The Darkest Tower (Unwithering Realm Book 2)

by John C. Wright

  (Note to imps in Hell: if you want to torment the damned, getting them to pull themselves hand over hand up along a spear sticking through their sensitive internal organs and muscles is an effective torture even Dante didn’t imagine. Make sure they hear the slurping noises as their flesh inches along the metal. That sound will linger in their nightmares, trust me.)

  By this time, my lungs had just gotten weary of screaming, and my other lung had a hole through it you could stick a forefinger into, so I was only making ugly, gasping noises, not bawling at full volume.

  It was only when I was free, and was trying to use my pierced and shattered limbs to climb up and squeeze through the remaining spears to the hole, that I thought to ask. “Listen, She-Monkey, can I ask you a question?”

  “It is best not to call me that. That was my punishment name, and the stars might hear you say it. My mother said my reborn birth name is Abanshaddi.” It meant Mountain Rock.

  “Can I call you Abby?”

  “It is best to use the name as it is, because the stars cannot hear it.”

  “Then I’ll call you Rocky.”

  “Er… Abby is fine.”

  “So, Abby, riddle me this: Why are the Astrologers and their soldiers not here? How come they did not foretell a break out?”

  “All are born once and once alone. But not I.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t they have people like me on your world?”

  “People like what? I am assuming you are a split character class thief and rogue. Remember to check for traps.”

  From the set of her shoulders it looked like Pagutu, or Abanshaddi, was miffed. I was sorry I made that joke. Not everyone thinks of rogues as lovable. I suppose poor people who don’t get enough to eat think even less of lovable rogues than rich people who never get their stuff robbed. (The reason why Robin Hood is a myth is not because he robs people on the highway, but because, for once, it was the rich people on the highway who got robbed, and poor folk love such unlikely tales.)

  “Look,” I said, sighing. (My sigh was a disgusting gargle, since internal fluids from several organs were streaming down gaping and sucking wounds in my chest and abdomen.) “I meant no disrespect. But when I climb up, the moment I hit the rim, they are going to turn on the Moebius gate set into the threshold and dump me lickety-split into a fresh jail cell. That is what happened last time. Can you damage the gold ring? Put it out of action? Or melt the gold with your sickle and chain there.”

  “Gold, the cunning metal cannot scald. Only living metal.” Cunning metal was Abartemitum: the coppery substance her haunted kusari-gama was made out of. (Temitum also meant sharp, acute, so the name was a deliberate play on words in her language.)

  I said, “If there is a wire leading to the Coil, cut it with your cunning weapon, please.”

  “That is not necessary.”

  “Yeah, I am telling you it is necessary, or I cannot get out! Just cut the wire!”

  The monkey mask shook its head. “To cut the wire may be foreseen by the maintenance Astrologers. You can get out. You must have faith in me and in those who sent me.”

  “What happens if I don’t?”

  “Then you stay trapped, even though the cage is open.”

  Groaning and grunting, I climbed up the remaining spears like a ladder and so out of the cell. The process was more painful and wetter than it sounds, and involved pull-ups using a set of arms with grossly torn muscles and at least one broken bone. The very last part involved clawing at the stone floor beyond the gold threshold, without the strength in my body to pull me up, and me unable to swing a leg up hard enough to get it over the edge, and the girl so grossed out by the condition of my body that she huddled out of arm’s reach, shaking her head when I groaned pathetically for help.

  Finally, with a ghastly effort, I rolled and slithered over the edge, then smashed face-first into the stones with a disgusting splorch of blood. Pure comedy gold.

  I raised my head and looked around. There were some iron tools and wooden masks on the walls. Light came from small, fist-sized holes in the stone through which thin air softly whistled. To one side was a workbench, and to the other, two openings in the floor, like twins to the one I had climbed out from. Ahead of me was an archway leading to a crawlspace or corridor for short people. There was no other exit. I guess tall people were supposed to use the Moebius coils rimming the floor openings.

