Breathing hard, he stopped, leaned against the dark stone wall. He slowed his breath and listened.
Nothing. No footsteps, no voices.
Could it be? Had he truly lost his pursuit? The quiet closed in around him.
Miracle of miracles. Now he would have a chance to find an amenable aspect. He knew of several where he could hide out awhile. He knew of others into which he could disappear for a very long time indeed, and that is what he desired. The castle was no longer safe. He had tried to take it, make it his, but had failed miserably.
No matter. Incarnadine would never find him. He would hide, biding his time. It would take years, perhaps, but somehow he would raise an army and return. He would invade Castle Perilous, depose Incarnadine, and take the throne.
Good, he thought. It was essential to have a plan, to keep ambitions alive.
He began walking again. Suddenly he stopped, looked about.
Something was strange. His castle sense was giving him mixed signals. The surroundings were familiar, but there was something odd. He could not grasp quite what.
He shrugged it off and continued. He wandered for what seemed like hours. No one was about.
The sense that something was amiss did not leave him. He could not shake the feeling that somehow, in some inexplicable way, he had left the castle. But that was impossible, for clearly he was still inside it. He had not crossed an aspect.
Or had he? There lingered an inescapable feeling that he had. There was a sixth sense about that as well. He knew when the castle gave way to one of its contingent worlds. There was always a sense of going out, of leaving.
As now. But what had he entered? What sort of world was like the castle itself?
He turned a corner and collided with a Guardsman.
“Gene!”
Stunned, he regarded the man, whom he recognized and knew well. It was no less than Tyrene, Captain of the Guard. What he could not fathom was why Tyrene was giving him the friendliest of smiles.
Tyrone’s gaze lowered to Gene’s hands, and his expression turned quizzical.
“What’s this? Lady Linda playing some sort of prank?”
Sir Gene looked at the manacles, then at Tyrene. He had no answer. Nor did he have an explanation for why Tyrene looked different, until he realized that the ugly, cancerous mole on the man’s right cheek was gone.
Tyrene laughed. “Too embarrassed to say? Here.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. “I should have a master here somewhere.”
Sir Gene remained silent as Tyrene searched for the key, found it, and released him.
“Thank you,” Sir Gene said, rubbing his wrists.
Tyrene examined the manacles. “Did Linda conjure these, or do they come from the dungeon?”
“Ah … I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“It’s all right. It’s a rare prisoner we have these days. I’ll see that they get stored away properly.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Well, must be going. Duty, you know. With Lord Incarnadine away things tend to get a mite frantic.”
Tyrene walked off, whistling off-key.
Sir Gene stared after him, amazed beyond words.
When the silence returned, he fell into contemplation.
At length, he reached a conclusion. He did not understand why or how, but it was clear that he had been presented with a golden opportunity.
Sir Gene Ferraro was not a man to let such pass by.
Two
Queen’s Dining Hall
It was breakfast and everyone was up early. The long dining table was heavy with food in every variety imaginable. The coffee flowed and so did the conversation.
Linda Barclay turned to one of the servants. “Orrin, did you wake Gene early?”
“I did, milady.”
“He’s hard to get up sometimes. Do you know when his plane leaves?”
“Your pardon, milady, I do not.”
Linda sipped her coffee. She looked up at Orrin again. “Do you know what an airplane is?”
Orrin wasn’t sure. “A flying machine?”
“Right. I’m never sure how much you born castle people know about our world.”
“Oh, we know a bit, milady. I’ve never seen a flying machine, but I’m very sure I wouldn’t fancy taking a ride in one.”
“I’ve always been afraid to fly, too.”
The man whom everyone called Monsieur DuQuesne was sitting across the table. “I’ve never flown in my life,” he said.
Cleve Dalton, thin and middle-aged, was seated next to him. “I always liked flying. Always meant to get a private license. Took lessons, even soloed, but never took the written test.” He lifted his coffee cup. “By the way, what’s Gene going back to school for?”
Deena Williams answered. “You mean why is he going back or what’s he gonna study?”
“I guess I mean both. Sorry, I’m always out on the golf course, so I don’t know what’s going on half the time.”
Thaxton, a dapper man in his late thirties, said, “You don’t know what’s going on half the time out on the course, Dalton, old boy.”
“I know enough to beat you more than half the time.”
“Golf’s not my game, you know that.”
“Yes, of course. It’s tennis, which I hate.”
“Gene’s going to study computer science,” Linda said. “Grad school at Cal Tech.”
“Very good school,” Dalton said, impressed. “Why computers?”
“Well, Gene has always had this inferiority thing about his not being very good in magic. He needs to compensate. Computers he thinks he can handle.”
Jeremy Hochstader came in yawning. He looked in his teens but was a bit older.
“Speakin’ of computers,” Deena said, “here comes the whiz kid now.”
“Morning, everybody,” Jeremy said between yawns. “Sorry. Up all night with the castle mainframe again.”
“How’s the rebuilding going?” Dalton asked.
“Oh, so-so. The CPU is working but the operating system is still full of bugs.” Jeremy helped himself to eggs and bacon.
Linda said, “Gene also thinks he can help with the magic if he learns computers.”
“Magic and computers,” Deena said with a shake of her head. “Crazy.”
“Incantations, pentacles, all that stuff is old-fashioned,” Jeremy said. “Why can’t you run a spell through a computer?”
“Why not?” Deena said with a shrug.
“Can’t stop progress,” Jeremy said.
“I also think that Gene needs to get back to reality,” Linda said. “I think maybe all of us need to get back sometimes.”
“Not me,” Dalton said. “I’ll take the castle over reality any day.”
Thaxton buttered some toast while commenting, “According to our host, the castle is reality. Everything else is just an adjunct.”
“What’s an adjunct?” Deena asked.
“Something that’s secondary. The castle creates all the worlds it provides access to.”
Linda said, “Well, that’s not entirely true. The way I understand it — I mean, the way Lord Incarnadine explained it to me — is that there are an infinite number of possible universes, but they don’t really exist in the normal sense. They just sort of hang out there until the castle makes them …real, I guess.”
“That’s more or less it,” Thaxton said.
“And the castle chooses 144,000 of these universes and creates access doors that we all go traipsing through.”
“You’ve hit it on the head.”
“But I really don’t emotionally accept it,” Linda went on. “I still can’t accept the castle as anything but a long-lived fantasy. I think Gene has trouble with it, too. That’s why he feels he has to get back once in a while. Back to the gritty, real world we came from.”