The Tower

by Jean Johnson

  Those risks and rewards were confined to the lower levels with easier, less lethal traps at first, but as the lure of that wealth brought in more and more outsiders, more and more of them grew rather skilled, penetrating farther into the mazelike structure, particularly as the original patterns became known. So some predecessor of Kerric’s had come up with the idea of sectioning off all the rooms and corridors at their doorways with special doorway-Gates which could be swapped up on a whim by the Guardian. The Fountain, of course, powered both the scrycastings and the enchanted doorways. It left the land less fertile than before as more and more magic was diverted, but the income from the scryings more than made up for it.

  The flexibility of the arrangement allowed the subsequent Guardians to actually plan various routes. Different levels of difficulty could be assigned to those routes, and different styles of games could be devised. Some were along the lines of “get in, grab a certain item, and get out again” while others were a case of “rescue the victim”—who was usually a Tower employee—or “see how many traps you can disarm in X number of hours.”

  After four hundred years, and with paths which could be realigned nearly at will, there were a lot of different games and configurations people could run. Adventuring in the Tower was the single most popular activity for a good thousand miles around, even beyond the extent of most scrycastings. There were even scrycast relays, mirrors hooked up in tandem to extend the range, and the images could be sent along the Fountainways.

  Adventurers could sign up as a group, or as individuals who would be put into a pool and selected by lottery based on their skill sets, levels of expertise, and the types of adventures they had signed up for, or any number of variations. But they all had to check in here, at the Adventuring Hall. Anyone caught trying to sneak into the Tower unauthorized was presumed to be a thief of some sort, with the nearest traps rearranged by the various Maintenance departments to be turned lethal.

  It was inevitable that they had clients who would pay for scryings of such things, but Kerric and his predecessors had made sure such clients paid dearly. And every single would-be adventurer had to sign legal contracts to hold the Tower, the Adventurer’s Guild, and their various employees free of responsibility for any damages they suffered or incurred while adventuring in the Tower. No one was forced to go inside, and no one could be forced to go inside, so whatever happened to them was of their own free will.

  Which means I’ll not only need to find a female adventurer who isn’t a mage, one who is capable of keeping her mouth shut, but also one who is highly skilled at navigating the tricks of the Tower, and willing to go in on a two-person team. Three-person teams are usually hard enough as it is, but with only two, everything grows extra hard. Plus she’ll have to be physically strong, to drag my frame through that one particular trap . . . and single, for the other trap. Interested in men, for that matter.

  The thought of that trap made him blush. As Master of the Tower, he normally just rerouted any doorway he opened or passed through with a pulse of his power, unless the configuration had to remain consistent for some reason. Such areas were usually the living quarters up at the very top, or if someone was using a particular passage or room during a game. Normally, he could override such things at great need . . . but not this time.

  There were nine concrete, physical paths leading upward from the base of the Tower all the way to the very top. The trick lay in choosing the right entrances among the thirty or so doorways that could be accessed from the ground floor. Two of those were maintenance stairwells, connected to various rooms and chambers on different floors via carefully concealed secret doors. Those paths did not necessarily connect to the heart of the Tower, however.

  Two more simply led from the base to the top, and the last five led toward the heart. Only a few of them crossed each other’s path at certain points. Of the five that led to the heart, they joined together at different points until only one final stretch led through a set of very deadly traps to the Fountain Hall, the hidden heart of the Tower.

  As Guardian, he knew which of those five paths was the easiest. Technically, the two maintenance stairwells were the easiest, but by now they were sealed off by the Tower defenses. Short of blasting giant holes in the Tower itself—which would cause an entirely new host of defensive measures to activate—there would be no way for an outsider to get into them. Whatever path was chosen, he and his companion would still have to face the formidable defenses lurking inside.

  Beyond the white-tiled roof of the Adventuring Hall rose the mottled-cream bulk of the Tower. He could see the balconies and windows from here. They looked like enticing shortcuts, but he knew they weren’t; their doorway-Gates were designed to loop back in on themselves in self-defense.

