Castle for Rent

Ten Keep — Queen’s Dining Hall

Sheila took another sip of coffee. She felt a little better now. There were people here who seemed to be in the same boat she was in — lost and stranded in a crazy place without knowing how or why. It felt good to talk to them and find out more about what the heck was going on here. None of what she was hearing made any sense, but at least everyone seemed to acknowledge that it didn’t make any sense. She could deal with that. Not with everything not making sense, but with the fact that no one seemed concerned that it didn’t.

Yes, she felt a little better, now that she had some proper clothes to wear. She had declined the usual quasi-medieval costume that everyone here pranced around in, opting instead for jeans, a blouse, and a good pair of running shoes. She’d been told that it was wise to be quick on your feet in Castle Perilous. She was determined to be as quick as possible.

The dining hall was almost full. Apparently it was a holiday in this world, and the castle servants (it was sometimes hard to tell the servants from the Guests, except that the servants had a sort of English accent) had set a festive table laden with dish after colorful and elaborate dish.

Everybody was digging in, so Sheila did, too.

“Anybody know what the occasion is?” Gene asked.

“Something akin to our winter solstice, I think,” M. DuQuesne said.

“I guess most worlds have solstices and equinoxes and all that stuff,” Gene said.

“My world doesn’t,” the creature called Snowclaw growled. (It seemed to growl all the time.) “Course, I wouldn’t know what an eekinocks was if it came up and kicked me in the butt.”

Sheila couldn’t get over how she could understand everything the white-furred, white-clawed creature said. In fact, it sounded a little like Uncle Walt, Mom’s brother. Uncle Walt growled a lot, too.

Despite her fear, she found the creature to be very friendly. She just couldn’t bring herself to look into its fierce yellow eyes.

She helped herself to a slice of roast suckling pig, then spooned out samples of a few of the side dishes. Everything had been delicious so far.

“Snowclaw, your world has to have an equinox,” Gene insisted.

“How do you know?” Snowclaw scoffed. “You’ve never been there.”

“Does it have a sun?”

“Well, of course.”

“Then it has equinoxes and solstices. What I’m talking about is … well, really it’s the relationship of a sun to a planet that revolves about it. You see, when a planet’s axis of rotation is tilted somewhat to the plane of its orbit, what happens is that —”

“What’s a planet?”

“Uh, a planet. It’s a world. You know, a big spherical lump of dirt that spins around.”

“Spins around what?”

“Turns. Rotates.”

“Where?”

Gene blinked. “What do you mean, ‘Where’? Out in space, of course. Look, when a planet spins on its axis, it —”

“What’s space?”

Gene took a long drink from his beer stein. “Forget it.”

“Anything you say, pal,” Snowclaw said amiably.

M. DuQuesne said, “Snowclaw, does your world have a warm season and a cold season?”

“Sure does.”

“Is the sun a little lower in the sky in the cold season?”

“It’s a lot lower.”

“Then, when the sun is at its lowest point during the cold season, and the days are very short, that’s the winter solstice. When it’s at its highest point in the sky during the warm season, and the days are long, that’s the summer solstice. The equinoxes are in between, in spring and autumn, when night and day are about equally long.”

“Oh. Well, sure, everybody knows that! Thanks.”

Everyone looked at Gene. He shrugged. “Okay, so I’m not Isaac Asimov.”

A man called Thaxton said, “Who’s for tennis today?”

Another, older man who called himself Cleve Dalton said, “Thax old boy, you ask that every damn day, and I can’t recall that anyone’s ever taken you up on it. Where the devil are the courts, anyway?”

“Well, they’re through an aspect just a little down the hall to the right. I suspect they’re not really tennis courts per se. I mean, there are nets and such, but they actually seem to be —”

There came shouts from out in the hallway, and the sound of running feet. A man, one of the servants, came running through the main entrance looking frightened to death. He ran past the table and shouted, “They’re coming! Run for your lives!” He sprinted to the kitchen entrance, threw the door open, and dashed through.

Everyone froze for a moment. Then Gene said, “It’s gotta be the Bluefaces.”

