The Tower

In which I look at a tower, endure more prattle, and actually do a bit of magic.

Chapter III: The Tower

 

A few minutes after we started riding on the third day, we saw the tower. I started when I first noticed it peeking above the horizon; I’d had no idea we were so close. Bergin cheered to see it; Sir Gerrick made no comment, but urged his horse on slightly faster.

The tower defied the laws of architecture; not in any interesting way, but by being far too tall and far too thin. Even the black bricks that composed it were even misaligned. By all logic, the whole thing should have fallen apart. The reason it was still together was obvious: magic; or rather, a gratuitous use of magic only someone with no knowledge of architecture whatsoever would bother with. While there were grasping claw-like protrusions and glaring gargoyles mounted along the tower’s edges, the proportions were so off it ended up looking ridiculous.

Atop it, however, was perched a most fearsome sight. This was the dragon that had kidnapped Princess Merowyn. It certainly looked up to the job. The monstrous black creature, with a crown of horns and shining golden eyes, leered down over the knights and mercenaries swarming around the tower’s base. Its wings stretched wider than the tower in some places; its claws, I was sure, could slice me in half with little resistance. Occasionally the creature would roar or spit a tongue of fire down at the adventurers, causing them to scatter and inspiring a few unlucky knights to panic and ride away as fast as they could. Sir Gerrick certainly looked like he wanted to take a page out of their book. But Bergin, his eyes full of something more malicious than wonder, said, “That’s the dragon Lord Cobalshire wants us to kill, right?” and Sir Gerrick swallowed, steeled himself, and set his horse at a steady trot towards the tower.

For my part - I couldn’t bring myself to be terrified. However terrifying the dragon was, it couldn’t have matched the creature of my nightmares. It was big and scary, yes, but it was still an animal and perfectly mortal. It didn’t swoop down and eat people, or even cook them with its breath. It seemed quite docile atop the tower, like a dog barking at people while chained to a post. My horse must have sensed my lack of fear, for even though she was small, she trotted quite willingly towards the terrible predator.

“How am I meant to face that thing?” muttered Sir Gerrick as I passed him.

“Your shield,” I explained, “is fireproof; I put a ward on it last night. Your sword is also enchanted with lightning, like you asked, and I made it a mana-heavy enchantment; you should be able to kill it in a few hits if you have to, since dragons don’t take well to magic.”

Sir Gerrick gave me a significant look. I couldn’t help but smile at his gratitude. In reality we both doubted his defences would stand up to the dragon’s claws or fangs, but Sir Gerrick now had a fighting chance, and his spirits duly improved. By the time he joined the convocation of knights at the base of the tower, he was only slightly paler than usual.

“Ho, sir!” he called to a particularly impressive-looking knight. “Why does no one enter?”

“There’s a spell on the gates,” the knight said, “and the magician we sent for hasn’t come yet. Damn high-brow Ivory Tower-ers taking their sweet time while the princess wastes away in Ghall’s clutches.”

I decided not to protest the insult. Offending a man with horns on his helmet higher than his head was not, I reasoned, a good idea.

We left our horses at an opportunist’s makeshift stable; though Sir Gerrick was loath to part with the horses, we could hardly take them inside. I changed out of my riding boots gratefully, but when I stepped out of the stable I wished I were back on my horse. My legs were unsteady from riding for so long, and dismounted, the entire scene felt far too big. The tower now scraped the sky; the dragon’s wings shaded it; but more imposing than they were the warriors fighting to destroy them. While I wasn’t short, I was still a girl surrounded by enormous men; enormous, for Sir Gerrick was tall and lanky, Bergin was not small, and the other adventurers dwarfed even them. The horns and capes and crests and spikes and plumes on the knights’ armour made them faceless giants; the sellswords achieved the same effect with enormous pauldrons and sheer burliness. Adrift in a dark sea of metal and muscle, I clung to whatever driftwood I could; id est, I made sure I could always see Sir Gerrick’s mop of golden hair above the crowd, or track the glint of his still-clean armour. Little though I liked to admit it, in this realm, he was my only security.

None of us were assertive, but Sir Gerrick and I were thin, and the former pulled Bergin through the crowd easily enough. We slipped through the gaudy throng easily enough; and we had nearly wormed our way to the tower’s door when Sir Gerrick abruptly stopped, causing Bergin to crash into him. A knight in red-white armour stood before us, surrounded by four scarlet-clad soldiers, sword aimed at Sir Gerrick’s chest.

