Wednesdays in the Tower (20 page)

King Glower looked at the tapestry draped over the table in bemusement. “The clues were all around us,” he said. “We just didn’t see them.” He slumped onto a bench, and the queen sat beside him.

“If the Castle was in danger back in the Glorious Arkower,” Queen Celina said, “does that mean we’re in any danger? Could something have followed the rest of the Castle here?”

“An excellent point, my love,” King Glower said, straightening.

“I doubt it,” Arkwright said. “The Castle is all here, and we would know by now if any hostile forces had hidden inside it.”

Rufus went over to the leather cloaks and sniffed at them. Then he started chewing on the edge of one, and Celie tried to pull it away. He fought her, so she got Flat Squirrel out of her sash and waved it in his face until he stopped.

“So, will you be able to put back the bits of the Castle we’re not using?” King Glower frowned, looking around the room. “This is all very well, I suppose, but I prefer my old
throne room. And Ma’am Housekeeper seems to think that all the extra bedrooms and linen closets will just make more work for her staff, not really enhance the Castle.”

“I don’t really dare, Your Majesty,” Arkwright said. “I don’t know what’s happening on the other end.”

“Could we go look?” Rolf asked eagerly. He’d been pacing around the room, but now he came to stand in front of Wizard Arkwright. “Could you and Bran and I, say, go back there and have a look around?”

“Absolutely not,” King Glower said. “Much too dangerous!”

“Can such a thing be done?” Bran said. “It’s not you bringing the rooms of the Castle here and sending them back when we don’t need them. It must be the Castle’s own inherent magic. Will the spell that brought it here work both ways?”

“No,” Arkwright said. “To protect ourselves, we devised a spell that would only work one way. But you are right: the very stones of which the Castle is built are magic, and it is alive in its own way. Certain parts of it come and go, but to keep it here we rooted many of the rooms, like the main hall and what is now the throne room, to the Sleynth soil; they cannot go back.”

“What happens if the Castle isn’t under attack anymore?” Lilah said timidly. “What if it decides it’s safer to be … back where it’s from, and leaves? Will we all be left here, or will it take us there?”

“No, no,” Arkwright reassured her. “It cannot go all the way back, and it can’t take anything vital with it, like a person.”

Bran was frowning. He plucked at the pages of the book of Karksus’s poetry, and ran a hand over the anvil.

“That’s impossible,” he said finally. “It goes against every bit of information I’ve managed to glean about the Castle. It goes against my experience growing up in the Castle, besides. If it can’t take anything vital, how did it bring Rufus’s egg here? How does it bring the food for the holiday feasts?”

“It’s magic—” Arkwright began.

“You and I both know that simply saying something is magic doesn’t mean anything,” Bran snapped. He folded his arms, rocking back on his heels. “Magic is a science: there are rules. There are rituals and ingredients to any spell. The Castle cannot simply make a feast out of thin air. It could not have saved a living griffin egg for five hundred years and then brought it here, especially if what you say is true. Any transport spell can be reversed—at least, any that I know. And speaking of knowing: knowing the Castle, even if you did root some of the rooms here, it would find a way to move them just to prove that it could!”

Wizard Arkwright closed his eyes. Celie thought he was looking older by the minute. Already thin, he now looked like a stiff breeze might blow him over.

“There was one last step to our spell that assured the Castle would stay in Sleyne,” Arkwright said, his voice barely a whisper.

They all moved closer to hear him. Rufus started to snap at the dangling laces of Lulath’s sleeve, and Celie brandished Flat Squirrel to make him behave.

“We removed something, something very important to the Castle,” Arkwright said. “A part was kept by one who stayed behind in the Glorious Arkower, and a part was kept by me.”

“What part?” Bran demanded.

Arkwright pointed to the fireplace. They all looked at the circular indentation on the mantel that had always caught Celie’s eye.

“The Eye of the Castle,” Arkwright said. “We broke it in half, crippling the Castle, in a sense. My uncle kept half and stayed behind. I took the other half with me.”

