Outside, the landscape that she saw was rendered in dark blues and blacks, below the tower and to the distant hills, which were silhouetted against the moonlit sky. The landscape was dotted with streaks of light and pockets of glowing mist, all of which seemed to move randomly across the valley. Above the hills, more streaks of light were visible, and a number of what appeared to be shooting stars, played across the night sky.
Looking down, Hemlock could see the gabled roofs of adjacent and lower rooms, and far below she could see one of the long, straight entry ramps–which had been raised up to seal the Tower.
As her eyes wandered to the ground directly below the tower, she noted a dull, insubstantial figure moving slowly with a staggering gait.
The Spirits. They are everywhere at night, she noted, having been told this many times, but observing it herself for the first time.
Hemlock had been so captivated by the view outside the window that she only sensed the approach of Taros Ranvok at the last moment.
His hand on her shoulder was not a shock, but was a surprise. She turned, mildly disengaging his touch and looking into his eyes.
She saw a guarded fondness there, which surprised her. Taros Ranvok was an attractively built warrior, a prince and a person of principle. But Hemlock did not feel any attraction to this young man, though she felt that he possessed all of the qualities that should engender such feelings. An image of Falignus emerged unbidden from her subconscious, bringing a thrill of excitement with it.
Taros Ranvok sensed this spark, and seemed to misread it.
He leaned closer as he asked, "Is Safreon truly well?"
Hemlock broke eye contact and took a step back: "Yes, he removed the dressing on the wound and it is all but healed."
If Taros Ranvok noted her disengagement from the more intimate vicinity of his person, his visage did not reveal a reaction. "It is well. My father, Pan Taros, wishes to meet with all of you when the fifteenth sands are exhausted." With that, he pointed to a mechanical device which was mounted above the entrance to the chamber, across the room.
The device consisted of two long pieces of wood intermeshed with gears and pulleys. Along the two pieces of wood, twenty hourglasses were suspended. The sands of some of the hourglasses had already been spent, while others were suspended on their sides, apparently not yet activated by the workings of the machines. Sand was falling in one, apparently the fifteenth.
Hemlock, understanding the function of the device, nodded her agreement: "We will be ready, will you escort us at that time?"
"I will return," noted Taros Ranvok as he bowed and left.
"He appears inflamed by you," observed Gwineval in a raspy voice behind her, which carried a note of humor.
"Was it that obvious?" asked Hemlock, turning to him with a look of playful consternation on her face.
"Rather, yes," he responded, holding some morsel in his scaled hand which he appeared to have just bitten into.
"Did they bring food?" asked Hemlock.
After taking another bite and discarding some bloodied bones into the corner, Gwineval responded: "No, food arrived of its own accord." He noted with a chortle, as he discarded a long wiry rat tail toward the direction of the bones.
Hemlock groaned in disgust, but was a little jealous, since she was hungry herself.
Safreon returned from his bath looking quite vigorous. Hemlock informed him of the impending audience.
A Tanna Varran woman brought some food to them soon after that and Hemlock and Safreon ate enthusiastically, while Gwineval ate a little meat, but little else.
Merit shuffled up to the group and observed their makeshift meal.
"Will I accompany you to the audience?" Merit asked.
Safreon glanced at him fondly as he devoured a large piece of animal meat.
"Yes Merit, I think that would be a good idea. You are a part of this tale and no doubt a source of some wonder among these Tanna Varrans," Safreon replied warmly.
"I will not burden them with my recent inner turmoil," Merit replied after a time, emitting a shrill whistle at the final word which echoed through the chamber, causing many of the Tanna Varrans to look at him.
Safreon seemed surprised by the incident. "Oh, ah, yes Merit, I think that would be wise. It would be difficult to explain the full gravity of your situation to our hosts."
Chapter Fifteen
It was the day after several extremely unusual events had taken place in the Tower. Falignus looked up from the large, semicircular onyx table before him as he sat in the meeting chamber of the Wizard Council. The Council was in session. The apparent insurrection of the wizard Gwineval was under discussion.
