Mark Anthony - Tower of Doom

Mika stared numbly. A choking sound escaped her throat. The smears of blood on the stone made by the beating heart formed letters, spelling out two words: HELP ME. There was a rustling sound behind her. Mika spun around. The cadaver lay faceup on the slab once more. His — dull eyes stared at her with an expression of… anguish.

With a muffled cry, Mika snatched up her satchel and dashed to the door of the charnel house. She gripped the knob and pulled. It was locked. Mika streamed, pounding at the wood, her hands clenched. She could feel the dead man's eyes boring Into her back. Suddenly the door swung open. Mika stumbled forward into fresh air and sunlight. She jerked the handkerchief from her face and took in deep gasping breaths.

"Are you well, milady?" the gravedigger asked, squinting at her with his one eye.She gazed back at the door of the charnel house. The Cadaver she had been dissecting lay facedown on the slab. The heart was no longer moving. Any message it had traced on the stone was now just a smear of blood. Shuddering, she turned to the gravedigger.

"The door," she said breathlessly. "It was locked."

"I'm sorry, milady. I forgot to tell you that the door only opens from the outside."

Mika stared at him. "But why?"

The gravedigger fixed her with another peculiar look but did not answer. "Are you finished, milady?" he asked finally.

She nodded. "I am now." Clutching her notebook and satchel, she hastily set off down the street.

In the light and air of the day, Mika felt her fright lifting. Soon she wondered if she hadn't simply imagined it all. It would hardly be unusual after her and Wort's nightmarish encounter with the treant. Relieved by this thought, Mika walked swiftly. She did not want any of the villagers to see her leaving the charnel house. Since Wort had scared away the mob that had accused her of witchcraft, she had been able to practice her craft in peace in Nartok. She didn't want to give anyone cause for starting further dark rumors about her.

When Mika returned to the Black Boar, she found a patient waiting for her in the dingy chamber behind the common room. It was a middle-aged woman, clad in the plain brown dress of a farmer's wife. "Begging your forgiveness, milady," the woman said, standing nervously. "I don't mean to disturb you…"

Mika smiled warmly, trying to put the woman at ease. "It's no bother." In truth, she was glad for something to take her mind off the grisly charnel house experience. She stepped into the chamber and set down her satchel. Only then did she notice the farmer's wife was not alone. In a chair in a dim corner sat a young woman. Mika stared in alarm, a hand unconsciously creeping to her breast. Something was terribly wrong with the young woman. Her face was pale and shadowed, and her eyes stared blankly forward-dark, unblinking, and utterly empty. Were it not for the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest, Mika might have thought her dead.

"I hope I've done the right thing in bringing my Alys here," the peasant woman said in a shaking voice. "Hannis-that's my husband, you see-Hannis wouldn't like it if he knew I'd come to see you. He says healers are all either charlatans or warlocks, each one worse than the other. Though I love him, sometimes half of what Hannis says is poppycock, and the rest is just plain nonsense."

Mika knelt down to examine the young woman's face. There was no movement, no expression-no indication that she saw or heard anything at all.

"Do you think… do you think you can help her, milady?"

"I hope so," Mika answered gravely. "But tell me, how did this happen?"

Soon Mika knew the whole, sad tale. The mother's name was Marga. She and her husband had woken one morning to find their daughter Alys missing and the window of her bedroom open. They had discovered Alys far out on the moor, shivering and staring with unseeing eyes. At first she had muttered things in a singsong voice…

"Strange things, like dark, eerie poems," Marga said sorrowfully. "They chilled my blood, they did."

Gradually Alys had turned utterly silent. Now she seemed neither to hear nor see anything, as if trapped in a waking slumber.

"I believe your daughter is suffering from catatonia," Mika explained after she had finished her examinations. "I'm afraid it's a sort of madness, usually brought on by some awful shock."

"Madness?" Marga gasped. "Can you possibly heal her, milady?"

"I'm not certain. Sometimes such patients heal themselves." Mika took a deep breath. "And sometimes.. She faltered. "Sometimes they stay this way forever," Marga finished in a whisper. "That's what you were going to say, isn't it?" Mika could only nod. She went to a cabinet where she kept packets of herbs, jars of ointments, and other medicines. She returned with a small vial. "This might help your daughter. It is a distillation of mandrake root. I've used it before in cases of coma or sleeping sickness." Mika carefully poured some of the elixir into Alys's mouth. Alys screamed. The two woman stared in astonishment. Alys's blindly intent eyes were now focused on something only she could see. Horror twisted her ghost-white visage as her hands clenched into rigid claws. Despite the terror on her face, weird laughter bubbled out of her mouth. She began to chant in a queer, melodic voice:

"Where is my love?

Far under the earth

Crowned by the worms

The mold gives birth. "

"Who is my love?

The scion of Death

Whose kisses drown me

With sweet, cold breath!"

"That's it!" Marga cried. "That's what she was saying when we found her. Over and over again. That's what she said. What do you think it means?" Mika shook her head. Bracing herself, she knelt before the traumatized young woman. "Alys," she said softly. "Alys, can you hear me?" "I see him." Alys's voice was at once whisper and shriek. "I see him, out my window. He is walking to… to the tower."

"Who, Alys?" Mika asked intently. "Who do you see?"

"Yet how can it be him?" Alys went on eerily. "Oh, but it is. That is all that matters. I run to him. Yes, I run to him, to throw my arms around him. But…" Her body began to shake violently. "What is wrong? He is… he is so cold. And the smell-like the damp, fetid earth." Her voice rose to a scream. "No! Don't touch me! His kiss… his kiss is filled with writhing worms!"

Mika gripped the young woman's shoulder fiercely. "Who, Alys? Who is it you see?"

Alys's cry of anguish froze Mika's blood. "Oh, Robart! What have they done to you?" The young woman collapsed into Mika's arms, sobbing.

"Who… who is Robart?" Mika finally managed to ask.

Marga's voice was so faint Mika had to strain to hear it. "Robart was Alys's lover. He was executed by the inquisition almost a week ago."

Mika swallowed the metallic taste of fear, trying to grasp the implication of Marga's words. The sound of murmuring brought her head around. Alys was chanting the queer melody once more.

"Whose kisses drown me,

With sweet, cold breath…"

Mika watched through the grimy window as the peasant woman led her blankly staring daughter away down the muddy street. There was little hope Alys would ever recover her sanity. The imagined sight of her dead lover-or perhaps real, Mika dared to think after her strange experience in the charnel house-had struck too deep a blow to Alys's psyche. Mika had visited the asylum in II Aluk more than once. There she had seen men and woman who, like Alys, had also witnessed things so unspeakable their minds were shattered. Lost Ones, they were called- lost, because they never found their sanity again.

Mika shivered, wishing there was someone there to hold her, to speak geRtle words of comfort and help her forget the day's disturbing events. But there was no one. She felt utterly and completely alone. She lifted the golden locket that hung around her neck and opened the tiny latch. Inside was painted a portrait, small as a robin's egg, of a young man with kind brown eyes. Suddenly Mika found herself shaking-not with sorrow-but with anger.