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“This,” said Ianto, “gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘abandoned castle’, don’t you think?”
“It’s certainly different.” Jack studied the castle. One thing was certain; it didn’t belong in the middle of the Brecon Beacons. To be fair, he wasn’t sure where it WOULD belong, with all its turrets, and minarets, battlements, bartizans, corbels, and watchtowers. It seemed to be an amalgam of every kind of castle built throughout earth’s history, with a few additional features that had probably never been imagined by human architects of any period.
How it had come to be where it was, sitting innocently in the middle of nowhere, beside the A470 was anyone’s guess. The Rift didn’t extend this far, or at least there’d never been any prior indication that it might, and anyway, the sorts of things that came through it were usually moderately sized at most, nothing bigger than a bus. Certainly nothing the size of a castle, and yet…
There it stood, solid as stone, nestling into the scenery as if it had always been there. Which, Ianto assured Jack, could not possibly be the case. There was no record of it, no one had ever reported seeing a stray castle up here, and there was no way in hell it could have escaped anyone’s notice. It would be extremely difficult for anyone to overlook a building more than a hundred feet in height and covering several acres, surrounded by a moat, especially one of such… unique design.
“I suspect this might be a little difficult to cover up.” Ianto stared gloomily at the castle. Now that the initial excitement was wearing off, all he could see was a massive problem, one that he and the rest of Torchwood would no doubt be expected to solve.
“Camouflage paint?” Jack suggested hopefully. Ianto didn’t reply, just turned a withering glare on his lover. Jack shrugged. “It was just an idea!”
Returning his attention to the inconvenient castle, Ianto stared at it hard, as if willing it to disappear as suddenly and inexplicably as it had appeared. “I had hoped it might be nothing more than a mirage,” he said, sounding defeated. “But no such luck.”
“It’s too solid for a mirage,” Jack agreed.
Ianto pulled out his pocket watch to check the time; it was barely five in the morning, although, with it being the height of summer, the sun had been up almost as long as he and Jack had. “We’re fortunate there isn’t much traffic this early in the morning, but it won’t be long before someone else sees our new landmark, and then tourists and locals alike will be flocking up here with phones and cameras at the ready…” Ianto trailed off. “It’s going to be a nightmare.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“If that’s meant to be reassuring… it’s not.” Ianto strode towards the castle and tested the conveniently lowered drawbridge with the toe of one scruffy trainer. He’d learned some time ago that tailored three-piece suits and Italian leather dress shoes were not suitable attire for a jaunt out to the Beacons.
“Be careful,” Jack warned as Ianto ventured slowly out onto what appeared to be weather-worn wooden planks of considerable age.
Ianto paused to look back. “Are you just going to stand there and let me face whatever might be in there alone?”
“No, of course not! I just thought we should cross the drawbridge one at a time. We don’t know how much weight it can take.”
“A likely story.” Ianto, already a good twenty feet out across the drawbridge, stamped his foot on the boards with a reassuringly solid thud; he didn’t detect the slightest hint of vibration in the timbers. “We could probably drive the SUV across if it wasn’t for the fact there’s a roadside ditch in the way. What are you worried about anyway? We’re both immortal, so come on!”
“Fine, but if we wind up trapped in there, or if it suddenly goes back to wherever it came from, who’ll know where we went and come to our rescue?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jack! I left a message for the team before we set out, since there was no way of knowing what we’d find when we got here.” All that Torchwood’s automated alert systems had given them was a report of an unknown signal being detected, along with a set of coordinates. “It’s a good thing one of us can be relied on to use their brain.”
“That’s unfair!” Jack pouted. “I use mine too! Give me a second to take a couple of pictures and send them to the team’s phones.” He got his phone out. “Say cheese!”
“Jack!”
“Good enough.” Jack snapped off a few shots, attached them to a text, and sent it. “At least if we don’t come back, they’ll be forewarned.” Jack stepped gingerly onto the drawbridge.
“Since when have you been such a pessimist?”
“Since a gigantic castle appeared out of nowhere! Do we even know what’s usually here?”
“A nondescript patch of moorland. Grass, heather, bracken, the occasional rock. Nothing of particular interest, except perhaps to a botanist or a geologist.” With Jack trailing behind him, Webley in hand, Ianto stepped through the arched entrance into a courtyard.
For an ancient castle, it appeared surprisingly well-preserved. The flagstones, though worn, were free of weeds, and the whole place appeared well cared for. Maybe it wasn’t quite as abandoned as it had seemed from the outside. Ianto drew his own gun and moved forward more cautiously, sniffing the air.
“What?” said Jack, coming alongside him, but looking in the opposite direction, covering their left side while Ianto covered the right.
“Don’t you smell it? Freshly baked bread!” Ianto’s stomach growled hungrily; they’d skipped breakfast in the interests of checking out the anomaly as quickly as possible.
“Huh, now you mention it…” Jack took a deep sniff too, his mouth watering. “Where is that coming from? It smells delicious.”
