‘We cannot go back down,’ Draeder replied, guessing at his comrade’s notion without even bothering to inquire further.
‘I’m not suggesting that we do,’ Felix said. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. Come here. Look out upon the walls.’
Draeder rather reluctantly came to Felix’s side, and peered out from the broken window frame.
‘That ledge is more than wide enough for a foothold,’ Felix said. ‘And the bones above it offer plenty of places to grip.’
Draeder stepped back.
‘What are you saying?’ he asked. ‘That we should climb up?’
Felix answered by sheathing his sword, jumping up on the ledge and straddling the window.
‘Exactly,’ he replied.
‘That’s madness,’ Draeder said.
Felix stepped out fully onto the outer ledge, leaving only his head and his arms inside the tower.
‘It’s not madness. Given our predicament, it is, I believe, the only sensible course.’
The two men climbed for a long while, realizing as they proceeded that the tower was somehow even taller than they had already imagined. Fog obscured the ground beneath them, and above them the parapets remained hidden behind a thick bank of clouds.
Using the lattice-work of bones to scale the wall, they managed to ascend for a few moments without incident. No skeletal warriors troubled them out in the mist, but even high up on that most remote of places, they soon found that they were not alone.
Ghostly voices hissed at them with nearly every foothold, taunting them or cursing the pair in some attempt to distract them. Several times, the phantoms nearly succeeded. Draeder and Felix each slipped on more than one occasion, both grabbing the other whenever a false step made a fast hand necessary.
Spectral faces appeared from the fog, glaring at them with sinister eyes and haranguing them with high-pitched, wraithlike screams.
Finally, with their arms aching and the skin on their hands rubbed bloody and raw, they recognized a change in the wall. Just above them, the bone lattice tapered off. Beyond that there arose a final ring of giant blocks that crowned the tower. The stones were obsidian black, three times the height of a man and utterly smooth.
‘There’s no place to grab,’ Felix said. ‘Nothing to hold.’
Draeder scanned the heights. Though Felix expected a rebuke for setting them on a futile course, none came. Instead, Draeder began to kick at the bones nearest him, breaking several free from the superstructure.
‘What are you doing, robbing us of what little we have to stand on?’ Felix asked.
Draeder did not reply. Instead, he took several of the bones in hand, recited a chant-like invocation and then tossed the bones up into the air. Instead of falling, the bones aligned themselves in a magical row, forming a sort of makeshift ladder suspended in the fog. It stretched all along the un-scalable section of the wall.
Draeder turned back to Felix with a smirk.
‘What was that you were saying?’
‘Lead the way,’ Felix replied.
As they climbed higher, the ghostly minions only grew more numerous. Every step closer to the tower summit seemed to bring more of them streaming down from the clouds, their faces ghastly and skull-like despite their phantom forms.
They swooped all around the two men, weaving and diving on currents of frost-choked wind. They shouted and taunted from afar, then crept closer, whispering obscene curses in their ears.
After a while, one chorus rose up above the rest. The spectres all seemed to join in uttering the same phrase, one after another as they passed by.
‘Draeder…’ the ghostly voices whispered. ‘Draeder von Halkern…’
They repeated the same thing over and over, as if the wizard’s very name were an accusation. Felix heard it, and though he struggled to keep climbing through the pain and the fatigue in his bones, he managed to call out to his companion above.
‘These phantoms… they seem to know you,’ he said. ‘How can that be?’
Draeder tried to ignore it. He pressed onward, shouting down to Felix to do the same. But the voices only grew louder, and more numerous.
Among the myriad phantoms dancing about in the mist, one figure finally veered closer. Its spectral form grew more substantial, drawing in fog and shadow until its features were well-defined. No mere phantom, Felix could see that the hovering ghost had taken the form of an old man.
It swooped down, apart from the cadre of spectral familiars, to pass right by Felix and then past Draeder above him.
