Ailanthe slept restlessly, dreaming of long corridors down which shadows pursued her and high-ceilinged chambers where they peered down at her from the corners and leaped at her face. She woke in the darkness to find herself tangled in blankets that covered her face, slept again and dreamed of Coren kissing Tristram and woke in tears to remind herself Tristram was the last person Coren would be interested in. Then she remembered it was possible the last person was actually herself, and willed herself back into nightmares.
She woke finally to see the faint rectangles of brightness behind her heavy curtains and stumbled, head aching, to the window room. Coren wasn’t there, though his sword lay across the seat, and there was no food, so he must be in the kitchen. She touched its hilt and wondered why he’d gone all the way down to the armory and back without stopping for food.
“My lady,” Tristram said. “I take it your…companion has gone to fetch our daily repast?”
“I was just going to help him carry it,” she improvised. She didn’t want to give Tristram another chance to assault her. Now she wished she’d told Coren, but it seemed like such a stupid thing to complain to him about, and she’d handled Tristram herself. Besides, there hadn’t been any time the night before for her to speak to him privately. But the truth was she now felt far more awkward around Coren now she knew he might be slant. If she weren’t so attracted to him, it wouldn’t be a problem, but if it were true, and he found out how she felt about him, how embarrassing it would be for both of them.
You don’t know that, she told herself, Tristram’s known him for only a couple of days and he could be mistaken. And he doesn’t care for you, so it would be embarrassing no matter which sex he’s attracted to. She wished she could go back to bed and start this day over.
“Then I shall join you,” Tristram said with a bow. He had that familiar twinkle in his eye, which probably meant she was safe; he’d looked so much more serious just before he kissed her.
Tristram talked constantly as they went downstairs, full of plans for exploring that day. “I think we would be better served for you to focus your energies on interpreting that book,” he said. “Your companion and I are well equipped to search independently.”
“He has a name,” Ailanthe said.
“Which I feel I may not make free of,” Tristram said. “I fear he has taken me in dislike, and in my country names make a sacred bond between two people. I do not use your name either, my lady, and will not until you give it me of your own choice.”
“I…see,” Ailanthe said. She bent to pick up Miriethiel, who’d joined them on the fourth floor landing, and scratched behind his ears. “That’s a lovely custom.”
“Indeed,” Tristram said. He eyed Miriethiel with some distaste, and Ailanthe’s dislike of the man deepened. So rather than setting the cat down to follow her, she carried him down the rest of the stairs and into the kitchen, where she deposited him on the counter. She could hear something strange, a clattering noise that came from very far away. “Do you hear that?” she asked Tristram.
Tristram listened, and his face went grim. “That is the sound of battle,” he said, and rushed out of the kitchen without waiting for her. She dashed after him, but he was faster than she and soon outpaced her. She had to follow the sound, which as she drew nearer did sound like metal ringing on metal. Then she heard shouting, and her own name, and she ran faster.
She rounded a corner into the hall outside the armory and stopped, disbelieving. Coren had hold of a sword much smaller than his own and was fending off attacks from two swords and a long pole with a curved blade on one end that were being wielded by no one Ailanthe could see. Tristram was gripping another sword which bucked and twisted, trying to free itself.
“Do something!” Coren shouted, parrying another attack and ducking under the sweep of the pole.
“What?” Ailanthe shouted over the noise of the strange battle.
“Make them stop!”
“I don’t—”
Coren swung again and made the opposing sword fly backwards. “Ailanthe, I can’t hold them off much longer! There’s no time for you to dither about what you don’t know!”
Ailanthe hesitated for a moment longer, then darted past Tristram to grab the hilt of one of the swords attacking Coren. “Ailanthe!” he shouted, and nearly took her head off trying to block the weapon’s attack. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Probably!” she said, and put her whole weight on the hilt and thought You are mine now. The sword resisted her for a moment, then she had its full weight in her hands. It was so unexpectedly heavy she dropped it; it lay on the floor, unmoving. Without thinking she took hold of the pole and yanked on it, forcing Coren to leap backward or have his throat cut by the blade. This time, she didn’t have to think anything; the weapon sagged in her hand and the blade grounded itself in the carpet.