“Bring it here,” Bran said, his voice cold.

“That would be most unwise,” Arkwright began.

“I don’t care,” Bran said. “We live here. This is our Castle now. It chose our family and our father, descended from Hathelockes or not. It chose my little sister to raise what is likely the last griffin in this or any world. Now you tell me that among all your lies and deceptions, you have taken a key part of the Castle and kept it in order to cripple it?” Bran’s voice had risen to a shout, and everyone was staring at him in shock. “Bring it here. Now.”

Chapter
25

The Eye of the Castle was an enormous round medallion, almost the size of a dinner plate, with a smooth green stone in the center. Around the stone was heavy gold in a pattern of running griffins, and this was what had been broken. Half of it was gone, and Arkwright reluctantly showed them how a post sticking out of the back of the Eye would go into the hole in the mantel and hold it in place.

“My uncle has the missing part,” he said.

As he held the broken Eye up to the place where it was supposed to be, Celie felt the Castle ripple under her feet. The rest of her family and Arkwright had felt it, too. Bran’s jaw tightened.

“A very grave mistake has been made,” King Glower said. His face was pale and his mouth set in a thin line. “A mistake on which my throne rests.”

“You aren’t to blame, Father,” Bran said, his voice hard. “And mistakes can be fixed.”

“Even after five hundred years?” King Glower’s face went even paler.

“Do they speak of what I think?” Lulath asked the queen.

“They do,” she replied. “You’re not taking Rolf with you,” Queen Celina said to Bran suddenly.

“What?” Rolf looked from their mother to Bran, confused.

Queen Celina ignored her younger son for the moment. “You’re going to try to reach the Glorious Arkower, aren’t you? Well, fine, you’re the Royal Wizard, and I won’t try to stop you. But you’re not taking Rolf; you’re taking armed guards instead.”

“We can’t,” Arkwright bleated.

“Yes, you can,” King Glower said in a tone of finality. He stood up and faced Arkwright. “You have wounded the Castle, taken something vital from it. I understand that you thought you were doing the right thing. But still: it’s time to restore it. You will take Bran and a handful of soldiers back to the Glorious Arkower, you will make certain that any piece of the Castle left there is not in danger, and you will bring back the other half of the Eye.

“Rolf,” the king said, turning to his younger son, “go inform Sergeant Avery that we need him and three of his best men for a short excursion.”

Rolf looked like he wanted to argue, probably to try to convince their father that he should be allowed to go, too, but something in King Glower’s face stopped him. He jogged out of the room, and they all turned to the king to see what he would say next.

But it was Arkwright who spoke instead.

“This is foolish. There will be nothing there,” he said. “My uncle was nearly eight hundred years old when I left; he has probably passed beyond by now. I have no idea who might have the other portion of the Eye.”

“We’ll just have to look harder, then,” Bran said.

“Bran,” Celie said. She had to say it again, louder, to get him to pay attention to her. “Bran!” When he looked at her, she said, “Bring back any other griffin eggs you find.”

“Ah!” Lulath clapped his hands. “For the Rolf and the Lilah?”

“Absolutely not,” Arkwright said. He made a cutting gesture with one hand in the air. “The very idea is appalling! Only the elite of our people were permitted to bond with a griffin. The Castle chose you, and the griffin bonded to you because you undoubtedly have royal Arkower blood on your father’s side. Which I can only pray will counteract the Hathelocke blood you’ve inherited on your mother’s side! But if you bring over more eggs, you risk having highly unsuitable people bond with them, and that would lead to … to …”

“It would lead to nothing but some griffins finding
happy homes with good people,” Lilah said with disgust. “You’re just a snob.”

“What other things do we need for the spell?” Bran demanded.

He took out a small notebook and charcoal pencil and began to make notes. Celie shifted Rufus, who was standing on her foot, aside so that she could take a step forward. Was she really about to witness some real, complicated magic? A gateway to another world sounded far more exotic and dangerous than the workmanlike spells she had seen Bran perform around the castle in the past.

