Fire Arrow (23 page)

Breathing hard, Brie leaned her back against the door and gazed around the room. Then she searched its periphery, lifting tapestries, looking behind gilt-framed paintings. There were no windows and no other doors. She found her bioran on a small gilt table and refastened her hair, her hands shaking slightly.

One thing she discovered in her search was an ornate cupboard that was apparently the source of the food and drink Balor had promised to provide. Inside were stacks of brisgeinlike bars, as well as dried fruit and biscuits. There were three large, long-necked carafes of clear water, and another with honey-colored wine. The cupboard's contents would not sustain a person more than several weeks; Balor must have a way to replenish it, Brie thought.

She had no illusions that she could best Balor when he returned for her, either by outright resistance or by trickery. His power was too immense.

She crossed again to the door and leaned down to examine the keyhole. During the early days of her quest to find her father's killers, before she met up with Collun and Talisen, Brie had encountered a wide assortment of fellow wanderers. One of the more interesting had been a thief named Jinn. At the lodging house of a prosperous smuggler, Jinn had taught Brie the finer points of picking a lock.

She would need something long and pointed. Brie's gaze fell on a golden lantern. It had a thin handle. Straightened, the handle could make an excellent lock pick. Aided by a golden fork from the table, Brie pried the handle out of the lantern. Then she took up a heavy, shimmering bookend and hammered the handle into a straight line.

Crossing to the door, Brie stuck the point into the lock and wiggled it into the mechanism. Unfortunately the lock bore no resemblance to the one on which the thief had taught her. But finally, just when she was on the verge of giving up, she gave a last frustrated jiggle and turn, and there was a click. The door silently swung open.

"Thank you, Jinn," she breathed.

But Brie couldn't help thinking it had been too easy. And indeed, when she finally stood before the great arched doorway at the bottom of the bell tower, she knew why. There was no way through this door.

She had gone over every inch of the unyielding stone surface. There was no lock. And though she was hardly an expert in such matters, she felt sure it had been sealed by sorcery.

Brie sank to her knees. The great stone cylinder in which she was trapped pressed down on her. For a moment she felt lost, withered by despair. Bleakly she gazed up at the flickering lanterns. She wondered if, like the food in the golden room, the oil in them would be replenished until Balor returned for her. Or perhaps he would not return for her and this bell tower was to be her tomb. And perhaps indeed that would be a better thing; Brie thought of Balor's talon-hand on the nape of her neck.

She put her hands to the sides of her head. "I must find a way out," she murmured.

Windows. She remembered seeing them from the outside, just a few, arranged randomly along the length of the tower. And there were golden tapestries that could be fashioned into a rope of sorts, to climb down. She would search the rooms, one by one, until she found a window.

And perhaps she might even find her bow and quiver. She suddenly remembered the arrows lying on the gold brocade—all alike. Where was the fire arrow? It had been in her quiver when she left the campsite.

Brie ran up the circular stairway, arriving out of breath at the first landing. She approached the nearest of the three doors, then hesitated, an unreasoning fear taking hold of her.

Trying to subdue the dread, she slowly turned the handle, opened the door, and looked in. It was dark inside. Brie returned to the landing and took a lantern off the wall. Holding it in front of her, she entered the room. It appeared to be empty, barren. The walls were of stone, dripping with moisture. She spied a window. But as she started toward it, something beneath her feet made a cracking, splintering sound. She looked down to see that the stone floor was covered with bones.

For a moment she froze, then resolutely made her way across the grisly carpet. As she approached the window she saw that it was heavily barred with iron. She tugged on one of the bars; it was unmoving, set deeply into the stone.

She made her way back to the door, spying rusty iron chains and manacles trailing from the walls. Shutting the door behind her, she had the fleeting thought that, except for luxurious trappings, there was little difference between this room and her golden prison cell.

