The Tower

by Jean Johnson

  Grumblings came from the left. They preceded the appearance of a tall man—obviously, but even in proportion to the huge room he was tall—with a balding patch on his head, a bit of a comb-over, a rounded nose, and a bit of a belly on him. He strode right over to the cage the pair were in and reached for the latch to the door.

  “Coo-ee! George!” Kerric shouted, waving his arms. “George! It’s me, Master Kerric!”

  Myal glanced between the two men. From the scowl on George’s humongous face, he either hadn’t heard, or didn’t care. The barred door opened as Kerric shouted some more.

  “I need you to lift us to the topmost shelf!” he called out. “Can you do that for us?”

  George wasn’t paying attention. Making up her mind, Myal struck swiftly. Kerric went tumbling across the sawdust-fluffed cage at her shove, and she got picked up first. A flex of her finger hardened her skin, toughening her body against being crushed. Hopefully. She didn’t know how strong a giant of George’s size and stature might be.

  “Myal—NO! George, you put her down this instant!” Kerric screamed, righting himself in time to see the cage door being shut again. “Myal!”

  Myal, now free of the confines of the cage, arched her back and activated the tattoos flanking her spine high on her buttocks. George turned toward the kitchen, and found himself with a rapidly expanding handful of formerly miniature human.

  “Whot th’?” He frowned down at her.

  Myal poured more of her concentration and her frightened anger into her shapeshifting. Within two seconds, she was too large to hold, and dropped to the floor, expanding rapidly until she stood as high as his thigh. And kicked him hard in the shin.

  “OW! Bloody buggering bollocks!” the giant shouted, hopping back and grasping his shin.

  “George! Watch yer language!” the giantess yelled from the kitchen.

  Myal smacked the edge of her fist into his elbow, numbing the nerve there with another hard blow, then punched him in the gut when his arms and knee shifted out of her way. The moment he doubled over, she grabbed his ear and hauled him down nose-to-cage, pinching it as hard as she could to control him.

  “That,” she asserted, her voice booming at half the volume of his and over four times its normal tone, “Is Master Kerric of the Tower, and you will pay attention to what he has to say!”

  “. . . Did you say Master Kerric of the Tower?” A woman about as tall to George as Kerric was to Myal hurried out of the kitchen doorway, hastily wiping her hands. Like George, she had medium brown hair, though hers was a bit curly; unlike him, her nose was thin and pointed. Both had complexions someone back in Penambrion had once called “strawberries and cream” and clothing which, while outlandish in its cut, was quite conservative, save that her skirt ended just below the knee, yet wasn’t shaped anything like a gauntlet-runner’s armored skirt.

  At the same time, squinting at the furious mage in the cage, George tried to rear up in surprise. Myal kept a tight grip on his earlobe, though. She might be the size of a young child to him, but she had enough mass and he was enough off-balance that she knew she could keep him like this with less fuss than in any other position.

  “Blind me wi’ ferrets! It IS Master Kerric. Mandy! We almost ate th’ master! Red light, my royal arse!” he added, trying to twist his head to look at his companion. “You must be goin’ color-blind in yer old age, woman. We don’t eat th’ Master!”

  “I know we don’t eat th’ Master!” Mandy argued back. “An’ I’m not going color-blind—and watch yer language—oh, and mind yer volume,” she added in an exaggerated murmur, tucking the dirty hand towel into a pocket on her apron. Dropping to her knees with two floor-thudding jolts, she braced her mostly clean hands on her skirt-covered thighs and smiled at the now impatient man in the cage. “Coo-ee, Master Kerric! How’ve ye been, eh?”

  “Thank you, Mandy,” Kerric sighed, relieved he wasn’t about to see Myal ripped open and popped into a stew or something. “I’ve been fairly well, thank you. I hope you have, too. Now, I do hate to be a bother, interrupting your supper preparations and rushing my visit like this, but my companion and I are in a hurry. We need to get to the top shelf exit.”

  Mandy’s hazel green eyes widened. “Th’ Seraglio? Good Lord!”

  Her hand went to the base of her throat, where a string of creamy white pearls the size of . . . well, on Mandy, the size of a pinky-nail, and to Kerric, the size of pumpkins, rested on a silken, knotted string. It reminded Myal very much of the plain pearl necklaces she had abandoned in one of the earliest traps they had slogged through, taking instead the one with rainbow pearls and diamonds.

