The Darkest Tower (Unwithering Realm Book 2)

by John C. Wright

  A black ball of darkness appeared in the dead center of the gold-rimmed gap, and it swelled up and filled the hole, but no sudden rush of hurricane winds occurred. I heard a high-pitched whistling like the noise a teakettle makes, but that was all.

  When the orb of darkness shrank and vanished, I saw there was something new in the chamber above me: a golden chair sitting on my roof, and a man on it, peering down through his slippers at me through the hole.

  (In theory, any object ‘Moebius-coiled’ into my continuum should have materialized directly over my head, in the middle of the black sphere. How they managed to land the old man in his gold chair off to one side was a mystery to me. Maybe topspin?)

  There was an old man hidden in black robes seated on a golden throne atop the ceiling above my cell, peering down at me, the way a Collie dog might peer down a well into which Timmy the farmer’s son had fallen.

  He wore a metal cylinder on his head, like a fez made of gold. I suppose it was a crown, but to me it looked like a yellow coffee pot.

  Beneath him was a chair of state made of black ebony and bright gold. The armrests were winged bulls with the heads of bearded kings. Spears of black and gold rose to either side of him, and held a canopy over his head, and the canopy was woven with the signs of the zodiac. I recognized those spears as the snake-like Moebius coil machines, twins to the one that had flown in through the Professor’s handmade model so long ago, during the life I lived before my life in the cage. It seemed as long ago to me as the world before the Ice Age. A film of twilight shimmered from them.

  The man himself was ancient. I could tell from the way he sat and held himself, even though every part of him was gloved or mantled or robed in darkest black. His face was hidden beneath a veil, so only a narrow band showing his eyes was visible. I wondered if there was breathing gear of some sort under the veil.

  “No,” I said, before he could speak.

  His eyes were the saddest, weariest eyes I have ever seen in a human being.

  Looking at those eyes, I felt a strange sensation in my stomach, as if I had swallowed a bucket of earthworms.

  “Whatever you mean to ask,” I said, “The answer is no.”

  He spoke. Duhumnamar shatar shutittu… As before, I understood the language without understanding how I understood. “The Dark Tower tells and foretells. Have you heard what the Dark Tower tells you, Ilya of the Host of the Undying?”

  His voice was thin and quivering, and yet possessed of a stern authority such as I had never heard before. Many, many people try to speak in voices that sound like they have no doubt: presidents, public speakers, officers. He actually had it. It almost did not sound human. Human beings always have some little droplet of doubt somewhere in their veins. Not him.

  And his voice was even more hopeless than his eyes. It was painful to hear.

  It made me sad that I felt sad for this guy, when all I wanted to do was kill him, and the only weapon I had with me was an icicle I had managed to grow overnight from my brand new water supply, and five date pits. The icicle was eight inches long and pretty sharp.

  Instead of answering, I threw one of the date pits at him. It plinked against the fabric of the knee of his black robe. His eyes did not look surprised, merely weary. Infinitely weary.

  He waited for me to answer.

  I threw the other date pits at him. I managed to hit his hat with a particularly good throw, but did not knock it askew. If only I had had a sling like David in the Bible, I could have put a pit through his skull and killed him. As it was, he did not even seem annoyed.

  Then I did not have anything but the icicle. It was resting on the wood near my foot. I did not want to pick it up in my hands until I was ready to use it, because I did not want it to melt.

  He had a device like a pocket watch, a golden disc of concentric dials, just like the one I had seen in the hands of Lord Ersu. He looked at it gravely.

  I took a deep breath. He was timing me. He was waiting for the hour and minute when I would decide to speak.

  2. The Son of Nimrod

  I said angrily, “I know what you are trying to tell me by keeping me here, letting me jump out, watching me fall and break and grow back and do it again. You are pretending you can predict my every action. You can predict where the wind will blow me when I fall out of the tower.”

  He did not bother to answer, but his eyes looked tired, the weariness of a man with a particularly stupid trained bear, who cannot learn a simple trick.

