Ico: Voices
By PeterEliot (egmont76@hotmail.com)
Author's note (PLEASE READ!):
1. I apologize for my long absence. I haven't been able to do any writing for months, due to some unkind turns my life has taken recently. I hope to end that hiatus. The second chapter is lengthy and a bit slow, but please be patient with it. As with any work of fiction, 'skipping over boring bits' will only serve to make the story harder to appreciate and thus even more boring.
2. This story—not the game—is set in the medieval period. It's just to help me deliver some semblance of authenticity. But if you'd rather imagine that it takes place in a completely imaginary realm, be my guest. I warn you, however, that the language used in this tale is archaic. You may encounter some words unfamiliar to you, especially those relating to architecture. But never fear! Simply highlight, using the mouse, any word that stumps you and push 'D' on your keyboard. Definitions of that word will pop up—courtesy of Fanfiction.net.
3. My delving into the detail of the castle is derived entirely from the game. To help you follow Ico's descriptions, I've added the below links for some screenshots of the castle as well as its floor plan. I did not make these screenshots; they are on a great Ico fan page created by a very talented guy in Hong Kong named Vincent.
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/map.jpg
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/gamescr/ico_castle1.jpg
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/gamescr/ico_castle2.jpg
4. Finally, I'm also adding the links for my hand-drawn Ico fan art, housed on the same page as the links above.
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/fanart/icofanarts04.jpg
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/fanart/icofanarts07.jpg
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/fanart/icofanarts05.jpg
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/fanart/icofanarts06.jpg
http://www.acad.polyu.edu.hk/~98342482d/ico/gallery/fanart/icofanarts08.jpg
I hope you enjoy this installment. I most appreciate your reviews, however brief or lengthy they may be. Should you hate this story, however, only remember to be civil in your posts.
Ico: Voices
By PeterEliot (egmont76@hotmail.com)
Chapter II. Entombment
In my early years I acquainted myself well to the woods of the vicinity, charting them in my head with the playful and instinctual diligence of an inquisitive whelp. My knowledge of the region, however, predictably fell within the confine of what a day's exploration on foot could allow. I had only dim notions, secondhand acquired, of what lay beyond that confine—which was to say that five leagues to the west was the abbey which I had supposedly visited once as an infant, for a belated baptism, in the care of my guardian but whose memory I could lay no claim to, and that at twice the distance to the north was a shore that gave way to an ocean I had never seen. This ocean, I had been told, resembled a lake so enormous that standing at one edge of it one could not discern the other, and was full to its equally fathomless depth of water that could be drunk by none save the creatures that inhabited it, for it was bitterer than the water Moses by the power of the Almighty cleansed in the deserts. To this latter, which a blend of childhood fancy and ignorance had elevated to all but mythic rank, my captors now proceeded. As I recollect our progress unfolded in this manner.
We rode westward and traced one of the many branching brooks in the mountains to the river, which, connecting the most heavily populated areas of the region, served as its principal channel—the same that I was to have crossed in my foiled flight. There the company turned north and taking a gentle but steady downhill path continued along the riverbank. An hour of briskly paced ride followed. To our left the stream was never out of the sight; it was as though we were racing against the river. When the warriors as one slowed their pace at the appearance of the bridge farther down the stream, I was certain that they meant to cross it. I was surprised when they marched past the aged structure without a look spared its way. Instead they approached the clump of ungainly wooden platforms, situated on the bank past the bridge, which the locals used by way of a dock. I should bring it to light here that lumber furnished our part of the country with an important trade, and that the sight of transports loaded with copious quantities of lumber was frequent on the waterway. I say transports because these crude albeit immense crafts hardly qualified as true vessels. In looks they were little more than colossal rafts, often built on the spot, as the need arose, of the very stuff they were intended to bear, to be disassembled and shipped along with the cargo once they reached their destination. The dock accommodated that day a number of these, all but one of them loaded with the customary cargo. A man awaited us next to the sole vacant freighter. It was the smallest of its kind I had ever seen. This the company proceeded to board, horses and all. Other tradesmen at the dock stopped their work to observe us. I should have found the courage to cry out for help, perhaps even a chance to break free and run to them, but that a look of such stony grimness shadowed each of the faces that gazed on. And grim they remained as the raft was unbound, and released to the flow of the river.
Thus far I had suppressed all impulse to speak anything. The knights seemed themselves determined to utter no words to me. They hardly spoke even to one another but rather seemed to know precisely what to carry out and when, so that the masked knight, whom I understood to be in command, hardly ever needed to issue any orders. Such a daunting silence I dared not breach. Yet the question of our destination, and of the immediate prospect of my future, was becoming too troubling to withhold; wherefore I timidly and with an air of the greatest deference I could muster under the condition asked one of the warriors, who held a rod to push onward the raft from the shallow waters, where we were headed. He judged me worthy of one indifferent glance, and no more; he returned to his task.
