by Gabi Moore
“The tower has seen worse storms, I am sure of that.”
After the next level slid past, Dion decided to make a little conversation with her. “So how did you get involved with the writers’ group? What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a botanist,” she told him. “I study plants. Help things grow, find out why they don’t. It’s rewarding, but doesn’t pay very much. I started reading novels on my spare time and decided I could write just as well as the ones I took off the shelf.”
“Anything ready to publish?” Dion asked her.
“Not yet,” she responded. “Still have to finish the one I’m working on right now. I keep changing the plot. Eventually, I’ll decide what it’s supposed to be about this week. So how did you end up here?”
“My uncle. He rigged somethings to ensure I would acquire the powers of the first four elements. Then he made sure I would have to come here to pick up the final one. He claims it was all to stop those things from coming down the tower and affecting my world, but I think there is more to this than what he’s telling me.”
“So you’re not from here?” she asked him. “Another kingdom?”
Dion didn’t quite know what to say. Even where he came from the existence of separate time circles was debated. He didn’t know what the local beliefs were and didn’t need to cause any problems by telling her information that might run counter to her belief system. So he went for the easy way to explain it.
“Oh yes,” he told her. “A whole different one. I’m sure you never heard about it.”
She opened her mouth to say something when the lift stopped at the highest floor. Dion stepped out before she could say a thing and into the formal eloquent chambers of the masters of the tower.
The level was still quiet. No further sounds came from the stairwell that was secured against the invaders. Most of the guards were relaxing on the floor or propped up against the wall, waiting for the next round. The nodded upon seeing Dion’s face, whom they knew from the mall.
“No further activity from up there?” Dion asked them.
“They’re being quiet,” one of the guards, said to him. “If I was a betting man, I’d put money on them planning something up there. They are determined to get to the bottom of the tower and I don’t know how much longer we can hold them.”
“Has anyone been hurt?” Kris asked him. She starred at the men who were exhausted on this level.
“A few bruises and cuts,” he told her. “Nothing too severe. We were able to secure the top level when it all happened months ago. For the longest time we didn’t think they would come any lower and the sisters spent most of their time trying to find a way to send them back. A few hours ago, those things became very active and fought their way down to this level. We’ve managed to stop them for now.
“Is there any way to see one of those them? Kris asked the guard. “Or is that too risky?”
“We’ve never had a good look at one,” he told her. “When they came through the gate with their leader it was dark and the storm had begun. It’s been dark outside since then and the weather never improved.
“Storm began when?” she asked him.
The guard had a look on his face, which Dion interpreted to mean he was trying to remember something. “About two months ago. The rain lets up every now and then, but the clouds haven’t broken in that time. I don’t know how they manage around here. From what I understand this is not the first time the weather has been so bad.”
“Two months is a long time,” She commented. “I’m surprised the place has any soil left outside. Must have something to do with the way the mud flows from time to time.”
“Let me get this straight,” Dion asked the both of them. “Storms lasting two or more months are common around here.”
“I wouldn’t say common,” she told him. “But you do hear about them. As the man said, the rain stops, but the clouds never break. Happens in the rainy season all the time in some places. We decided the bus had driven too far south when we ran into this place. I will admit this is one of the longer ones.”
“And we are sick of it,” the guard told him. “We get the lighting once or twice a week. Almost lost a man too close to the window during one thunderstorm last month. I don’t know how anyone lasts very long around here.”
“I’m told the farmers plan their seasons around the rains,” She explained. “I guess a person can get used to anything. On the other hand, most of them have moved north.”
Dion understood, at last, something about a place where he’d been dropped. The weather was vastly different from the world he’d left. The constant rains accounted for the stony ground he’d ran across to reach the tower. How difficult it must have been to construct this massive tower with the threat of constant storms. He had another thought and turned to Kris.
“Has this area experienced these long storms any time in the past?
“Not this place,” she told him, “We’re near the mountain pass and the weather patterns are different here than the rest of the valley. I think it was one of the reasons the tower was constructed at this location a thousand years ago. I’m sure if you looked in the records, you might find accounts of storms this bad, but I’ve never heard of them near the tower.”
It appeared his uncle had let more than this Queen Lilith and her Azuroth into this particular time circle. When he opened the gate, the weather was manipulated too. However, Dion was not able to see the air sylphs as he’d done in his home world. He wasn’t even sure if they worked the same way.
There was a ringing sound at the tube next to him and the guard went over to listen to it. He waited or awhile, then blew a whistle into it to let the other side know he was ready to send a message back.
“Received and acknowledged,” he spoke into the tube. “I’ll send down two guards to help. Everything quiet up here.”
He whipped around and turned to the former mall security men who were reclining near the barricade to the next level. “We have problems down on the main level. “Seems there are some of these things outside the tower trying to get in. I need two of you to go down and help secure the drawbridge. You and you just volunteered.”