‘Betrayer!’ it said, in a raspy, eerie voice
The phantom turned, moving through the sky for another pass. Its eyes were black and its translucent hands tried to clutch in vain at Draeder as it flew along.
‘I gave you shelter. I took you in,’ it continued. ‘You repaid me with treachery… deceit… and murder.’
‘What does that mean, Draeder?’ Felix shouted. ‘What is it saying?’
‘Pay them no mind, Felix,’ Draeder shouted back. ‘The dead who dwell here are jealous of the living, and wish to deprive us of our lives. They will do or say anything to make us like them. Deceivers and liars, all.’
‘But how could they…?’
Draeder pre-empted him, looking up at the bastions rising atop the tower, finally in view, almost near enough to reach.
‘Keep moving, Felix,’ he yelled down. ‘Do not allow them to lead you astray. We’re nearly there. Just keep climbing!’
Felix looked out at the swirling spectral familiars, hovering and cavorting in the haunted mist. He caught sight of one. The ghostly old man stared him in the eye as he paused on the bone ladder. Something about its gaze gave him pause. Though frightful and ghastly, a far greater horror occurred to him as he looked into the phantom’s eyes.
He somehow knew that every word it said was true.
12.
Felix and Draeder both collapsed upon reaching the top of the tower.
Exhausted from the climb, their eyes were red-sore and haunted by the ghostly terrors that had assailed them. They were at first relieved to find the rooftop quite empty, though Felix blanched at the stench. A foul stink pervaded the place with odours of rotting carrion and mouldered, decaying flesh.
For a moment, they merely listened as they huddled, doing their best to catch their breath and recover whatever strength they had left. The tower crest was eerily silent. No banshee screams or ghostly howls could be heard atop it. Everything was still, and deathly cold. Not even a gust of wind disturbed the peculiar, sinister serenity that reigned atop the necromancer’s black tower.
Pillars crafted of bleached human skulls framed the perimeter of the rooftop. Tattered banners hung limp beneath them. The crest was bare in every direction, crowned only by a single altar, elevated at the centre of a crimson star etched into the roof stones. The red pentacle sparkled against the granite, gleaming in the cloud-diffused moonlight.
It was a massive piece of ceremonial statuary, set upon a huge pile of discarded human bones. The ritual dais was itself a single mighty slab, gilded and bejewelled in a ghastly fashion. The face of it was cut to the likeness of a horned skull. On each side there stood familiar skeletal guardians, their bony limbs garbed in gold armour and their gauntlets resting upon massive swords.
Skeletal vultures cast in pure gold flanked the flat-top central platform, their bony wings rising up like serrated daggers on each side of it. Dark, oily smears of blood and muck stained the whole of it with old spatter and thick streaks. Beneath it lay dry pools of maroon and purple that reeked of death.
Draeder was the first to get up. He staggered across the summit, approaching the altar with a kind of reverence Felix had never seen him employ before. Despite that, he quickly began searching all around the platform. He cast aside bones and refuse, digging and reaching all around the altar.
‘It’s not here,’ he muttered. ‘It should be here.’
Felix came up behind him, straining just to walk.
‘You have to explain,’ he said.
Draeder looked around.
‘It should be here,’ he said. ‘Everything I read, everything I learned tells me it should be near the altar.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ Felix replied. ‘And you know it.’
Draeder didn’t seem to hear him, or to care.
‘Those phantoms knew you. They knew about you,’ Felix continued. ‘What did they mean… murder?’
‘I told you, ignore them, it was nothing,’ Draeder said.
He came around the far side of the altar, posing as if he were the necromancer himself, lifting his hands in a mock ritual, guiding himself through a silent rite.
‘What are you up to?’ Felix asked.
Draeder didn’t reply. He keep looking, scanning the back of the altar until his eyes widened. He reached down, grabbed hold of something and pulled it. The slow groan of rusted hinges once again rose up, just as tired and creaky as the tower gate far below. With the sounds, the altar itself began to move, sliding forward to reveal a chamber directly beneath.
