Trent lit a small brown cigar and puffed on it. “After thirty years, you decide to do this. Why?”
Incarnadine shrugged. “Any number of reasons. I miss New York … I miss this world. Lots of memories here.” He smiled. “I thought you might have been stranded here when the spell stabilizing the gateway went on the fritz.”
Trent looked hard at him. “You thought. And it takes you thirty years to decide to find out for sure?”
“What is time to a spawn of Castle Perilous? Sorry. Were you stranded? Are you?”
“You said yourself that you found the thing floating in the sky. Where did it leave out?”
“About three thousand feet over the East River.”
Trent whistled. “And you were flying a magical contrivance?” He shook his head. “Tough spot to be in.”
“Yeah. I’d really forgotten how hard it was to practice the Recondite Arts around here.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, when the plane dissolved, I tried just about everything on the way down. At about three seconds to impact I tried a simple protection spell, and that saved the day. And my hide. I hit pretty hard, though. Fortunately, it was only a few strokes swimming to shore. I didn’t get a drop on me.”
“You were lucky. Still, I wonder why you risked it.”
“We’ve been getting a lot of Guests from here in the past few years. Some of them would like a way back. I’m here to see if I can establish a permanent gateway again.”
Trent’s pale brow rose. “You did it for the Guests? Those losers?”
“It’s the least I could do. I would have seen to it long ago, but — one, I’ve been busy. Two, most of the Guests like the castle and want to stay. But some don’t, and I thought we owed them.”
“How about all the rest?”
“Some have stabilized gateways. The others … well, someday I mean to do something for them, too.”
“Most of those damn holes should have been plugged long ago,” Trent said, scowling. “The place is nothing but a big, drafty fun house.”
“Do you realize how much power it would take to keep all the aspects sealed up? Keeping the particularly nasty ones shut up uses enough already.”
Trent chewed his cigar. “Well, I’m no expert on castle magic.” He took the cigar out and tapped the ash into a ceramic tray. “So, you say it never occurred to you to find out what happened to me.”
“I’m embarrassed to say that although I certainly wondered, I always thought you could take care of yourself in any situation.”
“I see.” Trent’s smile formed a small crescent. “Actually it was years before I discovered the gateway had skedaddled. I like it here, as you knew.”
“One of the reasons I never really worried about you.”
“Well, you were never very solicitous of my welfare.”
“Nor you of mine, Trent.”
Trent grunted. “Let’s be frank. We were rivals for the throne. Dad favored you, and that’s all there was to it.” Trent tapped out the cigar. “Look. We have lots to talk about. Let’s drive out to my place. We’ll have dinner, hash over old times. What do you say?”
“Sounds friendly.”
“It is, Inky. Wait a minute.” Trent got up, parted the curtain, and called out: “I’m leaving early. I’ll drive. Get a cab home.”
“Yes, Mr. Trent.”
Trent unhooked a camel’s-hair overcoat from an antique coat tree and pulled it on. “Let’s go.”
The car was a blue Mercedes sedan, meticulously polished and parked next to a sign that read ABSOLUTELY NO PARKING.
“Hell of a nice car to leave on the street,” Incarnadine remarked.
“I have a few friends on the police force who look after it for me.”
“Nice to have friends.”
They got in and Trent started it up and headed east.
“I’m surprised you still have the old shop. Still need a front?”
“Nah, not really. You were very lucky to find me there. My employees open the place up maybe two, three days a week. Most of my business is strictly legitimate these days. Real estate, stocks, the usual. The shop’s still a good write-off, though.” He chuckled. “I’ve been depreciating the same inventory for decades.”
“Still deal in art?”
“My old hobby. I own a gallery on the West Side. Keeps the creative juices flowing.” Trent honked at a taxi that cut in front of him. “Tell me this, why the hell didn’t you try to stabilize the aspect from the other side? Why did you risk coming through and getting stranded?”
“I tried everything I could think of back home, but nothing worked. Something’s changed. The stresses between the two universes have shifted over the years. It’s not the same. Probably why the old spell failed.”
Trent nodded. “I see.” He made a series of lefts and rights, then turned north on First Avenue.
They were in the midtown tunnel when Trent asked, “Do you think you can tunnel back?”
“I’m going to give it the old college try. If I flunk out … can you take on a new employee?”
Five
Ice Island
Snowclaw had been kneeling all day on an ice floe, waiting for a huge sea animal called the jhalrakk to come within range of his harpoon. But the jhalrakk had other ideas. It was content to stay where it was, just out of reach, half submerged in the shallow icy waters of the inlet. It had been feeding all day, ingesting vast quantities of water and filtering out what was edible. Only when it had its fill would it move out to sea again, and maybe — just maybe — its course would take it near Snowy’s position.
Snowclaw knew it was a big jhalrakk (the word was sort of a growl, done with a snap of the jaws). He’d wanted to bag a big one all his life. This might be his chance.
It was cold. It was always cold here; the perennial question was how cold. Today, it was very cold. Bone-freezing cold. You had to watch when you took a leak outside, so as not to wind up stuck to one end of a pisscicle. It was cold.
Snowclaw hadn’t moved for a very long time. Slowly he brought his four-digited hand to his belly, where the fur was a little thinner and finer than that which covered the rest of him, but just as milk-white. Bone-white claws extruded from the ends of his fingers. He scratched carefully, exhaling.
His feet, which were huge and padded with thick spongelike tissue at sole and heel, were cold. His left knee was cold. His butt was cold.
Damn, he thought. I’m cold.
He didn’t know whether he’d be better off bagging the jhalrakk or not. If he did, he’d be all night gutting it, cutting it, and dragging the carcass back to his shack. And tomorrow would go to rendering blubber, seasoning hide, and doing a hundred different other things with all the products and by-products that jhalrakks produced. He didn’t look forward to any of that; it was all hard work. He just might freeze if he had to stay outdoors any longer. On the other hand, if he didn’t bag something soon, he would starve. But at least he wouldn’t have to break his back doing all that damn work.
It had been a very lean hunting season. He needed a little luck, or he didn’t know what he was going to do.
The jhalrakk suddenly began moving. Snowclaw tensed, his left hand coming up to grip the front of the harpoon’s shaft, his right moving back along its length.
The jhalrakk was heading straight for the floe. Snowclaw rose to a crouch and brought the point of the harpoon in line with the sharp, spiny back of the jhalrakk as it cut through the water, steaming toward him like a great ship, the kind Snowclaw would spy far out to sea sometimes. The spine rose, revealing the broad rubbery expanse of the beast’s flanks. Then the head came out of the water. Its six eyes seemed to focus right on Snowclaw. The beast’s great maw opened, revealing row on row of needlelike teeth.