Chapter 10
The men groaned and walked over the lift. One of them spoke into the lift tube to let the operator know they were ready to take the descent to the bottom.
“Just a minute!” Dion called to them. He turned to Kris, “I’m going down to help. I suggest you do the same. The lift doesn’t move too fast, you can jump off on the way past the great hall if you don’t want to ride it to the bottom.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “not much going on around here.”
They ran to the lift just in time to catch it as the elevator began its descent. Once again, Dion saw the different floors go by as the lift continued on its way down to the warehouse at the bottom of the tower. It was a quiet ride punctuated by the occasional boom of thunder. The passed a floor where two men in blue coveralls worked on a piece of metal. They looked up for a few seconds and returned to what they were doing.
“This storm has lasted the entire time you’ve been here?” Dion asked one of the guards.
“Pretty much,” the man replied. “It slows down, but, like he said, the rains never go away for longer than a few days. This place is crazy; I haven’t seen the sun once. The clouds only break at night and you never see the stars for more than a few minutes at a time.”
The elevator entered the opening for the great hall, which was taller than most of the doors to the lift chamber. Dion had asked one of the sisters earlier in the day how people kept from falling down the open shaft and was told it had never happened. “You just know better than to get near it if there is no lift in the shaft,” she told him with a look of astonishment on her face. “How hard is it to learn that?”
Dion saw one of the other women waiting at the great hall when they began to move past it. Just as Kris stepped off and into the main chamber, the new woman stepped onto the lift.<
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“It’s only another level down,” Dion said to her. “You could have met us at the bottom...”
“I know,” she said, “but I’ve been dying to ride one of these things ever since I saw it.”
In a few minutes, the lift stopped at the bottom, which was the warehouse level. A small crowd had gathered around the door to the entrance and took turns to look out a peephole cut into the doors. Dion recognized Kylie Mahen, although this time she wore shoes and held a spear in one hand that was much longer than the one she’d held when he entered the tower. She still wore the same black gown.
Around her were several men who appeared to be servants and attendants. One held a bow and the other a club. From the way the man held the club, Dion could tell he’d never used one in a fight. He kept dropping and picking it up off the floor. The other man plucked the bowstring with abandon, something else that clued Dion as to the man’s inexperience with it.
“Something happening out there?” Dion asked Kiley.
Twelve of those things outside at the bridge,” she told him. “I can’t make up my mind if we should send out the men and push them away from the bridge or haul it up.”
“I thought they couldn’t leave the tower,” Dion said to her. “Something about a fear of heights I was told.”
“Not the same kind. These have green fur and brought an entire encampment with them. Have a look.”
Dion went to the peephole in the odor and stared out into the distance. He could see movement at the edge of the bridge in the storm, but not much. There were small figures out there carrying weapons of their own that were indecisive about what they should do. Dion guessed it had to do with the storm. No one wanted to mount an attack in the middle of this maelstrom. As he watched, a bolt of lightning struck near one of the figures and it jumped back. The others beat a fast retreat to their hovels in the distance.
“How could you see what they looked like?” Dion said to her. “You can’t see much of anything out there in this storm.”
“There was a break in the rain for thirty seconds and the moon shone through,” she told him. “I saw forty of those things in their outside. They were on the bridge when the storm resumed and ran back across. I guess they didn’t want the wind to blow them into the moat.”
“Did anyone see where they came from?” he asked her. “I don’t recall any camp outside when you let me in. There wasn’t much of anything out there.”
“One of the servants let me know,” she told him. “He came down to make the watch and saw them milling around. He called me down while you were upstairs to let me know.”
“I’d raise the bridge,” he told her. “You have the storm working in your favor right now. With the lighting making things risky, they’ll not try to ford the moat. If this storm ever lifts, they might try to make it across, but you’re good for now.”
“That was my original thought,” she responded to him. “I needed to hear it from someone else. She turned to a pair of men standing next to a crank. “All right, bring it up.”
The men began to turn the crank a bit at a time and Dion could hear the bridge rise in the storm. He looked out the peephole and saw it begin to rise in the air. There were no movements on the other side of the moat, so he closed the opening and went back upstairs.
“I thought we would see some action down there,” the woman from the club who went down with him said as they walked back up the stairwell.
“Not today,” Dion returned. “Why, did you really want to have a go at those things...ummm…what was your name again?”
“Bernice,” she said, “Bernice Cosmo. I was in the dragon corps.”
“So you used those big fire-breathing lizards against ground targets?” he asked her. Dion knew what his idea of a dragon represented, he needed to make sure it was the same on this world.
“Nope,” she told him. “I was in the veterinary division. Never got to see one strike a target. I suppose you could consider them big, although I never saw one more than ten feet long. Nothing bigger can stay in the air very long. Many people think they are huge, but work around them long enough and the size is relative. The smaller ones are trained to make the first strikes. They escape radar detection.”