Felix came around to see what Draeder had discovered.
‘Of course,’ the wizard said. ‘The necromancer’s lair was beneath the summit. It must be there. It must be.’
Descending yet another winding, cobwebbed staircase, the two men entered a chamber of the macabre. The room beneath the rooftop was a shrine to the study of darkness. It was at once a vast library of foul knowledge and a repository of tools devoted to the most sinister of conjuring.
A round room not unlike the many lower levels of the black tower, this one was crammed full of every grim accoutrement imaginable. Shelves lined the entire room, floor to ceiling. Every bit of space was crammed with texts. Rows upon rows of bound volumes circled the chamber, mismatched and arranged in chaotic fashion. Their spines bore all manner of varied inscriptions, hieroglyphs, runes and twisted elven characters among them. Dozens of racks beside them were packed full of weathered, crumbling scrolls.
Baubles and gemstones affixed atop white skulls rested upon gruesome pedestals draped in chains. Candelabra cobbled together from human bones stood at intervals throughout, holding the remains of old black candles, the cold wax frozen in ancient drippings.
At the centre of it all though, resting upon a bone-carved stand all its own, was the prize they had so long sought. A single book.
Draeder approached it slowly, creeping toward the tome with the lightest of footsteps. When he came close enough, he reached out and scooped up the dusty volume in his arms as a father might cradle a newborn child. Tears welled in his eyes.
‘It is true. It is here,’ he whispered. ‘The Book of Ashur.’
It was a volume unlike any other Felix had ever set eyes upon, or any other in the grim library itself. A grisly monument to unspeakable horrors, the very spine of the tome appeared to be made of human vertebrae, the white bones stitched together with strands of woven gold. The leather cover was blackened from age and centuries of exposure to the foul winds its pages conjured from the depths.
Draeder held the book with the awed reverence of a true believer. When he opened it, leafing through the pages, he inhaled the rotten scent of old papyrus, every inch of its surface scrawled with bright crimson runes.
‘Written in the very blood of the ancient mages themselves,’ he whispered. ‘This will make me the most powerful wizard alive.’
Felix turned at the statement.
‘So it is true,’ he said.
‘What is that?’
‘You have no intention of helping the armies of the Empire. You never did. This was about you, all along.’
Draeder looked up from his precious volume. His eyes were narrowed, and sinister. The grin on his lips was merciless. A terrible feeling crept over Felix in that moment. The last words of Erhard echoed in his head.
‘And what of all the good men we lost on this journey, the sacrifices and the hardships we suffered?’ Felix continued.
Draeder peered back at him with a familiar, condescending gaze.
‘Those men served their purpose. Do not fret over them. As I told you before, they were beneath us, Felix,’ he answered.
‘You were out for yourself all along.’
‘We’re all out for ourselves, Felix,’ Draeder replied. ‘A lesson I’m surprised it took you this long to learn.’
Felix stammered.
‘In any case,’ Draeder continued. ‘That is all in the past now. You should be pleased, my friend. Soon I will take my rightful place as the most powerful wizard of this age, and for your assistance on this journey you will continue to enjoy my favour – as my loyal assistant.’
But Felix refused to let the matter go.
‘All your talk of the nobility of death magic, was that a lie as well?’
‘No, that was quite accurate,’ Draeder replied. ‘The Amethyst Order believes precisely what I told you.’
‘But you do not,’ Felix realized.
‘The true power in death magic is the ability to control it, to move through it. To live beyond its cold touch,’ he continued. ‘I admit, I seek that power for myself, in these lost secrets of Skethris that I have now obtained.’
‘And that was why they threw you out of their order,’ Felix said.
Before Draeder could reply, a third voice answered instead. It was weirdly familiar as its tones reverberated through the chamber.
‘This man was never in the Amethyst Order,’ the strange, ghostly voice declared.
As the words echoed, a figure took shape out of the mist. When the fog came together, Felix recognized the face. It was a tired, old man.