As if to corroborate his remark, three Bluefaces stormed through the main entrance with drawn swords.

“Stay where you are!” the middle one commanded. “You are now under authority of His Imperial Domination, High Proconsul of Greater Borjakshann, and you are subject to his every whim, wish, and caprice!”

“Hey, Blueface!”

Somewhat nonplussed, the creature raked an eye up and down the table until it found the speaker.

“Who dares defy authority of Proconsul?”

Snowclaw rose to his full height. “Me, that’s who,” he said.

The creature looked a trifle uncertain. “Any resistance will be dealt with harshly!”

“Yeah? What are you gonna do, bleed on me?”

The Blueface grinned with a satisfied malevolence. “For that bit of insolence, you will be put to death immediately!”

With a blood-congealing howl, Snowclaw sprang into a blur of motion. In one clean jump from a standstill, he was up on the table and running, huge clawed feet picking their way through the soup tureens and serving plates of prime rib, executing a neat end run around the carved ice centerpiece. At some point he became airborne, taloned toes leading, the claws of his hands swiping at the air, mouth wide and bristling with wickedly sharp teeth, gleaming incisors almost big enough to be tusks. A fire of diabolical ferocity burned in his alien yellow eyes.

The Blueface barely had time to point its sword in the proper direction. To no avail. The splayed foot of Snowclaw’s long right leg, which had extended slightly, hit the invader squarely in the breastplate. The sword went flying, and the creature went down, Snowclaw crashing on top of it.

Gene had delayed only an instant. He was up and charging by the time Snowclaw had made his leap.

“Everybody out through the kitchen!” he yelled.

Four more blue-skinned soldiers stormed through the door, and a few of the other males and one woman jumped up and ran to meet them, swords drawn.

Sheila just sat there, a morsel of beef Stroganoff still poised on the end of her fork, her mouth hanging open.

Ohmygawd. What the hell is happening now?

Someone grabbed her arm. It was Linda Barclay.

“Sheila! Run!”

Sheila got up and joined the clot of people that had jammed up at the kitchen door. She looked back over her shoulder to see Gene Ferraro crossing swords with one of the creatures, while the big white beast karate-fought with another. The Blueface who had done all the talking was sprawled on the floor with purple gunk running out of its mouth. Sheila suddenly got very sick, and very afraid.

Gene swung his weapon and lopped off the sword-arm of his opponent. Sheila saw the severed blue member splat to the floor. She thought she would throw up then and there, but when Gene’s next stroke clove the creature’s skull in two, spraying purple liquid all over the place, she was too shocked to react. Meanwhile, Snowclaw had lifted his adversary over his head; he threw the creature against the stone wall. The Blueface hit with a bone-pulping thud, hung against the wall for an impossible instant, then clattered to the floor.

Gene ran for the door. “Come on, Snowy, there’s too many of them!”

Snowclaw batted at one of the new intruders and sent the creature flying, but when he saw more reinforcements streaming through the main entrance, he broke for the back door.

Sheila had been watching all this, half hypnotized by the savagery of it, half paralyzed with fear. Linda yanked her back through the door as Gene came charging through.

Linda, Sheila, Gene, and Snowclaw raced through the cluttered, now deserted kitchen and banged out through the opposite door. They were followed by three survivors of the group who had joined the fight. The woman was not with them.

Once outside the kitchen, they pushed a huge sideboard against the door to block it. Immediately grunts and crashing sounds issued from the other side.

“They killed Morgana,” one of the men told Gene. “She chopped up one of them before getting it from behind.”

“I saw,” Gene said. “We’d better split up.”

The other nodded. “My favorite aspect is down this way.”

“Maybe not such a good idea,” Gene said. “Better to get off into the remote parts of the castle. Of course, that’s just a guess. You make your own decision.”

“Good luck.”

“Same to you.” Gene turned to Linda. “You and Sheila coming with us?”

“Of course. Gene, you were marvelous. I can’t believe how good a swordfighter you are. Maybe you really are Cyrano de Bergerac.”

“No, I just have a nose for trouble.”

Sheila hoped he was Cyrano, Duke Wayne, and Sylvester Stallone all rolled into one.