Spectral Crown: Chapter Thirty

“Generic subtitle for generic post”

I can’t do it today.  I’m sorry.  There’ll be more to come next week, but I can’t post anything more today.  I don’t feel well.

Previous chapter here.

Spectral Crown, by Andy Sima: Chapter Thirty

After the meal, us servants were escorted back to our second set of quarters, as we were deemed too dangerous to deal with the Uradels.  The shock of Simon’s death passed through me quickly, leaving me once again emotionless.  My mother, however, was frantically trying to wipe the bits of blood out of her smock.

            “Damned stains,” she said.  She was scratching at them, rinsing them with water, scrubbing them with fibers, whatever she could think to try that might conceivably remove the drops of Simon’s blood.  But nothing worked.

            In the stilted conversations I had with the remaining servants, we shied away from all topics pertaining to the death of Simon, the deaths of our compatriots, or any potential matter of escape.  We were all at an utter loss of how to proceed.  A malaise fell over us like a thick fog, and the consensus seemed to be what Simon had been saying from the start; don’t provoke anybody and ride out the storm.  We had little choice now.

            We were left in our quarters after the servants had finished escorting us, and the doors banged shut and locked tight.  The room itself was unthreatening, though smaller than our previous quarters.  There was a central table, with beds radiating out from it, a door at one end, and a small fireplace at the other.  If I hadn’t known better, it could have very well been a smaller version of the first room we had slept in.  But I checked the walls, and there were no loose bricks this time.

            Hours passed in that room.  Our dinner meal was brought to us, Iacob’s servant appearing unannounced in the room, handing us a few platters, and then leaving, just as quickly.  There was no sound of the door opening or closing, and try as we might, this iron porthole was just as locked as the previous ones.  Eventually the torches went out, and we fell into a fitful rest.  At the very least, none of us went missing that night.

            The next morning was much the same.  Awaken to find the torches lit and food in the center table of the room, eat the food that was delicious and without blemish, sit and discuss matters with each other, and wait for something to happen.  There was nothing else to be done.

            I had expected us to be called upon to assist the royals again, but there was no knock at the door.  Iacob did not ask for me.  Sorina did not attempt to assassinate me.  And the Uradels did not come calling.  We seemed to be forgotten.

            Often I would resent Iacob for leaving me here, but my heart would feel for him all the same.  Another day passed like this.  Franz was stiff and nervous.  Freda was doing her best to calm him.  My mother anxiously scrubbed at her clothing.  I felt nothing.  And we waited.

            The day after, I awoke from a dream and thought I saw a means of escape.  There was a mode of exit in the room we were not entirely considering.  I looked around, from bed to table to fireplace to bed to table to fireplace to… fireplace.  Yes, that was it, then.  Before I had looked through the fireplace.  Never had I looked up.

            “Mother,” I said that morning, as we ate.  “I think I may have an idea to help us leave this room.”

            “Saelac, you’re going to get yourself killed,” she said, nervously scratching away.  “What is your idea?”

            “I believe I could climb up the chimney of the fireplace and find another secret passage or get out onto the roof the castle.  I might be able to make my way back down, then, and unlock the door from the other side,” I said.

            “Absolutely not,” my mother said.  “It is too dangerous.”

            “Mother,” I said.  “You have not been one to balk in the face of danger.  Why now?”

            My mother turned to me, and she stared deep into my eyes.  “Saelac.  My only child.  Do you realize now that Simon was right all along?”

            “No,” I said.  Thought I didn’t convince myself, and I certainly did not convince my mother.

            “Please.  Stay here.  Help me remove this stain,” she said.  And continued to rub at the blood in her clothing.  I looked at her for a moment, not recognizing the woman before me.

            It hurt to see my mother like this, to find that she had been changed by this castle.  Whose doing it was, Iacob’s or Sorina’s or Titus’s or Viorel’s or Simon’s or even my own, it was impossible to say.  Maybe the blame rested on all of us.  Maybe it rested only on me.  All I knew was that it should not have been my mother’s lot to turn to this.