So ended the first of my few attempts at communication with those stoic men in the journey. Insofar as I was an obedient prisoner, they did not lay a rough hand on me, and after that first time of my capture there was no more occasions for violence. On the raft I was permitted some bodily freedom as well; though, as a safeguard against the possibility of some desperate effort on my part, when the horses were reined together to secure them on board I was leashed with them by a long tether, so that while I could move about I could not escape overboard unless I meant to take the horses with me. Well! there was nothing for me to do then but to squat next to said horses and keep to myself, watching the solemn warriors navigate their queer choice of transportation, while the countryside slipped lazily but inexorably by until at last all that was familiar had faded behind me. There wasn't a reason, peculiarly, that I chose to quarter beside the beasts. It merely seemed a fitting place for me, that day.
We were to spend the rest of the daylight sailing. And a bizarre sail it was, on a day that abounded in the grotesque. The river we journeyed on, had we stayed in the most frequented waters, would have taken us directly to the level plains where the shipbuilding yard was to be found. Not long after we embarked, however, we arrived at a parting point, where an errant branch split from the mother stream and meandered into the hills, taking with it a fair fraction of the water to reach a remote and altogether different shore. Cutting deep into the mountains, this winding gully made for a substantially more onerous, even dangerous, passageway, and it was my understanding since the earliest days of youth that it had long fallen out of general use for the stated reasons. Yet the desolation of the route, for which the soldiers now set course of the raft, surpassed my expectation. It was cause enough for alarm and intrigue when, soon after we had entered the stream, the raft was forced to halt not by some natural impediment but by a mighty chain of iron, which was slung across the width of the river and held at the surface by a succession of poles. There was no fathoming for me why the water was so blockaded, and after the cool reception of my last query I did not ask about it. At any rate, men ashore had to be signaled to remove the obstruction and allow the boat's passage. They that assisted our entry lost little time in restoring the chain to its previous state, once we had cleared the place.
I remember a number of things about the voyage down that nameless channel, which I saw only that once in my life. Most chiefly I remember that I was frightened half out of my wits—that the green and the blue of the ambience grew muted presently in the austere gloom of the gorge; that the water turned swift and turbulent and furious, not so much that it threatened capsizing but enough to make me doubt that the flimsy craft that carried us down the current should be able to bring us back up the same; that the men were tireless at oars; that the masked knight, who alone did not row with the rest, sat afar to fix his fierce gaze on me; that the horses were restive, and I petted their muzzles in an effort to calm them and myself; that after what seemed an interminable scuffle against an unwilling nature the water gave up its savagery and assumed an abrupt repose; that an absolute quiet stole over us that caused me to look about and discover the surroundings; that the bleak walls in the periphery were the valley, and the hollow, jagged strip of void between them and above was the heavens, which got grayer and grayer, owing this change to no clouds but to a devouring surge of haze that settled over all below.
Onward we floated, into the mist. It thickened, and the discernible part of the creation rapidly shrank to the extent that the very banks to our sides dissolved into spectral distance, and the current that took us along was my best hope at gauging our direction. All so dark, all so hushed! It was no peaceful kind of tranquility but a melancholy that hushed all beginnings of panic into mute dread. I fancied myself chilly and wrapped my own arms around myself, though it was nearly midday. Even the beasts next to me were subdued, now; they looked to each other unsurely, much as I was doing at everything in view. When a league had gone by in such a state, and then the next, without presenting the sight of another vessel, and it became increasingly evident that we constituted the whole of human traffic in those waters, wearied in fearful vigil I drifted into sleep.
Upon awakening I did not know where I was. Which of course was to be expected—I was now quite far away from home. But I mean that I failed to recall for a moment that I was away at all. Then I became sensible of a foreign smell. It emanated from a mantle, damp with moisture collected from the air, that was draped over me. The surface I lay on, while no harder than the bed I was used to at home, was so coarse that in sleep I had scraped my cheek against it. Hastily I raised myself—took in the vessel and the men and the watery panorama, then a lungful of the novel-tasting wind, and came at that dismaying instant closer to crying than I ever had all day. My abductors turned and took notice that I was awake. I cast aside the cloth like a serpent's loathsome peel and crouched away from the men, burying my head in my arms to banish them from sight. I knew they would leave me alone in my misery; for this at least I felt relieved. A momentary terror gripped me when one of them stood and walked over to me, but he merely retrieved the mantle from the deck and, rolling it, fastened it on his steed. It occurred to me that I should in politeness thank him for the kind deed—the blanket, I mean—and so I did, stumblingly. He looked at me, iron visage impassive as when first forged, and nodded once without a word before he took his seat again at the other side of the raft. For some reason that modest response at once allayed some of my distress and made me want to cry all the more.
