William King - The Serpent Tower

“Stuffy was it? You should be back in chambers. If you sneaked out for a smoke…” He sniffed the air ostentatiously. “Well you know how his Lordship told us all to be within by Bell Ten. I’ll have your hide, my lad.”

Rik stared at him. The man stepped back a little. Rik wondered if the speaker sensed how close he was to death. Rik measured the distance between them. He could get one man with the knife, but he was not sure he could take out the other before he could give the alarm.

“No smoking,” said Rik. “I never touch the weed. Anyway, hard to get a light in this rain.”

The other servant was looking at him strangely now. “Who are you?” he said. “I don’t recall seeing your face around before.”

“New hire,” said Rik confidently, stepping forward a little.

“I didn’t hear anything about any new hires,” said the larger man. “And I should have been told. If Bortha has been hiring behind my back, I’ll have his guts for garters. He’s supposed to consult with me about any hires.”

Rik knew how it was. Working in a place like the Tower was a good job. You had to bribe the head servants if you wanted in.

“Bortha said there wouldn’t be no trouble,” he said, deeming it better to go along with the story that the man had already placed in his own head.

“Did he now? We’ll see about that. You just come along with me and we’ll have a little chat with Bortha.” The man laid a heavy hand on Rik’s arm. He was very strong, stronger than Rik had expected. He allowed himself to be pulled toward the man, let the knife slide loose from its scabbard. As he came alongside the servant, Rik drove the blade into the man’s side. The servant slumped forward, gasping, the poison already starting to take effect.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Rik asked in as normal a voice as he could. His fingers trembled on the knife hilt. “Quick! Help me!” he said to the second servant.

The man moved closer and Rik sprang forward and grabbed him, moving behind the man, locking his free hand on his throat. He put one hand over the man’s mouth to stifle his screams and drove the knife into his heart. There was no sense in relying on the poison. It might already have been all gone from the blade. The man slumped forward dead.

Rik started to tremble as reaction set in. This quick stealthy sort of killing was not something he liked. He had killed in battle many times, but there was an additional strain involved because of the need for silence and the proximity of guards and sorcerous guardians.

Be calm, he told himself, and breathed deeply. Think.

Swiftly he moved back to the wall. Of course, he had lost the exact location in the scuffle. He glared around frantically. His heart raced. At any time, more servants or more sentries might come and find him. He doubted he would be so lucky a second time.

He froze, trying to decide what to do. Should he go back for the bodies and drag them into the warehouse? If he left them lying there, surely someone would find them. On the other hand, every heartbeat he stood here was another heartbeat in which someone might notice him.

He leaned against the wall until the fit of trembling left him. There was blood on his hands, particularly the one that held the knife. He put the blade down carefully and tried to wipe it off on the wall, leaving a series of bloody smears and handprints. It came to him that he might have left similar prints on the outside, a tell-tale sign, along with the corpses, that would let the inhabitants of the Tower know where he had gone.

Another thought occurred to him. What if he had nicked himself with the knife? What if he had somehow accidentally poisoned himself? He checked his hands for cuts and found none. He paused and listened to his pounding heart and rasping breath, trying to detect any signs of either slowing or becoming abnormal. It was long minutes before he decided that there were none, and that he had better get on with his mission.

It was only then that the realisation began to sink in that he had extinguished two human lives as casually as he might have swatted flies. Perhaps Asea was right about him, and right about the Shadowblood.

He pushed the thought aside. Under these circumstances such a heritage could only be an advantage.

The Nerghul pulled itself over the lip of the cliff. Huge walls of glass-like substance loomed over it, wet and slick and gleaming. It was not the walls that troubled the creature, it was the enormous power surging through them. The Nerghul sensed the presence of an intelligence within, tapping that power, one that it would be foolish for it to challenge.

It paced along the narrow ledge, considering. Its experience of the other night had taught it caution. It had taken hours crouching in the darkness among the old ruins to heal its injuries and that place had not been nearly as well defended as this. Still, the scent of its prey led here and it needed to kill, the way a lover needs the caress of its beloved.

There was something strange in the air this night. The flow of power around the Tower was odd. It surged and sank, peaked and troughed. The Nerghul felt the unease of the intelligence chained within the walls. It felt that unease itself the way an animal senses a coming storm. It sensed moments of weakness in the defensive wards, and moments where to touch those walls would mean instant death.

It crouched down to wait for another trough. When the moment came it sprang, reaching the top of the wall with ease. A moment later, it knew the defences were working again, but now it was inside, and it sensed the nearness of its prey.

Soon it would be time to kill.

Rik strolled casually around the base of the Tower, trying not to attract any attention. Where had all the people gone? Most likely into the Tower. The hair on the back of his neck rose. His skin tingled. There was a strange feeling in the air, like the closeness before a storm, of that brief instant before a cannonball hit close by.

Something was happening here; he had no idea what, but it made him nervous.

He needed to get inside the Tower and be about his work. Above him he could see a balcony, jutting out from the body of the tower in a streamlined bulge. He took the grapnel and knotted rope from his duffel bag and swung it swiftly upward. It caught on the third attempt. All the while the skin on his back crawled. He expected to be shot by a guard.

Not likely he told himself. It was dark and it was raining. Damp powder would most likely misfire. The thought did not make him feel any better.

He tugged the rope to make sure it was firm then pulled himself up using the knots in the rope for purchase. His fingers struggled for purchase on the rain-slicked spidersilk. His arms burned from having to support his weight. After what felt like hours, he reached the balcony. He had a moment of sheer, stark terror as his fingers slipped on the rope, but he managed to get a grip and pull himself over.

Rain puddled on the slick green stone under his feet. He listened at the closed shutters but could not hear anything within.

He pried the shutters open with his knife. He turned to glance over his shoulders for a last look at the world beyond the Tower, knowing he might never see anything beyond it again.

There was only the great walls, the huge surrounding courtyard and the massive outbuildings. Then he saw it, moving crouched but with unnatural speed across the courtyard, pausing head down to sniff occasionally.

It took him a moment to realise it was following his path exactly and that it had found the bodies of the men he had killed. When it did not immediately give the alarm, the nagging sense of familiarity about the thing crystallised. He had only seen it for a few moments back in the House of Three Swans, but those few moments were enough to burn the memory of it into his consciousness forever.