Sam pointed across the skeleton- and algae-choked moat.
“Is that a raft?”*
A makeshift log raft poked above the water on the far shore.
“That can’t be a hundred years old, can it?” asked Will.
“It can’t even stay above water empty,” said Gralen. “Charlotte? Could we build one?”†
“We have the wood, and we have the rope, that’s all we need.”‡
“Hold on,” said Will. “It’ll take half a day to make a raft, why don’t we walk around first and see if there isn’t some other way across? I hate to say I miss being in the mist, but now that we’re in the open I want to be inside those walls before nightfall.”§
“Good idea,” said Charlotte. “Let’s split up and meet in the back. You come with me. Gralen, Sam, go to the left. And don’t wander off!”**
Circling to the right, Will and Charlotte saw another inner tower at the castle’s back, southeast, corner. Behind the castle, on the hill and against the outer wall, a statue of a bearded man in a flowing robe pointed a long staff over the sloping hill, as if commanding the moat to part.
It did not.
To the left, on the north side, Sam and Gralen found a huge war engine, an attack tower or ramp that must have stood thirty feet or taller in the war, fallen into the moat. It crossed the breadth of the water.
“I can walk across that,” said Sam.
“What about the rest of us?” asked Gralen. “I couldn’t even begin to scale that mess.”
“We tie a couple of lengths of rope to this end, I’ll carry them, tie them on the other end—that tree, maybe—and the rest of you can use it for support as you walk across.”
Gralen and Sam went back and pulled their rope from the packhorse. When they returned, Charlotte was examining the fallen siege engine; Will was standing atop it, stamping it down.
“Think it’ll hold?” asked Sam.
“I think it’s worth a try,” said Charlotte.
They looped two lengths of rope around a tree, the ends around Sam. She walked across, carefully scaling the vertical sides of the fallen machine using her hands as much as her feet. At places the rotted wood slipped beneath her, but she always found some other part to support her before she fell.*
While Sam extricated herself from the rope, Will and Gralen unpacked what they needed from the horse.
“I hope he’s going to be okay,” said Will.
“Yeah,” said Gralen. “We’re going to need him when we get out.”
Gralen turned to the raven.
“You can’t come either,” he said. “Stay out here and watch for trouble. And stay out of trouble yourself!”†
Will shook his head.
“Hey, we all do what we can,” Gralen said.
Sam tied the four ends of the two lengths of rope to a smaller tree on her side of the moat, one high and one low to match what Charlotte had done.
Gralen crossed first. He stepped slowly, holding tightly onto both top ropes with his hands and trying to keep his feet on the lower rope as much as on the rotten wood. When he stepped onto the inner bank, he sat down immediately on the yellow grass.*
Charlotte took a deep breath and stepped onto the rope, starting it swaying again, gripping the higher rope so tightly her knuckles turned white.†
“Don’t look down!” cried Sam. “You’ll be safer if you relax!”
Charlotte inched her way across, trying to use the siege engine for support. It refused to provide any. She slipped on the wet surface, raised her hands up to protect her as she fell toward the wood, realized she had just let the rope go and tried to grab onto the lower rope, and failed that also. She sank into the water, then scrambled back up clawing at the wooden siege engine. She spit slimy water out, brushed the grime from her face, and spit again.‡ It smelled and tasted of rotting vegetation, like old potatoes or moldy cucumbers.
Gralen and Sam on one end, and Will on the other, pressed down on the foot-rope.§
“Grab onto it!”
She spit murky water again and pulled herself up to the lower rope. Then she went hand-over-hand wading through the water. She kicked a skeleton aside, then another, and another. The bones separated and floated off. When she crawled ashore a dark yellowish-green slime dripped off her tunic and hair.
Will walked across almost as easily as if it were a real bridge.* Charlotte, having done her best to wipe the muck off her face, untied the ropes and pulled them over.
“See? We still have the rope for later.”†
“Next time,” Sam said, “use it.”
The trees here, mostly pines, were smaller, more gnarled than their cousins in the forest, stark and sharp in the afternoon light. Needles scattered brown across the sloping ground.
