The Darkest Tower

by John C. Wright

  Shaking my head made my vision darken and blur all the more, and I squirmed and tried to unwedge myself and I looked up just in time to see two things at once.

  First: Hellpoodle was dead. He was hanging by his neck like you’ve seen in old Westerns by a chain that was red hot, and he wore a bib of running blood. The chain he had severed had simply noosed him with its free end. The fur on the back of his neck was not burning, but his throat, which was naked, looked like someone had taken the heating element from an electric stove and garroted him with it. Which, come to think of it, someone had. I made a mental note to have Charles de Gaulle give Abby a medal for keeping a cool head under tooth-fire. I was so addled that it took me a moment to remember de Gaulle was dead. Wellington or Lincoln would have to decorate her.

  Second: Lon Chaney was clinging by three legs somewhat above me to the surface of this second gold wayship where I now was stuck, the one parallel to ours, which he had been using as his firing position. His other leg held the crossbow, which he displayed to me in a front-view aspect, as if asking me to admire the workmanship of the business end.

  Lon Chaney had the same patient look on his doggy face I get on my face when I am waiting in the blind for the deer to move into the shot: eyes half-narrowed and mouth half-open (so the deer won’t hear my breathing). This time, I was the deer. When I craned back my head to see what was happening to Abby, I was exposed.

  I heard that twang of the cord after I felt the bolt enter my chest. Single lung shot.

  It was a good shot under difficult conditions in bad lighting on the roof of a speeding train, and he had to miss the prows and keels of other glass boats between us, so instead of swearing like a sailor, I decided to award him a victory.

  Recalled my acting lessons from the time I played the magical bear in the school play, I writhed a bit, and slumped over. I resisted the impulse to croak out the word Rosebud.

  Since I was wedged in, I could relax like a corpse without falling the infinite fall. The glass hull was right under my nose, and I could see a funhouse mirror reflection of Lon Chaney dimly in the glass.

  His head was turned toward Abby’s location. I was in a sweat, because if he started that way, I had no way to climb after him. But then in the reflection, I saw the sleek canine head turn toward me. Even though the glass was dim, in the reflection I could see above and behind me the glint of his nocturnal eyes like two coppery mirrors, or two burning matches, approaching.

  He slid smoothly down the golden hull surface toward me. I had some half-baked notion of grabbing the crossbow from him if he got closer, but he halted.

  Twenty yards away. Fifteen. Ten. I tried to urge him within arm’s reach by radiating hypnotic waves from my brain, but that was not one of the superpowers I was given.

  He stopped.

  Does swearing count as blasphemy if you do it silently in your heart? I decided to ask Father Flannery next time I went to confession. If I were so lucky.

  I sat there, playing possum while I watched him hang head-downward and cock another bolt with three hands.

  Cripes, but I wished I had something to throw at him during the moment when there was only one leg holding him to the surface.

  This time, I heard the string go thwang before the bolt entered my back. He struck some major vein. I could see the blood pumping from my back. Even with my childhood acting skills of pretending to be a bear, I could not convincingly impersonate a man whose heart had stopped beating.

  Lon Chaney spoke in a sonorous, delicate language, in the lofty accents of an aristocrat. I swear he sounded like a guy who would introduce Masterpiece Theatre on public TV.

  “Immortalis es, ut mihi videtur,” he said, with a slight lilt of laughter to his voice. “Rationalis creatura sum: noli te versari in me fallendo. Si lubet.”

  Latin. It was one of the languages I had studied. I could translate it… that is, while sitting with my Lewis’ Dictionary or Souter’s Glossary open at my elbow, or Harden’s Vulgate, a pencil with a good eraser for erasing plenty of mistakes, a bright lamp, a clean desk, and loads of time: hanging sideways over a sickening abyss while bloodied in combat while panicking about underfed little girls dressed in monkey-masks was a different matter. But I knew some of the words.

  Deathless, you seem. I am a rational creature: do not busy yourself in deceiving me. If you please.

  8. Dog Latin

  I raised my head. “Okay, dogbreath. You got me.”

  This time I wiggled like a salmon, and managed to get out of the wedge without falling to my non-doom. I braced one foot against the gold and one against the blue glass.

  I shook my broken arm, and said a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. He was listening, or someone was, because there was a snap of noise, and my broken bone unbroke itself right then and there. I yanked the crossbow bolts out of my back and chest and flung them spinning away with a casual nonchalance. I flexed my fingers, smacked my fist into my palm, and beckoned the wolfie thing to come closer.

  “Here, doggy, doggy! Good doggy! Come to papa!”

