Part 32 (1/2)

And he saw the castle itself, a fantastic hodgepodge of towers and roofs, its banners rippling in a spring wind. The Hayholt-his home. His home as it had been, and would never be again. But, oh, what he would give to turn Time in its track and send it rolling backward! If he could have bargained his soul for it ... what was a soul worth, anyway, against the happiness of home restored?

The sky behind the Hayholt lightened as if the sun had emerged from behind a cloud. Simon squinted. Perhaps it was not spring after all-perhaps it was high summer... ?

The Hayholt's towers faded, but the light remained.

Light!

It was a faint, directionless sheen, no brighter than moonglow through fog-but Simon could see the dim form of the step before him, his dirt-crusted, scabby hand flattened upon it. He could see!

He looked around, trying to determine the source of the light. As far as he could see ahead of him, the steps wound upward. The light, faint as swamp-fire, came from somewhere above.

He got to his feet, swayed woozily for a moment, then began to walk upright once more. At first the angle seemed strange and he had to clutch the wall for support, but soon he felt almost human. Each step, laborious as it seemed, was taking him closer to the light. Each twinge of his wounded ankle was taking him nearer to ... what? Freedom, he hoped.

What had seemed an unlimited vista during the blinding flash of light now abruptly closed off above him. The stairs opened out onto a broad landing, but did not continue upward. Instead, the stairwell had been sealed off with a low ceiling of crude brick, as though someone had tried to cork the stair-tower like the neck of a bottle-but light leaked through at one side. Simon shuffled toward the glow, crouching so that he would not b.u.mp his head, and found a place where the bricks had fallen down, leaving a crevice that seemed just wide enough for a single person to climb. He jumped, but his hands could only touch the rough brick lining the hole; if there was an upper side, it was out of his reach. He jumped again, but it was useless.

Simon stared up at the opening. A heavy, defeated weariness descended on him. He slumped down to the landing and sat for a moment with his head in his hands. To have climbed so far!

He finished off the heel of bread and weighed the onion in his hand, wondering if he should just eat it; at last, he put it away again. It wasn't time to give up yet. After a few moments of thought, he crawled over to the scatter of bricks that had crumbled loose from the ceiling and began piling them one atop the other, trying to find an arrangement that was stable. When he had made the st.u.r.diest pile he could, he clambered atop it. Now, as he reached up, his hands stretched far into the crevice, but he still could not feel any upper surface. He tensed his muscles, then leaped. For a moment, he felt a lip at the upper part of the hole; an instant later his hands failed their grip and he slid back down, tumbling from the pile of bricks and twisting his sore ankle. Biting his lip to keep from shouting at the pain, he laboriously stacked the bricks again, climbed atop them, crouched, and jumped.

This time he was prepared. He caught the top of the hole and hung, wincing. After taking a few strong breaths, he pulled upward, his whole body trembling with the strain.

Farther, farther, just a little farther ... ...

The broken edges of brick pa.s.sed before him. As he pulled himself higher, his elbows pushed against the brick, and for a moment it seemed that he would be trapped, wedged and left hanging in the hole like a game bird. He sucked in another breath, clenched his teeth against the pain of his arms, and pulled. Quivering, he inched higher; he braced himself for a short moment against the back of the hole, then pulled again. His eyes rose past the top of his hole, then his nose, then his chin. When he could, he threw his arm out onto the surface and clutched, pressing his back against the brick, then brought the other arm out as well. Using his elbows as levers, he worked his way up out of the crevice, ignoring the sc.r.a.pe of stone along his back and sides, then slid forward onto his chest and kicked like a swimmer until the whole of his length was lying on dank stone, safe.

Simon lay for a long time, sucking air, trying not to think about how much his arms and shoulders hurt. He rolled over on his back and stared up at another ceiling of stone, this one only a little higher above him than the last had been. Tears trickled down his cheeks. Was this to be the next variation in his torments? Would he be forced to pull himself up by sheer strength through hole after hole, forever? Was he d.a.m.ned?

Simon pulled the wet s.h.i.+rt from his breeches and squeezed it to get a few drops into his mouth, then sat up and looked at what was around him.

His eyes widened; his heart seemed to expand inside his chest. This was something different.

He was sitting on the floor of what was obviously a storeroom. It was human-made, and full of human implements, although none seemed to have been touched for some time. In one comer was a wagon wheel with two of its spokes missing. Several casks stood against another wall, and beside them were piled cloth sacks bulging with mysterious contents. For a moment, all Simon could think about was the possibility that they might contain food. Then he saw the ladder beside the far wall, and realized where the light was coming from.

The upper part of the ladder vanished through an open hatch door in the ceiling, a square full of light. Simon stared, gape-mouthed. Surely someone had heard his anguished prayers and had set it there to wait for him.

He roused himself and moved slowly across the room, then clutched the rungs of the ladder and looked upward. There was light above, and it seemed like the clean light of day. After all this time, could such a thing be?

The room above was another storeroom. It had a hatch door and ladder as well, but in the upper part of the wall there was a small, narrow window-through which Simon could see gray sky.

Sky!

He had thought that he had no more tears to cry, but as he stared at the rectangle of clouds, he began to weep, sobs of relief like a lost child reunited with a parent. He sank to his knees and offered a prayer of thanks. The world had been given back to him. No, that was not true: he had found the world once more.

After resting a few moments, he mounted the ladder. On the upper side of the hatchway he found a small chamber full of masonry tools and jars of paint and whitewash. This room had an ordinary door and ordinary rough plaster walls. Simon was delighted. Everything was so blessedly ordinary! He opened the door carefully, suddenly aware that he was in a place where people lived, that much as he wished to see another face and hear a voice that did not issue from empty shadows, he had to be cautious.