Falignus had appointed a new council member to stand in for Gwineval and to represent the Fifth Circle. He glanced at Kraven as he occupied his new seat. The man had a normal humanoid appearance, save for a pair of large bat wings that protruded from his back. He was sturdily built and dark complected; his features were handsome save for a prominent, crooked nose. He was known to be capable of flight and had been a useful ally of Falignus in the role of a spy to monitor Gwineval from within the Fifth Circle. His appointment rendered him useless as a Crimson Order operative from this point forward, but Falignus had promised the man the position should it ever become available. Now that it had happened, Falignus had followed through on that promise.
"Do we know where the magical cage transported them to in the Witch Crags?" Falignus asked.
"We have an idea, but we do not know precisely. We don’t know if Gwineval had time to adjust the controls prior to departing. We do know the location it had last been set for, however: a location close to the Tanna Varran capital town," Colberth responded with an air that matched his role as the bookish leader of the Sixth Circle of magic, the catalogers of spells and potions. His delivery was detached and clinical.
Falignus thought, "Should I go myself and confront them?"
He had been wrestling with the question for many hours, but a cautious voice inside of him continued to reason against that course of action: "You know that Safreon and Hemlock possess a veiled power. What if they use that power, with the aid of Gwineval, to attempt to crush you? You wouldn't have time to mobilize a large escort force for this reconnaissance. It would have to be a smaller escort. It is not worth the risk."
Falignus believed that this was not the time to directly confront Gwineval and the other intruders to the Tower, especially given the threat of the mysterious power that his magic had revealed to him that they possessed. He felt that he had needed to learn more about the nature of that power. He concluded that he would send another wizard to find and speak with Gwineval. If possible, he planned to setup a scrying session in order to speak with Gwineval remotely from the relative safety of the Wizard Tower.
He reasoned that once the threat that Gwineval and his allies represented was clear to him, that he would strike–personally if necessary–with the full force of the Wizard Guild army behind him.
"What do we do then? Do we send out a patrol to search for him? What do we do when we find him?" Falignus asked the assembled council.
"I say that we blanket the area with patrols until we make contact and then we parlay in order to determine Gwineval’s intentions," the wizard Jalis suggested.
Falignus turned to regard the portly wizard, who he regarded as self-centered, unprincipled, ambitious and foolhardy. Falignus registered some surprise at the worthiness of the suggestion, given his opinion of the source.
"Noted. Other opinions?"
"We must not show weakness. The Senate has no doubt heard some version of the incident by now. We must search Gwineval out and bring him back to the Tower for interrogation and … I dare say, punishment," Malvert, the battle hardened leader of the First Circle combat wizards, stated.
"That is rash!" Miara exclaimed. Falignus turned toward the only female member of the council, who he considered an ally of Gwineval. "We must parlay with Gwineval when we find him, as Jalis suggests. We
may not understand his purposes, and I suspect that he reacted in the only manner that he could, under circumstances that we do not understand."
"Perhaps. Anyone else?"
"Declare him a rogue Wizard and enemy of the City. Do not search him out in the Witch Crags. He will likely meet an appropriate fate there at the hands of the Witches or the Tanna Varran wild men. Do not inflame the uneasy truce we have with the Witches by sending a large force to search for Gwineval. When he returns to the City, as he surely will, kill him or abduct him and take him back to the Tower, along with his new friends," Arcos stated, leader of the Fourth circle of Magic. Falignus never liked the illusion magic that the Fourth Circle specialized in, considering it banal and lacking in honor since it invariably was used in deception. Still, Falignus had to concede that the magic had its uses from time to time.
"Kraven?" Falignus demanded.
"I would seek Gwineval out with a limited number of wizards and gauge his intentions. Once ascertained, I would act according to that information," Kraven stated reflectively.
"Well done," Falignus responded, nodding toward Kraven.
