Hemlock and the Wizard Tower
Page 32
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Read more about Hemlock’s adventures in “Hemlock and the Dead God’s Legacy” (The Maker’s Fire Book II). Available now!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007ONIDIC
Please read the following excerpt from Book II.
The character of her dream shifted. She was adrift in a sea of stars, floating in the void that separated them. A force was calling out to her and to anyone who would listen. She became conscious of other spirits. Some of them answered the call, some did not.
She became aware that it was a person calling to her, and she felt a compelling affinity with whoever it was.
She acquiesced to the attractive force of the call, and it pulled her with an alarming speed, causing the stars around her to streak as she sped between them.
She reached a world, and then a continent and then a country. Soon she descended into a mountainous area that was rich in plant life. Her consciousness began to merge with the Other that she aided.
She became dimly aware of a wide circle of dancers, their limbs wrenching back and forth almost spasmodically, as if they were trying to evoke something vicious and violent. She saw faces gripped in furious exertion—wide faces with dark skin.
She sensed that she was a part of this dance.
It was a dance of desperation, of anger… of exorcism.
A wide and dark structure loomed between the dancers. It was made of rough stone, which jutted out and recessed inwards in a natural and irregular fashion. But the color of the rock was incongruent with the rest of the surroundings.
The dance took place on a plateau that extended from the side of a vast cliff face. The plateau was reached by a series of treacherous paths that led up from the floor of a long, sinuous canyon. The canyon stretched from horizon to horizon. The climate was temperate: lush foliage and great, broad-leafed trees dominated the perimeter of the plateau. Nothing grew near the dark stone.
Hemlock sensed the thoughts of the Other, as the latter danced.
We should have destroyed this tower long ago. Now something has taken refuge in it and will not come out. It slays our people and threatens our canyon.
Hemlock again sensed the force of the magic of the dance. It was powerful magic, and it was exerting a tremendous energy of expulsion toward whatever was in the tower.
As the dance continued, Hemlock noticed that the Other kept looking at a shadowy recess on one side of the vertical surface of the dark stone.
It appeared to be a doorway.
The next time that Hemlock saw the doorway, a heavy wooden door thrust open from it.
She saw a cloaked figure emerging fitfully, but then the eyes of the Other were drawn away from the spectacle by the path of her violent dance, which had not paused and had not changed in intensity, despite the apparent change in circumstances.
Hemlock realized that she was somehow still able to sense the emergence of the cloaked figure, whose brown hooded garment completely obscured all features from view.
Then the figure pulled back its hood, revealing male features and eyes that shone with a brilliant yellow light—as if they were small suns somehow captured in his head. He wore a bold tricorne hat that barely contained beautiful, curly, blond locks of hair. The cloak opened to reveal blue raiment beneath, in the form of a collared waist cost, with a dark vest, and dark brown knee-length pants, which were met at the knee by soiled, white hose that culminated in heavy leather shoes with prominent gold buckles.
Hemlock had never seen anyone dressed like this, except for actors in her City when they put on dramas set in time of the Imperator. But those costumes were far less elaborate than these clothes. Hemlock was impressed by the man’s stately appearance, even as she beheld him in a state of obvious distress as he was being drawn, inexorably, from the interior of the black stone tower.
The dance continued, and the Other seemed to be more determined than ever to continue, though Hemlock sensed that the dance would likely end in the man’s death.
“You will stop this barbarous magic immediately! This is not a legal assembly! Ignorance of the law is not an excuse!” cried the man in a shrill voice that projected easily over the plateau and the chanting clamor of the dance.
The Other did not respond.
“It is true that I have taken some of your people—a necessary evil, for I partake of efforts that you would not be able to comprehend! It was all done lawfully, I assure you! And I have rid you of that old crone who dwelt here in secret and murderous isolation. That is just compensation for your lost ones!” the man cried again.
The figure was nearing the ring of dancers, and Hemlock sensed that this line represented a peril for him.
“I warn you, if you do not cease this dance and parley with me, I will be forced to defend myself!” the man cried with increased urgency, as if he was aware of the imminent threat.
The Other continued to dance.
Suddenly the man revealed something from under his cloak: something that bathed the entire plateau in a fiery light.
“I’m afraid that, by law, you must be slain in order to stop this,” cried the man, as if speaking directly into the mind of the Other. Hemlock, attached to the Other, heard the threat.
Hemlock experienced a jolt of recognition. The object held by the man was familiar to her.
“What is this?” asked the high voice. Did he sense the magical link between Hemlock and the Other? She doubted that this was possible, yet the impression remained.
In the next instant, the link between her and the Other was broken: shattered into a thousand shards, which painfully reassembled into Hemlock’s consciousness.
She was in her bed in the Wizard Tower.
She grasped the sheets of her bed in balled fists, as she considered the final thing that she had seen before the link had been broken.
The strangely dressed figure had wielded a Wand of the Imperator.