'Truly? Don't you?'
Worry shone in her eyes. 'Are you well, Wort?'
'Oh, yes, Doctor. I am now.' He took a menacing step toward her, leering. 'So, as usual I see it is black wool for me-not the lavender silk you prefer to don for my brother.'
The blood drained from her cheeks, leaving them as chalky as marble. 'Wort, I… I… ' She could not seem to find the right words.
'So, how long have you and Caidin been lovers?I* he hissed accusingly. 'Did it happen after the first time you came to my tower? Or before? Tell me, Doctor. Does the sight of his handsome face fill you with love? Or merely lust?'
Mika took a step away from him. 'Mo, Wort. You don't understand-'
'On the contrary, Doctor, I understand perfectly.' His voice was as cold as stone. 'I understand that I have been an utter, laughable fool. You should be proud of yourself, you know, for you have deceived me completely. I confess, I truly thought you did wish to heal me.'
She shook her head in dull astonishment. 'What are you saying?'
'Come, Doctor, you can give up the role of ingenue. Though you play it well, you need it no longer.' He spat the words. 'I know why you were so anxious to operate on me. Oh, no doubt you have some degree of scientific curiosity. Like a cruel, inquisitive child pulling the wings off a fly, you wanted to see how much you could do to me before I died. But that would only have been an additional benefit to your true purpose.'
A pigeon fluttered down to land on his shoulder. He took it in his gnarled hands, stroking it tenderly. 'I suppose Caidin promised you some reward for your help,' he went on viciously. 'Or perhaps his attention is enough. It does not matter. Either way, you agreed to help him get rid of me. For so long, he has loathed the fact that I exist-a deformed bastard son of his father, the Old Baron. Yet he himself could not kill me outright. There are still a few in the keep who know we are half brothers. If he murdered me, people would be bound to talk. The secret would leak out. He could not bear that disgrace.
'But you, Doctor, gave him a unique opportunity.' Wort's harsh glare stifled her protestations. 'Caidin sent you to convince me that you could heal me through an operation. Only it is an operation I would never have survived, isn't it? Caidin would have exactly what he wanted. And no one would ever blame a good-hearted doctor who attempted to heal a hunchback-and lamentably failed-resulting in the wretch's demise.' He took another menacing step toward her. 'So, Doctor, have I told your story well?'
Her expression was not fear, but terrible sadness. 'Please, Wort.' She reached a hand out toward him. 'I would never hurt you. You must believe that.'
For a moment, Wort almost took her hand. It would have been so sweet to surrender into her arms. What healing balm could have better eased his agony? An image flashed through his mind. He saw that same fine-boned hand running passionately over Caidin's muscular back. Hot as lightning, fury flooded his heart.
'You had better go, Doctor.' His voice was softly threatening.
'But why?' she asked with a gasp of alarm.
'Because I am a monster, my lady. And I will surely kill you if you do not.' Slowly, deliberately, with the terrible strength of his thick fingers, he twisted the neck of the mist-gray pigeon he held in his hand. Its bones popped audibly. Blood sprayed, splattering Mika's pale, lovely face.
At last he saw it, blossoming in' her eyes like a dark flower. Horror. Satisfaction welled up inside him. There was no more wOrry in her expression, no more sorrow, and no more love. There was only pure, sublime horror. At last, like all the others, she too saw him for the monster he surely was. With a wordless cry she turned to flee down the stairwell. Wort's mocking laughter echoed after her.
When she was gone, he scrambled up the ladder into the belfry. All at once the tower's bells began to swing back and forth, rocked by unseen hands, tolling out a tremendous dirge. In exultation Wort stood beneath the Bell of Doom, holding out his arms to catch the rain of bloodstained tokens.
PART III
Fifteen
A murderer stalked the barony of Nartok.
By most accounts, Nartok's treasurer was the first to die. Few were sorrowful to see the merciless tax collector meet his end, but even fewer failed to shiver at the gory details of his demise-crushed to death by a chest heaped with gold. Next to go was the village tanner, a man known to tan the hides of his apprentices as readily as those of the animals whose skins he fashioned into leather. He was found dangling from a rafter in his shop, horror on his bloated face, hanged by the neck with the belt he had used to whip his errant helpers. Some whispered that perhaps the apprentices themselves had turned upon the man. As the days passed and the bodies were heaped higher and higher in the charnel house, such mundane theories were forgotten.
Each killing seemed stranger and more gruesome than the last. A pair of lovers were found in the woods, dark leaves clinging damply to their naked skin, bound together by the thorned vines that had strangled them. In the keep's kitchens, a scullery boy stirred one of the gigantic iron kettles hanging above the hearth only to see the bulging-eyed face of the kitchenwife bob to the surface. The sharp- tongued woman had been boiled alive in her own foul stew. The village scribe, the acerbic Master Demaris, was discovered in his shop one morning, quill pens protruding from each of his eyes. His body was covered with sheaves of parchment, and on each, penned in the dark-rust ink of human blood, was a hideous poem. The one he clutched in his stiff hand was perhaps the worst of them all:
We live out our lives the dreaming dead,
All born to brief waking, to know and dread
The ancient, cruel, voiceless call-
Proclaiming our fate
To lie swaddled again
In the tomb's cold pall.
Eternity breathes dark breath on our face,
Whispering of earth and its damp embrace.
We rise from the soil only to fall
Our souls to reap
Then grind to meal
Doom shall come for us all.
By day, folk huddled together in taverns, stables, and smithies, whispering of the bizarre and grisly deaths that plagued the fiefdom. 'Did you hear about the miller?' The peasants gathered in the common room of the Black Boar shook their heads fearfully, gazing at the man who had spoken. He took a sip from his mug of dark ale and wiped the foam from his bushy mustache.
'His brother found him this morning,' the man went on grimly. 'Ground to bits on his own millstone, he was.' The others shuddered. 'That makes thirteen so far. Thirteen murdered in the last week alone. You know what I think? I think that it's a-' He lowered his voice dramatically. '-a werewolf.'
Another man snorted at this. 'You're wrong, Rory. Everyone knows the killings have to do with the tower on the moor. It's the ghost of the murdered Vistana, it is. The gypsy is building the tower, and he's using the blood of the people he kills to mix the mortar.' Gasps of shock went around the circle. All knew the tales concerning the mysterious tower- how the ring of stones had first appeared on the exact spot where a gypsy man had been robbed and stabbed to death, and how his spirit was said to haunt the accursed pl amp;ce.