  Daylight came through these gold-rimmed openings. I raised myself on one arm, and saw, sure enough, that one of the other two hanging cages had no wooden floor and a good number of the wall spikes were broken. My old cell.

  Abby had backed away from me, and was now sitting in a corner between a workbench and the archway leading out, with her arms wrapped about her knees, and her sickle-and-chain retracted and clenched tightly in her gloves. She was shivering. Well, it was below freezing in here. My spreading pool of blood was already beginning to turn into thick red slush.

  I squinted. The workbench she was next to had chains and manacles running over a windlass. It was a torture rack.

  This room was a torture chamber, where you would work over any prisoners you fished up out of their hanging birdcages underneath, and then toss them back down when you were done. There was even a crane affixed to the ceiling with a boom-arm for lowering and raising the prisoners. I don’t know what the masks on the wall were for. Decoration?

  I lay in a heap on the stone floor. I was free. I was out. Today was my Big Bang, and a whole new universe was brought into being, a universe of freedom. I was also too weak to stand, but I was not too weak to laugh and laugh with joy.

  Born of the Forever Nature

  1. Abomination

  She was silent until I was done laughing. Best not to interrupt the madman, I suppose.

  “Okay, She-Monkey, talk. Why didn’t the Moebius gate turn on when I climbed over the rim? Who sent you and what is going on here?”

  Abby said in a voice of awe, “How can you move your arms and legs? How can you breathe? Why is there still blood—it should have run out hours ago.”

  “I don’t know. Mind over matter. A violation of the law of conservation of blood. Why not ask the Scarecrow how the Tin Woodman can be alive?”

  “I don’t understand what you are saying.”

  “I am saying I do not know. The extra blood is being created out of nowhere. My lungs are moving even though the muscles connected to my diaphragm cannot possibly be working. My gouged-out eyeball ungouged itself, and now it is working again, but my vision is cramped and blurry in that eye. I cannot die and I heal a lot faster than I should, but not fast enough. Your head dipshit in the daffy hat, Enmeduranki, he said today they would torture my…”

  She was startled. “You met the Lord High Astrologer? Himself?”

  “What? You want his autograph? He said it was today! Today! It may have already happened. Torture hooks. Trained rapist-beasts. What kind of sick world has things like that? I’ve got to stop it, got to find out where….”

  I rose to my feet, felt so much pain that I went blind for a second, and hitting my head on the floor woke me back up. I was lucky I had not fallen over the other way, because I would have toppled into the cell and out the bottom hole of the airy oubliette again.

  Now I was lying with my cheek pressed against the stone, and I felt the tickle of blood oozing out from me, warm on my cheek.

  While I was prone, through my one good eye, I saw her tiptoeing toward the archway leading out of the chamber. “Where are you going?”

  She hesitated. “Well, since you are free now, and you are a murdering abomination from a hell-world ruled by demons, I thought it would be… nice… if I left you to commit your… actions… against any mortals who might fall into your clutches…. Uh, hands…”

  “I am a nice abomination. Kindhearted. Housebroken. Kid friendly. Trust me. In my civilian identity, back before this place, I am a Boy Scout. Troop Two. Second to none…”

  “… a
nd my mission was to rescue Master Ussushibu. I don’t wish to trouble you…”

  “I said I would help you!” I groaned. And maybe there was a little uncouth language in there too, sort of like Gash darn it! I flocking said I would flapping help you! except using words other than gash, darn, flock or flap.

  “But in return you got to help me!” I shrieked at her. “You got to!” My voice sounded kind of gross and sticky. Even I didn’t like hearing me.

  She started inching back. Not that I blame her. “Um. I’d like to help, except… I have this task I am supposed to do. It’s a mission… my very first mission! It’s really important that I do it right, and not get killed by an abomination. The Big Man made me promise.” I did not know if Big Man was a name or a title. The words my ear heard were Rom Baro. “And… um… real people’s lives are at stake, not freaks like you, so…”

  “Hold it!” My fingers clawed feebly at the stones while blood and some black grimy substance drooled from my teeth. I am pretty sure I was not a pretty picture. “For the love of God, wait! The Astrologers cannot foretell your actions, right?” She was somehow invisible to them, because otherwise their soldiers would have been swarming into the chamber five minutes ago.

