by William King
The cart stopped and he heard voices speaking. He realised that they were at the gate already, and the guards were checking them through. Fear filled him. Perhaps the soldiers would sense the nervousness of the drivers. Perhaps their guilt was written on their face, or Tomar’s men were even now betraying him to the Tower watch.
He tightened his grip on his poisoned weapons. If the worst came to the worst, he would kill a few and then turn the blade on himself. He did not want to face torture. He wanted a quick clean death.
Even as that thought crossed his mind, he knew that he would hesitate. Much as he hated things in this life, certain times had still been sweet. There was much he still wanted to do.
He cursed himself again for ever having put himself in this position, but then thought what choice had he ever had. There was a certain inevitability about it all now, as if every choice he had ever made, every road he had ever walked, had led him to this.
He almost sighed as the cart started moving once more. At this very moment, he would be undergoing the baleful scrutiny of the guardians within the walls. He felt nothing, sensed nothing and he prayed to the Light that this was a good sign, that he had passed undetected.
Every minute he expected to hear the sound of alarm drums and horns, of men rushing to capture him, but he heard nothing but the rumble of wheels on cobbles and the shifting of the cargo on the boards above him.
He relaxed then tensed his muscles, loosening them, untying the knots the strain of lying here for the past hour had put in them. He wanted to be limber and ready to move when the time for action came. His chances of survival depended on it.
The cart came to a halt. Moments later it bounced under the weight of men clambering on to unload it. He wriggled towards the exit hole, felt his feet touch empty air, pushed his legs through. There was a sickening dropping sensation. He hit the ground as silently as he could. It was dark. He smelled meat and sacks of grain and other provender. He knew that he was within a large storage shed.
Now was the worst part. He could see feet and legs on the far side of the cart. He could hear voices talking above him. It would be very easy to be caught. He glanced right. There was a small gap between two massive stacks of grain bags. He offered up a small prayer of thanks. The driver at least had kept his wits about him and parked the cart where he should. He swung his small duffel bag over his shoulders, scuttled over and dived into the gap, moving as quickly and quietly as he could into the gloom between the rows.
So far, so good, he thought. He was inside the Tower and he was still free. He hunkered down to wait in the shadows. Soon it would be full dark and he would have more chance of going about his business.
Rik moved through the warehouse. It was dark now but he could see, his half-Terrarch eyes piercing the gloom better than any human’s. The large doors were closed but there was a small postern gate as he had been told. It was locked. He felt a surge of claustrophobia and the old fear of being trapped, then he reached within his tunic and pulled out his lock picks.
As a boy, Koralyn had made him practise picking locks in the dark, and beat him for every failure. Rik had never expected to feel gratitude to the old bastard, but he did now, as the mechanism clicked and the door opened.
The moon glared through the clouds. The glow of the Tower easily provided enough illumination for him to see by. Storm force rain fell. Droplets splashed down into puddles. Green rings broke the reflection of the tower in the water. The massive bulk loomed overhead, mountain large, seemingly impregnable.
Who was he to think he could pierce its secrets? It’s hellish green glow underlit the clouds.
There was a smell in the air of ozone and something else.
What was going on here tonight, he wondered? Was this a sign of the power Ilmarec had gathered, that he was ready now to destroy Azaar’s army. What sorcery did he plan?
Rik was still in shadow himself and he intended to stay that way. He could make out a few people moving across the courtyard and sentries silhouetted against the walls.
He studied his surroundings. In the darkness the tower had a weird glow, phosphorescent like the scum that sometimes floated in the water at the effluent outlets of a Sorrow alchemical works. The runes set in the structure’s side grew brighter and then faded, and he was more than ever reminded of the fact that the Tower was the product of alien sorcery. The cycle of increasing brightness and then fading became more obvious and more pronounced. This had never happened before.
He exhaled a long silent breath and tried to calm his racing heart. He visualised the maps Asea had provided and attempted to relate them to this benighted space. Satisfied that he knew where he was going he made his way to the outer wall, touched its cool surface with his left hand, and walked for a hundred paces along its curve.
“Hey you,” said a voice. “What are you up to?”
Two large men were walking in his direction, heads down, shoulders hunched against the rain. He cursed himself. He should have taken the time to put on his Tower Guard uniform then these men would not be bothering him.
“Yes,” said Rik, trying to keep his tone of voice non-committal and imitate a local accent. He put his hands together as if in a gesture of obeisance and apology. In reality he was making sure he could grip the hilt of the poisoned dagger in its drop-sheath. “What do you want?”
“What are you doing here?” asked the larger of the two men. He was slightly the better dressed of the two and had a head servant’s bullying manner with underlings.
“Just getting a breath of fresh air, sir,” said Rik. “It was stuffy inside.”
“Stuffy was it? You should be back in chambers. If you sneaked out for a smoke…” He sniffed the air ostentatiously. “Well you know how his Lordship told us all to be within by Bell Ten. I’ll have your hide, my lad.”
Rik stared at him. The man stepped back a little. Rik wondered if the speaker sensed how close he was to death. Rik measured the distance between them. He could get one man with the knife, but he was not sure he could take out the other before he could give the alarm.
