ICO: Castle in the Mist (37 page)

“We’ll get out, I promise,” he said. On her knees, Yorda whispered something weakly. Ico looked down at her, still not understanding her words. “It’ll be okay this time,” he said.

How can you say that?
she thought, her eyes widening.
How can you know?

Ico smiled. “I just know. I can see it now.”

He understands my thoughts, even though he cannot understand my words,
Yorda realized.

“There was a battle, wasn’t there?” Ico whispered. Yorda trembled, recoiling from her own memories.

“You broke the queen’s enchantment. Then you and Ozuma escaped and took the Book of Light to the outside world. That’s why the armies of Zagrenda-Sol finally launched their attack.”

Yes,
Yorda thought,
they came—

At once, a new vision spread before Yorda’s eyes. She saw a massive host of armed men, battle-worn and brave. An armada of warships covered the sea. Atop the deck of the lead galleon flew the flag of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire, and on its bow stood the priest-king himself. She saw him closely now, in profile, his face filled with determination and battle lust. The sun lit his face and made the imperial emblem on his shoulder glitter like gold. Ozuma stood at his side, the longsword at his waist imbued with the power of the Book of Light.

Yes, they came to destroy the queen.
With her enchantment gone, the seas around the castle were as easy for ships to enter as a grassy field is to a brigade of footmen. There was nothing to stop them. They crossed the narrow sea, made landing by the castle, and the sound of their boots upon the stones drowned out even the howling of the sea wind.

They arrived to find nothing waiting for them—not a single soldier stood in their way.

Yorda jerked her hand from Ico, wrenching him from the vision of the past. The phantasmal armada upon the waters vanished into the sunlight.

A seabird passed overhead, its cry plaintive. For a while the boy stood there, looking down at Yorda, whose hands covered her face. Then he knelt close beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t want to remember, do you?”

Yorda’s head drooped lower.

“There was a battle, but the castle still stands,” the boy said, thinking aloud. “In the end, Zagrenda-Sol and Ozuma couldn’t defeat the queen.”

Yorda was silent. Again, the seabird cried out, high above them in the clear sky.

“It’s all right,” Ico said. He knew the castle would tell him what Yorda would not. He would learn soon enough of what had come next. Now that the path to her memories had been reopened, the visions would continue whether Ico wanted to see them or not.

“Well, I’m not worried,” Ico said.

Yorda looked up at him, her reddened eyes full of pity.
How can you know?

“Because of this,” he said, patting the Mark on his chest. It rippled slightly at his touch. “Remember, I told you the queen doesn’t like it? Well, I think I figured out why my Mark is so special. The pattern on this must be the pattern from the Book of Light! When the elder said I was their light of hope, that’s what he was talking about!”

Ico was young and his body, though small, was full of courage and strength. But it was the Mark that distinguished him from the many Sacrifices who had come to the castle before, and that had bade the phantasm of Ozuma to appear to Ico. The elder was right. Ozuma was right. There was nothing to fear.

Now the boy was talking about another friend, a boy named Toto. He must’ve found the book, Ico was saying. Yet the more he spoke, the deeper Yorda’s sadness became. His efforts to encourage her were valiant, but Ico was still too young to understand the dark tangle in Yorda’s heart, much as he was still too young to wonder why the elder had told him not to speak of his Mark to the priest from the capital. Too young to let the little doubts build up inside him and shake his confidence.

There was much he could still ask her: Why had the priest-king of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire been unable to destroy the castle? Why had Ozuma failed? Why did the queen remain here? How did the castle become enshrouded in mist, why was it insatiably hungry for Sacrifices made in the image of the knight Ozuma? Why had his bloodline been chosen for this dark destiny?

But Ico was more concerned with the future than the past. Mistakes were mistakes, and failures were failures. Why torment someone with memories of their past?

He would accomplish what his ancestor had not. That was what Ozuma wanted. He would free the Sacrifices as Yorda had freed her mother’s victims so long ago. He would bring peace to the world.