“Probably the kitchens, and if there’s bread baking, that means there’s someone about, doing the baking. Probably close by.” He spared Jack a quick glance. “But that does NOT mean we can go and help ourselves. For all we know, no matter how good it smells, it might not be suitable for human consumption. Accidentally poisoning or drugging ourselves would not be helpful. Whoever this castle belongs to, they might be deliberately trying to trap us and drug us into revealing Torchwood’s secrets.”
“Now who’s being a pessimist?”
“I’m just saying we should exercise caution. Lord knows your caution could do with some exercise. You never use it; you just go blundering into dangerous situations without a thought.”
“I… would resent that if it wasn’t true.” Jack gave a sheepish grin. “I’m trying to do better.”
“You’re trying, I’ll give you that much.” Ianto pointed. “Kitchens are this way.”
Jack frowned. “How d’you know that?”
“I have a passing familiarity with castles; I’ve visited a fair few. Despite the unusual aspects of this one’s design, some things appear relatively standard.” Ianto led the way to the central building, around to one side and through an open doorway, into a kitchen with a slate floor, massive ovens in one wall, a fireplace, and a large wooden table in the middle, where two loaves of bread that looked fresh from the oven were cooling.
“Huh.” Jack’s attention automatically fixed on the baked goods. “All this space, those huge ovens, and only two loaves? Doesn’t that seem like a bit of a waste of effort?”
“Not all bakers are overachievers like you, Jack. Besides, two loaves, two of us… Remember what I said earlier? They could be the bait for a trap.”
“You really believe that?”
Ianto shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe. This whole situation is bizarre, even for us. Castles don’t just appear out of nowhere, like they just fell out of some giant’s pocket at the side of the road.” He walked past the table and its enticing fresh bread, making for the far doorway, checking carefully before stepping through into what looked like the banquet hall. A long table ran down the centre, with elaborately carved chairs along each side, space enough for at least forty people, although there were only two place settings, across from each other at the end closest to the kitchen.
“Curioser and curioser,” murmured Jack. “It’s almost like we were expected.
Ignoring Jack, Ianto bypassed the table, moving towards another door leading deeper into the castle. Following him, Jack cocked his head to one side, “Do you hear that?” he whispered.
“Hear what?” Ianto replied. Three thousand years of evolution had given Jack better hearing and eyesight than Ianto, no doubt helped by a certain amount of crossbreeding with various alien races.
“I don’t know, but I’m hearing something. This way.” Jack took the lead, heading for the far end of the passageway, passing by numerous doors, all of which were closed. He stopped at a narrow doorway, the only one that was open, beyond which was a steep flight of stone steps. “Whatever it is, it’s coming from down there.”
“You do know that’s probably the dungeons down there, right?” Ianto sounded apprehensive.
“We’re armed with guns,” Jack reminded his lover. “I think we have the upper hand here.”
“I hope you’re right. Okay, lead the way.”
“Why do I have to lead?”
“You see better in the dark than I do, and it might be best to avoid advertising our presence before we see whatever’s making that noise.”
Now they were closer to the source, they could hear better, although they still couldn’t identify the noise beyond the fact that it was made up of thumps, clangs, thuds, and the occasional whirring sound, interspersed with snorts and rumblings.
“Maybe it’s the prisoners in the dungeons, trying to get out,” Jack murmured.
“Maybe it’s the sound of torture devices being used on the prisoners.” Ianto shuddered, remembering an earlier visit to the Beacons, and the cannibals who’d been preying on travellers.
“No, if it was that, there’d be screaming.”
“Right, of course. What was I thinking?”
“Alright, let’s do this. Keep close, but don’t crowd me.”
“I do know what I’m doing, Jack. I’m not some wet behind the ears new recruit.”
“I never said you were.” Jack crept slowly down the steps, Webley steady in one hand, the other trailing along the stone wall beside him for balance, trying to tread as softly as he could. Not that anyone was likely to hear his footsteps over all the banging and clonking.
Ianto followed, keeping three stairs between himself and Jack so that he didn’t lose sight of his lover in the gloom. As it turned out, he didn’t need to worry about that. The staircase curved in a tight spiral, and almost before they lost the light filtering down from above, they began to see a glow from below that grew brighter the further down they went. When they reached the bottom, they peered cautiously around the edge of the doorframe.
What they saw there was neither dungeons nor a torture chamber, but a spacious, well-lit underground chamber lined with banks of machinery, most of which neither man could even begin to guess the purpose of. There were computers, certainly, with lots of flashing lights, but they only accounted for one relatively small area. The other things were completely unfamiliar, although they appeared to have been bodged together using components from dozens of different worlds.
Over by one wall was a hunched figure wielding what appeared to be an assortment of tools, one in each of its four hands. It was hitting the machinery quite vigorously, muttering a barely audible stream of highly inventive curses in several languages of both earth and extra-terrestrial origin. The gist of it was that the machinery was NOT working the way it should, and that was apparently causing the alien a serious problem.
The being paused in berating the machinery, and in hitting it, to glance back over what passed for its shoulder. “Well, it’s about time you got here! I sent out a signal hours ago! What kept you?”
“Excuse me?” Ianto frowned at the being, who was now speaking fluent English, albeit with a strong Welsh accent.