"I favor that approach also. As Arcos pointed out, we cannot risk inflaming tensions with the Witches. We are not yet fully prepared to destroy them. But we need to locate Gwineval and learn his intentions. I will send special agents with our normal Oberon harvesting teams. They will seek out Gwineval by searching for magical emanations and also by speaking with the Tanna Varran townsfolk in the area. If this approach is unsuccessful, we will reconsider some of the other suggested approaches. We will give this approach one week to succeed."
"Each of you will personally accompany one of the harvesting teams. We have enough of our new Titan Harvesters ready to protect most of you."
Falignus then gauged the reactions amongst the group. Malvert looked eager. Jalis looked guarded, as usual. Miara looked troubled. Falignus knew that she was probably fully aware that her assigned route would have the least likelihood of actually encountering Gwineval. Arcos looked flushed with pleasure–no doubt because some of his ideas had been adopted as part of the plan. Colberth looked appalled, for Falignus knew that he hated being removed from his studies. Kraven also looked eager, like Malvert, but not in a fawning or cocksure way like the latter Wizard had. Kraven was already exceeding Falignus’ expectations; he was showing that he could be a valuable tool in his new role.
After the council meeting, Falignus retired to his chambers. He considered assuming a magical guise and entering the City to spend some time with one of his female consorts. But even the thought of that physical pleasure held no appeal for him in his current mood.
Falignus was pensive. These recent events had disquieted him. He had not foreseen the emergence of the girl and this freedom fighter from the Warrens. He had concluded that both wielded some hidden power that had resisted his attempts at divination.
He entered his chamber, which was large by the standards of the Tower, but relatively featureless. It was dominated by a large, canopied bed. Like many rooms in the Tower, great wooden bookshelves stood along the walls.
Falignus felt strongly that this girl–no, not a girl–a woman, must be descended from a powerful bloodline. She had only recently become a woman, but Falignus had seen that she was clearly confident in her growing abilities. She had entered the Wizard Tower, after all.
His sense of unease continuing, he approached a heavy oaken door, undid the bolts which secured it and dismissed the magical wards which had locked it.
He then opened it and stepped inside into his inner sanctum, and observed the personal effects which he had placed into the stark stone chamber. A row of moldering skulls sat on a shelf which had been worked into the wall. The sight of a series of animal cages greeted him as well, their various occupants having given the room an earthy odor.
Birds shrieked, monkeys called and jumped, and other animals awoke and stirred in the cages.
Beside the cages, a great alabaster alchemy table stood. Beyond that, a raised bathing basin and a sofa were visible.
A large window had been set into the smooth wall beside a bookcase, and overlooked the City below.
Falignus opened the window, and greedily breathed in the night air as he gazed down at the unordered sprawl of the Warrens below him. He hated the sight of that disorder, yet he valued it just the same, because it motivated him. His vision for the Warrens was one of prosperity, in the mold of the Elite District. He felt that it was only disorganization that fostered such a dichotomy between the classes in the City.
His plans were laid, and had been laid by Zaringer before him. He judged that those plans would come to fruition in his lifetime, if all went well. He also judged that if all went well, the concept of his "lifetime" would be one quite beyond normal human experience.
Still, he was uneasy. His prescient visions had led him to expect a hidden descendant of a powerful bloodline to have emerged, but had not suggested that the figure would be an overt enemy of the Wizard Guild. He also hadn't expected her to be aided by his principal enemy within the Guild.
Falignus felt a familiar feeling then; that he needed to know more.
In order to achieve the visions, Falignus needed to walk a dark path that Zaringer had shown him many years before, even though that path frightened him to his core. He was aware that he walked the path of the dead–or of the undead–in order to realize knowledge attained at the cost of life and soul. It was a great, dark power that Zaringer had taught him, and it seemed to Falignus to have eroded whatever force that connected one to the virtuous part of their being. It was the most simultaneously thrilling and terrible sensation that Falignus had ever known.