Once my spirit had overcome the worst of its despondence, I got the wood splinters and dirt out of my tunic and face and surveyed where we were. The river's span had widened considerably while I slept. I was happy to note that much of the mist had lifted, leaving the nature with a bit more clarity and hues and a good deal more of things worth appreciating. I thought I had never seen a water take on quite such a pretty, mournful shade of blue—almost azure at first glance, but devoid of all intimation of cheerfulness usually associated with that color, like the eastern sky shortly before the unveiling of the stars. Perhaps it was in reflection of the heaven, I thought, and lifted my eyes to it. In the pallor of the waning daylight white birds hovered over us, low and large. They had feet much like ducks', yet flew with the facility and grace of a hawk. Occasionally one or two would set down on the ferry to stare at the travelers and especially at the horses before scurrying back onto the air. I grew quite fascinated with them. They seemed interested in the crumbs the horses had left uneaten on the deck. While I watched one such creature brave being trampled under hooves as it went after the crumbs, I asked that same warrior that had nodded at me, what kind of a bird it was. He looked at the bird I pointed to, and then looked longer at me, ponderingly. I got fitful and started to regret my question.
"It is a seagull," he replied.
"Ah! so that's a seagull. I've never seen one, until today," I said with feelings, as though I had been told that it was the celebrated albatross. He resumed silence, and we spoke no more. Still I was grateful to him for speaking with me. I thought perhaps I should thank him for that, too, but then thought better of it.
We sailed on and at twilight came to the end of the route. But the river did not terminate there. It was cut off once again by a barrier, a weed-covered lattice that stretched from one riverbank to the other like a fishnet for boats and rendered passage impossible. There was no sign, as far as I could see, that the obstruction was movable as the other barrier had been. The water was closed off this time for good. We alighted and entered the forest on horseback, climbing the gorge we had been navigating along. It was one of those moonless evenings. The darkness of the forest was already stifling, and it only got worse as the day sank deeper into the night. It was a wonder that the men knew where they trod at all. Yet the masked knight, with whom I rode again, was undeterred, leading ahead with quick steps and surefooted confidence. Our journey was likely near its conclusion, I thought, for if it were not, the men should by now need a suitable place to camp for the night. My speculation proved to be correct. We had hardly been riding for an hour when a flicker of crimson in the distance broke through the uninterrupted arrangement of pitchy somberness. We drew near, and the glimmer brightened, illuminating the tenuous outlines of the undergrowth and the trunks ahead. I stared at it spellbound, a maelstrom of thoughts and fears raging within; I was finally here! What terrible, startling destination lay before me?
A startlingly puny one, as it turned out. What greeted us beyond the woods was a mount in shed of the plainest description, scarcely as large and every bit as humble as Father Micael's own domicile. It stood—nay, leaned against a tall boulder, which seemed to be its chief support, so that its removal would have brought the rickety ensemble of planks and stones to collapse like a cripple robbed of his prop. The lone window was open and lit, and the trail of smoke from the chimney was thin, swallowed up by the black night sky. The sturdiest feature of that unassuming abode was the fence that enclosed it, and this unlike the rest was wholly of wrought metal. Halting the company outside the fence, the masked knight called out loud. There were creaks from within, and the sound of bolts being lifted, and out came a short stooping figure of a man through the door. He wore a great cap of animal skin on his head and the light from the house on his back like a halo, and his own face was in shadow. It was not until he faced the riders on the other side of the fence that I saw he was of great age, with snowy profusion of beard that clung to his jaw in such an unruly fashion that one would have thought he had just crawled through a heap of cobweb. He raised a withered hand.
"Have you been well?" said the masked knight.
"I'm the same, always," replied the newest stranger. Though his words addressed the knight, his eyes were intent on me. "Bring another one, do you?" said he.
"Allow us in. We shall stay the night."
"A fine time of the day you've chosen to come," the old man said gruffly, dragging open the gate. "I have just smothered the fire. I shall have to set it going again."
"Be not concerned with us," the knight said as the company rode into the yard. He dismounted and bade me to do the same, while the old man bolted the entrance. "We will be outside. Only tend to the boy."
The old man considered me again, with a glare that seemed to have been sculpted into the lined mold of his face. He didn't look quite so small anymore, now that we stood upon the same ground. "Has he eaten?" he asked the knight.
"Not all day. See to it, if you please."
"Well, then. Come in, boy," the old man said, starting back towards the hut. Hesitantly I looked to the masked knight. But he had already left my side to join the other men, who were preparing to set up a camp in the enclosed yard. I was alone. Then the old man's impatient call from the doorstep jolted me, and I ran in after him.
* * * * * * *
"Think no foolish thoughts there, now," the old man said.
Startled somewhat, I turned from the gap of the door through which I had been peeking out to the yard. The knights sat in rest outside, gathered by a small fire.
"Sir?" I said.
He waved the ladle in his hand. "There's a wall of boulder on one side of this house, and those men on the other. They may have left you to me for the night, but they've no mind to let you fly, you see."
Thus concluding his first speech to me since I had entered the lodge, the old man returned to the hearth, where broth was beginning to boil. I looked at the knights once more. They had freed themselves of much of their armaments, though it was still hard to discern their faces in the darkness and the liquid dazzle of the fire. The sight of their bare heads, with short cropped hair, somehow struck me as inordinately curious. I closed the door.
