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
