With a Single Spell

CHAPTER 16

The heaped debris in the old gateway puzzled Tobas at first; but as they got close enough to see it properly, he realized that the gates had been solid iron and had rusted away like the sword in the ruined town, but, unprotected by even a ruin, they had collapsed beneath their own weight, or perhaps caved in before a storm.

Whatever the exact events had been, Peren and Tobas were able simply to crawl through the open gate on hands and knees. Had it been at a different angle, they could have walked in, but neither felt secure standing upright on the steep slope of cool, slippery white stone.

The castle had no courtyard, not even a garden, so far as they could make out. Neither Tobas nor Peren had ever heard of such a thing. But then, neither one had ever encountered an ancient wizard’s stronghold before; the ordinary rules of castle building would not apply to an airborne fortress.

Instead of a court, the gate opened directly into a large hall, dimly illuminated by dirt-encrusted windows in the upper part of the wall at the far end. Arcades ran along either side on three different levels, while below the windows the first floor ended in a wooden screen topped by a broad balcony.

The room was tilted so that the near left corner was the lowest point; the slope from side to side was pitched roughly twice as steeply as from one end to the other. Tobas half climbed, half slid down into the lowermost arcade and got cautiously to his feet.

A layer of dirt and debris had accumulated along the seam of wall and floor where he stood, providing fairly solid, secure footing. He was able to walk easily along the side of the hall, under the arcade, save where doorways opened off into other chambers. At each doorway he was forced to brace himself with his hands and step carefully across to avoid slipping down into the side room or corridor.

Behind him, as he reached the first such opening, he heard Peren sliding down from the doorway to follow him.

The walls of the great hall were polished stone, white up to shoulder height and black above that. Tobas guessed that the change in color was to prevent smoke stains from showing. The wires and brackets that had once held tapestries were still hanging, but the tapestries themselves had rotted and crumbled, for the most part. A few recognizable fragments were tangled in the layer of rubble on which he stood.

Rusting fragments of candelabra still clung here and there as well, both on the walls and on the pillars of the arcades. However, there was no evidence that the hall had ever held any considerable amount of furniture; neither Tobas nor Peren could find any trace of tables or chairs. Peren found something he believed to be the remains of a fur rug, but Tobas was not sure that the foul, black, stiffened thing wasn’t the remains of some small animal that had wandered into the castle and died there.

One small comfort was that whatever decay there might be had mostly taken place already, and the only smell was of dry, ancient dust.

When they reached the innermost end of the arcade, Tobas studied the wooden screen and balcony with misgivings. As he understood it from stories he had heard as a child, the lord of a castle would traditionally have his own apartments on an upper floor, leading off the inner end of the Great Hall, but he had no way of knowing whether this long-dead wizard had followed that tradition. Dwomor Keep had not, since it had no proper Great Hall, but this castle had no such lack. If the lord’s apartment were indeed reached by way of the balcony, that would be where they would be most likely to find valuables — gold and silver do not rust or rot, so they presumably would have survived, though the silver would be badly tarnished.

The wood looked solid, but Tobas found it hard to believe that no ants or termites had gotten at it and that damp breezes through the rusted-out gate had not rotted it. He tapped at the screen.

It sounded solid. Perhaps it had been painted or stained with some powerful preservative, Tobas thought. He motioned for Peren to come closer.

Neither one of them had spoken since entering the building; both of them felt, without knowing why, that speech would be somehow inappropriate. Now, though, Tobas broke the silence, saying, “Catch me if I fall.”

Peren nodded, and Tobas threw his weight against the screen, testing it.

It creaked, and dust whirled up from somewhere above; he felt a very slight give, but the wood held firmly enough to satisfy him. “Wait here until I call,” he said. “I want you to be able to come after me if something breaks.”

Peren nodded again, and Tobas began inching his way along the sloping floor in front of the screen, toward the stairs that led up to the balcony. He used the elaborate carvings that decorated the screen as handholds.

There were two staircases, one from either side; they met in a small landing at the center of the balcony’s forward edge. The nearer one, however, Tobas did not care to climb; its slope was added to the castle’s tilt, making it virtually unnavigable.

The further staircase, however, had the castle’s tilt subtracted from its own rise, so that it was now very gentle indeed, so long as one could avoid falling forward from the angle of the treads.

Tobas reached and climbed the second stair without incident and found himself on the broad balcony that had obviously been where the head table stood.

The table itself lay upended and broken against the lower side wall, but Tobas could make out the gleam of gold amid the dust and wreckage surrounding it. He made his way cautiously down the sloping floor to investigate; since the wood here, blackened and splintering as it was, was far less slippery than the stone floors below, he stayed upright.

A moment later Tobas leaned out over the balcony’s rail and cried, “Hey, Peren! Catch!”

Peren reached up and caught the object Tobas flung to him, and a smile spread across his face as he looked at it and felt its weight. It was a dented golden goblet, and from the weight it was plain that, unless someone had been foolish enough to use poisonous lead in a drinking vessel, it was not just gold-plated.