  Leaning down, the giantess scolded Kerric at a not quite ear-aching volume. “An’ what’s a nice bloke like th’ Master doin’ with a lady, heading for a naughty lil’ segment of the Tower like that, eh? I thought you were a gentleman, I did!”

  Kerric sighed and rolled his eyes. “Someone tried to wrest control of the Tower away from me on the one day I went out shopping in another town, Mandy. The Tower’s in lockdown mode. I have to get back to the heart to restart everything, and the fastest way is through the Seraglio—which means I’ll need you to not eat the woman I love, thank you very much.”

  Myal blushed at his choice of words. She didn’t know if he actually meant it, or if he was just tossing off a useful phrase to get the giant couple’s cooperation. She wasn’t going to protest it, though; these giants could still decide to change their minds, fight the pair of them, and pop them into a baking dish or something.

  Still caught in her grip, George craned his neck as best he could, peering up at Myal. “’Zat true?” he asked. “D’you love ‘im, too?”

  Blushing again, she nodded.

  “Oh, well, f’r Heaven’s Sake—you can let go a’ me now, girlie,” he added, fluttering a hand near the fingers gripping his ear. “We’ll pop you right up t’ the top shelf, right quick. Word of a Terry,” George stated.

  Myal released him with a shake of her other finger in his face. Mindful of her much-larger lung-power, she spoke in a murmur, too, for the sake of Kerric’s ears. “Don’t go back on it, or I’ll bake you for our supper.”

  “Ooh, she’s a feisty one, isn’t she?” Mandy giggled, briefly covering her mouth. “Bit of a warrioress? ’Ere, Master Kerric, I’ll give you a lift up to th’ shelf myself,” she stated, reaching for the cage latch.

  “Yer too short, woman,” George protested as he straightened and rubbed at the small of his back. “I’ll lift ’im!”

  “You gotta get th’ little lady,” Mandy pointed out, sticking her hand inside with her palm up and her fingers flat. Kerric climbed onto the proffered platform, avoiding a spot of dough that hadn’t been completely wiped off. He sat down and braced himself on her skin as she pulled her hand back out, latching the cage against any future arrivals.

  “Little, my foot! She’s done grown herself up to a tyke!” Looking down at Myal, he lifted his brows. “Can you get back t’ little-bitty size?”

  Myal folded her arms across her armored chest, trying her best to look stern and intimidating. “I’ll wait until Master Kerric’s safely on the top shelf. Then I’ll shift shape and join him.”

  “Definitely a fierce one,” George muttered. He turned to watch his wife stretching up on her toes, palm angled awkwardly to get Kerric up to the right height. “I told y’ you were too short, woman.”

  “Oh, sod off!” Mandy muttered under her breath. She waited until Kerric scrambled free, turned, and waved at them, and fluttered her fingers in return, grinning. “There you go, Master Kerric. You’re next, young lady—if you’ll both excuse me, somebody likes his soda bread, ’e does, an’ I don’t dare let it wait too long between kneadin’s.”

  George gave Myal a sheepish look. “It’s really good soda bread. Now, shrink yerself down, poppet.”

  Wary, but willing to give him a chance, Myal released her ink-magic. Shrinking all the way down, she found him following her in a stoop. Like Ker
ric, when he offered her a flat palm, she climbed up into it and sat down for better balance. A thought crossed her mind even as he crossed the floor.

  “Why do your people eat our kind?” she asked. “We’re very small, maybe three bites’ worth. Surely you have farm animals that are bigger?”

  “’F course we do,” George told her, lifting his wrist to the level of the knickknack shelf. “But mini-man meat is sweet an’ tender. S’a shame to be givin’ up the two o’ you, really.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Myal muttered, still not quite ready to trust him. She meant, she didn’t believe he was going to leave the two of them alone. However, it seemed the two males misinterpreted her disbelief.

  He gave Kerric a furtive look while Myal crawled off his hand and onto the shelf board . . . which at their comparative sizes was not very furtive at all. Kerric rolled his fingers in an encouraging gesture. “Go on, tell her. She won’t tell anyone else—and nobody’s scrying this. All the lines got shut off, which is why I’m in a hurry to get things back under control.”

