2 – The Tower Beckons

As the golden light of dawn rippled out across the endless rose stained horizon, and over the sprawling city of Qaiqala, Peregrine and Blade were well on their way, leaving the city behind them. Qaiqala seemed a city afloat upon shimmering waters where, in distant memory, had once extended rolling plains at the convergence of the twin rivers, swift Shalahir and turgid Far’hadal, beneath the shadow of a monolithic red stone mesa that dominated the plains. Now those heights were crowned with the extravagant Red Palace of the Sultan, with its gilded spires and towers, and fluttering pennons, while across the walls of the mesa there marched a long parade of history, the carved figures of the rulers of the city, brought to life with gold and bright paints. Spread beneath it there sat the expansive city, of sculpted waterways and canals and harbours, and island wards thick with buildings and gardens that were woven together with delicate bridges.

The road that the pair traversed ran alongside the Far’hadal, the river flowing slow and broad and muddy. Heavy laden barges slid by, dragged by teams of oxen that plodded methodically along the banks of the river, while river craft were propelled by the steady dipping of oars handled by slaves. Patchwork farmlands spread outwards from the city, interspersed by small copses of trees, rich and fertile lands fed by the waters of the rivers, enough, and more, to supply the needs of the most populous city of the known lands.

Peregrine walked the road with her easy, tireless stride, one that could eat up the miles, clad now in a shirt of chain and hardened leather. Strapped to her hip there sat a short sword, while a heavier broadsword had been slung across her back. Blade wore his elegant cerulean shirt, but to it had been added a flamboyant baldric from which hung a slender rapier.

Much traffic moved along the road beside the river; merchants and farmers, travellers and priests, mercenary guards and nobles and more besides, headed to and from the great city that dominated the plains, and the nations beyond. As the day wore on, from early morning into the late, the flow of people and beasts of burden grew yet heavier.

When the sun had reached its zenith, and the lands beneath stifled under the breezeless heat of the day, they came at last upon an insignificant village that sat by the cooling waters of the river, and there they halted. Lower Achazi, Blade named it, just one of the many that spread throughout the farmlands about Qaiqala.

A small wooden dock jutted out into the brown waters of the Far’hadal, a few minor boats tied up at it. About the dock had been built a cluster of wooden huts, interspersed nearer the river’s edge by studier ones constructed of mud bricks. It differed little to any other village that they had trekked through during the day.

Southwards of the village there rose a jumbled snarl of hills, much overrun with wild, entangling trees, near to the only break in the monotony of the plains that they had seen all morning.

“It is up there that we shall find the Tower,” Blade told Peregrine, his sleepy eyes gazing towards the overgrown hills.

A trail led out from the village, a trail that they followed, striking south towards the hills, a place where jagged ridges jutted forth at impossible angles and where tumbled boulders were strewn thick around, standing stark and solitary in the fields beneath the hills, some as large as houses. The hills were like none that Peregrine had seen before, she who had been born and raised in hill country herself. They followed no rhyme or reason, and the further the pair travelled the rough, winding path through the shattered landscape, the more sense Peregrine got that all that stood around her had been the result of some immense impact that had ruptured the ground.

The trees that grew in the hulls were ancient things, much gnarled and twisted by age, their branches entwined together so long ago that beneath their canopy was naught but gloomy silence, seldom disturbed by sound or movement. Even birds and insects appeared to avoid the woods, for not a sound of them could be heard. The nature of the place weighed heavily upon the thoughts of any who dared step into it, enough to unnerve those who trode the trail. A sense of nameless dread crept across them, a tiny voice plaguing the back of their minds that whispered to them to turn back and run, to flee the hills.

“There is power at work here,” Blade murmured, reluctant to raise his voice any further than that, “One that has seeped into the very trees and the ground, designed to spread doubt among those who deign to enter these hills.”

