Tower of Doom

Fourteen

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.

"How can it be her?" Wort whispered in amazement. For centuries this tapestry had hung here. Yet somehow it was her. He reached out and carefully traced a gnarled finger over the angel's white- gowned form. "Mika," he sighed. Carefully, he reached up to lift the tapestry off the hooks that fastened it in place.

A short while later, Wort painstakingly hung the tapestry on the" wall of his chamber high in the bell tower. He stepped back, making certain it was not crooked. For a startled moment he almost thought the diaphanous shift the angel wore was fluttering. A thrill raced through him. Was the angel somehow coming to life? He sighed. It was only a draft blowing through chinks in the stone, stirring the tapestry.

"I am letting my imagination have its way with me, Lisenne," he said as a cloud-gray pigeon fluttered down to land on his outstretched hand. "She does seem very real though, doesn't she? Mika will be. very surprised, I think. Don't you agree?"

The pigeon replied with an amiable coo. Wort tossed the bird into the air, and it winged away to roost in the rafters. Deciding it would be a good idea, to practice his endgame in Castles and Kings in anticipation of the doctor's next visit, he turned to open the trunk by his pallet.

Wort froze, staring. The ancient tapestry was not the only new weaving in his chamber. Stretching across the room's narrow window was a spider web. Drops of moisture clung to the silken strands, glittering like diamond-fire in the light of the westering sun. The weaver of the web still clung to its creation. Above the spider, the perfect spiral of the web was broken by a pattern spelling out three words in pearlescent strands: RING IT, WORT.

He jerked his head up, gazing at the ceiling. He could feel it. The sensation poured from the belfry above like foul water dripping between floorboards. Disapproval.

Shaking, Wort knelt before the ironbound trunk and drew out a small wooden box. He opened the box and took out some tokens. Only one of the objects was stained with blood-the gold coin that had belonged to Nartok's treasurer. The other tokens were as yet untainted. Wort had stolen them over the last week, prowling around the keep and village. There was a belt belonging to the villager's tanner, whom Wort had seen brutally beat a young apprentice for a trivial mistake. There was a hat he had stolen from a drunken highwayman he found passed out in a ditch beside the road. And there were two shoes-a man's and a lady's-which he had pilfered from a pair of adulterous courtiers who had ventured into a grove for a wicked liaison.

There were more tokens besides-rings and bracelets, knives and tools. The objects belonged to peasants, craftsmen, and nobles. Despite their disparate classes, all the people to whom the tokens belonged had one thing in common. Wort had observed each of them to be cruel, or selfish, or licentious, or brutal, or greedy.

A cold gust of wind whistled through the chamber. Wort raised a hand before his face, blinking. Dust, straw, and feathers whirled on the wind. Suddenly the flotsam began clumping together in midair, coalescing into three shapes. In moments, three vague forms outlined in moldering straw and stray feathers floated before Wort. The wind brought a chorus of angry voices to his ears.

Why have you not rung the bell?

Wort shrank away from the sinister forms. "I have not summoned you!" he cried. "How can you be here before me?"

These are but images, nothing more. The voices of the spirits whispered on the wind. Why have you not rung the bell? You have many tokens…

"I'll ring it went I wish," Wort snarled. "Do you hear me? When I wish it. Go back to your bell and wait!"

The wind rose to a howl. We grow weary of waiting!

Wort pressed his hands to his ears, trying to block out the shrill voices. It was no use.

You are afraid, bellringer. Why? Why do you refuse to ring the bell? Tell us!

Shuddering, Wort pointed to the tapestry.

Ah, it is the doctor! the voices on the wind hissed in understanding.

Wort let out an anguished groan, rocking back and forth on his knees. "Why, spirits? Why must she care so much what happens to me? Why could she not have left me alone after I helped her in the village? I could have killed them all by now. I would have the tokens I need to gain my vengeance! But I cannot "

Yes, Wort. You sense the truth. She would condemn you utterly for what you must do to make yourself whole. The voices surged dizzyingly through his brain. That is why you must forget her…

"Forget her?" Wort choked. "How can I forget an angel? How can I forget that she wants to heal me?"

Perhaps she can heal your body, Wort. Only we can heal your soul. In the end, her love means nothing

Wort's heart leapt. "What did you say?" he gasped.

The wind rose to a deafening shriek. Her love means nothing, Wort! Nothing!