“Help!” Tristram shouted, and Ailanthe replied, “Let go of it!” Tristram dropped, rolled, and came up with the sword Ailanthe had neutralized. He began fighting the weapon he’d abandoned, and even though she disliked him, she had to admire his fighting skill, which to her untrained eye looked more elegant than Coren’s fierce slashing about.
A new sound rose above the fighting, a higher-pitched jingle accompanied by a thud that sounded like footsteps. Through the armory door came one of the suits of armor, riveted metal segmented to allow the arms and legs to move freely. It bore a sword larger even than Coren’s and there was empty space where its head should be.
“Coren, move!” she shouted, and Coren threw himself to one side, abandoning the sword he’d been wielding and ending up in a fighter’s crouch. He looked as though he intended to wrestle the thing, but he was still being menaced by the animate sword as well as by this new threat, and reflexively Ailanthe brought up the mental picture of Coren’s sword lying on the boxy chair and saw it land with a thump by his feet.
He snatched it up and brought it around in time to block the armor’s swing, but it was such a heavy blow he rocked back. “It’s too strong for me!” he shouted, blocking again and swinging his sword to clang against the armor’s metal side. It left a dent, but the armor kept moving.
Ailanthe ducked in and took control of the loose sword, then backed away hurriedly and did the same for the weapon Tristram was fighting. He immediately moved to the side of the armor opposite Coren, drawing an attack.
The thing seemed unable to decide which of its targets to strike at, aiming a blow at Tristram’s head and then twisting around to block Coren’s attack. It could swivel at the waist in a complete circle without moving its feet, which seemed rooted to the ground for all Coren and Tristram could knock it down. “My lady, if you can do aught, do it now!” Tristram called out.
She couldn’t get in close enough to touch it without being struck by one of the three swords. She would have to take a different approach.
She focused on the elbow joint of the thing’s sword arm, on the segments of armor that slid past each other as it brought the sword down at Tristram’s head, and pictured them locking as the elbow reached its full extension. The armor swung again and was blocked by Coren’s sword, but when it brought its arm back for another swing, it remained straight-armed and Coren ducked it easily. Now the shoulder, she thought, and the armor jerked, trying to bring its arm up for another blow, but unable to move.
“Both together!” Tristram called out, and Coren moved next to him. As its torso swiveled around to face them, they struck together at its waist and broke the thing neatly in half. The lower half remained upright; the torso fell to the floor, its one moving arm flailing about.
“Stop,” Ailanthe said, and it fell still and the legs buckled and collapsed.
Coren, breathing heavily, said, “Thank God you came downstairs when you did. I wasn’t sure I could run backwards up all those stairs.”
“You have a great deal more faith in my abilities than I do,” Ailanthe said, panting a little herself.
Tristram wasn’t out of breath at all. “I am astonished, my lady. Clearly your powers are greater than I imagined.”
“They’re greater than I imagined, too,” she said, and went into the armory. “I think we need to establish,” she said to the walls, “that you are mine,” and turned in a slow circle, fixing every weapon with her eye.
Coren, standing just inside the door, said, “Ailanthe—”
“You gave me the idea,” she said, and an iron mace studded with spikes flew off the wall, causing Coren to leap forward, sword raised. But Ailanthe held out her hand and the weapon’s handle smacked into her palm. It was heavy, but she kept hold of it. “I should have realized when I saw your sword upstairs. When I summon things, I take control of them from the Castle. It couldn’t retrieve your sword last night because it was mine. I hope I just did the same to all of these. That was unnerving.”
“That is an understatement,” Coren said. He raised his sword and turned it to see it from all angles. “I should have realized it too.”
“I do not understand,” Tristram said. “Is the Castle so powerful, then, that it can bend things to its will?”
“The Castle is more powerful than any of us can imagine,” Ailanthe said, “but it seems I can use some of its power against it.” Tristram was looking a little blurry this morning, she thought, and then she was sitting on the ground and Coren had his arm around her shoulders. “I’m just hungry,” she said, hoping it was true.
“It looks like you might have limits to what you can safely do,” Coren said, helping her to her feet. “Tristram, bring food, and I’ll help her upstairs.”
Tristram’s eyes gleamed, and he smiled an appreciative smile at having his ploy turned against him. “Even so, good sir,” he said, and bowed.
