tower. The kitchenwife did not know why these actions were to J›e carried out, only that the order had come from Baron Caidin himself years ago.
Only rarely did Wort set foot outside the demesne of his tower, it had been months since the last occasion.
'It is better here with you, my friends,' he said softly to the pale pigeons that drifted down out of the darkness like ghosts to perch upon his hunched shoulder. 'You are not afraid of me. Besides, here we have our books.'
He hobbled to the battered chest next to his mouse-eaten pallet and threw back the lid. Inside were myriad volumes, some bound in oiled leather, others in purple cloth. Gingerly he picked up one of the books, and began to read aloud from its crackling parchment pages.
' 'As the prince journeyed deeper into the greenwood, he came upon a clear silver font, and being thirsty, he knelt to drink. Even as the first drops of cool water touched his lips, the sky darkened, and thunder rent the air. In moments, a dozen rose vines wove themselves about the prince, trapping him in a thorny cage. He tried to break free, but the thorns pierced his flesh, and blood fell upon the roses, changing the blooms from white to crimson.' 4
Wort turned the page, and suddenly a handful of pale red rose petals fell from the book. Laughing, he caught some as they fluttered toward the floor. As quickly as they had come, the petals vanished in a silver flash, leaving only a faint, sweet fragrance to drift upon the air. He read on.
' 'As the prince watched, the font glimmered with magic. Like a mirror reflecting some distant place, the image of a beautiful woman appeared on its surface. 'You have dared to drink from my pool!' the woman spoke in rage. 'Know then that the price for such a drink is death…'''
Slowly, Wort shut the enchanted book and placed it back in the chest. The birds about him cooed expectantly.
'No, I will read no more until tonight, my friends. We will learn what happens to our good prince then.'
Wort had discovered the magical book in one of the keep's many forgotten rooms. Sometimes the stories seemed so real that Wort imagined he was the handsome prince or noble knight who was the hero. That helped him to forget. There were times when the thoughts in Wort's mind seemed more twisted and painful than his deforimed back, but the books quieted such thoughts. Of course, nothing was so good as the bells. Their thunderous music seemed to blast the dark memories right out of his head, until all his senses were flooded by their glorious tolling. No, nothing could make him forget like the bells.
There was a time when Wort had lived in the keep with the rest of the baron's court. That had been before Caidin, when the Old Baron had ruled Nartok, when Wort himself had been only a boy. Even then, servants and nobles alike had regarded him with disgust, muttering charms against the Evil Eye as they passed him. As a boy, Wort had never understood why. Then one day the steward had given him the task of polishing a tarnished silver bowl. When he had cleared away the dark grime, Wort had been so startled to see a hideous face staring back at him that he had dropped the bowl, denting it.
'You are as stupid as you are ugly, Wort!' the steward had berated him, boxing his ears. 'Don't you even recognize your own reflection, boy?'
Wort had always known that he was different than other children, that he had been so from birth. Now he knew that he was not merely different. He was horrible. From that time on, he had done his best to conceal his appearance to avoid troubling others. For a time It seemed to work. But he could not keep his twisted form covered every moment, and as he grew older, those who glimpsed it regarded him with growing fear.
One day, when Wort was trying to help an ashwife clean the hearth in the Grand Hall, his hood had slipped back. When she saw his twisted face, the ashwife had screamed. In her haste to get away she had fallen into the fire and was badly burned. Several servants came to carry the woman away on a makeshift stretcher. Wort would never forget what one of them-a young man whose eyes had been filled with hate-had hissed at him.
'Look what you've done, you monster.'
'I was only trying to help,' Wort had choked pitifully.
After that, the steward had forbidden Wort to assist any of the other servants. In the end, it seemed the only way Wort could truly help people was by leaving them alone. With nothing else to occupy his time, he had taken to exploring the sprawling bulk of the keep, making his way down shadowy corridors and through dusty chambers where none had set foot in centuries.
