“The kitchens,” Pritkin said, pulling me up. “They’re not far.”
We ran.
The hill on which the castle sat had no trees, probably for defense. But down below, a small orchard ringed the base, the dense foliage swaying in the rising wind. Beyond it, I could see the walled town, its cook fires glittering in the night and sending thin threads of smoke skyward, which were being pulled off center by the winds. And which looked so small and insignificant next to the power of nature.
Everyone else must have thought so, too. Because there was frantic activity around the festival tents, as vendors and partygoers alike scrambled for cover. While out in the harbor, the boats dipped and rolled, the water beneath them cresting gray and white, like clutching hands, cold and angry.
“Come on!” Pritkin told me, pulling on my hand, because I’d unconsciously stopped to stare.
“Sorry.”
We’d just rounded the side of the castle when a thin, cold rain began to fall, the first outriders of what looked to be an onslaught. It hit a moment later, drenching us as we pelted across a garden clinging precariously to the slope of the hill, tripping on cabbages and mushing beans. And then through a door, our muddy feet messing up the clean-swept hall next to the kitchen.
Cheerful golden light splashed the stones in front of us. While behind, the moonlight was eclipsed by clustering clouds, cutting off as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. I turned around to stare at it, a weird feeling coming over me, while Pritkin wrestled with the heavy slab of the door, trying to swing it shut with rain lashing at it in gusts like hammerblows.
But he got it done, just as the cook poked his head out of the kitchen, a spoon in one hand and a bowl in the other. And a frown on his face. “What’s this, then?” he asked as some kind of sauce seeped onto the stones. “What’s happening?”
“Storm blew up,” Pritkin said dryly.
The man sighed. “And here I was, hoping to sneak off down t’ the faire later. Just my—”
He broke off when a shudder ran through the stones under our feet, hard enough to send us stumbling against the wall. That would have been worrying enough in a modern structure, but this wasn’t one. This was basically a mountain made out of stone.
Which had just shaken noticeably.
“All right, what is this?” the cook demanded, about the time we were mobbed by a mass of people coming from inside the castle. One that quickly filled the tiny corridor.
“What is this? What is this?” the outraged cook was yelling, barring the way into his precious kitchen while we hugged the wall on the other side to avoid being trampled.
And then some genius opened the door.
The hall immediately became a maelstrom of flashing light, screaming people and lashing rain. “Close the door! Close the door!” e
veryone at this end yelled.
But the ones getting drenched weren’t listening. Or maybe they couldn’t hear over the booming thunder, because the whole place sounded like we’d been caught in a giant kettledrum. It was deafening to the point of being painful, and I guessed they thought so, too. Because they were turning around, they were rushing back this way, they were—
“Myrddin!” I yelled.
“Stay with me!” He pushed me ahead of him as the stampede hit, sweeping us and everyone around us along with it. We burst into the area with the stairs, which was considerably larger than the hall, but no less packed. And was getting worse, because more people were flooding in all the time.
Along with something else.
I stared for a moment, nonplussed. Because a frothing mass of water was churning around the fleeing crowd, gushing down the stairs like an indoor waterfall. And causing them to trip and fall and others to pile up behind them. We fought our way to the side and watched them sort themselves out, panicked lords and ladies in their finery, wide-eyed servants in their livery, and several furious-looking actors, each carrying half of a wooden horse.
Pritkin grabbed one of them by the arm. “What’s going on?”
“What does it look like?” The tall man with the sharp cheeks was livid. “Had to ruin everything, didn’t they? The fucking fey! First decent-paying job we’ve had in months—”
“Ruin what?”
“My purse, for one thing! Who’s going to pay to see us now? With that for entertainment!” He gestured savagely back at the stairs.
“Entertainment?” I said worriedly. “What entertainment?”
“They’re fighting,” the big tambourinist said, his voice slow and thick.
The tall man nodded angrily. “Dinner hadn’t even started before that damn cold-eyed fey—”