THE TOWER OF THE FORGOTTEN
BY SARA M. HARVEY
This novella is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
The Tower of the Forgotten
Copyright © 2011 by Sara M. Harvey
Cover art "The Tower of the Forgotten" © 2011 by Melissa Gay
Interior Art © 2011 by Melissa Gay
Cover typography by Mekenzie Larsen
Interior design by Jason Sizemore
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce the book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Published by Apex Publications, LLC
PO Box 24323
Lexington, KY 40524
www.apexbookcompany.com
www.saramharvey.com
www.melissagay.com
Don’t miss the first two books of Sara M. Harvey’s exciting Penume trilogy from Apex Publications: The Convent of the Pure and The Labyrinth of the Dead!
THE CONVENT OF THE PURE
ISBN: 9780981639093 (Trade Paperback)
ISBN: 9781452333373 (eBook)
Secrets and illusions abound in a decaying convent wrapped in dark magic and scented with blood. Portia came to the convent with the ghost of Imogen, the lover she failed to protect in life. Now, the spell casting caste wants to make sure that neither she nor her spirit ever leave.
THE LABYRINTH OF THE DEAD
ISBN: 9780984553501 (Trade Paperback)
ISBN: 9781452373577 (eBook)
Imogen is all that matters. After rescuing her lover from the forces that trapped her in The Convent of the Pure, Portia Gyony has lost Imogen once again to the darkness that surrounds them. The only way to reunite is to walk through the shadow-worlds of the dead and bring Imogen back to the body that awaits her—a journey no nephilim was meant to take.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Acknowledgments
Biographies
This book is for Jason Sizemore for taking a chance on my work and bringing my story to the world.
And for Melissa Gay who gave my words life and color and let everyone see what I had imagined.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
—"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats
—1—
SEE! THE WORLD’S ONLY LIVING ANGEL! The sign hung on a sagging banner above a cage with cheaply gilded bars and imitation pearls. Inside, heaps of white wool fleece covered the floor and made lofty piles in the corners in front of a backdrop painted with a serene blue sky and an artfully placed white dove.
Portia Gyony sat bored most days in a smothering gown of heavy antique satin. She pretended that her hair was not, in fact, the shimmering silver-white of freshly fallen snow under a full moon, nor her eyes as gold as gypsy bangles. She kept her wings pressed tightly to her back so they looked as much like paste and swan feathers as possible and no one could see that they shone like a star’s halo. She imagined herself to be a well-conceived hoax and did not have to feign apathy as she slumped in the corner of her cell, looking at no one.
Her captors on the airship had been coarse, but kind. They kept their distance, one venturing near only to bring her a grimy scrap of paper bearing a long line of dots and dashes. Code under code, it was a note from the Primacy: Stay quiet, stay put. We know where you are and we will come fetch you.
When the men from the circus came, she went, hoping they would deliver her to her own people, but instead they brought her to a shabby little beach town. Tourists flocked to Capitola-by-the-Sea to pay a penny to see her and two bits to take a zeppelin tour of the strange opal tower that had appeared on the coast.
It had been weeks since she had escaped that very tower. Nigel Aldias, her adversary since childhood, held court there now. Portia could hear him when she dozed, his whispered seductions to any spirit he could find. And they came. Spectral streams lit the sky like ribbons of twinkling light, all ever moving toward the tower. Portia watched and waited. She dared not act until she was given orders. She could not imagine that it would take the Primacy long at all, but the days stretched on into weeks.
They came in waves: the gawkers, the men with starry eyes and marriage proposals, and always the wan and shadow-eyed mothers clutching their sick children to their depleted breasts. Portia was no healer, and she had nothing but a few murmured words of solace and a blessing of strength upon the little ones. They understood, those who existed on the knife’s edge between life and death. But the mothers skulked away, betrayed. Portia’s heart broke for them, but there was nothing she could do. Soon enough, the mothers stopped coming, only to be replaced by more would-be suitors as her fame spread.
The Primacy never arrived. No word followed the first clipped message weeks before. The Primacy consisted of a small handful of Nephilim of the Regalii lineage. Portia had never met a member of the Primacy, nor even a Regalii. She did not trust them, but not because they had clout and status and did not like to get their hands dirty. She did not trust them because she did not know who they were, or even where they were, and that bothered her. Especially now, while she sweltered in a heavy gown in a cage in a town that felt a hundred miles from home. Waiting, as she had been asked, obediently.
It galled her.
Yet she stayed quiet, and stayed put. Her training ran deep. And she hated it.
"Portia, lass."
She jolted out of a drowsing half-dream, shaking the languor from her limbs as they tingled from Imogen’s imaginary touch. The man leaning against the bars of her cage pushed his grey top hat back from his face.
"Captain," she whispered, disbelieving. "Oh, please let this be real."
He smiled, and the curling ends of his waxed moustache rose. "I’m here, dear girl. I am really here. But I can’t tarry. Here." He slid an envelope into the cell.
