The Silent Tower

by Barbara Hambly

  “Babe,” said Gary patiently, “what could he have stolen from here that he couldn’t have gotten easier from the storage bays? Computer stuff is easier to rip off from there, before it’s been dedicated—safer, too, because if it hasn’t been logged in, nobody would even know it’s gone.”

  This, Joanna knew, was true. She had her own theories about how Gary would know it. In her idle moments she had a habit of thumbing through the mainframe, breaking into files that the management of San Serano confidently assumed were hidden under their secret passwords; and she knew that, as a result of switching over to a new computerized system, the invoices were in a hopeless tangle. It was one of the things that had troubled her from the first about the guard’s glib theory that she’d surprised and been surprised by a thief.

  Her own alternative theories weren’t particularly pleasant ones.

  “I’ll be done here in a few minutes, Joanna,” Gary said after a few moments. “I can walk you out. Maybe we can stop someplace...”

  She shook her head. “Thank you, but that’s okay.” She might be nervous about walking those empty corridors alone; but in her present uneasy mood, she knew Gary would be no improvement on imaginary maniacs. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  He stepped forward and put his hands on her waist in the confident expectation of a kiss, which, after a microsecond’s hesitation for no particular reason other than that she simply didn’t feel like kissing him, she gave him. As usual, he overdid it. “You are coming out to my place this weekend, aren’t you?” he asked. “Everybody from the department will be there.”

  Reason enough to avoid it, she thought and vacillated, “I don’t know, Gary...”

  “I’ve got four new games for the computer, some good beer—even wine if you like that stuff—plus the new jet system in the jacuzzi, and some real nice...” He mimed blowing smoke in an elaborately silly euphemism for smoking pot.

  Joanna sighed. So in addition to the boring middle-management types Gary hung around with, there would be drunk, stoned, boring middle-management types. On the other hand, she never went to parties, but she knew parties were the sort of thing people were supposed to enjoy. “It’s a long drive,” she began.

  “Only ten minutes past here,” he pointed out. “Most of the folks are coming up in the afternoon. We can sit by the pool, catch some rays, turn the speakers up full-blast.... What’s the point of living clear the hell out here if you can’t make a little noise now and then?” He repeated what Joanna had always guessed was the line fed to him by the real estate man who’d sold him the place. Since she knew Gary’s taste in music ran to heavy-metal bands like Havoc and Fallen Angel, the prospect was getting less and less appealing all the time.

  “The new graphics system I’ve got on the games computer is fabulous,” he urged. “Please,” he added, seeing her unmoved even by this. He flashed her a nervous grin that she had never liked and that had increasingly begun to irritate her. “Hey, you’re my sweetheart, remember? The love of my life...” He drew her to him for another kiss. “I just wish we could be together....”

  “Gary.” With sudden firmness that was less determination than simple weariness, she wriggled free of his indecisive embrace. “If you ask me to live with you one more time I really will quit speaking to you. I told you I don’t know... ”

  “But why not, babe?” he asked, reproach in his big brown eyes and a suspicion of a whine creeping into his voice. “It isn’t like your apartment is great or anything. You’d be closer to work here and not have to drive all that way; and you’d save on rent money. You know I’ll always love you, babe...” She suspected he’d heard that line on TV. “Come Saturday, anyhow—see the place now that I’ve got the new computer stuff in. Are you doing anything else on Saturday?”

  She wasn’t, but hemmed, not sure how she should be reacting. “I don’t know, Gary. I may be going out with some friends...”

  “Invite ’em along,” he offered. “Who are they? Anyone from here?”

  Not feeling up to more flights of invention, Joanna sighed, “All right, I’ll be there.” His brown eyes warmed and his smile returned full-wattage.

  “That’s great, babe,” he beamed. “Hey, are you doing anything else right now? I’ll be done with this program in about fifteen minutes....”