Brie opened the second door on the landing, expecting it to be another dungeon. Instead she found a lush greenhouse with large, abundant green plants. The floor was covered with a thick layer of moss, and Brie crossed the spongy surface to the vine-choked wall. The air was rich and damp, and she started to sweat. She became aware of a musty, rotting smell. It reminded her of the stench of the cro-olachan vine, the blood-drinking plant she and Collun had once come across in their travels. She peered at the vines closely. They did not appear to be cro-olachan, but she took great care as she poked and pushed through them to see if there was a window. There was none.

And so Brie went through the rooms of the bell tower, one by one, each one stranger and ranker than the last. There was a room crawling with insects—black, brown, green, yellow, and orange. They covered the floor and walls, a moving buzzing mass. To look for a window, Brie had to brush them off the walls, her hand covered with her tunic. They glanced off her face and body, some flying frantically around her head.

Then she came to a room with honey dripping off its walls; and a room furred with spiderwebs, with one enormous spider hanging up in a corner. It seemed to see her when she opened the door and immediately scurried along the wall toward her. She slammed the door shut. The floor of one room was covered with small dead birds that she had to wade through, their little lifeless talons scratching against the stone floor. There was a room of shadow and fog, and a room lit by hundreds of ever-burning candles.

One room Brie could not enter, so oppressive was the evil that pulsed from inside. Strange whispering sounds emanated from within the room's yellow darkness. She was able to cast only the briefest of glances, then she pulled the door shut with a shaking hand. It felt as though the door resisted, as though someone on the other side pulled against her. Sweat stood out on her brow as she ran up the circular stairway to the next landing and the next door.

In the end she found only four windows, each one barred with thick bands of unmoving iron. They were shuttered on the outside as well, so she had been unable to see out.

She returned to the landing of the golden room. At first she had thought the circular stairway ended there, but then she noticed a narrow slit through which she found another stairway, this one a spiral also, but even narrower. She had to ascend sideways, holding the lantern over her head.

After a short time her head and shoulders emerged into a chill, open space. The belfry, she realized, staring up at a massive brooding bell that hung fifty feet above her. The bell was black—a hard dull black—its surface pitted and scored with antiquity. The belfry was wholly still, not a breath of air stirred in the oppressive space, yet there was a soughing, gibbering malevolence, like a living thing, that beat at Brie's skin and eardrums. It came from the bell, with its wide gaping mouth and the clapper hanging mute inside, a great evil teardrop.

Gazing up at the walls above, where the lantern light cast eerie shadows, Brie could see where there had once been louver openings to let out the sound of the bell tolling, but they had been mortared shut. A metal ladder rose along the stone wall to the top of the bell stock, and a thick length of hemp hung alongside the ladder. The thought of that hulking bell actually ringing filled Brie with an unreasoning terror.

More than anything she wanted to get away from the belfry, but, setting the lantern down on the top step of the stairwell, Brie inched over to the bottom of the ladder. She wasn't sure how sturdy the floor of the belfry was; it was roughly constructed of wood planking and loose stone. She hoisted herself onto the ladder. The noise that was no noise grew stronger; her eardrums ached and her skin felt as though things were crawling on it. She climbed the rungs, the metal cold on her hands. When she reached a place where the openings had been mortared, she scratched at the surface with her fingernails. But it; was as solid as the rock beside it; no bits of soft debris were loosened by her scratching.

Quickly Brie descended the ladder, grabbed the lantern, and slithered down the narrow stairwell as fast as she could. She walked into the golden room and sank down on gold velvet carpeting, rubbing her arms and face until the crawling feeling left her skin.

Brie bowed her head, closing her eyes. She had searched the bell tower from its foundation to the evil top of it. There was no way out.

If only the fire arrow had not been lost to her. Brie could not fathom where it might be. She summoned a picture of the arrow in her mind. She remembered the oddly comforting sensation of it humming against her fingers, and for a moment she could almost feel it. Suddenly the picture changed subtly. She saw her quiver lying in a murky place and, next to it, her bow. Brie gave a start, opening her eyes. The picture faded. But her eyes felt hot and, as had happened before, she could not see clearly. She sat still, puzzled.

Then her stomach rumbled. Thinking back, Brie realized she had not eaten since the evening meal she shared with Hanna. She had lost track of time, but guessed that had been at least a day ago. She thought about the golden cupboard with its store of food, then shook her head imperceptibly. Perhaps it would indeed be better to die of hunger and thirst in this prison tower than to live as...