Portia crawled toward it and slipped it into her bulky sleeve. She looked up at Captain Cadmus Gyony, her commander and mentor, and tears rose in her eyes. She stretched her fingers through the bars and gripped his hand.
"It is good to see you hale and whole, although not exactly as I remember you."
Portia could not meet his gaze. "What is to become of me, Captain? Haven’t they decided to come for me?"
"I can’t say, really. There aren’t many details there." He nodded at her sleeve. "But I know the Primacy is indeed sending someone here. And soon. They are interested in this matter. Quite interested."
She nodded. "Tell me, then, before you go…" She could barely bring herself to speak the words, but she could not bear another night of empty dreams that promised so much yet confirmed nothing. "Imogen?"
Cadmus chuckled and glanced back over his shoulder. "Anna," he barked. "Come on over here and see this! It’s the damndest thing, I’m telling you!"
Lady Anna Gyony, tall and regal in her blue walking dress, stepped from the shadows at the far side of the great tent that still smelled suspiciously of elephant.
; "What have we here?" She smiled, lighting up her bright blue eyes. "A lonely angel?"
Anna’s companion stepped into the lamplight and Portia gasped.
"This is no place for such a creature." Imogen Gyony stood before the gaudy cage as real as anything.
Cadmus and Anna stepped behind her and opened up a large folding map, arguing over the most direct route to their lodgings.
"Imogen!" Portia reached her arms through the narrow gaps between the bars and gathered Imogen into them, pressing her close, with the cheap gold paint flaking off between them.
"Oh, Portia, love. Thank heavens you’re safe. I didn’t know what to do when I woke without you. No one knew what had become of you." She pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her pretty green dress and wiped her eyes. They looked strange in the low light, as if they did not quite match one another.
"You disappeared. Just vanished right in front of me, and I thought for certain you were lost!" Portia fought back tears.
Between the gilded iron bars, they found just enough space to reach one another’s lips. Portia breathed the scent of Imogen’s soft skin—vanilla, strawberries, and gentle spices.
"I love you," Portia gasped into her lover’s mouth. "I could just close my eyes right now and die happy knowing you are safe and alive, oh God, you’re alive!"
"Thanks to you," Imogen murmured. "You came into the very pit of hell to find me."
"And I’d do it again."
"I know."
Portia traced the curves of Imogen’s face and tugged on the bright red curls of her hair. "I have missed you, the real you. The touch and taste and smell of you."
Imogen caught her fingers and kissed them, cradling them against her cheek. "Me, too. It was so difficult to see your body, but never really touch it." She snaked her slender wrist through the bars and ran a fingertip down Portia’s throat.
Portia caught her breath and shuddered. She gazed into Imogen’s eyes and her mouth fell open. A blush crept up from Imogen’s high lace collar and she turned away.
"Look at me," Portia urged. "I want to see."
Slowly, Imogen turned her face back toward the cage and opened her eyes. They surprised Portia, at once both all too familiar and yet strange. Green, yes—Imogen’s dark, olivine green eyes—but with an inner layer of amber that circled her pupils. It was as if Portia’s and Imogen’s eyes had been merged into one, which, in essence, they had. Gently, Portia stroked her fingertips across Imogen’s eyelids, just as she had in the antechamber of the tower when she had given Imogen her own eyes that she might see after hers had been stolen.
Tears trickled down Imogen’s cheeks. "See? You are always with me. I can never look at myself, or look at anything, really, without knowing what you gave to me."
"I don’t know what to say, except that they look beautiful in your face."
"They were both shadow-dark when I first awoke. But like a newborn babe’s might, they soon settled into this." She shrugged. "I cannot honestly complain. But you…gold? Portia, I don’t know what’s going to become of you."
Portia blinked, trying to feel the difference between the eyes through which she now saw and the ones she’d always had. They did not feel any different, and she had not gotten a good look at them herself. But she had seen the reaction to them. Fear, awe, curiosity, lust. As golden as wolf’s eyes, she would never be able to hide her nature from anyone who looked into them.
"I’ll live. I’ve no other choice, do I?" Portia smiled, a little lopsided. "It’ll be all right, you’ll see, my love. Besides, I’ve lived with silver hair for so long, golden eyes shouldn’t be so much more difficult."
Cadmus cleared his throat and yawned in a loud, grandiose manner. Portia could hear voices outside, coming nearer.
Imogen’s face fell. "I must go. But I’ll be back, Portia, I promise!" She slipped her long fingers into the neck of her gown and pulled up a tarnished silver heart-shaped padlock charm with a keyhole cut through its center. She pressed it to her chest lovingly. "Did yours…?"
Smiling, Portia rolled back the gold embroidered cuff of her other sleeve. A tea-brown ribbon wrapped several times around her wrist, and from it dangled an equally tarnished little silver key. "Of course."
They spent their last moments in a lingering goodbye kiss until Anna stepped between them.
