Mark Anthony - Tower of Doom

They had come for an execution

The last tatters of the storm that had lashed Nartok Keep during the night finally broke and fled before the violent crimson dawn. Sunlight spilled across the ancient stone of the keep, thick and heavy as blood, illuminating high walls that seemed to sag under their own ponderous bulk and a motley collection of towers that reached up to rake the underbelly of the sky. In the dark before the dawn, a throng of folk had climbed from the village below to the summit of the crag upon which the keep perched. They gathered now in the churned mud of the courtyard, huddling silently before a skeletal wooden scaffold.

From a window high in the spindly bell tower of Nartok Keep, a lone figure watched the grim scene unfold below. The watcher was swathed in a frayed black cloak that covered him from head to toe. Beneath the garment, a peculiar mass protruded from the figure's stooped back. He looked much like a man bent under the burden of a heavy pack.

"Come, my friends," the man said softly. "We must not be late."

Had anyone been there to hear his voice, he might have thought it beautiful. It was deep and resonant, like the tolling of a bell. But the only reply was the soft trilling of the mist-gray pigeons perched upon the crumbling window ledge. He stroked the birds fondly with a gnarled hand. The creatures ruffled their feathers and stared up at him, their eyes like dark jewels.

The man turned and moved with an odd, lurching gait across the small chamber. It was a dreary room: Only a feeble light managed to find its way through the narrow slit of the window, and it was not kind to the scant objects it found within. Moldy straw covered the stone floor, and chill draughts whistled unceasingly through chinks in the mortar. A musty pallet and worm-eaten chest were the only furnishings.

The cloaked man scrambled up a rickety wooden ladder and climbed through a trapdoor into a lofty chamber filled with dappled brilliance. Wind and sunlight streamed through the intricate wrought-iron gratings that covered the high arched windows. From stout oaken rafters above hung a dozen massive bells, each trailing a rope through a series of pulleys.

A pigeon fluttered down to land on the man's outstretched arm, followed by another, and another.

"Yes, Lisenne, I will play your favorite harmonic today." He caressed a bird whose feathers glowed with faint green iridescence. "Mow, there will be no pecking, Oratio," he chided gently. "You have no cause to be jealous. And you, Armond, shall have your choice next time. Go to your places now, my friends." The birds winged away to their high perches.

The sound of a snare drum drifted on the air. The cloaked man shuffled to one of the arched openings and peered through. In the courtyard below, a pair of the baron's knights, handsome in their brass-but- toned coats of blue wool, pushed a ragged old man ~up the steps of the scaffold. The prisoner's gaunt face was the color of clay, and mad terror shone in his eyes. He looked like one who had already gazed into the dark abyss of death. A black-hooded executioner forced the prisoner to his knees, pushing his head down upon a block of wood. The block's surface was stained a dark, rusty color and scarred by deep gouges. Next to the block lay an object draped by a black cloth.

One of the knights glared at the crowd. "The lord inquisitor has found this man guilty of treason against Baron Caidin of Nartok!" The fearful villagers cringed in a knot. "See that he does not find any of you guilty of the same!"

High in the bell tower, the cloaked man whispered excitedly. "Be ready, my friends! The moment approaches."

As the pigeons bobbed their heads, the man cast off his heavy cloak. Beneath was a form that could only be called hideous. The man might have been tall were his back not bent nearly double upon itself, twisting his shoulders into an agonizingly humped shape. His legs were unnaturally bowed, and his hunched torso made his arms seem horribly long for his body. Worst of all was his visage. Countless years of craning his neck and peering upward at queer angles had twisted his face into a grotesque mask. His blue eyes bulged disconcertingly in their sockets, and his mouth was drawn up in a perpetual, yellow-toothed grimace.

In the courtyard below, the snare drum rose in crescendo. The executioner lifted the black cloth from the object beside the block. Beneath was a half-moon blade. Intricate runes and sinister sigils coiled like serpents across the smooth steel. The blade was so massive that, had it been hafted to the end of an axe, no man could possibly have lifted it. The prisoner gaped fearfully at the blade. A gasp rose from the crowd.

The half-moon blade began to rise, as if lifted by an unseen hand. Thick red sunlight dripped bloodlike from its edge. The blade rose higher, propelled by some unspeakable force, or perhaps by its own volition, a living thing fueled by an inherent will to slay. At last the blade halted. It hovered high above the scaffold, shining like a crimson moon against the dome of the sky. The prisoner, who apparently could bear the atmosphere of portent Л о longer, struggled, craning his head to gaze upward.

"Come, be done with it!" he shrieked. "What does it matter to me now?" Insane cackling rose from deep in his throat. "I am already-"

The snare drum ceased. The half-moon blade plunged downward. It flared brilliantly as it bit deeply into the wooden block, then went dark. Eyes still staring widely, mouth still gaping in an unfinished cry, the prisoner's head rolled off the edge of the platform and fell with a wet sound into the mud below. As if freed from a spell, the peasants breathed once more, tasting air thick with blood and fear and death.

In the summit of the bell tower, the hunchback turned from the grisly scene below and dashed to the dangling ropes. It was time for him to play out his role in this dark charade. His powerfully muscled arms flexing, the hunchback pulled on the ropes. The bells swung in the shadows above, ringing out a mournful dirge for the dead man. The pigeons erupted in a gray, fluttering cloud, winging from rafter to rafter as the sound thrummed through the very stones of the tower. The tolling of the bells was deafening, but the hunchback only grinned, closing — his bulging eyes in an expression of sublime joy. To him it was not the grim song of death, but the sweet music of release.

Wort had lost count of how many years he had lived alone with the pigeons in the old bell tower.

These days, few in Nartok Keep knew who rang the bells each time there was a death in the keep or village. Some spoke of a ghost that lived in the tower. Others believed that the bells themselves were enchanted. Sometimes-when a funeral procession marched through the gates of the keep or when an execution was about to take place-a passerby might glance upward at just the right moment to see a shadow move high in the dilapidated spire. So it was most often whispered that it was neither ghost nor enchantment that animated the bell tower. No, it was a monster.

Wort did not mind the dark superstitions that surrounded the tower. They helped maintain the solitude he favored. No one ever dared come to the spire-except for the unlucky scullery boy who, every third day, was forced to tread alone down a dim corridor to leave a sack of food and a jug of water beside the door that led into the tower. The kitchenwife did not know why these actions were to J›e carried out, only that the order had come from Baron Caidin himself years ago.

Only rarely did Wort set foot outside the demesne of his tower, it had been months since the last occasion.