Hemlock And The Wizard Tower (Book 1) (9 page)

"
Donnut…let her beeee
aaa
uty deceive yaaaaaaa!
"
boomed the
drunken
voice of the Bust again. 

"Stop it!" cried the similar voice in anger.

A chorus of laughter erupted
again,
at
first sounding much like a raucous Tavern crowd.  But then the
bestial men
joined in, their guttural voices lending a sinister note to the sum of t
he sound of the crowd, like dark
paint
did when
poured into
white:
it discolored
it irrevocably.

Hemlock heard the sound of a gr
eat chain being uncoiled then–
and
then the chain crashed down toward the floor of the room,
sending a shudder through the great Tower itself.

In response, Hemlock dropped into a prone position and c
rawled up slowly
to the edge of the balcony so that she could
peer into the
full depth of the
room.  Since she did not have the luxury of any shadows, she figured that this was her best chance at avoiding detection.

They had the head
of the great sculpture
on the floor of the
large
chamber
, to her left,
where it had been out of
her view
. 
The features of the head were not visible to her; only the back of the hair was visible and it portrayed a generous head of short, curly locks.  A
great hook
at the end of the massive chain
had been dropped onto the crown of the head where a lifting bar had been
welded
on–
looking temporary in its incongruity with
the
masterwork quality of the remainder of the iron sculpture.

Sh
e saw what appeared to be a foreman, a larger beast–man who glowered
over the rest
as he took cues from a Wizard at his side
. 
The Foreman
began to bark out orders
as
teams of
beast–men
made their way quickly up the scaffolding to the top of the head.  Behind them lagged two
especially
large
brutes
whose weight clearly strained the scaffolding.  They were sent up on either side of the head.

Reaching the top, the
brutes
bore the tremendous weight of the hook on their backs
in tandem
with some lifting levers that the
smaller beast–men
manned in teams.  They dragged the great
hook
toward its
place
on the lifting bar,
when the foreman gave his cry to begin. 

Several
wizards
looked on in
their brightly colored
robes, looking attentive
ly at the work being performed
and
often
gesturing with concern
to the Foreman
.  The
brutes
soon
completed their task with a final grunt
as the hook took purchase on the lifting bar
.

At a signal from the F
oreman,
some of
the metallic cylinders
that Hemlock saw in the corner of the chamber
began to glow green
,
and huge white plumes of steam hissed from their upper extremities.

The great chain was tensioned and began to lift the hook. 
The
sculpted
head began to rise and as it did so, it rotated so
that
the features came into view. 
The features depicted
the face of
a perfectly beautiful male
youth,
with a
strong,
chiseled
face,
but
one which had
not yet
reached the
full growth of maturity.  It had a sneering smile on its face which Hemlock immediately thought
to be
quite obscene.

She
asked
herself what she was witnessing here. 
She considered whether this was
some monster
that would soon
be unleashed on the City?

Her mind quickly diverted
from that line of thinking,
at the
behest
of some analytical part of her brain which
had identified
an opportunity.

She was looking out over a sheer drop
of almost fifty yards,
from
a thin balcony that extended out of
an arched doorway. 
Before her, i
t appeared that there was some sort of central walkway that looked like i
t could rotate to her position–
but it was currently rotated toward the opposite side of the room where another exit lay
,
across from her position. 

She hadn’t noticed any controls or
other
means to
rotate
the walkway (nor did she entertain any notions that an action like that could possibly go unnoticed).

What she had subconsciously noted was
that the path of the head on the chain would pass quite near to her position. 
Judging by the sweeping path that the head was taking to reach the torso, i
t
looked like the head
would afford good cover and a way to get across the room
undetected
. 

The
head was hollow and
that
the mouth and nose were hollowed out.  She believed that if the rotation of the head played out
as
she anticipated
,
she would have an opportunity to jump
in
to the
great
mouth and crawl up into the nose before the rotation of the head would expose her to anyone in the chamber.

