Read Online Castle Perilous by John Dechancie - Free Book Online Page A

grass.
    â€œThat’s what we were talking about,” Snowclaw said, pointing up.
    Gene looked.
    It was a city in the clouds, moving slowly and majestically across the sky. The main structure was a lens-shaped silver disk at least a mile in diameter, studded top and bottom with clear bell-shaped bubbles that housed complex structures within them. The silver disk gleamed brilliantly. The city had come out of a bank of puffy clouds, and now its leading edge cut into another. Gene watched as the clouds enveloped it. The city soared through and began to exit into a clear patch of blue-violet sky.
    Gene shook his head slowly. “I’ve never . . .” He shrugged.
    â€œYeah,” Snowclaw said. He looked at Gene. “Now, what was that about a sailboat?”
    Still transfixed, still awed, Gene delayed answering for a moment. Then he said, “Huh? Oh.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “You better go look for yourself.”
    Snowclaw left the alcove. Linda stayed, leaning her hip against the windowsill and absently resting a hand on Gene’s shoulder.
    â€œBeautiful,” she murmured. “I wonder who they are and how they came to build such a thing.”
    â€œAnd how the hell they did it,” Gene said. “Your genuine antigravity-type flying city. My God.”
    â€œOr is it magic, I wonder?”
    â€œGreat White Stuff!” came Snowclaw’s shout from the next alcove. “Linda, you’ve got to see this.”
    Gene continued to gaze at the airborne marvel until Linda’s squeal drew him away from the window. He walked past his companions and went into the third alcove down.
    Here, again, was a totally different vista, this one of a vast desert of yellow sand wind-combed into furrowed dunes. Dark needles of rock poked up here and there, throwing stark shadows across the sand. Huge winged creatures — they were too big and too strange-looking to be birds — wheeled in a sky washed out by a searing, blue-white sun. With great batlike wings they soared on rising thermals, circling, searching. For some reason Gene didn’t think the object of the search was something that had died.
    The next window looked out on forested mountains, and the drop to the ground was over a hundred feet.
    The three of them began running from alcove to alcove — there were fifteen in all — oohing and ahing, yelling for each other to come look at this or that. There was another seascape, this one of an ocean washing a bone-white beach under a sky of bilious yellow. And another forest, though the vegetation was unearthly, funguslike and strangely colored. There were mountain views, wide aspects of parched wasteland, nightmarish landscapes with odd-colored skies, pleasant vistas of scenic countrysides. One window looked out into almost total blackness — nothing out there but a vague suggestion of looming shadows.
    When Gene went back to catch one more glimpse of the flying city, it was gone. He noticed that the window was slightly higher over the hilltop now. These aspects, it seemed, were not entirely stable.
    He left the alcove and went to join Linda on the divan.
    Snowclaw sat with one leg up over the arm of a carved wooden chair, still musing over what he’d seen. “Crazy,” he said, shaking his head, massive white brow creased into a frown.
    â€œYeah,” Gene agreed. He sat down heavily.
    Linda said, “I was wondering why every time I looked out a window, things looked different. I thought it was just because the castle was so big.”
    Gene said, “You’ve run into this before?”
    â€œYes, but the castle was under me when I looked out. Not like this, floating along up in the air and all. I would have totally lost my mind.”
    Gene considered it. “That might mean that the castle itself exists in other worlds. But not in all of them. Like the one we come from, for instance.”
    â€œNo big castle in my world