"Love?" Wort whispered the word as if speaking it for the first time. His eyes bulged. At last, it all made sense in his tortured brain-the way she had returned to the tower despite his violent outburst, the gentle words, the flowers she brought, her patience in teaching him new games, the hours spent talking in the dappled light of the belfry. Then there was that day in the woods, when she gently touched his shoulder, and then… yes, her soft lips brushing against his cheek. He had been too blind to realize it before. Now it was perfectly clear. He knew what he had to do.

Wort lurched to his knees, shaking his fist at the straw effigies. "Go back to your blasted bell!"

Why resist us, Wort? In the end, you will ring it again.

He pulled the magical silver candle from his pocket. Ignited by his rage, fire flared to life. "I said begone!"

Heed our words, Wort, you will Wort thrust the blazing candle at the three hovering forms. Straw and feathers burst into crimson flame. In moments the three figures were transformed into writhing columns of blazing fire. Turning, Wort slashed at the spider web in the window. Flames licked at the silken strands, consuming them, crisping the fat insect in the center. Cold wind whipped wildly about the chamber-mad, howling- then suddenly died. Dark cinders drifted to the floor-all that remained of the three effigies of the spirits. The silver candle sputtered.

Slowly, Wort picked up the box of tokens. He fingered the myriad objects. Suddenly he heaved the box into the trunk. He did not need them anymore.

"I must go to her, my friends," he whispered to the fluttering pigeons. "I must tell her that I finally understand!"

Wrapping his cloak around his twisted form, Wort dashed from the chamber, pausing only once to glance over his shoulder at the tapestry of the pale angel drifting through the darkened garden.

"I love you, too, Mika," he whispered. Then he vanished into the shadows of the bell tower's stairwell.

Wort found her sooner than he had hoped. He was lumbering through a small, little-used courtyard, making his way toward the keep's gates, when he heard the bright sound of laughter. A moment later the laughter came again, wafting over the top of a high stone wall. He recognized the clear, musical voice. It was Mika.

"What is she doing here at the keep, my friends?" he murmured to himself. Grinning, Wort flung himself against the wall and began pulling himself up its rough surface with powerful arms. If he fell, the hard cobbles below would almost certainly snap his neck. He did not care. Breathing hard, he heaved himself to the top of the wall.

On the opposite side lay the keep's garden. There were no flowers this late in the year, and the trees and hedges were dark and leafless, yet there was a stark beauty about it all the same. Then he saw her-as pale and radiant as the angel in the shacf- owed tapestry. She wore a gown he had never seen before, a flowing concoction of lavender silk that was in utter contrast to the plain dresses she usually favored. She had never looked so beautiful. Wort raised a hand to signal her and opened his mouth to call. Before he could do anything, however, a second figure stepped from behind a statue. Baron Caidin. He held his arms out, and Mika laughed again as she flung herself into his embrace.

Desperately Wort tried to look away. He could not. With dread he watched as Mika's fine-boned hands ran sensually across Caidin's broad back. The baron's green eyes glittered hungrily as he bent down, pressing his lips against hers. She did not resist him. Just the opposite. The golden-haired doctor leaned into Caidin's body-his strong, whole, handsome body-as the two kissed passionately again, and yet again.

At last Wort managed to turn his head. Going limp, he half slid, half fell down the face of the wall, crashing painfully to the paving stones. A hot wave of nausea surged through him. "I should have known," he croaked, his mouth filled with bile. "You've always had everything I can only dream of, my brother. Everything. While I have nothing."

That was not completely true. There was one thing Wort had that Caidin did not. The bell. Lurching to his feet, Wort hobbled across the empty courtyard, toward the looming spire of the bell tower.

When he burst into his high chamber, his cry of rage sent pigeons flapping in›all directions. Wort did not care. He batted the birds viciously out of his path. They were hateful creatures anyway. They cared naught for him-they desired only the bread crumbs he fed them. When he spied the tapestry hanging on the wall, fury ignited in his brain. He grabbed fistfuls of the rotting material. With a terrible rending sound and a cloud of dust, the tapestry tore apart. Turning in disgust, Wort flung open the trunk and snatched up the box of tokens. He clambered up the ladder to the belfry. The cursed bell gleamed in the fading daylight, radiating an aura of gloating.

We knew you would come back, bellringer…

"You were right," Wort snarled. "Her love means nothing. There is only one way I will ever be whole, and that is to have my revenge." He grasped the bell's rope in strong, twisted hands. "And I will have it-now!" The air shook with the thunder of the bell.