Tobas rummaged through the remains of the head table for several minutes, but turned up no more goblets. He did find two small golden bowls.

Nothing else seemed worth digging out, and he turned away at last to see what else he could find. What he actually hoped for, more than anything, was to find the wizard’s Book of Spells. With wizardry inactive, of course, it would be no more than an ordinary book and could easily have rotted away decades ago, but he still hoped.

The wizard-lord would presumably have kept the book tucked away safely somewhere in his own inner chambers, either that, or in a laboratory in one of the towers. If it had been in the tower that had shattered, then the Book was gone, but the odds, Tobas told himself, were against that.

As for the lord’s inner chambers, from this public balcony Tobas expected to find access to a smaller audience chamber, which should in turn lead to a sitting room, and that to a bedchamber, and that, finally, to a study. At least, that was what he understood the tradition to be, and, in modified form, that was how Dwomor Keep had apparently been arranged originally, before overcrowding had forced changes to be made. Of course, Dwomor had no Great Hall at all, so he could not use it as a model — but perhaps the Great Hall was what they now used for an audience chamber, or had been broken up into smaller rooms. In any case, the royal apartment had been described to him as following the pattern of audience chamber, sitting room, bedchamber, and study, though the study was off to one side rather than in a straight line and the original audience chamber now served as a dining hall.

This, however, was obviously not Dwomor, and might well not be traditional. He looked around the balcony.

The wall across the back of the hall looked like solid stone, and in fact the windows led Tobas to take it to be the back wall of the castle’s main structure, which would mean that the Great Hall stretched the castle’s entire length. He looked back along it, trying to judge it, and decided that that was about right. There would be no concealed doors in that wall.

At each end of the balcony, however, were two ordinary, unconcealed doors, one on the level of the balcony, the other reached by way of a narrow staircase. Seeing no grounds for a decision, he simply picked the nearest, the one at balcony level on the lower end, a few feet from the remains of the broken table.

Brief investigation in the semidarkness led him to conclude that the room beyond was a service area of some sort. He found no traces of tapestries or rugs, but a great deal of broken crockery, lit only by narrow, stingy window slits. A staircase at one side led down. He guessed that it led to the kitchens, and that this room was where meals were readied for final presentation to the high table.

He did not yet feel up to tackling the stairs to the upper level, so he climbed up the balcony to the far end.

The room at that end also appeared to have been intended for ignoble use; the most recognizable item he found there was unmistakably a chamber pot, and the walls were lined with the rusted remains of coat hooks, indicating a wardrobe or cloakroom.

With those two exits yielding nothing of value, he gathered his nerve and tried the stairs at the high end.

This was more promising. The chamber he found at the top appeared to be a sitting room rather than an audience hall, but it was, at any rate, part of someone’s apartment. Furthermore, the furnishings were fairly intact; apparently the rain, wind, and insects had not often penetrated this far. Several chairs were recognizably chairs, and two small tables were completely undamaged.

And, although they contributed nothing to his search for more magic, there were several small items of obvious value, golden candlesticks, a jeweled box, and miscellaneous trinkets. Leaving them for the moment, he moved on through the only door.

This next room was unmistakably a bedchamber; the canopy and mattress were a mass of dry, black corruption, but the frame was still complete, though Tobas was fairly certain that it had not originally been wedged into the lowest corner. Drawers were spilled and tumbled on all sides, and enough of their contents was still recognizable to make it evident that this had been a woman’s bedroom.

That did not signify very much, though; there was no reason that the castle could not have been built and flown by a female wizard.

Tobas gathered up several odd bits of jewelry; if all the gems in them were authentic, he knew he had just pocketed enough to live on for four or five years, if he were careful.

He doubted, however, that most of them were genuine.

This chamber had three doors in addition to the one he had entered through; one led out onto the uppermost level of the arcade. Tobas leaned out through that one and waved to Peren, just to reassure him that no accidents had occurred.

The next door he tried led to a privy, and the third to what had apparently been a dressing room. Here he found a few more bits of jewelry, which, again, he gathered up quickly.

Seeing nothing more worthy of investigation in this suite, he climbed back down to the balcony and began working his way toward the other staircase.

Before he had gone halfway, though, Peren called up to him, “Wait a minute, Tobas.”

He paused. “What is it?”

“How is it that you’re doing all the exploring?”

Tobas had no good answer for that.

“It seems safe enough,” Peren insisted.

“All right, then,” Tobas agreed. “Come on up. On that side is the lady’s apartment; this side should be the lord’s then, and I think it was he who was the wizard.”

Peren nodded. “We’ll see,” he said as he headed for the stairs.

As he drew near, Tobas remembered the jewelry. He held out a handful of gold and glittering gems, though much of the gold was probably plate, and the larger jewels glass. “I found these up there,” he said. “We’ll divide them up later.”