The knight lifted his visor, revealing a handsome enough face beneath it. He glared at Sir Gerrick as best he could and said, “Who are you, who would enter the Tower of Ghall?”

“I… that is… I am Sir Gerrick of Cobalshire. And you?”

“Sir Ranald of Duklerton.” He paused for effect, as if the name should have an impact on us; seeing it didn’t, he went on. “I am here in the name of His Grace the Duke of Duklerton to rescue Her Royal Highness Princess Merowyn from Ghall.”

Sir Gerrick smiled, relieved. “I am to do the same, in the service of Lord Cobalshire.”

“Of course you are,” Sir Ranald sneered, shocked that anyone would bother stating so obvious a fact. Sir Gerrick smiled obligingly.

“So is this crowd assembled,” said Sir Ranald. “All of them here to win glory and favour from Her Highness for themselves and their lords. See how they’ve dolled themselves up in such prestige, such colours! No doubt their own colours, that they and their lords might profit from their venture. ‘Tis a sickening display, a mockery of chivalry, wouldn’t you say, Sir Gerrick?”

The guilty Sir Gerrick could only nod.

“But I… my cause is much different,” Sir Ranald said. “For my liege His Grace has loved Her Highness with a fiery passion for many years! Long has he courted; long has he showered her with affection, and long has she requited him with her royal smile. And so I come here, clad in the white and red of Duklerton, to prove my liege’s love. Is this not chivalry?”

Sir Gerrick agreed that it was, but that he’d like to take a crack at saving the princess all the same.

“Perhaps you doubt, sir, the depths of my liege’s love,” said Sir Ranald. Sir Gerrick protested that he did not, but Sir Ranald was unsatisfied. “Jarred!” One of his squires stepped forward. “Tell Sir Gerrick the story of our liege’s courtship of Her Highness.”

Jarred looked only too happy to oblige. “Sirs, even back when Her Highness was a lass, and our liege His Grace the Duke of Duklerton was a noble lad of ten…”

Jarred proceeded to relate a story in which the Duke of Duklerton, childhood friend to the Princess Merowyn, attended her every whim, exchanged solemn vows of love with her when he was fourteen, and thereafter pledged to be her bride. Given the distance between Duklerton and the Capital, and the poor relationship between the royal family and house Duklerton, I found the tale rather unlikely. But at some length it became clear that Sir Ranald’s squire had no intention of ceasing, so I took the opportunity of examining the tower’s gate. It was a huge slab of rock perhaps ten feet high, and covered top to bottom in intricate Gwendian runes. At first I was intimidated, but upon analysis, the spells inscribed in those runes seemed mostly redundant - indeed, a few seemed to be purely connected to the tower’s abysmal architecture. Those runes meant to keep the tower stoppered up were themselves repeated several times, primarily in two permutations. Professor Vanus’s diagnosis of a needlessly layered Bressa-Cadwainn seal had been correct; the only unusual things about them were that they were engraved in stone rather than cast with a staff, and their redundancy.

At last the squire stopped talking and stepped back to join his fellows. “Now you see the nobility of my cause,” said Sir Ranald. “But it is a moot point; the door is guarded by a complex magical seal, and the mage I have sent for from the capital is yet to arrive.” I chose not to correct him as to the former points. “Now you know the cause of my contention, when I ask you to with - ”

He was interrupted by a deafening roar. The dragon had reared up and spread its wings.

“We must withdraw,” said Sir Ranald; “but we will meet again!” And he and his squires scurried away from the tower. Sir Gerrick was about to follow when I stopped him.

“Go towards the tower,” I said.

“What - why - ?”

“The dragon never left the top of the tower before; and if it comes down we can take shelter inside anyway. I figured out how to crack the seal. This is our chance.”

The dragon loosed a tongue of fire; Gerrick eyed it nervously. “But - Miss Malbair, please - common sense - ”

“Look, if we don’t go now, we’ll have to confront Sir Ranald. Would you rather fight a real knight or the illusion of a dragon?”

This spurred Sir Gerrick. “Come on, Bergin - to the tower.”

The dragon kept roaring and breathing fire as we approached. Once I thought Sir Gerrick was going to bolt, but he mastered himself; still, I decided I’d better break the seal quickly. I drew my wand from my robes and muttered my counter-incantation to myself; this was more difficult than I’d imagined, since I couldn’t hear myself over the dragon’s roars. Between spells, I allowed myself to grumble, “If you’ve quite finished your little tantrum, I’ve got work to do.”

