Swiftly he strode past Wort, reaching toward the rope that hung down from the bell.
Fear made Wort forget his pain. 'No!' he bellowed, lunging forward. Caidin fell, his fingers brushing the rope. Caidin grunted in pain as he struck the ground. Wort fell on top of him. Grappling each other, the two brothers rolled along the edge of the hole in the center of the chamber's floor. Propelled by Caidin's fleeting touch, the bell rope swung lazily back and forth over the pit.
'Do you delude yourself into thinking that if you kill me you will become baron?' Caidin grunted as his arms strained to pry Wort off of him.
'I don't know, Brother,' Wort hissed. 'Why don't I find out?' He shoved a hand against Caidin's face, pushing him backward over the edge of the precipice.
'I already know what the folk of Nartok will do. They will kill you like the monster you are!' Caidin rolled over, carrying Wort with him, reversing their positions. Now it was he who gritted his teeth, attempting to push Wort over the edge.
'If I am a monster, it is because others have made me so,' Wort shouted. 'But you, Caidin-you are a monster by your own choosing!' — The two men froze. Caidin's harsh laughter echoed coldly off the stone walls. Gazing flatly at his brother, he spoke in a voice that oozed calm, terrible, undeniable logic. 'Do you honestly think that makes any difference whatsoever?'
In that fractured moment, Wort knew Caidin was right. As different as the two brothers appeared, in the end they were the same. A fiend was a fiend. What did it matter how each had become such? All that mattered was what each was. Wort and Caidin.stared at each other for a moment, caught in their violent embrace. Like a pendulum, the bell rope swung slowly across the pit toward the two brothers.
Caidin bared his teeth in a cruel grin. He reached toward the rope. In panic, Wort kicked his feet upward, propelling the baron over him, into the dark hole. Caidin screamed as he dropped-but he did not release his hold of Wort. Wort scrabbled fiercely at the stone, but his fingers found no purchase. He felt himself jerked over the edge by his brother's weight. One of his flailing legs struck the bell rope. The cord wrapped itself around his ankle. The two brothers plummeted down into shadow.
With a snap, the rope tightened around Wort's ankle. Above, a thunderous tone rang out. The Bell of Doom. For a moment, Wort and Caidin dangled precariously in midair, but their weight was too much. The rope broke. They screamed as they plunged into darkness. Then their screams were cut short.
It took Wort several moments to realize that he was alive. Pain pulsated through his entire body. He blinked, finding that he could see. Faint gray light filtered through a narrow opening. He realized that he did not lie on hard stone, but on something warmer, softer. He heard a feeble groan beneath him. It was Caidin.
Agonizingly, Wort dragged himself to his feet. Caidin lay facedown. The baron groaned once more, but he did not move. Wort craned his neck. He could see now why he and Caidin were still alive. The opening through which they had fallen was no more than twenty feet above. They had not fallen all the way to the bottom of the spire, but had instead struck an intermediate landing.
Suddenly Wort heard a faint cry-high, clear, and filled with horror. The sound came through the open mouth of a spiral staircase. Wort's dizzy mind cleared. He recognized the voice.
'Mika,' he choked.
She must have come to the tower! Yet the Bell of Doom had tolled as he and Caidin had fallen, and It was Mika's handkerchief that had been tied to the rope. That meant The cry came again.
'Mika!' Wort shouted it this time. Leaving the motionless form of Caidin behind, he dashed down the stairway. In moments he burst through an arched portal onto the ground floor of the tower.
'Wort!' Mika called out desperately. 'Help me!'
Clad in a tattered gown, terror written across her moon-pale face, Mika backed away from the three smoky apparitions that drifted toward her.
'Get away from her!' Wort thundered, stumbling forward to place himself between the three dark spirits and Mika.
Eerie laughter floated from the dark cowls that concealed the faces of the apparitions. 'You cannot keep us from what is ours, bellringer.'
