ICO: Castle in the Mist

1

THE GIANT FRONT gates of the Castle in the Mist were closed once more. Ico and Yorda stood together in the sunlit courtyard. The memories of the castle and its history now returned to Yorda formed a link between her and the boy, a link firmer than his grip upon her hand.

Ico squinted in the breeze, looking up at the gates that blocked their escape.

“We’ll get out, I promise,” he said. On her knees, Yorda whispered something weakly. Ico looked down at her, still not understanding her words. “It’ll be okay this time,” he said.

How can you say that? she thought, her eyes widening. How can you know?

Ico smiled. “I just know. I can see it now.”

He understands my thoughts, even though he cannot understand my words, Yorda realized.

“There was a battle, wasn’t there?” Ico whispered. Yorda trembled, recoiling from her own memories.

“You broke the queen’s enchantment. Then you and Ozuma escaped and took the Book of Light to the outside world. That’s why the armies of Zagrenda-Sol finally launched their attack.”

Yes, Yorda thought, they came-

At once, a new vision spread before Yorda’s eyes. She saw a massive host of armed men, battle-worn and brave. An armada of warships covered the sea. Atop the deck of the lead galleon flew the flag of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire, and on its bow stood the priest-king himself. She saw him closely now, in profile, his face filled with determination and battle lust. The sun lit his face and made the imperial emblem on his shoulder glitter like gold. Ozuma stood at his side, the longsword at his waist imbued with the power of the Book of Light.

Yes, they came to destroy the queen. With her enchantment gone, the seas around the castle were as easy for ships to enter as a grassy field is to a brigade of footmen. There was nothing to stop them. They crossed the narrow sea, made landing by the castle, and the sound of their boots upon the stones drowned out even the howling of the sea wind.

They arrived to find nothing waiting for them-not a single soldier stood in their way.

Yorda jerked her hand from Ico, wrenching him from the vision of the past. The phantasmal armada upon the waters vanished into the sunlight.

A seabird passed overhead, its cry plaintive. For a while the boy stood there, looking down at Yorda, whose hands covered her face. Then he knelt close beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t want to remember, do you?”

Yorda’s head drooped lower.

“There was a battle, but the castle still stands,” the boy said, thinking aloud. “In the end, Zagrenda-Sol and Ozuma couldn’t defeat the queen.”

Yorda was silent. Again, the seabird cried out, high above them in the clear sky.

“It’s all right,” Ico said. He knew the castle would tell him what Yorda would not. He would learn soon enough of what had come next. Now that the path to her memories had been reopened, the visions would continue whether Ico wanted to see them or not.

“Well, I’m not worried,” Ico said.

Yorda looked up at him, her reddened eyes full of pity. How can you know?

“Because of this,” he said, patting the Mark on his chest. It rippled slightly at his touch. “Remember, I told you the queen doesn’t like it? Well, I think I figured out why my Mark is so special. The pattern on this must be the pattern from the Book of Light! When the elder said I was their light of hope, that’s what he was talking about!”

Ico was young and his body, though small, was full of courage and strength. But it was the Mark that distinguished him from the many Sacrifices who had come to the castle before, and that had bade the phantasm of Ozuma to appear to Ico. The elder was right. Ozuma was right. There was nothing to fear.

Now the boy was talking about another friend, a boy named Toto. He must’ve found the book, Ico was saying. Yet the more he spoke, the deeper Yorda’s sadness became. His efforts to encourage her were valiant, but Ico was still too young to understand the dark tangle in Yorda’s heart, much as he was still too young to wonder why the elder had told him not to speak of his Mark to the priest from the capital. Too young to let the little doubts build up inside him and shake his confidence.

There was much he could still ask her: Why had the priest-king of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire been unable to destroy the castle? Why had Ozuma failed? Why did the queen remain here? How did the castle become enshrouded in mist, why was it insatiably hungry for Sacrifices made in the image of the knight Ozuma? Why had his bloodline been chosen for this dark destiny?

But Ico was more concerned with the future than the past. Mistakes were mistakes, and failures were failures. Why torment someone with memories of their past?

He would accomplish what his ancestor had not. That was what Ozuma wanted. He would free the Sacrifices as Yorda had freed her mother’s victims so long ago. He would bring peace to the world.

He would defeat the queen.

Ico put a fist to his Mark, feeling his own heart beat through the fabric. Ico did not know that there were limits to the power of the Book of Light. He did not know that the priests in the capital-the new seat of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire on this continent-knew of the book’s failings all too well. That was why they maintained their silence and proffered up the descendants of Ozuma to the castle. Not all history is told in stories and chronicles. The parts untold, the dark passages of time, were those that swallowed men’s hopes and made the distinctions between good and evil as nebulous as mist.

Ico stood, taking Yorda’s hand, secure in the belief that their path and the answers to his questions would be revealed.

Ico thought back, recalling the pier at the bottom level of the castle where he had first arrived with the priest and his guards. The guard had gone to a room on that same level to retrieve the longsword that opened the idol gates-which was almost certainly the longsword that had once belonged to Ozuma. That’s why it was able to move the idols. It’s imbued with the power of the Book of Light. Just like Yorda.

It made sense now that they had found Ozuma without his sword. For some reason, he had let go of it, and that had led to his defeat.

I have to find Ozuma’s sword. I’ll just retrace my steps back to the underground pier.

With Yorda by his side, he would be able to pass any idols they came across on his way back.

Ico decided that he would first take Yorda to safety when they reached the pier. With the double protection of Ozuma’s sword and the Mark, Ico would be more than ready to face the Queen. There was no sense putting Yorda in any more danger-and it would be too cruel to force her to face her mother again.

Ico nodded to himself and then turned to the girl. While he had been lost in thought, she had wandered some distance away. She was standing near the gates by the foot of one of the stone torch pedestals that lined the courtyard like two rows of soldiers, her head hung low.

“Hueeeh!” he called out to her. When she didn’t come, he ran to join her. Grabbing her hand, he took her to the stone archway that led back to the drawbridge.

But now the stone archway doors were closed, and the arch was much too high for him to climb. Ico pushed and pulled at the doors, but they wouldn’t budge. He gave them a swift kick and immediately regretted it. Ouch.

It was as though the queen had foreseen everything he would do and gone ahead to foil his plans. The castle was like a labyrinth that changed to suit her needs.

Ico growled and, hands on his hips, glared at the arch. Yorda had begun to wander away again. She was off to the right, drifting like a shadow, looking up at a high point on the walls.

Yorda stood at a dead end too. It looked like the way here had been hastily barricaded. Large boards had been nailed to the door jambs. They overlapped one another, leaving gaps large enough for him to peek through.

Ico thought he might be able to pull off the boards if he got his fingers through the gaps, but even though he tugged till his face turned red, the barricade remained firmly in place.

He had all but given up when he looked to see Yorda pointing to a corner of the wall near the barricade where some round objects lay in a pile.

“What are those?”

Ico walked over and examined the black objects. They were each about the size of his head and too heavy for him to lift with one hand. He leaned down and sniffed one. It smelled like dirt and-

Firepowder!

He had seen hunters smear tar mixed with firepowder on arrows to take down particularly large or dangerous animals. Because of the risk, he had never been allowed to handle the tar himself, but he recognized the smell at once.

“There’s gotta be a ton of firepowder in each of these!” He looked at Yorda, his eyes wide. “They must’ve used these during the battle!”

“Find the queen!”

The voice in Ico’s head, heavier and more fierce than any he had heard before, made him pause for a moment. Is that the priest-king? He realized he was experiencing another memory of the past. “Destroy the barricades! She can’t hide forever!”

The voice faded. Ico blinked his eyes, coming out of the vision. Yorda was standing next to him, so quiet he couldn’t even hear her breathing. The round, dirt-encrusted balls filled with firepowder sat at his feet, looking as harmless as lumps of mud.

“I wonder if they still work?”

Ico ran back to the front gates and lit his stick on one of the torches he found there. Returning, he lit the fuse on one the balls with his newly fashioned torch, and it began to spark and sputter. After pushing the ball up against the barricade, he took Yorda’s hand and moved away as quickly as he could.

The ball didn’t explode with quite as much force as he had expected-he didn’t even have to cover his ears. Even still, it blasted the wooden barricade to smithereens, sending a thousand pieces of wood scattering in every direction. The wind from the blast even extinguished the torch.

Ico grinned. Beyond where the barricade had stood was a narrow passageway with stone walls on either side, a strip of blue sky visible high above.

He would have to move more carefully from here on out. The queen was watching. Ico took the lead, holding up his extinguished torch and walking down the stone-lined corridor.

At the end of the corridor, the walls opened out. To his left was a stone staircase going down to a patch of grassy lawn-another inner courtyard of the castle.

Behind him, Yorda gasped.

“What’s wrong?”

Ico looked back, then followed the girl’s eyes. He looked down at the lustrous green grass below and saw a line of square stones. It’s a graveyard.

Ico took Yorda’s hand. “Is this where the queen took you that night? The underground gallery?”

Yorda nodded and took a step in front of him, looking down at the gravestones lined up in the sun.

“That means we should be able to get back into the castle from here,” Ico said, thinking out loud. He went down the stone stairs. The grass felt good beneath his feet. He walked through the graveyard, trying to read the inscriptions on the stones, but the weather had worn them all away. He touched one. Even the corners of the stones were now rounded. Maybe they were already old when Yorda was here before-the night the queen summoned her below.

Despite what must have been years without care, the grass was uniformly short and not a single blade was out of place. The turf was soft, its bright green contrasting with the darker moss growing on the stones.

It was like time had stopped, preserving the stones, keeping the grass fresh-

Something pricked at the back of Ico’s mind, and then the realization came. The visions of Yorda’s past were all from long ago. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that sooner? The emperor that came here with Ozuma to fight the queen had been the fifth emperor of Zagrenda-Sol. He was pretty sure that the emperor in the capital now was the eighteenth.

For that much time to pass, Yorda must have spent ten or even twenty lifetimes trapped here in the castle-and she was still a girl.

Had the queen placed another enchantment on the castle? The Castle in the Mist was separated from the world he knew, and not just by geography. This was a different world entirely.

Ico rubbed his own arms to stop himself from shivering. Yorda was crouching by one of the gravestones, just as Ico had moments before, trying to read the markings. Or maybe that was the grave that had slid to the side, revealing the stairs? If Yorda touched it, would the gravestone move? For a moment, Ico held his breath, but the stone showed no inclination toward motion. Apparently, it took a queen to open that door.

Ico explored, eventually discovering the stairs and corridor that the chief handmaiden had taken when she brought Yorda here. At the top of the stairs, the wall had collapsed, preventing him from going any farther. The great mountain of gray rubble here didn’t look like something he could blast away, either.

He returned to the graveyard. The walls of the castle rose on all four sides here. The windows were all too high for him to reach. Then he noticed double doors standing in a shadowed corner of the graveyard. The doors, with an arched façade that made Ico think of a cathedral, seemed to lead to a different section of the castle.

Wherever the doors led, he hadn’t been through there before, which meant it wasn’t part of the castle Yorda had shown him in the visions. He called out to her, waving toward the doors. “Looks like some kind of hall. Does that go back into the main castle?”

Yorda only stared at him with a sad look in her eyes.

Ico shrugged. “Well, let’s explore it anyway. It’s not like we have many other choices.”

He took Yorda’s hand and began to walk, when suddenly he felt his hair stand on end. The air around him had grown suddenly colder and darker, even though the sun was shining above.

Then he saw them: dark swirling pools opening, one on the grass, one between the gravestones, one on the landing atop the stairs. They boiled and seethed, and a horned shadow-creature with long, sharp claws emerged before them. He spotted another with wings flying over the stones.

“Run!” Ico shouted. He pulled on Yorda’s hand and made for the doors leading to the hall. He beat back one of the creatures that rose up in their way with his stick. It dissolved instantly, leaving two eyes floating in space. Ico knew it would be back soon.

“Don’t stop!” he shouted. “We have to get through those doors!”

The creatures were on all sides of them now. Yorda swung her free arm, batting at the winged creatures thronging around her head.

Even more creatures emerged from the black pool on the landing behind her. They came down the stairs, jerking strangely, as if walking on tiptoe, one after another.

Yorda pulled away from Ico and ran in a crazed circle to evade the creatures, then her knee connected with a gravestone and she fell sprawling across the grass. The creatures swarmed on top of her, circling as though they were performing a macabre celebratory dance.

“Get away!” Ico growled through clenched teeth. “Don’t touch her!” He swung his stick and roared wildly, and when that didn’t seem like enough, he swung his arms and kicked with his legs, trying to push the monsters away. “Back!” he shouted. “Back to the shadows!”

Ico knocked away another of the creatures trying to seize Yorda, then picked her up by the sleeve of her dress. “Run!”

A single large creature slid in front of them as they made for the doors. Its clawed arms hung down by its side, and it leaned forward, peering at Ico. Its eyes flared.

Why do you protect the girl? It was her mistake that made us what we are.

The creature’s shoulders heaved, as though it were gasping in pain, and its eyes shone with the cold light of winter stars.

From this close, Ico could see what looked like an expression in the swirling dark mists-he saw pain, misery, and anger. But anger toward whom?

You are of our blood.

The creature gestured with its horns toward Ico, as if to prove his point.

Our lives were given to the castle so that the girl could live. Now, we will take her as payment for what we have surrendered.

Ico blinked, not comprehending.

“What?” he said out loud.

His grip on Yorda’s sleeve loosened. She fell to her knees, slumping down on the grass. The creatures advanced, tightening in a ring around them.

Ico took a half step backward, and the shadow-creature in front of him slowly shook its head.

Flee, young Sacrifice. Leave this castle while you still enjoy the book’s protection. We are bound to this girl by a curse that can never be broken. The queen tortures us as we wander her castle, so we will take the girl she wants and keep her to ourselves. It is justice, and justice is eternal. This is not something you can change, young Sacrifice.

Ico took another step backward, eyes still fixed on the creature. He tripped and fell to the grass. Another creature picked Yorda up and lifted her across its shoulder.

The creature turned and walked off, making for the black pool that had formed between the gravestones. Yorda’s arms hung limply down the creature’s back, swaying as it walked.

Young Sacrifice. Enjoy your own fortune, and pity us.

As the creature before him spoke into Ico’s mind, the one carrying Yorda had begun to sink into the pool. It was already down to its waist.

Ico sat helpless, watching her go. He didn’t know why he wasn’t jumping up to save her. He felt almost…sleepy.

The creature nodded to him. There. That’s right. Now leave.

At that moment, the Mark on Ico’s chest began to glow, a silvery light coursing along the complex pattern. It was a jolt of energy, snapping Ico out of the creature’s spell. “I’m not leaving!”

Ico rolled to the side and sprang to his feet, dashing toward the pool. He reached in, getting his arms around Yorda’s waist, feeling her weight in his hands. Summoning all his strength, he yanked her out of the pool so hard he nearly fell over on his back. Yorda seemed dazed, asleep with eyes open and unfocused. Ico shook her shoulders, and her wispy hair swirled in the air.

“We have to run! Through those doors!”

He gave Yorda a push on the back, then retrieved his stick and took a swing at the creatures writhing around them.

Fool!

The creature’s voice echoed in his mind as the dark shapes behind him gave chase. Now he heard other voices shouting, weeping.

– You can change nothing. The curse will never be lifted!

– The girl is the cause of our misfortune.

– You cannot save us.

– You cannot defeat the queen.

Ico’s hair stood on end. His legs threatened to buckle under him. But he managed to make it to the doors and broke them open with his shoulder, then pulled Yorda along behind him.

Suddenly, all was dark and quiet. Ico couldn’t see a thing. His breath felt stifled. For a moment he feared he might pass out, until he realized that the darkness in which he swam was simply a matter of his eyes having yet to adjust to the gloom within this wing of the castle.

His breathing grew steadier. Soon the floor came into view, and Ico could even make out the mortar in the seams between stones.

They were in a vast, empty hall. High up along the wall, a small shelf ran down either side, with windows that let in a trickle of light above it. The doors had slammed shut behind them, and the creatures seemed to have given up for now.

Someone was crying. For a moment he thought it was the creatures again, but then he realized that it was Yorda. She was lying on the floor, hands over her face, weeping uncontrollably.