Yet the information that he had gained had been extremely valuable in enabling the realization of his ambitions; before him it had been equally valuable to Zaringer, and before Zaringer it had been valuable to a number of wizards who dared to practice the forbidden art. Each one of them had ultimately succumbed to the temptation of the prescient power, and it had eventually rendered them all into something other than human.
Falignus shuddered at the thought.
But Falignus had been identified by Zaringer as a member of a unique bloodline. That made him different, Falignus thought. If anyone could resist the corrupting power of the prescience, Falignus had felt that it had to be him.
He wore a look of grim determination on his face as he moved away from the window and toward the alchemy tools, which were in position on the alabaster table. He then distilled a tincture, and withdrew a monkey from one of the cages.
The creature was abnormally docile, yet Falignus stunned the creature with a blow to the head and then placed it in a bath of the tincture, which hissed and burned around the creature’s body.
He then drew forth a blade, and with a practiced incision, drew the beating heart from the creature. Flinching only for a moment, he placed the still beating organ into his mouth, as blood flowed down his chin and over his garments.
The visions took him. The world became non–corporeal, manifesting in the context of a spiral of dimensions that he was able to perceive and to understand only when under the influence of the dark ritual.
He saw plans within plans and actions and reactions moving along hundreds of dimensions; the multiplicity of every person and space spread out before him like an infinite array of motion. He saw all potential timelines for the City, which were so vast in number that he had to look for patterns in their multitude in order to locate items of interest. Some things were clouded to him, as they always were (for reasons that he did not understand).
Still, he perceived what he sought after. He saw who Hemlock was, who she had become and who she might further become. He then saw Gwineval, and some of his actions and sympathies. He was able to see Safreon fully for the first time, having never noted previously the many subtle dimensions of power that were exercised by this individual. He saw a Griffin in possession of something: something that was hidden from his sight. This visi
on frightened him. The location of the Griffin was vague and hard to pin down. Falignus could see that it had some crucial part to play in the fate of the City, yet he was not able to determine the what, how or when of that part.
He saw a Witch enraged and plotting revenge against the Tanna Varrans. He also sensed that the Tanna Varrans were contemplating war, after dreaming of peace for so many years.
The visions started to fade. He once again perceived the table and the now sizzling and blackened corpse of the monkey. He glanced down at his hand and saw bones surrounded by ghostly flesh. Stricken by terror at the sight, he closed his eyes hard and then opened them again. His hand looked normal again, but was wracked by an excruciating pain. As the pain in his hand lessened, he became conscious of his body, and a powerful ache that throbbed within it.
Falignus felt somewhat relieved because he had accomplished his goal. He now knew where Gwineval and Hemlock were. He also now understood who Safreon was and how he had engaged and befriended Gwineval. He had also learned that the Witches were now distracted with a possible war with the Tanna Varran tribes.
Still, the clouded vision of the Griffin renewed his feeling of unease. It showed him that parts of his plans were still shrouded in uncertainty.
…
The Chamber of the King was sizable, and laid out in an odd, tiered arrangement. There was a middle level, where Hemlock, Safreon, Gwineval and Merit now stood, flanked by many chairs, which were empty. To their upper left was a higher level, the floor of which was sloped and lined with additional seats. To their right was a lower level, which was an open floor. The hall was decorated with ornate carved scrollwork and painted in regal but muted hues of gold and red. The woodwork contained many images of snakelike dragons and men, and the symbol of the open hand seemed to be an overarching theme. Hanging lanterns adorned the ceiling at odd intervals, and wall sconces released a pungent but pleasant smelling incense odor into the chamber. Directly in front of them was the throne of the King of the Tanna Varrans. Taros Ranvok had confirmed that he was the King of all of their towns, of which Tor Varnos was the largest. Seated in the intermediate space, at the front of the chairs on the middle tier, closest to the throne, were two score Tanna Varran elders.
Hemlock And The Wizard Tower (Book 1) Page 21