  He removed the bolt from his crossbow and carefully returned it to his quiver. The mouth of the quiver was shaped like a fish trap with inward-pointing teeth, to prevent the bolts from spilling. He pulled the trigger and twanged the empty string, and used his left hand and right foot to strap the weapon in place on his furry back.

  Then he said something rapidly in Latin that I could not follow, but the tone of voice was clearly smirking.

  I shouted to the Wolf-thing, “Out of many, one! He blesses our beginnings! A new order of the world! Uh… The thing speaks for itself! This for that! After this, therefore because of this!… Thus passes the glory of the world! She Flies With Her Own Wings!” That was about all the non-prayer Latin I could remember off the top of my head, and I hoped it would rile him up a bit, and lure him within reach.

  He said something else in a very non-riled up tone of voice. I could not follow it, except I think the phrase Verba sine ratione meant ‘words without reason’ and O bacchabunde meant ‘O thou raving Maenad’. Quaeso and Precer was ‘I beg you’ or ‘prithee’ and Venia tua was ‘pardon me’.

  He was asking me very nicely to stop spouting nonsense.

  I shook my fist at him. “I’ve spouted nonsense my whole life, and I ain’t stopping now! Come here and make me, dog breath!” I tried to remember the word for carrion-eater. “Cariosos voratore!”

  That must not have been right, because all he did was tilt his head, open his jaws slightly and let his tongue loll out. (I might have called him a frequently-turning ship-keel. Which is not much of an insult, really.)

  I shouted up to Abby. “Little sister! I am alive!”

  She called back, “I know that.” Her tone was one of motherly patience with a slowwitted child. “You are of the host that cannot die.”

  Lon Chaney cocked his ear. I reminded myself that he could understand anything she said the same way I could. It was only my side of the conversation he did not get.

  “Tell the wolfman here I challenge him to a wrestling match, no holds barred, first guy to be thrown loses!”

  She repeated it. The wolfman answered in a stream of sonorous words that sounded like poetry, the dactylic hexameter of Virgil. This guy was really creeping me out. Werewolves were supposed to be ravenous mindless monsters, not the well-spoken reincarnation of Rupert of Hentzau or Don Juan.

  She called down to me, “The Daughter of Wolf-Nursed Romulus, Birthed under the red War-star, and Triscurion of the Exarch Watch Oeolyca the Swift-running of the Host of the Cynocephali respectfully declines your offer of personal combat. She says that stars have not foretold her death this day; nor any victory.”

  I squinted. Come to think of it, the dangling gonads Big Bad and Hellpoodle had been sporting were not in evidence here, nor were the monster’s flanks and hindquarters nude. I wondered if having more hair meant having a higher station.

  The she-wolfman, or bitch-woman, or whatever you call a distaff-
side werewolf spoke again, another stream of fluid Latin dactyls. Darn critter was beginning to make me feel uncivilized, and that made me want to bash her skull.

  “She says that you are welcome to the curse that comes of attempting to becloud the stars, but she prefers not to step outside the predicted path. Triumph obtained without blood hot in the mouth is less sweet, but is more sure.”

  With no more ado, Oeolyca the Swift-running turned and ran swiftly down the sheer surface of the living metal. I soon lost sight of her between the golden wayship caravans that seemed not to be moving and the glass boats that seemed to be sliding down the wall of living metal like raindrops on a windowpane.

  Perhaps Oeolyca was running toward the nearest heliograph station, because I saw a spotlight beam flashing in many colors against a golden mirror hanging, an acre wide, like a banner in the gloom, and the reflected beam glanced against a mirror even more distant, one that twinkled like a star.

  Because my eyes were turned down, I almost did not see it happen. I heard Abby call out. I whirled, and slipped, and grabbed at the slippery prow of the glass boat I was precariously balanced on.

  The bowsprit of the golden wayship on which Abby’s glass boat was perched suddenly opened. Out from this opening came a long hook of living metal, which elongated, reached back, and snagged Abby’s boat by its tow-ring, and swung it dizzyingly out over the abyss. I watched helplessly.

  We fell past a wharf which had a pirate plank sticking out in midair, just like the wharf from which we had launched. The plank wobbled like rubber, almost bending double under the pressure imparted to it as it was struck by the passing wayship. But there was Abby’s bullet-shaped glass vessel, left behind, caught by the nose ring, bobbing up and down and up and down.

  Through the glass sides of the fast-receding boat, I could see Abby staring down at me, her hands spread against the glass, but the monkey-mask still grinning its empty grin.