  “I have been laved in the laver.”

  “So while you are near me, you act like a cloaking device? What is the range?”

  I was wondering if the alarm bells in some horoscope radar station downstairs would suddenly ring if she slipped out of my sight. I resisted the impulse to crawl after her, dragging my unwound guts, since the sight of that might make her panic. Panic more.

  The little grinning monkey girl inched another inch backward. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “How does it work?”

  She spoke more calmly. “The Astrologers can only cast horoscopes for those born once under the stars. I am born twice. It is your world-nature the stars see, for stars govern the world. I have done an act by my forever-nature, which is from the foreverness.”

  “Clear as mud. Now explain the explanation.”

  She spoke as if she were reciting a lesson at school. “Everything follows its nature. But the forever-born have two natures: higher and lower. If I act by the higher nature, that is timeless. It is above the circles where the stars count time. But if I act as my old nature prompts, that is star-governed. Only pure acts are purely hidden. That is why I saved you. You have only a lower nature. If you stay here, quite still, and do no acts of your lower abomination nature, it will be… perhaps… an hour or more… before they catch you again.”

  And she ducked around the corner and was gone.

  2. Enchantment

  So I shouted after her. I did not bother keeping the desperation out of my voice, because I was desperate.

  “They are going to torture her! You have to find her! I don’t care about me! Just save her!”

  There was more than that, but that was the gist of it, and my eyes started to sting because I was weeping. I had not realized I had closed my eyes—or maybe I passed out for a second, it was one of those days—until I opened my eyes again and saw her black shoes that looked like they were made of duct tape. Her feet were big compared to the size of her legs.

  Abanshaddi said softly, “There is someone… you… want saved? How can this be?”

  “I want you to find her, and if she is in a cage, get her out. First, they are going to do something medical to her, to make her nerves less able to resist pain, and then…”

  “My mother was killed by the tormentors,” she said in a dry, matter-of-fact way. “A type of death called Two Boats. My lord Sharapumakash-simtu performed the deed and was rewarded with an Ovation.”

  I actually flinched at the name. Sharapu meant to dye red. It also meant to torment with fire, to chastise, to scorch, to blister. Makash meant Slaughter-Bench. The name was Slaughterbench Dyed Red. And that was the nicest of the several possible interpretations.

  His title simtu meant the person who puts a brand or ownership-mark on you. She was talking about her master, her owner.

  “So he ordered you to come here…” The fear that I was being toyed with, that everything was just another psychological trick, flooded my brain.

  She said quickly, “Not he! I was stolen from him long ago by the Wandering Folk, and even his knowledge of the outlandish stars did not suffice to foretell the deed.” There was a note of joy in her voice when she added, “I sometimes read of the women and children Master Slaughterbench would have had me kill by stealth by this date, in my darkened horoscope. His foretelling, now, will never come to pass.”

  “He is an Astrologer? You don’t have to call him ‘Master’ any longer.”

  She nodded. “My mother told me that the water of the mupasshu-h’ washes all such marks away, and prevents new marks from being branded.” The word mupasshu meant washerman or cleaner. Mupasshu-h’ was a title. The Washerman. “And the Big Man says I am free like him, like his people, like all the caravan. But at times I forget to forget my old ways of speaking. Lord Astute Starmage is an Astrologer of the Chamber of Twoscore Never-Extinguished Candles. He is of the High Ones.”

  “Small world! I met him.”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “You are an abomination. Such is his purview. He deals with outlandish horoscopes. Lord Slaughterbench is his Death Name. It is told only to those over whom he is given the power of life and death. No one tells one of your kind his Death Name. You cannot die.”

  “We don’t have Death Names where I am from. Your world is sick, and I would like to get her and me out of it as soon as possible, and you too, if you want to come!”