Peregrine grunted and pressed on, forcing aside the fears that had crept into even her stalwart heart. Few there were that would have had the strength of purpose, and of will, to press on in the face of the fear that enshrouded the hills. With wary steps, senses ever alert for threat, they crept forward, stalking the path, fingering the hilts of their weapons as if for reassurance. Then, stumbling down a slope through the trees, they found of a sudden that the forest opened out before them, into a wide bowl that lay at the heart of the hills, the source, or so Peregrine felt by the manner in which the hills rippled out from it, of the impact in the far past that had so shaped the surrounds.

Within the bowl there lingered on a village, long since abandoned to the vagaries of the elements and the wild. Clinging vines enshrouded the buildings, winding through empty doorways and windows, or climbing up silent pillars and statues. Trees grew from within, crowning out through roofless abodes.

On the far side of the village from where the trail emerged looking out over it, at the heart of the bowl, there rose a tower of grey stone, yet it, unlike the village, showed no signs of wear, either from age or weather, and nor did even the vines mar its smooth surface. The clinging creepers did, along with heavy moss, encase the wall that ringed the tower and the grounds within though.

“What is this place?” Peregrine inquired, eyeing off the village and the tower with wary caution, her carriage like unto that of a cornered tigress, all coiled fury ready to explode into action at but a moment’s notice.

“This is Achazi,” Blade explained, straightening the ruffles at the cuffs of his shirt. “In centuries past, or so the tales say, those who served the master of the tower lived here. The full story of what transpired to see it abandoned is one I am not familiar with, though what I do know tells of a fateful encounter between the master of the tower and one who sought dominion over it. Suffice to say that the outcome is as we see before us, of the village and the tower both being long abandoned.

Peregrine responded with a soft grunt, her amber eyes narrowing as they searched out for any hidden dangers. “Were you to but clear the growth from around the tower, it would appear as if it were built just yesterday.”

They picked their way down from the hills and through the village that Blade had named Achazi, headed towards the tower, following along a moss encrusted street. In places it rippled upwards where trees had forced their way through the pavers. Empty, gaping buildings of silent stone rose around them, and at intervals statues still stood, so shrouded in moss and growth that their features could no longer be made out. At the centre of the village sat an old fountain, long centuries having passed since it last flowed. Water collected in the bowl, foetid and dank, with skeins of slime drifting across its surface, refreshed only when the rains fell.

The tower loomed larger, and as they left the village behind, they came at last to the thick walls that surrounded it and its grounds, lost beneath a verdant blanket of vines and moss that clung thickly to it. Through the walls the paved street led, beneath an arching entrance way. Where once gates had barred the way, now only a veil of swaying vines hung.

Peregrine reached over her shoulder and drew her broadsword, using it to push aside the vines, peering through as best she could. Beyond there lay a tunnel that led through the walls and into the grounds, cool and damp, with water slowly dripping from the arched roof, or flowing down walls encrusted with slime.

With silent step she slid on through the vines and down the tunnel, her every instinct like that of a wolf, ready for fight or flight at but a moment.

The gardens that had once existed within the walls, and had graced the tower with its name, had long since succumbed to the ravages of time, all obscured by the dense foliage that had overrun it thick and wild before them, a dense and all but impenetrable wall of growth. No paths could be seen running to the tower through it. Peregrine took her sword and slowly began to cut a way through it, slicing apart vines and branches both.

“It has been some while since last any set foot here,” Blade observed, following close behind Peregrine along the tight confines of the path she was hacking through the primordial growth.

Peregrine paused in the midst of one swing, staring hard at the ground. After a moment, using the tip of her sword, she prodded at an object that lay on the ground before her. Blade peered by her to see what it was that had caught her attention. In the dense grass, barely able to be seen, he could just make out a yellow sheen; bones. The skeleton of a man, dead for long years, lay scattered there, a sword reduced to mere rust still gripped in a bony hand. Entwined through his bones, grass and growth drew the skeleton to the earth and bound it close.

“One of those that came before us to explore this place,” Peregrine noted in a soft voice.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Blade agreed. “It would be best to proceed with care.”