"How does prune sound to you?" the old man said, retrieving a sack that hung on the wall to set it down on the table. I told him it sounded fine. I had not thought of food since morning, but now, with the fetching smell of the broth filling the house, hunger was prevailing over the want of appetite. "Come to the table, boy. I've got venison, and loaves with honey. Do you want anything else? Shall I ask the men outside for what they've brought with them? They ought to have some cheese, and mayhap milk even. I ran clean out of cheese long ago, and I haven't tasted milk these few years."
"Oh! you don't have to do that, on my account," I said, alarmed a little by the sudden talkativeness in the old man, as I took a seat.
"It's no trouble, laddy. As it happens it's something of a duty that I give you a good meal tonight. Shall I ask them, then?"
"No, no, that's quite all right," I said, hastily. "They might not look kindly on it."
At this reply, he guffawed. A monstrous laughter, I thought. I don't know why truthfully; there wasn't anything menacing in the sound. I think it was simply the man. There was something about him that was quite soundly and dreadfully divorced from the demeanor of common men and women I had known; though I was young, I felt this.
"Afraid of the ruffians, are you? Well, well! I suppose you've reason enough to be afraid. Wait here, boy. I'll go and see what they have to share with us." And he was about to exit the house.
"Please don't, sir," I said. "Really, I will be quite full with these. Unless—unless, of course, you want something for yourself."
"Well, look here," he said, stopping. "The young one knows the form, and he's got manners. Yet he's dressed like a peasant boy. I'd almost have thought he was brought up in a church."
"At a shrine, sir," I said.
"A shrine, eh?"
"Under Father Micael," I added.
"Ah. Christened?"
It was after some moments that I realized he had asked my name. "Ico, sir. But, not christened."
"Not christened, eh?"
"No, sir. I mean, I was—but I was named that before then, I think."
"Ah. Give that bowl here," he said, picking up the ladle again. When I did so, he poured out a generous helping and gave it back to me. "Eat. There's plenty, so have as much as you like."
"Will you not eat, sir?"
"I supped earlier," he said, and promptly sat across from me.
"Oh…" I looked to him, unsure.
"Well? Go on—eat," said he, gesturing to the plates encouragingly.
It has to be one of the most uncomfortable circumstances in a child's life, to eat at a stranger's table, with the said stranger and no other in attendance, and have that same stranger do nothing but stare at him through the entire meal. This was exactly what the old man did, from the moment he sat himself at the table. He had to urge me two or three times more to get me going, and as I whisperingly stuttered over grace, and proceeded with equal discomfiture to help myself, his interest in me did not seem to waver. Hungry as I was, it took me in my nervousness no small effort to force the food down the throat. The old man said nothing in his watch. I thought I could stand it no more.
"Please pardon me, sir, but," I began, mouthing the syllables around bits of sour prune.
"No need to be formal, boy," the old man said. "Formality has been to me a useless thing many a year now. I left all that behind, long before you were born."
"May I ask your name, then?"
"I left that behind, too," he said. "One doesn't need a name, you see, when he is always quite by himself. So I will be until the day I depart for the next world."
"Is that true?" I exclaimed, a good deal amazed. "That is most wondrous! But suppose you get lonely?"
"I am past thinking about it." He gestured to the food again. "The broth will get cold, boy."
Thoughtfully, I resumed eating. It seemed an easier task, now that we were in conversation. I looked up from the bowl again to find the old man's eyes unmoved from me. "But the knights outside… they know you. And I—I am here also. What do people call you when they see you, or talk to you?"
"They needn't call," replied he. "All who come here do so but for one reason, and they know what they are to do. And those—rarely, this happens—who don't, I don't trouble myself with. Another will deal with them."
"Oh," I said, not understanding a bit.
"But where my duties are concerned—which in the end is all that is of any consequences to me—I am sometimes called the gatekeeper."
"A gatekeeper?" I echoed. "But where is the gate that… that you must keep?"
The old man grinned and gathered his hands together on the table. "Sometimes the keeper watches the gate in proximity. Other times, he keeps post at a distance. I am myself never allowed inside the gate."
"That should be a very difficult thing to do!" I cried. "I mean—when I am sometimes charged to watch over the shrine, I must keep close to it, and even sleep in it if it is at night, or I shall not be able to keep a good watch at all."
"It's less difficult than it ought to be," he said. "That that I watch stands in vigil over itself, you see."
Seeing that my comprehension improved little, but that I continued to be impressed by his mystical accounts, the old man again let out a cackle that seemed half-demented to me. Looking back, I do believe that there was a kind of dementia involved—the dementia that seizes a soul doomed to solitude. "Enough of that, boy. Enough of that. You will learn it yourself afore long. For now, eat."
So I returned to my meal obediently. Before long, however, I was compelled—emboldened, you might say, for the gatekeeper for all his merry strangeness seemed conversational, and willing to be informative in his own way—to probe my host further. He had not once paused his rapt inspection of me.
