The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) (16 page)

“Uh, right.” The old man sighed with a bit of hurt in his eyes. “The artifacts mentioned in the book that were placed there due to their extraordinary power were missing. Stormcaller and Blackout. It seems the bracer the boy wears looks a lot like the sketch I saw.”

His eyes were sharper than he made them out to be. Were the spectacles just a ruse? “Strange, I hadn’t noticed,” Baylan said. “It must be some sort of replica.”

“Perhaps. I heard reports from the battle of the Plains of Dressna that there was a man who cut down Death Spawn with trails of fire…”

“Fascinating,” Baylan said, doing his best to not reveal what he knew, letting silence do the talking. They both sat there, staring up at the crystalline dome, the first light of the sun piercing through and dotting the library with pinks. Titles with gilded script shone bright, begging to be read.

“The Chains of the North—Bonesnapper as some call it—are still yet to be discovered, supposedly this weapon will be needed to slay Asebor,” Grozul said, peering over his shoulder at the scuffle of feet. A few diligent students slinked into an alcove on the other side of the dome, sending curious glances at the men. Grozul gave them a dismissive wave.

“I believe the legend of Bonesnapper is true. It’s a long story… I believe the Chains of the North are in the hands of Asebor,” Baylan said, his hands steepled.

“Grave tidings,” Grozul groaned.

Baylan stared beyond Grozul at a bookshelf, books blurring in his eyes, hoping for some serendipitous answer to emerge from the roots of his mind. None did.

“What should we do about Tamia?” Grozul finally asked.

“I don’t know. There is an army of demons outside the Tower and a snake within. It seems there is no front that lacks danger. We watch closely, try to catch her in the act. We’ll need proof before we strike.”

His lover, closest friends in the Tower, all dead. How many more would die before this disease was excised from the realm? Baylan was feeling the icy touch of death at his back, his bones aching when he woke in the morning, muscles chronically sore. Recovery from Phoenix wielding now took days instead of hours. He felt that time was running down for him, though he had felt that way before in his youth, and here he was, staring across the table at the face of his likely future. No one would escape Time’s poisonous blade. Not even a wizard.

T
he room was
small and too cramped for people who Walter thought should be well respected. All men were alike it seemed, regardless of geographic location. “People didn’t give surgeons proper respect, until they needed one,” his mother had said. The size of this room reflected her sentiment, an afterthought compared to the massive rooms in the rest of the Tower. The quarters he shared with Baylan were about the same size, he reckoned.

Walter had learned that there were many specialties in the houses. The Phoenix had their masters of healing, shields, portals, and telekinesis. The House of the Dragon had specialists in each of the elements—fire, air, earth and water. The House of Arms had specialists in over fifty weapon varieties. After ten years in the Tower as a journeyman you could choose your specialty on the path of mastery.

The air felt too hot this early in the day, in dire need of more circulation. The walls of the healer’s room were a blue-gray stone, sparkling in the gleam of the morning sun flitting through the sole window. One side of the wall had stone shelves lined with foreign jars of various goos, tinctures, and powders in the full spectrum of color.

Another side held a box of surgeon’s tools propped open on a small table, a few he recognized. There was a fine line between healer and torturer, mainly distinguished by the cleanliness of one’s tools. The healer’s tools were polished to a sterile gleam, well organized in a heavy lidded box lined with red fabric. It was a good choice for hiding blood stains, notoriously difficult to remove.

Juzo stood with his arms crossed on the opposite side of the bed, facing Walter. Blackout lay on a nearby table, Juzo’s eye seemingly unable to look anywhere else.

The healer had long hair, black with streaks of sun tinted browns. “The curse of this weapon is quite strong. I’m not sure how long this will take or how painful it may be. I won’t lie to you, this may be excruciating,” The hawk-faced man said with a strange accent. His stubby fingers rubbed the plain wooden ring all of the healers wore around their necks, secured by a simple piece of hemp.

Juzo nodded, eyebrows drawn flat. He flicked his eye up at the healer, to Walter, then back at Blackout. He let out a long sigh as he shook his head, lips moving as if lost in some hidden dialog.

Nyset stood at the end of the bed, flashing a toothy smile at Walter as he met her eyes. She wanted to be here for Juzo, she said at morning supper. She said her classes ended early today. Either way he was glad to see her. It felt like it had been way too long, though only a very long couple days. He did his best to smile back, but anxiety was clawing at his guts and twisting them into knots. He knew the pain well that Juzo would endure, wishing there was something else he could do for him. Sometimes the best thing you could do for someone was just to be there.

“Go ahead and take off your shirt, Juzo. I’ll dull your skin with some numbing oil,” the healer said, calm as if he were about to take a stroll in the garden, brush and clear oil in hand.

