Castle Dreams

John DeChancie Castle Dreams

To my mother, Mrs. Gene DeChancie

Oh, tell me not in mournful numbers,

“Life is but an empty dream;

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem!”

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal:

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”

Was not spoken of the soul.

— Longfellow

Foreword Yet another castle book

Again the mystery, again the enigma of Castle Perilous, presented once more in a highly colorful tale of adventure, written by “John DeChancie,” the purported author of all the Castle romances, who, unless this investigator has completely botched the job of ferreting him out, does not exist in any known world, i.e. in any of the worlds accessible via the castle.

Readers of previous books in this series will by now need no introduction to the castle, its residents, or its mysteries. However, as series books are sometimes read out of sequence, perhaps a capsule summary of the complex setting in which these stories are laid will serve as a pocket travel guide, as it were, to the world — and the myriad universes — of Castle Perilous.

Castle Perilous is a fortress atop a citadel bestriding the Plains of Baranthe, situated in a region known as the Western Pale, in a world bleak and drear. Nothing definite may be said of the castle’s size — save that it is vast; nor of its structure — save that it beggars description. It is no ordinary castle. Its external aspects shift and slide and rearrange, as do its labyrinthine interior spaces. It is the ultimate maze, one sometimes as terrifyingly dangerous as it is confounding. But this indeterminate aspect of its nature is not the only peculiarity; for beyond almost every door and window, through almost every portal within the castle’s tumultuous enclosures, lies another world. And through these portals come creatures of every description — fanged and furred they come; scaled and scrofulous they slither forth; beings fantastic and outre, some more horrific than the phantoms haunting the sweatiest nightmare.

Not all are monsters; in point of fact most visitors are human; and, indeed, most of the nonhuman “Guests” are decent enough sorts, in sharp contradistinction to their terrifying appearance.

For all its bizarre nature, however, Castle Perilous is a proper castle, and even boasts a king. His name is Incarnadine, Lord of the Western Pale, and, by the grace of the gods, King of the Realms Perilous. If understatement can sometimes be more eloquent than hyperbole, and more convincing, let us say that he is something of a magician, drawing on the castle itself as the source of his thaumaturgical powers. A gracious host as well, he cherishes his Guests and makes them eternally welcome.

What is the castle, exactly, and why does it exist? That is a long story. The tales of Castle Perilous are as endless as the worlds it contains. Only a relative few of them have been set down.…

… Which brings us up to this present volume.

This is the sixth installment of a work which bears the overarching title The Eidolons of the King, and, although past volumes have presented some problems regarding textual exegesis, this is the first book that, bids fair — if its numerous puzzles continue to resist critical explication — to become that bane of scholars down through the ages: the apocryphal work.

For all of the castle adventures thus far have been based to some extent on truth. The tales told in preceding books were in fact true stories, so far as this castle scribe has been able to ascertain. Indeed, some of the castle’s more harrowing events are forever etched in acid on the copperplate of my memory. But this is not the case with the “events” related in this particular castle book. No such happenings have been recorded in Perilous’s annals. No such drama ever unfolded within its dark purlieus.

What, then, to make of this book? Is it simply a spurious work, written by some plagiarist with an eye toward a quick advance on royalties and sold to the hapless publisher, who might know the real author — say he is a reclusive crank — only by correspondence? I think this unlikely. Yet I have no explanation for this volume’s being different in style and content from the previous ones. Conundrums abound. What are we to make of its (if you will forgive the term) “postmodernist” touches: for instance, the chapters labeled “Spot Quiz No. — ” and numbered accordingly? How to explain the spurious “footnotes,” most of which make no sense? Are these mere japes? Why is the vernacular used so extensively in the eschatological sections? Indeed, why is it that some of the questions in the “quizzes” have nothing to do with the text? These purported study exercises seem to be mockeries. We must conclude as much, for it is hard to credit the notion that this highly romantic bit of light entertainment was actually intended as a serious text for the study of literature. Diverting it may be; Art it certainly is not, despite its ham- handed pretensions.

Questions, questions. I, for one, harbor no hope that they will eventually be answered. For like the castle itself, the Castle series is an enigma. Of doubtful provenance, it provokes as much as it entertains. Analyze, explicate, and interpret as is your wont, but do all at your peril, for these books seem to justify the claims of the “deconstructionist” critics, who hold that, at bottom, any given text is not susceptible of reduction to any unambiguous meaning. In short: all texts are at once meaningful and meaningless, and there is no final sorting out of their uncertainties, for all the critical acumen we bring to bear on them. Like it or not, we must face the fact that there is an intrinsic uncertainty principle even in the humanistic field of belles-lettres.

All of the above notwithstanding, this is an entertaining book, like its predecessors. Setting aside its stylistic crudities, it reads well; the pace is quick, and we are compelled to turn its pages to see what happens next. We could do worse for our light reading fare.…

I shall say no more about it. Here, then, is Castle Dreams, puzzling as it is, apocryphal though it may be. In the end, the question of its authenticity could be moot. For Castle Perilous contains not simply a multitude of worlds, but a multitude of possible worlds.

Who is to say that the events herein related did not happen in one of them? Certainly not I.

Osmirik — Royal Scribe and Librarian

One Castle — Gaming Hall

“Going to the toad-fling tomorrow?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Linda Barclay, pretty, blond, and blue-eyed — sorceress par excellence and general-utility magician — looked up from her bridge hand and regarded her partner, Gene Ferraro, with an expression of bemused hauteur. This reaction was something of a pose, a defensive posture, now almost automatic, against what she suspected was