Hemlock And The Wizard Tower (Book 1) (3 page)

But then it happened. The Gargoyles slowed and then turned around, in a shuffling gait, back toward the Portcullis. They embraced it, their great arms outstretched grotesquely; and as they did so, their forms reverted to smooth, unmoving stone.

And then she felt something else. She was totally alone again with the melancholy of the Portcullis. The Gargoyles were just regular stone once more, as she sensed their magical spirits had been seized in some way by the seductive malice of those glistening iron bars.

Risking the icy touch of the Portcullis one final time, she crept through one of the openings that had been made by the Gargoyles, and approached the heavy wooden doors of the Tower itself. As she stepped beyond the Portcullis, it felt like stepping out of a bitterly cold night into a warm homestead.
W
ith a feeling of relief,
she realized
the Portcullis’ magic did not affect the Tower side of the hallway.

Recklessly, she touched the double doors, and she did not detect any magic. She surveyed what appeared to be some conventional locks
,
which would take little time for her to pick.

Nothing stirred within the Wizard Tower, even after the heavy footfalls of the Gargoyles had resonated over the surrounding moat during the recent encounter.

But at that moment, unbeknownst to her, a robed figure was moving about the outside of the Tower on
a
seventh floor balcony. It lingered above the drawbridge for a time, looked down, and then retired within the mysterious confines of the Tower.

She
soon
stood in an ornate entrance hall
,
which extended upward five stories, and was finished with elegant mahogany walls and great, multi–story tapered windows of opaque glass bordered with pale marble. Twin carpeted staircases crisscrossed the space and wound upward, providing access to the four visible floors above.

The beautiful woodwork of the hall felt oppressive, as if she
’
d entered into the belly of some ancient sailing ship, preserved in funereal majesty, resting deep on the floor of an ancient sea. 

She quickly gathered her wits,
realizing
that staring at her surroundings was a good way for her to end up being discovered and captured.

Hemlock’s goal was to ascend to the seventh floor of the Tower. She figured whatever force was siphoning magical energy from the Warrens district would most likely be situated there for maximum effect. And she had noticed (as had many in the City)
,
that strange lights and dweomers were seen to dance above the Wizard Tower in recent weeks. 

Don’t the wizards realize the lights look a little suspicious and that people notice these things?
Are
the wizards so detached from reality they
don
’t consider what people observe?

The stairs rose before her, the warmth of their mahogany railings enhancing their welcoming expanse, which Hemlock perceived being in stark opposition to the danger she knew would surely await her if she dared to take them.
S
ubtlety would be required for success—she couldn’t simply climb up those stairs and expect a warm reception from the wizards. She hoped alternative means to ascend might exist. 

S
he had to be cautious
,
just in case the wizards had been crafty enough to trap the interior of the Tower, despite her hunches they might not do so. She hadn’t survived as long as she had in the streets of the Warrens by being naïve.

T
he entry hall contained two large wooden doors, located slightly ahead of her, and offset to her left and right. Also, hidden somewhat in shadow under the balcony of the second floor above was a smaller door, dimly lit by flickering lamps on either side, and showing no visible doorknob or locking mechanism. 

Service entrance.

With a final, almost feral glance to the stories above, she silently darted across the floor
,
and with a graceful turn
,
halted, back to the wall, beside
this smaller
door. 

T
he wall at her back pulsed in an abnormal rhythm. This wasn
’
t something she had expected or could react to instinctively. She considered her course of action, conscious that precious time was elapsing and every moment spent in the open hall was a risk to her.

After feeling them for a time, Hemlock noted a pattern to the rhythms, and a distinct but faint hiss that sounded at a regular interval in the complex pattern. She wondered whether the source of the vibration was some sort of automata. Though automata were often not threatening, she weighed the risk of the likelihood of a trap or some other dark outcome waiting for her, should she pass through the small door.

Voices
, she thought, as her ears registered new sounds from above. 

Footsteps on the stairs above. Three voices: two elderly and reflective; one hissing, forceful. Third or Fourth floor
,
probably. Descending. No time. Choose. Or
d
ie.

She moved sideways, catlike, to stand in front of the small door, straddling its width and feeling methodically along its surface. The echoing sounds of footsteps and voices above on the stairs indicated  the rate of their descent was somewhat slower than she
’
d first thought. 

Thank goodness for the old timers. Their doddering footsteps came slowly
.
S
he pictured them grasping a railing while they walked
.
S
he returned her focus to locating a latch or other hidden mechanism.

As she concentrated on the rhythmic pattern that emanated from behind the door, she noticed a spell warding it. It had been well concealed and subtle, and she hadn’t noticed it immediately, wasting precious seconds. 

S
he had to risk entry despite the machinery beyond the door
.
Hemlock focused on the spell. It manifested to her as a subtle mixture of anticipation, defensiveness, and paranoia. It radiated from the middle of the door, and she felt a certain geometry to it: it had an ordered nature and some dimensionality. 

What does it mean? 

Vibrations from above, more voices. Getting closer.

She returned her focus to the magical ward on the door.

What do the sensations mean? Anticipation… Expectation? What is the key to the magical protection? It’s a service door – it shouldn’t be a complex ward. Feel.

The footsteps were now directly above her, on the second floor. 

Not a complex ward – likely runic or spoken. 

The geometry she felt pointed to runic.