  I was thinking that this was not the kind of man who lets some prisoner in a cage shout defiance at him. Usually pompous kings and emperors would have a man who did that fed to the sacred alligators or something. But he had come alone. Had he predicted that I would throw pits at him, and he did not want his people to see? Without witnesses, he could decide whether to punish or ignore my effrontery. Had there been anyone there to see, his dignity would have demanded retaliation.

  Slowly, I said, “You usually have a huge retinue, don’t you? Are you some sort of king?”

  He said, “More. Far more. Mine is the power that upholds kings and dashes them down again, of this aeon and thirty others, and three more beside.”

  The word I am translating as ‘aeon’ was daru. It also meant an era, an eternity. He was not saying he ruled for thirty-three periods of history reaching into the past. He was saying he ruled thirty-three parallels of history; thirty-three universes. Thirty-four, counting this one.

  “In the Court of the Stars I am named Enmeduranki Nimrod Nipur Shitimgal Duhumunamaru, Son of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, Architect of the Tower of Darkness Absolute.

  “In the Court of the Crown Above All Crowns, where the Great King over All Kings is enthroned, before the siege of the Warrior-Prince Who Binds Heaven to Earth, I am also called Beleliu Rab-Samavasipur Rab-Kassapur, Highest Lord Arch-Astrologer and Arch-Necromancer. Mine art is also knowing of hydromancy, hepatoscopy, and divination by the cedar rod, as well as many more taught to me by the stars. I am the Lord of All Magicians. The tablets of the future are open to mine eye. So—what need have I of pretense?”

  Enmeduranki waited a while for that to sink in.

  I said nothing.

  He nodded toward the open hole underfoot. “The way is clear. Nothing impedes. Flee from my power. You shall not escape, though you pray for escape, and you shall not die, though you pray for death.”

  Again he waited.

  3. A Weary Little Dark Lord

  I said, “So you are the Dark Lord, eh? I thought you’d be taller. Chief magician? Can you pull a rabbit out of your trashcan-shaped hat? No? Well, Enema Durante Nimrod-nipple Shat-I’m-gunna Doom-Mammy-Moo or whatever your stupid name is, I am not impressed. Whatever your question is, my answer is still no. Whatever you want from me, the mere fact that you want it gives me the power to deny it to you. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care what it costs.”

  Enmeduranki was watching me carefully. Those sad, dark eyes over his face-veil were so deep, so wise, and so filled with a certain type of monstrous certainty that struck me as so wrong, so inhuman. I wish I could point to exactly what it was about this guy that seemed so strange, so unearthly.

  Have you ever been in a line in a grocery store or something, and realized that the guy who is talking too much and too loud and too happy is not actually drunk, but is schizophrenic, but maybe he is taking drugs to control it? There is nothing you can put your finger on, but his eyes don’t quite point at you when he’s talking as the eyes of normal people do. The things he says don’t sound exactly like they fit in the situation you are in. And maybe he is saying the same thing he just said a moment ago, as if he is talking to you, but also hearing other voices in his head. Everything just slightly off. The way Enmeduranki talked was like that.

  Normal people kind of draw away from guys like that, and look uncomfortable. If you ask them, they might say that they are not sure what the guy will do, maybe he’ll get violent. But if you read crime statistics, maybe you are
actually in more real danger from sane people. So it is not the danger that creeps people out. It is something else. Something uncanny. An aura of madness.

  Even with his face hidden, I could see Enmeduranki had it.

  Enmeduranki said, “There are two exits from this, the Chamber of Two Exits. The one that is open you have used twenty-one times: The lower. It is for those who serve the Dark Tower unwillingly. It leads nowhere but to return here. Ah, but there is also the upper exit. It is for those who serve the Dark Tower willingly. Speak. Bow and worship the stars, and take upon yourself the name I shall bestow, and I shall make that name great among men. There is much one of the Host of the Undying can do which other men cannot. Your fate is to smite our enemies, one after another!

  “Then, as has been foretold of old, all aeons, yea, all worlds shall be ours, and all the peoples of time made one.”

