Castle Perilous

Keep — East Wing — Queen’s Dining Hall

“I say, you two up there! Had your breakfast?”

Linda twisted her head around in an effort to see whom in the world Thaxton could be talking to. When she caught sight of the gray-suited man and the furry white monster standing on the ceiling, she dropped her coffee cup to the stone floor.

“My God! How …?” She stared in amazement. After a moment she regained enough composure to look down at the mess on the floor.

Jacoby was already handing her a fresh cup. “Here you are, my dear. Don’t worry about it.”

“Th-thank you.” She took the cup.

“Are you all right?”

Linda gulped some coffee. “Yes, thank you. It’s just that I’ll never get used to this place. Surprises at every turn.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it rather quickly. In time you’ll come to the realization that this is rather a wonderful place to stay. Our Host could make a fortune if he charged the going rates.”

“If he could guarantee a way home,” DuQuesne said.

“But think of the throngs of people who would pay anything to go on holiday here,” Jacoby said enthusiastically. “Surely with an organized effort, the major portals could be located and maintained. Why, then you’d —”

“But that would be a task of major proportions, I’m afraid. Impossible, perhaps.”

“Well, perhaps …” Jacoby said, suddenly deflated.

“Hello, up there!” Thaxton was calling. “Coming down?”

After much discussion it was agreed that the ceiling-hanging pair should make their descent by walking down a nearby column. This they did, with success. Applause. Then the gray-suited man tried to walk back up, and fell on his buttocks.

Gene picked himself up. “I can’t figure it.”

“Where do you think we got turned around?” Snowclaw said.

“Who knows.”

“Where did you fellows come from?” Thaxton wanted to know when the two arrived at the table. “Coffee, tea?”

“Coffee, please,” Gene said, pulling up an ornate chair. “We took a tour through an Escher painting, I think.”

“Oh, yes. The one who does the trick perspective things, isn’t he?”

“That’s the one. Hello,” Gene said, nodding to various people around the table. “Hello, hello.”

Snowclaw prowled around the long table examining the sumptuous assortment of fare. He grabbed a whole roast squab, bit off half of it, bones and all, and chewed. “Not bad,” he said, then reconsidered it. “Not good, though. Ptoohey! ” A spray of semimasticated bird flew forth. “Y’got anything to eat around here?”

“Won’t you try the paté?” Thaxton offered, brushing fragments of bone and meat from the shoulder of his morning coat.

“What’s that?” Snowclaw said, tearing off a leg of turkey.

“Going back to your resort idea,” DuQuesne said sotto voce, leaning toward Jacoby, “you’d have to restrict the clientele.”

“Of course.” Jacoby smiled.

“This would be a nice hotel,” Linda said. “The area around here, I mean.”

“Most of the Guests stay in the family residences,” Jacoby said.

“The rooms are so nice,” Linda continued. “And the staff is helpful. They speak English too — which I can’t figure out. In fact, everybody around here —”

“But, my dear, they don’t speak English,” DuQuesne told her. “As a matter of fact, neither do I.”

Linda stopped chewing her mouthful of omelette. “Huh?”

“Don’t listen to the sense of what I’m saying for a moment, listen to the sound. The sound of my voice. Am I speaking English?”

“I don’t quite know what you mean,” Linda said, swallowing.

“Listen carefully. Are you sure that the language I’m speaking is English? Listen.”

Linda’s eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head to one side.

“Ecoutez bien Donc Quelle langue est-ce que je parle maintenant? J’ai parlant français n’est-ce pas?”

Linda’s jaw dropped. “You are speaking French! But I can understand you, and I don’t speak a word of French!”

DuQuesne grinned at her. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Oh, well, this is just too much. How could I not have noticed?”

“Part of the spell,” Thaxton said, having overheard. “Part of the magic.”

“Magic … yes.” Linda sat back.

“You got any raw meat, something still kicking?” Snowclaw asked, tossing the half-chewed turkey leg into the tureen of escarole soup.

A blue, shimmering cloud with a vague suggestion of a human form within it approached the table, having ghosted in through the main entrance. It glided to an empty chair and seated itself.

“Good morning,” came a voice emanating from within the phenomenon. The voice was feminine, and sounded as though the speaker were underwater.