Footsteps turning onto the stairs above!

Soon they would be within sight of her. 

She reacted from a place of desperate instinct now: raising her hand to the middle of the door, she pointed toward it with her fore and middle fingers. Her eyes closed and her head leaned back slightly, as she began to trace a pattern in the air–following the guidance of her mind’s eye as it struggled to traverse the geometry of the rune she was seeing in her mind. Her hand steadily traced out a graceful character consisting of six interwoven lines with three dots above it. 

The door clicked inward softly, and she slipped in just as three figures descended to the first floor, and a moment before a robed figure with a serpentine appearance darted its head her way. 

As she slid the door shut silently behind her, Hemlock hoped no sound had escaped in the short time the door had been open just a crack–which had been enough time to allow her slight form to pass within. She now stood in a damp, dark space which had a musty, metallic smell permeating it.

A band of dull green light, emanating from deep within the room, shone rhythmically up and down over Hemlock’s body as she surveyed the room for exits. The only exit seemed to be a metallic spiral staircase
,
which rose up into the ceiling some distance in front of her, behind a machine of infernal appearance. 

The machine consisted of a man–sized glass piston filled with a glowing green liquid, which was being pumped by the actuation of a metallic shaft. Ghostlike, an airy human figure worked a wooden handle attached to a round gear which turned the shaft.
T
he figure was nearly transparent, but the room behind it was oddly distorted. 

There was a large glass vat which was reinforced with iron banding
,
which was suspended above the piston. Within the vat rested the flanks of a massive green Dragon attached to some sort of mechanical device. The Dragon was suspended by chains, its clawed feet securely restrained with massive iron cuffs. The upper body and head of the Dragon were not visible, but appeared to extend up into the floor above.  The glowing green fluid dribbled from a number of gaping wounds on the hindquarters of the Dragon, hissing as it fell into the vat
,
which then fed the green fluid into the glass piston.

The piston pumped the green fluid into a copper pipe which ascended into a larger glasslike shaft, within which the glowing fluid could be seen to flow to the upper floors of the Tower in great volume. 

The ghostly figure continued to pump as Hemlock took in her surroundings.

Sensing no living, corporeal occupants in the room, Hemlock gazed in unmitigated awe at the massive body of the Dragon, finding she was unsure whether it was alive, dead or in some intermediate state. She
’
d heard legends about dragons, but had never seen one. Seeing its massive form imprisoned there and subjugated by the wizards gave her an increased appreciation for their power.

Hemlock cautiously strode toward the ghostly figure, casting a lengthening shadow on the wall behind her as she was bathed in the ghastly green light.

The figure was manlike in form; it appeared to wear full armor, and moved as if encumbered by its weight. As she approached it, there was no indication it sensed her presence. 

She continued to creep toward it, moving silently. A faint sound began to emanate from the figure and within two steps, it had grown to a wail of utter agony.

Startled, she leapt back into a crouch, and just as quickly the sound was gone. She glanced to either side of the room to make sure she had not been surprised by any other developments, and noticed both walls were lined with shelves holding supplies of a mysterious nature. There were beakers, books, strange robes, brooms, and a host of tools like shovels and pick axes; all in all there was a myriad of what were likely items of day to day use in a wizard tower.

Feeling somewhat befuddled by the strange apparition, but confident she could circumvent both the machine and the Ghost, she moved toward one of the shelves in a circular motion, maintaining the distance between herself, the ghostly figure and the machine.

She could see the figure in profile then, and her heart skipped a beat. The features were some cruel combination of human and skeletal, locked in a howling scream of pain and anguish
,
which seemed to reflect a level of suffering beyond anything in Hemlock’s experience
—
and she had witnessed her share of suffering. 

She imagined it would roughly equate to those moments of utter destruction of the mortal form, which normally extinguished the flame of consciousness before the true magnitude of the torment could be experienced. This man–ghost–skeleton appeared to be enduring in this state, however, as a gibbering shell put to some foul purpose in this Tower, no doubt, Hemlock felt, as a result of some Wizard spell of an ultimately corrupt nature.

Averting her gaze from the tragic figure, Hemlock briefly toyed with the idea of trying to free it somehow. But her senses quickly told her she was in no way qualified to meddle in such a powerful dweomer, and she strongly felt her goal was at the top of the Tower, not here. 

She could sense the form of the magic being employed in this room. Woven into the magic were strong emotions of ambition, aggression, and perhaps even megalomania, locked into a complex weave with the considerable mechanics of the machine itself. It was like a tapestry of indecipherable pattern, folded back on itself in four or more dimensions. Her mind simply could not make any sense of the complex lattice of these spells. Simple wards and traps she could often handle, but this was different. Understanding this magic would have been like a journeyman painter trying to touch up a masterwork painting: the probable result would be destructive. She felt it would likely result in her destruction and possibly that of a good portion of the City as well. Such was the power of the magic that she felt here. 

She ruefully moved toward the staircase, experiencing a reluctance to leave this machine in operation, but not knowing how else to proceed. As she approached it, she saw at periodic points along the spiral stair, its railing was adorned with odd hands
,
which were cast in the form of a clenched fist. Some were large, some were small. The staircase ascended to an opening in the ceiling and led to another floor above, which was cast in shadow. She anticipated there was another level of this maintenance area for this strange machine, accessible via this stairway.