Castle Spellbound

CASTLE PERILOUS — KEEP

Linda came out of a tropical night and into the gloom of the castle keep, passing through the portal that linked Sheila's world with Castle Perilous.

It was late afternoon, castle time. An ordinary day. Walking along the hallway, she passed servants and tradesmen going about their appointed tasks, along with a well-dressed nobleman or two about on business. She greeted the people she knew and smiled at those she didn't. She'd often wondered what the total population of the castle was. It must be enormous. She'd been here almost five years, and new faces presented themselves almost every day. To take a census, you'd have to count the population that lived in the various castle "aspects"-the worlds to which the castle provided access-as well as permanent castle residents. And then there were the Guests: people and other beings who had wandered into the castle through any one of 144,000 magical doorways.

The final nose-count would very likely be surprising. She turned down the hallway that led to her bedroom, still thinking of Gene and of what had begun to develop between them.

She was now regretting that it had happened; or rather that it only halfway happened. If Dalton and Thaxton hadn't blundered by, something might have, and then the affair would have been a fait accompli. Now she had to decide whether she wanted to go through with it. With the alcohol wearing off, she was beginning to see that that would be a tough decision. What would be the mood the next time she and Gene met? What would she say? What would he say?

She didn't relish facing him. Would they simply smile and pretend it didn't happen? Maybe that would be best. Or should they talk it out?

She wondered if Gene was already having second thoughts. Never once in all the time she'd known him did she get the slightest hint that he regarded her as anything but a good friend. A buddy. One of the guys. She had felt no spark, not the faintest throb, in all that time. She began to search her own feelings to see if there was something in her, some tiny glowing coal of desire beneath the sisterly warmth she felt for him.

She would be surprised to find anything. Maybe… maybe she just wanted to get laid.

Well, what was wrong with that? Perfectly natural. She hadn't slept with a man since…

She stopped. Good Lord, had it been so long that she couldn't remember?

Was it Tom Fahey, the man she'd been engaged to for three years? No wait. There was the insurance agent-her insurance agent, who had come over to change the beneficiary on her life insurance and ended up asking her out….

Was that after Tom and she had broken up, or before?

During?

Yes, during. It was during the breakup. Yes. She and Tom were just about through when she'd gone out with… She started walking again. What was his name? Phil. No, Stu.

Stu Stockton! Yes. Brief fling, that. One of the few, if not the only, brief fling of her life. On the rebound, sort of. Or did it happen before Tom and she got back together for the last time?

She laughed. She was obviously repressing all that. Better left repressed, too. Cover it up, let it lie. The dead past. Shudder.

So, it had been either Stu or Tom. When? Well, that would have been, oh, almost five and a half, maybe six years ago.

Six years! She didn't believe it. It couldn't be six years. But it was. She couldn't believe she had been nonvalent-incapable of bonding-in all that time. Not the slightest urge to pair, not the slightest quiver of desire… Well, not quite. There had been some nights, some cold and lonely castle nights, when she would have liked another warm body in her bed. Not just because Perilous was cold and draughty on occasion. But because she had felt the need to share her feelings with somebody. She had wanted someone to share a life with, to be a part of someone else's life. She had wanted to touch, to be touched. To sleep with somebody's arm around her.

And, yes, to make love.

She wasn't a cold fish. She wasn't asexual. It was just that she was picky.

Picky, picky, picky, her mother's voice came out of the dark ages of early memory. Eat your dinner, you're not eating. You're getting so thin. Miss Skin-and-Bones! You're too picky, Linda. A fussbudget about food. Too hot, too cold, too sour, too chewy; Linda had always had an excuse not to eat. And she had remained thin and fussy into adulthood. Picky, picky.

And about men, too. Not just anyone would do. In high school she had had few boyfriends. She liked to think she had high ideals. Well, that was true. Maybe too high. Tom had been a wonderful guy, but he was picky, too. More so than Linda. Way too picky. Always judging, always criticizing; first everybody else, then her. She had never measured up to his high standards, and she had wearied of the constant sense of failure she had felt.

So maybe high standards were a lot of hooey. Maybe getting laid was just what she needed, for once. Or twice. (Had Stu been just a lay? She barely remembered him. No, there'd been something more to it. Hadn't there?)

Repress, repress.

She reached her bedroom door and grasped the big wrought-iron door handle. The "lock" was her own: a magic spell that would admit only her.

Something occurred to her. What if Gene came knocking? What would she do? He might have interpreted her leaving as a signal to meet later. In fact, she had had that in the back of her mind.

Was she afraid of scandal? Afraid for her reputation? She laughed to herself, Did anybody care about those things these days? Well, maybe, but they didn't apply in Castle Perilous, at least among Guests. Whatever mores held sway among the native denizens of Perilous, she knew that her fellow Guests wouldn't bat a collective eye at a little bed-sharing. It went on all the time.

What if Gene didn't come? She wondered how she would feel about that eventuality. Rejection? She didn't want that either. Boy, had she opened a can of worms.

Why don't I take a little walk? she thought. Put it off. She left her door and continued down the corridor.

If Gene came home and found her gone he'd probably get upset, even ticked off. Now that she thought of it, that fetching look she'd given him couldn't have been interpreted any other way except as a come-on. So, he comes knocking, expecting, and… she's flown the coop. Nothing like leading a guy on and then shutting him off. There were words for the kind of women who made a habit of it. "Coquette" was the polite term.