  “Right. That ’splains why I had to listen to th’ cricket match. . . . See, th’ thing is, we usually just transfer ’em to a new cage, spell-proof an’ such,” George whispered, turning to face Myal. His breath gusted across the shelf when he did that, smelling of toffee and nuts, oddly enough. “Then we use th’ evil-o-meter on ’em.

  “If they’re really bad, we cast a memory-erasin’ charm on ’em first. But if they’re just bad at adventurin’, Mandy works wi’ the Master, ’ere, to open a portal back to their home town, an’ off they go, bad or good. We tell th’ good ’uns they’re too stringy for the stew pot.” He grinned, showing teeth as long as her forearm. “Most of th’ time, we let the little blighters escape, an’ just enjoy watching Tower episodes on th’ telly in between runs, in exchange for some really faboo anti-scrying wards.

  “Anyone else in this realm would eat you with a bit o’ trifle for pudding,” George explained. “But then they hate anythin’ extra-dimensional. See, magic’s not allowed in this universe legally, even though it exists, but me an’ Mandy are from long lines o’ mage-sorcerer type families, and . . .”

  “George! Haven’t you got that girl up to th’ top shelf yet?” Mandy hollered from deep in the kitchen. “While you’re up an’ about, dearie, could you get me a couple lamb patties from the icebox in the garage, since we’re not having mini-man tonight?”

  “Yes, dearie, she’s up! An’ I’m comin’, hold yer bloody horses!” he hollered back, thankfully turning away from Myal and Kerric, who both quickly clapped their hands over their ears, since his voice was still overly loud at that range. “Love of my life,” he muttered, “but I swear t’ God she can’t find ’er own arse without me. Anyway, off you two get, an’ send a note ’round when you got everything settled again, eh?”

  ELEVEN

  “I’ll do that,” Kerric promised, lowering his hands from his ears. “Thanks, George.”

  Moving over to a wooden toy cottage set against the back wall, he pulled out his lock picks and started working on the cottage door. Myal watched George retreat, grousing under his breath about lamb versus man-meat as he went. She didn’t completely lower her guard when he was out of sight, but she did relax somewhat.

  She relaxed even more when Kerric opened the door, revealing the familiar pale granite floors, walls, and suncrystal-streaked ceiling of the Tower on the other side. Again, she felt a tingling prickle as she passed the threshold. Shutting the door, Kerric slumped against the panel. It took him a few moments to speak. When he did, he glared at her.

  “Don’t ever scare me like that again! George wasn’t being completely honest,” he warned his bemused partner. “A ‘red light’ means they’re supposed to kill, not capture, particularly the moment you tried to fight him . . . except you surprised him by growing that large, and those two honestly don’t like eating mini-man meat . . . but there was a chance they’d do it.” Rubbing his hands over his face, Kerric scrubbed for a moment, then peered at her. “You surprised me when you grew that large. I’ve never seen you do that in all your gauntlet runs.”

  Myal shook her head. “Most chambers in the Tower are a bit small for it. It’s also very exhausting, and difficult to control exactly how large I grow. Plus, a good adventurer always keeps a hidden trick up her sleeve. Or down my pants,” she amended, flashing him a grin. “The tattoos are below my waistline in back.”

  “I’ll have to have a closer look at some point,” Kerric quipped dryly. He stayed resting against the door for a few moments more, then gathered himself with a deep breath. “Right. We have one spike trap to navigate, then the second door on the left is our third refreshing room. We tidy up, eat a little bit, and then strip off our armor for the three challenges of the Seraglio run.”

  “Our armor?” Myal repeated, frowning. “Why?”

  “The gauntlet section imposes feelings of lust and arousal upon an adventurer. It’s kind of hard to, ah, take care of such urges quickly if there are lots of obstacles in the way,” Kerric explained, blushing. He moved a few paces up the hall, then stopped and nodded. “Here’s the trap. Trip it by sliding your sword just past that line in the stone blocks there. We’ll get a five-second window while it resets for us to slip past, one at a time.”

  “Ah. Don’t dawdle,” she murmured.

