City of Golden Shadow (3 page)

He began to walk.

The castle grew larger as he approached. If Paul had retained any doubts that he was in a story and not a real place, the ever-clearer view of his destination would have dispelled them. It was clearly something that someone had made up.

It was real, of course, and quite solid-although what did that mean to a man walking across the clouds? But it was real in the way of things long believed-in but never seen. It had the shape of a castle-it was as much a castle as something could ever be-but it was no more a medieval fortress than it was a chair or a glass of beer. It was an idea of a castle, Paul realized, a sort of Platonic ideal unrelated to the grubby realities of motte-and-bailey architecture or feudal warfare.

Platonic ideal? He had no idea where that had come from. Memories were swimming just below the surface of his conscious mind, closer than ever, but still as strangely unfocused as the many-towered vision before him.

He walked on beneath the unmoving sun, wisps of cloud rising from his heels like smoke.

The gate was open but did not seem welcoming. For all the diffuse glimmer of the towers, the entranceway itself was deep, black, and empty. Paul stood before the looming hole for some time, his blood lively in his veins, his self-protective reflexes urging him to turn back even though he knew he must enter. At last, feeling even more naked than he had beneath the hail of shellfire which had begun the whole mad dream, he took a breath and stepped through.

The vast stone chamber beyond the door was curiously stark, the only decoration a single great banner, red embroidered with black and gold, that hung on the far wall. It bore a vase or chalice out of which grew two twining roses, with a crown floating above the flowers. Below the picture was the legend "Ad Aeternum."

As he stepped forward to examine it, his footsteps reverberated through the empty chamber, so loud after the muffling cloud-carpet that it startled him. He thought that someone would surely come to see who had entered, but the doors at either end of the chamber remained shut and no other sound joined the dying echoes.

It was hard to stare at the banner for long. Each individual thread of black and gold seemed to move, so that the whole picture swam blurrily before his eyes. It was only when he stepped back almost to the entrance that he could see the picture clearly again, but it still told him nothing of this place or who might live here.

Paul looked at the doors at either end. There seemed little to choose between them, so he turned toward the one on the left. Though it seemed only a score or so of paces away, it took him a surprisingly long time to reach it. Paul looked back. The far portal was now only a dark spot a great distance away, and the antechamber itself seemed to be filling with mist, as though clouds were beginning to drift in from outside. He turned and found that the door he had sought now loomed before him. It swung open easily at his touch, so he stepped through.

And found himself in a jungle.

But it was not quite that, he realized a moment later. Vegetation grew thickly everywhere, but he could see shadowy walls through the looping vines and long leaves; arched windows set high on those walls looked out on a sky busy with dark storm clouds-quite a different sky than the shield of pure blue he had left beyond the front gate. The jungle was everywhere, but he was still inside, even though the outside was not his own.

This chamber was larger even than the huge front hall. Far, far above the nodding, poisonous-looking flowers and the riot of greenery stretched a ceiling covered with intricate sharp-angled patterns all of gleaming gold, like a jeweled map of a labyrinth.

Another memory came drifting up, the smell and the warm wet air tickling it free. This kind of place was called . . . was called . . . a conservatory. A place where things were kept, he dimly recalled, where things grew, where secrets were hidden.

He stepped forward, pushing the sticky fronds of a long-leafed plant out of his path, then had to do a sudden dance to avoid tumbling into a pond that the plant had hidden. Dozens of tiny fish, red as pennies heated in a forge, darted away in alarm.

He turned and moved along the edge of the pond, searching for a path. The plants were dusty. As he worked his way through the thickest tangles, powdery clouds rose up into the light angling down through the high windows, swirling bits of floating silver and mica. He paused, waiting for the dust to settle. In the silence, a low sound drifted to him. Someone was weeping.

He reached up with both hands and spread the leaves as though they were curtains. Framed in the twining vegetation stood a great bell-shaped cage, its slender golden bars so thickly wound with flowering vines it was hard to see what it contained. He moved closer, and something inside the cage moved. Paul stopped short.

It was a woman. It was a bird.

It was a woman.

She turned, her wide black eyes wet. A great cloud of dark hair framed her long face and spilled down her back to merge with the purple and iridescent green of her strange costume. But it was no costume. She was clothed in feathers; beneath her arms long pinions lay folded like a paper fan. Wings.