Mika knocked again on the stout oaken door at the base of the bell tower, but still there was no answer.

"Perhaps he has gone out somewhere," she murmured. Suddenly from high above came the clarion sounds of a bell. Mika smiled. That was why Wort hadn't heard her knock. He was up in the belfry, with his bells and his pigeons.

"I suppose I shall just have to be rude and let myself in," she decided aloud.

Opening the door, Mika began making her way up the dim shaft of the tower's spiral staircase. She lifted the hem of her dress to keep from stumbling. She had traded the lavender gown Caidin had given her for her usual dress of dark wool. It had been difficult to wrest herself away from the baron. These last days it had felt as if she were caught in a sweet, burning dream. All she could think of were Caidin's brilliant eyes, and the fiery touch of his body. It was wrong-it had to be. Yet she could not help herself. Each time she decided to turn him away, it seemed as if he knew just where to find the wounds of her loneliness, rubbing words of passion into them like salt, until she almost cried out at her need to be held, and touched, and… desired. It was manipulative, and cruel, and so very delicious.

This afternoon, however, she had vowed to slip away from Caidin. She had not seen Wort in several days, and wanted to make certain he was well and to talk more about the operation she planned that would hopefully heal his back. Telling Caidin there was a sick person she needed to see-and indeed this was not entirely untrue-she had managed to convince him to let her go, at least for an hour. She knew that the baron thought his half brother mad and violence-prone, and that Caidin did not want her to visit him. Yet the baron did not seem to know Wort as the gentle-spirited person she did.

"Perhaps one day I can help Caidin see that his brother is truly a good man," Mika whispered. "Perhaps I could even help them become friends." The thought made her smile.

"Hello?" she called as she stepped into the dreary room where Wort made his home. Only the soft warbling of pigeons answered her. Again the ancient stones of the tower thrummed with the deep tolling of a bell. Something about the tone of the bell suddenly made her shiver. Shaking off the premonition, she moved toward the ladder that led to the belfry.

Mika paused. Something she had never seen before caught her eye. A tattered shape hung on one of the chamber's rough stone walls. Curious, she approached the wall. Reaching out, she stroked soft, frayed fabric.

"Why, it's a tapestry," she murmured. The fabric was rotten, and the weaving badly torn, almost shredded. Carefully, she lifted the tatters of cloth, holding them together to see what tableaux they might once have depicted.

A gasp escaped her lips. A serene face gazed back at her with deep violet eyes, the perfect reflection of her own. It was like staring into a dark, dusty mirror. A jagged rip ran right through the visage of the woman, like a livid wound. Mika let the ragged tatters fall. She backed away, clasping both hands to her mouth. She tried to blink away the disturbing image of the pale face-her face-brutally torn in two.

Again a thunder of bells sounded from above. Mika jumped, her heart rattling in her throat. This time the tolling was distinctly ominous. Filled with inexplicable dread, she craned her neck upward and gazed at the trapdoor in the ceiling. Almost without thinking, she moved to the rickety ladder. She ascended slowly, as if reeled in by some unseen force. She pushed the trapdoor open and peered through the crack. What she saw froze her blood.

Wort was pulling one last time on the rope hanging from a bronze bell, a maniacal grin on his twisted face. A patch of air before him began to roil like a miniature storm cloud. Smoky tendrils swirled together, coalescing into three amorphous blobs. Gradually the black blobs took on shape and form. The coils of mist vanished. Three dimly translucent figures hovered before Wort, bobbing slowly up and down like corpses floating on a midnight sea. Mika bit her tongue to keep from screaming.

"Here, take them!" Wort snarled. He thrust a small wooden box out toward the three dusky apparitions. "Take them all, and do your work!"

The three spirits bowed as one. "It will be done, bellringer." Their voices blended into chilling harmony. As the apparitions dissolved into the air, the box in Wort's hands did the same. With a look of hateful satisfaction, he nodded and began to shamble across the floor, heading for the trapdoor.

Fear flooded Mika's brain. Dizzy at what she had ' seen, she let the trapdoor snap shut and backed down the ladder. In her fright she missed her footing. Slipping from the ladder, she tumbled to the rotted straw that covered the hard stone floor. The wind rushed out of her painfully, and she lay paralyzed by pain and terror. Only one thought thrummed through her mind, as deafening as the noise of a bell.

What had Wort done?