"The knights outside, sir," I began cautiously while I chewed. "Do you know them well?"
"The tall one I've met a few times. The rest, I am not certain—how could I tell, I mean, with those iron caps of theirs?"
"But they come here often?" I asked, heartened that he did not seem offended by the prying.
"They or others, once every few moons, to bring me provisions—or children, which is a much more infrequent thing, thanks be to the Lord."
I stopped the spoon on its way to the mouth. Father Micael's words rose unbidden in my mind, and at their heel the gatekeeper's first remarks to the masked knight.
Bring another one, do you?
I turned to him. His mouth was set in a displeased frown, as though—as though in annoyance. But not at me, I thought.
"They brought other children here," I cried. "Others—like me. With horns. You've seen others like me, sir?"
"Now, now, boy—calm yourself," the gatekeeper said.
I would not calm. I was terrified again. Rising from the chair, I clutched the spoon until my fingers ached. "What is to become of me?"
"I do not know. I do not know that the men out on the yard know. But I said before, child, that you will learn soon enough. You may even learn more than any of us. We're nothing, lad. Nothing. We're all duty-bound."
For the first time, there was the tiniest shadow of distress on his old face, a look almost pleading. I thought of bolting for an instant. Then I thought of the men with swords outside the door, and sank back onto the chair.
"Why do they do this?" I asked, eyes downcast—as though searching for the Hell beneath where I seemed bound.
"Because they were commanded by their lord," came the old man's voice.
"Who is their lord?"
"I do not know, child."
"Why does their master want this done of me?" asked I again.
"Because he was commanded by my lord."
"Who is your lord?"
"I do not know, child."
I looked up. A wry grin, unhappy but mischievous, curled his lips. "I thought lords have names," I murmured, thinking of my own lack of surname. "Great names."
"They have secrets," he replied. "There is the Lord of the Heaven, you see—and then there is a horde of smaller lords crawling about below. Smaller and meaner. So their secrets naturally aren't as grand as His, but theirs have got much more cunning." His grin quickly widened, as if he found something terribly amusing—mad, I could not help thinking. "Our only comfort, boy—yours and mine—is that His secret," and as he said this, he pointed upwards, growing merrier still, "will in the end have the surprise on all of us… us and them alike."
"I do not understand, sir," I said weakly.
"You don't, eh? That's to be expected; it's quite all right. But, while we are talking about things beyond one's wit, let me tell you a story, for I must tell it to all my young brethren who pass under my roof.
"Long ago, an eagle lived in a great forest. None in the forest was fiercer than the eagle. It flew higher than anyone, saw farther than anyone, and was mightier than anyone. None escaped its eyes, its claws. It ruled supreme over all beasts in the forest for many years. But the eagle grew old, and with age came frailty it had not known before. At last the bird's old wings could no longer keep hold over the vastness of the territory, and it began to shrink. Then the eagle said to itself, 'Before my domain dwindles to nothing, I shall build myself a dwelling to enclose a portion of the forest, that I will always reign in it.' So the eagle ordered its creaturely subjects to erect an immense coop that would forever claim for its proprietor a piece of the heaven and the earth. The eagle entered it, bolted shut the door, and declared itself the monarch of the coop. After that day the great bird never flew outside the cage of his own making.
"But the bird needed to subsist like any other creature. Therefore it had its minions bring into the coop, from time to time, sustenance worthy of a king. Time flew, and the great bird all but faded from the thoughts of others. Yet none dared imagine that he was dead—for he was a terrible, terrible beast, and the coop stood a domineering mark of his presence. And the fear of the secluded monarch was great enough to cast his shadow over every bit of his former realm, the same as if he had never retired from that realm. In this way the shrewd bird assured himself of a rule everlasting.
"That is the tale. Finish your meal in peace, child. I'll go and prepare your bed for the night. I imagine the men will want to take leave early in the morning, so you'd best sleep soon. Don't worry yourself excessively. Your exile will end quickly, I promise you. Mine, I fancy, has some years yet left of it. Let us speak no more of this."
I talked to the old man some more that night, but he was careful to avoid all subjects related to my circumstances. When we slept, he insisted on giving up his own bed for me despite my protest. He opted to sleep wrapped in a great fur on the floor, positioning his bedding—deliberately, I suspected—just in front of the door. On that door I fixed my eyes for the longest time after the lamp was extinguished, while I lay on the bed thinking of home and the knights and the old man and his strange story. Until the very moment I fell asleep, the thin gap under the door glowed with the crimson flicker of the knights' fire outside.
* * * * * * *
I was the last to rise in the morning, though the hour was still early. It was the gatekeeper's voice that roused me. He sounded hoarse and brusque, though he tried to be quiet.
"So you've come sniffing already, eh? Well, damn you for it. Damn you twice."
