I follow the wall around and duck inside the tower. It’s a junction point. I can keep following the wall, or walk over a stone bridge that crosses the courtyard below and head back inside.
The wind snaps at my skirts and I decide that’s enough fresh air for now. I race across the bridge, ducking instinctively even though the arched top of the doorway is ten feet over my head.
It leads into another corridor. Motes of dust dance in big sun rays from the high windows, throwing my shadow on the wall in bursts as I walk. As I go I try to make a mental map, but this place is so complicated, doubling back on itself. Somewhere I should be able to go outside again and make my way into those central towers.
A corridor leads off to my right, into a round room. No, it’s a tower of its own. The path slopes up a bit as I walk inside, lifting my skirt to keep from tripping over it. My pace slows, and my breath catches. Something about this room feels ancient and sepulchral, the air heavy and chillier than it should be.
As I turn slowly around the room, my sense of awe builds until I smile involuntarily. It’s a library, a real castle library. The roof is fifty feet over my head, a dome of painted tiles. A wooden walkway spirals up around the inner wall of the tower, and it’s completely lined with books. A long library table stands in the center, with huge old chairs covered in pillows scattered around the room, each taller than I am by half my height or more.
Closest to the ground, the oldest volumes are bound in ancient, dry leather and are chained to the shelves with heavy wrought iron links. I’m tempted to draw one from the shelf and examine it, but stop myself. It feels like a real transgression to tamper with these. Judging by their looks, they’re probably hand copied, maybe older than the United States itself. Hell, they might be from before the New World was even discovered.
I work my way up. About halfway up, the volumes become more recognizable, with buckram and vellum covers joining the heavy leather, some with titles on the spines, some faded away. They’re in all different languages, Italian, German, some I don’t recognize, English. Near the top I start recognizing the authors’ names.
Closer to the top I find…comic books.
They’re in cardboard magazine holders. Vintage comics. Somebody in this castle is a huge fan of Spider-Man. They have to be, they own an original Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of the character, stored in a plastic bag. One comic book worth probably half a million dollars. I don’t dare touch them, but it looks like whoever collected these snapped up every issue from the very beginning.
I didn’t expect to find paperbacks in the library here, but they’re on the shelf, stacked up to maximize the space and nested on top of each other. Dust clings to each one, like they haven’t been touched for a while.
One of the wooden columns has been defaced, marked. Somebody carved something into it with a dull blade. I run my fingers around the edge and frown. It can’t be.
It’s a heart with initials inside. K + C.
The prince could be K. Who’s C?
The gently sloping walkway leads up to one last floor.
There’s only one shelf here and something about it unnerves me. There are maybe fifty books, all about the same size, each bound in a weird, pale leather that sort of looks like pigskin, but isn’t. I don’t know what it is, but looking at it makes my skin crawl. They’re enclosed in glass, and I turn around before I start getting too much of an urge to examine them.
I yawn as I reach the bottom, startling myself as the sound echoes. It bounces off the walls and sounds almost like laughter.
More than ever I suddenly feel like an intruder, like someone up on the balcony I can’t see is watching me. I rush back out into the corridor and start walking again, and stop after I realize I’ve lost track of where I am. I can’t remember if I turned left into the library, or right.
The walls and tapestries here give me no help, so again I walk.
After what feels like hours, I sit on a bench for a while until my aching feet feel better, then walk some more. This place is enormous. It feels like it would take days to explore it all.
I turn a corner and pass through a pair of open doors then stop and back out. I don’t know if this is the armory, but it feels that way. Suits of armor line the walls on both sides of a huge room that ends in a massive oaken throne, the back carved with the phoenix arms that the prince bears on his armor and cloak.
I can’t help but look, at least a little. The armor closest to the door is just armor—steel plates fixed onto wooden mannequin-frames, and all weirdly small, like the guys who wore them were less than six feet tall. Farther away they…change. Get more elaborate. Nearest the big throne stand suits of armor like I saw him wear last night, and one strange one.