            But maybe it was mine to fix.

            “Yes, mother,” I said, and crept away quietly.  She was too preoccupied with the spots on her dress to notice me move away, and by the time I was sitting in the shadows of the fireplace, she had begun a halfhearted conversation with someone else. 

            I looked up into the chimney from the back of the fireplace.  High above, just as I predicted, I could see grey sky and clouds.  It was just a pinprick of light, but that was all I needed.  I pressed my back against the soot-covered walls, the black ash staining my clothes.  I began to shimmy upward towards the light.

            It was a dirty, tiring process.  I found that I was just above the lip of the fireplace, out of the sight of everyone in the room, and I was already losing the strength in my muscles.  But I had to keep going.  I couldn’t stand the thought of another moment spent sitting down in that room.  So I continued upward, inching my way at whatever pace my legs could stand.  Soot and ash sprayed out from every step I took, and I did my best to silence my coughing.

            I expected to make it a decent way towards the light far above me, at least high enough that I could maybe hear the wind whipping through the cloud, but I wasn’t allowed even that pleasure.  At about the halfway point between the fireplace floor and the exit above, the wall I had propped myself up against gave way and I fell backwards.

            With a broken grace, I managed to direct myself into the hole and was pelted with falling bits of brick and rubble.  The sound was disgustingly loud, of shattering bricks and falling rocks.  But it quieted itself down quickly, once all the dust had settled, and I found that I was once again inside the tunnels in the walls. 

            I wasn’t terribly surprised by this turn of events, and from my new perch, I leaned out over the edge and looked down into the fireplace, and then back up at the sky.  I pulled my head back in.  As I looked around and saw a flight of spiral stairs off in the distance, I decided that all hope was not lost, after all.  So, moving through the dark, dusty corridor, exactly like the ones I had grown accustomed to exploring, I moved towards this new edge of discovery.

            The spiral stairs that I found were dusty, cracked, and clearly disused, as my first tentative step up warranted a wide manner of creaks and groans.  I glanced back the way I had come, to the hole in the wall, and then glanced upward, into the darkness of the stairs.  I did not have a torch with me.

            The more I peered upward, the more I became convinced that I saw some light at the top of the staircase.  Just a glimmer, a faint half-formed dream, but it was there.  Since I was going up, eventually the stairs would have to come to an end.  Maybe inside one of the towers I had spied upon first seeing Castle Blestem.  I began to climb towards the light.

            And so upward I went, rarely stopping to catch my breath, occasionally stopping on landings to peer down darkened halls, some of which were blocked off by makeshift brick walls.  There was not a sound around me save wind, high above.  The light above grew brighter.  The smell of rain prickled my nose, peppering it with the tantalizing scent of freedom.  I took in a deep waft of it, mixing the smell of the atmosphere above with the tombs below.

            Finally, after climbing scores of stairs, I came upon an open trap door, a space set in the ceiling above me, through which the cloudlight was filtering.  Stepping up through the hole in the ceiling, I stood in a sunbeam, albeit a darkened one, and graciously breathed in deeply.  Around me, open windows let in the taste of wind.

            I was in some sort of tall watchtower.  I stepped up to the first window and stared out.  I was surprised to find that I had climbed much higher than I anticipated and could see the wall and the cursed village below me, and beyond that, vast legions of pine trees.  The land rolled away from me, curving up and down, forming mountains and valleys, and between the trees I caught glimpses of streams and untended roads.  The country that Umbra occupied was much like Stalpert valley.  Besides the ever-present cloud cover above and the threat of painful death in the castle below, it was a beautiful area.

            I glanced around at other parts of the castle, noting similar spires rising from points along the construction below me.  Tiled with deep blue and purple roofing, the towers that I could see took on a majesty to rival anything else I had seen.  I was, for once, rather calm.

            Then the cawing started, and my momentary reverie was broken.  I turned around and looked inward, into the walled off tower, and noted with dismay that it seemed to be a rookery of sorts.