  Joanna hesitated for a moment, wondering if she’d indulged in enough selfish behavior and ought to keep him company, even though it would probably involve dinner afterward... and dinner at some coffee shop, at that. For all the money he made, Gary didn’t believe in spending more than he had to on anyone but himself. But there was no guaranteeing how long any program would take to run—she was used to playing “Another five minutes” for up to an hour and a half at a time. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m going to go home, take a very long bath, and go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Ignoring his protesting, “Aw, babe...” she hiked her monstrous purse up over her shoulder and reciprocated his rather wet and amorous farewell kiss, more out of a sense of duty than enjoyment. Duty, she reflected later, walking down the dim hallway toward the bright rectangle of the main corridor ahead, not so much to Gary as to all those years of being pointed at as the School Nerd. She was conscious, as she walked, of a feeling of relief and wondered how she could ever have been in love with Gary Fairchild.

  If it had been love, she thought, and not just the sexual glitter that surrounds the passage from virgin to nonvirgin. He had been, almost literally, the first man who had ever taken notice of her in her shy and bookish life. When she had first come to work at San Serano two years ago, Gary had asked her out, first to lunch and later to dinner, and had taken her home one night to the high tech Westwood apartment he’d been staying in that year.

  He had always wanted her to live with him. Lately, he had begun to pester her about it, Joanna suspected, because he was thirty-four and reaching the age when he felt he ought to be living with somebody. He had bought the house in the expectation of it—or anyway, that was what he’d told her. But then, Gary was seldom completely honest, particularly if he thought he could drum up pity.

  She sighed again, turning along the bright expanse of corridor. Twice in the last week, she had been plagued by the same queer, terrible feelings of hopeless depression that had come upon her on the night of the assault; at those times, she had found herself considering marriage to Gary, not because she loved him or even cared very much about him, but because she felt hopeless about her future to the extent that she did not much care what she did. Those depressions frightened her, chiefly because some small, sane part of herself realized that, in the grip of one, she had no real concern whether she lived or died—that if one came upon her while driving down the freeway, she would literally not bother to get out of the way of the other cars. The thought of living with Gary, she knew, was a little like that.

  The rest of the time, she wondered what her life would be like now if she had moved in with him when first he had asked.

  Well, for starters, she thought, you wouldn’t be working here. And the reason you wouldn’t be working here is because pool, jacuzzi, video room, an IBM-AT with 60 megabytes and $200,000 house in the hills notwithstanding, Gary would have driven you to leave him within two months by his assumption that he could interrupt whatever you were doing to keep him company, and you’d have quit your job and moved to another town.

  Or else, she thought with a shiver, you’d be so chicken of change you’d still be with him.

  And abruptly, the corridor lights went out.

  Joanna stopped and swung around, feeling that the blood in her veins had turned to water. In brownish gloom, the corridor stretched empty behind her. Far back at the rear of the building, she could see the yellow glow of crossing hallway lights—ahead of her, the corridor stretched for another twenty yards or so, to the dim illumination around the corner that led toward the hall to the main lobby. Just this section, she thought. Just a fuse...

  Terror breathed over her, like the wind
from a half-open door that looked into the pits of eternity, unreasonable, shocking; she had to fight it to keep from breaking into a panic run. It’s just the lights going out, she told herself, it’s stupid to be afraid....

  Down some hallway to her left, she heard the stealthy slip of footfalls.

  Gary, she thought, hoping against hope, but knew that Gary never walked with that effort at silence. She hastened forward, her heart pounding, her hand sliding down to the handle of the hammer again, knowing it would do her no good. There was something else here, something past ordinary fear, a terrible knowledge that hummed over her screaming nerves.

  Do I run? she wondered. Or is this just what it’s like to go insane? Were the depressions just a foreshadowing?

  But now the end of the corridor lay in darkness. The next section of cross-corridor must have gone out as well, she thought; but even as the idea went through her mind, she knew that no fuse failure could have produced a darkness like that. There was nothing beyond that darkness. She could not see the crossing wall with its bland photos of San Serano, only a shadow that seemed to have no end, as if she were looking into a starless night sky through a tube. Her reason told her it was a trick of the shadows, but her whole soul cried out against taking a further step toward that darkness.

  Don’t be silly, she told herself, sweat suddenly chilling her throat and clammy on her temples. There’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark.

