west of the village-the tower whose mysterious presence no one could seem to explain.
Suddenly shadows seemed to swirl about her body, molding it into a new shape. The black werepanther padded swiftly out of the chamber, leaving the dungeon's prisoners to their mad dreams of death.
It was all too easy.
Wort slipped the bloodied lock of cinnamon-colored hair between the pages of the book. Carefully, he set the tome back down on the circular table littered with scrolls, quill pens, and inkpots. Turning, he hobbled across the cluttered chamber that belonged to Lord Inquisitor Sirraun and opened the window. Nimbly, he climbed through.
Outside, dead vines clung to the stone wall. Wort clambered onto the vines. Some distance below him the wall met the sheer edge of the tor. From there it was five hundred feet down to the jagged heap of talus at the base of the crag. Wort was not afraid. The voice had told him he would be safe, and he believed it. Craning his neck, he peered through the window.
A short time later the door opened, and a boy dressed in a brown robe entered. Wort had never seen the boy before, but he recognized him all the same. The lad was Sirraun's assistant-he worked copying books and missives for the lord inquisitor. Wort knew this because the voice had told him. The voice of the bell whispered in his mind more and more each day.
The boy sat at the table and picked up a pen. He dipped it in an inkpot, then opened a book to begin copying. When the young scribe turned the page, he paused. Setting down his pen, he picked up something from between the pages of his book. Frowning, he studied it for a moment. Suddenly his eyes widened. Clutching the object, the boy dashed from the room.
Wort chuckled softly. He climbed down the vines to an open drainpipe. A thin stream of dark water poured from the wide mouth of the pipe. Wort climbed inside and soon waded through foul, knee- deep water. Crimson- eyed rats chittered angrily at the invasion. Following the whispered instructions of a voice only he could hear, Wort made his way through the sewers toward his bell tower. At dawn the next day, as the bloody light of the rising sun dripped down the dark walls of Nartok Keep, the bells rang out, tolling another execution. A head roiled from the chopping block and fell into a gore- stained basket, staring upward with a wide-eyed expression of surprise and terror. Until a moment, when the magical half-moon blade had flashed e' d descended, the head had belonged to the Lord Ш ' Inquisitor Sirraun. Now it belonged to the crows.. — All in the keep had heard the dark story. Sirraun's young scribe had discovered a bloody lock of hair belonging to Caidin's unfortunate lover, the Contessa Sabrinda, in the lord inquisitor's study. In his rage at apparent betrayal, the baron had refused to hear sun's protestations of innocence. Despite Sir- I?' years of service, Caidin had ordered his lord inquisitor clapped in irons and taken to the dungeon to await dawn-and death. Both had arrived on schedule.
High in the spindly bell tower, Wort let the bell ropes slip through his fingers as the last throbbing strains of the dirge washed through him. Everything had happened just as the voice had said it would.
'This is what it feels like to have power, Lisenne,' Wort said softly to the mist-gray pigeon that perched upon his humped shoulder. 'I've only just realized that, my friend, but it is so.' A chuckle rumbled deep in his chest as he hobbled toward one of the belfry's windows. 'Look at them-look at them down there, scurrying about like so many rats. They think they hold their own destinies in their hands. They are fools to believe so. It is I who control their fates. It is I who have the power to shape their lives-and to take those lives away. All of them. Even my brother Caidin.' His eyes fluttered shut, and he drew in a sensuous breath. 'I like this feeling, Lisenne. I like it very much…'
He took the pigeon from his shoulder and tossed it into the air. 'Go, Lisenne, join your companions.' The creature winged away to a roost high in the belfry. 'I must decide who will be next.' While the pigeons cooed in their gentle voices, Wort busied himself with grisly plans.
It was late in the afternoon when a faint voice echoed from far below. 'Hello?'
Wort jerked his head up at the sound of the distant call.
'Are you there, Wort?' Someone was ascending.
'She has come back!' he muttered under his breath with fury. And once again with impossible wonder: 'She has come back!' Swiftly, he half climbed, half leapt into his chamber below the belfry.
