The soldier, a former member of the castle patrol, looked down at the water running past his legs, his right hand still firmly over his eye.
There were arrests, executions, massacres, and melees. Who caused this madness? Who broke the enchantment?
Ico remembered the bridge across the grand hall in the castle where he had seen the hanged people. Was that one of the executions the soldier spoke of? Had the people of the castle gone to war against each other?
It had to be the queen’s plan. This was her doing.
It explained why the armies of Zagrenda-Sol had found no one upon their invasion of the castle. Everyone was already dead-executed or simply killed in open combat.
“Was there no one who resisted, no one who kept their sanity?”
The guard slowly shook his helmeted head.
“And you? Who put you in here? Did they survive?”
The soldier lifted his face and finally removed his hand, showing Ico the empty socket from which his eye had been gouged out.
Everyone died.
The words rang in Ico’s mind. When they had faded, Ico was alone again. Nothing remained to indicate what he had seen, save that his shoulder was cold and slightly damp where the soldier had touched him.
For a while Ico just stood there, unable to move. His limbs felt heavy, while sadness and anger whirled inside him. He gripped his Mark so tightly he thought the fabric might rip, and when at last he released his hand and looked back up, he felt tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Ico blinked and wiped them away. Now is no time for crying.
If this place had been a prison, there would be no exit, which meant no way down toward the ground floor of the castle. He jumped and managed to climb back up through the ventilation shaft where he had first entered, back out onto the surface. The sun beat down on him, warming his waterlogged skin. Ico stood, letting the life flow back into his limbs, before calling out for Yorda.
She had gone quite a distance. He had to backtrack a significant way, stopping to call out every few paces. When at last he found Yorda, the sight of her slender frame sent a stab of pain through Ico’s chest as he remembered the girl he had seen in the water.
He reached his hand out to her.
“Did you know there was a prison down there?”
Yorda took his hand, flinching at the question.
“I saw it. The ghost told me that when the enchantment over the castle was broken, they started killing each other. No one survived.” He wasn’t trying to blame Yorda, but he couldn’t help the sharpness in his voice. “I saw a vision back in the tower after I lowered your cage. It was an old man, a scholar, wearing a long robe. He was angry about something-that must’ve been from after the enchantment was broken, otherwise how would he have gotten into the tower?”
Yorda nodded quietly.
“Was that Master Suhal?”
Yorda nodded again. Her eyes were dry, but the pale glow that seemed to emanate from inside her had dimmed. Maybe, Ico thought, when Yorda is weak, the power of the Book of Light within her grows weaker too.
“So when the enchantment was broken,” Ico said, “Master Suhal learned what the queen had been up to in the Tower of Winds. That’s why he was angry. It was probably the first time he learned the true cause of the king’s death. Or maybe, it was less like learning and more like remembering.
“But what I don’t get,” Ico continued, “is why Master Suhal was still sane. Why didn’t he go crazy like everyone else in the castle? What happened to him when everyone was killing each other?”
Even as his lips asked the question, the answer rose in Ico’s heart. Master Suhal had been killed in the ensuing chaos. No matter how rational he might have remained, a single old man would not have been able to stand up to a garrison full of bloodthirsty soldiers.
“What was it the queen said-something about the Dark God feeding off people’s greed and malice?” Ico looked up at Yorda. “I bet the queen works the same way. That’s why when you got hold of the Book of Light, she had to release everyone under her enchantment. She made them kill each other to increase her power!” The more Ico thought about it, the more it made sense. “She used up the sacrifices she had been saving for the Dark God’s revival-she consumed them herself.”
And then the queen had fled from the searching eyes of Zagrenda-Sol, hiding somewhere in the castle.
The mystery was what had happened next. If the queen had gone into hiding, how did the Castle in the Mist become what it was today? Something even more terrible must have happened to place the queen back on her throne as master of the castle, in a position where she could demand the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire to provide her with new sacrifices from Ozuma’s descendants.
Yorda knew what had happened, as did the shades in the tower.
Only Ico was still in the dark.
Back in the outside corridor, Ico found a way to climb up to a higher level and spent the next several minutes helping Yorda up. They were inside again. He knew he was back in the castle proper, yet this place was completely unfamiliar to him. He found he preferred the outside corridor. Even if he knew it was a dead end, being out in the sun was better than wandering through these labyrinthine passages. They walked along, stone walls on either side, passing through several rooms where the air hung chilly and still. Despite his best intentions, Ico discovered that they were going up again. Every room seemed to have a rise in it up to a higher platform, and all the stairs went up. They were getting ever farther away from the underground pier.
Every time they came to a terrace, he made a point of stopping to look at the view and take in a deep breath-but he was still no clearer as to where in the castle he was. Everywhere he looked seemed unfamiliar.
He continued on. Fatigue had begun to gnaw at him, and then he came to a large window and spotted one of the giant celestial spheres that stood beside the main gate. He could only see the very top of its orb from where he stood, but still his heart leapt.
The sun was already beginning to slant in the sky, by which Ico could tell that the sphere he was looking at was the one on the eastern side of the gate.
Images from half-remembered visions flooded Ico’s mind.
“Yorda!” he called out. The girl was several paces away, having stayed behind when he ran up to the window. “If we can make it over there, we’ll reach the Eastern Arena-the celestial sphere’s right next to it!” Ico stopped. Why was the celestial sphere important again?
Another image flitted through his consciousness: curved dishes rotating, the brilliant sun, and a great groaning of wood and stone.
Of course! Ico clapped his hands with excitement. When the light from the mirror-dishes hits the spheres on the east and west sides, the gates open!
Pleased at even this hint of progress, and that his many visions of the castle seemed to be making more sense to him now, Ico grabbed Yorda’s hand and resumed walking briskly, checking out every window they passed to make sure he was still heading toward the eastern sphere.
Soon, more of the sphere came into view-then they hit another dead end.
It was a terrace, wide and grassy, that extended from the side of the castle with no corridors or stairs, save some leading up to what looked like a viewing platform on the right-hand side. Ico’s attention, however, was entirely captured by a separate building standing at the edge of the terrace, facing away from them.
It was a windmill. Ico had heard of these being used near the capital. Mechanically, they were similar to the waterwheel that ran on the river outside Toksa Village. The water, or in this case, the wind, turned a shaft that was used to do something else, like rotate a grindstone to grind wheat. He couldn’t imagine what this mill was used for. Its position high up in the corner of the castle, far from a granary or field, did not seem like an ideal placement. He went up to the edge of the terrace and looked down, seeing the tops of trees far below. Behind him, the Castle in the Mist rose, its walls stretching even higher than the top of the windmill.