The Tower (20 page)

The sound of the wheels changed to a deep rumble as they moved off the flagstones and onto the wooden bridge spanning the dry moat. It jerked to a halt by the waiting wooden platform, secured at each corner by thick ropes that soared up the side of the mountain and disappeared into the dark of an overhanging cave high above them.

Normally, the unloading would take four men about ten minutes to complete. Today it took the two of them less than five. The amount of food had been drastically cut over the past few weeks, suggesting there were far fewer mouths to feed. The only things they had requested more of – much more – were medical supplies.

The weekly bundle of correspondence was the last thing to be loaded. It was placed into the wooden box built into the corner of the platform before one of the seminarians pulled hard on a thin, hemp rope, causing a bell to sound high in the mountain above.

They watched as the ropes creaked and tightened and the platform started to rise, relieved that there were still arms strong and healthy enough to pull it up.

The platform rose steadily, three hundred feet up into the gloom of the tribute cave where it jerked to a solid stop. Hooded figures wearing surgical masks peeled away from the shadows to unload it, stacking the crates of food in various stone shelves cut into the walls and handing the medical equipment straight to the waiting brown cloaks who took it down into the darkness of the mountain where the distant sounds of suffering could be heard.

Brother Osgood watched from the edge of the cave, fiddling nervously with the straps on his face mask. He had only recently been elevated from the lowest order of monks within the mountain to the brown cloaks of the Administrata, not that the old system of apprenticeship had much bearing since the first case of the blight had struck. He waited until most of the supplies had been unloaded then stole forward, feeling the platform rock beneath his feet as he plucked the correspondence from its box and scurried quickly away again, glad to be away from all the people in the tribute cave.

He moved through the dark corridors, clutching the bundle to his chest, probing the blackness ahead for signs of anyone else coming his way. Since the blight had struck, the Apothecaria had advised everyone to minimize contact with others and movement inside the mountain had been severely restricted.

Osgood passed a padlocked door with a handwritten sign nailed to it saying
C
AVE
R
OBIGO –
B
EWARE
B
LIGHT
.
Similar signs barred routes all through the mountain, remnants of the initial attempt to contain the disease by sealing off different areas as each new case occurred. No one had bothered to take them down, even though they were no longer relevant. There were far too many other things to occupy the monks and everyone knew to ignore them anyway, at least the ones who were still rational.

A low, guttural moan wormed its way out of the darkness and the cotton mask sucked in and out of his mouth as his heart rate rose. Even after a year he had still not got used to the dark of the mountain, and still had nightmares from time to time in the quiet midnight of the dormitory. He would imagine the tunnels closing in on him, or dread creatures pursuing him down the labyrinthine corridors, the sounds of their inhuman grunts getting closer and closer until he woke, breathless and slicked with sweat. And now the nightmares had escaped into this waking world.

He clicked the latch on the heavy wooden door that led into the garden, shielding his eyes in preparation for the blinding daylight about to hit him.

The garden filled a large central portion of the mountain and was surrounded on all sides by high walls of sheer rock, It was the sunken crater of a long-extinct volcano that had bequeathed such rich and fertile soil that it had sustained the men of the mountain for thousands of years, through drought and famine and siege. For so long it had been the living jewel at the heart of the black mountain.

But not any more.

Osgood blinked as his eyes adjusted to the daylight and made his way past vegetable beds filled with the decaying remains of beans and tomato plants, lying black and shrivelled among the sludgy remains of pumpkins that looked like rotting heads. The vines that had covered the rock walls hung in withered curtains and broken branches littered the ground, buried in drifts of brown leaves bearing the black spots that had first heralded the arrival of the contagion. And all around, the air that had once smelled so strongly of earth and loam and life, now carried the bitter tang of wood smoke mixed with something Osgood would not forget for the rest of his days. Through the broken trees he could see the source of the smell as well as the group of monks who presided over it. It was the firestone, piled high with tangled branches through which hungry flames licked, and on top of them – three bodies.

They had started to burn the corpses on the third day of the contagion when they began to run out of places to store them and panic had already started to gnaw at the edges of the ordered life of the mountain. It had been decided that diseased corpses posed too much of an additional danger to health and they had to be either buried or burned. Burning was quicker. The fire had been burning constantly ever since, as the bodies kept on coming.

‘Brother Athanasius!’ Osgood called to the group, coming to rest as far from the heat and stink of the fire as he could manage. ‘I have brought the dispatches.’

A monk turned to look at him, his bald head and face marking him out in the otherwise long-haired and bearded community of men, the pain and trauma of the last week, carved deep into his face.

Athanasius nodded a greeting and stepped forward, holding his hand out for the bundle of dispatches, sensing the novice’s reluctance to come closer. Traditionally the letters could only be seen by the Abbot but the blight had swept through the mountain with no regard for age or rank and most of the senior clerics and heads of the various guilds were now either dead or strapped to beds in one of the many isolation wards set up throughout the mountain. The only ones left of any authority were Father Malachi, the head librarian, Father Thomas, also one of the group by the fire, and Athanasius himself who, as the Abbot’s chamberlain, had now assumed his duties.

He took the bundle and was about to return to the fire when he spotted his name written on the top letter. He tore open the envelope and read the handwritten note inside.

Brother Athanasius,

The disease you told me about when last we spoke has spread. I have it and so do many others. I’m sure many in the Citadel have it too. We must find a cure and stop it spreading further. In order to do this I ask you to allow the sick and their carers into the Citadel. The more patients the doctors can study, the quicker they will be able to find a cure and by bringing the sick into the mountain we can concentrate the infection and contain it. I understand the magnitude of what I am asking but I hope you can help me again, as you once did before – for all our sakes.