But after a few minutes of tracing runes and reciting incantations, the seal fell. Then came the matter of moving the physical slab itself; but this was no matter. I simply cast a pair of spells and the stone sank into the ground.

Sir Gerrick was impressed, but Bergin was astonished. “What did you just do?” he exclaimed.

“I just cast two spells - one to get the earth soft and prepare the way; then another to turn some of the earth beneath the stone into water. It’s quite simple, really.”

Bergin disagreed. “Amazing!” he cried. “That’s the power of magic firsthand! Why, I’ve never seen such a thing! The stone just sank into the earth like a rock in a lake! How did you - ”

The dragon mercifully interrupted him by spewing a jet of fire uncomfortably near to us. We looked inward. Beyond the gate was a dark, narrow corridor.

“We’ll go on,” said Sir Gerrick. “You ought to back to the horses and return home. Now our part begins! Let’s go, Bergin - ”

But Bergin was already jogging back from down the hall. “There’s another gate back there, Sir Gerrick,” he said, “with more of that strange writing on it.”

“Another seal…?”

I gulped. The plan was shot. Now my certainty was gone; now I was in real peril. But being waist-deep in the situation, having seen the dragon’s fire, had emboldened me, and I couldn’t simply flee. I started down the corridor. Sir Gerrick protested weakly, but I didn’t listen. Opening another seal wouldn’t deprive me of my escape route, I thought; and it would be rather pointless for me to have come this far without fulfilling my purpose in coming.

The hallway was tall as well as narrow, so I was at once claustrophobic and fearful of what might lurk in the empty darkness. There was a terrible reverb in the hallway besides; the walls were too roughly built to carry a real echo, so every sound was loud and indistinct. I could hear each footstep that carried me deeper into the darkness, and the sizzle of dragon-fire and the clamour of the knights harried me onto the gloom.

By the time I’d reached the second door, the sunlight was weak, and darkness seemed to swirl above my head. The sounds of the outside melded into a single discordant roar. To see the runes upon the door, I had to summon a magical torch to hover beside my head. Bergin stared at it with wide, shining eyes.

Sir Gerrick, for his part, squinted over my shoulder at the door. “These runes are different from the other door,” he observed.

This was true, and in fact, several runes and runic arrangements on the door I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t surprised - Gwendian runes were mainly used in sorcery, so I, an aspiring mage, did not concentrate my schedule on their study - and unless I was much mistaken, those runes dealt with architecture, not the seal; but I grimaced at the prospect of more uncertainty.

“Can you open it?” asked Sir Gerrick.

I nodded. “It’s likely the princess’s chamber, at least, is sealed. Shall I put the spells I’m using to get past these seals in an amulet for you to use?”

“Yes! Of course!”

In a few seconds the seal opened; the door fell away; and torchlight from the black-walled chamber beyond spilled into the corridor.

I had to sigh with relief. “Here,” I said; “this is the amulet I mentioned, and a potion that can blow up a door or two. Just throw the bottle at something and it’ll explode.” Sir Gerrick nodded and gave the vial to Bergin. “Don’t drop it,” I added; “if it hits the ground quickly it’ll explode all the same.” Sir Gerrick took back the vial.

After stowing it and the amulet in his belt, the knight stepped forward and gripped my hand in both of his. I wasn’t sure whether the metal or his grip hurt more. “Thank you,” he said. “Your service has been most meritorious to us. I assure you, when I succeed, I will make sure your name is known!”

“That won’t be necessary,” I said desperately; “a letter of recommendation or two should suffice.”

“Very well - ” he agreed, though he seemed disappointed - “ask and you shall receive. Adieu, Allicis Malbair! May we meet a - ”

A massive stone slammed into the ground, shrouding the corridor in darkness.

The echoing thud made my ears ring. I spun, confused, dazed, blinded. When I got my bearings I summoned a small magic light to hover beside me. With it I examined the new stone - it, too, was covered in runes.

My heart plunged; my stomach turned; I raced back down the corridor; horrified of what I would find; and when I found Sir Gerrick again I saw my worst fear realized, saw just how blind and stupid I had been to even attempt such a perilous mission - for a tall, twisted figure loomed in the torchlit chamber, swathed in black robes and gripping a skull-tipped staff. It could only be the sorcerer Ghall.