  She shrank back. “To the hell world of the Abominations? I do not want to go there, thank you. That is not a good fate.”

  “I live in a world different and finer than the one I was born in. I don’t even remember that one.”

  Abby said, “This one you seek?”

  “Her name is Penelope.”

  “Cunning Face. Is she from your world?” I noticed that when Abanshaddi said Penelope’s name, I could hear the original meaning in Greek in my head.

  I had had a lot of time to puzzle over the answer to that particular question while I was in the cell. “No.”

  “Can you describe her?”

  “Five foot three’n eyes of green, has anybody seen my gal? She is very brave and very blonde and built like a… well, never mind that. She has a talking falcon and she sails around the world and she is famous and glamorous and she knows how to shut Moebius gates with a broomstick. Boy, that sounds weird when I say it that way.”

  “Your beloved!” There was a squeal of girlish joy in her voice.

  “She is not really, uh– Heck with it. Yup. My beloved. She does not yet know it. Or know that I am alive. Or know my name. But she gets most of the letters right when she asks me to do some menial chore around the grounds.”

  “You are her boy-servant?” Her voice was bubbling with curiosity.

  “Hey! Man-servant! My official title is Employee of the Month for June.”

  “Then she is an enchantress! You are bewitched.”

  “Um- noooo, she is not an enchantress, it is merely that–” I thought about how pretty her blond hair was, and how shapely her figure, how red her lips and how green her eyes, and I compared it in my mind with how much I actually knew about her, and how often we had actually spoken. What did I actually know about her? Where she was born? Her favorite song?

  And so I had a rare moment of honesty and said, “Um. Yeah. You got that one right. Enchanted, bewitched. That is me.”

  “Master Ussushibu is elevated, and surely he knows how to snap the threads of her spell-weaving.” Abby had come over to the bloody slab of ground chuck I was using for a body at the moment, and squatted down. “If we find him, he will free you.”

  “No, no. I think Penny has just the normal magic girls her age, and, uh, looks happen to have, not magic like your filt
hy Astrologers. The kind of magic guys less shallow than me are immune to. That kind of magic.”

  Her big eyes behind her monkey lenses blinked at me. “I still think it is very sweet.”

  “You are a born romantic. But enchanting or not, pretty or not, I still want to save her. Heck, I’d want to save my worst enemy’s ugliest dog from vermin like the crazy magicians that run your world.”

  The monkey mask nodded in agreement. “I would even save a deathless abomination from the horror-land of Cainem from them.”

  “Thanks. Hey—what was that? Never mind. Look, I help you and you help me. Deal?”

  “You wish me to bargain with you? To make a covenant?”

  “Yep. Shake hands. Well, since my hand is kind of… uh… we can wave at each other, and that is our solemn oath.”

  Abanshaddi said in a voice of wonder, “I have never made a covenant before.”

  “We’ll be a team,” I said. “Blood-brothers. Blood brother and sister. We rescue your Master Ossifrage, and my Penny. It’s agreed!”

  She shyly put her hand toward mine, but I did not want to gross her out, so I did not shake it.

  3. Immensities

  “Very well,” she said, hopping eagerly to her feet. “Where is she?”

  “What? Why are you asking me, little sister? I don’t know anything about this stupid tower.”

  She sighed, and squatted down again, waiting for me to talk. She had a strange way of squatting: her footsoles were flat on the ground, and her knobby knees nearly bumping her chin.

  “So,” I groaned, “What are the options? Where might she be?”

  The little monkey face tilted as if the face behind it were deep in thought. “If she is to be tormented, they might send her to the Tormentor’s Furlong.”

  The word she actually used for ‘furlong’ was qaqqaru, which simply meant ‘immensity’. The magic spell or law-of-nature-gone-weird or whatever it was that allowed me to understand her like a native did not give me a numerical equivalent. But I did get a sense, or a hunch, that she meant the kind of distance a bowshot could cover, not a day’s march. And from the context, I assume she meant vertical distance: an immense climb, not an immense hike.