Page 575 of Flirting with Darkness

He walked through cobwebbed storage spaces, looking at paintings and old clothes, half motheaten. More clothes lived in giant wardrobes and dressing rooms with antique Russian furniture. He found a room full of medieval armor and glass cabinets filled with old guns, more swords, knives, manacles, other weapons. He came across another room filled with musty books stacked on the floor, on shelves, on the unused fireplace, on the tables and chairs.

He found several dusty rooms with nothing in them at all.

He eventually made his way to the roof.

He stood by the parapet of the north tower after trudging up an endless number of stairs.

He gazed out over a view of snow-covered mountains and fields until the gusting wind and falling snow drove him back inside.

For those few minutes, he looked out over a world that seemed frozen in time. His eyes found the two sets of walls that locked Count Aslanov’s lands away from the rest of the world. Like he had seen as he passed through each of the estate’s two gates, two walls cut off Aslanov’s lands from the public road. Ghost slowly turned to take in the expanse of peasant fields and small houses dotting the area inside the outer wall.

As the maps showed him, he saw a river wind through the center of it, dotted on either side by grazing cattle and horses, what looked like sheep and goats.

The half-frozen lake filled most of his view to the north of the castle, surrounded by dark trees and more fields, with mountains in the distance.

He couldn’t see the ends of those walls, not through the snow at least.

He wondered if it could all be seen from here, even on a clear day.

Once back inside the castle’s walls, he had intended to return the way he had come, to make his way down the main staircase to the ground floor. Once he’d walked down the dozens of steps to the castle’s fourth floor, however, he realized the tower stairs continued to descend.

Perhaps this is a better option, he thought.

Rather than go the way heknewhe would run into people, perhaps he could go down via the tower stairs instead, in the hopes he might not.

He went down one floor.

He went down another.

Now he was back on the second, where his own guest quarters were located. Uninterested in anything on that floor, he went down yet another story, to the landing below that one.

Now heshouldbe on the ground floor, he reasoned, where he had come in.

Strangely, however, the stairs continued to descend.

He walked down to the next landing… and the next…

…and the next.

Two more followed after that.

Then another.

After what felt an interminable time, Ghost reached the final landing.

A hole stood in front of him in the stone. He felt a draft through the hole, and when he peered inside, he saw yet more stairs. In that third, adjacent staircase, the passage narrowed dramatically, becoming a spiral with seemingly no landings at all. Right at the top, just before that part of the staircase began, Ghost also reached the last lit torch.

He hesitated, staring at it.

But again, the decision already felt predetermined.

He was too far in to stop now.

He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t.

He removed the torch from its iron wall bracket.

Holding the flame out in front of him, he entered the hole and continued to descend.

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