            Nest boxes for ravens lined the walls and extended up into the pointed ceiling of the spire.  No wonder the windows were open.  This was where the raven fleet roosted.

            The birds stared at me, beady black eyes judging me, an intruder in their territory.  Some of them almost gave off the impression of smiling, or at least of an amused grimace, and they would caw and ruffle their feathers while watching me.  I got the distinct impression that they were waiting for something to happen.

            The floor, coated in bird droppings and jet-black feathers, seemed to stir in the wind that blew through the windows.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I glanced around at the various ravens in their boxes.  Sometimes, one of them would hop around, glide to the floor, stare at me, then fly out the window at the other side of the room.  The rest, however, continued to watch me.  Most of the boxes were empty.

            As I was about to leave, a raven fluttered down to the floor in front of the stairs, blocking my exit.  Thinking that maybe a loud noise or sudden movement would startle it enough to leave, I was about to throw up my hands and yell when the thing hopped closer.  And I felt as if I recognized it.

            The bird scratched at its head nervously with one of its talons and stepped closer to me, cooing lightly.  As insane as it sounded, I crouched down next to it to hear better, my heart jumping spasmodically.  I did not learn my lesson the first time.  The raven leaped up and grabbed my hair.

            I screamed, startled by the suddenness of it, and stumbled backwards.  The flapping wings, rotating at an absurd speed, coupled with the manic screeching of the bird as it gripped my scalp, helped to propel me backwards.  As I swiped at the thing, it unlatched from my skin, but more ravens began diving at my head and hands.

            I thought at first they were trying to tear me to shreds, to use their obsidian beaks to rip me limb from limb, but as I got closer to the open window, and as the birds seemed ever more insistent on attaching themselves rather than doing damage, I realized that they were trying to throw me out the window.

            In between the repeated jabs at my eyes and the torrent of birds that covered every inch of my body, I had to give the things some credit.  They were organized and showed some level of intelligence.  As one unit, the birds grabbed hold of me, and flapping vigorously, proceeded to lift me off my feet.

            It shouldn’t have been possible.  But then again, I had seen many things that should have been impossible, and yet they had happened.  So, it did not strike me as so strange when instead of catapulting me into the void, the birds took flight, carrying me out of the tower.

            I was suspended in air, wind whistling around me, accompanied by the heckles of the birds as they carried me.  Glancing down, I stopped struggling as I realized that I was a good fifty meters or more from the nearest solid ground.  The birds could drop me at any point, or I could twist myself from their grasp and drop myself.  I couldn’t quite say which would have been preferable.

            Desiring not to lose my life at the talons of these feathered monsters, I kept myself as rigid as possible.  It was painful, hanging in equal measure from my skin and from my clothes.  I noticed blood leeching from my arms and I prayed to whatever was out there that it would not loosen their grip.

            The ravens carried me downwards toward one of the ramparts that marked the roof of the castle proper.  They took a dive to the west, skimming along the purple roof tiles until I was suddenly on the opposite side of the castle from where I had started.  I was at the side of the castle where the royals had their quarters.

            The birds, with their fleshy luggage in tow, flew from window to window, searching.  I was relieved that my mother could not see me like this.  IN her present state of shock, seeing her son being carried off by a gang of black-eyed fiends might have been too much.

            However, once the birds finally stopped searching windows and seemed to find one that they liked, I realized with a jolt that my little entourage was backing up, out into empty space.  Backing up so that the birds could ram me into it.

            “Hey, wait a minute, now,” I said, but the wind whipped the words from my mouth as we went sailing towards the glass wall before me.  I screamed, but no one could hear me, and with a crash like thunder, I was hurled through the glass and tumbled to the floor in a heap.  The tinkling of shattered glass filled my ears but was quickly drowned out by the sound of blood rushing to my head and the laughing of ravens.

Next week will be a post about what I did this summer, I promise.  But I just couldn’t muster up the energy today.