  But there was. Was that movement, far off—farther off that could possibly be real, at the end of that corridor of darkness that could not actually exist? The glance of shadow along the fold of a robe, like a stirring of wind in the darkness—a breath of a smell she could not identify, but which shot her with an adrenaline injection of unthinking horror.

  She turned right down a corridor, trying to remember how the other halls joined up to the one that would get her to the main lobby.... This is silly, she told herself, hastening her steps as much as she could while trying to keep them soundless. Why am I having a nightmare when I don’t remember falling asleep?

  The corridor plunged on, dim and uncrossed, to the far reaches of the test bays.

  Without even questioning what she did or why, she opened the only door on that whole unbroken length, slipped inside and shut it behind her. It was a janitor’s closet, smelling of ammonia and mildewing mopheads; as she shut herself in, the diffuse glow from the one-sixth-power lamps in the hall glanced briefly off a black, chitinous shape that retreated with offended haste beneath the baseboard. Even her old hysterical terror of roaches didn’t trouble her now. She pulled the door shut and held fast to the inner knob in the darkness.

  She could hear something in the hall.

  It was hard to analyze, though she’d gotten good at identifying the minutest sounds from her months of living alone. Waking at night, she could track her way through her apartment with her ears—that was the refrigerator, that was the television antenna wire moving across the roof in the wind.

  That soft, slurring sound outside now was like a stealthy footstep, but subtly different from those she knew. Fabric, she thought, remembering the heavy tangle of robe as she’d kicked at her assailant last week.... In the silence she wondered about the ears listening out there, and if they could hear the wild hammering of her heart.

  Evil surrounded her, breathing and waiting, and she had backed herself into this corner in the stupid hope that it would pass. She heard the padding tread—walk, walk, halt. Walk, halt.

  Does it know that I’m here?

  There was a louvered grille in the lower part of the door to let in air and a feeble bit of light. Something blocked the louvers, some shadow. Under her hands, the doorknob moved testingly.

  Her teeth and hands shut so tightly her bones ached. Terror jammed like a knot of unscreamed sounds in her throat, and she thought she could smell through the grille the faint, familiar odor of her earlier terror; the pungency of woodsmoke-permeated wool and the lingering cold scent or feeling that she could not define. The knob moved again, and she held tight to it, willing whatever was outside to think it was locked. Later she would find the gray plaid of her shirt soaked with sweat, but she had no consciousness of it now, nor of anything but a hideous dread. She knew if she had any courage at all, she should fling open the door, face what was outside, and see the intruder. What, after all, could he do to her in a public place like San Serano with help within easy call? But her resolve drained from her and a small, sane voice at the back of her mind whispered to her, If you do that you will die.

  She wondered how she knew that, or if it was a common delusion. But her knowledge of it was so strong that she knew that nothing could have induced her willingly to open that door.

  Filtered yellow light returned to the louvers. Whatever had blotted them was gone.

  It is still in the hall, she thought—waiting for me. Waiting for me to think it’s safe, to put my head out and look.

  What?

  What?

  How long she stood in the smelly darkness she didn’t know. Her legs began to shake, and dizziness swept over her. There’s a fifty-foot walk down this hall, around the corner to the next big corridor, and up along that to the lobby, she thought. Her knees were trembling so badly she wondered if she’d be able to run.

  Of course you won’t run, the cool part of her mind said. You’ve already made your reputation with the Man Who Wasn’t There—not a fingerprint in sight and nothing but a few bruises, which could have come from anywhere to prove there ever was such an intruder. They never found the place where he got in. What are you going to tell them if you go pelting into the lobby full-tilt and screaming?

  Yesterday upon the stair

  I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today.

  I wish that man would stay away...

  It took all the courage she had to open the door. The corridor was dim, innocuous, and totally empty. A few yards away the main hall crossed it, brightly lit as always and ordinary as only an aerospace building can be.

  She managed to walk to the lobby. But she did it very swiftly and drove down the hill toward Van Nuys at breakneck speed through the darkness, to stare uncomprehendingly at the television set until it was dawn and she finally dared to turn out the bedroom lights.