His words were accompanied by the familiar deliberate beat of a knife against the cutting-board. For a full minute the chopping continued in silence, until the old man's annoyed voice came again sharply.
"For your accursed curiosity, quite healthy and sound. Now get out."
The chopping was turning erratic, and needlessly vigorous. While I, still in bed, listened in vain for some sign of the personage with whom the gatekeeper was evidently conversing, he again spoke, exasperated: "Well, how do you fancy I should know, when I met the lad only last evening? Go on! You shall not touch him in my house."
I was now completely awake. I rose and made furtive steps to the opposite corner of the house, where a low wall of the scullery was blocking the gatekeeper and his companion from my view. I found him with his back towards me, chopping a steaming piece of meat in front of him, and addressing a dark corner.
He ceased his hand. "Why do you torment me, fiend?" he growled. "Shoo, now! Off you go, back where you belong! Shall you not see him soon enough?"
Granted, it was rather dark in the house, for the day had not yet cast off its night shade. But there was no mistaking what I saw. At the old man's angry dismissal, a clump of pitchy black shadow—I had not even noticed its presence until just then, so shapeless was it—, crouching at that very corner of the scullery, snuffed itself out like a black flame that had been doused with water!
I blinked and rubbed my eyes. The gatekeeper resumed his chore. I must then have betrayed myself somehow, for he glanced behind him. We were both equally startled, I think. He stared at me wide-eyed for a second, and then started briskly across the room for—of all things in the world—his head-cap that lay on the table. Grabbing it, he donned it without a word—which, of course, only attracted my eyes to his head, and to the thing that he had meant to cover, before he could cover it. And I at once realized the cause of his peculiar behavior. There, pushing through the unkempt white mass of his hair, was a gray stump no bigger in length than a child's thumb.
I stood frozen, my jaw no doubt hanging down to my collarbones.
"The men wish to leave immediately," the gatekeeper said as he returned to the food he had been preparing. He did not meet my eyes. All merriment was gone from his demeanor. "I thought I would feed you breakfast before you went, but I shall have to wrap it for you. They wait outside even now."
And that was all he would say.
I stepped outside to find the knights ready by their horses, back in full armor. The masked knight wordlessly raised his hand, gesturing me to come and mount his horse. I moved to abide but was momentarily detained by the gatekeeper's hand. The elder pushed a warm knapsack into my arms.
"This is for you. Farewell, young Ico," he said. His hands remained on my own.
"Sir…" I began, suddenly trembling. "Do you have… I mean, on your head—"
"I once did," he said, completing my question. "I destroyed them in the hope of eluding my fate. This… was my punishment."
I was too afraid to ask him what that fate was. Instead I found myself saying: "Sir, how long have you lived here, all by yourself?"
Ah, how very much like Father Micael he looked, as that resigned smile spread across his ancient face!
"Since my twelfth birthday. Defy not thy destiny, brethren. To do so is consignment to misery—misery like mine. Farewell, Ico," said he again, returning momentarily to that vacuous grin of his. "May the Judge of All see you through your journey. It is nearly over. Be brave, lad!"
I could not hold back one final question for this man, who had told me so much and yet so little in our brief acquaintance. "But where am I journeying to?"
"Why, child, do you not see that over there?" said he, pointing behind me with a motion of his bearded chin.
I espied the northern sky as prompted. And got the biggest surprise of my life. To be strict, stranger things were yet to come, and more terrible, too—yet, in the sheer impact of the thing, none would exceed that arresting, speechless moment.
Rising in far distance above the uneven, elevated horizon of treetops were gray towers. Their lofty mass contended with the peaks next to them, a lone anomaly amid many leagues of otherwise unchallenged wilderness.
A fortress.
I gawked. How could I have missed it the night before? It had to have been lost in the darkness of the night. Still how could I…? How could I…?
I whirled to face the gatekeeper. "Is that…?" I said, pointing like a fool at the distant structure, seeking—I don't know why—confirmation. "Sir, is that—"
"The coop, my boy," replied the gatekeeper.
* * * * * * *
The ride that morning was brief, though I generally spent the hour in a state of quiet hysteria. During the whole of it, I had my eyes fixed on the gray shadow ahead, which was the guide for our march. Sometimes it disappeared from view when the forest path dipped low, but invariably it reappeared before long, each time looming bigger than before, and clearer, as the sun dispelled more of dawn. That it was absolutely the most immense thing I had ever seen was apparent even from that distance. I clutched the knapsack to my heart, which pounded with that bleak clobbering beat that seems to reverberate through one's entire body in a time of keen anxiety. My back grew tired and stiff, for on the horse I had no support but the masked knight's metal-wrapped bulk against my backside, and I kept crouching forward, not liking the feel of the chain-mail.
At last we emerged from the forest, where I could see an uphill path clear of vegetation terminate at the peak, beyond which were the towers. The body of the castle, now sandy-bright in the morning sun, revealed itself bit by bit as we climbed the hill. It was obvious that the part of the castle visible over the treetops was for all its size only the uppermost level of the structure. The thought fueled my curiosity as to the fortress' true dimension.