"I’m so sorry, Portia, but we must."
"I understand."
The three of them meandered out of the large, striped tent and into the fading sunshine. Portia wanted to wave and call out to them, but instead, she settled back into her corner and, when she felt certain they were long gone, took the letter out of her sleeve. The short missive told her nothing that Cadmus had not. The Primacy knew where she was. They knew what had happened to her, or at least pretended that they did. They advised her once again to stay quiet and stay put. They would send further instructions.
"Poxy bastards." She folded the note back into the envelope and rose on her tiptoes until she could just reach the corner of it into the nearest lantern. The expensive paper smoked a long while before it caught fire. Portia held it until it burned down to her fingertips. It did not so much as singe them.
"Parlor tricks?"
Portia jumped. She had not heard the man enter. He came in on silent feet, pausing to tie down the flap behind him. She tensed, drawing her legs beneath her and pressing her wings close to her back, ready to strike.
The man turned, sweeping his cloak back from his arms, and touched the brim of his hat to her. His eyes were hidden behind peculiar blue-tinted glasses fitted with several magnifying lenses that could be dropped down in any number and combination from the brass frames. He fiddled with them, raising and lowering several of them in succession as he looked her over. He nodded and murmured to himself, then shook his head as if disagreeing with his own thoughts.
His drawn face was pale in the dimness, and his lean body was all but lost in the folds of his rich wool suit. But in Portia’s vision, she could tell that he was no ordinary man. And no ordinary Nephilim, either.
"Do you know who I am, girl?" he whispered with only a minute movement of his thin lips.
"What does the Primacy wish of me?"
"Astute." The magnifying lenses clicked into place and up again. Finally satisfied with what he saw, the man pushed the glasses down his nose and gazed at her with unblinking green-grey eyes flecked with gold. "The reports do you no justice, Mistress Gyony."
Portia shrugged. "The reports do not concern me. How long do I have to stay here? It’s humiliating and I am damn tired of it."
"That is not for you to decide, I’m afraid. You are far too valuable to risk, and here, you are safe."
"Safe? Here? Safer here than in my own home?" She felt each feather of her wings start to stand on end as irritation coursed through her body. "What about the information I have? Surely that means something to you!"
"We have enough information."
"What’s your name, sir?"
"Names have power, Portia Gyony."
"I know. That’s why I want yours."
He paused, tilting his head to regard her. "Lord Alaric Regalii," he answered, finally. "Does that please you?"
"Enough. Now tell me when you’ll get me out of this place."
"Soon." He glanced around, nose wrinkling as if finally noticing the interior of the tent for the first time. "You won’t think it soon enough, I’m sure, but I’d like you keep you somewhere safe where we can keep an eye on you. That gives us a bit more time to investigate the tower before anyone goes and causes a ruckus."
"I fear that Nigel may have begun again—"
"Nigel? That grasping Aldias brat?" Lord Alaric scoffed. "Even if it was he that Imogen claimed you fought, and yes, we have debriefed her on this matter—you did get a chance to visit with her just now, I trust?" He cleared his throat. "Anyway, there is no way he can recover the mass and matter to threaten us again. So put those fears to rest, my dear girl, and try to make the best of things her
e."
"Do not underestimate him."
"I promise not to," he told her, placating.
"It would be to your peril," she warned once more.
"We have our best investigating the matter of this tower. We will send for you, Mistress Gyony." He slid the glasses back in place and shrugged the cloak closed over his body. He untied the tent flap’s lacings and stepped through, pausing to bow his head toward her gilded cage. "Your duty to the Grigori will be noted."
Portia gave him a curt nod in reply. "Good. I’ll be wanting a parade."
—2—
"THE TOWER OF MIRACLES!" Halford Kirkley, the most senior partner of the traveling circus and sideshow, had strolled into the tent that housed Portia’s cage. "It’s making us rich, rich I tell you, Quentin! The pilgrims! The cures! The advertising writes itself! Now, what shall we do with her?"
Quentin Seymour hastily followed, rolls of architectural plans and a notepad clutched in his ink-stained fingers. What Quentin may have lacked in ambition, he made up for in business sense. He eyeballed the shoddy tableau of the cage and blew through his lips.
"It’ll be a boon, combining both attractions. But it just means we’ve got to move her again. Like a wildcat, that one. And do we dare leave her out there at night? I don’t think we can pay anyone enough to take the job of shifting her back and forth." He tucked his plans under one arm and flipped through the notebook.
"Bah, she’s been weak as milk since we got her settled. Once she gets accustomed to her new home I think she’ll be just as docile. Won’t you, girl?" Halford turned to address her directly for the first time.
Portia bristled, but did not respond.
"But Hal, wasn’t she plucked from that same tower by the Airship Corps? I’d hate to endanger this venture by giving her an opportune means of escape back there. Perhaps that’s what it’s waiting for: her return. And if she goes home again, we lose them both, and where would our revenue be, then? I’ll tell you where—"
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