Corbenic Read Free

heavy and sopping. He was almost running down the dark leafy tunnel of the lane.
    And finally, around the bend, the hedge became a wall, a high red-brick wall smothered with glossy wet ivy, the trees behind it black and ominous. He squelched alongside it, seeing how the track was a mire of mud here, and at the muddiest place of all he found a wooden door, and above that a sign that swung and creaked and dripped on his face.
    CASTLE HOTEL
    CORBENIC
    The letters were worn, and rain-streaked. Below them, cracked and badly painted, was the pub sign, but instead of a castle all it showed was a crooked yellow chalice. And hanging from that on rusty hooks, swinging so wildly he could barely make it out, a tiny addition read:
    VACANCIES

Chapter Two
    A sorry figure in a court so distinguished as that.
    Peredur
    T here was nothing to knock, but his groping fingers found a latch under the dripping screen of ivy; he lifted it, and the door opened. Beyond the arch was a shadowy garden, blackened by frost. Bare branches dripped onto a gravel path. The trees were dead or leafless.
    Cal stepped through, holding the door open. It didn’t look promising, and it was too quiet. Maybe the place was closed up. Out of season. Maybe they were all in bed.
    He let the door swing behind him with a soft clink. He’d find out. There was no way he was walking back up that lane.
    The gravel crunched under his feet. On each side of the dim path small statues peered from among the withered plants: peculiarly crouched animals, bears and cats and tiny foxes whose eyes gleamed fleetingly in wet faces. He passed them quietly, choked with an odd feeling of excitement. The rich stink of the clotting leaves seeming sharper here, the watching animals tense, as if ready to pounce on his back. It made him remember a picture in a book he’d seen when he was small, of a garden of sleeping princes all tangled in thorns, and beyond them, high and gray and sinister, the walls of the castle, with one light in a high window. He had forgotten it till now. For a second, he remembered how the story had made him feel, the flavor of it.
    There was a light here too. It flickered through the branches; he had to bend down and peer ahead to see it, because the trees were so tangled and low, and for a moment he thought it was a bundle of burning wooden sticks in a bracket on the wall. But pushing through the stiff branches he found that the trees grew right up to the stonework and at the path’s end was a black wrought-iron lantern with a dim electric bulb inside.
    Above him the house was a shadow. He couldn’t even make out what it looked like, except that it was big, and old, and ivy covered the walls. Over the door a sort of mock portcullis jabbed its pointed spikes down at him. There was a porch, littered in the corner with heaps of windblown leaves and, at last, a bellpull with a heavy, faceted knob, swinging in the wind. Cal caught it in his numbed fingers; water dripped from it, cold as ice, the night silent around him. For a moment he stood there, undecided, afraid of the place, of who might be there.
    Then he pulled the bell. It jangled deep inside the building. Lights came on; they flooded his face and he saw the panels of the door were stained glass, a rainbow patchwork of knights and horses, their heraldry bright with golds and blues and scarlet. Upstairs windows lit; he heard voices, the sound of some sort of horn or trumpet, the rattle and clatter of dishes. For a moment he almost felt he had wakened the place from a centuries-long sleep; then he noticed the stone at the end of the bellpull in his hand was as red and glittering as a ruby, and stared at it in amazement.
    The door opened. Warmth came out and embraced him; for a second the relief of that was so great he couldn’t speak. A woman stood there, tall and gray-haired, wearing a long dress of some rich velvet. “Welcome to the Castle,” she said gently.
    He had his speech all ready.