Introduction

There’s a bone-aching chill in the air as I stare at the landscape over the battlements of Castle Silverhill. It isn’t a pleasant view, what with a blood moon coating the endless terrain of dunes in crimson, and burnishing the still surface of the moat, which for centuries has been gently eroding the castle’s foundations.

I don’t like the look of the desert. I haven’t been outside during the day since the castle relocated to this world. The heat makes the stones groan worse than usual.

I lean over the wall and gaze down. The moat looks like it might clot at any moment. Even the swirling wavelets, caused by a tentacle breaking the surface, roll away like they’re thicker than water.

Only a handful of stars glitter in the cold velvet sky. I turn away and brush my fingers over the mortar, loosening a fist-sized chunk which falls on my foot.

I hadn’t meant to do that. I know the castle’s ancient masonry is slowly crumbling, but that doesn’t make the pain in my injured toe any less acute.

I yelp. With a low rumble, a chimney stack in the distant east wing topples onto a rooftop.

It wasn’t always like this.

When my great-great-great-great-grandfather built the castle, it used to stay in one spot, as buildings tend to do. Especially large, fortified ones.

That was until one of my clueless ancestors took it upon himself to dabble in magic. Geoffrey was his name. And not particularly bright by all accounts.

According to legend, a century after the castle was built, Geoffrey stole a book of spells from a wizard who had stayed overnight while on his way to Tintagel.

Geoffrey wasn’t known for his caution, and despite his less-than-firm grasp of thaumaturgic principles, couldn’t wait to try out one of the many spells between the book’s covers. While leafing through his ill-gotten prize to choose a spell he liked the look of, a word or two from each page caught his eye. Not being the most literate of readers, he mumbled them out loud.

Forty pages in, he’d said enough to inadvertently cast a spell.

One that had never been cast before because it hadn’t existed until Geoffrey accidentally created it.

And what a spell it turned out to be.

It cursed the entire castle to an endless existence of world hopping. Every fortnight, more or less, the castle – and everyone in it – moves to another world.

As you can imagine, the nomadic nature of Castle Silverhill has its drawbacks. For example, it makes catching a bus home rather awkward. Well, that’s if we’re in a world where buses exist.

And don’t get me started on postal services… To my boundless annoyance, the only letters that get pushed through my letterbox are tax demands, invoices, and bills. Some clearly have been in the postal system for hundreds of years, written as they are by hand on folded parchment sealed by large blobs of red wax.

But, I suppose, the biggest issue is that not all worlds are friendly. Some are downright hostile. You never know what the next world is going to be like, so it’s not like you can prepare.

Apart from being too hot, the desert world we’re in at the moment hasn’t come up with any nasty surprises.

Yet.

We’ve only been here two days, after all.

I sigh, go to the iron-studded oak door at the edge of the castle wall’s walkway and make my way back inside the warren of castle buildings. A few minutes of trudging takes me to the spiral stairs leading to my studio.

My journal lies on my desk, open at a blank page. My favourite pen and a bottle of ink are next to it.

Waiting.

The Tales

You can also find the tales using the “Castle Silverhill” menu at the top of every page