Castle Kidnapped by John Dechancie Read Free Book Online Page B

computer without electricity."
    Jeremy chuckled. “C'mon, you gotta be kidding."
    Osmirik was watching numbers and symbols dance across the screen.
    â€œVery interesting,” he said.
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    Cenotaphs
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    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.
    â€œMost 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?
    â€œCurious. 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