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Authors: Elizabeth Winthrop

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BOOK: The Castle in the Attic
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“Enough,” he growled. “That will do, won't it, Calendar?”

“Aye, my lord,” croaked a voice from the corner, and William looked over to see the bent shape of an old woman. “Order him to perform,” she said.

The wizard nodded at him. William stepped back to the entrance of the room. He would use the beginning of his routine for the meet. But no Arabians. He wasn't ready for that. For a moment, he stood with his eyes closed, centering his body. He thought of Robert's voice. To succeed, William knew that everything else—the smoky room, the wizard's angry eyes, the guards' curious stares—had to drop away.

“Perform, fool,” the wizard ordered, his deep voice bouncing off the walls of the room.

Ready, go . . . round off, whip back, reach for the back handspring, he had the rhythm and the speed for the second pass. Another round-off, then a perfect layout somersault with a full twist, which was ruined only by the clatter of his falling dagger. The guard leaped forward and snatched it from the floor before William could retrieve it himself.

“Most interesting,” the wizard said. “A fool who travels with a dagger.” William said nothing. He was sure the wizard could hear the pounding of his heart, but he did not let the fear show in his face. “What do you think, Calendar?” asked the wizard.

The old woman shuffled forward and inspected the weapon, putting it up to her nose and sniffing it. “No blood,” she muttered, handing it back to her master. “But how did he get past the dragon?”

“Well, fool, you heard the question,” the wizard muttered.

William opened his mouth and shut it again. He had no idea what to answer. He stared at his feet, hoping they would help him decide which answer was the safest one.

Before he spoke, he heard the soldier's voice behind him.

“When he stated his business, we directed him to
the side entrance, my lord. We knew you were looking for a fool.”

The wizard's eyes came to rest for a moment on the soldier. Nobody in the room moved.

“Very well, then. We shall keep the dagger for you, young Muggins,” the wizard said. “That way you won't be tempted to use it, will you?”

“No, sir,” William ventured warily.

“Come with me, fool. I have something to show you.”

William picked up his belt and followed the silver robes. They reminded him for a moment of Sir Simon, but again he shook the thought away. Calendar scuttled along behind them, sniffing at him occasionally like a curious dog. They went out a back door behind the wizard's chair, down a sloping, narrow corridor, and through a series of stoutly fastened doors, each opened by a guard and closed again behind them. At last, they arrived in a large gallery hall whose walls were lined with statues.

“These are my pets,” the wizard said with an eerie smile. “Take a closer look at them, fool.”

This was the room that William had heard about, the place where the wizard displayed his lead people. William walked slowly around the edges of the room, forcing himself to look into each face. He saw old men and children, fearful faces and kind ones, wide,
staring eyes, arrested in the middle of a plea or a protest or a prayer. The wizard was talking to him, boasting about some of his best prizes, a visiting prince and a wily priest. When William came to the last two figures, he put his hand over his mouth to stifle his scream of horror. It was the Silver Knight and the son of the apple-tree man. So the whispers he had heard on the road were true. His beloved Sir Simon had been defeated again. When the wizard came and stood beside him, William held himself very still. Even in the midst of his despair, he knew he must mask the fear and fury that raged within him.

“This is my most recent prize, an old enemy who has tried to take my kingdom before. It was rumored that he would return one day with a boy, and so he has. But neither one of them shall bother me again,” Alastor crowed. “The Silver Knight has been defeated, and in honor of his destruction, I have chosen to wear silver myself.”

At that moment he put his hand up to his neck, and William caught a glimpse of the two medals hanging from the necklace. There at last was the token, the prize he had come all this way to get. It was so close now that he toyed with the idea of reaching up and snatching the medal from around the wizard's neck before anybody could stop him. Could he do it? He glanced about the room. The two guards standing at
the door saw his look and took a step forward with their lances ready. He would have to bide his time.

The old wizard fingered the woven ribbon nervously for a moment and then tucked it out of sight again as if he could read William's mind. “You stole one of my precious little treasures from me, but I shall have it back someday,” Alastor said, speaking now to Sir Simon's face, which was frozen in an expression of anger mixed with surprise. The wizard glanced at William with an odd smile.

“Come with me, fool. I have decided to let you stay because I need the sight of a new face to cheer me. This old crone annoys me, though I've gotten used to her company,” he said, pushing Calendar out of the way. “If you please me more, I shall add her to my gallery. But if you do not please me enough, I shall add you.” The wizard turned a withering glare on William, who looked away. He followed the silver-robed man back down the series of corridors, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other. With the Silver Knight imprisoned in lead once more, William was left alone to defeat the wizard. How was he ever going to do that?

A soldier showed William to a small, dark room near the gallery.

“You're to take your meals in your room. The wizard
does not sleep well, so you will become used to waking at all hours.”

“It's so dark down here, I think I'll lose all sense of time anyway,” William said wearily. “Are you my guard?” he asked, looking more closely at the soldier. The man's mouth was almost entirely hidden by a large white mustache. His face was stern and forbidding, but the eyes that looked at William from beneath the metal helmet were kind.

“Yes.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but after a moment, he turned abruptly on his heel and left the room. The door closed, and the bolts were shot across on the other side.

William looked around his prison. The only light in the room came from two torches attached to the wall. His bed, a straw pallet on the floor, was shoved into one corner, and a rough table and stool stood in the other. He sat down on the stool and emptied the contents of his pouch on to the table. One recorder, one pair of binoculars, one stale piece of bread. That was it.