“Let’s get inside,” said Will.
The four adventurers walked to the broken drawbridge. Will reached out and touched one of the front bridge towers as they went by.
“I half expected it to not be there,” said Will. “This is all so unreal.”
“OooOooOooOooOooOoo,” sang Sam. “Ghost castles.”
“I’ve heard about a ghost castle,” said Will. “Somewhere in the mountains on a high plateau is an ancient castle that appears only on nights of the full moon. It holds great treasures and magic, but anyone who enters to get the treasures and magic never returns.”
“Then how do you know there’s treasure and magic inside?”
“That’s the trouble with campfire stories,” said Will. “You can’t base your life on them.”
“Well, this castle is real enough,” said Gralen. “And it’s not a full moon.”
“It is tonight,” said Charlotte.
“I was hoping no one remembered.”
“Full moons are good,” said Sam. “They provide light and they make lots of shadows to hide in.”
“Sometimes those shadows seem alive,” said Will.
“Because sometimes they hold people like me.”
The boards of the drawbridge creaked and shifted until they entered the long murder hall in the interior of the castle grounds. More dead men and goblins carpeted the hall; the ceiling had collapsed. A few beams remained. Will tapped at one of the pillars. A skull fell and shattered on the floor beside him and he jumped forward.
Two tall doors that had once blocked the end of the murder hall lay flat on the ground inside the courtyard. They gazed around again at the remnants of hundred-year-old carnage. Skeletons of man and goblin lay tangled in the grass.
The dome on the castle was black, or grey, depending on the angle of the sun. The gold on the great clock was peeling and faded.
“Not real gold,” said Charlotte. “Looks like paint of some kind.”
“You’re ruining our dreams,” said Sam.
“It’s… that clock,” said Gralen. “It looks like the right time.”
“It can’t possibly still be running,” Charlotte replied. “Even if the goblins didn’t destroy the workings, a clock like that, any clock, needs regular care.”
The castle was built of stone blocks. Two towers stood at the front and back corners on the castle’s right wall.
“Let’s see what the goblins left us,” said Will.
A path of marble tiles, white with red veins, led toward a terrace and two massive wooden doors beneath the clock. Yellow grass poked between the tiles. Some were pushed upward by young trees. In the center of the terrace, inlaid with white marble, a circle enclosed a six-pointed star.
On the left door a faded moon was engraved, on the right, a faded sun. Pale paint remained only where the engraving etched deepest.
The doors scraped against a stone floor as Will pushed them open.*
Their eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.
Inside was a large circular foyer. Great stairs on either side circled up. A domed ceiling was covered in gold and silver constellations, the walls in repeating knotwork. Dust floated in the beams of light that filtered in from behind as they stood at the entrance.
“No skeletons,” said Will.
Charlotte pointed at a broken length of thick wood in two halves on the floor.
“But,” she said, “it was broken into. That bar’s for the door.”
“Can we re-bar it?” asked Will.
She lifted one of the halves with some difficulty.
“It won’t be as strong as it was originally, but one of these should hold against smaller… creatures.”
“Well, katy bar the door and see what, if anything, is still here for us to take,” said Sam.
Will took the bar from Charlotte and forced it through the iron buckler on each door.
“Let’s look upstairs first,” said Gralen.
A barely perceptible whirring noise greeted them when they reached the landing. Charlotte led them out to the battlements. The courtyard below looked even more desolate, more hellish, in contrast to the wild green beyond the outer walls and battle-choked moat.
Charlotte leaned out to look up at the clock.
“It’s definitely keeping the right time. Look at the three hands: one for the sun, one for the moon, and one for the zodiac, I’m sure of it. The middle hand is pointing at the full moon. The zodiac hand is between Virgo and Libra, and the time is the fourth hour, about half past. This is unbelievable.”
“If no one’s bothered it, why wouldn’t it be running?”
“The gears. That’s that whirring noise. They collect dust; they rust; birds build nests above them. The amount of care that went into this clock, compared to the amount of care that did not go into the castle… There’s no way the same people built both.”
