of the possibility of escape.
Worse still, he had not been fed or given a drink of water, and there were no toilet facilities. He had chosen a corner to do his business in, but his mouth felt like the inside of a clothes hamper, and hunger was eating a hole in him.
The worst part was not knowing anything. Not knowing who his captors were, or why they were holding him, or what their intentions were. He wondered what was going on back in the castle. He suspected another invasion attempt, but there was no telling. Someone might just have it in for him. You could never tell about the castle. They didn’t call it Castle Perilous for nothing.
But could he really have personal enemies? After some rumination, he dismissed the notion. No, his abduction must be part of a grand scheme of some sort. He only wondered why he hadn’t been killed outright. Obviously he was a hostage. But to what purpose?
Then again, maybe the plan was to let him die slowly. No food, no water, no sanitation. Hell of a way to go, starvation.
He sniffed. The place was beginning to get ripe, but before long, he suspected, he wouldn’t have much waste to void. Thirst would kill him long before hunger did.
How long had he been here? He really had no notion. Twenty-four hours at least. Maybe forty-eight. It seemed like a week. He hadn’t slept a wink, and fatigue was weighing him down.
He stopped pacing and sat, leaning his back against the wall, then began giving more thought to where he could be. Well, he had come through a portal from Earth, which meant he was back in Castle Perilous somewhere. Or so he thought. He had never heard of a portal opening up between the universes of the castle. But it was a possibility, so he could be anywhere.
It made him feel better to think that he was inside Perilous, albeit at the mercy of his abductors. It meant that he had his magic powers. Correction: power, for he had only one. He was the best swordsman in the place. He wished for some way to test the hypothesis, but he needed a sword. There was no other way. He had tried shadow fencing with an imaginary sword, but it had told him little.
Of course, he
His thoughts drifted to food. There was a great Syrian-Lebanese restaurant in Pittsburgh that he used to frequent. They served great shish kebab, fragrant hunks of flame-broiled marinated lamb, which went even better with a dish of rice and pignolias on the side. Of course, to start out you’d have maybe a tabuli salad — parsley and cucumber tossed in lemon dressing — along with fresh warm bread dipped in a mixture of mashed chickpeas, sesame oil, and garlic. Then some grape leaves stuffed with rice, ground lamb, and spices — or perhaps a dab of kibbe, raw ground lamb with onion. You didn’t have to go with the meat on a skewer, either. There were plenty of other entrees, like stuffed eggplant or …
He had to stop that. He couldn’t think of food or he surely would go mad.
Chinese was good, too. He could almost smell a dish of cashew chicken. But then again there was nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned slab of American prime rib, well-done at the edges and pink in the middle, lying alongside a volcanic cone of mashed potatoes, its caldera full to the brim with gravy made from pan drippings —
Stop! Are you crazy already? Stop. Just quit it.
He got up and began to pace again. If only the phantom smells would go away. He was sure, now, that he could smell bread baking.
He halted. Maybe he did smell bread baking. Or manufactured odors designed to tantalize him. Part of the torture. It could be this was just the beginning of his torment.
Somebody had it in for him! It had to be. But who?
He had no shred of an idea. Unless the Hosts of Hell were back in the castle. Those bastards were capable of anything. Sadism was child’s play to the Hosts. In that case, it was hot pincers and thumbscrews for him, or worse, if such could be imagined. And it probably could.
He was worried now. And of course, fear and worry were high on the agenda, too. Anything to make him sweat, wear him down. Did they want him to talk? About what? He knew almost nothing of strategic value — that he could think of. He was just a soldier, nothing more. He was no sorcerer, like …
Like Linda and Sheila. Especially Sheila. Were they trying to get to the girls through him? Trying to coerce cooperation out of them by threatening him? The reverse?
Perhaps he was merely being kept in reserve as a future bargaining chip. That made sense. Maybe they were deciding what to do with him, which explained why the major excruciations hadn’t started yet. The plan was to keep him barely alive for now, living in his own filth.
Again he wondered where in the castle he was. In the keep, most likely. The Donjon was a good bet, but this place could very well be in one of the outer defensive walls, of which Castle Perilous had a mind-boggling maze.
He couldn’t stand it any longer. Time for the last Life Saver. He took out the package and peeled back the remnants of the paper covering, exposing the doughnut-shaped, wild-cherry-flavored confection.
He halted a motion to pop the thing into his mouth. Should he save it? After this, the thirst would become unbearable.
He rewrapped the candy and carefully put it back inside the inner breast pocket of his tweed sports jacket. If only he had loaded up on chewing gum and other stuff before he boarded the plane, as he usually did. But L.A. rush-hour traffic had delayed his arrival, necessitating a dash to the gate.
If he ever got out of this, he would never go about unarmed again, no matter where he was.
On second thought, what good would a gun or a knife or even a sword do him now? It was his own damn fault for being so trusting. He should have sounded that page out, demanded to see Osmirik, at least, if not Incarnadine. In fact, he should have —
Light!
He waited until the pain in his eyes subsided, then tried to look. A fuzzy, eye-searing oblong of light had suddenly appeared in the far wall. An opening. He staggered toward it. A warm breeze washed over him, and a strange, dry smell entered his nostrils. An alien smell.
Gene knew it was no ordinary door. Perhaps his captors were on the other side; if so, they weren’t inside the castle. He instinctively knew a wild portal when he saw one.
This meant he was inside Castle Perilous! And slipping through the portal meant escape, all right, but it also possibly meant being stranded on the other side, forever exiled from Perilous and its wonders. Wild portals were like that. They flitted about the castle, appearing and disappearing at random, sometimes never to be seen again. Each one led to a different world; some of those worlds were lethal, some were not. To enter any one of them was to leap into the unknown.
That is,
His eyes were adjusting slowly. Shielding them with both hands, he advanced until he could pick out some features of the landscape on the other side. There wasn’t much out there: a few rocks, a hill, a gnarled bush, and sand everywhere. The sky was slightly yellow.
No one stood near the entrance. If it was a trap, it did not look like one. He lurched forward until light from a strange sun warmed him. He was outside.
He stopped and looked about. The portal was an anomalous dark rectangle standing in the middle of an eroded gully. Pink boulders rose all around him. The cloudless sky was pale yellow. His eyes would not let him look near the sun, but he sensed that this world’s star was larger than the Earth’s though not as bright. The air was warm and breathable. Lucky for him. This was not always so on the other side of a portal. He chose a rock and sat down to wait for his irises to contract.
Presently they did, just in time for him to watch the portal disappear with a pop.
“So much for life at Castle Perilous,” he said dully.
The portal could reappear, but more than likely he was stuck here. Forever.
He decided not to wait around in the hope that the doorway would rematerialize. The presence of the bush informed him that there was life here, and where there was life there was danger. This position was too exposed and vulnerable.
