“I won’t.”
“Then… Are you taking one of the robots with you?”
“I hadn’t intended to.”
“I wish you would. I only ventured into the fringes of the tunnels, but there looked to be some rough spots.”
“John, I don’t need a nursemaid. Save that for the baby when it comes!”
“Please, Ayra, don’t be unreasonable. I’m not asking you to stay inside; I’m asking you to take a robot so that if you fall or slip or start a rock slide there will be someone to help you.”
Ayradyss almost commented that she expected to have one or more ghosts with her, but held back the words. John did not realize the amount of time she had been spending with Castle Donnerjack’s spectral inhabitants: the crusader ghost, Shorty, the Weeping Maid, the blindfolded prisoner, the Lady of the Gallery, and now the caoineag. And John was not really being unreasonable.
“Very well, John. You do have a point. I’ll ask Back who can be spared.”
John set down his disks and crossed to her. His arms around her, he murmured into her hair:
“Any of them can be spared, my love. You are more important than any chore that needs to be done around here.”
Almost any. You won’t leave your work, she thought bitterly, disliking the petulance in herself. She knew John felt that working steadily on Death’s palace was keeping his part of the bargain that had won him Ayradyss’s return, but she suspected a certain element of pride as well in his devotion to the project. The Lord of Entropy regularly sent electronic messages suggesting revisions and requesting additions to his Palace of Bones. John had mentioned that he felt strangely honored to be receiving communications from an entity that even Verite’s greatest scientists had dismissed as legend.
“Thank you, John,” she said, trying to ignore her internal harangue. “I don’t think I need anything too elaborate. One of the general purpose ‘bots should serve admirably.”
John smiled, embraced her once again, then picked up his disks and reader. “I’ll look forward to hearing what you find, my dear. See you at lunch?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know how far I’ll walk—and I’m getting a late start.”
“Very well. Don’t wear yourself out.”
“I won’t.”
He left, brushing her cheek with another quick kiss. Ayradyss stood a moment longer, wondering if she had angered him. With an effort, she put the question from her, knowing that she could not run after him and ask without inviting an argument about the very issues she had resolved not to argue. Marriage—at least to a devoted scientist—was a bit more difficult than she had imagined. She had never realized that the art which had shaped the man she loved would also be her rival.
Pressing her fingers to her eyes, she put the thoughts from her. When she had been longer in Verite she would have more activities of her own. When the baby came she would have more than enough to occupy her. For now, there were the tunnels to explore and the odd company of the caoineag to savor.
The heavy iron key that opened the thick iron door could have been a relic of the original castle, but Ayradyss knew that John, in one of those fits of whimsy he usually reserved for his art, had ordered the door specially forged in the village. The hinges creaked when she tugged the door, but it swung open easily enough.
When she had descended to the “dungeon” levels, she had been accompanied by Voit, an all-purpose servomech that currently resembled nothing so much as a meter-tall robin’s egg hovering about a foot from the ground. Its air cushion stirred up the dust slightly, but otherwise the robot was an unobtrusive companion. The crusader ghost, the caoineag, and the ghost of the blindfolded prisoner had joined her as she was fitting the key to the lock.
“He wanted to come along,” the crusader ghost said with a shrug toward the blindfolded specter. “Said he knew the place. I dinna think you’d mind.”
Ayradyss flipped on her headlamp and let it shine into the darkness on the other side. Following her example, Voit switched on a wider beam light. A corridor a meter and a half across extended before them. In the immediate vicinity it was lined with dressed stone, but at the fringes of the light both floor and walls reverted to the native stone.
“Can your friend see?” she asked, gesturing at the blindfolded prisoner.
“Aye, that he can,” the crusader assured her. “Or if he canna see, what harm can come to him from a fall, his having shuffled off this mortal coil in ages past?”
“You have a point,” Ayradyss agreed. “Let’s go, then.”
“Shall the door be closed behind us, mistress?” Voit asked.
Ayradyss gave in to impulse. There was no reason for the door to be closed. They were not hiding from anyone, but she craved the sense of adventure that the little gesture would grant.
“Closed, yes, Voit, but don’t lock it.”
“Understood.”
The robot extended a mechanical arm and pulled the door shut with another satisfying squeal and thump. As Ayradyss waited for her eyes to adjust to the light cast by the lamps, she noticed that each of the three ghosts gave off a slight bluish-white glow. She had never noticed this effect before. On the other hand, their previous meetings had not been in nearly so dark a place.
“It’s so black,” she whispered.
“Aye,” the crusader ghost agreed.
The caoineag did not comment, but drifted ahead, leading the way. Ayradyss followed, surprised at the superstitious fear she felt. The darkness, the rough stone, the odors of must, mold, and the salt sea touched memories she had left quiescent for so long that she had not realized that they were there to recall. She concentrated on the immediate moment, the crush of sand and rock beneath her feet, the tug of the stone wall when she caught her sweater against it, the annoyance of a drop of water that fell from the ceiling to run down her nose, and the memory receded and with it the fear.
Following the caoineag, Ayradyss walked slowly through the tunnels. These twisted, doubling back on themselves, crossing and recrossing with such frequency that she was not at all certain how far from the castle they had come—or if they had left its environs at all. Sometimes the tunnel would widen into a small cavern. Then Ayradyss would have Voit hover near the ceiling so that its light would shine down to illuminate the area.
She found odds and ends in these little caverns: old bottles, candle stubs, a rusting tin of machine oil, two broken claymores side by side, once a rag doll—the stitches of its face still holding a lopsided smile. Most of her finds she left behind, but she put the doll in her pocket, unable to bear the idea of it remaining in the loneliness and silence.
Time lost all meaning in the darkness and quiet. The ghosts drifted along with her, rarely speaking, and then usually to each other. Occasionally, when she passed her own bootprints in the sand, she wondered how long ago had she made those marks. It could have been minutes, but as easily it could have been eons. At long last, she felt a breeze, solid and salt. It woke her from the dream in which she had been wandering.
“I wonder where that wind comes from?” she said aloud, her own voice sounding strange to her.
“There is a cave that opens to the sea when the tide is low,” the caoineag answered. “Would you like to see it?”
“Yes.”
She walked more briskly now, the fresh wind blowing the cobwebs from her mind. The ghosts’ light dimmed as they turned a corner and entered a cavern larger than any Ayradyss had seen thus far. It was thirty meters from end to end, much of this taken up with an underground pool. This was lozenge-shaped, a gravelly beach running along one long edge, rock walls closing in everything except for a narrow strip of light at the farthest edge of the water.