One day he had stumbled upon an entrance into the abandoned bell tower. The bell ropes had rotted away, and the bells themselves had been covered with filth, but despite the tower's dreariness it became Wort's secret retreat. Here there was no one save the pigeons that roosted in the belfry, and- miraculously-they did not seem to fear him. Here there was the power of the bells. The tower had become his only home, as a boy. Now, in the autumn of his thirty-third year, few remembered the hunchback who had disappeared long ago from the corridors of the keep. It was just as well. Wort knew that it was better to be forgotten than feared.
'But today, I must do a dangerous thing-I must go down into the keep, Celia,' he said to a pigeon now perched upon his wrist, pecking at the crumbs of bread in his cupped palm. 'I must ask Baron Caidin for a new bell. One of old bells has cracked, I fear, and it is causing a dissonance in the minor harmonic.'
The bird seemed almost to nod its head, ruffling its feathers in apparent disdain.
'Ah, yes, I see you heard it as well as I. It simply will not do, will it?' The music of the bells had to be perfect to drive the black thoughts away. Wort had to get a new bell, and soon, lest he be overcome by his twisted memories.
Wort tossed the pigeon into the air and watched it flutter up to the rafters. Wrapping himself in his heavy cloak, he lumbered down the cracked steps of a spiral staircase, then locked the tower's oaken door behind him with a heavy brass key. Lurching, he made his way down a twisting corridor. Only a faint gloom filtered its way in through the ivy-choked windows, illuminating thick strands of cobweb and mold-stained walls. Like many parts of the vast keep, these passageways had fallen into disuse over the last hundred years. The number of people who dwelt in Nartok dwindled with each passing year, as if a dark blight was gradually draining the life from the barony. One could almost smell it in the air, pungent and disconcertingly sweet, like the scent of rotting meat. Nartok was dying. However, it had been dying for centuries, and no doubt it would continue to die its slow death for centuries to come.
In his time Wort had explored all of the chambers that lined the corridor, and he found many forgotten treasures-like the enchanted book-within. Most wondrous of them all was the tapestry. He had discovered it hanging on the wall of a musty storeroom. The weaving was moth-eaten and rotting in places, its images obscured by grime. But in the center of the tapestry, shining through the dark tarnish of uncounted years, Wort spotted an angel. Though he could barely make out the garden in which she floated, the angel herself seemed to glow, as if no amount of dust and dirt could dim the inner light of her timeless beauty. Time and again, Wort had gone to the room to gaze upon the angel, for she seemed so peaceful, so gentle. There was so much love in her purple eyes that sometimes he dared to imagine that there might be enough for him.
Wort shook his head. Those were dangerous thoughts. Mo one could love someone as hideous as he. Pushing the image of the angel out of his mind, he hurried on his errand. Making certain the hood of his thick cloak cast his face in shadow, he stepped through an archway into a torchlit corridor. He had reached an inhabited portion of the keep. Cautiously, he made his way from chamber to chamber.
Despite the decay, Nartok Keep was still the heart of one of the richest fiefdoms in all of Darkon. It was particularly famous for its ruby-colored wines, which sold at exorbitant prices in the great city of Aluk to the north. The barony's vast wealth was ostentatiously displayed in every chamber. Chairs of crushed velvet sat next to tables of glossy wood, laden with silver candelabra and crystal vases. Soot- darkened portraits of long-dead nobles stared down from the walls, their hungry, jealous eyes glaring at the descendants who now possessed what had once been theirs.
Finally Wort reached the gilded doors that led into the Grand Hall. The young page given the task of guarding the portal had fallen asleep in his chair. Wort glided with uncanny silence past the sleeping boy. Carefully, he opened one of the gilded doors just enough to slip through, then pushed it shut behind him.
'.. and the inquisition continues to uncover traitors in your fiefdom, Baron,' a sibilant voice spoke.
Wortquickly ducked into the pool of shadow behind a grotesque marble statue-a dying stag, its neck pierced by a steel arrow. Baron Caidin was in the midst of a meeting. Wort craned his neck to peer through the stag's antlers. Three men stood in the center of the vast, marbled Grand Hall. Beneath their feet was an intricate mosaic