“All right,” Peren said.

“Now, let’s see what’s up here.” Tobas led the way up the remaining staircase.

As he had expected, it led to an audience chamber roughly the size of the lady’s sitting room and bedroom put together. A heavy wooden throne still stood in its accustomed place, obviously bolted to the floor, but the other furnishings had largely been reduced to a layer of dust, sticks, and tatters along the lower edges. The draperies behind the throne that had once shielded the inner chambers had been eaten away by insects, leaving a sort of ragged lace work thick with dust; when Tobas poked at them, they collapsed completely.

He and Peren moved on into the sitting room; here, protected by solid walls, unbroken windows, and the stubborn drapes, time had done little damage. Tables and chairs were heaped along the lower edges, but only a few were broken; boxes lay scattered, their contents spilled and lost for the most part. Some still held powders; Tobas looked at these carefully, sniffing cautiously at some.

He could not identify any with certainty, but he thought several of the powders resembled ones he had seen Roggit use in his spells. Perhaps the wizard-lord had kept ready supplies of some of his ingredients close at hand, in case magic was called for during audiences.

A few of the empty boxes were trimmed with gold, jewels, or time-blackened silver, but those which held powders were unadorned.

Tobas did not bother to pick up any of the valuables here; he had enough from the lady’s chambers. Peren, however, still had an empty pouch or two on his belt and gathered up the most obviously precious items.

A door led out to the upper arcade of the Great Hall, and another led farther into the apartment.

The next chamber was not, as Tobas had expected, the bedchamber, but appeared to be a small guardroom or antechamber. Four chairs, their upholstery crumbled to dust but otherwise still sound, were piled in one corner, and several spears and swords lay nearby, blades blackened but still solid.

Beyond that was the lord’s bedchamber. Under the thick coating of dust that lay everywhere, the mattress and draperies were still intact, brittle, faded, incredibly dry and fragile, but intact. The bed itself had slid down against the lower wall, but had not tipped over or broken. Two wardrobes had been less fortunate, as had an immense chest of drawers. Something heavy had struck the formal railing below the foot of the bed and reduced it to kindling, a few of the scattered pieces still shiny with gilding.

Their footsteps stirred up the dust, and both youths sneezed a few times in response.

Three doors led onward, one to a privy, one to the arcade, and the third, at last, to the wizard’s private study.

The furniture here had been simple enough, no tapestries, no carvings, just a simple, unadorned table and walls completely lined with shelves. About half of the shelves had remained in place, though their contents had not; everything else lay in a great heap of rotting books, broken glass, and scrap wood.

Tobas immediately began pulling out the books, looking for a Book of Spells, ignoring the clouds of dust that rose around him and ignoring Peren.

Peren, for his part, went back to exploring the rest of the castle, gathering up anything that looked even remotely valuable in a sack improvised from the most intact of the wizard’s bedroom tapestries.

The sack shredded under the weight of the loot fairly quickly, and Peren switched to collecting as much as he could carry and heaping it on the balcony.

He had been at this for perhaps an hour when the fading of the light became unmistakable. He made himself a torch out of tapestry fragments and an old table leg, spent fifteen minutes getting it lit, the fabric might be dry, but igniting it with flint and steel was still no easy task, and then returned to the wizard’s study.

He found Tobas squinting in the thickening gloom, trying to make out the contents of yet another book.

“Tobas,” he said, “it’s getting dark.”

“I know,” the young wizard replied. “Could you make me a torch like that?”

“Have you found anything?”

“Histories, love poems, and even cookbooks, but no books of magic. I thought this was one, but it’s not; it’s a text on the curative properties of herbs, useful, I suppose, but not wizardry.”

“Have you noticed that there isn’t a single fireplace or chimney in this entire castle?”

“Hm? No, I hadn’t; I suppose it was heated by magic originally. Could you get me something for more light?”

“Can’t the rest of these books wait until morning?”

“What?” Tobas looked about himself absentmindedly; in his hopeful fascination with the books he had become somewhat distracted. “Oh, I guess they can, really. I found something else, though, look here, behind these boards.” He rose and crossed to the lower end of the sloping floor, where he pushed aside a pile of fallen shelving and pointed to empty darkness beyond.

The study was not the final room in the wizard’s apartment; Tobas had found a door leading on still farther into the depths of the suite.

“What’s in there?” Peren asked.

“I haven’t looked,” Tobas replied. “There’s no light. I don’t think there are any windows, just solid stone walls. I was waiting for you to come back before I decided what to do about it.”

Peren held up his torch and peered in. “It’s a passageway, I think, not a room.”

“It would have to be; we’ve come the full length of the castle already. This must run across the front, directly above the gate, inside the thickness of the downstairs wall.”

Peren nodded agreement and held the torch out before him. The flame did not flicker; the air in the passageway was dead and still. “I’ll go first,” he said.

“All right,” Tobas agreed. “I’ll be right behind you.”