“Don’t just stand there gawping! Give me a hand with this stupid thing!”
“Don’t you have enough hands?” Ianto wasn’t sure why he’d said that; it had just slipped out.
“Obviously not! I thought Torchwood in this time period was supposed to help people from other planets who are experiencing difficulties!”
“We are, I mean we do, and we will.” Jack stumbled over his words. “It might help if you’d tell us what the problem is.”
“Damned perception filter’s gone on the blink, of course! Now everyone can see this place! Nineteen hundred years of observation and research, hidden in plain sight, and now the blasted thing’s jammed up and stopped working! I’d fire up the engines and move somewhere less conspicuous, except that they haven’t been used since we moved to this spot approximately five centuries ago. They’ll need a full service before I’d dare to even try, and besides, if we take to the air, that will attract even more unwanted attention! Nevertheless, my colleague is running checks on them, just in case we have to leave in a hurry.”
“Are you saying you’ve been right here for five hundred years, and no one’s ever noticed?” Ianto’s eyebrows went up so fast it looked like they were trying to reach escape velocity.
“Of course! Well, give or take a few decades. That’s what the perception filter technology is for. Don’t you know?”
“Yes, we use it ourselves,” Jack assured the alien. “But I’ve never heard of it being used on this scale.”
“Hmpf.” The alien glared at them from catlike silver eyes. “Well, now you have, so if you don’t mind, some help would be appreciated. You can ask any other questions you have while we’re fixing this stupid thing.”
“Of course.” Jack holstered the Webley, shrugged out of his coat, and tossed it over what looked like a workbench. “I’m Captain Jack Harkness, and this is Ianto Jones.”
“Yes, yes, I already know all that. I am called Immrikk. I come from a planet we call Arnusk, not that you’ll ever have heard of it. We won’t make contact with humans for another few millennia. Now, can we get on with this? It IS rather an emergency, you know.”
“What d’you need us to do?” Jack asked.
“You and the other one take that one.” Immrikk pointed at the neighbouring bank of machinery. “I’ll keep working on this one.”
Ianto hesitated for a moment longer, then put his own gun away. If the alien was telling the truth, and they had no reason not to believe… him, fixing the machinery would be in Torchwood’s best interests, since it would solve the problem of there being a strange castle where no castle should be.
“So,” Ianto said as he rolled up his sleeves and set to work assisting Jack, who knew more about perception filter technology than Ianto did, although perhaps less than their new acquaintance. “You’ve been here a long time then.”
“We have indeed,” Immrikk agreed. “Studying various aspects of earth’s history. We used to move around a lot, but then we decided to specialise in Welsh history, which hasn’t received as much attention as we feel it should have, especially considering it’s where the Rift and Torchwood are located.”
“And you parked yourself in the Beacons?”
“This area will remain undeveloped for a long while yet, and it’s not too far from Cardiff, and your base.”
“And you didn’t think to let Torchwood know you were here? We could have helped.” Jack sounded like he was pouting.
“We prefer to make our own observations, and our sensors collect data from across the entire country. We venture out from time to time, in disguise of course. There used to be more of us, but some were recalled to our home planet a few centuries back, and a few met with unfortunate accidents, and now there are only two of us left, but we intend to continue out studies for at least another thousand years.” Immrikk shrugged. “There’s so much to learn about the period before humanity begins to venture out among the stars, and the first few centuries of contact with other worlds.”
Jack was working busily at the console next to the one Immrikk was periodically hitting with one of his tools, and occasionally kicking with a hooflike foot. He removed a panel and peered into the machine’s interior, using his phone for illumination. “Ianto, give it a good thump about five inches to the left of that readout.”
“Ah, the time-honoured way of fixing machinery.” Ianto did as instructed, giving it a hefty whack with something resembling a lump hammer. The machine hiccupped, burped, rattled, and a series of lights abruptly winked on. One by one, they turned green.
“Aha!” The alien beamed at Jack. “That seems to have done the trick!”
“It’ll do for now, but I’ll be out again later with my tech expert,” Jack said. “We’ll take a closer look and see if we can deal find the root cause and deal with it. You may have some loose connections in the circuitry. We’ll help you service your engines as well; make sure they’re in working order.”
“Your assistance will be most appreciated. Machinery does tend to break down over time. For the moment, perhaps the two of you would care to join my partner and I for breakfast?”
“It would be our pleasure.”
“Excellent!” Immrikk was fairly radiating joy. “It’s so rare that we get to converse with anyone but each other. I’m sure it will be especially fascinating to talk with the two of you, who will have such a far-reaching impact on the future. Not that we can tell you anything of what lies ahead.”
“Of course not,” Ianto agreed. “You might accidentally change the future.”
“Indeed. But we can tell you of our world in exchange for your company, and your insights into past and present.”
Jack nodded. “That sounds fair.”
It was strange to think that the castle had been there all along, masquerading as the most boring stretch of moorland in the whole of Wales, with nothing even remotely interesting about it, ensuring that nobody passing by even gave it a first glance, never mind a second. Still, now that Torchwood knew it was there, they’d stop by now and then to check on the two aliens. They did bake exceedingly good bread.
The End