“No smoking,” said Rik. “I never touch the weed. Anyway, hard to get a light in this rain.”
The other servant was looking at him strangely now. “Who are you?” he said. “I don’t recall seeing your face around before.”
“New hire,” said Rik confidently, stepping forward a little.
“I didn’t hear anything about any new hires,” said the larger man. “And I should have been told. If Bortha has been hiring behind my back, I’ll have his guts for garters. He’s supposed to consult with me about any hires.”
Rik knew how it was. Working in a place like the Tower was a good job. You had to bribe the head servants if you wanted in.
“Bortha said there wouldn’t be no trouble,” he said, deeming it better to go along with the story that the man had already placed in his own head.
“Did he now? We’ll see about that. You just come along with me and we’ll have a little chat with Bortha.” The man laid a heavy hand on Rik’s arm. He was very strong, stronger than Rik had expected. He allowed himself to be pulled toward the man, let the knife slide loose from its scabbard. As he came alongside the servant, Rik drove the blade into the man’s side. The servant slumped forward, gasping, the poison already starting to take effect.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Rik asked in as normal a voice as he could. His fingers trembled on the knife hilt. “Quick! Help me!” he said to the second servant.
The man moved closer and Rik sprang forward and grabbed him, moving behind the man, locking his free hand on his throat. He put one hand over the man’s mouth to stifle his screams and drove the knife into his heart. There was no sense in relying on the poison. It might already have been all gone from the blade. The man slumped forward dead.
Rik started to tremble as reaction set in. This quick stealthy sort of killing was not something he liked. He had killed in battle many times, but there was an additional strain involved
because of the need for silence and the proximity of guards and sorcerous guardians.
Be calm, he told himself, and breathed deeply. Think.
Swiftly he moved back to the wall. Of course, he had lost the exact location in the scuffle. He glared around frantically. His heart raced. At any time, more servants or more sentries might come and find him. He doubted he would be so lucky a second time.
He froze, trying to decide what to do. Should he go back for the bodies and drag them into the warehouse? If he left them lying there, surely someone would find them. On the other hand, every heartbeat he stood here was another heartbeat in which someone might notice him.
He leaned against the wall until the fit of trembling left him. There was blood on his hands, particularly the one that held the knife. He put the blade down carefully and tried to wipe it off on the wall, leaving a series of bloody smears and handprints. It came to him that he might have left similar prints on the outside, a tell-tale sign, along with the corpses, that would let the inhabitants of the Tower know where he had gone.
Another thought occurred to him. What if he had nicked himself with the knife? What if he had somehow accidentally poisoned himself? He checked his hands for cuts and found none. He paused and listened to his pounding heart and rasping breath, trying to detect any signs of either slowing or becoming abnormal. It was long minutes before he decided that there were none, and that he had better get on with his mission.
It was only then that the realisation began to sink in that he had extinguished two human lives as casually as he might have swatted flies. Perhaps Asea was right about him, and right about the Shadowblood.
He pushed the thought aside. Under these circumstances such a heritage could only be an advantage.
The Nerghul pulled itself over the lip of the cliff. Huge walls of glass-like substance loomed over it, wet and slick and gleaming. It was not the walls that troubled the creature, it was the enormous power surging through them. The Nerghul sensed the presence of an intelligence within, tapping that power, one that it would be foolish for it to challenge.
It paced along the narrow ledge, considering. Its experience of the other night had taught it caution. It had taken hours crouching in the darkness among the old ruins to heal its injuries and that place had not been nearly as well defended as this. Still, the scent of its prey led here and it needed to kill, the way a lover needs the caress of its beloved.
There was something strange in the air this night. The flow of power around the Tower was odd. It surged and sank, peaked and troughed. The Nerghul felt the unease of the intelligence chained within the walls. It felt that unease itself the way an animal senses a coming storm. It sensed moments of weakness in the defensive wards, and moments where to touch those walls would mean instant death.
It crouched down to wait for another trough. When the moment came it sprang, reaching the top of the wall with ease. A moment later, it knew the defences were working again, but now it was inside, and it sensed the nearness of its prey.
Soon it would be time to kill.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rik strolled casually around the base of the Tower, trying not to attract any attention. Where had all the people gone? Most likely into the Tower. The hair on the back of his neck rose. His skin tingled. There was a strange feeling in the air, like the closeness before a storm, of that brief instant before a cannonball hit close by.
Something was happening here; he had no idea what, but it made him nervous.
He needed to get inside the Tower and be about his work. Above him he could see a balcony, jutting out from the body of the tower in a streamlined bulge. He took the grapnel and knotted rope from his duffel bag and swung it swiftly upward. It caught on the third attempt. All the while the skin on his back crawled. He expected to be shot by a guard.
Not likely he told himself. It was dark and it was raining. Damp powder would most likely misfire. The thought did not make him feel any better.
He tugged the rope to make sure it was firm then pulled himself up using the knots in the rope for purchase. His fingers struggled for purchase on the rain-slicked spidersilk. His arms burned from having to support his weight. After what felt like hours, he reached the balcony. He had a moment of sheer, stark terror as his fingers slipped on the rope, but he managed to get a grip and pull himself over.