He would defeat the queen.

Ico put a fist to his Mark, feeling his own heart beat through the fabric. Ico did not know that there were limits to the power of the Book of Light. He did not know that the priests in the capital—the new seat of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire on this continent—knew of the book’s failings all too well. That was why they maintained their silence and proffered up the descendants of Ozuma to the castle. Not all history is told in stories and chronicles. The parts untold, the dark passages of time, were those that swallowed men’s hopes and made the distinctions between good and evil as nebulous as mist.

Ico stood, taking Yorda’s hand, secure in the belief that their path and the answers to his questions would be revealed.

Ico thought back, recalling the pier at the bottom level of the castle where he had first arrived with the priest and his guards. The guard had gone to a room on that same level to retrieve the longsword that opened the idol gates—which was almost certainly the longsword that had once belonged to Ozuma.
That’s why it was able to move the idols. It’s imbued with the power of the Book of Light. Just like Yorda.

It made sense now that they had found Ozuma without his sword. For some reason, he had let go of it, and that had led to his defeat.

I have to find Ozuma’s sword. I’ll just retrace my steps back to the underground pier.

With Yorda by his side, he would be able to pass any idols they came across on his way back.

Ico decided that he would first take Yorda to safety when they reached the pier. With the double protection of Ozuma’s sword and the Mark, Ico would be more than ready to face the Queen. There was no sense putting Yorda in any more danger—and it would be too cruel to force her to face her mother again.

Ico nodded to himself and then turned to the girl. While he had been lost in thought, she had wandered some distance away. She was standing near the gates by the foot of one of the stone torch pedestals that lined the courtyard like two rows of soldiers, her head hung low.

“Hueeeh!” he called out to her. When she didn’t come, he ran to join her. Grabbing her hand, he took her to the stone archway that led back to the drawbridge.

But now the stone archway doors were closed, and the arch was much too high for him to climb. Ico pushed and pulled at the doors, but they wouldn’t budge. He gave them a swift kick and immediately regretted it.
Ouch.

It was as though the queen had foreseen everything he would do and gone ahead to foil his plans. The castle was like a labyrinth that changed to suit her needs.

Ico growled and, hands on his hips, glared at the arch. Yorda had begun to wander away again. She was off to the right, drifting like a shadow, looking up at a high point on the walls.

Yorda stood at a dead end too. It looked like the way here had been hastily barricaded. Large boards had been nailed to the door jambs. They overlapped one another, leaving gaps large enough for him to peek through.

Ico thought he might be able to pull off the boards if he got his fingers through the gaps, but even though he tugged till his face turned red, the barricade remained firmly in place.

He had all but given up when he looked to see Yorda pointing to a corner of the wall near the barricade where some round objects lay in a pile.

“What are those?”

Ico walked over and examined the black objects. They were each about the size of his head and too heavy for him to lift with one hand. He leaned down and sniffed one. It smelled like dirt and—

Firepowder!

He had seen hunters smear tar mixed with firepowder on arrows to take down particularly large or dangerous animals. Because of the risk, he had never been allowed to handle the tar himself, but he recognized the smell at once.

“There’s gotta be a ton of firepowder in each of these!” He looked at Yorda, his eyes wide. “They must’ve used these during the battle!”

“Find the queen!”

The voice in Ico’s head, heavier and more fierce than any he had heard before, made him pause for a moment.
Is that the priest-king?
He realized he was experiencing another memory of the past.
“Destroy the barricades! She can’t hide forever!”

The voice faded. Ico blinked his eyes, coming out of the vision. Yorda was standing next to him, so quiet he couldn’t even hear her breathing. The round, dirt-encrusted balls filled with firepowder sat at his feet, looking as harmless as lumps of mud.

“I wonder if they still work?”

Ico ran back to the front gates and lit his stick on one of the torches he found there. Returning, he lit the fuse on one the balls with his newly fashioned torch, and it began to spark and sputter. After pushing the ball up against the barricade, he took Yorda’s hand and moved away as quickly as he could.

