The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

Days had gone by. I had lost count of them. I had quartered the valley in search of the monument of Thandbar. I had searched and had begun to despair, for who was to say the monument had not moved always before me, or behind me? I had not seen a human form since Sambeline had flown away. I had wondered from time to time whether they used the human form only on some ceremonial occasions for some purpose of high ritual in the pursuance of their religion, whatever that might be. In any case, they did not show human form to me. I saw animals which were not animals, things apparently of stone and earth which were not, trees and plants which never sprouted from seed or tuber, but I did not see mankind. Even furred-Peter was far closer to his reality than many others there.

So, when I came upon the Castle, lit from a hundred windows, with a soft breath of music stirring from it into the airs of the night, I was needful more than I could say of that refreshment which comes from one’s own kind. I was growing unsure of who I was, what I was. Was I only furred-Peter, running wild in the wilderness, an animal among others, gradually forgetting why I had come and to what end? I needed to be more than that.

So it called me where it stood upon its hill, brooding there over the silvered meadows, its great ornamental pillars contorted into bulbous asymmetries, casting lakes of shadow onto the grasses before me, making swamps of darkness within its courts. Its doors were open, welcoming. There was no warning. It was grotesque, misshapen, abnormal, but not fearsome. I was too lonely to be fearful. I shifted into a more civilized form, relishing the feel of clothing again, the weight of a cloak upon my shoulders. I had learned that clothing was no problem. One simply made it of the same stuff one used to make one’s skin. I walked under the arch, hands empty to show I was no enemy. Here was no portcullis to grind gratingly into stone pockets, no bridge to fall thunderingly upon the pavement. No, only an open way. the floor a mosaic design which swirled and warped, leading away in unexpected directions, returning from unexpected shifts and erratic lines. Looking at it made my head swim, but I told myself it was hunger for talk, for people, for a fire, for food that was cooked, for the trappings of humanity. The name of the place was carved over the great door. “Castle Lament.” Well, A name without cheer, but not for that reason damnable. I had been in other places with sad names.

The door swung wider before me, and I went through. Then it shut behind me.

How can I describe that sound? The door was not huge, no larger than in many great halls. It shut softly but with the sound of a door twenty times its size, a monstrous slam as of a mighty hammer, slightly clamoring, briefly echoing, fading into a silence which still reverberated with that sound, and all down the monstrous bulk of that place came the sound of other doors shutting with an equal finality, an inevitable shutting which I could not have imagined until that moment. I was shut in. I turned to beat my hands against the door, then stopped, afraid of what might come in answer to that knocking, for the sound of closing had been like jaws snapping shut, like hands clapping around fluttering wings, to hold, and hold, and hold until hope went, and life. It was the sound teeth might make, fastening in a throat.

I was terribly afraid, so afraid that I did nothing for a long moment, scarcely breathed, crouched where I was, peering into the place, seeing it as in a nightmare. At last I moved.

There were stairs which climbed from the audience hall over bottomless pits of black, arching against pillars to coil, snakelike, about them and climb upward to high pavements littered with a thousand half carved heads of stone which smiled at me and begged me in the voices of children for food, for the light of the sun, for escape. They rolled after me as I walked among them, pleading. I slipped through a door and shut it against their clamor, against the insistent knocking of the stone heads against the door.