Ico sat down beside her, his own legs shaking, his elation at their narrow escape fading rapidly.

Why are you crying? Was it true what those creatures said? That you-what did you do?

Ico hadn’t intended to say anything out loud, but Yorda looked up at him as though she had heard. She put a hand on his arm and gently pushed.

“What?” Ico asked, his voice hoarse. “You want me to run away by myself too?”

Yorda nodded.

“Why? Why would you say that? I don’t understand.” Ico’s voice grew louder, his hands clenching into fists. Yorda simply shook her head, tears rolling down her face.

“Don’t tell me you want to stay here. That you want to crawl back into that big birdcage!”

Ico sat for a moment, catching his breath. He realized that he was close to crying too.

“They were talking to me,” he said to Yorda, more quietly now. “Those creatures out there were talking to me. They said that you were the cause of their misfortune.”

The girl’s shoulders tensed; she hung her head.

“They said I wouldn’t be able to defeat the queen.” Ico sat up on his knees beside her. “Okay, so what do I know: You and Ozuma escape here with the book, right, then Ozuma comes back with the book’s power in his sword to kill the queen-at least he tries. He fails, gets turned to stone, and I guess loses one of his horns along the way, and now the queen’s master of the castle again.” As he spoke, Ico could feel himself gradually calming. The shaking in his arms and legs had stopped. “The shadow-creatures, they used to be Sacrifices-the queen used her power to make them that way, so she could have them as guards for her castle.

“And the Sacrifices are the descendants of Ozuma-I’m guessing that happened at the queen’s request. Some deal she worked out with Zagrenda-Sol in exchange for not destroying them, right?”

Yorda blinked slowly, looking up at him.

“Because they failed to remove her from the castle, that’s all Zagrenda-Sol could do. They had to protect their people.”

Yorda said nothing.

“That’s what the custom of my village is all about,” Ico whispered, looking down at his own fists. He opened his hands to look at them. They were covered with scratches where he had scraped against the wall and the floor while swinging his stick around. There was dried blood on his skin.

Ozuma’s blood.

“It has to end,” he said. He wasn’t saying it for Yorda. He wasn’t saying it for himself. It was a declaration of war. “I have to end it. That’s what the elder wants me to do.” Ico’s voice grew louder, and his confidence grew with it.

“If we just sit around here and do nothing, then one day, the next eclipse is going to come and the Dark God will rise up and blow this entire continent away. There’s no stalling for time anymore, if there ever was. This castle has to be destroyed, along with the queen.”

Ico grabbed Yorda’s slender arm with more intensity than ever before. “That’s why I need you to tell me why Ozuma failed. I have to know why he couldn’t defeat the queen!” So I don’t make the same mistake, he added to himself.

Yorda took her free hand and placed it against her chest, directly above her heart.

“What?”

She was saying something, but Ico still couldn’t understand. He growled in frustration.

It’s my fault, she said. I let my mother escape. I took pity on her and so fell into her trap. At the last moment, our victory turned to defeat.

Yorda struck herself on the chest two, three times.

“You mean…you did it?”

Yorda nodded swiftly, without hesitation.

“You let the queen win? That’s why you want me to leave by myself? Is that what you’re saying?”

Yorda nodded, flooding with relief that he understood.

Ico was staring at her now. “The queen used you, didn’t she?”

Yorda lowered her eyes, and Ico knew he had hit the mark.

“I knew there was something more going on inside you when I found you in that cage-more than just sadness. It was regret.”

Ico noticed new tears welling in Yorda’s eyes and shook his head. “No, we can fix that. We can win this time. Then there’ll be nothing to regret. Think about it. The queen locked you up because she was afraid you’d run away and be out of her control. If you’re free of the castle, you’ll be free of her.”

Ico put his hands on Yorda’s shoulders. “We have to do this, one last time. Don’t let everything Ozuma fought for be in vain. You’re still alive. This isn’t over. Don’t give up!”

But Yorda merely shook her head, like a tiny blossom trembling in a strong wind. No, no, no.

She had already paid too great a price for her last mistake, and now she could see it happening all over. I cannot defeat my mother. I will never be able to defeat her. And we both know it now.

Please, she thought to Ico, let me go back to sleep. Put me back where you found me. Nothing good will come of this.

If her heart fell asleep once more, if she were locked inside the cage, Yorda would feel nothing. She would never see the Sacrifices sent to the castle, never see their faces or hear their voices. If she didn’t know their names, she could pretend they never existed.

As long as she could free this one, the boy looking into her eyes, the Sacrifice named Ico. That would be enough.

I have no right to want more than this. Ignorance is my penalty and my salvation. My final rest. This must be, because I…

Ico let go of Yorda’s shoulders. She looked up, thinking perhaps he had understood her again, but the boy’s face looked even more determined than before.

“Fine,” he said, standing. Though his legs and his arms were covered with scratches and bruises, he showed no signs of pain. “If you can’t fight-if you think you’re what brought Ozuma’s plan down the first time-then we can’t risk you being here. I’ll fight the queen alone.” The smile returned to Ico’s face. “I’ll be fine. See? I’m not scared a bit. After all, I’m fighting to free my family.”

Ico looked down the hall at a door that appeared to lead back into the castle. “We need to find some way to open the main gates or find a way down to the underground pier. Either works for me. Except, I’m going to need your help getting past any idols along the way.”

Ico offered his hand. Yorda stared at it for a moment and then stood on her own. Ico glanced at his hand, hanging lonely in the air, before letting it drop to his side. Either he had caught a whiff of the fear welling inside her, or he no longer cared.

The Castle in the Mist seemed to change the layout of its corridors every time Ico walked them, so that he could go down a hallway into a room where he was sure he had been before and find it looking like it belonged to an entirely different building. Ico grew more frustrated with each mistaken turn, though he knew his anger was wasted on the castle’s stone walls.

Ico wondered if all castles were designed so confusingly. He suspected the queen’s twisted sense of humor was the real culprit here.

He climbed up wide shelves in the middle of chambers, clambered up chains hanging where staircases had crumbled, then called for Yorda once he had found a way for her to join him. After making his way through three or four rooms in this fashion, Ico had entirely lost track of where in the castle he was. Which way was it to the stone bridge where Ozuma stood? Which direction am I facing? He stuck his head out of the window to check the sun and found it to be straight overhead. So much for that idea. He knew that he had to go down to reach the water, but how to go down when he couldn’t find any stairs or ladders leading in the right direction?

As Ico wandered, he found himself outside again in a corridor with grass growing in tufts on the dry ground. There were some trees resembling willows with long slender branches that shook in the wind.

Ico had seen these same trees near Toksa Village. They kept their leaves even in winter and sprouted new green buds in spring. They were highly sensitive to changes in the wind and given to rustling, so much so that they often alerted hunters to the whereabouts of prey or gave early warning of approaching danger.

Ico stopped beneath the trees, feeling the sun on his skin. For a moment, he felt like he was back home. Whoever had planted these trees here must have loved the forest-something told him it wasn’t the queen. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, when he noticed the sound of running water.

Yorda was standing behind him a distance away. Ico ran quickly down the corridor. It extended straight for a while, then turned sharply to the right.

He ran down to the end, finding a clearing with a large pool of water in it, like a cistern. A rusted pipe ran left to right across the wall on the other side of the cistern at about Ico’s height. From there, a thinner pipe extended straight down into the water. It was another dead end. But Ico could hear water flowing beneath his feet. He went to the edge of the cistern and leaned over, looking down to see that part of the underwater wall on the near side had a grate set into the stone, its bottom half submerged in the water. The water was flowing through the grate, back toward the corner Ico had just turned.

The cistern looked deep. Before he could change his mind, Ico jumped straight out, away from the edge, landing in the cool water with a little splash.

His feet couldn’t reach the bottom, so he treaded water, scooping up some onto his face to wash off the dirt and sweat. It felt incredibly refreshing.

Unfortunately, the grate on the near wall was strong, and no matter how much he kicked or pulled at it, bracing his feet on the edge for support, it wouldn’t budge. He looked around for a lever or some other device that might open the grate, but there was nothing.

When he looked through the bars, the water on the other side was dim, but he could see patches of light falling on square pedestals that protruded from the water at regular intervals.

He wasn’t sure why there would be a room as part of an underground waterway, but the light he saw had to be coming from some sort of ventilation shaft-possibly big enough for him to get through. If the water was flowing through the grate, then it must be going down somewhere ahead, which meant that the underground room might be a way down to the lower levels of the castle.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Climbing up the pipe on the far side of the water, Ico made his way back to the top of the cistern. Heading back down the way he had come, he found, just as he had expected, several square openings hidden in the tall tufts of grass. The openings ran in a line down the corridor. Each was covered with a thin grate, but he was able to pry one free with a little work from his fingers.

Crouching by the hole he called out to Yorda, who came running from around the corner.

“I’m going down-you wait here,” he told her, then he slid down through the hole so fast he didn’t see Yorda waving her hands, trying to stop him.

Ico landed back in water, but at least here it was much shallower than out in the cistern. It only came up to around his knees. The air smelled of mold, and the walls were damp.

He quickly found one of the square pedestals and climbed up onto it-and immediately fell into the past.

2

FOR A MOMENT, Ico didn’t realize he was seeing another vision. He blinked and saw people-many people-crowding around him in the dimly lit underground waterway.

What made it so different from his previous visions was that, this time, Ico wasn’t just an observer-he was part of the scene. Right next to him, a skinny boy raised one bony arm, trying to touch Ico’s Mark with trembling fingers.

“Wh-who are you?” Ico asked, and the boy disappeared, only to reappear an instant later a short distance away, standing alone up to his knees in the water. He looked cold.

Ico turned his attention back to the other people. There were men, women, young and old, about thirty in all, he guessed. They all looked terribly cold and exhausted, their backs bent with despair. Their pale faces, drained of life, hovered eerily in the light that spilled down through the opening above Ico’s head.

“What are you doing down here?” he asked, turning around. No one replied. “What’s going on? Is there a way out of this place?”

In silence, a few of the people broke away from the crowd and began walking slowly down the waterway, making dull, metallic noises with each step.

Beside him, a boy lent his hand to a slender girl to help her step up onto one of the pedestals. Ico gaped at her legs, so skinny they looked like skin stretched over bone. Wooden manacles went around both of her ankles, the heavy chain connecting them coiled at her feet like a snake.

“This is a prison,” Ico breathed. “Who put you in here?” he asked the crowd.

He felt someone tapping him on his shoulder from behind-a vision of the past, actually touching him.

Ico whirled around and saw a stocky man standing on the pedestal behind him. He looked like a soldier, possibly a guard. Though he wore no sword or chain-mail vest, the shoulder of his tunic was woven with some kind of emblem, and he wore a metal helmet with a short visor over his eyes.

He held his right hand over his right eye, peering out at Ico with the left. His eye was clouded, like a deep pool, far underground where the light does not reach.

“Who are you?”

The soldier shook his head, and Ico heard a voice in his mind.

What happened when the enchantment was broken? the voice asked.

Eyes opening wider, Ico took a step back into the water with a splash.

We were prisoners here, but the enchantment was our protection. What happened when it broke?

“How should I know?” Ico said with a shake of his head. While the voice had been talking in his mind, the others gathered in the underground prison had formed a circle around him and the soldier.

Madness took us all. People trying to run, others trying to stop them. Fear and a mindless rage gripped the castle.

Ico stood gripping the Mark on his chest and listened to the soldier’s story. “I thought someone had invaded, or the queen had put everyone to death-but no, you were killing one another.”

The soldier, a former member of the castle patrol, looked down at the water running past his legs, his right hand still firmly over his eye.

There were arrests, executions, massacres, and melees. Who caused this madness? Who broke the enchantment?

Ico remembered the bridge across the grand hall in the castle where he had seen the hanged people. Was that one of the executions the soldier spoke of? Had the people of the castle gone to war against each other?

It had to be the queen’s plan. This was her doing.

It explained why the armies of Zagrenda-Sol had found no one upon their invasion of the castle. Everyone was already dead-executed or simply killed in open combat.

“Was there no one who resisted, no one who kept their sanity?”

The guard slowly shook his helmeted head.

“And you? Who put you in here? Did they survive?”

The soldier lifted his face and finally removed his hand, showing Ico the empty socket from which his eye had been gouged out.

Everyone died.

The words rang in Ico’s mind. When they had faded, Ico was alone again. Nothing remained to indicate what he had seen, save that his shoulder was cold and slightly damp where the soldier had touched him.

For a while Ico just stood there, unable to move. His limbs felt heavy, while sadness and anger whirled inside him. He gripped his Mark so tightly he thought the fabric might rip, and when at last he released his hand and looked back up, he felt tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Ico blinked and wiped them away. Now is no time for crying.

If this place had been a prison, there would be no exit, which meant no way down toward the ground floor of the castle. He jumped and managed to climb back up through the ventilation shaft where he had first entered, back out onto the surface. The sun beat down on him, warming his waterlogged skin. Ico stood, letting the life flow back into his limbs, before calling out for Yorda.

She had gone quite a distance. He had to backtrack a significant way, stopping to call out every few paces. When at last he found Yorda, the sight of her slender frame sent a stab of pain through Ico’s chest as he remembered the girl he had seen in the water.

He reached his hand out to her.

“Did you know there was a prison down there?”

Yorda took his hand, flinching at the question.

“I saw it. The ghost told me that when the enchantment over the castle was broken, they started killing each other. No one survived.” He wasn’t trying to blame Yorda, but he couldn’t help the sharpness in his voice. “I saw a vision back in the tower after I lowered your cage. It was an old man, a scholar, wearing a long robe. He was angry about something-that must’ve been from after the enchantment was broken, otherwise how would he have gotten into the tower?”

Yorda nodded quietly.

“Was that Master Suhal?”

Yorda nodded again. Her eyes were dry, but the pale glow that seemed to emanate from inside her had dimmed. Maybe, Ico thought, when Yorda is weak, the power of the Book of Light within her grows weaker too.

“So when the enchantment was broken,” Ico said, “Master Suhal learned what the queen had been up to in the Tower of Winds. That’s why he was angry. It was probably the first time he learned the true cause of the king’s death. Or maybe, it was less like learning and more like remembering.

“But what I don’t get,” Ico continued, “is why Master Suhal was still sane. Why didn’t he go crazy like everyone else in the castle? What happened to him when everyone was killing each other?”

Even as his lips asked the question, the answer rose in Ico’s heart. Master Suhal had been killed in the ensuing chaos. No matter how rational he might have remained, a single old man would not have been able to stand up to a garrison full of bloodthirsty soldiers.

“What was it the queen said-something about the Dark God feeding off people’s greed and malice?” Ico looked up at Yorda. “I bet the queen works the same way. That’s why when you got hold of the Book of Light, she had to release everyone under her enchantment. She made them kill each other to increase her power!” The more Ico thought about it, the more it made sense. “She used up the sacrifices she had been saving for the Dark God’s revival-she consumed them herself.”

And then the queen had fled from the searching eyes of Zagrenda-Sol, hiding somewhere in the castle.

The mystery was what had happened next. If the queen had gone into hiding, how did the Castle in the Mist become what it was today? Something even more terrible must have happened to place the queen back on her throne as master of the castle, in a position where she could demand the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire to provide her with new sacrifices from Ozuma’s descendants.

Yorda knew what had happened, as did the shades in the tower.

Only Ico was still in the dark.

Back in the outside corridor, Ico found a way to climb up to a higher level and spent the next several minutes helping Yorda up. They were inside again. He knew he was back in the castle proper, yet this place was completely unfamiliar to him. He found he preferred the outside corridor. Even if he knew it was a dead end, being out in the sun was better than wandering through these labyrinthine passages. They walked along, stone walls on either side, passing through several rooms where the air hung chilly and still. Despite his best intentions, Ico discovered that they were going up again. Every room seemed to have a rise in it up to a higher platform, and all the stairs went up. They were getting ever farther away from the underground pier.

Every time they came to a terrace, he made a point of stopping to look at the view and take in a deep breath-but he was still no clearer as to where in the castle he was. Everywhere he looked seemed unfamiliar.

He continued on. Fatigue had begun to gnaw at him, and then he came to a large window and spotted one of the giant celestial spheres that stood beside the main gate. He could only see the very top of its orb from where he stood, but still his heart leapt.