She wouldn't blame him if he did get a little pissed off. Turning a corner, she came upon the Queen's Dining Hall. Earlier there had been an infestation of flies here. The flies seemed to be gone.

She went on down the hall and made a few turns, two rights and a left, threading her way through the maze of the castle keep. An old castle veteran, she knew her way. She rarely got lost now no matter where she went.

She passed a pretty sitting room, doubled back, and went in. The far wall was cut with six French windows, the extreme right one leading out to a bartizan turret high on the keep that gave a sweeping view of the Plains of Baranthe, some thousand feet below.

The other windows were quite another matter. They looked out onto different worlds altogether: parkland, farmland, forest, plain, and river valley. Nothing spectacular in any; simply pleasant landscapes.

Linda took a seat on the comfortable couch and put her legs up. The situation called for some thinking.

She was distracted by how appealing the room looked. The rug was Oriental, with a design that looked more Indian than Persian. There was a lot of furniture: an ornately carved rolltop desk; a tall, white-lacquered chest of drawers; a walnut trestle table; slat-back chairs; an oaken Gothic stool; several wing chairs; several bookcases holding leather covered volumes; lots of shelves and dressers displaying ceramic pots, cameo glass vases, bronze statuettes, enamel boxes, silver tankards, and other items of interest.

It was a nice room, cozy. She had run across it before, but it changed every time she encountered it. Which was par for the course in Castle Perilous. Things shifted about helterskelter on a regular basis, even in the most stable areas of the castle. Sometimes whole rooms relocated themselves, and it was not uncommon for them to disappear entirely, closed off by spontaneously generated blank walls.

They didn't call it Castle Perilous for nothing.

But sometimes the old place was quite homey and comfortable. Linda fluffed am embroidered pillow and sat back.

Getting back to the issue at hand…

Gene, Gene, Gene. What did she think of him? Well, he was good-looking, in a way. Dark curly hair; sort of Italian-looking (but didn't he say his mother was Irish?) with regular features, hazel eyes. She liked his face. It was a good face; maybe not what you'd call cute, exactly. Handsome. Yes, Gene was a handsome man. Tall, dark, and handsome. No problem there.

Okay. He was intelligent. Very. Often too. He talked well, was quick on verbal feet. Had a penetrating wit. He could make her laugh. Sometimes he was a scream. Sometimes he was obscure and made strange comments and you didn't know how to take him; but he always had something pertinent to say. He was good in a fight, that was for sure. He was an excellent swordsman, and he seemed never to be afraid, even in a sticky situation. And together they had found themselves in some very sticky situations.

He was also something of a ladies' man. Women generally liked him. His adventures in other worlds always seemed to involve a romantic liaison or two. The most notorious of these came to light the time he brought back this absolute Amazon of a female out of some bizarre Edgar Rice Burroughs-like universe, a veritable Deejah Thoris, brass brassiere and all. Right off the gaudy cover of a sci-fi paperback. She'd been stunning. But he'd lost her-she'd run off to Earth with some motorcycle types.

There had been other affairs that Linda knew about, both inside the castle and out. Before tonight she had regarded these with a boys-will-be-boys attitude. But now they seemed vaguely threatening.

That was stupid. How could she possibly feel that way? Gene was just a friend. That's all he was.

She sighed. Or was he? Let's see, add it all up. Gene was handsome, intelligent, resourceful, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful….

Hey, this guy was Boy Scout of the Year! So why the hell wasn't she head over heels in love with him? What did she want? What was she waiting for?

Kid, you've got to realize that you're no spring chicken anymore. I mean, the big Three-Oh has come and gone; up ahead, the scary Four-Oh, heading right at you.

If not now, when?

Something came into the room. She stared at it before she realized what it was, or rather before realizing that she didn't quite know what kind of creature it was. Her first thought was of a hairless monkey in dungarees, but the head was too large for a monkey's.

Whatever it was, it was humanlike. A gnome? A dwarf? Something like that.

And whatever was it doing sweeping up?

It began its cleanup on the bare part of the stone floor and came toward her.

"Hello," she said as pleasantly as possible. She couldn't tell whether it nodded in response or was just bobbing its bald head, which it constantly did when it moved. She rather thought the latter.

It swept on by her, busy with its straw broom.

One of the servants? she guessed. Was there a new policy to hire the… "differently abled"? Well, if so, that was very commendable. She watched it make a quick circuit of the room, marveling at how fast and efficient it-he? she? — was. The longer she watched, the more energy and animation the creature seemed to acquire, until it became a little whirlwind of housecleaning activity. It let go of the broom only to start dusting the shelves with a rag it pulled from its blue bib overalls, carefully lifting every objet d'art to wipe underneath.

It went through the room in no time, leaving the faint odor of cleanliness behind, a whiff of furniture polish, a hint of lemon oil and wax.

When it was done it walked briskly out of the room, moving with a curious bouncing gait, head lolling back and forth. She got up, followed it out, and stood at the arched entrance to watch it go galumphing off down the hall. "Strangest thing," she said.

It turned a corner and was gone. "Now, I wonder-"

She heard tiny footsteps behind her, turned, and was amazed to see the same creature heading toward her, broom tucked under its arm. She cast a confused glance back down the corridor. No, it couldn't possibly be the same creature; but this one was absolutely identical to the first, down to the mincing walk and the checkered cloth hanging out of a back pocket.

She watched it go past. It moved purposefully, totally dedicated to its mission, which seemed to be to… clean things.

At any cost.