  He made a gesture, and the spikes came out of the walls, extended to full length, but only one from each tier in a spiral pattern.

  It formed a ladder reaching up to the hole. He was offering me the way out.

  He said, “Fear not. The abarbaltu is the living metal of which the Dark Tower is forged. At my word, it will bear your weight.”

  4. The Second Exit Opens

  I said, “You are out of your [expletive deleted] mind! Is that your problem?”

  I actually used a number of expletives there. Technically, there is nothing in the Bible that says we may not take the act of copulation or excretion in vain, it is only the name of Our Lord we may not abuse.)

  Swearing like a sailor did not faze him. It provoked no anger, no nothing. He looked bored to tears.

  I could not understand his attitude. I thought tormentors were supposed to be sadistic, and sorcerers, and evil kings were supposed to be proud and thin-skinned. He did not look like he enjoyed tempting, gloating, and toying with his starving prisoners.

  He looked more like he was just going through the motions, waiting to get it over with.

  I stopped shouting at him and drew a deep breath. I tried to center myself zazen-style, even though there was no blade in my hand.

  Now I spoke in a calm, cool voice.

  “I will not serve your proud Tower.” I said calmly.

  His voice was even more calm and more cool. “All serve. Willingly or unwillingly you will serve: it does not matter. Nothing men do matters. Fate is fated.”

  “That is a goddam lie. This tower of yours is built on lies. I will knock it down some day.”

  “You speak words without sense. Not even an archangel could topple this Tower. We would see and foresee the day. Our horoscopic arts say that such a day will never come to pass. The stars know and foreknow.”

  “And I say your horoscopic arts can bite me. Your stars will be pretty surprised.”

  But I did not have that utter inhuman certainty in my voice. There was in me somewhere a drop of doubt; and I hated it, but it was there.

  He made a little steeple of his fingers and leaned forward on his throne. “Any man who truly believed that we have no power to see the future would have lied when asked to bow. He would have pretended to swear, and would have climbed the ladder to me, and taken me by the throat while still praising me and promising me loyal service. And then he would have pitched me down through that egress you have so often used.”

  I said nothing.

  “You did not do so,” he said.

  I still said nothing. I did not trust myself to speak. He was freaking me out.

  “There is a reason you did not do so,” he said in that slow, patient, utterly bored and utterly certain voice of his, the voice of madness. “You see clearly in your mind’s eye the image of what would happen if you imagined in your heart to swear falsely. You know that I, knowing and foreknowing all your deeds, would allow you to ascend half the way up, and then I would ask the living metal of which the living tower is grown to retract, casting you down the middle axis of the cell and once more out the airy oubliette.”

  I said, “You are reading my mind.” I did not like the tremble in my voice.

  “Of course not. I am reading your stars. Do not bother to open your mouth to call me again a liar. I am the most honest of all men under heaven. Never have I need of lies, never do I utter them.”

  5. Determinism and Determination

  I felt so weary then that all I could do was sit down. The spikes he had extended were as long as spears, and were projected horizontally from the wall, and I used the bottom few of them as an impromptu chair, resting my naked butt on one, my naked back against another.

  “You cannot predict the future,” I said. “Men have free will.”

  “You say men have free will, and I say the sun rises, and the moon waxes and wanes, and the stars and wandering stars rise and set. I can name the hour and the minute of their rising and setting. The acts of men are not different from these. All things are controlled by their nature.”

  “But I decide my own actions!”

  “But if you spoke with the planetary intelligence guiding the sun around the fixed center of the cosmos, would he not say the same? The angel in the sun believes he guides his own actions, as does each angel in his wandering star. It is his nature to believe this. Like all else, his belief is fated.”

  The magic spell or whatever it was that allowed me to understand his language did not necessarily mean I understood his idea of the world or how it worked. It took me a moment to realize that these people might not have ever had a Copernicus, a Galileo, a Kepler.

