There was a faint, oddly metallic odor, pungent and sour, that wafted up from below, from wherever the passage led. Occasionally glancing backward over his shoulder, he moved, step by deliberate step down and around the gentle slope of the passage.
He had gone far enough around the slow curve of the corridor that the tower’s entrance had passed out of view beyond the intervening wall when he came to a doorway leading to his right, into the structure. The door was closed and there was no handle; he could discern no means of opening it. With no other idea readily at hand, Aram simply pushed on it and was surprised when it swung easily inward, exposing a large, dimly lit, open area beyond.
Holding the Sword pointed toward the opening as he moved around to where he could more clearly see inside the space beyond the door, Aram glanced each way along the passage, making sure that it was still abandoned, before turning his attention back to the interior space. The room was evidently very large, for it extended away from him beyond the ability of his eye to resolve detail. It was lit by the same method as the hallway, with green, glowing jewels or stones imbedded into the ceiling, which, like that of the passage, was quite high.
All his nerves twitched and the hair on the back of his neck tingled as if it stood on edge. Despite the fact that there was no movement anywhere in sight and no sounds other than those that his boots made upon the smooth black floor, he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched.
Time after time, he turned his head quickly to the left or the right in an attempt to catch anyone or anything stalking him from either direction along the corridor, but never was there another soul in sight.
Summoning his courage, he eased into the room beyond the door and slid to his left to stand with his back against the wall while he surveyed the interior. The room was immense and round, apparently encompassing the breadth of the main structure of the tower. Except for the exterior walls he could discern no supports for the ceiling anywhere. It appeared to him as if the tower had at one time been solid and this room had simply been hollowed out of it.
There were weapons stacked at intervals along both walls as they curved away from him, halberds, lances, even swords, but they were not numerous enough to signify an armory. It appeared, rather, as if each stack of weaponry was the cache of some individual lasher.
There were hundreds of large woven mats scattered here and there, many more than there were caches of weapons. And there were scattered piles of bones, mostly of animals, but there were also some that were fearfully humanlike.
The atmosphere of the room was heavy with a foul pungency, as of decay, rotted meat. Probably, this odor arose from the refuse of past meals of the beasts that had lived there.
Aram’s eyes had by this time grown accustomed to the faint green light, but though he peered deep into the depths of the room and turned his head to either side to listen, it became obvious that the vast space was devoid of living beings. He could see no reason to expend time on further exploration of an empty room.
Still, the feeling of malignant observation persisted.
He eased back to his right, peered around the edges of the opening, and examined the outer passage in both directions.
But it, too, was empty.
Easing out into the corridor, still holding the Sword to his front, Aram descended further, going down and around the passage to the right.
How far he went, he could not be certain, but after what seemed like a complete revolution of the vast structure, he came again to a doorway that led into the interior of the structure. This room was already open to him, the door having swung inward.
Abruptly, his senses were assaulted by a strong, metallic odor, as of blood, that emanated from the space beyond the open door. This room, then, was the origin of the scent he’d noticed earlier.
It smelled of blood.
And of other, fouler execrations.
He eased closer to the opening and then looked down at the floor, startled, as his boots encountered a thin layer of a sticky substance that gave off fresh waves of foul aroma when disturbed by the soles of his boots. It was gore, mostly congealed, though whether it was of human origin or lasher, he could not tell.
Apparently, Manon’s device for the destruction of his armies out in the valley had also destroyed anything that lived within the tower itself.
The air became suffocating with the pungent odor of death as he stepped gingerly across the swath of blackened gore and peered inside the room. Horror and revulsion rocked him as he gazed upon the furnishings of this vast open space.
Humans had lived here.
But that which had been living creatures was now reduced to mounds of devastated flesh, bone, hair, and cloth scattered all across the floor of the room, from wall to wall. In horror, Aram held his free hand to his nose and examined what he could see of the room from the opening. The other objects in the room told its use. Beds, hundreds of them, were aligned in rows, stretching away to the far distant wall.
Over to the right, sweeping around the room out of sight, between the beds and the wall, there was a broad space filled with tables, barrels, and tall cabinets. Some distance away, incorporated into this space, there was what looked to be an area for the preparation of food. It struck Aram suddenly that he was looking at the place – or at least one of the places – where the young women transported from the south were housed while their wombs were put to use. This suspicion was confirmed by the presence of smaller husks of what had once been living things scattered here and there among the larger corpses that lay everywhere across the room.
His heart abruptly constricted, sadness overwhelmed him, and the gorge rose in his throat, even as hot anger poured into his soul.
This very room, this terrible, loathsome dank space, was very likely the last dwelling place of his sister, lost to him so many years ago.
Pivoting abruptly on his heel, he turned and left the room. Gaining the passageway once more, and breathing hard, as if the horror he’d just witnessed was something that could expunged by the mere act of exhalation, Aram turned to his right. He did not hesitate or slink but strode quickly down and around the passage. Two more time-consuming circuits of the tower proved that there were two more rooms like the one above. After but a cursory look into each, in what he knew to be a futile attempt to determine if anything yet lived, he went on.
