Castle Perilous

“Good. Got your second wind?”

“Fifth. Let’s get moving.”

“Don’t you want to go retrieve your carrying box?”

“Who needs reality?”

They resumed mounting the stairs. Some distance up they came to a landing flanked by descending stairwells.

“We should have a coin to flip for these occasions,” Gene said.

“You mean cast bones, something like that?”

“You don’t have coins where you hail from? Money?”

“Some. Pretty scarce.”

“Oh. Left?”

“Right.”

For some reason the stairwell, which descended in ninety-degree turns, was unlighted. They groped, tripped, and cursed in the darkness; came to landings, went up, came back down; traversed corridors that dead-ended, swore mightily; found another stairwell, continued down, went up yet again, and finally wound up clumping downward again, doing it all in pitch blackness.

Lighting fixtures appeared again, and they found themselves descending a spiral stairwell.

“Gene, look at the ceiling.”

Gene stopped and looked up. The ceiling was in steps as well. “Odd.”

Odder still, farther down, was the sight of a man in a long gown walking up them. Gene was hit by a sudden dizzy spell.

The man tilted his head up, down, and did a double take.

“My!” the man said. “You gentlemen seem to have gotten yourselves turned about, haven’t you?”

Gene regarded the man standing on the ceiling. “What about you?”

The man laughed. “Well, a matter of where one is, I suppose. Good day to you.” He went off, chuckling.

“What do you make of that?” Snowclaw asked.

“ ‘As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there …’”

At long last …

They debouched into a large room — a strange one. After crossing a columned portico that bordered the main area, they stood on the edge of what looked like an empty swimming pool with chandeliers rising like crystal trees from the bottom. A swimming pool … but if you twisted your head, it looked a great deal like a ceiling. Gene and Snowclaw slowly looked up.

There was a group of people seated at a long table magically affixed to the ceiling.

They were enjoying a very elaborate meal.

Keep — East Wing — Queen’s Dining Hall

“I say, you two up there! Had your breakfast?”

Linda twisted her head around in an effort to see whom in the world Thaxton could be talking to. When she caught sight of the gray-suited man and the furry white monster standing on the ceiling, she dropped her coffee cup to the stone floor.

“My God! How …?” She stared in amazement. After a moment she regained enough composure to look down at the mess on the floor.

Jacoby was already handing her a fresh cup. “Here you are, my dear. Don’t worry about it.”

“Th-thank you.” She took the cup.

“Are you all right?”

Linda gulped some coffee. “Yes, thank you. It’s just that I’ll never get used to this place. Surprises at every turn.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it rather quickly. In time you’ll come to the realization that this is rather a wonderful place to stay. Our Host could make a fortune if he charged the going rates.”

“If he could guarantee a way home,” DuQuesne said.

“But think of the throngs of people who would pay anything to go on holiday here,” Jacoby said enthusiastically. “Surely with an organized effort, the major portals could be located and maintained. Why, then you’d —”

“But that would be a task of major proportions, I’m afraid. Impossible, perhaps.”

“Well, perhaps …” Jacoby said, suddenly deflated.

“Hello, up there!” Thaxton was calling. “Coming down?”

After much discussion it was agreed that the ceiling-hanging pair should make their descent by walking down a nearby column. This they did, with success. Applause. Then the gray-suited man tried to walk back up, and fell on his buttocks.

Gene picked himself up. “I can’t figure it.”

“Where do you think we got turned around?” Snowclaw said.

“Who knows.”

“Where did you fellows come from?” Thaxton wanted to know when the two arrived at the table. “Coffee, tea?”

“Coffee, please,” Gene said, pulling up an ornate chair. “We took a tour through an Escher painting, I think.”

“Oh, yes. The one who does the trick perspective things, isn’t he?”

“That’s the one. Hello,” Gene said, nodding to various people around the table. “Hello, hello.”

Snowclaw prowled around the long table examining the sumptuous assortment of fare. He grabbed a whole roast squab, bit off half of it, bones and all, and chewed. “Not bad,” he said, then reconsidered it. “Not good, though. Ptoohey! ” A spray of semimasticated bird flew forth. “Y’got anything to eat around here?”

“Won’t you try the pate?” Thaxton offered, brushing fragments of bone and meat from the shoulder of his morning coat.

“What’s that?” Snowclaw said, tearing off a leg of turkey.

“Going back to your resort idea,” DuQuesne said sotto voce, leaning toward Jacoby, “you’d have to restrict the clientele.”

“Of course.” Jacoby smiled.

“This would be a nice hotel,” Linda said. “The area around here, I mean.”

“Most of the Guests stay in the family residences,” Jacoby said.

“The rooms are so nice,” Linda continued. “And the staff is helpful. They speak English too — which I can’t figure out. In fact, everybody around here —”

“But, my dear, they don’t speak English,” DuQuesne told her. “As a matter of fact, neither do I.”

Linda stopped chewing her mouthful of omelette. “Huh?”

“Don’t listen to the sense of what I’m saying for a moment, listen to the sound. The sound of my voice. Am I speaking English?”

“I don’t quite know what you mean,” Linda said, swallowing.

“Listen carefully. Are you sure that the language I’m speaking is English? Listen.”

Linda’s eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head to one side.

“Ecoutez bien Donc Quelle langue est-ce que je parle maintenant? J’ai parlant francais n’est-ce pas?”

Linda’s jaw dropped. “You are speaking French! But I can understand you, and I don’t speak a word of French!”

DuQuesne grinned at her. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Oh, well, this is just too much. How could I not have noticed?”