“Who did, then?”
“Nobody could build this clock. That I know of. The hand for the time is showing the same time a sundial would show. That’s incredibly complicated.”
“The clock’s too big to steal,” said Sam. “Let’s head back in and look for something we can carry.”
“We can come back later to look at the clock,” said Gralen.
“I could spend days on that clock.”
The battlements led right and left. Skeletons of man and goblin leaned between the crenellations. At the end of the left route, the front tower’s door was black. They walked toward it single file, Gralen leading, Charlotte trailing.*
Gralen slowly pushed at the door. Inside were more skeletons, bones tangled together, mostly human, intermingled with armor and weapons. The floor was black with soot and a pale mold grew over everything.
Everyone crowded around Gralen to peer inside.
“My god,” said Charlotte. “Did they all burn to death?”
They stepped inside. Stairs circled the wall leading higher into the tower, and back down to the ground level. A window overlooked the front courtyard to their right. There were two more charred doors next to each other on the left.†
Will poked his sword at one of the skeletons.
“It sure looks like they burned.”
He bent down and gently removed a broken sword from bony fingers. The light phalanges clattered among other bones to the floor. The sword was mostly hilt, with about three inches of blade ending in a jagged break.
“This guy’s sword broke,” he said. “There are markings on it. I can’t understand them.”‡
He handed it to Gralen. The blade was steel, the hilt an odd soapy green. There was no leather on the grip; the green mineral of the ornately-looped guard merged into the tang as one piece.
“This isn’t the Ancient tongue, and it isn’t the Druids. I don’t know what it is. A private script, maybe, of the monks? Most of the script, or runes, whatever they are, was on the rest of the blade. Do you see it anywhere?”
Will looked among the skeletons near where he’d found the hilt, trying not to break the bones and failing, but found nothing.
“Maybe he broke it somewhere else.”
“Why would he bring it to fight, then?”
Gralen slipped the hilt into his side pouch.
The stairwell leading down had been barricaded from this side. The makeshift barricade was laced with charcoal.
“They locked themselves in,” said Sam, “and burned themselves to death?”
“Or they were barricaded against someone, and that someone tried to burn them out.”
“Christ.”
They followed the stairs up, to a slightly smaller room, circular, three windows letting in light. Shutters creaked. Tables lined the walls, filled with papers and flasks. Ash covered everything, and an alchemical odor pervaded the room. Two skeletons were on the floor, tattered and blackened cloth wrapped around their skulls. Gralen picked up one scroll of paper.
“Careful!” cried Charlotte.
The paper crumbled in his hands, pieces and dust fluttering to the floor.
“Damn it!” he said.
“This paper has been open to the elements for a hundred years. There are no librarians caring for this stuff.”
Gralen examined the small piece that remained in his hand.
“It’s Ancient,” he said.
He picked up one of the scraps that had fallen.
“It looks like a recipe. Sulfur, pitch, and,” he held the second piece near the first, “quicklime.”
“Yum!”
Will looked out the window at the setting sun.
“It’ll be dark in a few hours. Unless you think there’s something worth finding here, let’s go to the other tower.”
“Take that flask,” said Gralen, pointing to a soot-covered glass filled with a grayish liquid. “I think it’s suspended silver. Hardly piles of gold coin*, but it’s a start. I’ll come back later and see if I can get these papers without harming them.”†
They walked back down the stairs and across the south battlement. The door to the rear tower was busted open. More bones inside, men and goblin, and the desiccated corpses of small animals and birds. Will poked at one with his sword. It crumbled to dust.
They walked up the stairs. A grayish curtain hung over the entrance to the upper room.
“It’s a spider’s web,” said Will.
He brushed it aside. A similar gossamer net hung across the windows. A tiny bird struggled in the south window, sending wildly swaying shadows across the stone floor. Will took his dagger‡ and cut it free.
“Aren’t you the animal lover,” said Sam.
Will shrugged.