  Chapter V

  STONNE CARIS REMAINED among the sasenna at the

  House of the Mages for nearly a week. He trained with them, morning and afternoon, and enjoyed the chance to hone his skills with a new master’s teaching and fresh opponents. One summer evening, all of the sasenna of the town, whether of the Mages, the Church, or the few nobles who kept permanent seats in the district and were wealthy enough to retain their own troops, went on a training hunt in the marshes. Caris had drawn to run with the wolves and dodged in and out among the boggy pools, accounting for four of his pursuers from ambush before Le struck him down from behind. They all returned to the city bruised, battered, and plastered with mud, to celebrate with much beer their joint funeral.

  In that week he had a casual affair with a tavern girl, one of the few who did not open wide, kitten eyes at him and breathe, “You serve the mages? Is it true that...” and produce some fantastic piece of sexual practice rumor ascribed to wizards. It was short-lived, though he was fond of her; they quarreled during one of those strange, aching episodes of depression, when his magic deserted him, quarreled stupidly, as if they could not help it. Coming down from her rooms, he heard her crying behind her shut door; but in the strange colorlessness of the world, he saw no reason to go back to comfort her. Afterward, ashamed of the senselessly cruel way he had acted toward her, he felt it was too late.

  His grandfather he rarely saw. He knew the Archmage was frequently at the episcopal palace, far grander than the one attached to the St. Cyr fortress in Angelshand, for the Bishop of Kymil was the chief prelate of the Empire. At other times he knew the old man was simply abroad in the countryside, tracing the stories of strange happenings and abominations, which seemed to
haunt the surrounding villages like restless ghosts. One night by the fire in the small sasenna barracks of the House, Le spoke of things seen, heard, or rumored seen and heard—flopping white shapes glimpsed between the birches of the woods by a home-going farmer or the herd of sheep found slaughtered with marks upon them no dog could have made or the three people who went mad in the bright sunlight of an open field near Poncross.

  “Could that be connected with Suraklin’s Citadel?” Caris asked her the next morning, while they wandered off-duty under the vast brick arches of the town’s grimy central market.

  Around them a hundred stalls sent up a conflicting cacophony of smell and noise, the heavy scents of violets and roses vying with the half-spoiled meat and cheese of the vianders and the overwhelming stink of fish. Chocolate candy from Angelshand, fine cottons from the mills of Felleringham and Kymil itself, daggers, shoebuckles, cheap tin or porcelain pots of cosmetics, something advertised as Electrical Hair Cream, clocks the size of a child’s hand, silk and delicately fragranced tea brought on caravans and ships at huge cost from distant Saarieque—anything could be had in that huge and gloomy emporium. They had bought rolls hot from the baker with primrose-yellow summer butter dripping from them and ate them as they roved among the stalls.

  Le shrugged and took another bite of her roll. “Not that I ever heard,” she said. With her short-cropped black hair and broken nose, she looked like a skinny teenage boy in her black jacket, trousers, and deadly, curving sword. “The fortress was razed by the wizards and the Emperor’s Heir. All that’s left are a few crumbled walls and a hole in the earth, far out in the hills.”

  “Will you ride out there with me?”

  The lieutenant hesitated, as everyone, Caris had noticed, hesitated when it came to mention of the Dark Mage or anything he had touched. Then she nodded. “As long as we’re back by four.” They had duty that night, and Le, Caris knew, had a girlfriend of her own.

  Once it passed the feet of the Silent Tower, the road to Suraklin’s Citadel was lined once more with the standing-stones so hateful to the memories of those who dwelled in Kymil; it lacked even the pale traces of occasional commerce. Once or twice Caris, simply to test his own skills, tried to find signs that his grandfather had passed that way—as he knew that at some time in the last few days he had—but saw nothing. It took a powerful sasennan indeed to track a wizard. The road itself, overgrown to little more than a notch running through the round-backed green hills that crowded so close on all sides, ran perfectly straight, scaling the flanks of hills it could easily have gone around, or, on one occasion, climbing to the crest of a green tor from which Caris could see all the rolling, silent land beneath and the faint arrow of the road pointing inexorably away to vanish into the green wastes of the Sykerst, the empty lands to the east.