THE JOURNEY TO THE castle of the King’s mistress was beautiful. The rock-strewn dirt road ran along the coastline high on a bluff overlooking the sea. A tiny village sat on the edge of the bluff at the base of a cliff beneath the castle. The stark walls of the castle appeared to have grown straight up out of the rock.
The castle held no defensive armaments. No protective wall surrounded it. No moat or mounted platforms holding catapult or pots of boiling oil. No armaments, because it didn’t need them. A series of dark gray spires sprang out of the rocky cliffs to shoot upward. High up near the top of the towers an open window could be seen. Each spire was unique. Each was a different height and circumference. The structure appeared to be a series of razor sharp stalagmites that were some