“It’s—”
Something fell from the ceiling onto Sam. She slapped at it with both hands, knocking it away.§ It scuttled, dark and jerkily, back to her. Gralen batted it with his walking staff**, crushing it. Another fell next to him, a black and furry spider the size of a cat. Will and Charlotte tried to maneuver to where they could help, but it was impossible to attack without risking hitting Sam or Gralen.
Gralen tried to crush the second spider, first with his boot and then, thinking better of it, his staff.*† Sam tried to hit it with her short sword as it bit at Gralen. She clanged her blade against the floor.*
“Gaak!”
The thing scuttled jerkily—but quickly. Gralen jumped away as it bit at him.† He slammed his staff down again, just as Sam did the same with her sword. The spider splattered white ooze across the floor.
“These are the biggest fucking spiders I’ve ever seen,” said Sam.
“What the hell else,” asked Will, “is in this place?”
Charlotte brushed aside some of the webbing with her quarterstaff.
“Something’s glittering over here.”
Two golden heads were on a shelf, studded with jet for eyes and emerald for earrings. The gold atop the heads was pounded into curls for hair.
“That,” said Gralen, “is what else is in this place.”
Will stepped carefully across the gut-splattered floor and took one from the shelf. A book flopped over and sent a cloud of dust into the air.
“Are they solid gold?”
“No,” said Charlotte. “You’d know from the weight.”
“Who are they?”
“Demons? Founders of the order?”
“More important,” said Sam, “how much are they worth?”
“Depends,” said Gralen, “on how much gold is in them.”
“Duh.”
“Sorry, I don’t know.”
She nodded and took the other head from the shelf.
“Gold is as gold does. We’re going to need bigger bags.”*
Will returned to the window and leaned out. It faced south; to his left the High Divide loomed tall, lit by the low sun.
“Let’s search the first floor for a safe place to rest.”
They circled down the stone stairs, past the second floor of the tower and down again. Skeletons lay heaped on the floor. Sunlight creeped in from a partly-opened east door.
“This must have been one hell of a battle,” said Charlotte.
“A last-ditch defense is my guess,” said Will.
Bones cracked under their feet.
“Hey, this guy’s got his hands on something,” said Sam. “Jesus, he’s also got an arrow right through his forehead.”
The skull, where the forehead would be, was shattered and an old arrow lay in it like a wilting flower in a pot.
“He was crawling away. He was trying to push this… ”
She shoved the skeletal arm aside, scrawling a line across the ancient dust on the floor.
“There’s a trap door here. It was meant to be secret.”†
She pushed one of the flagstones down. A square section of floor sank slightly. She pushed on the depression. It creaked loudly and flipped down. A stairway carved in dirt led into darkness. She peered into the hole, and then dropped her head into the opening.
“I can’t see past a tiny hallway. But it goes somewhere, and they didn’t want anyone to find it.”
Charlotte lit her lantern and handed it to Sam. Will followed her down the dirt stairs. Charlotte and Gralen followed Will. As their eyes adjusted to the lantern’s light, they found themselves in a tunnel, dug out of the dirt, with stone arches buttressing it.
“Footprints!” cried Charlotte. “And not Sam’s!”‡
“This place can’t possibly have been entered since the goblin wars,” said Will. “The trap door was covered in bones.”
“It looks like two people running,” said Sam.
“A secret way, and men died to protect it,” said Gralen. “Shall we follow?”
They walked slowly. Sam led them, holding the lantern in her hand and peering carefully at the floor and walls.
“Stop!” she cried. “There’s a trap here. Look at the ceiling, and look at the floor.”
“I don’t see a damned thing,” said Gralen.
Sam traced, lightly, her finger across the dirt floor of the corridor.
“See how there’s a slight depression in the dirt here? Now, look at the ceiling.”
“It’s worked differently here,” said Charlotte.
“I’ll bet my share of those statues it’s set to drop a ton of rocks when we step on the trap.”*
They all peered further down the thin tunnel. The lantern’s light faded into the distance.
“I think it’s an escape route,” said Sam. “If it leads anywhere, it leads out.”
“Perhaps we should explore the rest of the castle, first,” said Gralen.