The sun was already beginning to slant in the sky, by which Ico could tell that the sphere he was looking at was the one on the eastern side of the gate.

Images from half-remembered visions flooded Ico’s mind.

“Yorda!” he called out. The girl was several paces away, having stayed behind when he ran up to the window. “If we can make it over there, we’ll reach the Eastern Arena-the celestial sphere’s right next to it!” Ico stopped. Why was the celestial sphere important again?

Another image flitted through his consciousness: curved dishes rotating, the brilliant sun, and a great groaning of wood and stone.

Of course! Ico clapped his hands with excitement. When the light from the mirror-dishes hits the spheres on the east and west sides, the gates open!

Pleased at even this hint of progress, and that his many visions of the castle seemed to be making more sense to him now, Ico grabbed Yorda’s hand and resumed walking briskly, checking out every window they passed to make sure he was still heading toward the eastern sphere.

Soon, more of the sphere came into view-then they hit another dead end.

It was a terrace, wide and grassy, that extended from the side of the castle with no corridors or stairs, save some leading up to what looked like a viewing platform on the right-hand side. Ico’s attention, however, was entirely captured by a separate building standing at the edge of the terrace, facing away from them.

It was a windmill. Ico had heard of these being used near the capital. Mechanically, they were similar to the waterwheel that ran on the river outside Toksa Village. The water, or in this case, the wind, turned a shaft that was used to do something else, like rotate a grindstone to grind wheat. He couldn’t imagine what this mill was used for. Its position high up in the corner of the castle, far from a granary or field, did not seem like an ideal placement. He went up to the edge of the terrace and looked down, seeing the tops of trees far below. Behind him, the Castle in the Mist rose, its walls stretching even higher than the top of the windmill.

Though the white sails on the mill were tattered and dirty, they still rotated, creaking gently in the wind.

“I wonder if we can go any higher here?”

Ico turned to Yorda just in time to see a person standing directly behind her topple from the edge of the terrace and plummet to the ground below.

3

ICO YELPED, CAUSING Yorda to jump back in alarm. She landed with one heel hanging over the edge of the terrace. Ico grabbed her arm at the last moment, pulling her back to safety. “Someone just fell! Right there, behind you!”

He had seen it happen with his own eyes. Another vision?

Ico stepped carefully to the edge of the terrace, looking down over the precipice to the treetops far below. He could see no bodies lying on the canopy, no obvious places where branches had broken. No bodies lay sprawled out across the small patches of grass he could see between the boughs.

Though he had only caught a glimpse, he got that the fallen person was a woman. Chewing his lip, Ico walked the same path he had seen the vision walk, trying to figure out what she might have been doing. The long hem of her robes had dragged on the grass behind her as she walked, and her black hair had been tied up into a bun on her head.

“A handmaiden…maybe?”

Yorda had been following Ico with her eyes, but when she heard him say that word, her expression changed.

“Do you know who it was?” he asked. Yorda looked away in silence. Her eyes were dark, the way they had been ever since Ico learned about her name, her parentage, and her past.

“Well,” Ico said as he paced, “maybe she threw herself from the wall when the castle descended into chaos. It would fit with everything else that was going on.” He looked up at Yorda for some acknowledgment, but she did not appear to be listening.

Ico left Yorda with instructions not to get too close to the edge of the terrace and began climbing the foundation at the base of the windmill. The stones were worn and cracked, so it was easy for him to find handholds. While he toiled, climbing, the windmill blades creaked merrily on above him.

When he had reached the top of the foundation, he picked his moment and jumped onto one of the spinning blades. The sail flapped, snapping in the wind as the blades turned to carry Ico all the way to the top. He held on tight and enjoyed the view.

From here, he could see the eastern celestial sphere as well as a view of the winding path along the top of the castle wall he would have to take to get there. To the left of the sphere was a separate structure connected to the wall, which his borrowed memories indicated was the Eastern Arena. Beyond the wall stretched the blue sea. He jumped off the blade onto one of the roofs of the castle. Up here, the stones were even more weathered, with large cracks and tufts of weeds growing up from the gaps.

He looked out toward the arena. Something like a giant circular window dominated one of its walls. The window was closed with gray shutters made of the same material as the walls around them, but when he squinted his eyes, he could make out a thin line running down the middle where the shutters opened. He could draw a line between the circular window and the celestial sphere that led directly to the main gates. If he could open up the window on this side and the west and get the light through there to the spheres on either side of the gates, the gates would open.

He would start with the east, then would just have to run through the castle to the opposite side. Ico checked the route several times to make sure he wouldn’t forget. It would take a while, but actually knowing where he was going was a huge boost to his morale.

He walked along the wall from the place where the windmill had brought him and found an idol gate-a pair of squat statues-waiting at the end of the passage to block his path.

It would be impossible to bring Yorda up by the route he had taken. She could manage clambering up small rises and the like, but he couldn’t imagine her clinging to spinning windmill blades.

In the end, he was able to find some old wooden crates that he stacked to create steps at a place further down the wall. It was a long way around, but it was better than nothing. Ico ran back to the windmill, growing increasingly nervous with each moment Yorda was out of his sight. He didn’t want to think what would happen if the shadow-creatures attacked while they were apart.

He spotted her, standing on the terrace, lost in a reverie. For a moment, he wondered what exactly was going through her mind, then he shook the thought from his head and called out to her.

“You have to go around! I made a place for you to climb up! Around that way!” He jabbed with his finger back toward his makeshift stairs. “Understand?”

After a long pause, she started walking. From his high vantage point, he could watch her every move and call out to her whenever she was walking in the wrong direction.

Once she had climbed up to a higher landing, there was another problem. In order to get to the idol gate, she would have to cross a gap in the walkway. It had been easy enough for Ico to jump, but for Yorda, it would require quite an effort, and if she missed, she would plummet to the ground far below. The thought made Ico’s knees go wobbly. “No looking down, okay?” he called out to her from across the gap. Yorda immediately looked down and took three steps backward.

“It’s really not that far across. You can make it if you jump.” He reached out his arm to her. “I’ll reach out and catch you, all right? Don’t worry, just give yourself a running start and jump when you reach the edge. Just like jumping over a creek,” he said, realizing that Princess Yorda had probably never jumped over a creek. She might never have even seen a creek.

“See that?” He indicated the idol gate behind him. “If we go through there, we can get to the Eastern Arena. I figured out a way. We just have to get through here, and I need your help to do it.”

Yorda shook her head and took another step back.

“Well, I can’t do this alone,” Ico retorted. “Look, if we waste any more time-”

As soon as the words left his mouth, a black pool of shadow began to boil on the ground behind the girl.

“Yorda! The shades are coming! Behind you! You have to jump!”

Yorda took a quick look around, then back at Ico’s outstretched hand. She hesitated.

“You know if they get you I won’t be able to get out of here either!” Ico shouted, wondering if it were even really true. If the shades grabbed her, wouldn’t they be satisfied and leave? They had asked him not to interfere, that was all. Maybe if he gave them what they wanted, they would leave him alone. He could find another way out of the castle.

The first dark shape began to emerge from the pool, wobbling eerily as it stuck a misshapen foot out onto the stone. Its glowing white eyes found Yorda and glowed brighter.

Yorda turned back to face the creature, even as it spread its clawed arms to envelop her in an embrace.

Leave me. Run. Save yourself.

The words seemed to ring in Ico’s mind, though his ears heard nothing. A wave of weariness crashed over him. If she wanted to stay here in the Castle in the Mist, who was he to stop her? I should just leave-

Suddenly, Ico’s head began to ache as though someone had set fire to the base of his horns.

With a start, he realized it was Ozuma. Somehow, the spirit of his ancestor had crept inside his mind, driving back the shadows that threatened to cloud his thinking.

“Jump!” Ico shouted, swinging his fists. “Jump now!”

Yorda turned away from the shadow-creature just as its claws were about to close on her shoulders. Her eyes met Ico’s, then fell to his outstretched hand.

Finally, fear spurred her to action. She ran and jumped. Then she was falling forward, the wind blowing up from the chasm beneath her feet making her hair and dress flutter.

Ico grabbed her hand in midair, then her weight began to pull both of them down. He fought against it with all his strength.

The two collapsed onto the near edge of the gap, arms and legs tangled together. One of Yorda’s feet was still hanging over the edge.

“This way!”

Helping Yorda to her feet, Ico ran toward the idol gate. On the other side of the gap, the horned shades stamped their feet in soundless frustration. As Ico watched, two of the flying creatures swooped over the heads of their comrades to pursue Yorda.

The idol gate flared with light at Yorda’s approach as the power of the Book of Light within her shot forth and pushed the statues off to the sides. The two dashed through the opening. Ico looked back; the flying creatures made keening sounds like wind through bare branches. Then they dissipated into formless plumes of smoke.

Ico caught his breath. “That was close.”

A smile returned to Ico’s face, but Yorda remained glum. She spread her hands and looked down at them as though she were having trouble believing what she saw. Why am I still here? she seemed to be asking herself. Why did the creatures not catch me? Why did I not let them?

“You can’t let them get you,” Ico said. “Ozuma said so. I heard him.”

He brushed his fingertips over the base of his horns. The burning pain had subsided, but he still felt its message loud and clear.

When they arrived at last in the Eastern Arena, they found it standing silent and cold. Ico crossed the arena slowly, one step at a time. On the round platform in the center of the arena he spotted dark stains that were almost certainly blood. They were the last remnant of the battles waged here-and of Ozuma’s performance that had distracted the queen for those few vital moments. Not even the many years since the last tournament had been able to erase it. Though the life that had drained here onto the floor had become nothing more than a dark smudge, it still held its meaning.

When he found the device for opening the large circular window in the wall, Ico felt like he might jump all the way to the arena’s high ceiling with joy. He pulled down on the lever, and the shutters on the window opened with a heavy creaking noise.

A band of light shot across the arena floor, gradually widening to envelop Ico and Yorda in its brilliance. Ico climbed up the outer frame of the window. From here he could clearly see the light hitting the sphere. It sparkled, creating a glow that seemed to fill the stones all around the eastern door of the gate. Soon, what had been nothing more than a solid stone obstruction to Ico’s escape was glowing with a white, pure light, becoming almost transparent.

“Yes!” Ico shouted.

A fresh sea breeze blew in through the window and teased at the edges of Yorda’s hair. She too was looking off into the distance at the sparkling sphere by the gate. Then Ico spotted something long and thin lying on the floor by her feet. He jumped down from the edge of the window and picked it up.

It was a sword-a knight’s sword. It was covered with rust, and the blade was pitted and marked in places.

What was a sword doing here?

Ico looked up at the open window and thought. He recalled the thin gap he had seen between the shutters on the window from the windmill. Could this sword have been wedged in between a pair of shutters to hold them open, then fallen down when he opened them all the way?

He grabbed on to the handle and gave it a swing. Though the blade had lost its luster, its weight felt good in his hands. This would be a weapon far superior to his makeshift club for driving off the shades.

Ico’s imagination traveled back to that dark day when the enchantment on the castle lifted, plunging its occupants into madness. Maybe someone had come here in their desperation to escape but had forgotten or been unable to work the mechanism to open the window. In a last attempt to spill the light onto the celestial sphere, one might have thrust his sword into the gap between shutters in the hope of prying the window open, and there the sword had remained.

They wanted to bring light back to the castle-to free the trapped souls.

Then it seemed to Ico that the band of light stretching from the Eastern Arena looked like a sword had cut a blazing path across the sky on which not even the mist that enveloped the castle dared tread.

4

REACHING THE EASTERN Arena had lifted an incredible weight from Ico’s mind. He could picture the ruins of the castle now, and the route he would need to take to cross over to the western side. The ease in his mind had lightened his step as well.

Yet, next to him, Yorda seemed even more burdened by sadness. The light of the book within her had not faded, but her face had. She was expressionless, wearing an unfeeling mask.

Though they had never been able to speak normally to each other, Yorda’s face had always been a clear signal of her feelings. When danger was near, she shook her head and looked reluctant. At times she was scared, and at other times she wept, or showed surprise, or tried to console Ico.

Now she looked like a being molded from wax. When she stopped to look around, she was like a statue-a priceless object of art left behind in that abandoned castle. Still possessing its beauty, but robbed of its life.

Ico pressed onward, dragging her along by the hand. Through a long corridor, they entered a room where the shades once again attacked, but Ico handily drove them off with the sword. The weapon served him as well as he had imagined it would. All it took was one swipe to send the shades back to smoke.

The sun was beginning to redden in the sky and had dropped to a level with Ico’s shoulder. He picked up the pace. He would have to open up the window in the Western Arena and throw light on the western sphere before the sun set. No way am I spending another night in this castle!

He climbed up three stories, passing through rooms and corridors with familiar shapes, reaffirming his newfound confidence in the layout of the castle. From the windows he passed, Ico occasionally caught glimpses of the Tower of Winds. It seemed to beckon to him, standing apart from the rest of the castle as it did, but he resisted the urge to stray from his chosen course.

After a particularly long climb up a staircase, Ico entered an unfamiliar room. He caught his breath. The room was almost perfectly square and not particularly large. The walls were straight and entirely unadorned save for eight sconces in which torches crackled and sputtered, casting their light across the room. Only the very top of the arched ceiling remained in shadow, as though some dark creature lurked there, devouring all light that strayed too close.

The only prominent feature of the room was a raised dais about twice as high as Ico was tall, with a solid-looking chair set in the middle. Both the dais and chair were made of stone and looked as though they had been carved from the living rock of the room itself. Behind the dais, the rear wall of the chamber had crumbled, leaving a pile of gray rubble upon the floor.

It’s a throne, Ico realized. Which would make this the queen’s room-the place where she sat, hands on the wide armrests, staring down at her ministers. A shiver went through Ico and he raised the sword. If the queen should appear again…

Ico steadied his breath, senses alert, but the only thing he noticed was a white mist drifting through the room. Ico breathed a quick sigh of relief and turned to see Yorda standing at the entrance by the strangely adorned archway, slowly shaking her head.

“What is it?”

Ico walked closer to her and noticed she was crying.

“This is the queen’s chamber, isn’t it?”

Yorda nodded, her head hanging.

“Was this her only chamber? Is this where she managed the affairs of the castle? Where else might she be hiding?”

In response to the barrage of questions, Yorda lifted her face and walked briskly past Ico’s side to the throne. She was almost running as she clambered up onto the dais, straining with the effort.

What’s she doing? “Is something there?”

The rubble behind the throne seemed like an easier route to the top of the dais, but by the time Ico announced he was coming, Yorda had already finished the climb and was standing next to the throne. A teardrop sparkled on her chin.

Gingerly, Yorda touched one of the armrests. To Ico, she looked like a hunter maiden, reaching out to touch the fur of a sleeping savage beast, not wanting to wake it and yet overcome with curiosity. Stop, he thought instinctively. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Holding her breath like a swimmer about to plunge into the water, Yorda slid onto the throne. She brought her slender legs together and rested her arms at her sides.

“Wait,” Ico said through the thickening mist. “Was this your throne?”

He looked around. The mist was streaming into the room now, making it a sea of white fog so thick it was hard for him to see as far as the throne.

Ico walked quickly up to the dais, waving his hand to sweep away the mist. He felt like he was swimming. Is this the queen’s doing?

“Yorda!” he called out, but there was no reply.

The figure on the throne was no longer Yorda.

In his surprise, Ico jumped back and let the point of the sword drop down to the stones with a loud clang.

On the throne was seated a female corpse wrapped in black robes, a black veil over her face. Her slender body was tilted, leaning up against one of the armrests, one arm dangling over the edge so far the withered fingertips almost touched the floor.

He could see the corpse’s face through the flowing veil, the strong line of the nose, and the tightly closed, bloodless lips.

Ico blinked. It’s the queen, he realized.

Next to the throne, he saw two tall figures standing side by side, facing away from him-one with horns clearly visible through the flowing mist.

Ozuma!

He held a sword that glowed with the blessing of the Book of Light.

“Behold, the queen of the castle,” a low voice echoed in Ico’s mind. He listened, his feet rooted to the floor. “She is our greatest enemy, herald of darkness, child of the Dark God himself.”

Is that Ozuma’s voice? Ico wondered. Who is he talking to?