  Before Copernicus, the ancients held that the sun circled the Earth, whose core was at the center of all the gravity of the cosmos; this cosmos consisted of a sphere of the fixed stars and lesser spheres holding planets riding epicycles, the whole thing moved in perfect circles by spirits and spooks.

  I said, “You would not be here talking to me if that were true! All you would do is look up on your star-charts to see what I would say…”

  The words died in my mouth. He knew exactly what I was going to say. That is why he looked so bored. This was a re-run to him.

  I said, “I’ll make you a deal. You tell me something I am going to say, and I will say the opposite. Are your stars going to suddenly jump down out of the sky into my brain and force me to open my mouth and speak your words, and not mine?”

  There was bitter amusement in his voice. “The apprentices of the noble families begin the training at seven years of age. The instruction in Paradoxes, Strictures Against Judgment, and Layered Fates on its first day begins with such exercises.”

  He was telling me my idea was something a seven-year-old would think of.

  “So what happens if they try?” I persisted.

  “To defy fate riles fate.”

  “What exactly happens?”

  “Fates better avoided eventuate. We have a story in our aeon of a man who is known to be fated to slay his father and take his mother as wife. To escape fate, the parents command the child to be exposed, but he is found and raised by a shepherd and his wife. Growing to manhood, and consulting the stars, he learns of his fate of incest and parricide, and so flees from the humble rustics he falsely thinks his parents. The stars direct his wandering feet to the ford of a river, where a warlord in a chariot disputes with him who shall cross first, and in anger the fate-haunted wanderer slays the warlord. The stars direct his feet next to a city whose king has recently vanished, slain by none know whom, and to quell the civic discord, it is their custom to crown the first stranger found among them, and to give him the dead king’s widow as bride. Curses and pollutions befall the city, and the wanderer who became king discovers the murder is his, the parricide, and the incest, for the man in the chariot at the ford was his sire. Riddle me this: each footfall of this wandering man was decided and selected and chosen by him just as you boast you choose your words and deeds, was it not?”

  “We have this story on my world. It’s a myth. It’s called Oedipus Rex.”

  “Then you know that fate wi
ll sometimes make it fated that men should struggle against fate. But fate cannot make it fated that fate will be defied, for then it would not be fate.”

  I blinked at that sentence, trying to unravel it. It is even more Doctor Seussian in the original tongue.

  Then I shrugged. “Whatheheckever, Creepy Old Guy. That does not explain why you go through the motions of questioning me, when you know my answer will always be ‘no’. If you really knew, you wouldn’t ask.”

  He sadly sighed a sad sigh. “I came to speak to you because the stars direct my words and deeds just as they do yours. You ask your foolish question because it is inscribed that you must ask: you are an automaton. I am an automaton. All men are automata. All men are puppets of the stars.”

  “But you could do the opposite of whatever the horoscope said. You could let me out of this cage. I have done nothing to you or your people. I don’t even know you. You have no reason to keep me here and no right to do it. It’s not fair.”

  His eyes looked so very tired. “I read in your stars that you would say those words, and I did not understand them then, and do not understand them now. What is right? What is reason? What is this fair of which you speak? You are within the cage because your birth and your stars destine you to be there. I am without the cage because my birth and my stars destine me to be here. There is no right and wrong, no reason and no unreason. These are the illusions of men who know nothing of the star lore.”

  “You are [more expletives] insane, aren’t you?”

  He uttered the tiniest laugh, and the most cheerless. “Of course I am. All who study the star lore deeply find their humanity departs from them, one little grisly bit at a time. Piece by piece, the stars eat our souls as we discover the unearthly truth of things, that we have no will, no freedom. All High Astrologers succumb soon or late to the star-madness, and must be thrown to death from a high window by their servants when the time is decreed. When my hour is come–” (his eyes were pulled as if against his will to his golden pocketwatchy device as if the date and time were also inscribed there for him to see) “–my slaves will defenestrate me—for we who serve the Dark Tower, there is no other method of execution. But I can keep my soullessness hidden by reading in my horoscope, which says how I would speak if I were sane, and carefully reciting the words, like an untalented player in a wandering street-play.”