"Who's there?" she cried.

It was all a dream, of course-perhaps just the last hallucinatory moments of a battlefield casualty-but as her voice crept into him and settled itself like something that had found its home, he knew that he would never forget the sound of it. There was determination and sorrow and the edge of madness, all in those two words. He stepped forward.

Her great round eyes went wider still. "Who are you? You do not belong here."

Paul stared at her, although he could not help feeling that he was doing her some insult, as though her feathered limbs were a sort of deformity. Perhaps they were. Or perhaps in this strange place he was the deformed one.

"Are you a ghost?" she asked. "If so, I waste my breath. But you do not look like a ghost."

"I don't know what I am." Paul's dry mouth made it hard to speak. "I don't know where I am either. But I don't feel like a ghost."

"You can talk!" Her alarm was such that Paul feared he had done something dreadful. "You do not belong here!"

"Why are you crying? Can I help you?"

"You must go away. You must! The Old Man will be back soon." Her agitated movements filled the room with a soft rustling. More dust fluttered into the air.

"Who is this old man? And who are you?"

She moved to the edge of the cage, grasping the bars in her slender fingers. "Go! Go now!" But her gaze was greedy, as though she wished to make him into a memory that would not fade. "You are hurt-there is blood on your clothing."

Paul looked down. "Old blood. Who are you?"

She shook her head. "No one." She paused and her face moved as though she would say something shocking or dangerous, but the moment passed. "I am no one. You must go before the Old Man returns."

"But what is this place? Where am I? All I have are questions and more questions."

"You should not be here. Only ghosts visit me here-and the Old Man's evil instruments. He says they are to keep me company, but some of them have teeth and very unusual senses of humor. Butterball and Nickelplate-they are the cruelest."

Overwhelmed, Paul suddenly stepped forward and grasped her hand where it curled around the bars. Her skin was cool and her face was very close. "You are a prisoner. I will free you."

She jerked her hand away. "I cannot survive outside this cage. And you cannot survive if the Old Man finds you here. Have you come hunting the Grail? You will not find it here-this is only a shadow place."

Paul shook his head impatiently. "I know nothing of any grail." But even as he spoke he knew it was not the full truth: the word set up an echo deep inside him, touched parts that were still out of his reach. Grail. Something, it meant something. . . .

"You do not understand!" the bird woman said, and shining feathers ruffled and bunched around her neck as she grew angry. "I am not one of the guardians. I have nothing to hide from you, and I would not see you . . . I would not see you harmed. Go, you fool! Even if you could take it, the Old Man would find you no matter where you went. He would hunt you down even if you crossed the White Ocean."

Paul could feel the fear beating out from her, and for a moment he was overwhelmed, unable to speak or move. She was afraid for him. This prisoned angel felt something . . . for him.

And the grail, whatever it might be-he could feel the idea of it, swimming just beyond his grasp like one of the bright fish. . . .

A terrible hissing sound, loud as a thousand serpents, set the leaves around them swaying. The bird woman gasped and shrank back into the center of her cage. A moment later a great clanging tread sounded through the trees, which shivered, stirring more dust.

"It's him!" Her voice was a muffled shriek. "He's back!"

Something huge was coming nearer, huffing and banging like a war engine. A harsh light flickered through the trees.

"Hide!" The naked terror in her whisper set his heart hammering. "He will suck the marrow from your bones!"

The noise was becoming louder; the walls themselves were quivering, the ground pitching. Paul took a step, then stumbled and sank to his knees as terror fell on him like a black wave. He crawled into the thickest part of the undergrowth, leaves slapping against his face, smearing him with dust and damp.

A loud creak sounded, as of mighty hinges, then the room was filled with the smell of an electrical storm. Paul covered his eyes.

"I AM HOME." The Old Man's voice was loud as cannon-fire and just as boomingly inhuman. "AND WHERE IS YOUR SONG TO GREET ME?"

The long silence was broken only by that hiss like escaping steam. At last the bird woman spoke, faint and tremulous.

"I did not expect you back so soon. I was not prepared."