Now the other figure stepped off to the side, showing his face in profile. He wore a slender golden crown upon his head, an elegant doublet, and a battle cloak trimmed with leather. In his hand, he gripped a crystal scepter of the sort that priests from the capital used during ceremonies.

It was the priest-king of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire.

“It is she,” said the trembling voice of a young girl from somewhere in the mist. “These are my mother’s remains. This is the queen of the castle.”

The priest-king hung his head and closed his eyes for a moment before looking up again. “The body is cold. She must have taken her own life and the lives of her ministers when she realized she could not stand against the power of the Book of Light.” The priest-king lifted his crystal staff and turned toward Ozuma. “Hers was a foolish, pitiful life. Now, Ozuma, end it. The battle has been won.”

“As you say, Your Excellency,” Ozuma said quietly, his eyes fixed on the queen’s remains.

The two men took a step away from the throne, and Ozuma raised his sword, his chain-mail vest creaking with the movement.

“The queen is finished!” the priest-king declared as Ozuma’s sword swung down through the air. There was a flash of brilliant light, and a moment later, the head of the corpse sitting upon the throne separated from the neck and fell to the floor, trailing the long black veil behind it.

“This castle has been purified in the name of Sol Raveh.”

The priest-king made a gesture in praise of the Sun God, lifted his scepter high, and looked up toward the heavens. The white mist swirled upward, concealing his form. Thick and deep, it swallowed Ico whole-

Yorda had witnessed it all. The head dropping from the queen’s body. The corpse upon the throne. Ozuma and the priest-king returning to the castle to declare the end of her mother’s reign.

There was a loud thud, and Ico jumped back as though he had been slapped across the cheek. He blinked. The white mist was gone, vanished, or perhaps it had never been there at all.

Yorda had slipped from the throne and was lying on her side at its foot. Ico ran up to the dais, leaping to the top in a single bound. “Yorda!” Reaching down, he lifted her shoulders off the floor.

Yorda’s eyes were closed tightly. Even still, tears ran from beneath her eyelids, streaking down her cheek. Ico tapped the side of her face, stroked her hair, and gently shook her. “Wake up. Wake up!”

Yorda’s eyes opened. They were swimming with tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Ico said. “I didn’t know she was dead. I didn’t know Ozuma killed the queen.”

Yorda’s face was blank, her eyes unfocused. Ico was not even sure if she knew he was there.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he whispered.

Gradually, strength returned to Yorda’s body and she gripped his hand. Ico gripped back. Yorda sat up on the floor, but her eyes were still distant.

Suddenly, Ico felt cold. A chill emanated from Yorda’s body as he held her in his arms, as though she were a pitcher that had just been filled with ice water. He had the sensation that something else was inside the girl, pushing aside the Yorda he knew.

Her head turned, and she looked at him, her eyes sharp like a hawk focusing on its prey.

“If the queen has died, then how can she be here now?” Yorda asked, her lips like flower petals in spring, the space between them forming an ugly scar.

The voice was wrong. This isn’t Yorda.

“How is it that I still rule this castle, when the sword took off my head?”

Ico recoiled, but Yorda moved quicker, arms wrapping around his head and chest, holding him tight. Their faces came close, until he could feel her breath against his cheek. Their eyes met. Not Yorda’s eyes, but the queen’s. Bottomless pools of darkness, black as the abyss.

“Tell me, young Sacrifice. How am I here?”

The queen’s cruel smile spread across Yorda’s face, but Ico saw nothing but those dark eyes staring into his.

5

ICO TRIED TO think, but his mind had lost its moorings, and he couldn’t seem to hold on to any thought for long.

“No answer, Sacrifice?” Yorda’s delicate lips spat out the cold words. “Then I’ll tell you: I am everywhere. I can do anything. The Castle in the Mist is me, and I am the castle.”

Even while Yorda’s body spoke with the voice of the queen, he could still see the true Yorda deep within the pools of her eyes. But her back was turned to him, and she was drawing away, sinking deeper inside.

“You’re the castle?” Ico asked, struggling for breath. The queen tightened her grip on him, squeezing out the air. He felt his ribs about to crack.

That meant that all of the madness, all of the killing that had come when the enchantment fell had been happening inside the queen. She had enveloped the slaughter within herself, absorbing the screams and the bloodshed-all of it.

She loosened one arm from around Ico’s shoulders, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and raised his head up till they were eye to eye. The true Yorda was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing but void, dark emptiness swirling with madness and the sparks of wild laughter.

“Tell me, Sacrifice,” the queen said in a voice like honey, “did you really think that the child of the Dark God could be defeated by a mere inconvenience to her mortal body?”

“But you couldn’t face the power of the Book of Light!” Ico said through clenched teeth. “Yorda drove you back with the book! She broke your enchantment!”

“Indeed she did,” the queen said, a smile spreading across her face. “But I was not defeated. The only thing I lost when my enchantment was broken was my human form. Just a mask. By destroying my enchantment, Yorda freed me to become what I was destined to be! And the Book of Light? Why should I fear that? No paltry scrap of ancient spell can hope to defy me!”

The book didn’t rob her of her strength. Her strength grew!

If the queen was the castle, then no matter how great an army marched through her gates, they would be nothing more than ants in the palm of her hand.

“But wait,” Ico said, “if you weren’t here anymore…then who was beheaded on the throne?”

The queen laughed low, until Yorda’s body shook with her deep, rolling mirth. “Men are weak and easily deceived. They see only what they want to see. And if the phantasm before them takes the shape of their hearts’ desire, they believe it all the more. Not even a priest-king is immune.”

Ico’s mouth opened. “The chief handmaiden…”

The queen raised an eyebrow-Yorda’s eyebrow-and drew Ico’s face closer, so that their noses were practically touching. Her breath frosted on his skin. “Very clever, Sacrifice. But what difference?”

But the difference was everything. It meant that there was one person who would have realized the truth. When she stood there, looking down at the woman draped in black on the throne, one person would have known: That is not my mother. That is not the queen. That is my pitiful handmaiden, now just a corpse who still trembles in fear of my mother’s power.

Yorda.

Ico knew from the vision he had seen by the throne that Yorda had been there when they found the body. She had seen everything.

She lied to them.

Ozuma and the priest-king had believed her, of course. Everyone else in the castle was dead. The queen’s fell presence had dissipated. There was no reason to doubt Yorda’s words. Had she not previously betrayed her mother, helping Ozuma steal the Book of Light in order to drive her away?

No one could have imagined that, even as the sword bit into a woman’s neck, Yorda was protecting her mother.

The queen laughed merrily, and it seemed to Ico that Yorda’s body was no longer hers at all, but the queen’s possession entirely. Ico trembled in the queen’s arms.

She laughed one last time, a high, derisive laugh, and then flung Ico away like a child throws away a toy. Ico flew through the air, landing on his back on the stones near the throne. His head smacked against the floor, sending sparks dancing behind his eyelids. He couldn’t move.

Yorda stood slowly and walked over to Ico’s side. Ico looked up at her, his eyes watering with tears. They were not for the pain, they were for Yorda.

Ico moaned. He could taste blood in his mouth. “You’re horrible. How could you make Yorda do that? She’s your daughter!”

“You poor thing. It is precisely because she is my daughter and I her mother that the bonds of affection between us are so strong. We protect each other, she and I.”

“Liar!”

The queen leaned down and grabbed Ico by the collar. She tossed him across the room again. This time he landed below the throne. Despite the pain, Ico looked up. “What lies did you tell Yorda?” he shouted. “How did you deceive her?”

“I’ve already told you,” the queen said. “There was no deception. Do you not recognize the love between mother and daughter when you see it? Why should it be strange for a daughter to want to save her mother’s life? Why would she need another reason?”

Yorda slid down the side of the throne platform and walked again toward Ico. She moved differently now. This was not the Yorda he had led through the castle by the hand, the Yorda who would wander aimlessly if he did not call out to her. This was the queen’s double, her puppet.

The realization led to another. What if Yorda hadn’t deceived Ozuma and the priest-king of her own will? The queen could have been controlling her the very moment she stood by the throne, looking down at the body of the handmaiden. Her own self could have been locked away inside her body, held in thrall to her mother’s wishes, just as it was now.

Fresh tears ran down Ico’s face. His back ached, his arms were numb. He couldn’t even reach up to wipe his eyes. Ico lay facedown, crying.

Yorda had been weak, an easy target for her mother’s spell-because she was the queen’s daughter, and she loved her mother.

At last Ico realized why Yorda had struck her own chest and insisted that everything had been her fault. Even though she could have had no way of knowing what suffering her actions would cause over the years in the dark castle, where shadows walked alone, she blamed herself for it all. The shades blamed her too.

“Why the tears?” the queen asked. “For whom do you cry?”

Ico shook his head for an answer. Getting his arms beneath him, he managed to lift himself off the floor. Sitting up now, he turned his tear-streaked face to look at the queen. “I don’t know my real mother,” he said. “My parents were taken from me after I was born. It’s part of the custom when you’re the Sacrifice.”

The queen stared at him. The glow given Yorda’s body by the Book of Light still shone, dim and low like a sickly firefly, as waves of darkness flowed from the queen’s heart into her veins.

“But I was never lonely. My foster parents took care of me. They were always there for me. They looked after me.”

An image of his mother rose in his mind. With a gentle hand, she reached out to rub his cheek, comb his hair, and put him to bed at night. She may not have given birth to him, but she nurtured his life. And she loved him.

“Did you ever love Yorda?” he asked the queen. “You tell me she had feelings for you, but did you love her like my foster parents loved me?”

The queen’s lips twitched, then the right side of her mouth curled upward, as though caught by a fisherman’s hook.

“I am Yorda’s mother. I gave birth to her, I gave life to her. That is the greatest thing a mother can do for her child, the only thing! Love is meaningless!”

The rage that had been boiling in Ico’s heart burst forth, and he shouted, “But Yorda loved you! That’s why she was deceived! That’s why she saved you! Can’t you see that? Is she only a tool to you-is that all she’s ever been to you?”

The queen turned her back-Yorda’s back, as supple as a spring leaf-to Ico and ascended to the throne. Ico watched her go.

She sat on the throne, the queen inhabiting Yorda’s body. She was lost against its tall back, the broad armrests. The light of the book was lost as well. There, on that throne, she was nothing but darkness in human form.

“They saw what they desired, my death, and believing that they had defeated me they left this place,” the queen said quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper. “They left that nasty sword in a cave by the sea-a symbol of the castle’s pacification, I suppose. There they held an empty, meaningless ceremony, bowing their heads to that ungainly hunk of metal.

“All while I became one with the castle. At the same time, Yorda became mine. She was my eyes and my hands. The bonds of blood are great. She was my most faithful servant. I was there, you know, at the ceremony. I watched it through her eyes. The cheeks of the men were flushed with their so-called victory over me-men who are little more than lumps of dirt, pretenders to their weak god’s glory. I watched them board their boats and leave-and Yorda with them,” the queen said, her voice like a song.

“Through Yorda I knew this, and I decided to wait until they had returned home to their capital. I am unshaken now, as I was then. I feel this castle, every inch of her stone is mine. The loss of my inhabitants, my sustenance, was a setback-but only a minor one. I had time on my side. And my task remained the same: to lie in wait until the next eclipse.”

So long as the queen remained the world was still endangered, and the people of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire were too busy celebrating the defeat of the “herald of evil” to notice.

“They took Yorda to their walled capital beyond the mountain. There they rested their armies and gave Yorda time to rest as well. She was happy. They even let her stand atop the city walls and wave down at all the fools, together with that greatest of fools, the man they call their priest-king. Yorda acted the part they wanted her to play to perfection.”

The queen shook her head slowly, like Ico’s mother used to do when scolding him.

“Yorda thought that by deposing me she had saved me. She thought that she had driven back the Dark God, released me from his spell, and saved my human soul by taking me within her body.”

“You tricked her into thinking that!” Ico shouted back.

He didn’t want to imagine how Yorda must’ve felt, the happiness at being together with her mother at last. And yet he could hear the lies the queen’s soul had whispered to Yorda’s heart as though she were reciting them aloud to him now.

I am free at last. Free of the Dark God’s control. Though I have lost my human form, I am finally myself again. It is as if all that happened until now was but a long, dark nightmare. Beloved daughter, I will be inside you always. Your joy is my joy. Your life is my life. We will share these together. Bless your heart and your gentle nature for forgiving me!

It had all ended in betrayal. The anguish weighed on Ico’s heart so heavily he felt he might sink into the stone floor. It seemed like no matter how many tears he cried for Yorda, his eyes would never dry.

The queen sat in her borrowed body, watching him. White mist drifted through the room, wrapping around Ico as he lay trembling on the stones. When at last he looked up and wiped his eyes, the queen was staring down at him.

“They still had the Book of Light,” she said through her teeth, the alluring smile on her face contrasting with the venom in her voice. “That is why I moved, thinking to destroy the walled city, the priest-king’s army, and that cursed book with one blow.”

“The city of stone…” Ico groaned.

The queen turned her eyes upward toward the dark ceiling high above. “Yes, beautiful stone. Its lifeless forms are a joy to behold. Art as a sign of ultimate power.”

When the queen lashed out at the city, the empire realized for the first time that its struggle with the darkness was not yet over, and their ignorance of the ongoing conflict meant that they had utterly lost the initiative.

“Part of their army simply fled, including the priest-king and that knight with bestial horns like yours. However, the Book of Light was lost, and the stone city became part of my domain, its statuesque citizenry my new subjects.”

The queen leaned forward, arms draped elegantly across the armrests of her throne. “Imagine my surprise,” she said, her tone growing more familiar, “when I discovered the power of that same book woven into the cloth you wear on your chest. It can only mean that the people who sent you to me as a Sacrifice somehow retrieved the Book of Light from my city.”

Ico felt his heart sink. The elder believed in the power of his Mark. They believed in the absolute power of the Book of Light-that he was their light of hope. And yet it seemed now that the book was not as powerful as they had thought. The Book of Light could not defeat the queen. It had failed once already. It was less a poison and more a nuisance to the queen.

Was the elder wrong?

“As it happens, I do remember a particularly mischievous insect slipping into the city quite recently. A little boy, just about your age. He must have found the book and carried it to the place where you lived.”

Ico tensed. She’s talking about Toto!

“What’s wrong, Sacrifice? You look pale.” The queen smiled at Ico. “Don’t worry. That little insect feels no pain anymore.”

For a moment, Ico felt like he couldn’t breathe. “W-what do you mean he can’t feel pain?”

The queen’s smile widened.

“Toto’s dead? You killed him!” Ico felt the strength leave his body. The elder had told him Toto was fine. Why would he lie?

“Poor little Sacrifice,” said the queen on her throne. “In truth, I pity you.”

“Why should you pity me?”

“Because you are mistaken, so terribly mistaken. You have all these misconceptions in your head, and you’ve never been given a chance to set them straight. That is why I pity you.” Though she still spoke with the authority of the queen, a gentleness crept into her voice that reminded Ico of Yorda, and that made him tremble all over.

“You’re trying to trick me, but it’s not going to work!” he shouted, but half of him wanted to believe. Don’t listen to her lies! he told himself, but the other Ico within him wanted to hear more. This could be important, he heard himself thinking. This could be the key to discovering the truth of what happened.

Truth? What’s “truth”?

“What did they tell you back in your village?” the queen asked. “What did you learn of your role, of the custom? What great purpose did they claim you were fulfilling?”

“Quiet!” Ico shouted. “Quiet! I don’t want to hear any more!”

“Did they tell you to resign yourself to your fate?” she asked, ignoring him. “Did they say you were a hero for giving yourself up to this noble cause? Did you picture yourself as a great person for what you did, drunk on the draught of their lies? Yes,” she said, nodding, “there’s nothing sweeter than false glory.”

“Quiet, quiet, quiet!” Ico shouted, covering his ears with both hands. He could hear his pulse pounding in his head, and his breath was ragged-and all this time, his Mark did not glow, nor did he feel its strength flow into him. It was just a thin piece of cloth pressed against the floor beneath his body.

“I don’t believe anything you say!”

“Whether you believe or not is entirely up to you.”

Ico looked at the queen’s face as she brushed aside Ico’s protests and could find there neither the queen’s pale visage, nor even Yorda’s, whose face it truly was. She looked like his foster mother, the gentle woman who had raised him and taught him all he knew.

