The Iron Tower Omnibus

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Tuck leapt to Jet’s flank. “Quick, Sire, they come now on our track: Ghûls and Vulgs. They know we are here.”

  Galen hauled the Warrow up and spurred Jet forward, with Fleetfoot and the pack horse galloping after. And Tuck despaired, for he knew not how far they could fly, for the hard-running horses already were weary.

  ~

  South they fled, across a snow-covered broken land, south along a plateau caught between the looming flank of dark Grimspire to the east and a small mountain to the west: Redguard. And running on their trail behind came Ghûls on Hèlsteeds, and Vulgs with their snouts to the track.

  Southward hammered the great black Jet with Fleetfoot’s white stockings flashing after. Last of all scaddled the pack horse in tow, fleeing in panic from the chill Vulg howls. How long they had run, Tuck did not know, but slowly they gained ground on their pursuers, twisting through great rocks and spires, running across long flat stretches.

  Five or six miles they galloped, and gradually drew away. But then Tuck’s heart plunged in despair, for Galen harshly reined Jet to a skidding halt on the brink of a great cliff falling sheer before them.

  “Tuck!” barked Galen as Fleetfoot thundered up, “Use your eyes: Look for a way down!”

  Tuck leapt to the snow and flung himself bellydown on the verge of the bluff, looking over the edge and down. He scanned left then right. There: Just to the right and running past below: “Sire: A long sloping path down the plumb face: Fifty paces westward!” Tuck started to stand, then groaned as he leapt to his feet. “Sire, ahead two miles or three, I think I see the brink of another drop like this one.”

  “Mount up, Tuck. We have no choice.” Galen extended his hand, hauling Tuck up behind. “We’ll plunge down that one when we get there, not before.”

  They spurred to the sloping path and turned and started down, and as they went below the level of the rim, Tuck’s last sight of the upper plateau showed running Vulgs and Hèlsteeds.

  The way down before them was narrow and icy, with sheer frost-clad stone looming on the left and open space plunging perpendicularly to the right. Slowly Jet picked his way down the treacherous course, and Tuck could hear Fleetfoot and the pack horse stepping behind. Tuck glanced down the fall but once, then kept his eyes firmly fixed upon Galen’s back. The Warrow could feel Jet’s hooves slip along the ice, and each time the steed lurched so did Tuck’s heart, pounding in fear. The descent seemed to drag on without end as slowly they crept downward. And above, back upon the plateau, loping Vulgs and Ghûls on Hèlsteeds came.

  At last Jet reached the bottom of the cliff, coming out upon another plateau, with the other horses right behind, and once more they ran to the south. And as they hammered away, Tuck flung a glance back to see the great stone massif jutting upward; nearby, a great black vertical crack was riven in its face, and west of the cleft, silhouetted against the spectral Shadowlight sky came Modru’s creatures. And when the Ghûls saw the horses fleeing southward below, they set up a wild howling, for now they knew they pursued but four riders. One Ghûl’s howl rose above the others, and they turned and made for the icy path, to work their way down after the quarry.

  Swiftly south the four rode, the gap widening between hunters and hunted, for the Ghûls were slowed by the descent. Two miles south the horses ran, to come to another sheer drop. This time there was no sloping path.

  “Sire: East: There seems to be a canyon that I can see coming out through the face below.” Tuck leapt to his feet. “Perhaps it is a way down.” Once more Galen pulled him back upon Jet.

  East they ran, to come to a canyon at their feet so narrow that Tuck thought a horse could perhaps leap its width. They could not see its bottom, but it did breach the face of the massif that thwarted them.

  Back to the north they ran, back toward the Ghûls, the horses racing along the rim of the cleft, seeking to find its entrance.

  At last they came to where the narrow split emerged upon the plateau. A path led into the dark cranny.

  “In we go!” cried Galen. “Else we are trapped along the rim wall.”

  “Hold!” Brega called. “I have a lantern. Follow us. I will light the way.”

  Tuck could see that the Ghûls had just reached the base of the distant cliff, and Vulgs loped across the flats.

  Brega fumbled in his pack and drew forth a crystal-and-brass lantern, throwing the shutter wide; and without a flame being kindled at all, a blue-green phosphorescent light leapt forth. “Go!” Brega barked at Gildor, and Fleetfoot sprang forward into the dark slot, with Jet following the pack horse.

