by Mark Anthony
Tower of Doom
( Ravenloft - 9 )
Mark Anthony
Mark Anthony
Tower of Doom
Prologue
They had come for an execution
The last tatters of the storm that had lashed Nartok Keep during the night finally broke and fled before the violent crimson dawn. Sunlight spilled across the ancient stone of the keep, thick and heavy as blood, illuminating high walls that seemed to sag under their own ponderous bulk and a motley collection of towers that reached up to rake the underbelly of the sky. In the dark before the dawn, a throng of folk had climbed from the village below to the summit of the crag upon which the keep perched. They gathered now in the churned mud of the courtyard, huddling silently before a skeletal wooden scaffold.
From a window high in the spindly bell tower of Nartok Keep, a lone figure watched the grim scene unfold below. The watcher was swathed in a frayed black cloak that covered him from head to toe. Beneath the garment, a peculiar mass protruded from the figure's stooped back. He looked much like a man bent under the burden of a heavy pack.
"Come, my friends," the man said softly. "We must not be late."
Had anyone been there to hear his voice, he might have thought it beautiful. It was deep and resonant, like the tolling of a bell. But the only reply was the soft trilling of the mist-gray pigeons perched upon the crumbling window ledge. He stroked the birds fondly with a gnarled hand. The creatures ruffled their feathers and stared up at him, their eyes like dark jewels.
The man turned and moved with an odd, lurching gait across the small chamber. It was a dreary room: Only a feeble light managed to find its way through the narrow slit of the window, and it was not kind to the scant objects it found within. Moldy straw covered the stone floor, and chill draughts whistled unceasingly through chinks in the mortar. A musty pallet and worm-eaten chest were the only furnishings.
The cloaked man scrambled up a rickety wooden ladder and climbed through a trapdoor into a lofty chamber filled with dappled brilliance. Wind and sunlight streamed through the intricate wrought-iron gratings that covered the high arched windows. From stout oaken rafters above hung a dozen massive bells, each trailing a rope through a series of pulleys.
A pigeon fluttered down to land on the man's outstretched arm, followed by another, and another.
"Yes, Lisenne, I will play your favorite harmonic today." He caressed a bird whose feathers glowed with faint green iridescence. "Mow, there will be no pecking, Oratio," he chided gently. "You have no cause to be jealous. And you, Armond, shall have your choice next time. Go to your places now, my friends." The birds winged away to their high perches.
The sound of a snare drum drifted on the air. The cloaked man shuffled to one of the arched openings and peered through. In the courtyard below, a pair of the baron's knights, handsome in their brass-but- toned coats of blue wool, pushed a ragged old man ~up the steps of the scaffold. The prisoner's gaunt face was the color of clay, and mad terror shone in his eyes. He looked like one who had already gazed into the dark abyss of death. A black-hooded executioner forced the prisoner to his knees, pushing his head down upon a block of wood. The block's surface was stained a dark, rusty color and scarred by deep gouges. Next to the block lay an object draped by a black cloth.
One of the knights glared at the crowd. "The lord inquisitor has found this man guilty of treason against Baron Caidin of Nartok!" The fearful villagers cringed in a knot. "See that he does not find any of you guilty of the same!"
High in the bell tower, the cloaked man whispered excitedly. "Be ready, my friends! The moment approaches."
As the pigeons bobbed their heads, the man cast off his heavy cloak. Beneath was a form that could only be called hideous. The man might have been tall were his back not bent nearly double upon itself, twisting his shoulders into an agonizingly humped shape. His legs were unnaturally bowed, and his hunched torso made his arms seem horribly long for his body. Worst of all was his visage. Countless years of craning his neck and peering upward at queer angles had twisted his face into a grotesque mask. His blue eyes bulged disconcertingly in their sockets, and his mouth was drawn up in a perpetual, yellow-toothed grimace.
In the courtyard below, the snare drum rose in crescendo. The executioner lifted the black cloth from the object beside the block. Beneath was a half-moon blade. Intricate runes and sinister sigils coiled like serpents across the smooth steel. The blade was so massive that, had it been hafted to the end of an axe, no man could possibly have lifted it. The prisoner gaped fearfully at the blade. A gasp rose from the crowd.
