The two men went down a second turning, and the corridor's walls changed from cut and fitted stonework to solid native sandstone. The corridor narrowed, then turned again and flared to accommodate a guardpost and a garderobe. A barred window overlooked the lake, admitting the dim blue light of early evening. The window had to be cut right into the cliff face, beneath the garden wall. The garderobe's stone chute for slops tunneled through nearby.

The corridor sank a little further, and passed a row of unusual doors. Each cell door was a rack of vertical iron bars, their iron hinges set deep into the sandstone. The cells, too, had tiny barred windows, making them not so airless, damp, or horrible as Thur had expected. In conjunction with the airy ironwork of the doors, the ventilation was excellent. But the cells were crowded, four or five men in each. Thur slowed, trying to make out faces, forms ... Ferrante only held about twenty prisoners here. Uri was not among these. .. .

"Here, workman." The guard frowned back at his laggard steps, and Thur hurried to catch up. On his left he passed another narrow corridor leading ... up into the castle? Too dark to tell. The guard pointed into an empty cell at the end of the row. "This one."

"What's wrong with it?" Thur asked. It looked identical to the others, except for being empty.

"Nothing, I wager," said the guard darkly. "I think it's magic. Magic and madness." Glumly, he rattled the door on its hinges, took a key from his belt, and unlocked it "See? It was locked, just like this. Yet the madman has—dare I say—flown."

Nervously, Thur entered the cell. A vision of the guard clanging the door shut behind him with a cry of Ha! Caught you, spy! flashed in his mind. But the guard merely rubbed his nose and stared, helpfully hoisting the lantern high. Thur stepped to the cubit-square window, and traced over and shook the iron bars set therein. Solid. There was a couple of feet thickness of solid stone between the cell and the cliff face. The window was like a little tunnel. A slice of lake glimmered in the gathering doom; in a tiny patch of sky, one star shone. Thur jerked his hand back as a large centipede scuttled from a crack and flowed over the stone, to disappear over the outer edge of the window tunnel.

Thur gazed around the whitewashed walls of the cell. The chamber was small, but not inhumanly so; there was room for a taller man than Thur to lie down on the usual woven straw pallet, and, standing up, Thur's head didn't brush the ceiling. The walls seemed solid. Thur chafed under the gaze of the guard. Go away, you. He was close, close to Uri, he could feel it, if only he could win a few moments unobserved.

Rough voices echoed down the corridor, blended with a much stranger noise—laughter? A high shriek rang, "Eee, eee, eee!"

"Ah. They got him." The Losimon guard grimaced. "He doesn't get far. But how does he get out?" He shook his head and backed out of the cell. Thur followed, dogged by the darkness that seemed to seep from the corners as the lantern was withdrawn.

Two Losimons were manhandling a third fellow toward the cell. Their prisoner was a middle-aged man, tending toward stoutness. In another time, he might have been grave and stately. The torn and soiled velvet tunic, decent skirts to the knee, and silk hose he wore marked him as a man of rank, his graying hair as a man of dignity. But now his hair stuck out wildly, uncombed, and his beard-salted jowls were shrunken. Red-rimmed eyes stared out from bruised hollows. He shrieked again, twisted, and flapped his hands below the guards solid grip on his arms.

"Where did you find him?" asked the guard with the lantern.

"Downstairs again," panted the younger guard. "Same corner. We missed him first pass, but he was crouching there the second time I looked—God! Maybe he does turn into a bat."

"Don't say the word, you'll just start him up again," began his partner, their sergeant, but it was too late. Excitement flushed their prisoner's face, and he began to jabber and mutter beneath his breath, his body jerking.

"A bat. A bat. A bat's the thing. The black Vitelli is a false bat, but I am a real one. I'll fly away. Fly away from you, and you'll be hanged. Fly to my wife, and you won't stop me—vermin! Murderers!" His conspiratorial grin gave way to incoherent rage, and he began to buck and fight in earnest. The two guards flung him into the cell and slammed the door shut. He banged into it with a velvet-covered shoulder, over and over, while the two junior guards leaned against the bars to hold it closed while their sergeant thrust the key into the lock—it took three tries—and turned it. The Losimons stood away from the door, relieved, as the bolt caught.

The madman continued to bang and shriek his wordless bat-cry, alternated with stamping in circles and shaking his whole body as if he were a bat flapping its wings. It was absurd, but somehow Thur didn't find it funny. Tears leaked down the man's ravaged face as he piped his strange cries, and his indrawn breath churned in a raw throat. "I will fly. I will fly. I will fly...," he trailed off at last. He crouched to the floor, then sat heavily, weeping and exhausted.

"Who is the poor fellow?" Thur whispered, staring through the bars.

"He was the dead Duke's castellan, Lord Pia," shrugged the sergeant, catching his breath from the wrestling match. I think the battle and the bloodshed turned his brain. He doesn't half care for being locked in his own prison, I can tell you."

"But he doesn't stay locked in, is the trouble," muttered his younger comrade. "How does he do it? Vitelli swears there's no trace of magic on the lock."

The prisoner's eyes flashed up at the secretary's name, a scarlet, lucid, malevolent glare that crossed Thur's startled eyes, then buried itself in downward-looking muttering again. Is he really mad? Or only pretending? Or perhaps the castellan was both ... strange thought, It was no wonder he was kept alone, though, even as crowded as the prison was now.

Thur examined the iron door. The bars were oiled, free of rust and corrosion. The hinges were deep-set in solid rock, and sound. He tapped down the long vertical rods. All rang true, no hidden hollows for a secret slide. He was no locksmith, but there was nothing wrong with the lock that he could see.

"We've done all that," said the guard with the lantern impatiently, watching Thur.

"Have you searched him for a key? Searched the cell?"

"To the skin. Twice."

"To the skin. Um ... I don't suppose he could have ... that is, uh, did you—"

"No, he'didn't stick a key up his ass," said the guard sergeant, dryly amused. "He didn't swallow and gag it up again, either." Thur decided not to ask how he knew. "Somebody's just going to have to watch him, day and night," the sergeant went on.

"I've got to go fetch dinner," said the younger guard nervously.

The sergeant eyed him in an ominous sergeantry manner, but then shrugged. "We're short-handed all around. I'll ask the captain to assign us a convalescent. It would be easy duty. Just sit on a bench opposite the door and watch. And stay awake."

"I wouldn't sleep down here," said the younger guard fervently.

"Afraid of the spiders?" his comrade with the lantern mocked. "Or the rats? We ate the rats roasted, in the prison in Genoa."

"And fried the spiders in garlic and axle grease, no doubt," his comrade returned testily, nettled by what was apparently an oft-told tale of manly endurance. "It's not the spiders that bother me. But there's things in the walls. Uncanny things."

It disturbed Thur a little that no one denied this, nor accused the guard of drinking.

"Leave me the lantern," Thur suggested, "and I'll watch him for a while. Maybe I'll get some clue as to how he does it." The castellan was seated cross-legged on the floor now, rocking from side to side, gaze fixed on nothing, face like stone.