Rain puddled on the slick green stone under his feet. He listened at the closed shutters but could not hear anything within.
He pried the shutters open with his knife. He turned to glance over his shoulders for a last look at the world beyond the Tower, knowing he might never see anything beyond it again.
There was only the great walls, the huge surrounding courtyard and the massive outbuildings. Then he saw it, moving crouched but with unnatural speed across the courtyard, pausing head down to sniff occasionally.
It took him a moment to realise it was following his path exactly and that it had found the bodies of the men he had killed. When it did not immediately give the alarm, the nagging sense of familiarity about the thing crystallised. He had only seen it for a few moments back in the House of Three Swans, but those few moments were enough to burn the memory of it into his consciousness forever.
The Nerghul was on his trail. Fear clutched his heart. His mouth felt dry. He was uncomfortably aware of the throb of his pulse. Sweat beaded his brow. He could not survive an encounter with the thing. He froze for a moment but then the image of the Nerghul clambering up his own rope came to him. Swiftly, with fumbling fingers, he pulled the rope up, then stepped inside the room.
He cursed. He had barely begun and already things had gone badly wrong. How had it got past the guardians, he wondered? What other miscalculations has Asea made? As he crossed the room, he told himself there was no sense in apportioning blame. He checked his surroundings. There were pallets on the floor and small heaps of personal possessions. This looked like servants quarters.
What to do, what to do, he wondered? He already felt as if the Nerghul were only a few steps behind him.
Sardec stood beside Asea as she stared out the window at the Tower.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I was not thinking, I was praying,” she said.
“There’s nothing we can do now. The carters have returned. Our man is inside. All we can do is hope he is not caught.” Sardec thought about how he had once felt about the half-breed and felt slightly ashamed. He had to admit the man was brave. Sardec was not sure he could have gone into the Tower alone to do what the half-breed was doing.
“If he fails,” Asea said. “We fail.”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps Ilmarec is not as powerful as he thinks.”
“You are not a sorcerer, Lieutenant. You cannot feel what is radiating out of that Tower. Ilmarec is powerful if he controls it, perhaps more powerful than any other living being on this planet.”
Looking at the way the green-lit clouds swirled around the peak of the Tower, Sardec was prepared to believe her. When the lightning and thunder started, it seemed merely another manifestation of the Tower’s ancient evil energies.
Sardec let out a long breath. He was going to suggest that they sit down and have something to drink, but he did not. If all they could do now was keep this vigil, it was what they had to do. Anything else would seem like a betrayal of the man they had sent into that terrible place.
Ilmarec lowered himself into the command throne. All was in readiness. The servants were gathered in the great hall. All of his troops were in position. Kathea was confined to her chambers nearby. The great ritual was complete. Tonight he would unleash the greatest weapon this world had seen in millennia.
He took a final look around. The central chamber was empty save for his demonic bodyguard. It would keep watch while he was at his most vulnerable and deal with anybody who managed to get past his guards and into this sacred place.
He allowed himself a momentary surge of triumph. It had taken centuries to master the secret
s of the Tower, to open the seals to its hidden heart and awaken the Old One who lay in long-doomed hibernation within its secret vaults. It had taken endless study and sacrifice and the expenditure of a great deal of gold.
Tonight would make it all worthwhile. He would prove to the world that he was the greatest sorcerer of all the Terrarchs, and a power to be feared as much as the Princes of Shadow. He would destroy Azaar’s army the way a man would crush a nest of insects, and all would know who was the true master of the world.
Anything and everything seemed possible. He would free his beloved nation of foreigners. He would drive both the Taloreans and the Sardeans back to their homelands, and after that he would conquer them. Perhaps he would even open the Eye of the Sun and reclaim Al’Terra from the Princes of Shadow. He knew he could do it, if he wished. What lay within the tower made him capable of it.
He smiled. Such pleasant daydreams were getting him nowhere. It was time to test the power of this ancient artefact and put the Old One’s knowledge to good use. It had taken him long enough to obtain it. He smiled, knowing his captive would sense the use he was putting the knowledge it had given him to, and tremble.
He touched the glowing amulet on his chest, and muttered complex sentences in the cold, hissing language of the Serpent Men. His mind opened and sent tendrils of thought drifting out to interlock with the chained intelligence of the Tower. It responded to his alienness and fought him briefly, but he drew upon the power of the talisman, and it recognised its appointed master.
His body seemed far away now. His true form was the Tower. He could feel it like he could feel his own flesh. He touched the cocoon of energy that encased it and it grew thicker as he willed it to. He was aware of the mighty power that burned in its heart, a power which grew ever stronger as he drew upon its energies.
He was a god. It was that simple. He could reach out and destroy the entire town below if he wanted but that was not his purpose. He extended his will and the Tower obeyed. His senses extended to the horizon. He reached out with fingers of force and probed the nearby mountains. Only the curvature of the world’s surface protected Azaar’s army now, and he would deal with that soon enough.