It’s crazy, but this might be my only chance
,
she
decided
.

The head loomed closer,
and Hemlock was happy to see it
casting a great shado
w on the wall as it proceeded
.
  She hoped that the shadow would help to conceal her jump.

The
arc of the
screeching
, rotating
chain
soon reached her
and the shadow of the
suspended
head covered her position
.
It
somehow managed to make the hallway feel dark despite the fact that it was
still brightly
lit by some mysterious force.

The
great
mouth was
before her then,
facing her just as sh
e had planned, and she jumped–
feeling a bit like a damned soul bein
g drawn into the mouth of some d
ark Overlord
as she did so
.

She landed hard
against the polished iron,
i
ts masterwork smoothness nearly proving
her undoing.  Her feet completely lost their purchase
on the lower lips of the large mouth opening,
and she nearly
fell; she was unsure whether she simply would have fallen
to her death or into some dangling position from which she would have been unavoidably visible to those below.

Fortune was with her at that moment, however
,
as
she managed to grip an inner nostril’s edge, hang by one arm for a moment,
regain the purchase of her feet,
and then draw herself up and into the nose
of the sculpture
.

She noticed that the
impact
of her jump
had caused the head to sway back and forth a little.  She hoped
that
the effect was subtle enough to not warrant notice
,
as the motion of the chain was relatively jerky.

She
also
noticed the
wizards
and the
beast–men
in more detail as she looked down on them through the hollow neck of the head.

Some of the
wizards
seemed scared of the
beast–men
.  These looked frail and
"
bookish
,"
had clean robes, and some even had an appearance of kindness.  But other
wizards
, leaner types in worn robes with red sashes, some balding and many carrying serrated staves
or short swords
, looked upon the
beast–men
with utter contempt
.  T
he
brutes
were deferential to all of the
wizards
.

After a few more moments, t
he
huge
head rotated into a position
near
the torso
and Hemlock
surveyed the jump that she was going to have to make. 
She realized that it was going to be trickier than she had thought
.  She
planned
to wait until the head was nearly joined to the body (she presumed this was the intention of the
wizards–
otherwise she was going to be in a desperate situation). 

Once the head was lowered close,
she
was going to have to slip down and catch the edge of the Torso’s neck, quickly scramble around toward the walkway
, jump down,
and then dart
across the walkway and
into the doorway
that
she had seen from her former vantage point
, which was now across the workshop from her
. 

She knew that i
t was going to be a physically demanding sequence
of moves
.  She felt confident that she could do it
easily if she were fresh and
with a good night’s sleep under her belt
,
b
ut she knew
that
she was getting tired.  She had been through a great deal already this night…

Fortunately, the moment
of action
was upon her before her mind could become too unraveled
by
doubt.  Because the head was rotating,
the wizards had
to pause it for a time above the torso.  This made it relatively easy for one of Hemlock’s skill to pull of
f
the maneuver
s she had planned
.

She felt reasonably sure, as she darted
through the doorway and
into another oddly lit passage, that she had exposed herself to the smallest possible window of detection.  She hoped that it had been small enough.

…

For the second time that night, reptilian
eyes
registered a
n inexplicable
hint of motion.  This time, however, there was
a psychologically
additive effect
created by the
repetition of the stimulus
,
and it made its
way into the consciousness of a
male, humanoid figure with the scaly body
and head of
a lizard.  It had been talking,
as it was wont to do in its
heavily accented manner of speech,
when suddenly its words trailed off into a hiss
.
T
hose
that
it had been speaking to on the balcony of the third floor
of the workshop
did not i
nterject
.  They knew better than that (and one
of their number
bore the
substantial
mental scars
resulting from a prior transgression
to prove it).

"Something is amiss, follow me," spoke the Lizard Man
after a moment
.  He
then walked off purposefully, the others following dutifully in tow, careful to avoid the long
lizard
tail which swept out from under
his
bright yellow w
izard robe.