The half-moon blade began to rise, as if lifted by an unseen hand. Thick red sunlight dripped bloodlike from its edge. The blade rose higher, propelled by some unspeakable force, or perhaps by its own volition, a living thing fueled by an inherent will to slay. At last the blade halted. It hovered high above the scaffold, shining like a crimson moon against the dome of the sky. The prisoner, who apparently could bear the atmosphere of portent Л о longer, struggled, craning his head to gaze upward.
"Come, be done with it!" he shrieked. "What does it matter to me now?" Insane cackling rose from deep in his throat. "I am already-"
The snare drum ceased. The half-moon blade plunged downward. It flared brilliantly as it bit deeply into the wooden block, then went dark. Eyes still staring widely, mouth still gaping in an unfinished cry, the prisoner's head rolled off the edge of the platform and fell with a wet sound into the mud below. As if freed from a spell, the peasants breathed once more, tasting air thick with blood and fear and death.
In the summit of the bell tower, the hunchback turned from the grisly scene below and dashed to the dangling ropes. It was time for him to play out his role in this dark charade. His powerfully muscled arms flexing, the hunchback pulled on the ropes. The bells swung in the shadows above, ringing out a mournful dirge for the dead man. The pigeons erupted in a gray, fluttering cloud, winging from rafter to rafter as the sound thrummed through the very stones of the tower. The tolling of the bells was deafening, but the hunchback only grinned, closing — his bulging eyes in an expression of sublime joy. To him it was not the grim song of death, but the sweet music of release.
PART I
The Monster in the Tower
One
Wort had lost count of how many years he had lived alone with the pigeons in the old bell tower.
These days, few in Nartok Keep knew who rang the bells each time there was a death in the keep or village. Some spoke of a ghost that lived in the tower. Others believed that the bells themselves were enchanted. Sometimes-when a funeral procession marched through the gates of the keep or when an execution was about to take place-a passerby might glance upward at just the right moment to see a shadow move high in the dilapidated spire. So it was most often whispered that it was neither ghost nor enchantment that animated the bell tower. No, it was a monster.
Wort did not mind the dark superstitions that surrounded the tower. They helped maintain the solitude he favored. No one ever dared come to the spire-except for the unlucky scullery boy who, every third day, was forced to tread alone down a dim corridor to leave a sack of food and a jug of water beside the door that led into the tower. The kitchenwife did not know why these actions were to J›e carried out, only that the order had come from Baron Caidin himself years ago.
Only rarely did Wort set foot outside the demesne of his tower, it had been months since the last occasion.
"It is better here with you, my friends," he said softly to the pale pigeons that drifted down out of the darkness like ghosts to perch upon his hunched shoulder. "You are not afraid of me. Besides, here we have our books."
He hobbled to the battered chest next to his mouse-eaten palle
t and threw back the lid. Inside were myriad volumes, some bound in oiled leather, others in purple cloth. Gingerly he picked up one of the books, and began to read aloud from its crackling parchment pages.
" 'As the prince journeyed deeper into the greenwood, he came upon a clear silver font, and being thirsty, he knelt to drink. Even as the first drops of cool water touched his lips, the sky darkened, and thunder rent the air. In moments, a dozen rose vines wove themselves about the prince, trapping him in a thorny cage. He tried to break free, but the thorns pierced his flesh, and blood fell upon the roses, changing the blooms from white to crimson.' 4
Wort turned the page, and suddenly a handful of pale red rose petals fell from the book. Laughing, he caught some as they fluttered toward the floor. As quickly as they had come, the petals vanished in a silver flash, leaving only a faint, sweet fragrance to drift upon the air. He read on.
" 'As the prince watched, the font glimmered with magic. Like a mirror reflecting some distant place, the image of a beautiful woman appeared on its surface. "You have dared to drink from my pool!" the woman spoke in rage. "Know then that the price for such a drink is death…"'"
Slowly, Wort shut the enchanted book and placed it back in the chest. The birds about him cooed expectantly.