  Down a narrow twisting corridor they went, Brega’s high-held lantern casting swaying pendulous shadows among the rocks and boulders, and blue-green light glinted and bounced amid the great icicles hanging down from the ragged shadowed stone overhead. The sound of blowing horses and the clatter of hooves reverberated along the broken walls and echoed back from dark holes boring away, their ends beyond seeing.

  Tuck felt the black walls looming above him, and it seemed as if he could nearly reach out and touch the sides, spanning the width. He looked upward, and high above was a swatch of dim Shadowlight, jagging in a thin line, marking the rim of the narrow crevice they followed. Downward they went, ever deeper, twisting through a tortuous path, at times scraping along the ice-clad rock, Gildor leading, Galen following, Brega’s lantern showing the way.

  At last Tuck’s eyes saw a great vertical cleft filled with spectral Winternight glow, and he breathed a sigh of relief, for they had come to the end.

  Out of the crack they rode, out into a broken hill country. “South we go, bearing west,” called Galen as Brega shuttered the lantern and returned it to his pack, “we strike for the Old Rell Way. And if ever we elude the curs at our heels, we’ll make for Gûnar Slot.”

  And on they ran, black Vulgs following the scent, Ghûls on Hèlsteeds after.

  ~

  Fifteen more miles they went, south verging west, and the mounts were near to spent, for each was bearing double and the chase was long with little or no respite. And behind them the hills blocked Tuck’s view, and he could no longer see the pursuers; hence, he did not know the length of their lead.

  “Galen King,” called Gildor, “Fleetfoot begins to falter. We must do something to throw them off our track.”

  Galen signed that he had heard but did not otherwise reply, riding onward instead.

  At last they came out of the hills to see the Old Rell Way before them, and they rode along its abandoned bed, finally coming to a fork: to the left was a cloven vale; to the right the road bore on southward. Here Galen reined Jet to a halt, and Gildor stopped Fleetfoot and the pack horse, and the steeds stood lathered and trembling.

  “Tuck, Lord Gildor, retrieve your knapsacks from the pack horse,” said Galen. “Fill them with provisions. Get grain sacks, too, for Jet and Fleetfoot.

  “Brega, again use your axe to chop brush: three large bushes. I have one way we may escape.”

  While Brega cut the winter-dried brushwood, Galen, Gildor, and Tuck took provisions from the pack horse. Then, while Brega filled his own knapsack, Galen tied the brush close behind the two riding mounts by loops of rope, each horse with a large bush trapped to trail close upon its heels.

  To the pack horse, though, he broke off and fastened a brushy limb above the pack cradle. Then he removed his sweat-soaked jerkin and tied it to a long rope so that it would drag along in the snow behind the animal.

  “Lord Gildor, hold Jet’s reins as well as Fleetfoot’s,” said Galen. “Hold them firmly; keep them calm. Here I turn the pack horse eastward into the valley. Brega, hold his reins now. Tuck, your flint and steel: set some touchwood glowing. I am going to set this brushwood on his back afire.”

  “But, Sire,” protested Tuck, “he will burn.”

  “Nay, Tuck, the cradle will protect him, though he will not think so,” answered Galen. “He will bolt east into the vale, spreading my scent after, while we fare south, the brush we drag behi
nd obscuring our tracks. Let us hope the Vulgs are fooled.”

  Tuck struck steel to flint, setting touchwood glowing, thinking, Poor beast, yet we have little choice, and perhaps he, too, will escape the Vulgs in the end. The Warrow handed the small tin of glowing shavings to Galen who held it to the brush and blew it aflame. As the tinder-dry branch burst into flame, Jet and Fleetfoot pulled back but Gildor held them firmly by the bit-straps. The pack horse, too, plunged and reared, and as the flame roared up, Brega loosed the reins and stepped aside as Galen cried, “Hai!” and slapped the horse on the rump.

  Screaming in fear, the animal fled in panic, running full tilt to escape the flame riding the cradle on its back, and trailing in the snow behind was Galen’s sweat-soaked jerkin. But the horse wheeled and bolted south instead of running east!

  “Rach!” spat Galen.

  “Sire, he drags your scent along our course!” cried Tuck, dismayed.

  “Stupid horse,” growled Brega. “Now it is we who are left with the eastern way. Let us ride into the valley and hide until the danger is past.”

