Mark Anthony - Tower of Doom

Soon she reached a low hill rising above the moor, its crest surrounded by a rusting, spiked fence. The cemetery. Quickly she padded through the gate and made her way toward the graves. Using her sharp claws, she pulled herself up the trunk of a dead tree and curled in the hollow between two branches. Her eyes glowing in the darkness, she watched the graves below. Jadis did not know what she expected to see, but she had a strong feeling she would see something.

She did not have long to wait. A faint, scrabbling sound reached her sensitive ears. Moments later, the dirt covering dozens of the graves, those belonging to victims of Caidin's inquisition, began to churn. A pale hand broke through the surface of one. It clawed at the dirt. More hands broke through the damp soil. In moments dozens of clutching hands and pallid arms rose up from the earth as though this was not a cemetery but some sort of grisly, blossoming garden. The hands scratched at the soil, and slowly an army of corpses rose out of the ground. Mold covered their rotting flesh, and dirt clung to their lank hair and tattered clothes. The corpses began shambling forward. Zombies. Jadis's pink nose wrinkled at the stench of their bloated flesh.

Shuffling listlessly, the throng of zombies marched through the graveyard. All stared with blank eyes. Some dropped gobbets of flesh or even loose fingers 0I ears behind them as they passed. When the last had clambered from his grave and stumbled out the cemetery's gate, Jadis jumped from the tree. She

Jadis followed the gruesome cavalcade across the moor. Soon a dark shape hove into view. It was the mysterious tower, now almost complete. Jadis slunk around the spire, her fur blending seamlessly with the night, watching as the zombies converged on the vast stone construction. The animate corpses began pushing ponderous blocks of stone up wooden ramps and sliding them into place atop the tower.

The undead moved clumsily as they went about their mindless labor. Two zombies bearing armfuls of tools collided with each other. One stumbled away, oblivious to the chisel embedded in her forehead, while the other tried vainly to pull out the crowbar that skewered his torso. A zombie woman shuffling toward the tower stepped in a trough of wet mortar. She lurched to a halt, her leg stuck in the rapidly setting cement. The decomposing woman strained, trying to pull out her foot. With a ripping sound her entire leg tore free of her body. Blithely, the zombie woman hopped forward on her one remaining leg.

A dwarven zombie waved a flaccid arm toward the dirt-encrusted corpse of the man that guided a wooden crane. A ponderous block of stone hung from the end of the stout boom.

"Drop… here.. the dwarven zombie groaned.

He started to point to a nearby pile of stones, but his rotting hand chose that moment to fall off, landing at his feet. The dwarf stared dully at the hand twitching on the ground. Slowly, he looked up.

"Uh… oh…" he moaned.

The wooden crane swung into position. The block of stone dropped, crushing the dwarf to a gooey pulp beneath. Next to the block of stone lay the dwarf's still-pointing hand.

Worms dropped from the mouth of the zombie man controlling the crane as he smi|ed. "Right… on… target…"

Jadis twitched her whiskers with satisfaction. Now she understood the purpose behind Caidin's false inquisition. He was executing supposed traitors simply as a means to gain corpses to transform into zombies-zombies who emerged from their graves each night to work on building this tower. Yet this begged a crucial question. Why was Caidin going to such elaborate lengths to build the tower?

Jadis's flesh rippled fluidly as her limbs lengthened and her dark fur vanished. Human once more, she scooped up handfuls of dirt and rubbed them over her naked body and through her hair. In moments she looked little different than the zombies. Slumping her shoulders and staring dully forward, Jadis shuffled toward the tower. The other zombies paid her no heed as they went about their mindless labor. She joined several who pushed a heavy block of stone up one of the wooden ramps. When they reached the top of the wall, she slipped away. The moonlight afforded a clear view of the construction.

So-it was a tower of war. Strong buttresses braced thick walls. Narrow windows slits were designed to make it easy to fire arrows at approaching targets. Overhanging ledges with holes created machicolations for dropping hot pitch onto enemies below. Jadis frowned. How would a tower of war in Nartok allow Caidin to defeat King Azalin in far-off II Aluk? It was a riddle she could not solve. Having learned all she could for the moment, Jadis moved to the ramp to head back down.

"Stop…" a slurred voice croaked behind her.

Jadis froze, then slowly turned around, keeping her face expressionless. A zombie man lurched toward her, dropping stray bits of putrid flesh as he moved. Jadis swore silently. Even in this state of decay, the zombies Caidin had created were still surprisingly sentient!

"Where… you… go?" She could hardly make out the zombie's words. His mouth was filled with dirt and worms.

"Down," she mumbled thickly.

"No…" the zombie groaned. "Come… with… me."

Panic jabbed at Jadis's heart. Limply, she shook her head. "Down," she mumbled again.

The zombie advanced on.her. A dozen more shambling corpses appeared out of the gloom behind him. If she changed into her werepanther form she could destroy perhaps half of them. That would not be enough.

"Why… you… disobey?" The zombie's slurred voice sounded suspicious. "Come!"

Jadis did not dare refuse a second time. Nodding stonily, she joined the others and shuffled after the zombie. He led them to the top of the wall.

"Must… carve… stone," he groaned. "Make… smooth."

While the zombie foreman watched, the other zombies clumsily picked up hammers and chisels and began chipping away at the stone blocks, squaring their edges so more blocks could be set on top of the wall. Jadis followed suit. She picked up a hammer and began chiseling away at the stone. Soon her hands were blistered, and her shoulders throbbed painfully. The zombies around her worked tirelessly, never ceasing. If she were to stop to rest, even for a moment, they would know she was not one of them.

"You can't fall asleep, love," she murmured hysterically under her breath. "No matter how lovely it sounds. If you fall asleep, they'll tear you to bits."

Biting her lip to stem the pain in her burning hands, desperately trying to shrug off her weariness, she kept chiseling. Eventually she drifted into a dark delirium, a waking nightmare filled with the endless clanking of steel on stone and the suffocating reek of rotten meat.

Suddenly Jadis looked up. The zombies were setting down their tools and shuffling away. Pearly light glowed on the distant horizon. It was almost dawn. Shuddering in relief, she set down her own hammer, stretching her throbbing shoulders.

"Back… to… coffins," a zombie moaned.

The zombies tottered down the wooden ramp to the ground and began lumbering back toward the cemetery. Jadis took the chance to slip away. Moments later the lithe werepanther loped across the moor, quickly leaving the gruesome procession of zombies behind. As she headed toward the keep in the misty gray light, a wry thought crossed Jadis's mind. Caidin ought to thank her for helping build his blasted tower.

Wort parted a gauzy veil of cobwebs. It had been months since he had last come to the forgotten storeroom to gaze upon the ancient tapestry. His breath caught in his chest. He had forgotten how beautiful the angel was.

The weaving drooped upon the stone wall. At least a third of it had rotted away over the centuries, and the rest was stained dark by smoke and the passing of time. Once the scene must have been a sylvan glade in the golden light of the morning sun. Now it was a garden swathed in the shadows of dusk. Yet in the midst of all that murkiness drifted the angel. A single ray of sunlight slanted down from a high window, illuminating the pale oval of her face. Her violet eyes gazed out serenely, and her rosebud mouth bore the faintest trace of a smile that was dreamy, and knowing, and hinting ever-so-slightly of love.