The ball didn’t explode with quite as much force as he had expected—he didn’t even have to cover his ears. Even still, it blasted the wooden barricade to smithereens, sending a thousand pieces of wood scattering in every direction. The wind from the blast even extinguished the torch.

Ico grinned. Beyond where the barricade had stood was a narrow passageway with stone walls on either side, a strip of blue sky visible high above.

He would have to move more carefully from here on out. The queen was watching. Ico took the lead, holding up his extinguished torch and walking down the stone-lined corridor.

At the end of the corridor, the walls opened out. To his left was a stone staircase going down to a patch of grassy lawn—another inner courtyard of the castle.

Behind him, Yorda gasped.

“What’s wrong?”

Ico looked back, then followed the girl’s eyes. He looked down at the lustrous green grass below and saw a line of square stones.
It’s a graveyard.

Ico took Yorda’s hand. “Is this where the queen took you that night? The underground gallery?”

Yorda nodded and took a step in front of him, looking down at the gravestones lined up in the sun.

“That means we should be able to get back into the castle from here,” Ico said, thinking out loud. He went down the stone stairs. The grass felt good beneath his feet. He walked through the graveyard, trying to read the inscriptions on the stones, but the weather had worn them all away. He touched one. Even the corners of the stones were now rounded. Maybe they were already old when Yorda was here before—the night the queen summoned her below.

Despite what must have been years without care, the grass was uniformly short and not a single blade was out of place. The turf was soft, its bright green contrasting with the darker moss growing on the stones.

It was like time had stopped, preserving the stones, keeping the grass fresh—

Something pricked at the back of Ico’s mind, and then the realization came. The visions of Yorda’s past were all from long ago.
Of course! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?
The emperor that came here with Ozuma to fight the queen had been the fifth emperor of Zagrenda-Sol. He was pretty sure that the emperor in the capital now was the eighteenth.

For that much time to pass, Yorda must have spent ten or even twenty lifetimes trapped here in the castle—and she was still a girl.

Had the queen placed another enchantment on the castle? The Castle in the Mist was separated from the world he knew, and not just by geography. This was a different world entirely.

Ico rubbed his own arms to stop himself from shivering. Yorda was crouching by one of the gravestones, just as Ico had moments before, trying to read the markings. Or maybe that was the grave that had slid to the side, revealing the stairs? If Yorda touched it, would the gravestone move? For a moment, Ico held his breath, but the stone showed no inclination toward motion. Apparently, it took a queen to open that door.

Ico explored, eventually discovering the stairs and corridor that the chief handmaiden had taken when she brought Yorda here. At the top of the stairs, the wall had collapsed, preventing him from going any farther. The great mountain of gray rubble here didn’t look like something he could blast away, either.

He returned to the graveyard. The walls of the castle rose on all four sides here. The windows were all too high for him to reach. Then he noticed double doors standing in a shadowed corner of the graveyard. The doors, with an arched façade that made Ico think of a cathedral, seemed to lead to a different section of the castle.

Wherever the doors led, he hadn’t been through there before, which meant it wasn’t part of the castle Yorda had shown him in the visions. He called out to her, waving toward the doors. “Looks like some kind of hall. Does that go back into the main castle?”

Yorda only stared at him with a sad look in her eyes.

Ico shrugged. “Well, let’s explore it anyway. It’s not like we have many other choices.”

He took Yorda’s hand and began to walk, when suddenly he felt his hair stand on end. The air around him had grown suddenly colder and darker, even though the sun was shining above.

Then he saw them: dark swirling pools opening, one on the grass, one between the gravestones, one on the landing atop the stairs. They boiled and seethed, and a horned shadow-creature with long, sharp claws emerged before them. He spotted another with wings flying over the stones.

“Run!” Ico shouted. He pulled on Yorda’s hand and made for the doors leading to the hall. He beat back one of the creatures that rose up in their way with his stick. It dissolved instantly, leaving two eyes floating in space. Ico knew it would be back soon.