Outside the door lay a huge chamber with a floor of polished stone, lit only by small high windows. The walls were covered with heavy tapestries. On his right, a wide staircase swept upward and out of sight; across the chamber a smaller set of steps rose to a landing and a closed door. Simon looked from side to side and listened, but there seemed no one about but him. He stepped out.

Despite all the cleaning implements in the various storerooms, the large chamber did not seem to have benefited from their use: pale freckles of mold grew on the tapestries and the air was thick with the damp, close smell of a place long-untended.

The astonishment of being in daylight again, the glory of escape from the depths, was so strong that Simon did not realize for some time that he stood in a place he knew well. Something in the shape and arrangement of the windows or some dimly-perceptible detail in one of the fading tapestries finally p.r.i.c.ked his memory.

Green Angel Tower. The awareness came over him like a dream, the familiar turned strange, the strange become familiar. The awareness came over him like a dream, the familiar turned strange, the strange become familiar. I'm in the entry hall. Green Angel Tower! I'm in the entry hall. Green Angel Tower!

That surprising recognition was followed by one much less pleasant.

I'm in the Hayholt. In the High King's castle. With Elias and his soldiers. And Pryrates.

He stepped back into the shadows along the wall as though any moment the Erkynguard would crash through the tower's main door to take him prisoner. What should he do?

It was tempting to consider climbing up the wide staircase to the bellchamber, the place that had been his childhood refuge. He could look down and see every comer of the Hayholt; he could rest and try to decide what to do next. But his swollen ankle was throbbing horridly, and the thought of all those steps made him feel weak.

First he would eat the onion he had saved, he decided. He deserved a small celebration. He would think later.

Simon slipped back into the closet, then considered that even that place might be a little too frequented. Perhaps the tower's entry chamber only seemed seemed unvisited. He clambered down the ladder into the storeroom beneath, grunting softly at the ache in his arms and ankle, then pulled the onion from his pocket and devoured it in a series of greedy bites. He squeezed the last of his water down his throat-whatever else might happen, rain was sluicing through all the castle gutters and drizzling down past the windows, so soon he would have all the water he wanted-and then lay back with his head resting against one of the sacks and began organizing his thoughts. unvisited. He clambered down the ladder into the storeroom beneath, grunting softly at the ache in his arms and ankle, then pulled the onion from his pocket and devoured it in a series of greedy bites. He squeezed the last of his water down his throat-whatever else might happen, rain was sluicing through all the castle gutters and drizzling down past the windows, so soon he would have all the water he wanted-and then lay back with his head resting against one of the sacks and began organizing his thoughts.

Within moments he fell asleep.

”We tell lies when we are afraid, ” said Morgenes.

The old man took a stone from his pocket and tossed it into the moat. There was a flirt of sunlight on the ripples as the stone disappeared. ”Afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.”

Simon looked around. The sun was vanis.h.i.+ng behind the castle's western wall; Green Angel Tower was a black spike, boldly silhouetted. He knew this was a dream. Morgenes had said this to him long ago, but they had been in the doctor's chambers standing over a dusty book at the time, not outside in the fading afternoon. And in any case, Morgenes was dead. This was a dream, nothing more.

”It is, in fact, a kind of magic-perhaps the strongest of all,” Morgenes continued. ”Study that, if you wish to understand power, young Simon. Don't fill your head with nattering about spells and incantations. Understand how lies shape us, shape kingdoms.”

”But that's not magic, ” Simon protested, lured into the discussion despite himself. ”That doesn't do anything. Real magic lets you ... I don't know. Fly. Make bags of gold out of a pile of turnips. Like in the stories. ”

”But the stories themselves are often lies, Simon. The bad ones are. ” The doctor cleaned his spectacles on the wide sleeve of his robe. ”Good stories will tell you that facing the lie is the worst terror of all. And there is no talisman or magic sword that is half so potent a weapon as truth. ”

Simon turned to watch the ripples slowly dissipating. It was wonderful to stand and talk with Morgenes again, even if it was only a dream. ”Do you mean that if I said to a great dragon like the one that King John killed: 'You're an ugly dragon,' that would be better than cutting its head off with a sword?”

Morgenes' voice was fainter. ”If you had been pretending it wasn't a dragon, then yes, that would be the best thing to do. But there is more, Simon. You have to go deeper still. ”

”Deeper?” Simon turned back, angry now. ”I've been down in the earth, Doctor. I lived and I came up again. What do you mean?”

Morgenes was ... changing. His skin had turned papery and his pale hair was full of leaves. Even as Simon watched, the old man's fingers began to lengthen, changing into slender twigs, branching, branching. ”Yes, you have learned,” the doctor said. As he spoke, his features began to disappear into the whorls on the white bark of the tree. ”But you must go deeper still. There is much to understand. Watch for the angel-she will show you things, both in the ground and far above it. ”

”Morgenes!” Simon's anger was all gone. His friend was changing so swiftly that there was almost nothing manlike left of him, only a faint suggestion in the shape of the trunk, an unnatural trembling in the tree's limbs. ”Don't leave me!”

”But I have left you already,” the doctor's voice murmured. ”What you have of me is only what is in your head-I am part of you. The rest of me has become part of the earth again. ” The tree swayed slightly. ”Remember, though-the sun and stars s.h.i.+ne on the leaves, but the roots are deep in the earth, hidden ... hidden.... ”

Simon clutched at the tree's pale trunk, his fingers scrabbling uselessly against the stiff bark. The doctor's voice was silent.

Simon sat up, nightmare-sweat stinging his eyes, and was horrified to discover himself in darkness.

It was all a dream! I'm still lost in the tunnels, I'm lost....