"No, I will read no more until tonight, my friends. We will learn what happens to our good prince then."
Wort had discovered the magical book in one of the keep's many forgotten rooms. Sometimes the stories seemed so real that Wort imagined he was the handsome prince or noble knight who was the hero. That helped him to forget. There were times when the thoughts in Wort's mind seemed more twisted and painful than his deforimed back, but the books quieted such thoughts. Of course, nothing was so good as the bells. Their thunderous music seemed to blast the dark memories right out of his head, until all his senses were flooded by their glorious tolling. No, nothing could make him forget like the bells.
There was a time when Wort had lived in the keep with the rest of the baron's court. That had been before Caidin, when the Old Baron had ruled Nartok, when Wort himself had been only a boy. Even then, servants and nobles alike had regarded him with disgust, muttering charms against the Evil Eye as they passed him. As a boy, Wort had never understood why. Then one day the steward had given him the task of polishing a tarnished silver bowl. When he had cleared away the dark grime, Wort had been so startled to see a hideous face staring back at him that he had dropped the bowl, denting it.
"You are as stupid as you are ugly, Wort!" the steward had berated him, boxing his ears. "Don't you even recognize your own reflection, boy?"
Wort had always known that he was different than other children, that he had been so from birth. Now he knew that he was not merely different. He was horrible. From that time on, he had done his best to conceal his appearance to avoid troubling others. For a time It seemed to work. But he could not keep his twisted form covered every moment, and as he grew older, those who glimpsed it regarded him with growing fear.
One day, when Wort was trying to help an ashwife clean the hearth in the Grand Hall, his hood had slipped back. When she saw his twisted face, the ashwife had screamed. In her haste to get away she had fallen into the fire and was badly burned. Several servants came to carry the woman away on a makeshift stretcher. Wort would never forget what one of them-a young man whose eyes had been filled with hate-had hissed at him.
"Look what you've done, you monster."
"I was only trying to help," Wort had choked pitifully.
After that, the steward had forbidden Wort to assist any of the other servants. In the end, it seemed the only way Wort could truly help people was by leaving them alone. With nothing else to occupy his time, he had taken to exploring the sprawling bulk of the keep, making his way down shadowy corridors and through dusty chambers where none had set foot in centuries.
One day he had stumbled upon an entrance into the abandoned bell tower. The bell ropes had rotted away, and the bells themselves had been covered with filth, but despite the tower's dreariness it became Wort's secret retreat. Here there was no one save the pigeons that roosted in the belfry, and- miraculously-they did not seem to fear him. Here there was the power of the bells. The tower had become his only home, as a boy. Now, in the autumn of his thirty-third year, few remembered the hunchback who had disappeared long ago from the corridors of the keep. It was just as well. Wort knew that it was better to be forgotten than feared.
"But today, I must do a dangerous thing-I must go down into the keep, Celia," he said to a pigeon now perched upon his wrist, pecking at the crumbs of bread in his cupped palm. "I must ask Baron Caidin for a new bell. One of old bells has cracked, I fear, and it is causing a dissonance in the minor harmonic."
The bird seemed almost to nod its head, ruffling its feathers in apparent disdain.
"Ah, yes, I see you heard it as well as I. It simply will not do, will it?" The music of the bells had to be perfect to drive the black thoughts away. Wort had to get a new bell, and soon, lest he be overcome by his twisted memories.
Wort tossed the pigeon into the air and watched it flutter up to the rafters. Wrapping himself in his heavy cloak, he lumbered down the cracked steps of a spiral staircase, then locked the tower's oaken door behind him with a heavy brass key. Lurching, he made his way down a twisting corridor. Only a faint gloom filtered its way in through the ivy-choked windows, illuminating thick strands of cobweb and mold-stained walls. Like many parts of the vast keep, these passageways had fallen into disuse over the last hundred years. The number of people who dwelt in Nartok dwindled with each passing year, as if a dark blight was gradually draining the life from the barony. One could almost smell it in the air, pungent and disconcertingly sweet, like the scent of rotting meat. Nartok was dying. However, it had been dying for centuries, and no doubt it would continue to die its slow death for centuries to come.
