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paces to a stairwell and entered it.
He climbed six stories. On his way up to the seventh he was huffing and
puffing.
Gods, I m out of shape, he mumbled.
He stopped.
Standing in the gloom of the stairwell, he thought the problem through while
he caught his breath.
At length he said, Seems like cheating, though.
He continued up the stairs and exited at the next landing. Out in the hall he
stood in front of a blank wall and said, I need an elevator.
In a moment, one materialized, a section of wall to his right transmuting into
metal doors that parted to reveal the interior of a modern elevator. He
entered, and the doors slid shut.
Family residence, he said to no one who could be seen.
The elevator rose, rumbling and humming.
His study was lined with books and filled with endless curios. Quaint
astronomical gear occupied one corner, alchemist s paraphernalia another. Maps
and star charts covered areas of wall not taken up by books. There were
several desktop computers in the room, and some of these were unusual. Instead
of
CRT screens, they had crystal balls.
He sat at the terminal of one of these morganatic marriages of the magical and
the technological and tapped out a few commands.
The ball, mounted on a wooden base sitting on top of the computer, began to
glow.
He peered into it, keyed in more commands, looked again. Shadows flickered
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dimly in the depths of the glass.
He kept at it until he saw something come to life. He watched intently.
After a good while he sat back and grunted. He hit a key and the light inside
the ball faded.
Well now, that s interesting, he said abstractedly. Veddy, veddy
interesting.
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Castle MurdersJohn
DeChanciee-reads2002Texttext/html0-7592-6266-7en-usen-usCopyright © 1994 by
John DeChancie{59FFE082-6408-11
He sat for a time thinking, absently stroking his clean-shaven chin. His hair
was long and light, and his eyes were brown this month. He had a habit of
changing his appearance now and then. After three hundred years one could grow
tired of one s looks. He refrained from transforming his face into something
unrecognizable; that would confuse the servants and Guests. But he was wont to
alter his hair and eye color slightly with a simple spell. Underneath he
remained the same: dark-haired, blue-eyed, strong of chin, thin blade of a
nose. Generally a good face; perhaps even a handsome face, disregarding that
the brow was a little low and the chin a shade too prominent.
Handsome or not, he was a lord. The peerage had devolved to him down through
thousands of years. But he was also a king, and for that regal title he owed
an ancestor who had got the notion that the lord of
Perilous, master of thousands of worlds, should have his honorific upgraded to
something more impressive. So Incarnadine was King of the Realms Perilous,
and actually did directly reign in several of the castle s domains. He had a
hand in the politics of a hundred worlds, interests in thousands more.
The piano-playing had been time stolen from a full schedule.
No time now.
He rose and began walking toward the door, but something rang off in a corner,
and he turned and moved toward it. The device was an old-fashioned telephone,
the upright kind with a conical mouthpiece and detachable earphone. Behind it,
though, was a television screen, and beside that was a small device that
looked like an automatic answering machine. Before he reached the desk on
which all this lay, a somber recorded voice was already on the line:
You have reached Castle Perilous. We cannot answer your call at this time, but
if and let me emphasize the if you have some matter of great moment to
impart, you may leave your name at the sound of the trump. On the other hand,
if your call is being made on some contrived pretext, or, worse, is in the
nature of an annoying solicitation, you run a grave risk.
He sat back down, propped a hand under his chin, and watched the screen. A
form wavered on it, a face.
we do not need storm windows, we do not need aluminum siding, we most
certainly do not care to be the lucky winners in some transparently
fraudulent giveaway scheme. Let me now enumerate and quickly describe the
variety of calamities that could befall you should any of the above conditions
obtain. You could be incinerated on the spot
The image on the screen clarified and sharpened: a thin-faced man with
glasses.
colonies of fire-lice could suddenly infest your spouse s
He hit a switch on the answering machine and interrupted the recording, then
unhooked the earpiece and put it to his ear.
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