The circumnavigations took less time now, as the deeper rooms grew smaller rather than larger. Still, in the passage and in each room he passed, the air reeked with the foul stench of death. Immediately below the third – and the last – of the slave quarters, there was another room, smaller, but with thick walls and a heavier door. The door was shut but opened easily enough when Aram leaned his shoulder against it.
He eased cautiously into the gloom of the narrow room and let his eyes adjust as he surveyed the dim interior. Immediately, he recognized the remains of the three massive beasts which lay dead within, still shackled to the wall with heavy lengths of chain.
The wolves had named their kind deathmakers.
Aram had slain their brother far away to the south, on that terrible, dark, overcast day in The Lost.
These monsters, then, had been the sires of the grim lord’s vile armies of lashers, cultivated in the innocent young wombs of the daughters of men. Aram made to move toward them and make sure of their demise. Before he took three steps the overwhelming stench and vast thickening pools of gore made it clear that these beasts would terrorize and horrify no more.
There was nothing – and no one – else, in that room. Backing out of its foulness, he gained the passage once more and went again downward, around to the right.
The passage wound down for a significant distance and then straightened out and led straight toward another doorway, which was sealed. Like the room below the tower in the befouled city of Panax far away to the south on the borders of Wallensia, this door was set tightly into its enclosure. He could find no means of ingress. It appeared that if Manon was inside th
e space beyond, Aram would be obliged to wait for him to choose the moment of revelation.
As he studied this apparently impassable door, however, anger abruptly surged within him. He had not come all this way just to let the enemy decide when and where he should be confronted. Stepping up close to the smooth blackness, he thrust the Sword into the barely discernable seam on the left-hand side.
Acrid smoke boiled up on the instant and the material of the door began to melt and sag away from the opening. He moved the blade away from the jam which was also beginning to disintegrate and then removed it from the door itself. By now the whole door had become fluid and was melting onto the floor of the passage.
Aram stepped back from the blazing hot mess of the melting door and retreated out of the acrid choking smoke which dissipated gradually as it curled up along the corridor. After giving the melted door a few minutes to cool and coalesce into its new shape, he eased forward until he could see into the room beyond.
It was small and dark and as well as he could see from where he stood just beyond the still-heated pile of black goo, also very oddly-shaped. That dark space was ovoid, as if a large egg or geode had once occupied that spot and then burst or evaporated, leaving a chamber behind.
The only furnishing in that egg-shaped space was a chair that appeared as if it had once been part of the surrounding stone and had grown up out of the floor. Directly before this chair, between it and the entrance, there was a basin, formed in similar manner to the chair, and filled with a dark fluid of unknown composition.
Manon was not there, anywhere inside that small, restricted space.
Aram backed away and then retraced his steps up, up, and around the curving passageway, not pausing to re-examine any of the rooms he’d passed earlier. There was no point in spending more time below the level of the earth. The grim lord, apparently, waited for him somewhere above.
When he came to the main entrance, he halted and gazed out for a few moments into the deep night. Though he peered carefully out into the darkness, he saw nothing moving on the roadway that dipped down and then ascended away from him toward the dark plain above. He turned away and kept going, angling up and to the left now. Around and around he went as the tower seemed to grow no smaller. Either the interior part of the tower was solid along this large section or the doors into unseen rooms were invisible. He wasted no time in examining the walls to see if in fact there were any of these unseen entrances, for something told him now, with a certainty that he could not have explained, that his quarry was above him, somewhere in the heights of the structure.
It was only after three or four more circuits that Aram came upon another opening leading to his left, into the interior of the tower. There was no door at the entrance to this chamber and Aram slowed as he approached it. The feeling of being observed had grown as he ascended and grew stronger as he approached the door. Now, perhaps, at last, he would face the destiny that had fallen to him.
With the Sword extended out to his front, he came to the opening and peered inside, moving first one way and then the other as he examined the large room beyond. He could see no one. Still holding the Sword before him, he cautiously entered the chamber. It was vast and utterly without furnishings, and lit, like all the others, by the strange stones overhead. In the very center of the room, there was a glowing green jewel imbedded in the ceiling, much larger than all the rest that surrounded it. This one large jewel-like stone served to illuminate an area immediately below it.
Aram stood still and stared toward the center of the room at this pool of much brighter light, wondering if perhaps Manon might materialize upon that spot.
But many minutes passed in silence and the grim lord did not appear.
Aram carefully scanned the depths and the far sweeping reaches of the vast room, but discerned nothing. The immense chamber was, apparently, quite empty. If Manon indeed occupied that broad space, the god had discovered the secrets of invisibility. But no – no, the god was not here. He swept his piercing gaze back across the room one last time and then turned away, back into the passageway.
As if summoned, he felt compelled toward the heights.