Beware, a voice said inside him. You’re being tricked. He wanted to look away, but the effort was like trying to grab water in his fists.

“You know, Sacrifice, I think I’m growing to like you. You have a simple, uncomplicated soul. It glitters like gold among the meaner examples of your kind. Truly you must be loved by all the gods,” the queen said. “So I will tell you the truth you seek.”

The queen slid from the throne and walked to the edge of the platform as she brought her hands together in front of her chest and looked down at him. “Know that I never once asked them to sacrifice to this castle. Not a single one of you was offered up at my request. It was the rulers of the empire who came up with the custom, chose the sacrifices, placed fetters on their arms and legs and pressed them into the enchanted stone sarcophagi. Your people did this.”

The words reached his ears, but Ico couldn’t grasp them.

“It is not I who devours the Sacrifices,” the queen continued, “nor is it the castle. I am here as the castle is here. We require no sustenance.”

“Liar!” Ico yelled at her, though his voice did not seem like his own. He wasn’t even sure he had shouted.

Silence fell on the room. Even the mist stopped its drifting.

“You lie…” Ico said again, much more quietly this time. “Why would they do that to one of their own?”

“They don’t think of you as one of their own. You are a horned child, a Sacrifice. Nothing more.”

The mist brushed Ico’s cheek like a gently consoling hand.

“When I destroyed their city, the priest-king and his men realized that I was not yet defeated, and they were afraid. Yorda’s treachery also stood revealed. They blamed her, and struck her.”

Ico shook his head, feeling like one of the little wooden dolls with springs for necks that Toto’s father used to make for them.

“They realized that even with the power of the Book of Light they were too weak to ever stand against me. More so now that I had lost my human form! I was indestructible. Even if they managed to cross the waters again and march through my gates, I would merely turn them to stone and wait for the wind to reduce them to dust.”

The queen fell silent. Ico looked up. “So?”

“So…”

“What did the priest-king do?”

The queen leaned very slightly toward him. “He stopped time.”

“They cast an enchantment over the entire castle so that time would stop and I would be trapped within these walls,” the queen explained. “That is why the torches still burn, and the grass still grows green, and the gravestones stand in a neat little line. But in order to do this they needed the power of the Book of Light that was within Yorda. It was through her body that they worked their spell.”

The elder had once told Ico that the Sun God was the source of light, and as the sun wheeled overhead, so did time flow on. What better device than a Book of Light to control the passage of the days?

“They brought her back to the castle to be the cage of time. You see, the glow within Yorda was not just that of the book. She glowed with the time she held captive. It was she over whom the Sacrifices stood guard, not me,” the queen said. “They watched her, making sure she did not gain back her human awareness. The fools who rule your people sent Sacrifice after Sacrifice, encased them in stone, and let the magic of the sarcophagi transform them into monsters. One by one, the shades grew in number while time outside the castle flowed on. They continued sending the Sacrifices so that Yorda might not escape. But the more time she held within her, the greater their unease became. So they sent still more.”

That explains why the creatures wanted to take Yorda back with them so badly. That has to be the answer. That has to be the truth!

The more time accumulated, the deeper their sin. And the hotter their rage and resentment burned. They couldn’t stop the sacrifices, they couldn’t change the custom. The leaders of the empire kept converting people into shadows to keep their lock on the castle safe. It was exactly what the queen had done in the Tower of Winds. Ico understood it with such clarity that it nauseated him.

The queen nodded slowly. “You see it now, Sacrifice. They blamed me for my evil deeds, yet while their words still sang on their lips, they committed the same acts over and over, for many long years.”

The duty of the Sacrifice was never-ending. They would never return to their former selves. Pity us, they had begged him. And he had understood nothing.

“It was Ozuma’s idea that horned children be offered to the castle,” the queen said. Ico listened, forgetting even to breathe.

“When Yorda was chosen for the cage, he offered himself and his descendants as her protectors. ‘If Yorda is to suffer for this, then I deserve the same fate. I will go with her to the Castle in the Mist,’ he said.”

So Ozuma had returned once more to the castle, this time with Yorda. He came without his sword, one horn removed as a sign of his penitence-to show that he had lost his right to be a defender of the land, beloved of the Sun God.

“I greeted them,” the queen was saying, her voice becoming part of the mist that flowed around Ico. “Do you understand why? Why would I let them freeze time around me? Why would I admit Yorda and Ozuma to the castle?”

Ico himself was frozen, as though he had become stone.

“Because I was satisfied, Sacrifice. They were doing my god’s work for me! Picture, if you will, the beloved creations of the Sun God here on the land, the very ones he told to go forth and prosper, sacrificing one of their own kind, twisting them into horrible shapes and locking them away across the sea, and then accepting the resultant peace as their rightful reward. Did they really think they could sin and just wash their hands of it, pretending that nothing was wrong? Is that the proper way for men to behave?”

Another derisive smile spread across the queen’s face. She lifted her hands toward the sky beyond the darkened ceiling of the throne room. Then her hands moved, tracing the shape of a globe in the air.

“When men do such things of their own accord, then the entire land is an offering to the Dark God. My master takes as his power man’s fear, man’s hatred, and man’s anger. How pleased he must be! I had won. The darkness had won. Now you see why I was content.”

Now Ico saw the truth. When the custom of the Sacrifices had been established, the battle between light and darkness had already been decided. The long line of Sacrifices throughout the years had been nothing less than the procession of the defeated army. If men were reduced to sacrificing other men to appease the darkness, the Dark God’s reign had already begun.

The queen had only to sit back and watch the foolish humans do her work for her. Once they had decided to kill not just one person, but an entire race, the way was set. They had come up with their own reasons for the sacrifices, and their own method for carrying them out. There was nothing to stop them. People were always good at justifying their actions if there was a need, or even the appearance of one, and were quick to turn to violence when necessary. They washed away blood with blood, kindled hatred with more hatred, killed, plundered, always claiming that they were in the right as they built their mountain of corpses-an altar to the Dark God.

The Dark God’s revival was imminent, with or without the queen’s help. The Castle in the Mist would rule the world, and the queen would regain her former glory.

Ico sat limply, head hanging down, unable to stand up from the stone floor. He lacked the strength even to cry. He wanted to shout at her again, to tell her she lied, but he couldn’t summon the words.

This is the truth, a voice said inside him. “That’s why…that’s why you didn’t kill me,” he said, eyes on the floor. “There was no need to.”

The queen said nothing, nor did Ico need her to. “You said that I was lucky. You meant I was lucky because my Mark freed me from the sarcophagus, saved me from an eternity as a shade. That’s why you didn’t need me, why you said I could leave.”

Only now did the elder’s parting words make sense. He would be able to return to Toksa Village thanks to the Mark. A Sacrifice who could not become a shade was useless. That was why they didn’t want him to tell the priests about the Mark. If they had learned of its power, they would have ripped it from his chest on the spot.

“How will you live?” the queen asked abruptly. “Now that you bear the truth upon your back, where will you go? Do you have hope, little Sacrifice?”

Ico had no words with which to answer.

“Do you still want to take Yorda from the castle?” she asked gently.

Ico felt fresh tears well in his eyes.

“You might as well try. I won’t stop you.”

“What?”

“I believe you’re actually capable now. You have clearly been chosen by someone or something. Take her by the hand and cross back to the land, if you so wish.”

“But if I do that-”

The queen nodded deeply. “Indeed, the rulers of your empire would not forgive you. Do you fear their wrath? Why? You’re strong. And you’re right to be angry.”

Ico looked up at the queen-a little boy standing at the feet of a maiden.

“If you really wanted to change things, if you really wanted to lift the cruel burden that has been placed upon the Sacrifices-if you are ready to rise up in anger against those who told you false histories and sent you to your death, then I will serve as your master and your protector. I will give you sword and shield and an army to lead!”

Ico blinked, not understanding at first. Me, under the queen’s protection? She wants me to follow the master of the Castle in the Mist?

“I am not your enemy,” the queen said. “Nor is the castle. No, your enemy sits in the capital, reveling in the prosperity they have gained through the sacrifice of your kin.”

And they must be punished-the thought rose in Ico’s mind of its own accord. He took a hesitant breath.

“Sacrifice!” the queen called to him. Her voice was stronger, and her appearance more noble than ever before. Her tone was that of a sovereign addressing her subject.

Ico felt his posture straighten.

“There is no time within this castle. Consider your choice for as long as you like. And, if it so happens that you collapse before the sadness, and you fall into despair, and you choose to hold your anger deep inside you, then I will turn you to stone and place you among the others here. As I did Ozuma so long ago.

“But do not misunderstand-I turned him to stone from compassion. Stone men have stone hearts, and stone hearts cannot be wounded or broken. I would show you the same compassion, if you wish it.”

The queen vanished, along with Yorda’s body.

Ico was alone, the dark truth his only companion.

6

ICO SAT CURLED into a ball, his arms around his legs and his chin resting on his knees. He sat like that for a long time, fading in and out of awareness. He might even have slept. When he finally opened his eyes, his body was cold, and he ached all over from the punishment he had received.

He was tired, and his limbs felt heavy.

Ico closed his eyes again. I’ll just go to sleep. I’ll keep sleeping. I don’t want to think, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to have to make any decisions. If I sit here long enough, maybe the queen will make good on her promise and turn me to stone.

Ico didn’t really care if she did. He felt as though he was made of stone already. He liked what she had said, about stone hearts being impervious to harm. It made perfect sense. A lot of things she said had made perfect sense.

But I’m not stone. My heart does hurt. A lot. That’s why I can’t stand.

He wondered where Yorda had disappeared to. Ico looked up at the queen’s throne. It was empty. Everything was quiet. Sunlight shone in through a window along the corridor ahead. Everything was perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened here at all.

The queen had offered to let him escape with Yorda, but then she had gone and hidden her somewhere. Does she want me to look for her again? Or was she hoping that I would just give up after all?

Another possibility occurred to him: Yorda might have left on her own. So I could leave the Castle in the Mist by myself. Maybe that’s what I should’ve done in the first place. I’m the lucky Sacrifice, right? Why throw that luck away?

If he went back home, he could see his foster parents again. Wouldn’t they be happy to see their prophecy fulfilled, their little Sacrifice returned to them to live in peace?

Then the voice of doubt rose in his mind. Peace? Really? Even with Toto gone? Even though he’s probably turned to stone? Toto had traded his life for the Book of Light. He had purchased Ico’s life with his own.

Ico sensed another presence in the room, and he turned, almost expecting to see Toto there.

It was the shadow creatures-several of them stood in a semicircle behind him. Their eyes glowed, fixed on him. For a while, Ico stared back at them as though beguiled, his breathing slow and labored. Save for the slow rippling of their silhouettes caused by the faint motion of the air around them, the shades were stock-still. But to Ico, it looked as though they were trembling, weeping.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last in a breathless whisper. He swallowed, then said again, louder, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t know-you’re the same as me, but I didn’t try to understand.”

The shades made no response. Ico sat up on his knees, then swayed as a sudden wave of dizziness came over him. His hands hit the floor, and he sat hunched over for a while, fighting back nausea. When he looked up again, the shades were gone.

Ico stood slowly and walked over to where the shades had stood. No trace of them, no sign of their presence, remained.

He left the queen’s audience chamber and walked out into the sunlit corridor. The light hurt his eyes. Ozuma was standing at the end of the corridor, his back to a single, high stone step leading to another passageway. His figure cut a dark silhouette against the pool of light at the corner.

Ico stopped and faced him.

“This was your fault,” he said. The words came to him quickly.

With the light at Ozuma’s back, it was impossible to see his expression. Unlike the shades, his eyes were covered in darkness and gave off no light at all.

“It’s all your fault!” Ico screamed as he raised his fists and charged the knight. A moment before he reached him, Ozuma slid to one side, his cloak billowing behind him.

Ico’s fist came down on empty air, and his momentum carried him sprawling onto the ground. His knees, legs, and fists smarted.

“Your…fault.”

Ico struggled back to his feet to see Ozuma vault to the top of the step. The knight moved smoothly, betraying neither hesitation nor any acknowledgment of Ico’s presence.

“You did this to me! To everyone!” Ico shouted as he ran after him, trembling with rage. Clambering up the stairs, he found himself at the beginning of a passageway that curved gently to the right. Ozuma was walking down it, away from him. Ico paused, catching his breath with one hand on the wall. “Turn and face me, coward!”

Ico felt the strength come back to his limbs. He ran, determined to catch Ozuma, to make him face his descendants-Ico and the other shadowy Sacrifices. This time he would answer for what he had done.

Ico ran through several rooms, clambering up large steps and dropping down over ledges. He climbed, vaulted, and used chains to swing across otherwise impassable crevices. The more he ran, the faster he went, until he felt his body become as light as the wind. Even still, he couldn’t catch Ozuma. The black knight was ahead of him, always visible, yet always out of reach.

It’s almost like he’s leading me somewhere.

After running for what seemed like an impossibly long distance, Ico had to stop, out of breath, hands on his knees. He looked up. I recognize this place.

It was the small room he and Yorda had come to after they first crossed the old stone bridge. He recognized the walls and the columns, the hanging chains, and the positions of the sputtering torches on the walls. There were the idols, and beyond them, the bridge.

Will I find him standing out there again? The stone watcher on the parapet?

Ico could hear the sound of the sea. A briny smell reached his nose. He could feel the wind on his skin. He stopped, hand resting on one of the idols by the door. He led me here…he wanted me to follow him. But why?

Ico passed between the idols, hearing a seagull cry close by. He was standing at the end of the long stone bridge now. On both sides, the sea reflected the color of the sky. Waves leapt, sending up a spray where they hit the stone columns supporting the bridge. Ico felt like he had emerged into the vast space between heaven and earth after months in a tiny box.

The bridge was collapsed, no, severed, in the middle. The statue of Ozuma stood on the far side, back turned to Ico. From here, he was so distant, he looked barely larger than Ico’s upraised finger.

My child, a voice said in Ico’s mind. You and your brothers have borne the great burden of my sin these many years. Yet after all this time, nothing changes, and I remain bound here to the Castle in the Mist.

For the first time, Ico had the strong sense that he was Ozuma’s child, his descendant, the bearer of his blood. He felt like running to him, up to that motionless figure, and screaming, Why did this happen? Why?

But what he said was, “What do you want me to do about it?” Ico felt the rage rise inside him and just as quickly slip away, as though his body were too weary to hold on to it. He sobbed quietly. “What am I supposed to do?”

There was love here, the voice said.

Ico blinked. The seagull was hovering, flying against the wind only a few arm spans away from him, its beady black eyes watching him for a moment before it angled its wings and sped off into the distance.

Ico walked up to where the bridge had crumbled. He looked down over the ragged edge at the rolling waves far below, the deep greens and light blues swirling beneath white foam. The castle might be frozen in time, but all around it the sea was alive, in motion.

The sound of crashing waves rose up from beneath his feet, wrapping around him. Ico squinted, looking toward the statue of Ozuma. He couldn’t leave Yorda here alone, Ico thought. Even after she became the cage of time, he returned here to be her protector. He chose this.

Why? Because he regretted his powerlessness, his inability to defeat the darkness?

Was he just trying to live up to the expectations of the empire?

Or maybe he had realized that there was no place for him in the world outside.

No, Ico thought. That’s not it. It was because he couldn’t save Yorda. He couldn’t leave her to bear the burden of his failure alone. He, who reminded her so much of her own father when she was a little girl.

That’s why Ozuma returned and remained.

Ico’s heart ached as though he had been stabbed. He gave a cry and fell forward onto his knees, hands to his chest where his Mark was glowing brightly.

There was love here, the voice said again.

But whose love, Ico wondered. He had assumed Ozuma was talking about the queen and her daughter-but maybe…

From the very first time he had seen her, Ico had wanted to save Yorda. There had been no thought, no reason-when he saw her in the cage, he knew he had to set her free.

Ico shook his head. I didn’t know anything then. I could just do what my heart told me to do. But not anymore. Right?

With his newfound knowledge, why should he care about Yorda? Why should he worry about saving her if she wasn’t to be saved?

I could leave her and escape this place.

Or I could take her with me and become a fugitive of the empire. The thief who stole the lock holding time in place over the castle. He wondered what the rulers would do if he took her and escaped, and kept running, and running.

They would probably find another cage to trap time. But would that save Yorda? Would it save me?