Yours,

Gabriel Mann

Athanasius handed the letter to Thomas, his mind buzzing as he waited for him to finish reading it. In the entire history of the Citadel, no one had ever been allowed inside the mountain who had not been strictly vetted and ordained. Even though the circumstances they found themselves in were exceptional in the extreme, there were still those who would rather die than break with tradition. And this would mean bringing women in too.

Thomas finished and looked up, his intelligent eyes registering the shock of what he had just read. ‘What do you think?’ Athanasius prompted.

Thomas stared into the flames now steadily consuming the latest victims of the terrible blight that no one had so far been able to stop. ‘I think we need to talk to Father Malachi,’ he said. ‘We cannot sanction this without him, or the support of those he represents. Unfortunately, I’m fairly certain I know what his response will be.’

Athanasius nodded. Malachi was as traditional and conservative as any in the mountain and the seemingly endless parade of recent calamities that had plagued the Citadel had only made him more rather than less so. He would be a hard man to convince, but the letter in Athanasius’s hand offered the first real glimmer of hope he had encountered in some time and he was not about to let it go.

‘Then we will just have to convince him,’ he said, and smiled for what seemed like the first time in days as he strode away across the blasted garden, heading towards the Great Library at the heart of the mountain.

The Great Library spread like a maze through forty-two chambers of varying sizes, deep in the heart of the mountain. It was one of the greatest treasures of the Citadel, the most valuable and unique collection of books and ancient texts anywhere in the world, gleaned from thousands of years of acquisitions and donations. It was also one of the reasons for the mountain’s millennia-old tradition of isolation and secrecy. There were texts housed in the library’s restricted sections containing knowledge so dangerous that few had ever been allowed to see them, even inside the cloistered and secretive world of the Citadel.

Athanasius approached the entrance, a steel-and-glass door cut into the solid rock of the tunnel that looked like it belonged more in a hi-tech science facility than an ancient monastery. He placed his hand against a scanner set into the wall and a cold blue light swept across it to check and verify his identity.

‘Don’t show him the letter,’ Father Thomas said, arriving breathless at his side. ‘It is an appeal for us to help save lives. Malachi cares little for people. All that matters to him are his precious books.’

‘Agreed,’ Athanasius nodded.

The door into the airlock slid open in a hiss of hydraulics. It was only large enough for one person at a time and Athanasius took the lead, stepping inside and waiting for the outer door to close behind him. A light blinked above a second scanner and a down-draught of air swept over him as impurities and dust were cycled down to filters built into the floor. The library was climate-controlled: a constant sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and a dry, 35 per cent relative humidity to protect all the precious paper, papyrus and vellum from moisture and the attendant damage it could wreak. The light stopped blinking and Athanasius placed his palm on a second scanner that controlled the final door into the library.

Nothing happened.

The blue light that should have crept down his hand did not appear and the door leading into the library remained closed. Athanasius peered through the window set into it but saw only perpetual darkness beyond.

‘Try it again,’ Father Thomas shouted from outside, his voice muffled by the door, his face framed in the window and frowning at the dead scanner as if its failure to do its job was a deliberate act of mutiny. Father Thomas had designed and updated all the security and control systems in the library and took any faults, no matter how small, very personally.

Athanasius placed his hand back on the glass. This time something did happen. The door behind him opened again, allowing him back out into the corridor.

‘Someone’s tampered with the entry system,’ Father Thomas said, looking as if he was about to explode with anger. He glared past Athanasius at the mutinous locking system then focused on something over his shoulder. ‘Malachi,’ he said.

Athanasius turned and saw what had caught his attention. Through the window of the closed door a small orb of light had appeared in the distant dark of the library, growing larger as it wobbled towards them. This was another of Father Thomas’s genius innovations, a movement-sensitive lighting system that followed every visitor and illuminated only their immediate surroundings as they made their way through the library leaving the vast majority of the precious collection in almost permanent darkness. The frequency of light even changed as one progressed further into the collection, turning through soft orange to red when the older and more delicate surfaces and inks were reached.

‘Remember our mission here,’ Athanasius whispered. ‘Do not let your anger overshadow our greater purpose.’

Thomas grunted and fumed quietly as the orb of bobbing light drew closer and revealed the bearish, hunched figure of Father Malachi like a tadpole at the centre of a luminous orb of spawn. He shuffled along, taking his time as he followed the thin filament of guide lights set into the floor to lead people through the maze of the library.

‘Can I assist you?’ he said as he finally reached them, his voice rendered flat and robotic by the intercom that was thankfully still working.

‘What have you done to my entry system?’ Thomas asked, the peevishness in his voice clearly evident.

‘It is not your entry system. It belongs to the library and I have locked it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I do not want just anybody to be able to gain free access here: I’m sure, with everything the way it is in the mountain, you understand that.’

Father Thomas opened his mouth to respond but Athanasius held his hand up to silence him, mindful that they should choose their battles and this was not the one they needed to win. ‘That is why we have come to talk to you,’ he said. Malachi’s eyes darkened behind the thick pebbles of his glasses and his bushy eyebrows beetled above them. ‘We have been contacted by the outside,’ Athanasius continued. ‘They have requested that we help develop a cure for the blight.’

‘They have a cure?’ Malachi took an involuntary step forward, his glasses magnifying the hope in his eyes.

‘No. Not yet. They are working on one, and they would like us to help.’

The shadows on Malachi’s face settled back into guarded suspicion. ‘How?’