With Korfius in dog form, Collins' companions discussed the upcoming castle break in freely. Caught up in the plans, Collins listened and joined in eagerly. Though the approach changed several times, the idea that he might not succeed never entered the conversations. Heartened by his companions' confidence, Collins found himself just as certain that he would prevail. The crystal would make it back to Prinivere, she would open the portal, and he would return home to face the consequences of his absence-gladly. He only wished he could take his new friends with him. The image this conjured made him laugh. Wouldn't that be interesting? He curled up to sleep, dreaming of castle spires and a talking plesiosaur entrenched in a moat of blood.
Early the following morning, Ialin raced back to Collins and his friends: a rat, a horse, and a dog. "It's just ahead."
"The castle?"
"Yes, the castle." Impatience touched Ialin's tone, his small, thin body in constant motion. "Up ahead. Come look."
As Collins went to do so, the other man added, "Carefully, now."
Collins obediently moved slowly in the indicated direction, trying to avoid crackling leaves and snapping twigs.
Ialin pranced an anxious circle around him. "Come on."
Collins stopped, studying the little man. "I can be quick or careful, not both. Choose."
Ialin sighed. "Careful." He flitted ahead, still clearly fretful, though he no longer rushed the only other companion in human form. He paused to peer through a gap in the foliage.
Collins counted Ialin shifting from foot to foot seven times in the few seconds it took him to come up beside the hummingbird/man. He wondered if the speeding metabolism required by a quick and tiny bird extended to his human form and made the world seem to move that much slower. He glanced through the gap, vision obscured in serrated chaos by overhanging leaves. Not far ahead, the forest opened to a vast plain of grass grazed by sheep, cows, and goats in a myriad array of colors. Chickens and ducks waddled through the herd, scooping up the bugs dislodged by shambling hooves.
Beyond the animals, a ring of brackish water surrounded a high stone wall with teethlike turrets and circular platforms. An even taller wall peeked over the first, visible only as jagged shadows. Above it all rose the castle, looking very much like the pictures Collins remembered from the postcards of friends who had chosen world travel over higher education. Each corner held a square-shaped tower that loomed over the turreted, rectangular roof. Every part was constructed of mortared stone blocks. It looked exactly as Ialin had described it, yet it defied all of Collins' expectations. The grandeur held him spellbound, struck by the work that must have gone into its construction, the eerie aura of power that accompanied a living fossil. The pictures his friends had sent were of crumbling ruins that barely compared with the reality of a functioning, real-time castle. "Wow," he said.
Ialin loosed a sound, half-snort and half-giggle. "Zylas said you were a people of few words, but I never realized just how few."
Collins tried to explain, gaze locked on the castle of Barakhai. "It's amazing. I've never seen anything like it."
Ialin withdrew, and Collins followed. "Where does your king live?"
As Collins returned to his animal companions, he tried to explain, "We don't have a king. We have a president who's elected-"
Ialin made a gesture to indicate he did not understand.
"We pick him."
"Who's we?" Ialin asked suspiciously, sliding the pack from Falima's withers. He eased it to the ground.
"We." Collins made a broad gesture to indicate everyone. "The people. All of us." It was not true in the strictest sense, as the 2000 presidential election could attest, but Collins had no intention of explaining the electoral college to a man struggling with the meaning of "vote."
Ialin dragged the pack deeper into the forest. "Regular people picked your leader?"
In rat form, Zylas galloped after Ialin. Korfius thrust his damp, icy nose into Collins' palm.
"Pick," Collins corrected the tense and scratched behind Korfius' ears. His family had always had a dog and at least one cat. His current lifestyle did not lend itself to pets, but he hoped to get one of each as soon as he graduated. "Every four years, we decide on a new one."
"And everyone agrees?"
At the same time, Zylas squeaked, "How do you keep one from taking over. From declaring himself leader for life?"
More worried about getting safely into and out of the castle, Collins found himself unwilling to get into a long discussion about American democracy. "There are whole enormous textbooks written on those very topics. It's not my field of study, but the system's worked reasonably well for at least the last two hundred years." He rushed to add, "Now, if we can get back to the matter at hand."
Zylas scurried up Collins' arm to his shoulder. "Ah, so now you're the one who only wants to talk about the castle."
"Yeah," Collins admitted, still stroking the dog. "Guess I'm a natural crammer." At the confused look on Ialin's face, he explained. "I tend to avoid things I don't want to do until a deadline looms. Then, I dive into it to the exclusion of everything else."
Ialin shrugged and began setting up the camp. "How odd." "Not where I come from. Not for students, anyway."
Zylas spoke directly into Collins' ear. "I find I tend to remember things longer and better if I learn them slowly over time. And repetitively."
Collins flushed. "Well, yeah. I didn't say cramming was a smart thing." Realizing they had veered off the topic again, he redirected the conversation. "Any recent ideas on how I'm going to get into this castle?"
At first, Collins thought Ialin turned to look at him. Then, he realized the smaller man's gaze did not directly meet his own. He was, instead, consulting the rat on Collins' shoulder. "As a matter of fact," the man in human form started, "we have one."
Interested in what they might have discussed on the sly, Collins tipped his head toward Zylas to indicate his interest.
"Well," Ialin started, sitting on the only blanket he had, thus far, laid out. "Town guards sometimes come for brief training with the king's warriors. From what I understand, it keeps the king informed about the goings-on in his holdings and gets some elite training for the guards."
"Yeah?" Collins encouraged, not yet sure how this could apply to him.
"They usually come in pairs," Ialin continued. "So if we send you in riding Falima, no one should question it. Usually, a guard wouldn't let anyone but a royal or another guard sit on them."
Collins considered. "Falima let me ride her."
With a wave of his paw, Zylas dismissed that argument. "After she went 'renegade' by saving you, all bets were off."
That seeming self-evident, Collins shook his head. "No, I mean before the rescue. She carried me to the… the dungeon." He swallowed, fighting a forming image. A swirl of the desperate parade of emotions that had struck him there returned to haunt him.
"Because the other guards told her to do it, I presume," Ialin growled. "And I'll also wager it wasn't a comfortable ride."
Remembering, Collins winced. "You'd win that bet."
"Anyway," Ialin said, returning to the subject, "if you rode in on Falima, no one would think to question that you're both guards."
Collins still saw a gap in the logic. "Unless word of Falima turning…" He used Zylas' word, or at least the one the translation spell and stone turned it into, "… 'renegade' has reached this far."