"AND WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO BESIDES PREPARE FOR MY RETURN?" More crashing footsteps sounded as the Old Man moved nearer. "YOU SEEM DISTRACTED, MY NIGHTINGALE. HAS BUTTERBALL BEEN PLAYING ROUGHLY WITH YOU?"

"No! No, I . . . I do not feel well today."

"I AM NOT SURPRISED. THERE IS A FOUL SMELL ABOUT THE PLACE." The ozone stench grew stronger, and through his laced fingers Paul could see the light flickering again. "AS A MATTER OF FACT, IT SMELLS LIKE A MAN."

"H-how . . . how could that be?"

"WHY DO YOU NOT LOOK ME IN THE EYE, LITTLE SONGBIRD? SOMETHING IS AMISS HERE." The steps grew closer. The floor shuddered, and Paul could hear a discordant creaking like a bridge in high wind. "I BELIEVE THERE IS A MAN HERE. I BELIEVE YOU HAVE HAD A VISITOR."

"Run!" the bird woman screamed. Paul cursed and staggered to his feet, surrounded by head-high branches. A vast shadow hung over the room, blocking the soft gray light from the windows, replacing it with the stark blue-white of its own nimbus of sparks. Paul flung himself forward, smashing through the clinging leaves, his heart beating like a greyhound's. The door . . . if he could only find the door again.

"SOMETHING SCURRYING IN THE SHRUBBERY." The titan's voice was amused. "WARM FLESH . . . AND WET BLOOD . . . AND CRISP LITTLE BONES."

Paul splashed through the pond and almost lost his balance. He could see the door, only a few yards away, but the great clanking thing was just behind him.

"Run!" the woman pleaded. Even in his terror he knew that she would suffer some dreadful punishment for this; he felt that he had somehow betrayed her. He reached the door and flung himself through, skidding and then rolling on the smooth stone floor. The huge gate stood before him, and thank God, thank God, it was open!

A hundred steps, maybe more, difficult as running in treacle. The whole castle shook beneath his pursuer's tread. He reached the door and flung himself through and out into what had been sunlight, but was now twilight-gray. The topmost branches of the great tree stood just above the edge of the clouds, a seemingly impossible distance away. Paul bolted toward it across the field of clouds.

The thing was pushing through the door-he heard the great hinges squeal as it forced its way. Lightning-scented air billowed past him, almost knocking him off his feet, and a great roar filled the sky: the Old Man was laughing.

"COME BACK, LITTLE CREATURE! I WANT TO PLAY WITH YOU!"

Paul sprinted across the cloud-trail, his breath scorching in his lungs. The tree was a little closer now. How fast would he have to climb down to move beyond the reach of that terrible thing? Surely it couldn't follow him-how could even the great tree bear the weight of such a monstrosity?

The clouds below his feet stretched and jounced like a trampoline as the Old Man stepped from the castle. Paul tripped and fell forward; one of his hands came down to the side of the trail, pushing through the cloud surface as through cobwebs. He scrambled to his feet and sped forward again-the tree was only a few hundred paces away now. If he could only. . . .

A great gray hand as big as a steam shovel curled around him, a thing of cables and rivets and rusting sheet iron. Paul screamed.

The clouds fell away as he was jerked high into the air, then turned to dangle in front of the Old Man's face. Paul screamed again, and heard another cry, dim but mournful, echo from the distant castle-the keening of a caged bird.

The Old Man's eyes were the vast cracked faces of tower clocks, his beard a welter of curling, rusted wire. He was impossibly huge, a giant of iron and battered copper pipes and slowly turning wheels that steamed at every crack, every vent. He stank of electricity and grinned a row of concrete tombstones.

"GUESTS MAY NOT LEAVE BEFORE I CAN ENTERTAIN THEM." Paul felt the bones of his skull vibrate from the power of the Old Man's voice. As the great maw opened wider, Paul kicked and struggled in the cloud of choking steam.

"TOO SMALL TO MAKE MUCH OF A MEAL, REALLY" said the Old Man, then swallowed him. Shrieking, Paul fell down into oily, gear-grinding darkness.

"Quit that, you bloody idiot!"

Paul struggled, but someone or something was holding his arms. He shuddered and went limp.

"That's better. Here-have a little of this."