Her mind veered away from Balor. Instead she thought of Collun and a deep yearning took hold of her, so overpowering all else was obliterated. She conjured up an image of Collun, and, strangely, a faint humming vibrated under the skin of her fingers.

Collun sat by a campfire, his face illuminated by the orange glow of the flames. He stared into the fire and his face looked tired.

He looked so real, close even. Her humming fingers lifted as though to touch him. "Collun," Brie breathed.

Suddenly Collun looked up, startled.

Then the picture was gone and her vision blurred.

Sometime later, when she left the golden room, her vision was back to normal. Standing on the landing, she could feel the hulking weight of the bell above her, like a totem of doom, challenging her with its ancient evil.

The toll of a bell
—a signal, to Hanna or Fara, though what they could do for her, she did not know. She again made her way sideways up the circular stairs. A throbbing, persistent mutter seemed to beat against her as she emerged into the belfry. "At your own peril," it seemed to say. "Pull on the rope and know desolation, despair." Its gaping mouth leered at Brie. She grasped the bottom of the ladder and hoisted herself up.

As she came even with the rope, the throbbing noise in the belfry felt almost like a scream. She put out a hand and grasped the thick hemp. It scratched against her palm, and rotted, ancient bits of it fell away. For a moment she feared the whole thing would disintegrate, but it did not.

She pulled.

The bell swayed, but only an inch or two. She pulled again, harder. It swayed again, farther, but not enough for the clapper to strike the sides.

Trying to lodge her backside into the rungs of the ladder, Brie reached out with her other hand so that both hands grasped the rope. She pulled. Still it wasn't enough. With a muttered curse, she pushed herself off the ladder and dropped down, holding fast to the rotting rope.

As she swung through the air the clapper struck the side. The bell rang. Then the rope snapped and she fell.

Her hands caught at a plank of scaffolding, and she hung there. Hand over hand she made her way toward the ladder.

Meanwhile, the bell continued to toll. And the ringing seemed to gain momentum for, instead of subsiding, the bell tolled louder:
Bong! Bong! Bong!
And the chittering, soughing sound that had been so overwhelming before became a tidal wave, assaulting every nerve of her body.

She reached the ladder and clumsily, desperately slid down it. Then she grabbed the lantern.

Suddenly she noticed that a crack had appeared in the stone wall beside her. Two cracks, then three. And the tower seemed to be swaying. The bell continued to swing violently from side to side.
Bong! Bong! Bong!
The walls of the belfry and the floor beneath her feet shuddered with each
Bong.
Then Brie realized the bell tower was starting to break apart.

Side-slipping down the narrow stairway, she emerged on the landing. Inside the golden room she watched as the golden cupboard toppled over; the carafes broke, spraying water and wine over the golden rug and tapestries. Holding tight to her lantern, Brie plunged down the spiral stairway. Inside the stairway, cracks had begun to appear, and dust sprayed out with each new fissure, clouding the air. Brie's heart drummed as her feet pounded the stone steps. The cracks grew larger, more jagged. Small pieces of rubble littered the steps, and shards of stone pelted her head and shoulders.

She took the steps three at a time. Then, as she leaned into the wall for balance, a whole section fell away, and she tumbled headfirst down the stairs. She landed hard on a landing, stone dust raining down on her. Painfully she pulled herself to her feet. The door nearest her lolled open, its wood splintered. A buzzing, flapping exodus of insects swarmed around her. Screaming, she dived for the stairway.

Broken doors gaped open on all the landings. Once Brie slipped in something viscous and almost collided with the enormous spider; another time she tripped and skidded over bone fragments; she fended off clutching vines and choked on thick, smoky fog.

At last she reached the bottom. She ran to the massive door. Spidery cracks crisscrossed its stone surface, but to her horror the door remained unrelenting, immovable. It would be just her luck, Brie thought, if the whole tower collapsed on top of her, but this door remained standing, permanent until the end of time.