Ailanthe felt recovered enough by the fifth landing to walk unsupported, but Coren insisted on her keeping hold of his arm, and she felt a little ashamed of herself for not protesting more. He saw her settled on a chair next to the desert window, then went to the painting and the stand in the middle of the floor and moved it aside.
“What’s the painting of?” she said. She’d always wondered, but since he set it facing the wall every morning she felt awkward making a point of looking at it.
He laughed. “Take a look,” he said, turning it around, and Ailanthe blushed to see the half-completed portrait of a very naked woman in a very compromising position. He set it against the wall and said, “It was a little off-putting, seeing her staring at me over breakfast.”
Ailanthe stood and went to the wall, put her hands on the canvas and exerted some willpower. It was easier all the time, like flexing a muscle. Then she did the same to the easel. “Now you can leave it wherever you like.”
“I appreciate it, but it’s not important enough for you to risk hurting yourself,” Coren said. “I would say I can’t believe you walked into the middle of that battle, but it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d believe of you. I nearly took your head off.”
“I trusted you to hit the right target,” Ailanthe said lightly, seating herself again. “And now I know how to do it without touching things, so I won’t wade into any more fights.”
“If you’re right, there won’t be any more fights,” Coren said. He stood beside her and looked out at the desert. It was going to be another scorching hot day. “What is it you do, exactly?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It feels like breaking one connection to make another, but I don’t feel connected to any of these things I’ve…summoned, or whatever it is I do.”
“Now you just need to figure out how to summon food from the kitchen stores, so we don’t have to walk up and down the stairs so often.”
“Or send Tristram to do it.”
“I don’t mind that.” He looked down at her, his eyes serious. “Ailanthe—” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder.
“Fresh bread and strawberry jam, just the thing to begin a day of exploration,” Tristram said. “And I have brought oranges for my lady, as I observed you are fond of them.”
“Thanks, Tristram,” Ailanthe said, accepting the fruit from him. Coren caught the one Tristram threw at his head and grinned savagely at the man. Ailanthe concealed a sigh. How long could Coren and Tristram coexist without coming to blows? They needed to find an exit, soon.
They ate in silence, even Tristram, who seemed subdued by the battle. Ailanthe looked out over the desert toward the distant, invisible city. If she could escape through this window, she would probably die before she ever reached its safety. But the window wouldn’t break, and she was too high up for her rope to reach the ground.
She’d always wanted to visit Rius-zara, with its sprawling, vibrant cities. If Usael rather than Idantra were representative of his people, they were outgoing and kind and full of curiosity about other places. There were more Rius-zarans represented in the hero books than those of any other country. She ought to visit their museum room again, and it would be fun to try on some of the clothes—no, she’d have to face those mannequins again, and if Coren weren’t there….
She shuddered. If the Castle could bring them to life, could animate suits of armor, there were whole rooms they’d have to avoid. And suppose the shadows tried to attack Coren, or Tristram? She felt a great weariness descend upon her. She would have to keep not only herself but the others safe, and she couldn’t be everywhere at once.
“We will leave you now, my lady,” Tristram said, startling her out of her reverie. “Your companion and I will resume our search, and may I suggest you spend your morning in study of that book?”
“What if something else attacks you?”
“We can defend ourselves against most things, Ailanthe,” Coren said, “and I promise we will run screaming for you if that turns out to be a lie.”
Ailanthe laughed at the image of two tall, strong men running down the halls of the Castle shrieking like children. “I’ll be in the Library, then,” she said, “after I retrieve the diary from the study.”
“Did you not already do so, my lady?” Tristram said, indicating one of the chairs. The yellow-bound book lay atop it.
Ailanthe crossed the room to pick it up. “How odd. The Castle didn’t remove this last night, like the sword.”
“I thought you couldn’t use magic on magical things,” Coren said.
“I can’t. I didn’t. But I wonder if it’s so magical, the Castle can’t affect it. Like it never takes away the key.”
“That’s convenient,” Coren said. “It feels as if something’s finally on our side.
“I agree.” She examined the diary as she walked down the stairs to the Library. Convenient, and fortunate, that she didn’t need to take control of it from the Castle. The was extremely magical and she was afraid her powers would have no effect on it other than to give her a blinding headache.