  At the mention of danger, Tuck turned his sapphirine gaze back toward the foothills. “We must go quickly,” he said, bitterly, “for again I can see the foe coming along our track.”

  ~

  East they bore, into the valley, the brush dragging in the snow behind, erasing their tracks. The slopes of the vale rose up around them, looming higher the further east they went, till they rode in a deep-riven valley far below a distant rim. The floor of the vale curved this way and that and the road they followed ran along the edge of a winding ravine, shallow and rocky and without water or ice, though a dusting of snow covered the dry streambed.

  As they rode Tuck saw Galen glance at the gentle slopes rising to either side, where the vale canted up finally to meet a wall that loomed sheer. Suddenly, Galen smote his forehead with a palm.

  “Sire?” called the Warrow above the weary beat of hooves.

  “Tuck, don’t you see?” called Galen back. “We are trapped. We should have ridden west out onto the open land and not east into this sheer-walled cleft, for here we cannot get out. And now it is too late to turn back. The pack horse should have bolted this way and not us, and I was distracted when he ran south, a lapse that may cost us our lives.” Galen’s voice was bitter.

  “But, Sire, they will follow the scent of your shirt and not our scrubbed track,” responded Tuck, though a shiver ran through him.

  “Let us hope, Tuck,” answered Galen. “Let us hope.”

  Tuck looked back along the twisting way, but he could no longer see the entrance to the valley, and he desperately hoped that their trick had deceived the Vulgs and Ghûls, and prayed that their wake was clear of those evil creatures.

  On they rode eastward without speaking, and the only sounds made were the ragged thud of overweary hooves, the labored gasps of pumping lungs, and the scraggle of brush hauled behind.

  ~

  How long they had fled, Tuck was not certain, yet both Jet and Fleetfoot had borne double to the limits of their endurance and they were near to foundering.

  Galen reined to a halt and dismounted, signing for Tuck to do the same. As the Warrow dropped to the snow, Fleetfoot stumbled to a halt behind, and Gildor and Brega leapt down, too.

  Galen began walking east leading Jet, the horse trembling with each step, his breathing tortured, his flanks foamed with lather, and Tuck could have cried over the steed’s agony. The Warrow looked back at Fleetfoot following, and Gildor’s horse, too, had been ridden to his uttermost limits.

  Of their pursuers, Tuck could see nought, but the way behind curved beyond seeing, and whether the Ghûls followed false trail or true, he could not say.

  Galen looked at the valley around him, a puzzled frown upon his features. “Tuck, there is something strangely familiar about this vale: the road, the ravine to our right, the sheer rim. It is as if I should know it, though I have never been here, but from childhood a haunting memory gnaws, though I know not what it is.”

  They rounded a curve and stopped, for less than a mile before them was the head of the vale: A high stone cliff jumped up perpendicular from the valley floor; the spur of road they followed cut upward along the face of the bluff, to disappear over its top. Also carved in the stone of the face was a steep stairway leading up beyond the rim, up a pinnacle standing high above the bluff, up to a sentinel stand atop the spire overlooking the valley. And beyond the rampart and dwarfing it, looming out and arching over, was a great massif of the Grimspire mountain rising up into the Dimmendark.

  Gildor and Brega came to their side. Brega spoke, his voice hushed: “It is as we suspected: this is Ragad Vale.”

  “Ai: Of course!” Galen slapped a palm to his forehead. “The Valley of the Door!”

  “Valley of the Door?” Tuck asked. “What Door?”

  “Dusk-Door,” answered Gildor. “The western entrance into Drimmen-deeve. Atop that bluff and carven in the wall of the Great Loom of Aevor stands the Dusk-Door: shut now for nearly five-hundred years, though it stood open for five-hundred before that, left ajar by the Drimma as they fled from the Dread, loosed at last from the Lost Prison and stalking through their domain.”

  “I must see it now that I am here,” said Brega.

  Forward they started, following the abandoned road, and while they went, Brega spoke: “There on that pinnacle is the Sentinel Stand, where Châkka warders of old stood watching o’er the vale. Down the bluff water once fell in a graceful falls—Sentinel Falls—fed by the Duskrill, the stream said to have carven this very valley.

  “This road we follow is the Rell Spur, a tradeway of old, abandoned when the Gargon came to rule Kraggen-cor.

  “If the tales be true, the Dusken Door itself stands within a great portico against the Loom, on a marble courtyard surrounded by a moat with drawbridge.