“So you can’t ride them….” Dion spoke aloud. His idea of a dragon was much different.
“Of course not,” she laughed. “You’ve been reading too many books. They don’t talk either. But they do shoot fire. Takes them awhile to recharge, you only get two or three burns before they have to fly back to base.”
“They sound scary enough,” he told her.
“Not if you work with them every day. They haven’t been used in battle in over a hundred years, but every kingdom keeps them on the ready. You never know. I’ve read enough history to know what a full-on dragon war is like and I wouldn’t want to be around for it. Whole cities burned to the ground in one night. Entire countrysides reduced to ashes. And they will fight each other if not trained right. It was hard enough keeping the females separated. You get several female dragons in a pen together and they’ll try to rip each other apart.”
Dion continued on until he reached the grand hall level and went back to the table where his parents were sitting once again across from his uncle. There wasn’t much else to do right now but wait it out. Dion noticed the servants bringing out blankets and bedding for the couches and chairs in the great hall. Apparently, the Mahen sisters decided it would be a better idea to have all the storm refugees stay downstairs in the hall with both the top and entrance to the tower under siege.
He thought about what the woman who worked with dragons told him. Too bad they couldn’t get any of them to take care of the creatures that’d infested the tower. On the other hand, would it be such a good idea to have fire-breathing lizards running all over the tower? It might be stone on the outside, but there was plenty of wood on the inside.
Right now, he didn’t feel like interacting with either his parents or his uncle. The Mahen sisters where nowhere to be found. He’d left Kiley Mahen in the bottom warehouse playing little major, but he had no clue as to where the other two went. The servants were bringing in bowls of stew to the women who hadn’t had a chance to eat. Most of them sat at the table and continued to discuss whatever they’d been discussing when he walked into the hall.
He saw the young black woman who had come in with the bus occupants standing by the window and watching the storm. She held a drink in a small glass and wore a tight dress and heels. She turned from the window, checked her make-up in the reflection of a mirror and returned to the storm. Dion decided he could do much worse than talking with her, so he walked over to her part of the room.
“I remember you entering with everyone else,” he told her. “But I’m terrible with names.”
“Sondasha,” she told him. “I remember yours. You’re Dion, correct?”
“Correct,” he affirmed. “Were you on the bus long before it broke down?”
“About a day,” she told him. “Kristen drove it most of the way. She has a license or something. I hope the men who work here can get that bus fixed tomorrow. I need to get back to the city.”
Dion decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask her what city and changed the subject. “It sounds like you have important work to do in the city.”
“I’m an actress,” she told him. “And a singer. I have a concert coming up in two weeks and I need to get ready for it. I’m told there are some important patrons who are coming to see me and I want to look my best.”
“It sounds like a hard way to earn a living,” he said to her.
“It’s not easy. Plenty of competition out there. But I’m just starting and I hope to get places before much longer. I’ve always heard success is all a matter of timing, so I want to be ready.”
“Did you see anything funny outside when the bus broke down?”
“No, it was dead out there except for the storm.”
“Did you want to get something to eat?” one of
the women called to her from the table. “There’s plenty of food. We’ve worked out a way to compensate the sisters for their hospitality later. They’ll send the bill to the agency.”
“Agency?” Dion asked Sondasha.
“The outfit who organized this trip,” she explained. “They were supposed to send us to a hotel for the evening. As you can see, we got lost. One of the stipends in the contract is that they will cover any unplanned expense. I think this qualifies. My, that stew smells good; I think I’ll have some.” She wondered off to the long table, leaving Dion alone by the window.
Dion sighed and decided to go sit with his parents. There still wasn’t much else he could do until the elemental grandmaster returned. He wasn’t able to get any more information out of the sisters or his uncle and decided he would have to wait to gather any.
The sisters were back at the head of the table. This time they wore the same color scheme, but had jackets on over their shoulders. He noticed Kiley leaning over to her sister Susan in a deep conversation. He couldn’t hear what it was about, but the younger woman didn’t seem to like the direction the discussion was headed. She continued to frown while her older sister told her what she didn’t want to hear. Dion speculated it had something to do with Susan leaving the room earlier. As before, Loris was in the middle of it all, but tried to stay aloof. This argument might’ve been going on for years, for all he knew.
The women from the bus seemed to be excited by all the action at the tower. Most of them had led boring lives from what he could tell. This trip was a chance to get out of town and find something to write about. From what he picked up from the side conversations, there was very little actual warfare in this world. The presence of dragons, which were easy to breed although monopolized by the various kingdoms, made it difficult to wage war on a neighbor. The mere threat of a dragon attack was enough to bring negotiators to the table. It didn’t matter how many of the lizards each side trained, the other side could still wreak havoc on an enemy with a few of them. These reptiles seemed to be a lot easier to train than their equivalent on earth. Most large reptiles from where he came from couldn’t be trained; they regarded any form of warm-blooded animal as an enemy or food.