She developed a normal kind of headache right away. The symbols still didn’t mean anything, and when she flicked her gaze quickly across them, she was only able to tell that what she glimpsed was in the Castle’s language and alphabet. She did this for about fifteen minutes, then searched the shelves, hoping somewhere in this room was a book on languages, or deciphering codes.
She couldn’t find books in languages other than the Castle’s own; she recognized one or two titles of books she knew had been written by Idrijanese, or Eshkians, but the Castle had translated them from the original. Eventually she stumbled on a few books about how languages develop over time, which were interesting but quickly became too complex for Ailanthe to follow. She put them away with a sigh.
She returned to the yellow-bound book and opened the front cover. Gweron. It was probably his study they’d found, the first real evidence someone had occupied the Castle before them. No way of knowing how long ago he—or was it a she? It sounded like a man’s name, an Enthalian name—had lived here, or when he’d left, or why he’d left, but he’d had powerful magic for a kerthor and Ailanthe wished she could meet him, if only to shake the secret of his diary out of him. Maybe the Castle had killed him. It would have killed Coren and Tristram, and probably her, if she hadn’t been able to overcome its control of the weapons.
She flipped through the pages rapidly, catching glimpses of letters alone or in pairs, then shut the book, laid it aside and rubbed her forehead.
The lights went dim. Ailanthe looked up and saw about half of them had gone dark. The remaining lights cast shadows across the bookshelves and the chairs. A stripe of shadow lay across the table she was working at, falling across her hands, and she felt a chill grip them. Across the room, the shadows shifted.
“No,” she breathed, and tried to encompass the dark lights, pictured them blazing and sending the shadows fleeing. Something fought her for control. It held on to the connection the Castle had to the lights and made it iron-hard, unyielding, and she tried to snap it with no different result than if she’d tried to break an actual iron cable with her hands.
The gray shadows bulged and spread across the walls toward her. She couldn’t stop watching them, how they hunched and stretched like rippling caterpillars, but faster, so fast she could only see their bodies’ movement as a pulsing flood of gray dust rolling toward her. She strained against the Castle’s control, but it was so much stronger than she was, and it felt so indifferent to her oncoming death she screamed at it in fear and fury.
Then the shadows were upon her like a gray wave, wrapping her in their clinging threads. They burrowed inside her, choking her lungs and covering her eyes in burning cold spider webs. Lights whirled in front of her eyes, her dizzy, air-starved brain trying to make shapes of them but unable to stop them moving.
In terror, she struck out, not at the cables, but at the Castle, putting all her anger and despair at being trapped into a scream that came not from her throat but from deep within her body, and it rocked back as if she’d punched it. In its moment of distraction, she reached past it and broke the connection and made one of her own, and willed the lights back on.
The Library suddenly blazed with light. The freezing tendrils withdrew so quickly they seemed to slice her flesh like razors. Breathing the warm air deeply, she scanned the room. Nothing. She touched her face, expecting to feel blood, but her skin was intact and dry, parched as if the moisture had been sucked out of it.
She rubbed at the places where the shadows had grabbed her, trying to erase both the numbing cold and the terror at how close they’d come to killing her. Trembling, she took control of the remaining lights so the Castle wouldn’t be able to try that again. Then she sat with her hands gripping the arms of her chair and shook. It had fought her and nearly won. It would have killed her if she hadn’t been lucky, and it wasn’t going to stop trying. The next time, it might succeed.
She stared down at the diary. Somewhere in its pages was the key to her escape, and the Castle didn’t want her finding it. She opened it again. How could it be a danger to the Castle if she couldn’t even read it?
Her hands shook, and she clenched them tight. Her right hand still hurt, and she thought she might have hurt it more in the fight with the weapons, but she closed it tighter, welcoming the pain as evidence that the Castle hadn’t killed her. Yet.
A couple of tears rolled down her face, and she wiped them away impatiently. She didn’t have time for self-pity. She was alive, and that was what mattered, because as long as she was alive she would keep fighting the Castle and it wasn’t going to defeat her.
She remembered the suffocating, freezing darkness, and then the tears wouldn’t stop flowing. Depending on luck to keep her alive was like throwing herself off that tower and expecting the air to cushion her fall. Someday soon her luck would turn, and the Castle would kill her, and nothing she did could stop that.