Arkwright began to rattle off a list of herbs and tools. Pogue hurried to clear a space on the largest of the tables, and Lilah and Lulath helped him move the cloaks and books.

Celie found a biscuit in her pocket to keep Rufus busy and sidled closer to Bran. But she didn’t take her eyes off Arkwright. He had given in too easily, after so many years of hiding.

“He’s up to something,” Pogue murmured as he passed near her.

“Undoubtedly,” she said softly.

“We will need to use the Eye as a focus,” Arkwright said.

He carried it over to the fireplace again.

Celie and Pogue both turned to watch him. Celie tried to get Bran’s attention, quietly, but Bran was busy tossing
the griffin cushions onto the floor. It occurred to Celie that if this room was the Heart of the Castle, then the fireplace was actually its center. She’d noticed the chimney on her earlier flight: it was round and very tall and crowned with a sort of iron cage to keep birds from flying down it.

Arkwright didn’t try to put the Eye back in its place, since there was nothing to hold it there. Instead he laid it on the hearth and ran his hands over it in a loving caress.

The Castle rippled again.

“Even
I
felt that,” Pogue said.

“What was that?” Queen Celina said, turning away from the griffin to look first at Bran, then Arkwright. “That keeps happening. It’s not quite the headache from the Castle changing around, but what is it?”

“Is that what that funny feeling is?” Lilah shook her head as though trying to cast off the sensation. “That’s the Castle changing? I’d never felt it before about a month ago.”

“It’s because the Castle is more alive now,” Arkwright admitted. “I tried to warn you. By putting these things here, in the Heart of the Castle, you’ve reminded it of what it used to be. Woken it up a little from the necessary sleep we put it in. You’re feeling the magic of the Castle more strongly because it’s becoming stronger.” He looked rather sour at the thought.

Celie was enraged, though. They’d put the Castle to sleep—permanently? They’d taken away a part of it, made it forget what it was? That was something Khelsh would
have done! She opened her mouth to say something scathing to Arkwright, but her mother beat her to it.

“You’ve done a terrible thing,” Queen Celina said in her rich voice.

“Mother,” Bran began, making a calming gesture. “As a wizard—”

“As the daughter of a wizard, the mother of a wizard, and someone who could have been a wizard herself, I think I do know a bit about magic, Bran,” the queen said crisply. Celie gave a little start at that: her mother could have been a wizard? “And I am very angry right now. You’ve done a terrible thing, and now we will have to make it right,” she said to Arkwright, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You will return to your homeland and bring back the other half of the Eye, to restore the Castle to what it should be. That will be your first step toward making amends for the years of darkness into which you cast the Castle.”

“I have to get some things,” Arkwright mumbled. He shuffled out of the room, looking like a little boy who had just been scolded. As he passed through the archway, the Castle rippled again.

“Now what?” Lilah sounded almost cross. “I wish the Castle could think of a way to tell us what it wants more specifically.”

“It’s the Eye,” Pogue said. “Bran, I think he took the Eye with him.”

“No, it’s right there,” Bran said, pointing at the hearth without really looking.

“Celie,” Lulath said in Grathian. “Really, this griffin is magnificent. I will have my own tailor make you a griffin-riding outfit as a name-day gift!” Rufus, who didn’t seem to like most men, was actually letting Lulath stroke his head and had his long tail lovingly coiled around one of Lulath’s legs. Celie supposed it was the smell of dog on Lulath that made him seem friendlier than King Glower.

“Thank you,” Celie said.

Normally this would have thrilled her, and she definitely needed to find a better solution than hiking up her skirts around her knees. But she couldn’t stop staring at the Eye. It didn’t look right, somehow. Could Arkwright possibly have switched it? Or made a copy? She remembered some illusions that Bran had made during the winter holidays. The birds and stars that had swirled around this very room had also looked real.