Peregrine resumed her push forward, hacking once more into the growth. “I am always wary; more so in a place like this. There is an unnatural feel to the air here, one that sets my teeth at edge. Aye, and it is more so than just that. There should be birds aplenty, yet not a song have we heard since we arrived, nor winged flight spotted in the air above. No unhallowed ground of silent crypt that I have stepped within has felt as it does here. It is as if all is frozen, a moment in time waiting to be awakened. There is not even a breeze stirring when all senses says that there should be.”

In answer to the questions raised, Blade had no answers to provide, yet he too could feel it, and more so than the woman of the wild hills. Hers was a primitive, almost primal culture; his was of the cities, and more, of one who had delved into the Mysteries. There was a sense of that there, a lingering touch, its true nature beyond his grasp, and yet more apparent because of that. It had soaked the land, permeating all with its presence.

More bodies they came across as they forced their passage through the tangled, verdant bloom, of skeletal forms grasping an array of rusted weapons, and even some in the remains of long decayed armour, withered by the long march of time. Whether they had fallen in some great battle in distant memory, or one by one as the years had flowed on was not one that they could fathom an answer for.

The closer they drew to the tower, the vaster that it loomed above, formidable and imposing, beyond the scale of all but a few of the highest towers in Qaiqala. Its immense construct was perfectly smooth, the grey stone blocks that had gone into the forming of it all but blending one into the other so seamlessly that the blade of a knife could not have slipped between them, and yet for all of its age, it was as if it had just been finished in its construction.

High above, ledges jutted out from it, balconies fed by doorways, while at its base, when at last they emerged from the wild growth, they came upon a set of stairs that led up into a doorway set into the wall. Upon those stairs were the fallen forms of a pair of skeletons. Within the doorway there stood a solid oak door, untouched by age.

“There is enchantment at work here, for the tower to be as it is,” Peregrine noted in the voice of one who was wary about such matters, even if her companion dabbled in such things; wary, yet not afraid.

“It lies thick about,” Blade confirmed, “Fair weeping from the walls.”

He stepped forward to begin the climb up the stairs to the door. Peregrine moved even before he had set his foot upon the first step, her keen senses alert to the slightest disturbance. With reflexes like unto those of a coiled snake, she roughly grabbed a hold of him and flung the both of them clear, the pair slamming to the ground just as a jet of molten white flame erupted from the step, a scorching burst that would have devoured Blade in its hellish embrace but for Peregrine’s lightning reflexes.

Blade slowly picked himself up off the ground after the flames died away, taking a moment to dust crushed grass and dirt from his silken shirt. “Most diabolic,” he stated calmly, if tinged with a certain respectful admiration. “That is the mark of one who has long since mastered the Mysteries, and more than mastered.”

Peregrine tapped at the step with her sword. No response came to her probing, the magic that had been contained within it now spent, or lying dormant. “If it had been triggered previous, as these fallen skeletons would indicate, how then did it come to be ready for us?” she asked.

“It could be that it required a certain amount of time to recharge,” Blade theorised. “Whatever the case may be, the way is clear for us at the moment. We should take advantage of that fact.”

Peregrine began to make her way up the stairs, slowly, step by cautious step, each coming to rest with precise care, the very fibre of her being alert for hidden danger with the innate wariness of her untamed heritage. No traps were sprung, nor threats perceived by the time she reached the door. There she waited for Blade to follow her up.

The tall man knelt down before the foreboding portal once he reached the top, the wood of the door blackened and as hard as iron. He swept his hand across the surface of it, scant fractions of an inch above the smooth worm surface. A soft whistle escaped his lips, querying in nature. From his hand a subtle radiance rippled forth, passing across the surface of the door; then it was gone.

“It would appear to be clear of trap or device,” he announced. Setting down the pack that he carried, from it he removed a rolled up canvas bundle. Opening the bundle, he extracted a set of lock picks, and with them commenced work upon the solid lock that secured the door. A click after a time announced that which he wished to hear. Stowing his gear, he stood again.

“The way is clear,” he announced. “Let us see what this tower holds.”

On to Chapter Three – Guards and Wards