  “Long have my eyes wanted to see this Land, yet I had hoped it would be when the Châkka came to make of it a mighty Realm as of old, and not as a fugitive fleeing vile foe.”

  “The Dusk-Door,” said Galen, “it is told in the old tales that it opened by word alone. Is that true?”

  “Aye,” answered Brega, “if the word be spoken by a Châk whose hand presses upon the Door—at least Châkka lore would have it so.”

  “The Lian say that the Wizard Grevan helped in its crafting,” said Gildor.

  “With Gatemaster Valki, he made it,” said Brega.

  “Do you know the lore words that cause it to open?” asked Tuck, his great tilted eyes wide with wonder.

  “Aye, they are with me,” answered Brega, “for my Grandsire was a Gatemaster, and he taught them to me. But I followed the trade of my own sire, Bekki, and chose to be a warrior instead. Yet, even though I know the lore, I would not open that Door for all the starsilver in Kraggen-cor, for behind it dwells the Ghath.”

  Leading the steeds, they came to where the road turned up the face of the bluff, the way free of snow. They stopped long enough to discard the brush they had dragged behind the horses, for it was no longer needed. The comrades then started upward, both horses quivering at each step with the effort of mounting up the slope.

  “The steeds are spent,” said Galen, his voice filled with regret. “What evil fortune, for until they have rested long—a week or more—feeding upon grain and pure water to restore their strength, we cannot ride.”

  “But then, how will we fare south?” asked Tuck.

  Brega gave a terse answer: “Walk.”

  “No, I mean, our plans to hie to the Host and lead them against Modru will be delayed greatly,” protested Tuck, “just as our plans to warn the Lian in Larkenwald of the marching Horde are dashed. How can we recover from this ill fortune that has befallen us?”

  “I know not,” said Galen, wear in his manner.

  Gildor spoke: “Wee One, our plans to warn Darda Galion and to fare swiftly south may be dashed, as you say, yet though we do not know our course still we must strive and not abandon
hope.”

  All fell silent as they trudged onward.

  Up the slope of the road along the bluff they went, at last topping the rise. Above them hovering over was the great natural hemidome of the Loomwall, and within its cavernous embrace lay a long, thin, black lakelet, no more than three furlongs across, and, from the north end where they stood, Tuck saw that it ran nearly two-and-a-half miles to the south; the lake was made by a dam of great stones wedged in a wall across the ravine atop the Stair Falls. The Rell Spur they followed disappeared into the ebon waters.

  “This black tarn should not be here!” cried Brega.

  “It is the Dark Mere,” said Gildor, “and the Lian tell that something evil dwells within. What, I cannot say, but stay wide of its shore.”

  “Ai-oi: Here’s a riddle!” exclaimed Galen. “Why is not this lake frozen?”

  Tuck realized that Galen had indeed pointed out an enigma: except for a narrow rim of thin ice embracing the shoulders here and there, the black waters of the Dark Mere undulated torpidly, As if pulsing with evil, thought Tuck.

  “Perhaps it is not frozen because it is sheltered by the Loom,” said Brega, eyeing the great vault of stone above.

  “Perhaps it is not frozen because Modru does not want it to be,” responded Gildor. “Just as the Quadran Pass held no snow, this Dark Mere, too, escapes the clutch of deep Winternight. Mayhap it does not suit Modru’s purposes to have it otherwise, and he is Master of the Cold.”

  “What purpose could he have to keep this lakelet free of ice?” growled Brega, but none could give him the answer.

  “It is so black,” said Tuck.

  “Even were there sunlight, it would look so,” said Gildor. “Some say it is because it lies under the black granite of the Loomwall above; others say it is because the Dark Mere is evil.”

  Tuck looked up at the Great Loom arching cavern-like hundreds of feet overhead. Then his eyes roamed the distant shoreline. “So ho: Over there against the Loom, I see tall white columns holding up a great roof.”

  “It is the portico of the Dusk-Door,” said Brega, his eyes following Tuck’s pointing finger. “Lying before it should be a marble courtyard, bounded by the Dusk-Moat fed by the Duskrill. Yet they are flooded by this Dark Mere. But see, there endures the ancient drawbridge, standing open above where the moat should have been. There, too, is the Rell Spur, where it runs along the base of the Loom. But all else is drowned in blackness.” Brega’s voice was filled with rage over the desecration of the environs by the Dark Mere.