William King - The Serpent Tower

The Nerghul was on his trail. Fear clutched his heart. His mouth felt dry. He was uncomfortably aware of the throb of his pulse. Sweat beaded his brow. He could not survive an encounter with the thing. He froze for a moment but then the image of the Nerghul clambering up his own rope came to him. Swiftly, with fumbling fingers, he pulled the rope up, then stepped inside the room.

He cursed. He had barely begun and already things had gone badly wrong. How had it got past the guardians, he wondered? What other miscalculations has Asea made? As he crossed the room, he told himself there was no sense in apportioning blame. He checked his surroundings. There were pallets on the floor and small heaps of personal possessions. This looked like servants quarters.

What to do, what to do, he wondered? He already felt as if the Nerghul were only a few steps behind him.

Sardec stood beside Asea as she stared out the window at the Tower.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I was not thinking, I was praying,” she said.

“There’s nothing we can do now. The carters have returned. Our man is inside. All we can do is hope he is not caught.” Sardec thought about how he had once felt about the half-breed and felt slightly ashamed. He had to admit the man was brave. Sardec was not sure he could have gone into the Tower alone to do what the half-breed was doing.

“If he fails,” Asea said. “We fail.”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps Ilmarec is not as powerful as he thinks.”

“You are not a sorcerer, Lieutenant. You cannot feel what is radiating out of that Tower. Ilmarec is powerful if he controls it, perhaps more powerful than any other living being on this planet.”

Looking at the way the green-lit clouds swirled around the peak of the Tower, Sardec was prepared to believe her. When the lightning and thunder started, it seemed merely another manifestation of the Tower’s ancient evil energies.

Sardec let out a long breath. He was going to suggest that they sit down and have something to drink, but he did not. If all they could do now was keep this vigil, it was what they had to do. Anything else would seem like a betrayal of the man they had sent into that terrible place.

Ilmarec lowered himself into the command throne. All was in readiness. The servants were gathered in the great hall. All of his troops were in position. Kathea was confined to her chambers nearby. The great ritual was complete. Tonight he would unleash the greatest weapon this world had seen in millennia.

He took a final look around. The central chamber was empty save for his demonic bodyguard. It would keep watch while he was at his most vulnerable and deal with anybody who managed to get past his guards and into this sacred place.

He allowed himself a momentary surge of triumph. It had taken centuries to master the secrets of the Tower, to open the seals to its hidden heart and awaken the Old One who lay in long-doomed hibernation within its secret vaults. It had taken endless study and sacrifice and the expenditure of a great deal of gold.

Tonight would make it all worthwhile. He would prove to the world that he was the greatest sorcerer of all the Terrarchs, and a power to be feared as much as the Princes of Shadow. He would destroy Azaar’s army the way a man would crush a nest of insects, and all would know who was the true master of the world.

Anything and everything seemed possible. He would free his beloved nation of foreigners. He would drive both the Taloreans and the Sardeans back to their homelands, and after that he would conquer them. Perhaps he would even open the Eye of the Sun and reclaim Al’Terra from the Princes of Shadow. He knew he could do it, if he wished. What lay within the tower made him capable of it.

He smiled. Such pleasant daydreams were getting him nowhere. It was time to test the power of this ancient artefact and put the Old One’s knowledge to good use. It had taken him long enough to obtain it. He smiled, knowing his captive would sense the use he was putting the knowledge it had given him to, and tremble.

He touched the glowing amulet on his chest, and muttered complex sentences in the cold, hissing language of the Serpent Men. His mind opened and sent tendrils of thought drifting out to interlock with the chained intelligence of the Tower. It responded to his alienness and fought him briefly, but he drew upon the power of the talisman, and it recognised its appointed master.

His body seemed far away now. His true form was the Tower. He could feel it like he could feel his own flesh. He touched the cocoon of energy that encased it and it grew thicker as he willed it to. He was aware of the mighty power that burned in its heart, a power which grew ever stronger as he drew upon its energies.

He was a god. It was that simple. He could reach out and destroy the entire town below if he wanted but that was not his purpose. He extended his will and the Tower obeyed. His senses extended to the horizon. He reached out with fingers of force and probed the nearby mountains. Only the curvature of the world’s surface protected Azaar’s army now, and he would deal with that soon enough.

Awake, he told the spirit of the Tower. Give me your strength.

It responded.

Rik stripped off his wet clothes and got into the guard’s uniform. He strapped the sword to his side and stuck a pistol inside his jerkin. He made sure all his concealed weapons were in place. He forced himself to go through all of this quickly and calmly even though he felt certain that the Nerghul was about to lay its cold hand on his shoulder at any moment.

He pulled on his officer’s tricorne hat, forced himself to smile and stepped out into the corridor. The flash of the lightning almost made him wet himself but at least it prepared him for the boom of the thunder that came heartbeats later. He thought about going back over to close the shutters but could not make himself go back in the direction of the creature that hunted him.

Instead he forced himself out into the corridor. Where were all the servants, he wondered? Where were all the guards? What were they about, this night of all nights?

It did not matter too much. He made his body march confidently. He knew he needed to find the ramp up into the Princess’s chambers. Asea had marked them on her map.

With the Nerghul out there he could not help but feel this mission was doomed before he started, but there seemed nothing else to do but keep at it. It seemed preferable to waiting for unclean death to come and claim him.

The Nerghul stood in the rain at the base of the Tower. Its prey had gone up here, it could catch the scent. It could not climb these huge slick walls, and the height of the balcony baffled even its mighty leaps. It would have to find another way in. It slid around the Tower looking for an entrance. It found an archway from which a jewel eyed serpent looked down. It was under observation it knew.

It sensed the power there, the cold malign intelligence that had watched for centuries, an intelligence which could call upon strange powers to aid it. The mansion it had attacked had been guarded by wards of a similar type. It stepped away, took a long run and leapt through the archway. Cold needles of agony lanced through its brain. Its whole body seemed encased in a chill so deep it burned. Had not momentum carried it through the archway, the Nerghul would have been frozen to the spot. The pain would most likely have burst the brain of a normal man, but the Nerghul was not as they. It landed sprawling in the corridor beyond the arch, momentarily stunned by the power that had blasted it.

Two sentries looked at it in astonishment then raised their rifles. The Nerghul attacked.

Rik closed his eyes and visualised the maps he had memorised. He had a long way to go, and only a short time to do it in. It was only a matter of minutes before somebody spotted him and a general alarm was given.