“Alright, let’s be done with it then,” Juzo said, slipping off his oversized shirt, rolling onto the bed, his sinewy muscles flexing. The healer flicked the brush over Juzo’s shoulder a few times, then over his chest and ankles, smiling all the while.

“That should do it. You’ll feel a brief tingling as the oil spreads through your skin,” the healer said, capping the oil and placing the brush in another jar.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Juzo stared up at the healer standing over him. “The sword—it talks to me,” he said quietly.

“No, I’m not sure. But I have been doing this for over thirty years and have yet to encounter an artifact with a curse I could not break,” he smiled reassuringly. He didn’t seem worried. Why should he be?

That didn’t seem to do much for Juzo, who lay squirming on the bed, gray strands of hair sticking to his forehead. Feathers spurted out from a rip in the mattress in a jet of white as he tossed his back into a different position. The sheets were porcelain white, an incredible feat for a surgeon’s room. The wonders of magic, Walter thought with reverence.

“We’ll have to strap you down for your own protection,” the healer said, draping worn leather straps over his body, cinching them to the bed on one side. These were clean too, but Walter could see the deep stains of pink showing through. He made himself useful, getting the other ends of the straps and working them through the hooks bolted to the bed. It felt like just yesterday when he was in this position, terror firmly gripping his throat, under Malek’s impassive gaze.

He brushed the hair from Juzo’s eyes and gripped his hand tight, trying impart a sense of comfort. It was alarmingly cold. Juzo looked up at him, forcing a smile that didn’t touch his eyes and squeezed Walter’s hand in kind.

“Apprentices, please stand back,” the healer said, waving them away from Juzo. “I’ll need to remove this too,” he said, slipping off Juzo’s eye patch and hooking it on a corner of the bed frame. His eye wasn’t just an empty socket, but a jagged mess of misshapen bone and skin, like someone had tried to work the eye out with a garden shovel and failed the first ten times. The sight of that old wound pressed on Walter’s chest, whose heart was thundering, teeth gritted at the pain Juzo had to have endured. Walter gave his friend’s hand another quick squeeze, ignoring the inhuman cold of his touch, then stepped back to the wall beside Nyset.

The healer’s hands glowed with the distinctive blue of the Phoenix, lightly humming in the air and illuminating the dim corners of the room. It was fascinating to be on the other side of the Phoenix’s healing. He wondered when he would learn how to heal the wounds of others.

The air above Juzo’s chest shimmered and a blue aura spread from his body, the humming magnifying in intensity, vibrating in Walter’s head. Juzo lurched against the straps, trying to sit up and blowing out a breath as if he were trying to cough and vomit at the same time. The tendons around his neck jumped out like cords, a string of spit sliding across his cheek. Walter realized his mouth was wide open and closed it up tight.

Something rattled on the table. Walter pulled his eyes from Juzo to the sound as Nyset strode around the bed, her hand clamping over Blackout, pinning it to the wood. The sword rattled with increased ferocity, shaking her arm. She slammed her other hand on the hilt, her body leaning over it, pressing it down.

“Help me, damn it!” she yelled at him.

“Right!” Walter croaked, his legs feeling heavy as he worked his way around the bed.

Juzo let out an inhuman screech. His bladed teeth snapped at the air, trying to draw blood from it. “Kill! Drink their souls!” he roared. His arms flexed against the restraints, the bolts and wood groaning at his strength.

Walter had stopped in front of him, then looked back at Nyset, whose eyes were red with the glow of the Dragon, her hair dancing in the air. Her teeth were bared, palms red with the effort of keeping the blade down. “Walter!”

Walter embraced the Phoenix, wanting to touch the Dragon, but had to ignore it. The Phoenix filled him with peace, the quivering in Nyset’s arm slowing such that he could see each of her muscles waving with the sword’s quivering. Walter added his hands to the sword’s sheathe as it jumped out, the dark metal sucking in the reds and blues of the god’s powers.

“No!” Nyset shouted, her hand foolishly wrapping around the blade, red spattering onto the floor.

“Shit!” Walter gasped, slamming the hilt into the sheathe. Then Nyset was gone, as if she’d never been there.

N
yset spun around
, eyes still burning with the warmth of the Dragon, darkness all around like a heavy fog. The smell of rot, putrid water, coal smoke, shit, piss and decay jabbed at her nose. It looked like she was on a street, feeling the uneven cobbles through her soft boots. She conjured two flaming discs, the Dragon surging within and yearning for more release, hovering and crackling beside her hands.

“Where am I? Walter?” she whispered into the black. The sound was all wrong, not echoing, as if speaking into a pillow.

She forced more energy into the discs, flaring brighter with taller flames, doing nothing to further dispel the encompassing abyss. She couldn’t see further than ten cobbles ahead and started walking. A second later, pain lanced through her hand and she looked down at it, black liquid leaked from a long cut across her palm. A wind cold as the dead lapped at her face, blowing her hair back, stinging her nostrils and teeth, streaking her blood down to patter on the cobbles.

