***
The tower was a broken old thing at the end of the peninsula. The Necromancer cursed as he unhooked his filthy robes from the thorn bushes that grew profusely around it. It had taken him weeks of travel to get there. If it hadn’t been for his spirit-familiar taking possession of the tiny desert birds and flying their bodies to him to be eaten, he would have died in the barren waste.
He regarded the building sceptically. Was this really the storehouse of the relics that the Jester had promised him? Was this another trick? The crumbling edifice had four big buttresses propping it up, and it looked as though it needed it. Hopefully it would not collapse when he made it inside.
He climbed the long staircase to the door carefully. At the top there was a weathered door, and the scattered remains of at least three people before it, gnawed to fragments by whatever scavengers lived in this desolate place. He probed cautiously with his mage-tuned senses, and he could feel the pressure of an enchantment laid upon the door. He rubbed his hands, and prepared himself to unlock whatever ward was laid upon it.
Several hours passed. Three interlocked dweomers had been upon that door, one a trigger-spell, another crafted to stun the toucher, and the third crafted to electrocute the unwary. He smirked. He had disabled them all, proving yet again his superiority to whatever rabble he was likely to run into. He stretched his back, and got ready to enter.
There was still something about the tower that bothered him, but he could not put his finger on it. The door swung open easily. The Necromancer paused at the threshold. There seemed to be a high keening in the air. Some dark intuition screamed at him not to enter. But why not? He laughed. There was nothing that was his equal in this land, he had even overcome Turgath, the Lion of Krangar, the legendary bane of all things evil in his land.
Overcome with confidence, he swaggered into the Tower.
There was a long staircase up within a bare entrance chamber, vanishing into darkness high up. He took it, and hundreds of stairs later he reached a landing with a closed door. Panting slightly (it did not seem nearly so high from the outside) he opened the door.
The chamber beyond was richly appointed, and lined with shelves filled with countless glass jars. Retorts, beakers, decanters. An alchemists laboratory. Excitement grew within him. There was everything in here that he could desire. Labels spoke of rare and powerful ingredients. More rooms opened up from other doors. An armoury, filled with the tools of the warrior’s trade. A library, filled with arcane books that he had never read. That keening sound was louder. Like a buzzing. He shook his head. It wasn’t a sound, it was as though it was in his head. Only one room left. If there was danger at the top of the tower, it would soon discover who was really dangerous.
At the top was a bare room filled with light, with a plinth in the centre. On the plinth rested a book, bound in rich red gold and studded with jewels. He undid the clasp, and opened it. It was a spellbook, and as he thumbed through it he saw dozens – nay, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of incantations that he never knew even existed. Surely, here was the chance to find something inside to make him live forever!
Lord Harlequin had told the truth, then.
The buzzing had become a high pitched note. There was something wrong about this place. He picked up the book, and made his way out. He would investigate this treasure outside, and make further plans there.
The staircase vanished into darkness below him and he balanced himself carefully, since there was no rail. It went down and down. After about a thousand steps, he stopped, with a growing realisation that this place was powerfully enchanted. A twist of space – or something – was rendering the staircase infinite. But, he was a mage, and he could deal with these things.
It was when he began to invoke a spell of unmaking that he began to realise the magnitude of his woes. The magic he was trying to undo kept re-iterating itself, as though it was being regenerated, or re-cast continually. He’d never seen this before. He decided to put his shoulder into it, magically speaking, and began with a greater ritual to blast away the offending enchantment.
That’s when the fear set in. The spell he was crafting was countered, dismantled, blown away like chaff in the wind. The work of an extraordinarily powerful spellcaster, yet he saw nobody.
“Silith evor nat!” cried the Necromancer, casting a spell of revelation. It would instantly force anything rendered invisible by sorcery to reveal itself. Nothing appeared - yet there had to be something there. For what had countered his spell? He started again to cast the spell of unmaking, and stopped just before the critical stage, and suddenly extended his senses as hard as he could. It was an advanced duelling trick, and he had used it many times to make his opponent miscast against a nonexistent spell, while getting a good idea of the arcane prowess of his rival.
His antagonist was pure, formless power, all around him, permeating the very building itself.
Icy fear doused his insides. Legends had been handed down through the centuries about the archmages that had once lived in this land. Among their supposed feats was the weaving of meta-magics, of magics that could manipulate sorcerous energies themselves. The very greatest of these metamagics were self-aware … living sorceries, possessing the intellect of a great mage, but living forever. He had always scoffed at these fanciful tales.
He scoffed no longer.
In the weeks to come, he would come to realise that he had been tricked after all by Lord Harlequin. Sending him to Turgath had merely been a bluff, something to throw him off his guard, to make him overconfident and reckless. To make him enter the Tower. The Jester had judged his character perfectly, and had used it against him.
The living sorcery in the tower did not allow him to leave. It smothered his attempts to reach out magically beyond the tower, outclassing him in every possible way. It rebuffed his attacks upon the structure itself. It was beyond anything he had met. It was infused with what mages called “colour”, that being an alignment with either good or evil. Most sorcery was neutral, but coloured sorcery was particularly effective against its opposite, and ineffective against its like. The colour of this living sorcery was white – blinding white. His own malice and ferocity and evil … what made him, him, was turned against him.
The living sorcery seemed to be tasked with keeping this place untouched by time or damage. He could make himself at home, but he could not leave. His familiar could, probably because it had the dim colourless instincts of a wild animal, pass in and out, but it lacked the intellect to do anything worthwhile.
But Lord Harlequin had not lied. He did find, within the great gold spellbook, formulae to prolong his life indefinitely. To craft a mighty staff, and to infuse his body with unnatural vigour. He had his power, his victory, his weapons. He had eternity … in the Tower.
***
The magic-infused waters of the spiral well lay still, under the desert sky, for weeks. One day, when desert nomads happened to visit it, watering their thin horses, the waters stirred. A huge animal head burst out from it, gasping for air. The beast was a giant lion, its eyes burnt blind, and its pelt scored with scars. It lived. Just before the nomads ran away screaming in terror, they saw that the strange scars on it formed the runic word … ‘Turgath’. That day the legend of the Lion of the wastes, Turgath, was born, and people said that if one ventured with evil heart into that desert, death was sure to follow. And so it was that the old warrior finally gained his wish.
***
Chaos and conflict had been seeded, and a new great drama had just begun.
Somewhere in nothingness, in dreams, Lord Harlequin smiled.
The End.
***
This story is a prologue to The Man from the Tower, a much longer work available from major e-book retailers. It is the first in what will be a three book epic fantasy series called “Tergin’s Tale”. Very likely the next books will also have short stories like this one given away as I develop the characters and their backgrounds.
&n
bsp; If you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it, you may want to head over to my blog at https://brunoccstella.blogspot.com/ where additional short stories are available for download, free of charge.
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