"Nor wouldst thou be, if thou didst carry four, one in full armor!" Stegoman retorted.
"No matter how, I'm awfully glad to have you both back," Matt said quickly. "I'd like to get as far away from the duke as I can, and I don't think Stegoman could carry us all very far. Think you could take Fadecourt and Yverne together, Narlh?"
The dracogriff growled low in his throat and shook his wings. "Sure, nothing to it. But can scaly-face there carry you and the knight-in-armor both?"
"Scaly-face, indeed," Stegoman snapped. "And what hast thou for a visage, birdbrain?"
"Takes one to know one, right?"
"I prithee." Yverne stepped up to Narlh, nicely short-circuiting the insult match. "Wilt thou carry me, good beast?"
"Well, for you, lady..."
No one wins like the winsome, Matt decided. He turned away to Stegoman. "Mind trying again, old saur? Or do you need some rest?"
"Rest? Phaugh!" Stegoman lifted tired wings. "A dragon flies so long as there is need! Mount, knights!"
They did—and Matt noticed that Sir Guy wasn't looking as enthusiastic as he would have expected. He began to wonder if his courtesy to Yverne was just good manners, after all.
He had also noticed that she didn't seem to mind having both the knight and the cyclops being very solicitous of her. He began to revise his opinion of the damsel, then remembered how steadfast she had been in the torture chamber. After all, he had to admit she hadn't exactly been flirting with either man or cyclops—and there was nothing wrong with enjoying the situation, after all.
Was there?
They took off in a thunder of wings, and Stegoman growled, "Whither away, Wizard?"
"I hope that was a question, not a wish." Matt turned back to the knight. "Any idea how we can find Gor—the king's castle, Sir Guy?"
"Castle?" Sir Guy snapped out of a first-class brood. "Oh, aye! I have not seen it, but my allies have told me much of it. The royal castle is by the sea, on a small tongue of land that is surrounded on three sides by ocean."
"Sounds easy enough to recognize." Matt nodded. "Hear that, Stegoman?"
"Aye." The dragon sounded less than enthusiastic. "Thou shalt wish to be set down near to that, I conjecture?"
"As near as is safe, yes."
"If aught can be said to be safe, in Ibile," the dragon grumbled—but he arrowed ahead into the west, anyway.
The castle was there, all right, a huge triangle of curtain walls containing a trio of courtyards, a brooding old keep, and a whole town of support buildings. But there was a sulky, sullen feeling of having gone to seed, of having been darkened by centuries of soot. "Max," Matt said softly, "what's wrong with that place?"
The spark appeared beside him in midair, then hummed, "Precisely what you suspected, Wizard, or you'd not have summoned me. Entropy has taken it, and none has fought it off."
"But I don't see any visible signs of decay."
"Nor would you. The rot is not physical, but spiritual."
"Castles don't have souls!"
"Nay, but a house reflects its owners' spirits, Lord Wizard. The denizens of that house have let their souls subside in decay; 'tis why they are termed 'decadent.' This is only the outward sign of that corruption."
It did seem corrupt, now that Max had said the word—like the corpse of a great fortress, rotting unburied. Matt shuddered and turned to the practical aspect of the situation, which meant talking backward over his shoulder. "See any way to get in, Sir Guy?"
"Nay, Sir Matthew. 'Tis impregnable, unless it chooses to be otherwise."
Matt toyed with the notion of trying to get in by ruse and disguise, but discarded it quickly. "We'd better get out of the sky, then—I don't relish having their sentries see us and watch to find out where we go. Think you've seen all you need?"
"For what purpose?" Sir Guy shrugged. "I have seen its overall plan and can draw it for you from memory, now—yet how will that serve? We shall not take it, though we camp about its walls for ten years."
"Let's mull that over at leisure, shall we? Stegoman, find us a safe place for relaxing."
The dragon banked away toward the east. Matt scowled down at the ocean below, trying to figure out how to take a castle on a headland. Then he sat up straight, eyes widening. "Down there, on that island! What castle is that?"
It was much smaller, only a curtain wall, an outer bailey partitioned off from the inner bailey surrounding the keep, and four towers situated around its irregular, ellipsoid shape. It was dilapidated to the eye, though not to the inner eye, and surrounded by the long slopes of a hill, barren and blackened—almost, Matt would have thought, charred.
" 'Tis the Castillo Adamanto," Sir Guy answered. "I have heard of it—how it has restrained past kings from tyranny, by welcoming such barons as disagreed with the king. If enemies opposed those earlier monarchs from across so narrow a stretch of ocean, and were able to blockade them by sea whilst others might wall off their peninsula on the landward side, they might bid fair to starve the kings out—as the counts of that castle have done, ever and anon through these five hundred years. Always has the king had to come to terms with his barons, and his tyranny has never been absolute—till now."
"Oh? The sorcerer king managed to conquer it?"
"Nay—but his ships have penned it up. None may come there, now, and 'tis likely that the last of the counts is dead. Yet his spells endure, to sear invaders with fire if they approach his walls."
Could that explain the charred look to the hillsides? But how could the count keep a spell going after his death?
By embedding the command in a poem, naturally. Literature endured, after all. Matt nodded. "Well, we're not approaching by land, and we don't want to conquer—we just want a bed for the night, and shelter while we try to figure out what we can do about the king. This strikes me as the ideal location—if we can come in without getting fired. Do you suppose your cohort could find out?"
"The Puck? What say, goblin, can you tell?"
"Aye, that can I," Puck's voice said behind Matt, making the hairs on his neck stand on end. "What matters fire to a spirit mercurial? Nay, if flames come, I may change my form and burn them out!"
Matt didn't doubt that he could.
A breath of breeze fanned the back of his neck, and he saw the elf diving down toward the castle. He held his breath, but nothing happened.
"How long must we tarry?" Stegoman demanded.
"Till he tells us it's clear," Matt answered. "Sorry about the weight, old friend."
" 'Tis not so bad as all that—there are updrafts here, and I but glide from the one to the other. Natheless, Matthew, I shall be glad of a chance to lay me down."
"Just wait till we're on the ground, okay?" A dot was shooting up toward them, swelling into a diminutive human form—and Puck landed on Sir Guy's shoulder. "There is naught, not so much as a spark."
"Let us attempt it, Matthew."
"As you say. Gently, Stegoman."
"Indeed. I've no wish to be crisped." The dragon began to circle lower, a little at a time, very warily.
He brought them in to a thundering descent that was vertical for the last fifty feet, stretching his hind toes down to touch the granite, then taking up his weight as he sank down to crouch on all fours, folding his wings. Narlh wasn't quite so graceful—he came in at a low angle and landed running fast, cupping his wings to brake and trying to dig in his claws to come to a stop. He almost had to leap off the other side and try again, but at the last moment, he skidded to a halt, slewing around and bringing himself up sharply against a merlon.
"Done with excellent grace," Stegoman said dryly. "In truth, thou hast scant need to fly, thou dost run so well."
"Oh, put it in a bucket and drop it in a well!" Narlh growled, coming back to them. "If you're such an expert, maybe you could teach me that neat vertical landing, huh?"