As though Wort were immaterial, the spirits of the bell passed through him. He gasped as the ethereal substance passed through his flesh, turning his heart to ice. Frozen, he could only watch as the apparitions closed in on the doctor.
Twenty
With a grunt, Caidin pulled himself to his knees. Deep in his chest, he could feel the broken ends of several ribs grating sickeningly against each other with each ragged breath he took. Clenching his teeth against the pain, he staggered to his feet. Wort was gone. The wretched hunchback had fled like the coward he was.
'The bell has been rung, my brother,' Caidin said aloud between gritted teeth. 'You can run from me, but you cannot run from the spirits of the bell.' Laughter rumbled low in his chest. It hurt, but he did not care. A panicked thought occurred to him. Hastily, he checked the pocket of his coat to make certain the Soulstone had not been lost in the fall. His fingers found its reassuringly smooth surface. He smiled, walking stiffly toward the spiral staircase. It was time to finish things once and for all.
A scream echoed up from below. A moment later, an anguished voice bellowed, 'Mika!'
With a rush of alarm, Caidin recognized both voices. Wort was still in the tower-and still alive! Somehow, the doctor was here as well. Was the hunchback assailing her? Swiftly, Caidin drew the knife at his hip-an ornamental blade, but nonetheless sharp and deadly. 'If the spirits of the bell will not kill you, Wort,' he snarled, 'I will do it myself.' Ignoring the grinding noise of his broken ribs, he dashed to the stairwell.
Wort turned with agonizing slowness. It was as if he moved, not through air, but chill mud. The ghostly apparitions had left a paralyzing numbness in his limbs. He could only watch with bulbous eyes as the three dark spirits surrounded the terrified doctor. 'The bell has been rung,' one of the smoky forms intoned in its reverberating voice. 'The price for our blood must be paid,' spoke another. 'Blood for blood,' whispered the last. 'That is the curse.' Shaking her head wordlessly, Mika backed up against a stone wall. There was nowhere to go. The spirits reached out their translucent arms. 'What is this?' a voice cried out. Caidin burst out of the archway of the stairwell, a glittering knife clutched in his hand. 'It is him you are to slay!' Caidin pointed the knife at Wort. 'Not the doctor. She is mine!' 'That is not so.' The spirits' eerie susurration hissed from all directions. 'The token has led us to this one. Her blood belongs to us.' Caidin lunged toward the spirits. But as one the three shadowed cowls of their robes turned toward him, and he froze in midstep. His emerald eyes bulged. He tried to move, but to no avail. 'Fear not. You can have her corpse when we are through.' The spirits turned toward the doctor. A strange calm descended over Mika's face. She braced her shoulders and raised her chin, as if facing a fate she no longer feared. Pressing her eyes shut, she gripped the gold locket at her throat.
'I am coming, my loves,' she murmured. 'Wait for me but a little longer.' The spirits of the bell fell upon her, enfolding her in their darkness. The two brothers could only stare, tormented by their powerlessness. For the last time an image came to Wort of the shining angel floating in the twilight garden of the ancient tapestry. Now night had fallen, and it seemed there was no place in all its darkness for the radiance of angels.
A deafening shriek rent the air. It was a cry like none ever voiced by a living creature, a scream so vast and wounded that it pierced Wort to the quick, stripping away all the layers of his being to expose the naked soul.
Then, like dark tatters of mist blown before the winds of a gale, the three spirits spun away from their victim. Sparks of violet brilliance crackled about their dusky forms. As the humans watched in awe, the apparitions began to swirl wildly in the air above the doctor, as if caught by an invisible cyclone. Shreds of darkness tore away from their robes.
'No!' the spirits screeched. 'It cannot be! Her heart is untainted by the least speck of darkness.'
The cyclone whirled faster. More shreds of shadow ripped free. Their voices blended together to form a keening chorus.
'How can there dwell in this land one whose soul is truly pure? But we cannot harm her. It must be so!'
Their shrieks rose to a stentorian roar, shaking the foundation of the tower. The three onlookers clamped