Charlotte took some chalk from her pouch, and carved a white line on both sides of the dirt corridor.
“So we’ll know where the trap is if we come down here again.”
They returned back up the rough corridor and climbed into the tower. Gralen pointed toward an open door.
“That hallway leads diagonally into the castle. It should lead to the main entrance.”
Their steps echoed through the corridor. There was a wooden door on their left as they entered it, and another, further ahead, to their right. They passed an intersecting corridor and two more doors before reaching the grand entrance. Charlotte dug writing paper, pen, and ink from her pack.
“Those double doors opposite the entrance,” said Sam. “Bigger doors, bigger treasure?”
The doors were intricately carved with interlocking circles, bands, and curves, some bands ending in serpent’s heads and some circles enclosing many-pointed stars. Tarnished silver lay green inside the engravings. The doors were swollen from dampness and age, and did not open when Gralen pushed them. Will shoved hard against them with his shoulders and forced them open.*
Beyond was a long corridor, a stone wall on the right and a wall of marble arches on the left. The white marble was misted with dust and cobwebs. Everyone stepped back, and looked to the ceiling.
“Spiders?”
Sam peered at the ceiling and into the darkness.
“I don’t think so.”
She pushed soft strands away with her wooden pole, clearing one of the archways. Cloth lay crumpled beneath the archway. Once dark blue and embroidered in gold stars, the color had leached away. A film of dust obscured what remained. When Sam poked at it a silverfish wriggled off.
“There must have been curtains here,” said Charlotte.
Tiny gems lay scattered on the floor around the arches. Everyone stooped to grab as many as they could.
“I think they were woven into the hangings,” said Charlotte.
They stepped through the archway. Light shone through tinted glass in the ceiling of a large room, colored beams cutting through dusty air and illuminating dozens of marble columns. Veins of grey twisted and curled across the pale marble.
Dusty beams of light fell upon more skeletons, some armored. There were fewer here than in the tower. It was easier to avoid snapping the bones of the dead as they walked.
At the far corner of the room loomed a dais of black stone. On the stone were three elaborate marble chairs, pure white. A skeleton lay half-draped over the largest, middle throne, parts of it on the floor along with its rusted sword.
Will whispered.
“Was it the king?”
“The orders didn’t have kings,” said Gralen, almost as quietly, as they stepped among the dusty shafts of colored light.
“All of the skeletons are human,” said Charlotte.
Next to the dais, two great arched oaken doors were partially open. Dirt, grass, and weeds silted through in an arc.
Charlotte opened the door; everyone followed her into a wildly overgrown garden. Bright purple flowers flowed from vines dragging down trees, and the trees drooped purple and yellow trumpets toward the ground. Wrought-iron posts ten feet tall, shaped like writhing serpents, held sparkling crystal birds. The crystals were shaped as if they were swooping toward the garden. Vines and weeds intertwined the wrought iron. It was cooler here, in the shadow of the castle.
“Someone help me get those things,” said Sam. “They must be worth a fortune.”
“How?” asked Will.
“Hold the post steady.”
She climbed a post. A crystal robin lifted easily; beneath it was a candle holder covered in dirty wax.
“Nightlights.”
Sam weighed the bird in her hand, and then replaced it on its post.
“We’ll come back for them later,” she said. “If we drag them around this place we’ll break them.”
She nudged a crystal hummingbird. It spun, sputtering a colorful fountain of light across their faces.
“Let’s go back,” said Gralen after a few minutes, “and try the other hallway.”
They returned to the great ballroom, navigated through the columns and detritus of battle, and reentered the grand foyer. They pondered the many doors leading off the small hallway. Charlotte sketched a rough map of their progress.*
The first door on their left, a simple oaken door that opened outward with some force from Will, revealed stone stairs leading down. The stone walls of the stairway were simpler than the rest of the castle. Large, grey stones of varying shades were inset into a cement that held them together. Gralen lit the lantern and held it out over the descending steps. Another door at the bottom, wood, and bound with iron, was barred with a thick wooden pole.
“Well?” asked Will.
“The goblins never got past this.”