  No, the real paths to the heart of the Tower—not the top, which he could reach by simply levitating all the way up—started at the bottom. And the best path to finding the right woman for his adventuring companion lay in the personnel files of the Adventuring Hall. Cupping his hands for one more drink at the fountain, Kerric wiped his mouth on his forearm and headed for the steps up into the Hall.

  At least I can pick locks, so she won’t need that in her skill set. I’ll need to pick up a couple sets of tools from the supply master, though. I should probably pick up some knives or daggers, just in case. The physical fighting, that’ll mostly be her job, whichever woman I pick. She’ll need to be an outstanding warrior, too, since I’m not the best combatant in the world. Damn, I can’t remember who was scheduled to go into the Tower this morning. I don’t think any of them were the top fighters. I know I’d have remembered if a big-name adventurer-lady like Shalia or Myal or Terrend went in, so hopefully one of them is free. I do know Nafiel is taking the day off for certain, though he’s a fellow male and both of us are straight, as far as I know . . .

  “Master Kerric! What is going wrong within the Tower?” someone called out from the reception hall the moment he entered. “What’s happening?”

  Heads turned his way, not just from the staff managing the front chamber, but from the men and women lounging on the benches and chairs, many of them in armor with packs of traveling gear and supplies at their feet. Kerric quickly went into Master mode, shoulders square, chin confidently up, his strides solid and purposeful. Raising his hands, he quelled their concerns before the others could add their own queries.

  “Rest easy, everyone. The Tower is just undergoing a bit of emergency maintenance. It will take a little bit of time to settle out,” he admitted, “but I know exactly what to do and how to do it, so it will get done. In the meantime, consider this a little rest-break from the normal hustle and bustle of things. Relax, have some fun, and I’ll see about requisitioning a nice meal for everyone on the Tower’s bill if this stretches into tomorrow, to apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “Uh, Master Kerric?” one of the women lounging in the front hall asked, her tone hesitant but her hazel eyes earnest, almost pleading. She rose to her feet, taller than him by a handspan, clad in fighting leathers, her ash-brown hair pulled back from her face by a leather band across her brow. “You’re the one in charge, right? I . . . I have a friend in the Tower right now. I was a little late getting here, so she went on ahead without me, and . . .”

  Kerric dipped his head, acknowledging her fears. “All adventurers inside the Tower were instructed to move to a refreshing room shelter area. I’m sure your friend did exactly that. Once inside a refreshing room, she’ll be perfectly fine while she waits for the necessary repairs to be made. She might get a little bored of dried meats and crackers from the food vending cabinets, but she’ll be alright.

  “If she wasn’t smart enough to find one immediately . . . Well, everyone who enters the Tower accepts the inherent risks. And yes, that includes Tower personnel, from the lowliest cleaner all the way up through even me,” he added deprecatingly, touching his chest.

  “Master Kerric, I have a question!” a man called out.

  Gi
ving him and the others a slight bow, Kerric continued toward the back halls, where the copies of the files on every currently active adventurer were kept. “I’m afraid there’s quite a lot for me to do in order to get the Tower back up and running properly. We’ll do our best to get everyone out again, but things do break down from time to time, and so maintenance must happen. Try to enjoy the day off, everyone!”

  Flicking his hand in a friendly wave over his shoulder, he disappeared through a door marked with a brass plaque that read Authorized Personnel Only. It meant escaping to safety, but only relative safety. He wouldn’t be queried by adventurers, but the men and women on the other side of that stout panel would also have awkward questions for him to deflect.

  The head of the Adventuring Hall would need to know what had gone wrong. Sylva, of course, already knew. And those with whom Jessina had spoken would already know. The rest would only get the two scenarios proposed by burgher Sylva. It was the only way to quell the wrong sorts of rumors.

