The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [78]
The blue lanterns illuminated only a small circle around them, and they soon felt that the glacier had become a huge wall, rising infinitely high into the darkness, first on their right side, then on the left, as they passed back and forth over the gradually-increasing slope. It was dangerous; Valentine slipped several times, and was spared a frozen trip back down the mountain only because of his death-grip on the robe. Beckett, who was mindful of how age and illness had made him much less agile than his partner, took only slow, measured, careful steps, despite the chill that threatened to murder him.
Two miles in a straight line was five miles along the zigzag trail that had been left in the glacier, and the two coroners almost cried with relief when Gotheray Castle appeared out of the darkness; unlit, it was illumined suddenly when they grew close enough to cast the weak light from their lanterns on it. The mountain of ice rose up immeasurably high behind the castle; it looked like the glacier had washed down the side of the mountain and half-buried Gotheray in ice.
There was another, frustrating half an hour of being able to see the castle in the darkness, but being forced along the indirect path across the glacier to reach it. When they finally obtained the castle’s stone landing, Beckett and Valentine found the doors—ponderously heavy but unlocked—which were at the top of a stone stair leading right out up from the glacier. Unlocked doors stood to reason, Beckett supposed, as Gotheray Castle’s location made it an unlikely target for burglars.
Gotheray Castle, hunching on the glacial mountainside like a tired predator, was built during the fifteenth century, long before the Architecture War in Trowth. It reflected the spirit of the times: before the Second Reconciliation of the Continental Powers, Trowth was in a perpetual state of war with its innumerable neighbors like Thranc, Sarein, and Sarpek. Castles, even castles that were meant to be summer palaces, were built first as fortresses, and Gotheray was certainly that. It was squat, with narrow windows that had recently been fixed with glass panes and copper shutters. Its walls were thick granite; the main door led through a tunnel into the house proper, a tunnel that could potentially be defended indefinitely by only a handful of men. Beckett and Valentine walked down the long tunnel, rubbing their hands and chests, trying to work blood back into circulation.
The two coroners found the castle stiflingly hot. Though none of the lamps were lit, a wave of dry heat poured down the entrance tunnel of the castle. By the time they reached the end of the tunnel, Valentine had stripped down to his shirtsleeves, and Beckett had tucked both winter coat and his overcoat under his arm. The two men left the excess outerwear in a pile in the main hall.
“Have they installed a furnace, do you think?” Valentine asked, trying to make out the details of the main hall in the places where the faint blue phlogiston light touched on them.
The heat shimmered across Beckett’s eyes, and for a moment he found himself unaccountably reminded of the gleaming, melted towers in the City of Brass. “No,” he replied, curtly.
Valentine stood in the center of the huge, hollow empty hall, surrounded by the circle of light cast from his lantern. His shadow was thrown long on the floor. “So…what do we do? I don’t think there’s anyone here.”
Beckett nodded. “It doesn’t look like it. So. We start looking. You know anything about castles like this?”
Valentine scratched at his chin. “Well, in the old days, there wasn’t a lot of consistency to design. I’d guess that most of the living spaces are near the center of the building. And there’s probably a basement.”
“Down. Sounds about right. Let’s see if we can find a stair.”
They began to search, hands out and lightly resting on the walls, as they opened doors, and explored down hallways,