In his time Wort had explored all of the chambers that lined the corridor, and he found many forgotten treasures-like the enchanted book-within. Most wondrous of them all was the tapestry. He had discovered it hanging on the wall of a musty storeroom. The weaving was moth-eaten and rotting in places, its images obscured by grime. But in the center of the tapestry, shining through the dark tarnish of uncounted years, Wort spotted an angel. Though he could barely make out the garden in which she floated, the angel herself seemed to glow, as if no amount of dust and dirt could dim the inner light of her timeless beauty. Time and again, Wort had gone to the room to gaze upon the angel, for she seemed so peaceful, so gentle. There was so much love in her purple eyes that sometimes he dared to imagine that there might be enough for him.
Wort shook his head. Those were dangerous thoughts. Mo one could love someone as hideous as he. Pushing the image of the angel out of his mind, he hurried on his errand. Making certain the hood of his thick cloak cast his face in shadow, he stepped through an archway into a torchlit corridor. He had reached an inhabited portion of the keep. Cautiously, he made his way from chamber to chamber.
Despite the decay, Nartok Keep was still the heart of one of the richest fiefdoms in all of Darkon. It was particularly famous for its ruby-colored wines, which sold at exorbitant prices in the great city of Aluk to the north. The barony's vast wealth was ostentatiously displayed in every chamber. Chairs of crushed velvet sat next to tables of glossy wood, laden with silver candelabra and crystal vases. Soot- darkened portraits of long-dead nobles stared down from the walls, their hungry, jealous eyes glaring at the descendants who now possessed what had once been theirs.
Finally Wort reached the gilded doors that led into the Grand Hall. The young page given the task of guarding the portal had fallen asleep in his chair. Wort glided with uncanny silence past the sleeping boy. Carefully, he opened one of the gilded doors just enough to slip through, then pushed it shut behind him.
".. and the inquisition continues to uncover traitors in your fiefdom, Baron," a sibilant voice spoke.
Wortquickly ducked into
the pool of shadow behind a grotesque marble statue-a dying stag, its neck pierced by a steel arrow. Baron Caidin was in the midst of a meeting. Wort craned his neck to peer through the stag's antlers. Three men stood in the center of the vast, marbled Grand Hall. Beneath their feet was an intricate mosaic embedded in the surface of the floor. Rendered in bits of colored tile, the mosaic depicted an ancient, forgotten battle in gory detail.
"Indeed, my lord baron," said another voice. "I suspect your lord inquisitor could find traitors under a stone if he attempted the feat." The second speaker was a stout, broad-shouldered man with sharp eyes and iron-gray mustaches. He wore the midnight blue military coat of the baron's knights, but the golden braid coiled about his right shoulder indicated his superior rank. "Lord Inquisitor Sirraun appears to have a talent for finding treachery in the most unlikely places."
"And does that disturb you, Castellan Domeck?" Sirraun turned upon the muscular, gray-haired knight. The lord inquisitor was a gaunt man with small eyes and a mocking, almost lipless mouth. His tight-fitting garb of coal black accentuated the unhealthy color of his sallow visage. "Perhaps you have something you wish to hide. I wonder what secrets you might reveal, good castellan, given the encouragement of a skillfully placed hot iron or a few judicious turns of a thumbscrew."
Domeck gave Sirraun a look of open disgust. "I have found that those most interested in discovering the secrets of others usually have the most to hide themselves." He clenched a fist. "No, the best way to avert betrayal is to defend ourselves with sabers, not with Hes."
Sirraun shot Domeck a poisonous look, but before the castellan could respond, the third man interposed himself between the two.
"As usual, your squabbling grows tedious," he said sourly. He was a tall man of graceful yet imposing bearing, dark haired and uncommonly handsome. His short, carefully trimmed beard was glossy with expensive oils, and his eyes glittered like emeralds above a proud nose. He wore a long coat not unlike the castellan's, but far richer. The garment was fashioned of purple velvet with silver trim, its sleeves gashed to reveal crimson silk underneath.