  * * *

  Rumors were rampant in the Honey Spear. No sooner had Narahan Myal pushed open the door and stepped into the tavern than she heard at least five different reasons why the Tower was locked down. She had to duck a little to get through the doorway without feeling like she was going to smack her head on the lintel, but she was used to doing that. She couldn’t duck the noise of all that speculation, though.

  A huge chunk of rooms had swapped entrances and frozen up, with no access in or out. A special team of adventurers was making a run for some sort of fantastic treasure. A small army of would-be thieves had managed to infiltrate the structure to steal the various treasures meant for honest, hard-working adventurers. An extremely wealthy patron wanted a private adventuring run. An extremely wealthy and perverted patron wanted an erotic adventuring run with scantily clad males and females competing for . . . things that made her ears burn.

  Thankfully, the men and women joking about that one carried it clearly to the point of absurdity, and the game broke up in ribald laughter and deep sighs of denial. Myal had heard of certain rooms in the Tower of a very adult nature, and that such things were traps, but those rooms were almost never run. When they were included, it was announced to all, and any adventurer who chose that particular scenario had to sign additional waivers. Not to mention they had to prove they were at least twenty years in age, and wear contraceptive amulets. The local age of consent was sixteen, but the rules of the Tower decreed an adventurer had to have a bit of experience in such matters to be able to handle them maturely. Or at least had enough time to give the consequences some decent thought.

  A variation on the “erotic adventuring” rumor made its way around again shortly after Myal had snagged one of the servers and requested whatever was hot and ready for her supper. She’d heard the one about someone betting the Master of the Tower to run the tricks and traps himself on her walk from her three-room tenement to this place, but this version had the Master of the Tower running the gauntlets stark naked.

  She blushed just thinking about that. She, like many other adventuring favorites, had dealt directly with the Master of the Tower from time to time. Most of those “meetings” had been mirror-based. The administrators in the Adventuring Hall would call for specific players during special events requested by patrons when they wanted to see their favorites perform, or had a particular form of gauntlet in mind, but sometimes the Master would make those requests or outline those runs himself.

  He was rather handsome, with his exotic curly brown hair, lightly suntanned skin, and those nice gray eyes . . . but it wasn’t right to think of the man naked. He worked very hard to make the Tower entertaining, exciting, and even fun, despite its many dangers. Myal didn’t think it was respectful to . . . to think of him as a sex object instead of a man. Everything she had learned since coming here had only increased her admiration of the hardworking Guardian and his equally hardworking staff.

  Five years ago, she had arrived on the eastern shore of Aiar as part of a Mendhite merchant ship’s crew. As they had made their way up the coast, offering Mendhite spices and seeking out exotic local versions to take back, word of the Tower and its adventurers had reached her ears. Being who and what she was, Myal had felt an itch of curiosity about the place. Wanting to test herself, she had parted from the crew at the nearest port, found work as a caravan guard headed west, and wound up here in Penambrion, the Tower Village.

  She wasn’t the only Painted Warrior at the Tower, but at the moment there were only three, herself and two men, and she was the best of them. There were always more male adventurers than females, particularly among the non-Mendhites; if one wasn’t a mage, capable of shielding and augmenting one’s abilities, then an adventurer had to rely on strength and stamina as well as skill. In just about every land she had visited by sea, women were expected to be more interested in more peaceful pursuits, such as raising children, administering a government, or making a house into a home. Such things didn’t leave much time for adventuring and life-risking, after all.

  Myal wasn’t tied to a job, a hearth, or a cradle. She wasn’t interested in amassing vast amounts of prestige or money, either, though she had purchased expensive enchantments for her boiled leather armor and her weapons. She had also bought a few comforts for her tenement, like the custom-sized bed to fit her Mendhite-sized body, and she made a habit of eating someone else’s cooking on a regular basis. Little things, though, nothing big.