There was another alternative. He could choose to serve the queen, fight against the empire that made his people sacrifices. With the queen’s strength behind him, victory was certain. Then he would serve the queen, and they would rule the world.

But what of Yorda? What would she think, she who had wept even as she aided her mother’s enemies in an attempt to destroy her?

And Toto? Could he be brought back to life by the queen’s power? Would he even be my friend if he did come back? Would he forgive me?

Ico grabbed the intricate woven lines of the Mark tighter, trying to catch the rainbow brilliance that ran along its curves. Then it felt as though the world had brightened around him.

Toto’s courage, Yorda’s pleas-how could he turn his back on their tears?

My child, Ozuma said to him. Ico looked up, smoothing the rumpled cloth of his tunic with his hands.

Go find the sword. The sword calls to you. Take it in your hands and you will know the way.

Ico looked down at his empty palms. The sea breeze whipped through his hair. “Will the sword let me defeat the queen? Will I be able to save Yorda then? I don’t think so. I don’t-” without realizing it, Ico had begun to shout. “Why couldn’t you wield the sword again yourself? Why couldn’t you defeat the queen?”

The sword rested in a cave beneath the castle, still imbued with the power of the Book of Light-why hadn’t Ozuma tried using it again? Was he prevented somehow? Was no one in the empire able to do it?

Now that Ico thought about it, it struck him as extremely curious. There must have been many people in the empire that knew about the sword-the priest and the temple guards who led him here were just a few of them. They had even used it. Had no one thought to raise that sword against the queen? Did they think it was enough to cage her? Had they denied the truth of the situation for so long?

Why didn’t they do what had to be done?

Because our minds were closed. Ozuma’s voice rose and fell with the sound of the waves. Because all that we saw was within her hands, we saw only what the queen wished us to see.

“That’s no different than me,” Ico muttered, shoulders drooping. “I’ve been wandering through the castle forever, not even sure where I’m going. I’ve just been running in circles in the palm of her hand.”

Ozuma spoke again, a smile in his voice. His words were gentle, reminding Ico of the first time he had seen the knight’s face up close.

My child. You already know the truth-you are the only one not caught in the queen’s embrace.

“How do I know that? How can I be sure?”

Remember the queen’s words. Remember the elder’s words. The knowledge and courage once separated have come together again in you.

The wind picked up, and Ico staggered several steps backward. He could feel Ozuma’s presence slipping away. The warmth he had felt coming from the distant statue had faded.

Maybe that was all the strength he had. Or maybe he left.

I’m alone.

He touched the Mark again. Its glow had faded. And with it the understanding that had been so close-

What did he mean I already know? Know what?

Maybe getting the sword would solve that mystery. Unfortunately, that presented another problem. Ico didn’t relish the idea of another aimless trip through the castle in search of a way down.

Ico looked up at the sky. The sun was still shining. The world still moved outside the castle.

Then it hit him. Ico’s eyes went wide. The castle is the queen’s domain. No wonder I can’t get anywhere running around in here.

I have to leave the castle.

It felt like a ray of sunlight had penetrated the clouds of his mind.

This was the answer he had been looking for. The sword was calling to him, beckoning him. If he could escape the queen’s clutches, the sword would draw him to it. That’s what Ozuma was saying.

Ico stepped forward again, looking down at the sea. The water swirled around the foot of the pillars. White froth sprayed into the air. He licked his lips and tasted salt. The sea was moving beneath him.

Ico looked back up at the sky, at the seabirds wheeling above him. He wondered if they ever knew fear. Whether they ever collided with walls they could not see and broke their wings. Whether they ever faltered in their trust of the open sky.

The sky was limitless and vast, as the sea was deep and wide. These things were beyond the reach of human designs. Not even the iron will of the queen could hope to rule them.

Trust the sea.

Ico closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Holding his arms by his sides, he clenched his fists tightly for a moment, then let go.

He stepped forward with his right foot and then brought his left foot even with it. His toes were looking out onto empty space.

Ico pushed with both legs.

The very moment his body hit the wind blowing up from the sea, his Mark began to shine with a brilliant, pure light, like a shooting star. Then he fell, plummeting downward like an arrow trailing a tail of light.

In the back of Ico’s mind he saw himself and Toto back in that cave, shouting, jumping into the pool of water they had found without any fear.

The blue sea opened its arms and welcomed him.

7

ICO’S EYES OPENED to the pleasant rush of running water. The light was dim around him. He was by an inlet, at the edge of a rocky crag jutting out into the water. Beneath him were pebbles and sand, a half-washed-away beach. The waves must’ve carried me here. He was lying on his stomach, halfway up on the sand. His legs were still in the water.

Ico got his arms beneath him and crawled on his elbows away from the water’s edge. He was drenched. Sitting up, he began wringing the water out of his shirt and trousers and the Mark on his chest. He sneezed loudly, hearing the muted sound of water caught inside his ear.

I’m alive, he thought. The sea swallowed me, carried me, then spat me back out. But where am I?

The warped wooden planks of the pier were nowhere in sight. Dark rock wet with sea spray rose around him in a tall cliff. That was what was blocking the light.

Across from the narrow triangle of sand where he sat, he saw a cave with an entrance like two hands steepled together, the fingers touching.

The sword is in there. It must be.

He looked around and saw the source of the running water he had heard over the gentle wash of the waves-a tiny waterfall that ran like a beautiful silver thread down the side of the cliff.

No matter how high up he looked, he couldn’t see the castle anywhere. It must be over the top of the cliff. This place was hidden from its view, a narrow strip of beach between the sea and the rock.

Thank you, he thought, looking over his shoulder out at the water. Then he began walking toward the cave. Even though the waves must have tossed him quite some distance, he had not lost the sandals on his feet, and the sand was packed firm under them.

It was dark in the cave, despite Ico’s eyes having long grown accustomed to the gloom. He could only just make out his hand if he moved it in front of his nose. When he extended his arm, everything past his elbow was lost in the darkness. Ico groped for the rock walls with his fingers, feeling his way forward, testing the ground beneath his toes as he advanced deeper into the cave.

Even still, he felt no hesitation. The cave would take him to the sword, of that he was sure. It was as though he had been here many times before.

Maybe the sword really is calling to me, he thought, setting a path before me I can only see with my heart.

He continued on, feeling his way deeper into the cave. When he reached a curve in the wall, he pressed up against it and walked sideways, and eventually the sound of the waterfall at the entrance receded into the distance until he could hear it no longer. It was replaced by the whispering sound of water flowing somewhere down by his feet.

For the first time, he realized that the water was a living thing. It spoke with many voices. Ico listened to them and understood that none spoke of danger. There were deep voices and high trilling voices, loud voices and soft ones, all telling him that this path was true. Walk on and you will reach your destination, the water seemed to say to him.

He walked until he could not remember how long he had been walking. Water dripped down from the roof above him, splashing off the top of his head. He looked ahead and realized that there was a light coming from higher up, a place where the rock bulged out from the walls and ceiling like the fists of two stone giants.

He put his hands to his waist and caught his breath while he looked around in surprise. He realized that he had been climbing up a rather steep slope to get here, clambering over folding layers of rock, jutting boulders, jagged walls, and narrow passages.

No wonder I’m out of breath.

Ahead, the rocky slope continued upward for some distance, leading up to the place where the giants’ fists met and a narrow sliver of light shone through. He thought the gap might even be wide enough for him to pass through.

At the top of the slope, he wedged his way through the gap between the rocks and heard the sound of a greater body of water echoing beyond. This new noise was almost like rain, and it came with a deeper tone that seemed to come up from the ground. He crawled on his elbows across the gravelly floor, coming out into a wider space where he could raise his head again-and caught a blast of water directly in his face.

I’m behind a waterfall. The watery veil spread out in front of him. Water splashed up in a fine mist, wetting his arms and legs.

Thankfully, it was brighter here. Ico peeked around the edge of the waterfall to get a better look, like a child peering around his mother’s skirts, and he realized that the opening he had reached was looking out over the sea. He was midway up a cliff that curved forward on either side, like a horseshoe with him roughly at its center. From here there was no apparent way to climb farther up, and when he looked down, the sea seemed impossibly far below. Several waterfalls coursed gracefully down the inside of the horseshoe cliff, and the sound of the rushing water was enough to make his ears go numb.

He also noticed something else-two thick pipes crossing from the cliffs to his right over to the cliffs on his left. They seemed to be made of copper, darkened by the spray of the water, with green rust clinging to the seams where lengths of pipe were joined together.

Several chains-he counted eight in total-hung down from the pipes, each with something like a giant ring suspended from its end. Ico looked closer and saw that they resembled giant spinning wheels, easily as wide across as a man was tall. While he looked in amazement, he could feel his heart racing. The sword was calling to him. Come, come. This way.

As though pulled by a thread, Ico’s eyes looked in the direction of the soundless voice. It was coming from above the cliff to his left. Trees grew thickly along the top, and he thought he saw something among them sparkling, catching the sunlight.

Great, now I know where to go-but how do I get there?

Fear rose in Ico’s chest. What if all this running around, all of this fear, all of the sadness has made me lose my mind? What if the sword calling to me is just an illusion? What if madness brought me to this cliff?

He saw another light shine in the trees atop the cliff, a sparkle like a star guiding a lost hunter.

He wondered again how he would get there, when the answer rose in his mind: he would have to jump down to the wheels hanging from the bottom of the pipe, going from wheel to wheel until he reached the one furthest to the left. Then he would climb up the chain, and if he could get back on top of the pipe, he would be able to reach the forest at the cliff top.

Each of the chains hanging from the pipe was a slightly different length. Unfortunately, the one closest to him was also the longest, which meant he would have to fall a great distance before he reached the wheel suspended at its bottom.

He considered just jumping down into the water, when he remembered the warnings he had often received as a child not to swim near the base of the waterfalls that fell near Toksa Village. The water there swirled in such a way that if you went too far down, it would trap you there and never let you back to the surface.

He would have to make a jump for it, and if he missed the wheel at the bottom of the chain, he would just have to brave the waterfalls.

Come, the sword beckoned.

This is another test, Ico thought. If I don’t pass this one, it just means I wasn’t worthy of the sword.

Come to me.

The sword’s voice had a sweet ring to it that reminded Ico of his mother-or maybe it was just that he chose to ascribe a familiar sound to those clear, beckoning vibrations that seemed to beat against his very soul.

Then the adventuresome child inside him perked up. Grabbing the Mark firmly in one hand, he leapt. Wheeling his hands through the air, he worked his legs as though he might gallop on the wind, trying to keep his balance.

With a surprisingly light sound, Ico landed directly on top of the wheel. His legs swayed beneath him and he quickly grabbed hold of the chain. When he looked around, he saw rainbows in the air all around him, so close it seemed he might be able to grab them with his hands.

Drenched to the skin, Ico grinned, letting his eyes follow the rainbows through the air. They winked in and out of existence, their sparkling light looking like applause for his courageous jump off the cliff.

He looked up at the blue sky, rimmed by the curve of the top of the cliffs. The sky seemed less blue than it had before he jumped from the old bridge, and it was veiled by a thin white mist. Evening was approaching.

I have to hurry. He looked across at the other wheels hanging from the chains, plotting his course, and it seemed like the rainbows twisted to guide him, showing him the way.

“Here goes!” he shouted and jumped out into the air. Ico’s arms and legs moved smoothly, no trace of the fear that had sent shivers up his spine moments before. The more he moved, the less he feared. He made the last jump easily and began climbing up the chain toward the pipe, a smile spreading across his face.

He walked along the top of the pipe, nearing the forest, when he stopped and turned to look behind him, wondering what the strange wheels had been placed there for. Why were they hanging from the pipe? What was their purpose?

Looking down at them from this new angle he realized suddenly that they looked like cages. That’s what they are, round cages.

People were kept here, hanging high above the waves-

He trembled with the horror of the thought.

But those cages had led him here. Maybe the rainbows were the traces of the souls of the people who had died in those cages, come back to lead his way. All of them wanted release from the Castle in the Mist.

“I have to hurry,” he said aloud, quickening his pace, leaving the thundering sound of the waterfalls, the dancing rainbows, and the eight silent cages behind.

Ico made his way through the thick foliage, over a rocky crag, and along the stone face of the wall. He found he could hear the voice of the sword best when his mind was cleared of thoughts.

He headed down along the cliff, descending until he figured he was about halfway back down the slope he had climbed inside in the darkness. The path here was narrow, and he had to cling to the cliff to avoid slipping and falling into the ceaselessly pounding waves far below him.

His memories returned to him as he moved carefully along the side of the cliff, grabbing at protrusions with his hands and finding indentations for his feet, jumping when he could not reach the next handhold. The look of the sea, the shape of the rocks, and the flow of the water all reminded him of his first visit. When he had descended even further, a scant three body lengths above the waves, he jumped off the cliff into the sea. This time he fought against the current, swimming with strong strokes into the cave that held the underground pier.

Ico arrived at the lowered portcullis and found that there was enough of a gap at the bottom for him to swim through. He broke through the surface of the water on the other side with a splash. He was about to continue on when he had a change of heart and decided it was a better idea to investigate and raise the portcullis before continuing further.

The rope was easy to find, and though the wheel above creaked noisily when he pulled on it, it was easy for him to raise the portcullis. He brought the rope down as far as it would go, watching water stream off the portcullis back down into the channel as it lifted.

Even as he watched, he wondered why he had bothered to raise the portcullis at all-when he realized the answer. I’m coming back through here. And I won’t be alone. I’ll be with Yorda. I’ll bring her back. It was likely she wouldn’t be able to swim as well as he could, so raising the portcullis was a good idea.

I will save Yorda. That’s what I’m doing. I haven’t given up.

He dove back into the water and swam swiftly onward. Within moments, he could see the leaning piles of the underground pier.

It was quiet. The sound of the waves did not reach this far inside the cave. He swam until his feet could reach the bottom. Then he stood and walked toward the pier, scrambling up on top of it.

Here I am, back at the beginning.

He wasn’t going to take the queen up on her offer. I’m making my own way now. With my own hands-and the sword.

The cave seemed different than when he had passed this way before. It was dimly lit and warm. A gentle breeze wafted through, feeling like the morning wind that blew down through the village at dawn, when the hunters gathered to check the gear and choose the path they would take that day. The armor clinked, laughter echoed down the street, and their voices turned to white steam that drifted in the air. We are off. All is ready for the hunt. It was an energy in the air here that did not exist before. Ico realized with a start that it was coming from himself. And there was another source-

He would have been able to find it even with his eyes closed. He walked along the path that led from the pier, turning right at the intersection. White light shone up ahead. He could almost hear a noise each time the light winked, its outline so sharp he felt he could trace it with his fingers. If he had, he felt like its shape would be the same as the morning star that shone at dawn and the evening star that stood watch over the twilight.

Ico walked toward the white light.

The path ended in a stone wall, and there he found it.

The sword was on a surprisingly small altar, and at first it was hard to make out, so glorious and blinding was the light that shone from it. As he drew closer, he saw that the altar resembled the shape of the Tower of Winds, except instead of the walls that covered the tower, there were four pillars.

Ico’s sandals made wet sounds that echoed off the walls seemingly in time with the singing in Ico’s breast and the light flowing from the altar. The sword sat at the height of Ico’s waist, in the center of the four pillars. It had no scabbard, and its hilt faced toward him.

Come, take me.

I am yours.

The sword spoke to him in his bones and blood, not words.

Ico reached out, taking the handle in first his right, then in both hands, slowly lifting the sword.

It was a long blade but light as a feather. He gave it two or three swings and then shifted it to his right hand, lunging forward then back, then in a circle, raising the sword to eye level. It felt like an extension of his arm, a part of his body.

I am you.

The Mark on his chest pulsed with light in answer to the sword’s vibrations. Mystical power and purifying light crisscrossed the patterns woven there by his mother’s hand.

We meet again, and again come here together to form a single light!

Ico held up the blade, looking at his own reflection in its broad surface. He felt like the sword wanted him to do it. Warmth spread in his chest.

He saw his own eyes, the straight brows. When he was still young enough to sit on his mother’s knee, she would stroke his eyebrows with her finger and say, “You are a strong-willed boy. Look how straight your eyebrows are.”

He had never heard what his foster mother said next, what she muttered under her breath-but now he knew.