“All right, Mrs. Phillips,” he whispered to the wall. “I'm in the castle. And I'm all alone.”

With his head in his hands, he closed his eyes and tried to imagine her, sitting in her chamber in the castle, poking the needle in and out of the canvas, standing up to stir the fire. If he did not succeed here, she
would wait for him from one day to the next, until all her food had run out, until she was too tired to walk to the gatehouse tower to watch for him, until . . . He shook his head to drive away his worst thoughts. At last, he put everything back in the pouch and, using it for a pillow, he went to sleep.

CHAPTER 15

In the next few days, William realized that the wizard was more eager for an audience than for a fool. The old man seemed to relish the hours when he could trap William and tell him tales of the particularly evil spells he'd cast, of the bad children he'd turned into toads, and the young women he'd changed into crones. When the wizard told him about the apple-tree man, William smiled to himself, knowing Dick had been freed.

But Alastor did seem amused by William's tumbling. He wanted to know the names of all the tricks, and for the next few days, he spent long hours putting William through various strings of exercises.

“Now do a round-off, a whip-back, and a back handspring,” he would say.

If William objected because he was too tired or if
he could not force his body into the gyrations Alastor required, the wizard would go into a rage, shrieking at his fool.

“I control you. You must do as I say, Muggins. Do not cross me or I shall put you in the gallery,” Alastor would scream.

He was a tougher taskmaster than either Robert or Mrs. Phillips. William knew if he ever got home, he would be in perfect shape for his meet.

William's guard, whose name was Brian, understood after a few days that his prisoner had no wish to escape from the castle, so he allowed him to roam more freely about the place.

“Keep out of Alastor's way,” Brian warned. “And the old crone too. The wizard has sucked out her heart and replaced it with a stone. The only thing that can be said for her is that she hates him too. You can see it in her eyes when she watches him.”

“Why don't you band together to overpower him?” William asked.

“He divides us so that each is rewarded if he carries tales of another. And all of us are afraid that we shall end up in the gallery. Now that the Silver Knight has been captured again, we have no hope left.”

William decided to say no more.

One morning about a week after William had arrived, he was summoned to the wizard's chambers. A
young man stood in front of the wizard's throne, his hands bound in front of him.

“Ah, my fool has come,” Alastor announced, his shoulder jerking faster than usual. “Now we can begin. Muggins, this man was found cutting down a tree for firewood. The summer is over and the wind is blowing up out of the northwest. This man says his children are cold, but cutting down trees is against the law, is it not?”

The man spat to one side. “That is what I think of this wizard's laws,” he muttered. “The wizard would have us starve and freeze. Soon there will be no person left in this godforsaken kingdom to follow his laws.”

“Silence!”
Alastor screamed, rising from his chair. “How dare you speak, you churlish scoundrel.” He snatched the necklace from under his robes and pointed something at the man. As William watched, the man began to turn to lead. He screamed and clawed at his legs.

“Stop it,” William cried, reaching out to take the man's hands.

He was pulled back by Brian. “Don't touch him or you'll be next,” the soldier whispered in his ear.

“There, Muggins,” the wizard spat when the man fell to the floor, a twisted metal statue. “A little demonstration for your further education. Now get away from me, all of you. Your faces sicken me.”

The room was emptied in seconds. “I hate him,” William said to Brian as they took the dark corridor back down to his room.

“Hate has no magic in it,” Brian muttered. “We need magic to defeat him.”

“Have you seen him do that before?”

The man nodded. Through the holes in his helmet, William could see the tears standing in the old soldier's eyes. “Too many times to count. Other people's agonies are the only pleasure Alastor takes from life.”

When the wizard didn't need him, William spent long hours pacing the corridors, trying to devise a plan. He knew he had to get the necklace from around Alastor's neck, but he could not think how. He found himself drawn to the gallery of lead people again and again. He went always to stand in front of the Silver Knight and stare into his eyes, as if they held the secret to the wizard's defeat.

“What did you do?” he asked one afternoon. “March up to the castle waving your broad sword? What made you think evil like that could be struck down with an ordinary weapon?”

“Sir Simon's subjects gave him away,” said a voice beside William. He turned, and to his horror he saw that Calendar had slunk up behind him. “The old wizard has spies everywhere who are so scared of him that
they do whatever he tells them.”

William listened to her raspy whisper without moving. The old woman knew now that he was acquainted with the Silver Knight. Would she tell Alastor? She began to speak again in such a low voice that he had to lean closer to hear her.

“When Alastor heard the Silver Knight was coming up the main road, he went out to meet him. Before Simon could lift his sword, the wizard pulled out the lead disk and froze him.” She covered her eyes. “I had to watch it happening to him for a second time. Then he took the boy too. The people stood on the side of the road, their faces all twisted in despair.” Suddenly her voice changed. “They are fools all of them. There is only one way to defeat Alastor.”

William still didn't speak. He willed her to go on.

“But why should I tell you my secrets?” she asked. “Why shouldn't I save them for myself? Then the revenge shall be all mine.”

William took a chance. “Because this is your grandson, Calendar,” he whispered, nodding his head at the lead boy. “This is your daughter's son.”

Her head swiveled back to the boy, and she stared into his blank, gray eyes. “The baby boy, the sickly one,” she cried.

William grabbed her by the arms. “What is the secret? How do I defeat Alastor?”

BOOK: The Castle in the Attic
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