“Merikona, how nice to see you,” Thaxton said. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”

Gene, Linda, and Snowclaw were watching, mouths agape. The other Guests smiled and went back to eating.

“I found an aspect opening onto a world somewhat in phase with mine. I spent some time there. It was pleasant to have spatiotemporal intercongruence with one’s environment again. But I missed my friends here, and … as you can see —”

“How nice,” Thaxton said. “Tea and scones, as usual? Some over there, I think.”

“What’s on the agenda today?” DuQuesne asked brightly.

Linda had recovered from the shock of Merikona’s entrance enough to ask, “How did … how did Merikona get back from the world she went into? I thought someone said the doorways or whatever you call them shifted around.”

“I’m for tennis. Up for a few sets, DuQuesne?” Thaxton called.

“I’d rather golf today, if you don’t mind,” DuQuesne answered, and immediately went on speaking to Linda: “Marikona traversed an aspect, of which the castle has 144,000, or so rumor has it.”

“Ah,” Jacoby said. “A number pregnant with mystic significance.”

“Quite so.”

“Best of three sets, then,” Thaxton proposed.

“Not today, Arnold, thank you. As I was saying, my dear, many of the castle’s aspects are stable. One may pass to and from those worlds without trouble. Unfortunately, most are very unstable. They appear and disappear with disconcerting irregularity. Lord help you if you wander through one. It could close up and leave you stranded on the other side. That could be most unpleasant.”

Thaxton wouldn’t give up. “How about you, Dalton, old boy?”

In the middle of lighting a cigarette, Dalton said, “And drop dead after the first set? No thanks. Golf’s my game too.”

“Bother. Well, golf it is, then.”

Linda asked, “Don’t these unstable aspects ever open up again?”

“Possibly. No telling,” DuQuesne said. “And there’s no telling where in the castle they’ll appear if they do open up.”

“It’s catch as catch can, I’m afraid,” Jacoby said.

Linda sat back and smiled wanly. “I suppose the aspect leading back to our world is one of the unstable ones.”

“I’m afraid it is,” DuQuesne said.

“Isn’t there any way of finding it? Can’t we search for it?”

“No one we know has found a way back,” Jacoby said.

“But that doesn’t mean that a way back to our world won’t eventually be found, by somebody,” DuQuesne protested. “Or that somebody, some Guest, at some time, may not have found one and gone back to the world we know. This castle is thousands of years old.”

“Then …” Linda’s right hand went to her face. “We’re stranded here.”

“Temporarily,” DuQuesne said gently. “That’s the way it’s best to think of it.”

Gene had finished his plate of ham, sausage, scrambled eggs, smoked whitefish, buckwheat cakes, lox, and herring in sour cream. He looked around the table and noticed there were serving plates of food more commonly appropriate for lunch or dinner. He helped himself to chicken cordon bleu, stuffed cabbage, rigatoni in meat sauce, and sauteed mushrooms, with an artichoke salad and a plate of coleslaw on the side.

Snowclaw was munching the last of the candles, which he had been dipping in Thousand Island dressing first. Addressing Thaxton, he said, “What’s tennis? Sounds interesting. I’d like to take a try at that.”

Linda gave a surprised squeal, and everyone looked.

“Oh, this is it,” she said, shaking her head in wonder. “This takes the cake.” She was looking at something cupped in the palm of her hand.

“What is it, Linda?” DuQuesne said.

“A Valium. See?” She held it up between thumb and index finger.

“Yes, Linda. What’s wrong?”

“Just a minute ago I was thinking that I really needed a trank — a tranquilizer. I used to take them … a lot of them. Kicked the habit, but when you told me about us being stuck here, I was thinking to myself, God, what have I got to lose, I wish I had one right now, right in my hand. And I had my right hand clenched … and just now I opened it and looked … and, well, here it is.”

Significant looks were exchanged around the table among the seasoned Guests.

“Materialization,” DuQuesne murmured. “Interesting.”

“How long have you been in the castle, did you say?” Jacoby asked pointedly.

“Huh? Oh … uh, two nights. Yes. Two nights and a day.”

“I see,” Jacoby said, and sipped his demitasse thoughtfully.