“What a fine man you would have become-”

But he was fated to go to the Castle in the Mist.

I have to give him up to the castle.

The memories became more real inside him until he was feeling them anew, and Ico closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw a face in the blade of the sword-but it was not his own.

It was a boy with horns like his. His eyes had a bluish tint to them and were lighter than Ico’s. A long scratch ran down his right cheek.

The horned boy was looking out at him, blinking his eyes. Ico almost called out to him. He felt the boy would hear him if he did. But before he could, the boy in the blade turned and vanished. As though someone behind him, someone unseen, had called him away.

Ico followed after him, into the world the sword was showing him. His soul left his body and chased like the wind after the running boy.

Ico’s senses were sharp, and he felt his awareness spread as fast as the sky and deep as the sea. Past and future seemed like one moment. He could hear it. He could feel it. One second was an eternity, one thing was everything, he himself was limitless, and at the same time, everything was becoming one.

The boy he had seen in the blade was riding on a large bearded man’s shoulders. He was laughing out loud. They were walking through tall reeds. No, wheat. This was a field. The boy was singing, and the man whistled cheerfully, accompanying him. Then they laughed together, the sound of their laughter sweeping across the field rows.

Then he came upon another scene. This time there was a girl with horns. She was sitting in front of a loom, holding thread and spindle in her hands. An old woman with a stern face stood next to the loom, and whenever the girl made a mistake in her weaving, she would slap her with the broad flat of her hand. The girl would pout, but then she would go right back to her work.

What are these things that I’m seeing?

Ico stood, entranced by the shining sword. The scene in front of him changed again and again, but in each a horned child was jumping, studying, running, laughing, crying, playing with friends, or sleeping-living their lives just as Ico had in Toksa, each with a different face.

These children are the Sacrifices.

They had all been brought here to the castle and placed within the stone sarcophagi. He was seeing their lives before they became creatures of darkness and shadow. He could hear their voices, see their smiles, listen to their words. He watched them working under the sun, harvesting grain, scythes in hand and baskets upon their backs. They walked down the field rows, swinging tree branches and singing songs to drive off the birds. They sat in front of plain wooden desks and practiced their letters. They fished in the shallows and splashed water on each other, squealing with delight.

A gentle breeze blew through the village, carrying with it the scent of new leaves and fresh blossoms. They went to sleep tired from the day’s work, thin quilts to keep them warm on the chilly spring nights. They listened to stories told in tender voices by the men and women who raised them as their own. On summer days, their skin was brown from the sun and mud and dirt. On autumn evenings, the moon rose full above them and the sky was filled with stars. Then came the brightness of dawn. The taste of freshly picked fruit. Teeth biting through the skin, smiles brightening as the juice hit their lips. They hunched their heads low in the cold winter, huddled around fires for warmth. They looked up with pride at the village hunters returning from the hunt, taking off their gear, the faint smell of the blood of their catch still lingering around them.

Always shining, always warm, always alive. He saw their lives in an endless series of scenes, like paintings of everyday moments. And faces, so many faces-too many to count.

All the Sacrifices, in every age-they were alive.

And the people who had sent them to the castle were alive. Toksa was the sorrowful farewell port for the Sacrifices. But it was also the place blessed with the task of raising them.

The sword had lain here in the Castle in the Mist as a symbol, an object of worship-but had they ever known that all of the days lived by all of the Sacrifices were still here, kept safe within its blade? The blessing of the Book of Light was nothing other than the joy of life itself.

Ico returned to his body, feeling as though he had come arcing across the sky, through shining clouds, back down into the cave. He was still holding the sword in his hands. Only his face was reflected in its shining blade.

And now the blade was asking him a question. It wanted to know if he was ready. If he was, it would show him the way.

Ico understood. He knew what he had to do. The clarity of the task before him was like the light of the midday sun, shining high in the sky inside his heart.

8

HAD IT BEEN yesterday or the day before? Or had an entire month already passed? In this sequestered world, a world without time, it was impossible for Ico to say how long ago the priest and the two guards who wore horns on their helmets had led him through this place.

He lifted the sword before the idol gate, and the stone idols, bathed in the sword’s light, slid to either side. Ico stepped onto the platform he knew would take him into the castle above-alone, this time, without the pride or the fear he had known upon his first arrival. He worked the lever, and the floor began to slowly rise, lifting him into the hall of the stone sarcophagi. He brandished his sword, yet still he hesitated.

This was the path. Ahead lay the queen. Through the hall of the stone sarcophagi he would find her true throne. The sword had told him that.

What slowed his pace? Was it the fear that he lacked the resolve it would take to fight those he would soon face? Or was it that he lacked the strength to cut them down?

No, that’s not it. Ico looked in vain for the words he needed to express his turmoil.

Pale light shone between the idols framing the passage into the hall. He knew exactly what that eerie, ill-omened color represented now.

He stepped out into the hall, shining sword in his right hand, left hand clenched into a fist by his side, and looked upon the source of the pale light.

Every one of the many sarcophagi lining the walls was glowing. Or rather, the designs upon their surfaces, the enchanted patterns, were undulating with living light.

Several torches burned along the walls. Yet their light did not reach the sarcophagi. The designs on the sarcophagi were slithering snakes. One snake per stone. They slithered across the surface of the sarcophagi, weaving patterns that had no head or tail-engraved chaos.

In harmony with the movements of the pale-glowing serpentine patterns, the sarcophagi were humming. It was as though the sarcophagi were in ecstasy, growling like animals lacking mouths. It was a horrifying sight, and yet it possessed an otherworldly beauty. For a moment, Ico stood entranced, his heart held by the strange light of the sarcophagi. He felt the strength leave his arm gripping the sword. The point dropped down toward his feet.

What’s going on?

A wind blew through the hall, making the Mark on his chest flutter. His hair got in his eyes. Ico blinked, forcing them to focus.

Someone was crouched amongst the sarcophagi on the landing halfway up the wall in front of him. He took a step closer to see who it was, then realized he was looking at a statue. The figure was bent over as though in lamentation, forehead pressed to the ground. Its arms might have been part of the stone landing, they were pressed so low, and the slender arch of the back made Ico realize who it was.

It’s Yorda! She’s been turned to stone!

The enchantment woven around him by the sarcophagi and their light broke in an instant. Ico launched into motion, running toward her when he saw shadowy shapes rise around her, drifting up like shimmering waves of heat, like shadows forming in a sudden flash of light.

Ico went a few steps farther and then stopped, looking up at the landing. The shades did not move. They merely looked down at him with their dully glowing eyes.

Ico was breathing hard. The shades held their ground. Ico’s heart threatened to burst from his chest. Still, the shades did not move.

Ico steadied his grip on the sword.

“What’s happened to her?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I know who she is now. I know what she means to you.”

The shades continued to stare.

“B-but Yorda didn’t want what happened to you. She never wanted you to suffer…”

Ico’s knees buckled beneath him.

Have I come this far only to lose my nerve? No. It’s these sarcophagi that are doing this to me. It’s those eerie glowing enchantments. They’re happy. They enjoy my pain, enjoy the grief of my fellow Sacrifices. That’s the source of those vibrations I’m feeling.

The visions Ico had seen when he looked into the blade came back to him in a rush of memory. It was as though the sword were cutting through his confusion. He saw the eyes of the Sacrifices shining with happiness. The joy of their lives in the village. The brilliance of their existence.

These creatures I’m facing aren’t shapeless things of smoke. They’re not dark souls come boiling out of whirling pools of black. These are the Sacrifices. These are children. The descendants of Ozuma. My brothers and sisters.

They are me.

Suddenly, a howl of rage escaped Ico’s lips. His throat trembled and his voice echoed off the walls of the vast hall.

Ico lifted his sword and charged. He ran up the steps. He wasn’t charging at the dark creatures, he was charging at the sarcophagi. He was going to destroy their pale glowing curses.

He split the first stone sarcophagus he reached in two with a single swing of the sword. On the backswing he destroyed the one beside it. Look how fragile they are, look how weak!

Ico screamed as he ran from sarcophagus to sarcophagus, swinging his sword. As they broke under the sword, their shattered pieces shone brightly, and when Ico cut the lines of their enchantments, they howled like steam escaping a kettle. The coffins crumbled, lost their lives, and fell to cold fragments of stone.

The shadow creatures began to move. Large ones with horns were gathering around Ico, bobbing up and down as they trailed him. They advanced and retreated, formed a line and pulled away. Winged creatures flew in circles over his head. The moment he thought they might land on his shoulders they would peel away or swoop low by his face and flap their wings at him.

Yet they did not hinder his progress. They were just trying to be as close as possible to the sarcophagi when they were destroyed, to be as close as possible to the light of the sword. They wanted to relish the dying screams of the stones.

Up at the highest level, with the chaos of destruction all around him, Ico slipped from the ladder. Yet he did not fall. One of the shades grabbed his collar with its long claws, and he hung in midair, kicking his legs.

Then he was back on the landing. The creature with long crooked horns, much taller than Ico, was standing next to him, looking at him with its white eyes.

He helped me.

Ico steadied his grip on the sword, thinking. The shades thronged around him in a circle. They were swinging their hands, stomping their feet, their eyes burning with the same rage that filled his.

Joy filled Ico’s heart.

More strength filled his arms. The brilliance of the blade drowned out the light of the glyphs on the remaining sarcophagi. Ico gave another shout and brought his sword down on the sarcophagus in front of him. Then with one stroke, the stone sarcophagus split in two. Its keening fell silent, and it crumbled to lifeless stone.

He was a cyclone, a thunderbolt, the power of the maelstrom. Incredible energy moved through Ico’s limbs. Each time the sword crushed another sarcophagus, each time its enchantment lifted, he grew stronger. Ico ran through the hall, bounding up stairs and ladders, then leapt to the next to begin again. He ran across narrow landings, the cacophony of the destruction erasing the whispers of the enchantments.

Ico destroyed the last sarcophagus. Shoulders heaving, he stood. His eyes flashed, watching each of the cursed fragments fly to its final rest. Until his prey was motionless, he would not remove his gaze, like a hunter who would not lower his bloodied sword.

Silence filled the hall. Ico’s breathing gradually quieted. Like a child laid down to sleep, his inhalations grew farther and farther apart until he breathed so quietly he could hardly hear them at all.

The shadowy creatures had moved around Yorda once again. Ico stood at the bottom of the stairs below, looking up at them.

“Let’s finish this.”

Ico held the sword high above his head, and from behind the shades, part of the wall forming the hall began to rumble. Fine dust accumulated over the years drifted slowly from between the stones. The next moment, the wall collapsed with a great cloud of dust and rubble. The way was open through it-a stone staircase.

Ico’s eyes traveled up the staircase, past the shadowy creatures, past the shape of Yorda frozen in grief, all the way to the true throne room of the queen.

The ceiling of the throne room was shrouded in darkness, making it impossible to judge its height. A wall covered with carvings stood in the center, coming to a peak at its top, where two swords hung over a graven crest. This was the seal of the royal house. He wondered why such a thing would be here-what did the royal bloodline mean to the queen? Was this perhaps some lingering trace of pride or attachment?

Directly beneath the crest in the center of a raised platform sat the queen’s throne.

No one was here. Ico could sense no presence. The throne was empty.

Out in the room, four of the stone idols stood, two to each side and slightly in front of the throne. These were slightly taller than the ones that guarded the doors, and their patterns were different. Ico walked between them quietly, holding his sword ready.

He walked up to the throne. Its design was similar to the one that had sat in the room where he had been separated from Yorda, but it was carved from a different stone. That throne had been made of the same gray stone as the walls around him, but this one-the true seat of the master of the Castle in the Mist-was carved from a block of smooth obsidian.

The back of the throne was like a slab of stone, covered with carvings. He saw dragons, two-headed creatures spewing flame, ringing the edge of the throne. No-that’s not flame they’re spewing. It’s jet black mist.

A faint carving stood out in relief at the center of the throne’s back. Ico took another step closer, and its lines came into focus: a perfect circle, surrounded by swaying flames, set in a sky of countless stars.

The scene of an eclipse.

The sun was a mirror reflecting the power of the Dark God, instead of the light that was the source of all life. Light consumed by darkness.

Ico gingerly set his hand on the throne. Cold. He lifted his fingers and saw the silhouette of his own horned head cast across the seat.

Readying himself, Ico stepped back from the throne. He looked up at the crest above his head and turned to step down off the platform when a voice called out to him from behind.

“Is this your decision, then?”

Ico spun around.

The queen was sitting, leaning back in her throne, lustrous black hair and long black sleeves spread wide. Her arms perched upon the armrests. The many folds of black lace covering her held the shape of her body, but at the same time they seemed empty. If it were not for her pale white face and the tips of her fingers extending from her sleeves, it would have looked as though her gown sat the throne alone.

“Foolish boy,” the queen said, her voice strangely gentle, coaxing. “In the end we find that a Sacrifice child has no more wit than his forebears. I offered you my protection, I offered you my strength, and you turned your back on me. As I assume you have turned your eyes away from the true enemy you were meant to fight.”

Ico stared at the queen’s pale face. For the first time he realized that nowhere could he see any resemblance to Yorda.

Because her face is just a mask, Ico thought. Those fingers I can see are not real. All that is here is a dark void. Hadn’t the queen said so herself many times? She had already lost her true female form. Destroying this thing on the throne would only be destroying a mask.

“You lied to me,” Ico said, his shrill voice echoing in the darkness of the throne room. “You said you would let me go free if I wanted to take Yorda with me. But I saw Yorda turned to stone. You lied.”

“Ah,” the queen muttered, her fingers twitching. “But I have not lied. The Yorda you saw in the room of the sarcophagi is the way you wanted her. Were you to take her hand and separate her from her loving mother, that is what she would become. I’ve merely prepared her for you.”

The queen’s black veil trembled with mirth.

“I have not done anything so foolish as to lie-though perhaps there was more of the truth I could have told you, Sacrifice.”

Ico felt the blood rush to his face and his body grew hot. The sword in his hand began to glow with a brilliant light. In response, the Mark on his chest began to swirl with white energy.

“Regardless, the time for us to share words has long since passed,” the queen said, slowly rising from her throne. “Turn that sword on me and I will destroy you!”

The queen quickly spread her hands. Ico jumped back, opening the distance between them, readying his sword.

“So pitiful, so foolish. How could a wretched little creature such as yourself hope to defeat me? How could such lofty dreams have found root in your heart and spread their branches through you? Sacrifice, it is clear that my duty here is to right the terrible mistake your shallow heart has made.”

“You can’t trick me again!”

As Ico charged with his sword, the queen’s hands moved gracefully, tracing the shape of a glyph in the air. Fingers of bone thrust forward, and wind spilled forth with a howl.

Ico was blown back. The wind was freezing cold, enough to take his breath away, and it robbed the sword from his hands and sent it flying.

He fell on his back hard, but was again on his feet in a moment. Just as he regained his footing, the sword landed by one of the idols standing to the right-a considerable distance away from Ico.

He launched himself into the air, diving headfirst for the sword. A second blast of wind billowed out from the throne, striking him at the very moment he grabbed the sword. Once again, the sword was ripped from his hand. It flew end over end, then clanged against the stone wall at the side of the room and fell point first to the floor like a twig tossed by a winter gale.

The queen was playing with the sword as though it were a child’s toy, the purifying strength radiating from it seemingly powerless.

The queen was now standing on the throne. Her hands were raised to summon another gale. Without even time to find where the sword had fallen, Ico quickly ducked behind one of the idols. The wind would have blinded him. It was an icy blast, carrying a thousand poison needles, ten thousand sharp, bared fangs, and limitless hatred.

When the idol caught the brunt of the queen’s cursed wind, the patterns on it glowed and sparked like lightning. It was the same as the effect Ico had seen when he used the sword to part the idols by the door. When the wind had passed, the idol’s light faded once again. Only the sword and the mark on Ico’s chest remained bright.

I have to retrieve the sword. Where is it? Where did she send it flying to this time? He found it almost directly across the room. Ico waited for the queen to raise her hands again and darted behind the idols on the left-hand side.

One of his leather sandals, faithful companions this entire time, finally gave out, splitting as he ran. His left foot felt suddenly lighter, and the sandal shot off, lying with its sole facing toward the throne, directly between the two pairs of statues.