‘The ghost beside the tower,’ he said.
The figure took on a more complete form then, spectral but garbed in the full regalia of an Amethyst adept.
‘You know him, this ghostly wizard,’ Felix said. ‘Tell me how.’
Draeder sneered. He clasped the book and turned toward the stairwell. The voice called out to him nonetheless.
‘You were turned away by the Amethyst Order, adjudged unfit for the study of magic,’ the ghostly figure said, pointing an accusing finger at Draeder.
Felix looked over to Draeder.
‘The erratic casting. The failed spells,’ he said. ‘You were never a true wizard. Erhard saw through it, but not until it was too late. That was what he was trying to warn me about.’
‘They refused to listen to me!’ Draeder protested. ‘My talents were obvious. My natural facility with the winds of magic was greater than any of them. I would have been the greatest of their Order! My gifts frightened them.’
‘But you were not one to fade into the shadows,’ the ghost wizard taunted.
‘I spent years honing my skills, learning from anyone who would teach me,’ Draeder said, now arguing with the ghost.
‘You’re nothing but a hedge wizard,’ Felix replied. ‘That’s why your spells were so inconsistent.’
‘Strong enough to save your life on more than one occasion,’ Draeder rebuked.
‘But weak enough to fail us on many more,’ Felix replied. ‘We all watched out for one another on the trail. Every one of us saved the other’s neck more times than I can count. But that changes nothing. Everything you said, everything you did was a lie. And many good men died because of it.’
‘As I said, they were of little consequence. Those men died so that I might take what I deserve to have,’ Draeder answered.
‘What you deserve?’ the ghostly wizard continued, his voice rising as his spectral face twisted with wrath. ‘You’ve earned nothing. You came to me as a weary traveller, pretending to beg assistance. I took pity upon you, and the moment my guard was down you murdered me. Y
ou stole everything I had, my book, my scythe and even those robes you wear – my very identity!’
Felix stood stunned. Now, when he gazed upon the man who had been his travel companion, the only other survivor of their long ordeal, he had only contempt. He looked at everything again. The age-worn robes. The great scythe. The spell-book.
Draeder remained indignant. He continued on his way, ascending the stairwell back to the tower summit. But Felix followed close behind, clambering to the top of the steps and clutching at Draeder from behind. The imposter wizard turned, anger simmering in his eyes.
‘Ignore that ghostly wretch Felix,’ Draeder said. ‘It matters little now.’
‘But it is all true,’ Felix replied. ‘You lied, you cheated and you murdered your way to this place.’
Draeder clutched the book but looked back to Felix with an expression not of shame, but filled with a strange pride.
‘Indeed,’ he finally said. ‘I did all of those terrible things, and many more, if you wish to know.’
Felix stepped back, his hand reaching for his sword.
‘And do you know what it all means?’ Draeder said. ‘Nothing. It means nothing now. For I have the Book of Ashur, the power long denied to me is finally mine to wield. There is no one who can stand against me now.’
Felix drew his sword, pointing it at the wizard.
‘I can’t let you leave here with that,’ he said.
Draeder sighed, shaking his head.
‘You’re making a mistake, Felix,’ he warned. ‘You and I are very much alike. I saw it in you the moment we met. We’re men of culture and wisdom, we deserve to take what is rightfully ours. We are the men who should rule this land, and this book gives me the power to do so. Now put aside this nonsense and take your place beside me.’
Felix kept his blade raised.
‘I want no part of this.’
‘Step aside, Felix,’ Draeder said. ‘Lower your sword and permit me to pass. I could have struck you down already, if I wished to.’
Felix clenched his teeth and gripped his blade.
‘You’re going to have to,’ he said.
Draeder smirked back at him, lifting his scythe and pointing it at Felix. He began to chant, and his great staff started to glow with violet flame, ready to strike. Felix shifted into a fighting stance, prepared to launch his own attack.
Into the Valley of Death Page 9