When we reached the peak—well, there I was rendered speechless again. I had fully expected to find the fortress sitting behind the hill. And it did; but that wasn't all. We were greeted by a handsome ivy-covered colonnade, which was half fallen from age and looked for all the world like a roofless portico. But instead of granting entry as a portico should, this one marked the endpoint of the path—and, not only that, it marked the endpoint of the land as well; we were all but perched at the edge of a bluff that plunged to a shore far, far below.
We were—I could see now, finally—at the innermost spot of a crescent bay. For the first time in my life, an ocean infinite and magnificent stretched before me—a sublimely silken field of unending blue. Its tranquil majesty was marred only by the white foams dancing savagely over the rocky shore, the weather-beaten border of the watery world. It was a humbling sight. It was marvelous beyond what I had ever dreamed.
And the castle? Why, there it was—soaring straight out of the waters, practically at a stone's throw from the cliff!
As the men dismounted, I remained spellbound. When I came halfway back to senses, the knights were tying the horses to the marble posts. This was the end. The journey was over. But, I asked myself, how were we to enter the castle? For there wasn't so much as a string that connected the castle to the land. It was inaccessible as the heaven itself.
"See about the boat."
It was the masked captain who spoke. One of the men immediately departed on foot. Until he returned, the rest of us took a rest in the shade of the colonnade. The captain ordered—he made it plain that it was an order, not a suggestion—me to eat the victual which the old gatekeeper had given me. The warrior then displayed a most curious consideration by handing me an urn full of cider to accompany the breakfast. The drink was sour and dull, and it left an odd taste in my mouth. I should have drunk just enough to ease thirst but that the same who had given me that drink prompted me to finish the bottle entire. While eating I scrutinized the castle in helpless enthrallment. Since this was the only time I was able to observe the edifice from the land, let me to provide here a brief impression of it before I move on.
Any honest description of that castle must abound in superlatives. To begin with, its height was utterly impossible. The sea was a long way down from where the riders rested, and yet the castle stood proud and level with us. No, taller even; taller by far.
A second look at the fortress, once the initial jolt of the spectacle had subsided, revealed features that I had overlooked. The castle did not jut out of the sea itself, as I first had fancied, but sat instead upon an island of awesome steepness. Nor was the castle a single structure, but rather a compound consisting of the main body flanked on both sides by identical wings—and each had its own foundation in the form of an island, so that there were in total three isles, all equal in height and arranged in an unnatural symmetry. The isles, despite their craggy appearances, were smooth and even across the tops, like the bases of some great trees that had been sawed down. Furthermore, I could detect nary a patch of top soil that was left bare; all available surfaces of the islands were built on, thus creating an effect whereby it was difficult to distinguish at a glance where the islands ended and the citadel began.
Imagine, now, the superhuman effort it would take to erect a castle atop islands which, being barely large enough to accommodate the edifice, could not possibly have supplied the needed quantity of stone. And this at such a dizzying height above the water! It was just preposterous; one simply could not do it. The fortress indeed seemed a natural extension of the islands, as though, instead of being assembled brick by brick, it were carved directly out of the foundation much as a statue is cut from a single slab of marble.
I was surprised to see, at the center of the castle, a stately gate facing us. What was more, the gate was flung wide open so that the green courtyard inside was in plain view. But unless one were to tread five hundred cubits of empty air, the inviting gate was perfectly useless. I began to understand what the gatekeeper had meant by his charge standing in vigil over itself. The ocean was the castle's moat—and the plunging height its second, invisible wall of fortification. It was a perfect bastion.
Presently the man who had left on an errand returned and announced that the boat was ready. Leaving the horses bound on high ground with one of the men, the rest of the company descended to the shore by a narrow foot passage along the wall of the precipice. We boarded a small boat and set out for the citadel.
If the castle had looked towering from atop the cliff that was now behind us, it was absolutely monstrous from the sea. And it only got bigger as we got closer to it. The islands quickly took up my vision, and I had to strain my neck to glimpse the castle above. The sight was so overwhelming that frankly I was more captivated than terrified—which helped the situation somewhat, for I had known for some time already that I would not live.
As we neared the central isle, which was the largest of the lot, I thought I heard a new sound mixed with the enchanting roar of breaking waves: a low, brooding and measured grating, like the sound of a dozen mills turning in tandem. The sound grew the loudest when we were passing by the isle and was soon lost as we moved away. About that time I began to wonder where we would disembark, for it seemed clearly suicidal to approach any those megaliths on a boat so small; it would go to pieces like an egg upon a rock.
