The castle was eerily quiet. Every room had the look that someone had just left. All of the lights were on and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. It was as if everyone cleaned up the place real nice and then vanished. I was certain I would see someone eventually.
Up these stairs, down those, the shadow was leading me all over the place trying to avoid the wizard. I wasn’t complaining. It was worth it to see the art alone. Large paintings of amazing landscapes hung on most walls. The shadow told me they were painted to show the kingdom. It wasn’t always the dry woods I had seen. There were once valleys and marshes, hills and lakes, and even a few deep forests where all sorts of animals hid. Now it was all gone and the shadow blamed the wizard. I couldn’t imagine one person being able to do the things this wizard was blamed for.
Every member of the royal family had paintings as well. These went back hundreds of years to the founding of the kingdom, known as Amna. The shadow’s real name was Prince Heradus Amna. There wasn’t a painting of him, at least not yet.
After an hour of wandering this way and that we came to the fourth and final floor. Heradus was certain that there were booby traps on the way to the room with his body. They didn’t affect him, but he couldn’t move the body. I had to be careful.
The first room was another bedchamber. This one was different from the others. The bed had nothing but an overstuffed mattress on it. The floor was hard stone without the usual carpeting I was now familiar with. The walls were bare save for one painting of an old wizened man. He was clean shaven except for a tuft of white hair on the right side of his upper lip. It was bizarre, but I suppose that was the fashion somewhere. He wore faded yellow robes and had a mysterious smile on his face.
I stepped warily across the stone floor, keeping my eyes and ears peeled to a sudden change or movement. There were no traps across the first half of the floor. Heradus whispered encouragements to me the whole time. He slid effortlessly across the floor near my feet. At the halfway point I looked up. The door was so close. I had a feeling that if I ran to it I would be able to make it before anything bad happened. But I couldn’t. I chose to take it slow and be vigilant.
I moved my right foot carefully and touched down a few inches in front of my left. I then moved my left a little ahead of my right. I attempted to then lift the right but it wouldn’t come. I pulled and pulled but I was stuck. To my horror my feet were sinking into the stone floor.
“What are you doing? Come on.” Heradus yelled.
“I can’t. I’m sinking.”
“Why are you sinking?”
“Because it’s fun!” I shrieked.
“Hang on.”
He glided across the floor, the walls, and the ceiling trying to find some way to help but it was no use. My legs sank lower and lower. It felt like I was in mud. Someone started laughing. My head twisted around trying to find the source. It was the painting. The old man in the yellow robes threw his head back and was cackling like a madman.
“That’s the wizard.” Heradus said, stopping on the wall next to the picture. “He’s done something to the floor.”
My torso slipped beneath the stone and my arms followed.
“Where am I going?” I cried, feeling hopeless.
“I don’t know, but I’ll find you.”
My head dipped below and I couldn’t see anything. Next thing I know I was falling through the air, landing on a bed on the floor below. I pushed myself off and tried to get my bearings. The stairs to the fourth floor were right outside the room. I called to Heradus and he appeared on the stairs a moment later.
“Oh, that wasn’t so bad after all.” He said, clearly relieved that his helper wasn’t trapped somewhere.
“It still wasn’t very fun.” I muttered.
We went back up the stairs to retry getting through that room. This time I knew not to go slow, the wizard was expecting that. I took a deep breath and ran right across the floor to the door. I made it. I nodded to the painting. The wizard now had a sour frown. We pressed on.
Next up was a hallway. The floor was uneven and the walls were covered in more paintings, all of which had the wizard with his strange facial hair and yellow robes. I tried not to look at them. Slowly I started into the hall.
The floor rocked this way and that, attempting to throw me into the wall. Heradus yelled more encouragements, but now they were annoying and I told him to shut up.
I got down on all fours and crawled across the bucking stone floor. It was little use. I was tossed this way and that, making hard contact with the walls. But as with jumping from the cliff and falling down the hole, it did not hurt. It did however disorient me. At one point Heradus yelled at me because I ended up facing the wrong way. I righted myself with difficulty and continued to try my hardest to stay on course.