The queen’s wind picked it up, and Ico held his hand up over his face to protect himself from the cold. When he pulled his hand aside, he almost yelped.

His leather sandal had been turned to stone, the severed thong that had held it to his leg crumbling at the end where it had broken.

I have to stay out of that wind!

But what had happened before? The wind had hit him and he was fine. Maybe that was the power of the sword. If I can get the sword, then I can face her.

“Are you running, Sacrifice?”

The queen’s black robes trembled with derision and laughter. “Run. Run until you are exhausted. Run until your legs grow weak. In my castle we have all the time in the world!”

Ico kicked off his remaining sandal.

I have to get that sword back. It’s my only chance.

The queen was moving her hands almost as though she were dancing. She drew glyphs in the air, fingers leaving black trails that lingered in his eyes. I have to wait for my chance. When she’s ready to send out her next blast, I have to pick my moment and run to the sword.

Ico grabbed the Mark firmly in one hand. It crumpled between his fingers, but its light remained steady. Now go!

Waiting for the queen’s shoulders to bend back, Ico ran toward the sword. His extended fingers touched its hilt and scraped at it, getting it into his hand when the queen’s next blast of wind came over him. Ico clutched the sword. Its light wrapped around him, shielding him from the blast.

Ico stood and ran over to the wall, tracing a wide circle back to where he had begun.

Another blast of wind. Ico lowered his head and met it, sword raised. He took one step toward the throne. Then another. And another. But when he raised his sword again and looked up, another blast hit him, knocking away the sword. Ico was flung into the air. He tumbled to the ground, defenseless. The impact of the hit made his body scream. His right horn struck the floor and blood flowed.

Ico’s head spun with pain and rising nausea. He got an elbow under himself and sat up, looking down at the blood that flowed from his head pooling on the ground. His right horn hung loosely from its base.

A broken horn-the sign of defeat and shame.

“This is your end, Sacrifice!”

The queen’s arms lifted again.

An icy gray wind blew forth. It erupted like a living thing from the lines the queen’s fingers traced in the air. Ico saw it coming for him, he saw it tremble with a cruel appetite.

A black shadow fell across his legs.

Ico curled up into a ball and shut his eyes tight, but the moment passed and he realized he was still breathing. His eyelids trembled open. His head felt like it would split.

Can stone feel pain?

He looked up to see a large shadow looming over him, broad shoulders on stunted legs, with the same horns that he had. Strangely curved arms spread out, protecting him.

It was one of the shades-turned to stone. As Ico watched in shock, it crumbled to dust before his eyes.

– Be brave, Brother.

– Stand. Fight.

Ico heard disembodied voices coming from every direction, near and far.

He looked around to see that the queen’s throne room had filled with the shadowy creatures. They were hovering around Ico as they had once surrounded Yorda. Winged shades flew over his head, and those that resembled men stood around him, supporting him.

– We will be your shield!

The shades advanced step by step, forming a rank around the throne with Ico behind. The cursed creatures the queen had created had broken the chains that once bound them.

Ico looked at their shadowy features and gasped as he saw the living faces that the sword had shown him.

– Take the sword, Brother.

– You can destroy her.

The words wrapped around Ico, and he felt strength welling from the core of his being.

The queen remained on the throne. The pale mask of her face did not move or betray any expression, yet her voice was filled with rage, and her mounting anger ruffled the hem of her black robes.

“Wretched things, you would turn on me?”

Another blast. A row of the slowly advancing creatures turned to stone, preserving their misshapen forms for a moment before exploding into dust. Yet still the mob continued their advance toward the throne.

It was a moving wall, defending Ico.

Flying shades turned to stone and fell as dust from the air. The feel of powdered stone on Ico’s face brought him back to the present. He got to his knees and stood, looking around for the light of the sword. When he found it, he ran directly to it, picking it up in both hands just as one of the creatures next to him turned to stone.

– Use the sword.

– Use its strength.

– Defeat the queen.

Suddenly, the sword’s power increased. The blade extended until it was longer than Ico was tall, longer even than the shades in front of them, and it shone with the brilliance of the noonday sun, sending forth waves of power that made the stones on the floor of the throne room ripple.

– You can see the queen.

– It is the power of your Mark.

– You can see the queen who has lost her mortal form and become the castle.

– You can see her true shape.

The shades’ words brought Ico a deeper understanding. The final key he needed for his battle.

Of course-what had Ozuma said? Remember the queen’s words. Remember the elder’s words.

The Mark would help him see the queen’s true form-this was the knowledge.

The sword would help him defeat her-this was the courage.

That which was once split had come together again.

“If I can see it, I can fight it!” Ico shouted, and the shades echoed his cry. The ring tightened on the throne. Even as their brothers turned to stone and fell to dust, they surged forward. An army of Sacrifices.

“Hateful things!” the queen roared, and her hand faltered as she traced another glyph in the air.

Ico lifted the sword above his head. He charged up onto the platform, making directly for the throne. The sword traced a beautiful arc in the air, trailing white light as it cut straight for the queen’s chest.

There was an explosion of light centered on the tip of the sword. It grew, enveloping the throne, and Ico saw the ring of dark creatures around him evaporate in it.

It felt as though the sword had struck nothing as it pierced cleanly through the queen’s black robes. Ico followed its momentum until he was practically leaning over the throne, seeing its black obsidian reflected in the blade.

The queen doubled over, her chest collapsing onto the seat of the throne. Her arms, stretched over her head, stopped abruptly, grasping the air. Then her fingers lost their strength, her elbows bent, and her head fell backward, revealing her white throat.

The strength left her shoulders, and her arms fell down on the armrests together.

Ico looked at the queen’s white face, so close to his own. He was looking at a white mask. Where her eyes should have been were two dark holes. Then the darkness faded.

“I…” the mouth of the mask moved. Ico kept his grip firm on the sword. “I cannot be…”

Ico shut his eyes tight. Then with his remaining strength he thrust the sword forward again.

The white mask crumpled. Like white paper burned by an unseen fire, it fell inside itself, wasting away to nothing. Her black robes lost their shape and color, turning to a drab gray, their embroideries fading, until the cloth itself began to thin and disappear.

No one was left sitting upon the obsidian throne.

The last ring of light emitted by the sword reached the corners of the throne and evaporated to mist.

The sword dropped from Ico’s hand.

With a clang, it fell upon the throne. It was no longer shining. Now it was dull, aged. Rust showed on the hilt, and the notches in its blade told the tale of its many years.

For a moment it hung balanced, half off the throne, before falling onto the floor next to Ico’s feet.

Ico lowered his arms and stood a while just looking at it.

The glow of his Mark had faded as well, as had the shades from around the room.

Ico staggered back, almost toppling off of the platform. He found it hard to control his own body.

Fresh blood flowed from the base of his right horn. It ran down his neck and trickled onto his shoulder. New blood flowed with every beat of his heart. His knees bent and he sat, face dropping. He raised his right hand to hold down his horn, but couldn’t lift it all the way before he lost what strength remained in him and collapsed on the spot. His face was calm, peaceful, like that of a sleeping boy.

The Castle in the Mist realized something was different-its core, its soul, was gone.

In countless rooms, walls of stacked stones sighed. Cobblestones in the floor began to rattle.

We are cages. We are empty.

The strength that held us in place is gone. The darkness that bound us together has faded.

The vibrations were so faint at first that not even the most wary bird would have noticed them. Yet the entire castle had begun to tremble. Every stone, wall, and floor began to shake. Tiny particles of rock fell from the cracks where the ornamented walls met the ceilings. As one, every torch in the castle was extinguished. Water in the copper pipes ceased to flow. The wind that whistled through the towers and across the terraces and along the outer walls grew still.

We have held this false shape for so long.

All of this should have faded years ago.

Minute vibrations became a noticeable trembling that came with a keening noise. The birds sitting on the Tower of Winds or flying around the old bridge sped away from the castle.

It is ending. I am ending.

On two slender legs she climbed the stone stair to the queen’s chambers, the tattered hem of a dress falling around them.

Yorda was free of the stone, and her body had begun to glow again as she walked.

She saw the boy lying on the stone floor, his back to her. He was exhausted and covered with wounds.

Yorda approached. She knelt by his body. She extended her fingers and touched his cheek as she had when they first met.

The boy’s face was dirty with blood and dust. His eyes were closed.

All around them the Castle in the Mist shook with a low rumbling noise Yorda felt in her body. The sound of the deep, vital foundations collapsing. Yorda looked up at the royal crest over the throne. The vibrations increased until Yorda could see the stones shaking.

The carving of the crest split in two. Along with the pair of carved swords, it fell to the floor behind the throne with a loud crash.

Yorda put one hand on the floor to support herself as the castle shook anew. She could hear the castle screaming through her hand.

There isn’t much time.

Yorda reached out and picked up the boy in both her arms.

Pillars crumbled, floor tiles buckled. Yorda continued on, ignoring the swirling dust and the collapsing walls. She advanced with steady feet through the groaning, screeching, lamenting castle. She passed through a corridor and it collapsed behind her. As she crossed a hall, she saw its floor give way, crumbling down into the earth. A chunk of rock grazed Yorda’s heel. She did not stop. Through the next room and the next, destruction and collapse followed close behind her. But Yorda did not look back. Over swaying steps and collapsing bridges, down secret stairs that only Yorda knew, they reached the underground pier. Yorda stepped across the wet sand, making for the water. The ground rumbled under her feet. The shock waves were growing more violent. When she stepped on the pier, one of the rotting pilings gave way and the pier collapsed, leaving nothing but a few scattered boards floating on the water.

Yorda smiled.

Still carrying the boy, she stepped into the water. The vibrations in the castle above sent ripples across the surface of the water. Yorda lifted her arms, keeping the boy’s face above the lapping waves.

Pushing her way forward, she reached one of the planks from the shattered pier. She laid the boy atop it. He was still asleep. Blood oozed from where his right horn attached to his scalp. The blood dripped down onto the board, staining it red.

Yorda kept moving forward, pushing the boy along on the board. The water rose until it was just below her chin, and then higher until she could go no farther.

Summoning all her strength, Yorda pushed the board forward as hard as she could. As though it heard her unspoken plea, the current shifted, carrying the plank out through the grotto toward the open sea. Yorda watched it go.

The final dying cries of the castle reverberated through the grotto. Yorda whispered something as the boy drifted away, though even had he been awake it would have been impossible to hear her over the clamor of the collapsing castle. He had never been able to understand her language, in any case.

“Goodbye,” she said.

Then, pushing back through the water, she quietly turned back toward the castle.

One of the pillars gave way. When it fell, the one next to it cracked and buckled, as though victim of a fast-spreading plague, followed by the next and the next.

In the Western Arena, the viewing stands crumbled first. Rubble buried the platform where knights had once fought for their lives and for honor. Finally the arena itself collapsed under the weight of the rubble, dragging the walls down with it and burying the queen’s observing throne.

The large reflectors to the east and west shone brilliantly, standing through the quakes. As their bases shook and the earth split, they fell to the ground, facing up toward the sky. At the same time, the two spheres above the main gate collapsed into dust.

The branches of the willow trees in the courtyard swayed like a maiden’s hair, brushing against the inner walls of the castle as they began to crumble. Gravestones toppled and split or were swallowed into the ground as coffins were spat out onto the grass.

Waves passed along the water filling the underground jail, and the copper pipes running through the castle boomed with echoing noise, sounding like bells tolling the doom of the castle. Water sprayed from cracks in the pipes, flowing down into the earth.

Gray dust rose up, mingling with the white mist that floated around the castle grounds. Wrapped in its veil, the towers of the castle leaned and toppled. They fell to the inside and to the outside, new rubble falling upon old.

By the giant waterfall, the chains of the eight hanging cages split one by one, and the cages plunged into the water far below. The water increased in volume, sending up a terrific spray notable for its absence of rainbows. Their purpose voided, the cages sank below the water.

Towers in the east, west, and main keep collapsed, as though the castle had been nothing more than a painting upon a folding screen that was now being put away by giant hands.

The last thing remaining was the main gate, the only path to the outside world, and the Tower of Winds that had stood so long and seen so much darkness.

We are ending. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Then the main gate and the Tower of Winds leaned and began to topple beneath the scarlet sky of evening, above the indigo blue of the waves. When the Tower of Winds fell, the statue of Ozuma still stood at the end of the old stone bridge, looking up at it. As the outer wall of the tower came crumbling down, the half of the stone bridge closest to it gave way under the weight of the rubble. The anchorage of the other side crumbled, and the rest of the bridge was pulled down by the collapsing castle, bowing down into the waves far below.

Yet the stone Ozuma did not shatter, did not crumble, did not break. The only thing he'd lost in his long years of penitence had been a single horn. When the bridge collapsed behind him, and the stone parapet began to topple, the statue faced up toward the top of the tower, and stone from its walls fell down on his face.

Legs still attached to a piece of the stone, the statue of Ozuma plummeted toward the sea, the Tower of Winds and the Castle in the Mist following behind him. Ozuma, the wandering knight, the horned challenger, protector of the land. Once again, his black cloak fluttered in the wind, as he led the castle’s charge toward oblivion. The charge from which no one would return. A charge toward freedom.

The sky and sea watched all. Between them, the castle gently crumbled away to stone and grass, and the mist rose from the land.

At the same moment, far off in the capital, an unseen surge of energy stirred through the hall where the priests had gathered for their vespers, blowing the hoods from their heads. The nobles lost their crowns to a sudden gale, while the soldiers’ helmets flew from their heads and rolled across the ground.

In the center of the capital, in the great temple to the Sun God, every bell began to ring though there was no one there to sound them. The people of the capital looked fearfully at one another and up toward the sky, listening to the sound of the bells. Though no command was given, nor any decree issued, one by one, the people dropped to their knees and began to pray.

In the forgotten walled city to the north of the Forbidden Mountains the long curse was at an end, and time began to move once again. The stone bodies of the people began to crumble, and the wind whipped up their dust into the sky. After enduring an eternity of silence, their souls were finally free.

As the stones of the city returned to the flow of time, they withered to dust in an instant.

Yet among them, there was a single breath of life. A sheen returned to the hair of Arrow Wind’s coat. His mane rippled, and he snorted. Freed from his stone prison, the horse stomped his hooves and looked around for the little hunter who had ridden him into this place.

Turning his nose into the wind, he searched for the scent of home. The sun was low in the sky. He needed to find his young but brave rider and make sure he was all right.

Arrow Wind kicked with his hooves and broke into a gallop straight across the empty plains where the walled city had once stood.

The elder was tired. His body couldn’t keep up with his eager mind-a common lament of old age. He dreamt at his desk, the Book of Light beside his head.

In his dream, he saw an unknown place far in the distance. There, a great light blazed and within it, a dark form was toppling, though its shape was beyond his ability to comprehend.

“Are you in there?” Oneh called from outside. The elder sat upright in his chair. The window by his desk was lit by the evening sun. His eyes fell on the Book of Light on the desk, with his hand resting next to it.

“Are you there? It’s Toto!”

The elder ran from his home and clasped Oneh in his arms. Her weathered, beautiful face was filled with joy, and tears wet her cheeks. “Toto’s awake!”

Hand in hand, they ran to the house where Toto lay. Villagers were running down the street, asking if the news was true. The elder pushed through them, keeping hold of his wife’s hand.

Beyond the simple wooden door, someone was crying out loud-Toto’s mother. He could hear Toto’s brothers and sisters calling his name.

Legs trembling, the elder stepped inside.

Toto, no longer stone, was lying on the bed his father had crafted out of wood for him. His mother was hugging him. Toto clutched her shawl, eyes wide.

“Toto!” the elder called out.

The boy’s cheeks were sunken and his lips dry and cracked. The air coming out of his nose was thin, and far too weak. But his eyes sparkled with life. “Elder, I…I-” Toto’s eyebrows sank, and his mouth curled into a frown. His cheek twitched. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

The elder and the boy’s mother hugged him tight as he cried.

“Elder?” Toto asked through his tears. “Where’s Ico? Did he go to the castle? Did he leave me? I didn’t want him to be alone.”

Tears filled the elder’s eyes. Hugging the boy, he looked up at Oneh beside them and found the same conviction in her eyes that he felt in his own heart.

“It’s all right,” the elder said, hand on Toto’s head. “Ico’s done it. He’ll be back soon. Back home.”