Manon was not in the room behind him, nor anywhere else below; he was more certain of it than ever.
The grim lord waited for him somewhere above.
Glancing back to his right, down the long curving hallway, he turned left and climbed up once more along the dark corridor.
Up and around he climbed, and gradually the circuits around the tower took less time. The structure grew perceptibly smaller. And now there were no more rooms or doorways leading into the interior of the structure. There was only the seemingly endless passageway, climbing up and up. Once, he passed a door in the exterior wall, but like the room far below, he could find no means of getting it open and he was loathe to use the Sword here.
He moved on.
Abruptly, the hallway ended and the entire interior opened up. The floor in front of him fell away, into hideous depths. Beyond the interior wall of the corridor, the tower had apparently been nothing but a shell for many circuits. But, wait, there was something in that broad, dark space.
Aram stared into the dimness, willing his eyes to adjust and expose to him what it was that was there. And gradually, it was resolved.
In the center of the emptiness, rising up out of the depths of the tower far below to pierce the void like a spike, a column of smooth black stone soared into the blackness overhead and out of sight.
Where the floor ended at a precipice, a narrow walkway of the smooth black stone arched across to the column or pillar that arose from below. Beginning where the walkway touched the pillar, steps had been cut into the shining black stone column. These steps wound upward and around it until they passed from view, and then reappeared to encircle it yet again in the gloom further above.
Aram hesitated for but a moment and then stepped out onto the suspended walkway.
He had encountered him whom he sought nowhere below.
Manon must be above.
Reaching the encircling steps, he went cautiously upward, into the night, round and around, and around again, and yet again. The column gradually narrowed, grew smaller, and still he climbed.
Then the stairs ended and he rose up and stepped out onto a smooth gleaming platform in the very heart – and the heights – of the tower.
A figure stood in the exact center of the platform, regal, tall, and slender, bareheaded, clothed in silvery robes.
Manon.
50.
The Lord of the World’s eyes glowed deeply blue in the dimness.
“Hello, my son,” the god said quietly, and the words seemed to slide from his tongue like oil or liquefied honey. He held out one hand in invitation. “You have come to me at last.”
Aram made no reply. His heart was racing, making the blood pound inside his head like the ringing of a hammer, not so much from the exertion of the climb but rather from the fact that in that moment he stood face-to-face with the greatest and most powerful evil that had ever troubled the world and its people.
His doom.
His destiny.
The destiny he had not sought but had found anyway and now faced.
The long and dangerous path that his feet had trod for so long ended here, upon this polished black surface, high above the plane of the earth inside a hollow black spike that yet extended far into the darkness above him.
Making no reply to the god, holding the Sword at the ready, Aram gauged the distance to his enemy.
It was about twenty-five feet.
He bunched his muscles and lunged forward.
Manon lifted his hand, turning it so that invitation became a shield.
Aram crashed into an unseen, yet unyielding wall of power and went to his knees, gasping with pain.
“Is this why you have come to me after all this time?” Manon asked in apparent surprise. “To try and slay me?”
Aram could not find breath to return an answer. Hi
s lungs were empty; his mouth gaped open in an attempt to pull air back into his body. Pressure surged over and against him, grinding him down onto the smooth floor of the platform.
Then the god dropped his hand. The pressure eased.
Aram sucked in a desperate lungful.
“Do you know what it is that you bear in your hand, Aram?” Manon inquired gently. “I will tell you. It is the key to all things. It is the key to the door of the universe itself.”
With his muscles still quivering from the blast of unseen power, Aram nonetheless managed to force himself up onto his knees, holding the Sword defensively in front of him. His lungs yet burned but he felt compelled to give an answer.
“If this is the key to such a great door,” he gasped out, “it is a very small one.”
Manon smiled. “Very small keys may open very great doors,” he said. He stretched forth his hand and beckoned. “Come – give it to me. Be the son to me that I know you can be. Give me the key and I will open the door; then, let us walk through that door together and together we will astound the universe.”
Aram looked up and met his gaze but gave no reply. He was unmoved by Manon’s offer, of course; still, he did not know what to do. He had not counted on the god’s ability to extend the reach of his terrible power beyond his physical person. As his lungs quieted and his muscles calmed, he focused his brain and attempted to assess the problem.
How could he reach Manon and employ the weapon?
He had to somehow penetrate the god’s powerful shield. He had counted on the Sword’s ability to strike down any barrier, but this had not proved true. Slowly, carefully, Aram came to his feet. He had no desire to engage his enemy in polite conversation, but he had to get closer.
He lowered the Sword. It pulled against his hand, down and to the rear. Based on the weapon’s behavior, Aram realized that the sun must even now be climbing the firmament on the far side of the world.
He looked into Manon’s night-sky eyes as he took a half-step forward. “If I give you this ‘key’, my lord, you will slay me, will you not – as you slew my fathers?”
Kelven's Riddle Book Five Page 34