Rounding the central isle, however, we came upon a fourth and final isle. Being the smallest member of the archipelago, it had been obscured from the shore by its bulkier siblings. Small size notwithstanding, the isle seemed the most striking of them all. In breadth it was no match for the others. But it was fully as tall—and a single sky-piercing tower capped it, doubling its height. From distance, it would have seemed less an island and more a massive pillar of stone. It became evident that the boat was bound there. As the boat neared it, I looked for a passageway along the cliff that would take us to the top of the island, but to no avail. Then the men rowed the boat halfway round the island and brought us to the side of the isle that faced the ocean—and I saw that the island gaped inward at the base like the hollow of an old tree. The cavern's entrance was guarded by two even rows of square granite columns that evidently were rooted in the seabed itself. Like the colonnade ashore, these two showed signs of ruin. Several lacked capitals, and one in particular was leaning precariously, which gave me no little scare as the boat passed between the columns for fear that it would collapse upon us.
Forward, ever forward, into that darkness! The lattice barring the cavern surrendered to the black depth of the sea, and the island received us into its bowel. The waves' ambient wail was hushed all in a moment. The air put on a sudden moist chill. We were inside the isle.
At this time I became aware of a dizziness—a growing faintness of the attentive spirit. Was it the effect of the spectacles, of too much thrill and depression at once of the soul? But I felt weak as an infant, and gripped the edge of the boat to support myself. The masked knight's cold hand was steady upon my shoulder. The boat halted at the dock—a pitiful wooden fixture, nestled awkwardly among strewn ruins of granite; I couldn't suppress the thought that different hands were involved in their respective construction.
The dizziness worsened quickly. I was falling into a lethargy that began at the temples and flowed down to the limbs. When I climbed out of the boat after the men, and the legs that touched upon the soil threatened to fold, and the masked knight deftly caught me under one arm without the least surprise as if he had expected this sudden infirmity in me, I suspected at last that an influence beyond mere overtaxing of the spirit was at work in me. The enlightenment did me little good. The masked knight prompted me onward, his hand closed round my arm as securely as any manacle, and I walked as guided in a hazy state of mind. A mere few steps afterwards, I saw that I no longer stood in the rugged confine of the cavern.
The space in which I found myself—how shall I describe it? It was like the interior of a very great tower. In itself this should have been little surprise, after the wonders I had already witnessed. No, the wonder of it would not make itself apparent until one reflected upon the fact that this great vertical duct traversed through the heart of the isle—that the isle had been hollowed out along its height like an upstanding pipe, and I now stood at the bottom of it. A well—that was precisely what it felt like. I was at the bottom of a dry well that had to have been dug by some race of titans many dozen times bigger than men.
Except one detail… At the very center of the vault, another, slimmer column stood. At its base was a pair of strangest-looking statues I had ever seen—clearly fashioned after human likeness, but too blocky to pass for sculptures, like some pagan idols. Two perfectly identical specimens stood pressed together side by side.
I was by then all but asleep on my feet, like one drunk. Dreamily I matched gaze with the stony, dull eyes of the statues, lulled into dumb fascination, and unaware that I stood alone again.
A movement in the periphery caught my attention. One of the men walked through the entrance to rejoin the group. I had not noticed him leave. And he held in his hand—a sword, in a dark scabbard. That brought me up, sharply. The men had never displayed their weapons.
The knight pushed the sword towards his captain. But the captain turned away from the proffered weapon, and in my near-delirious state I fancied I read a frown of revulsion behind his mask as plainly as if the mask were not there. It was like he was afraid to bear the touch of the sword. Instead he pointed a gloved hand at me. The sword bearer—I recall he had an unusually crimson mail on—turned, and walked my way. I watched his advancement, immobile; I can't say whether it was the effect of whatever drug I had been given or sheer terror that bound my feet where they were. But the man passed me by, and instead faced the idol-like statues. He raised the sword and unsheathed it—not all the way, but just enough for me to glimpse the naked metal therein. How it glowed! A glow most eerie and amazing, in that dark chamber that hadn't so much as a lit candle for lighting. But that lingered not on my mind for long. The blade had not been bared for a second, when there resounded throughout the vault an unearthly groan that set my hair on ends. Startled, I jumped at the source of the noise: the statues! Their eyes, no longer dull, gleamed livid white. In horror I watched them shake violently, furiously. Then with a great, shuddery gnashing against the stone floor, the statues parted, revealing, where they used to stand but a moment ago, a recess within the column!
Growing rapidly fainter in the head all the while, I stared at the newly created doorway, until the masked knight's hand guided me once again.
From there only the blurriest retention of events remains in my memory. I recall a series of images, the order of which I can only through surmises vouch.
A curious sensation of the floor rising, like riding upon a crane platform. The knight's cautious wielding of the sword again—the flash, and the same gnashing of stones once more. Then we were stepping out—I was all but being carried by that point—into a gray, dimly lit chamber full of dust. And then the faces, massive and many and surrounding, that gazed at me from all directions, dismal and tight-lipped… all except one of them, whose jaw parted to expose the blackness within. Being lifted and deposited in that jaw. A brief, final flash of the morbid ironclad heads, my captors, looking in grimly from outside.
"Do not be angry with us…"
The jaw closed over me, commending me to the dark.