She remembered now. She was in the healer’s room, in the Silver Tower, helping Juzo. But where was everyone?

Something whitish and translucent rose from the black, a human form. “Help!” The strange figure screamed, its hand reaching limply towards her, fingers missing and oozing translucent blood. The wind blew harder, washing the figure away as if it were cotton in the breeze. Her heart thundered in her chest, sweat trickling down her temples. Her discs burned brighter.

Then there was another figure, a young girl with pigtails. “Run! He comes,” she wailed, seeming to cling to some invisible handhold. She tilted her head up, throat opened in a grisly slash, blood leaking down her skirts. Other human forms materialized in the sheet of dark, adding their cries to hers.

“Go living one!” An old man, lean as a spider fumbled at the offal spilling from his gut.

“The eater comes,” said a round faced woman, both hands missing and ethereal, blueish blood seeping out her freshly cut stumps.

“Do not resist him,” wept a young boy, long gash across his chest, ribs splayed open to reveal his punctured lungs.

“Fight!” roared another voice above the din of the others. She turned to face this figure, swallowing hard, stomach twisting into knots, forcing the bile down her throat trying to edge its way towards her lips.

“No, you’re dead,” she stammered, shuffling back.

It was the Lord of Death, the beast from the battle at the Plains of Dressna. Its body was still littered and smoking with the hundreds of holes Walter had burned through it. Its fingers and toes were missing. Dark blood wept from its wounds. Its face, stitched together components of other men, flashed her a sickly grin. “Fight,” it hissed, dissipating in an arctic breeze.

Interspersed between the wailing figures emerged animals of all kinds. There were whimpering dogs, cats, horses, wolves, jaguars, and strange creatures she had never laid eyes upon even in books. There was a beast as big as a house, thousands of legs padding at the cobbles. Another was like a goose with a neck spanning about three arms lengths, shrieking into the heavy air.

The apparitions started fading away and their pleading with it, leaving only the empty black. Nyset felt a great hollow form inside of her, like everything that mattered in her life was being sucked away in the enveloping void. The sound of her breath and the once crackling fire of the burning rings was swallowed, dashed away before reaching her ears. The shred of hope she held onto for finding a way out of here slipped in the endless silence. She scraped her boots on the cobbles. Silence. She still had the Dragon though. That would keep her safe, give her light.

Footsteps, soft like her mother’s shuffling, came from behind. The singing of a blade being drawn came from all around. An amber ball of light appeared, overcasting a familiar face in deep shadow. It was Juzo, lips bared in a menacing grin, blade drawn at his side, muscle taught on his sword arm.

“Juzo? What are you doing here?” she asked. She realized she still didn’t know where ‘here’ was herself. Given the color of things, she assumed she was somehow experiencing a vision related to Blackout. No, not a vision. You don’t continue to bleed in visions or feel pain, she thought, glancing down at the blood trickling from her palm, sparsely illuminated by the flickering of her discs.

He just stood there, staring back at her like he didn’t hear, his black eyebrows drawing down and his eye forming a red slit. He marched towards her, raised the dark blade high into the air for a killing blow, his long coat flapping.

“Juzo?” she asked, eyes wide, blade hissing. She reacted with animal instinct, discs whizzing towards him, one sliced through his elbow and the other his knee, dropping him to the cobbles, severed arm still clutching the hilt. The sword broke into three pieces with the sound of a breaking icicles, strewn about his crumpled body. The burning discs briefly parted twin holes in the black, then fizzled into smoke.

“No!” She pressed her hands to her lips, gnawing on a finger. He started crawling towards her with feral grunts, the remains of his leg pumping out jets of dark blood. “Why? What are you doing? I’m trying to help you! What’s wrong with you?” she babbled.

Juzo slammed the broken sword into the ground with his other hand, using it to pull himself forward, Nyset stumbling back. He looked up at her, then smiled and licked the blood that had speckled his lips. He laughed, a deep, terrible laugh that only could come from something inhuman. He flicked his head back, clearing the hair from his face. There was something wrong with his cheek, sliding down his face like melting wax.

“It has been eons since a mortal entered my realm,” the thing that was clearly not Juzo said. “I have been bored in this prison,” it said, the rest of Juzo’s face melted the same, slipping off like liquefied skin. She rubbed at her throat, feeling it was hard to get air, hard to breathe properly. Her mind felt thick with honey, unable to process what to do next. She was breathing too shallow. She had to fight to regulate it, had to kill this beast.

“Burn!” she roared, remembering who she was, what she could do, the hundreds of Death Spawn she’d killed before. A cone of fire spiraled out from her fingertips, wave of heat washing over her face, charring the flesh of the creature on the ground. She panted from the effort, sweat matting her hair against her cheeks.