All the paintings, and there must have been thirty of them, began laughing at me. Some even started yelling rude things to me.
It took a little while but eventually I did make it. The floor stopped and the paintings ceased. They all took the sour frown like the first one.
The third, and thankfully final, room was another bedchamber. It looked very similar to the first. The bed had only a mattress and the floor was bare. There wasn’t a painting of the wizard in that room. The door on the other side of the room was open. It was dark beyond it.
“What do we do now?” I asked Heradus.
“I don’t know if you take this slow or fast. Try fast first.”
I ran toward the door. An inexplicable force met me half way through and I was lifted off of my feet and thrown backwards with such a force that I could only watch as the hallway flashed by. I slowed in the first bedroom and was placed gently back on my feet near the stairs. We had to start all over.
“This wizard sure likes to play games.” I called to Heradus who was sliding across the floor back to me.
“He is evil. Don’t think that this is a game.” He snarled. “Now let’s go back. Remember to go fast here.”
“I know.”
I ran through the first bedroom again and continued speedily through the hall. That may have been a mistake. The floor came up in a wave and bucked me back to the stairs.
“You know this isn’t too bad.” I said, getting to my feet in the first bedroom again.
“If you could feel pain you would probably be half dead by now.” Heradus pointed out.
“Thankfully I can’t. And I’m hoping this wizard can tell me why.”
“He will only lie, like he did to me.”
I knew the routine now. I had to go fast through the first bedchamber, slow through the hall, and I hoped slow again in the second bedchamber.
I started for hopefully the last time. I sprinted through the first room and stopped myself in the hall. The floor rocked back and forth. I got down on all fours and crawled across the wild floor. It tried its best to halt my progress but I struggled on. The paintings laughed louder than ever, and the insults were worse than ever. Eventually I stood up in the last room.
I took steps slowly, not wanting to start over again. Halfway through I clenched my fists and took quiet and slow steps to the darkness beyond the next door. I made it. I sighed deeply and started into the dark. Once again I could no longer see Heradus.
“Just a little bit on now.” He said somewhere ahead of me.
“What is in this room?” I asked.
The floor was stone and it was cold in there, but that’s all I could tell.
“It used to be a small closet. The wizard changed it to what you see here. My body should be right up here.”
The door slammed shut behind us. We were in complete darkness.
“Don’t worry.” Heradus said calmly. “We’re almost there.”
I kept my arms out to make sure I didn’t hit anything. After a while it no longer seemed like a room but a void. Once again I began to wonder if I ma
de a good choice in helping Heradus.
A light appeared. It came from the ceiling and lit a platform about twenty feet high and a little ways ahead of us.
“That’s it! That’s where my body is.”
I made out a staircase leading up. In a minute I was at the top. A body lay just out of reach of the light. Heradus’s body wore a bright green outfit one would expect from royalty. He even had a sword on his belt.
“Now just push me into the light and I’ll tell you everything.” Heradus’s voice grew excited.
I knelt down. A blinding flash hit my eyes. I shut them tight.
“Not another move.” An old voice said from in front of us.
I slowly opened my eyes and saw the wizard from the paintings standing on the same platform twenty feet away. I could no longer see the light needed to bring Heradus back.
“If you move that body I will curse you away.”
Heradus slithered across the floor to the wizard, trying his hardest to inflict some kind of damage to him. It was all useless. “Do it, do it now.” He shouted.
“I wouldn’t.” The wizard said calmly.
“What will you do to me?” I asked.
The wizard folded his arms and thought for a bit. Heradus would not give up his attempted attack. He groaned and yelled on the floor.
“I think I will turn you into a chair and then sit on you forever.”
“I only need one thing.” I said. “I want to know where I am and how I can get home.”
The wizard stepped forward. “I can tell you that if you step away from the body.”