  “Exactly. I’ll go first, if you’ll set it off,” Kerric said.

  Drawing the blade at her hip, she crouched next to the wall and slid it past the subtle, hair-thin crack. Spikes shot up, knocking the blade aside with a loud tang, though not hard enough to knock it out of her grip. Kerric hopped across the trap zone quickly even as the five spears reset back into their illusion-hidden holes. Tensing her muscles, Myal counted slowly to five, then slid her blade across. The spears snapped up, sank down, and she leaped. Landing, she steadied herself and resheathed her weapon.

  Or started to; Kerric caught her wrist, and pointed at the blade. That was when she noticed something yellowish and oily smeared on the steel. “What’s that?”

  “Poison,” he said. “You’ll want to wash it off in the refreshing room before sheathing it.”

  “Lovely.” Following him into the refreshing room, Myal ducked into the ladies’ portion. She didn’t touch the stuff directly, just angled her blade in the sink so that the water from the tap slowly rinsed off all of it, then used the facilities.

  By the time she had all of her armor off and stowed in her now bulging backpack, the sword looked clean. Gingerly washing it with soap, she dried the blade and returned it to its scabbard, then debated whether or not to keep wearing her sword belt. On, she decided. It won’t be that much in the way, I think. And it’s like my boots; I’m not going anywhere barefoot in this place if I can help it.

  She felt a little odd wearing just her padded vest and skirt, but with the sword at her hip, she didn’t feel completely defenseless. Shouldering the pack, she returned to the lounge. It took her partner a few more minutes to emerge from the gentlemen’s room, but then she suspected he wasn’t as accustomed to donning and removing armor as she was. Adjusting her scabbard, she sat down to wait for him, and tried not to think too much about the previous stuffed leather couch they had used.

  When he did open the door, his appearance riveted her. Kerric had stripped down to a pair of shorts, the belt with his pouches, and his boots. With the straps of his backpack looped over his shoulders, he looked very . . . odd. Myal quickly bit her lip. At least he didn’t have that stupid-looking helmet on his head, but the plain, padded muslin shorts were little more than undergarments, covering him from waist to mid-thigh and hanging baggily off his hips. He had nice thighs, yes, with a fair bit of muscle on them, but the loose garment made them look skinny whenever the muscles weren’t being flexed.

  Kerric, catching sight of her flushed face, nibbled lip, and bright eyes riveted on his legs, sighed. “I look ridiculous, don’t I?”

  She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, the
n admitted very, very quietly, “You have since I first saw you in armor. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t take umbrage, but instead nodded and sighed again. “I know. Not everyone can look like Nafiel.”

  “No,” she agreed in a tiny voice. Her shoulders shook and her face reddened. “Sorry.”

  Not at all offended, Kerric quickly flexed his limbs, twisting one knee out and lifting his hands up on either side of his head, letting what muscles he did have bulge. Her helpless laughter, bursting from her before she quickly slapped both hands over her mouth, made him grin. Strolling over to her, Kerric gently pulled her hands away from her mouth. She blushed and tried to cover her face, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “It’s alright, Myal. I know very well who and what I am.” Bending over, he brushed his lips over her forehead. “And I am quite certain Nafiel doesn’t make you laugh nearly as often as I do.”

  She blushed again and mumbled, “No, he doesn’t. Sorry.”

  “Well, if you’re really that sorry, you can kiss it and make it feel better,” he offered. At her bemused look, he flexed his left arm and pointed at his bicep. “Kiss it, and make it feel better?”

  “Oh.” Leaning forward, Myal pecked it. “Is that better?”

  “Somewhat.” He flexed his other arm and pointed. She promptly kissed that, a smile teasing at the corners of her mouth. Then he flexed his knee, and pointed at his thigh. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened in mock-outrage, but she couldn’t hide her smile.

  Kerric pointed again, firmly. Insisting she follow through. He received a roll of her dark brown eyes for his troubles and a press of her lips just below the hem of his shorts. The tingle that raced up his leg to his groin had nothing to do with mirror-Gates to other worlds. Clearing his throat, he pulled back, mindful of their surroundings. The Hairy Naked Thing wasn’t the only possible random wanderer in the Tower. Not that they’d wander into a refreshing room, but . . .