  You would think I would be frantic because, now that she was gone, whatever I did next would be foreseen and foretold by the Astrologers. Nope. That didn’t worry me. The only thought that kept rattling around in my brain was this one:

  I had not ever gotten a look at her face.

  Here ends The Darkest Tower

  To Be Continued in the Next Volume of Unwithering Realm

  The Lord of the Black Land

  Science Fiction

  Awake in the Night Land by John C. Wright

  City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

  Unwithering Realm: The Door into Nowhere by John C. Wright

  Unwithering Realm: The Darkest Tower by John C. Wright

  Unwithering Realm: The Lord of the Black Land by John C. Wright

  Unwithering Realm: The Blood Storm by John C. Wright

  Superluminary: The Lords of Creation by John C. Wright

  No Gods, Only Daimons by Kai Wai Cheah

  Hammer of the Witches by Kai Wai Cheah

  The Corroding Empire: Corrosion by Johan Kalsi

  Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson

  Hyperspace Demons by Jonathan Moeller

  Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

  Alien Game by Rod Walker

  Young Man's War by Rod Walker

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

  QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills by Steve Rzasa and Vox Day

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Mind Programmed by Jeff Sutton, Jean Sutton, and Vox Day

  Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes

  Fantasy

  One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright

  The Book of Feasts & Seasons by John C. Wright

  Iron Chamber of Memory by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 1: Swan Knight's Son by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 2: Feast of the Elfs by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 3: Swan Knight's Sword by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 4: Daughter of Danger by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 5: City of Corpses by John C. Wright

  Moth & Cobweb 6: Tithe to Tartarus by John C. Wright

  Arts of Dark and Light 0: Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy by Vox Day

  Arts of Dark and Light 1: A Throne of Bones by Vox Day

  Arts of Dark and Light 2: A Sea of Skulls by Vox Day

  A Magic Broken by Vox Day

  The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

  The Last Witchking by Vox Day

  The Altar of Hate by Vox Day

  The War in Heaven by Vox Day

  The World in Shadow by Vox Day

  The Wrath of Angels by Vox Day

  Military Science Fiction

  There Will Be War Vol. I ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. II ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. III ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. IV ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. V ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. VI ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. VII ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. VIII ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. IX ed. Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. X ed. Jerry Pournelle

  Plague Wars 0: The Eden Plague by David VanDyke

  Plague Wars 1: Reaper's Run by David VanDyke

  Plague Wars 2: Skull's Shadows by David VanDyke

  Galactic Liberation 1: Starship Liberator by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson

  Galactic Liberation 2: Battleship Indomitable by David VanDyke and B.V. Larson

  Riding the Red Horse Vol. 1 ed. Tom Kratman and Vox Day

  Fiction

  An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity by J. Mulrooney

  Hitler in Hell by Martin van Creveld

  Loki's Child by Fenris Wulf

  The Ames Archives 1: Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant

  The Ames Archives 2: Rocky Mountain Retribution by Peter Grant

  The Missionaries by Owen Stanley

  Non-Fiction

  4th Generation Warfare Handbook by William S. Lind and LtCol Gregory A. Thiele, USMC

  A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind by Martin van Creveld

  Equality: The Impossible Quest by Martin van Creveld

  Clio & Me: An Intellectual Autobiography by Martin van Creveld

  Four Generations of Modern War by William S. Lind

  On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 by William S. Lind

  MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again by Mike Cernovich

  The Nine Laws by Ivan Throne

  Appendix N: A Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons by Jeffro Johnson

  Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth by John C. Wright

  Astronomy and Astrophysics by Dr. Sarah Salviander

  Compost Everything: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting by David the Good

  Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening by David the Good

  Push the Zone: The Good Guide to Growing Tropical Plants Beyond the Tropics by David the Good

  SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police by Vox Day

  SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police by Vox Day

  Collected Columns, Vol. I: Innocence & Intellect, 2001—2005 by Vox Day

  Collected Columns, Vol. II: Conceit & Crisis, 2006—2009 by Vox Day

  Collected Columns, Vol. III: Failure & Freedom, 2010—2012 by Vox Day

  Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America by John Red Eagle and Vox Day

  On the Existence of Gods by Dominic Saltarelli and Vox Day

  On the Question of Free Trade by James D. Miller and Vox Day

  Do We Need God To Be Good? by C.R. Hallpike

  The LawDog Files by LawDog

  The LawDog Files: African Adventures by LawDog

  The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon by Moira Greyland


  ARKHAVEN COMICS

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #1 By the Book

  QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #2 Zero Zero Tango

  Right Ho, Jeeves #1 A Binge at Brinkley

  Right Ho, Jeeves #2 Hungry Hearts