  No, she was here for the challenge and the fun. She could afford to spend her excess money on finding and buying copies of various Aian books to be shipped all the way back to the Great Library. She could also donate to various local charities, such as the disaster fund for the local farmers of the broad Penambrion valley-basin, whose crops were occasionally ruined and homes flooded by heavy rainfall. It had been a very wet spring, and the communities for miles around had been deeply grateful for the support from the adventurers who chose to live here permanently.

  “Ah! Myal the Mendhite!” The hearty baritone voice was more than familiar; it belonged to Nafiel, self-styled Aian barbarian, and the single most popular adventurer, period, of the entire Tower. He raised his mug of ale to her. “So what do you think is the real reason for the Tower being locked down?”

  They weren’t being remotely scryed. That was the deal with the villagers, to protect the privacy of their daily lives; no scrying was allowed anywhere but within certain chambers in the Adventuring Hall, and of course in the Tower itself. That rule also protected everyone’s privacy in their off-hours, including hers. Nafiel wasn’t being hearty for the mirrors and their patrons; he was simply that way all the time, public or private. She knew he came from a land to the west called Pasha, where the people had chosen a God and Goddess who represented passion in its many forms.

  Accepting the plate of sliced beef, mashed roots, and steaming buttered vegetables and the mug of chilled Aian tea brought by the server, Myal considered his question. Nafiel, having adventured with her multiple times, hushed a few of the more impatient patrons of the Honey Spear, and waited for her to speak. He may have been boisterous by nature, but he was also polite.

  “I think . . . given the age of the Tower,” she allowed, “that it is quite possible several of the rooms have ‘locked up’ like joints seized with inflammation. Some of the rumors from those watching the current adventure groups did say that the rooms and corridors have realigned themselves unexpectedly. And it has been said that the Master appeared in the Adventuring Hall personally, so the situation must be quite grave to involve him on the outside.”

  “Nah, s’not the real reason,” another man dismissed, sipping from a glass of wine. He had dyed his shaggy hair in stripes of white and black, and had dyed and stitched his leathers to match, making him look like a zevra from back home. He wasn’t Mendhite, but he had heard about that land’s wild horses from one of the others within the first few days of his arrival, and had decided to create an outlandish outfit to catch the eyes of
the scrycast viewers, and the name to go with it.

  “It makes the most sense,” Myal stated. “The Tower is old. Even with the Fountain powering it, spells do eventually wear out. Or so I understand; I’m no mage.”

  “No, but you’re the next best thing to it,” Nafiel chuckled, lifting his mug in salute before drinking. Like Zevra, he was in his working clothes, which were nothing more than furred boots, a furred loincloth, and a plethora of enchanted armbands, necklaces, rings, and even earrings to make up for all the lack of armor. His gimmick was leaving his rather large and very well-muscled chest, arms, and legs as bare as possible; the Tower had a lot of lady mages paying right and left to watch him as he worked his way through each gauntlet. Rumor also had it he paid mages to remove his chest and armpit hairs by spell, so that no female patron would have her view distracted from all those flexing muscles.

  “Nah, nah, meant th’ Master bein’ on the outside,” Zevra corrected, waggling his spread hand as if to erase the misunderstanding. He sipped his wine, then grimaced. “Nah, I heard he’d gone off to th’ city on a trip. Things went rump-up while he was gone, an’ he got locked out.”

  His suggestion was met with far more catcalls and derisive noises than mutterings of agreement. It wasn’t just loyalty on the part of the locals and the regulars. Every once in a while—about two, three times a year—some idiot-mage came by, demanding to have an Arcane Duel with the Guardian of the Tower. Master Kerric allowed it only after the would-be challenger paid a hefty fee . . . and then usually drove the challenger to his or her knees within minutes. Sometimes one-handed. Those, too, were broadcast for a fee.

  Zevra quickly held off the worst of the grumblings. “Just sayin’, must be pretty bad f’ the Master t’ get locked out, s’all. Or just bad luck ’n bad timing crawlin’ into bed together.”