Read Online Queen of Stars by Dave Duncan - Free Book Online

as Alula, but I call it Escher Castle or Vertigo Villa. It takes a little getting used to.”
    They stepped through the doorway into a wide, luxuriously carpeted and decorated corridor. Rigel paused and diffidently pried her grip off his forearm. She had left white marks there. She had been digging her nails in, too, and must have hurt him.
    “Sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t realize.”
    He grinned. “No harm done. I’ll grow another. Come along.”
    The corridor ended at a balcony overlooking a large hall. There were other galleries and several staircases in view, but the sight lines were insane—carpet on the ceiling and windows in the floor, and two great staircases that didn’t seem to know if they went up or down. Even as she was trying to make sense of it all, Izar went racing along another balcony in the company of a large and woolly dog—except that they were running on the underside of the balcony, upside down.
    Rigel said, “Close your eyes if you have to.”
    She kept them open. He led the way along another balcony and through a door.
    “All this is supposed to be for Izar’s protection,” he said, “but it’s also for mine. There is only the one entrance, and that has five layers of security on it. The building itself sits on a rock in a very turbulent ocean. Can you feel the wind? Sometimes it makes my ears pop. There’s a permanent hurricane blowing outside.”
    “But…How far are we from the palace?”
    “That question means nothing here. You enter by the portal or not at all. The wind and the changes in orientation make it impossible to come in by air, as much as anything is impossible here.”
    “But who wants to kill you so badly?”
    “The Family. I’ll explain more over supper. Hungry?”
    She nodded, then wondered if Escher Castle turned nods into shakes. They went along another corridor, which turned left six times before leading into a courtyard. It had to be open to the sky, because she could smell the sea, and hear wind and crashing surf, yet she felt no draft. She was standing at the bottom of a very long flight of stairs, overlooking a wonderful enclosed garden, with winding paths, fruit trees, humped bridges, paved grottoes half-hidden in flowered shrubs, and an Olympic-size swimming pond, in which the imp was flailing along with his dog paddling close behind. The only problem was that the landscape was all vertical. Izar was swimming straight down .
    “We go up these stairs,” Rigel said, leading the way, “although usually it’s down. Don’t worry about the twists. If they bother you, just close your eyes and wait a few minutes and it will all change. You get the Newcomer Suite, which is as close as we can make it to a first-class earthly hotel. Your maid’s name is Tshuapa. Be gentle with her. One word of criticism and she’ll cower like a scolded dog. I expect you’ll want a swim—”
    “No! I’m cold.”
    “Cold? That’s your human half showing. Well, Tshuapa will draw a hot bath for you and find you whatever you want in the way of clothes. When you’re ready, I’ll meet you by the pool. Get Tshuapa to bring you down. Or up, as the case may be.”

Chapter 7
     
    T shuapa, despite her African-sounding name, turned out to be as Nordic as a glass of akvavit and little more than a child, pathetically eager to please. Avior forced herself to relax, lolling in her titanic veined-marble bathtub, carefully brushing her hair—firmly declining Tshuapa’s pleas to be allowed to help. And the sensory magic worked, helping her bury the terror, the insanity. She could feel the knots untie, the coils unwind, and she felt much better by the time she was ready to dress. Tshuapa had laid out no less than eighteen outfits for her to consider and seemed worried that it might not be enough.
    Swathed in a cosy, long-sleeved gown of blue velvet and a gypsy-style head cloth, Avior was ready for her date with Rigel. When she peered out the door she was happy to discover that