As Wort turned away from the bell rope, he heard something in his chamber below-a thump! followed by a soft cry of pain. Rage flared in his chest. Someone had invaded his personal domain. Pulling up the trapdoor by its iron ring, he clambered swiftly as an ape down the ladder. He leapt to the floor and crouched, staring with blazing eyes.

"I see you have come back, Doctor." His voice was low, hoarse, dangerous.

Hastily, Mika scrambled to her feet. "Of course, I have, Wort," she said breathlessly. She made a visiЫе effort to compose herself. "I know it has been some days since I last came, but you know… you know how busy I am sometimes in the village. I came as soon as I could."

Weird laughter bubbled in his chest. "Oh, yes, doctor. I know very well about the things that occupy your time."

A frown cast a shadow across her forehead. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

"Truly? Don't you?"

Worry shone in her eyes. "Are you well, Wort?"

"Oh, yes, Doctor. I am now." He took a menacing step toward her, leering. "So, as usual I see it is black wool for me-not the lavender silk you prefer to don for my brother."

The blood drained from her cheeks, leaving them as chalky as marble. "Wort, I… I… " She could not seem to find the right words.

"So, how long have you and Caidin been lovers?I* he hissed accusingly. "Did it happen after the first time you came to my tower? Or before? Tell me, Doctor. Does the sight of his handsome face fill you with love? Or merely lust?"

Mika took a step away from him. "Mo, Wort. You don't understand-"

"On the contrary, Doctor, I understand perfectly." His voice was as cold as stone. "I understand that I have been an utter, laughable fool. You should be proud of yourself, you know, for you have deceived me completely. I confess, I truly thought you did wish to heal me."

She shook her head in dull astonishment. "What are you saying?"

"Come, Doctor, you can give up the role of ingenue. Though you play it well, you need it no longer." He spat the words. "I know why you were so anxious to operate on me. Oh, no doubt you have some degree of scientific curiosity. Like a cruel, inquisitive child pulling the wings off a fly, you wanted to see how much you could do to me before I died. But that would only have been an additional benefit to your true purpose."

A pigeon fluttered down to land on his shoulder. He took it in his gnarled hands, stroking it tenderly. "I suppose Caidin promised you some reward for your help," he went on viciously. "Or perhaps his attention is enough. It does not matter. Either way, you agreed to help him get rid of me. For so long, he has loathed the fact that I exist-a deformed bastard son of his father, the Old Baron. Yet he himself could not kill me outright. There are still a few in the keep who know we are half brothers. If he murdered me, people would be bound to talk. The secret would leak out. He could not bear that disgrace.

"But you, Doctor, gave him a unique opportunity." Wort's harsh glare stifled her protestations. "Caidin sent you to convince me that you could heal me through an operation. Only it is an operation I would never have survived, isn't it? Caidin would have exactly what he wanted. And no one would ever blame a good-hearted doctor who attempted to heal a hunchback-and lamentably failed-resulting in the wretch's demise." He took another menacing step toward her. "So, Doctor, have I told your story well?"

Her expression was not fear, but terrible sadness. "Please, Wort." She reached a hand out toward him. "I would never hurt you. You must believe that."

For a moment, Wort almost took her hand. It would have been so sweet to surrender into her arms. What healing balm could have better eased his agony? An image flashed through his mind. He saw that same fine-boned hand running passionately over Caidin's muscular back. Hot as lightning, fury flooded his heart.

"You had better go, Doctor." His voice was softly threatening.

"But why?" she asked with a gasp of alarm.

"Because I am a monster, my lady. And I will surely kill you if you do not." Slowly, deliberately, with the terrible strength of his thick fingers, he twisted the neck of the mist-gray pigeon he held in his hand. Its bones popped audibly. Blood sprayed, splattering Mika's pale, lovely face.

At last he saw it, blossoming in" her eyes like a dark flower. Horror. Satisfaction welled up inside him. There was no more wOrry in her expression, no more sorrow, and no more love. There was only pure, sublime horror. At last, like all the others, she too saw him for the monster he surely was. With a wordless cry she turned to flee down the stairwell. Wort's mocking laughter echoed after her.

When she was gone, he scrambled up the ladder into the belfry. All at once the tower's bells began to swing back and forth, rocked by unseen hands, tolling out a tremendous dirge. In exultation Wort stood beneath the Bell of Doom, holding out his arms to catch the rain of bloodstained tokens.