'I would not have taken you for a common thief,' he snarled as the violet-eyed doctor stepped from the spiral stairwell into the dingy room. 'Do you often break into people's homes?'
Boldly, she took a step forward. 'I am sorry. I knocked on the door, but you did not answer.'
'Why have you come?' he demanded.
'To apologize,' she said simply.
Those were not the words he had expected. She took advantage of his mute surprise to continue in an earnest voice. 'You were right, you know. When I said I might be able to straighten your back, I wasn't really thinking of what you might want. I was only thinking that I was a doctor, and here before me was an affliction I might be able to cure.' She shook her head fiercely. 'I was wrong. What in truth stood, before me was not an affliction, but a man. By expecting you wished healing, I made the gravest of mistakes. I assumed that there was something wrong with you.' Wort regarded her silently. Then his lips parted in a leering smile. 'A pretty speech, Doctor,' he said in a harsh voice. 'No doubt a wretched hunchback should quiver with joy at being so lucky to hear such sweet words.' He advanced on her. 'Well, I tell you this, Doctor. It is an affliction! A true affliction.'
Spittle flew from his lips.
'You claim to understand me, because you know what it is like to be loathed.' Wort shook a heavy fist. 'You understand nothing, Doctor. You-who have the beauty and grace of an angel- you have the audacity to cry your false tears and tell me that you know what it is like to be scorned. I laugh at you. Do not think for one moment that you in any way like me. Look at me, Doctor!' He beat his shoulder furiously, pounding the misshapen that weighed so heavily upon his stooped shoulders. 'This is loathing. This is hatred. This- this is true suffering!' Wort's raving echoed off the cold walls, then fell into silence.
Mika's eyes burned with anger hot enough to match Wort's. No-it was far hotter, a bonfire to his pitiful, guttering torch. 'How dare you.' Her words were quiet, even. They cut him like a knife. 'How dare you claim to have a monopoly on misery.' She roughly wiped tears from her pale cheeks. 'I tell you this, Wort-it might as well be misery that fills each well in this kingdom rather than water, for sometimes it seems there is no man, no woman, no child who does not drink deeply of sorrow every day. A mother dies in childbirth. Her husband drinks a cup. A farmer is trampled by horses. His family passes the cup around. A nobleman loses his foot to gout. Let his cup be of silver then, though the drink is just as bitter. Disease races like a swarm of rats through the streets of a city-let all its people go to the well again and again, pulling up bucket after bucket of misery until their shoulders ache with the labor. Then let them drink down every drop of sorrow to slake their parched throats.
'You think I don't know true misery? Then reconsider. I drank a full cup from the well when my daughter died of the Crimson Death. I drank a deeper cup when my husband followed her to the grave a month later. Consider every time someone has scorned me for daring to be a doctor another sip I have suffered, and two for every poor soul I have tried to heal and failed. Pour it all into a pool together, and I will give you a lake of grief you would drown in, Wort, and in whose dark depths your body would never be found!'
She fell silent, as if the words had gushed out of her like wine from a broken barrel, and now the barrel was empty. Wort could only stare at her. It felt like someone had plunged a knife in his gut and was even now twisting it with abandon.
Once more the doctor spoke, though this time her voice was quiet, measured, and terribly distant. 'If you think your suffering so much grander than anyone else's, Wort, then I will leave you to savor it.'
Lifting the hem of her dark dress out of the moldy straw, she turned to go. Wort's heart lurched in his chest. Words issued raggedly from his throat. He himself listened in dull amazement, as if someone else were speaking.
'Please-don't go!'
Mika froze. She regarded him solemnly. 'Why?'
'Because…' He licked his lips slowly. Why did he wish her to stay? Why was there such a deep aching in his heart, a feeling that, if she were to disappear into the shadows of the stairwell, he would howl with madness, or lie down on the cold floor and die? 'Because,' he gasped at last, 'because I am lonely, Mika. I am so terribly, terribly lonely.'
Slowly she lifted a hand, reaching toward him. 'I know you are, Wort.' Her voice was as sweet and quavering
