Violet sky, cloudless, a small blue sun low over a distant ridge, sand and fine gravel underfoot, a steady wind blowing across a plateau peopled with stone monuments of myriad shapes. Overhead, a triangle of bright stars. This world was always the same.
He walked among the monuments, gravel crunching under his boots, the only sound on these stark plains save for the faint murmur of the wind, melancholy and drear.
All was simplicity, clarity, peace.
The monuments were of various geometrical shapes, some towering into the bluish-purple sky. No one knew who had created them, or why, or what purpose they served. As objects which inspire contemplation, however, they served admirably. Perhaps that was their proper function, after all. He often walked this plain when he had some thinking to do, or when he needed to clear his mind.
He had just completed a hard year negotiating a settlement to a protracted war. The belligerents had been obstinate to the point of exasperation, but reason had won out in the end. The terms of treaty served the interests of the state which he had a hand in governing, and in which he himself had considerable personal interest, as his family resided there. The castle was no place for small children.
Monuments at either hand: on his left a truncated pyramid; to the right an inverted trapezoid juxtaposed with a sphere. He paused to study this latter arrangement. Presently he moved on.
He had come full circle, back to the two-dimensional oblong of the doorway between this world and the castle. After casting one last look over the silent plain, he passed through the portal and entered the fortress of his ancestors.
The cenotaph world was one of a number of interesting landscapes in the Hall of Contemplative Aspects. He wished for the time to visit them all today, but duty called. He had been away much too long. He left the Hall and began his descent of the spiral staircase that would take him to a tunnel, thence through to the castle keep.
Halfway down the first turn, he stopped suddenly.
There it was again, the same strange feeling he had experienced on arriving back in the castle. He could not put his finger on it, but something was awry. Something not right. He closed his eyes and attempted to pin it down.
Whatever it was, it resisted pinning.
“Most interesting,” he murmured.
He cocked an ear, as if listening. There was no sound to hear. Odd. Now everything seemed fine. Or had there been a subtle change?
“Curious. Very curious.”
He continued down the stairwell. He would have to look into this.
Perhaps he had simply been away too long.
The passageway leading into the basement of the keep was silent and dim, illuminated only by an occasional jewel-torch.
Incarnadine.
He stopped. What he had heard was not unusual. Castle Perilous contained many voices, many spirits. The bones of his ancestors lay in crypts all around, three thousand years’ worth of bones. Sometimes the voices called his name. Mostly they nattered unintelligibly. The castle itself had a voice, the voice of the demon out of which the castle had been magicked long ago, but that voice had been silent for the last few years. The only other spirit in the habit of babbling at him was the ghost of his first betrothed, the Lady Melydia, who had died an unnatural death a few years ago, victim of a consuming madness.
This new voice was different, however. He oriented himself this way and that, as though his body were an antenna.
Incarnadine, hear me.
There! It was coming from one of the family crypts; one of the oldest ones, in fact. He felt obliged to answer such a venerable source.
The tunnel branched off ahead, and he bore right, down a narrower and even dimmer passage, at the end of which stood a cast-iron door set about with various fanciful creatures in bas-relief.
He waved his hand, and the door emitted a sharp click; then, seemingly of its own volition, it swung open with much creaking and groaning.
A strange pale light emanated from the chamber within. He approached carefully, and looked into the crypt.
He beheld a strange sight: the vaporous image of a man standing beside an ancient sarcophagus. Tall, gaunt, bedecked in kingly robes, the specter regarded him enigmatically for a moment. Then it spoke.
“My hour is almost come,” it said, “when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself.”
“Alas, poor ghost,” Incarnadine replied.
“Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to —”
“Begging your pardon, Ancestor,” Incarnadine broke in “but do we really need all the traditional ghostly rhetoric? It’s rather a bore, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Frightfully sorry,” the ghost said. “This is my first haunting, you know. Didn’t quite know what proper form was. Sorry, Sorry. Well, then —” The ghost seemed at a loss.
“Why don’t you just warn me against whatever it was that you were going to warn me against?” Incarnadine said. “That more or less was what you were about to do, wasn’t it?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Well I seem to have gone and botched the whole thing, haven’t I?”
“Not at all.”
“You’re so very kind. See here; do you know who I am?”
Incarnadine looked off, mentally counting crypts. “Let’s see, you’d be … Ervoldt the Sixth?”
“Seventh. Quite all right, I was a nobody and damned well know it. Just happened to be handy when the job came up. Well, we might as well get on with it. You would do well to heed these words, Incarnadine. Someone has been tampering with the interdimensional forces which hold the worlds together.”
“I know.”
“You do?” The ghost of Ervoldt VII was crestfallen. “Well all this seems to have been of doubtful utility, I must say.”
“Not so. I had merely suspected. Now I know.”
“Eh? Oh, I see. Quite so, quite so.”
“You have my humble thanks, Ancestor.”
“It’s nothing, nothing at all. I’m told you’re a fine boy, a worthy continuation of the family line. Done rather well for yourself.”
“I do my best. Grandfather, do you have any idea of who might be responsible?”
The ghost chortled. “Not the bloody vaguest idea! You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Most people think the dead know everything. Truth is, you can’t see a blessed thing from the other side!”
“Then how are you so sure about the tampering?”
“Oh, no mistaking that. It makes my head hurt, actually. Celestial spheres ringing, bonging, all sorts of clanging about. Dreadful racket!”
“I see. Again, you have my thanks. One thing, though. You were fooling about the sulphurous and tormenting flames, were you not?”
“Of course. Don’t want to let on what it’s really like. People would be killing themselves to get here.”
“What’s it like?”
“Oh, splendid, splendid! I was just sitting down to a game of seven-cards-up when the call came. You should see —” The ghost gathered himself up. “Well, there I almost went and put my foot in it. The others might take a dim view of me tipping our hand. Eh?” He laughed good-naturedly.
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“Stout fellow.” Lacking anything more to say, Ervoldt shrugged. “Well, must dash off. May the gods watch over you. Be well.”
“Farewell, Ancestor.”
The apparition turned abruptly, strode toward the wall, and passed through it in classic ghostly fashion, disappearing into the stone.
“Not a bad haunting, after all,” Incarnadine said. He closed the crypt and continued on his way. He had a
