The Hunger’s Eye
by Wrestlr
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The Hunger’s Eye
by Wrestlr
1. The Keep
In the long, dangerous hours after the sun had set and the darkness settled, the narrow cobblestone streets of Harper’s Keep as always belonged to the lowest of the low, the thieves and whores, the murderers and kidnappers. Those brave enough to stagger home through its alleys lined with trash and puddles of excrement, both animal and human, found torches to light the streets were few and far between; watchmen were fewer still, since most had been bought with dirty coins and told to look the other way. Even the otherwise uncaring moon seemed to avert its light from this place.
If a visitor were to approach The Strutting Cock, far from the Keep’s best tavern but not quite its worst, he would hear the noise of drinking flagons and fists being slammed again rough wooden tables before he smelled the stink of spilled ale and sweaty bodies. At the doorway, the near-deafening jumble of conversations and snatches of obscene drinking-songs would make individual voices indecipherable. If a visitor were undeterred and pushed inside, he would find the low-ceilinged hall packed with criminals, lowlifes, and wolves from many far-flung nations: solemn pickpockets, leering kidnappers with knives in their belts and slyness in their hearts, nervous-eyed thieves with twitching fingers, stone-faced wandering mercenaries and deserters from a dozen defeated armies who wore their steel swords openly, and swaggering whores in clothes meant to incite lust.
If a visitor looked closely in the far corner, he would have seen a pale-skinned youth sitting alone and apart, his age perhaps nineteen summers or so and face unlined, his body slim and strongly framed, tight-muscled, blond of hair—which was rare enough itself in these parts to attract attention—but whose sharp eyes and stone-like bearing suggested that to approach him was to invite his hidden and dangerous dagger between one’s ribs. The youth sat and drank slowly, looked and listened. By that part of the evening, his eyes had no doubt thoroughly appraised some of the mercenaries for their orgy potential—this one’s chest, that one’s particularly full crotch, this other’s mouth that would look good pierced by a cock-shaft—but he was there to listen, not orge, and he was listening intently to one tavern patron in particular at the adjoining table.
That patron, an enormous pig of a man, both tall and fat, was well into his cups and boasting loudly to a group of bored mercenaries of his plans to kidnap the daughter of some local noble family. “By the Nine Remaining Gods, I’ll have her across the border before dawn”—he paused to thrust his jowls into a tankard probably more froth than ale—“where her new masters will be waiting to receive her and pay me my two hundred gold. And she is a pretty package to be sure, and worth every coin they will pay for her. Two hundred gold! Can you believe? That’s more than a man would pay me for the secrets to the Tower and for less trouble than I had earning them!” He laughed at his own joke before returning his mouth to his ale.
The boaster did not sense the nearby mercenaries shift nervously, but he did feel the touch on his tunic sleeve and turned his head, already scowling at whatever interruption. He saw the blond youth standing beside him. The youth’s cheap gray tunic and tight black trousers did not disguise the hard and rangy lines of his body, a coiled strength, which moved with a calm efficiency of a skilled fighter. This close, the pale youth’s eyes that seemed brown from a distance were smoldering amber, and the dagger at his waist was sheathed in a leather scabbard whose wear and stains bore witness to much use. The mercenaries eyed him warily, knowing they might have had the edge in muscular strength, but the youth would likely be quicker—and a quick youth skilled with a long dagger would have an advantage over strength in the close-packed room where the mercenaries had no room to draw and swing their longer swords. Too, the blond northern tribes were famed for their fighting arts, and had ways to kill a man with no weapons at all, only their hands or feet, strikes to the throat or kicks, effective and deadly in close quarters like this.
“You talked of the Tower of the Hungers,” said the blond-haired stranger, with an accent. Definitely northern—Perhaps one of the barbarian nations? They produced hair this light, but this youth was taller, sleeker than most of them. “I’ve heard much of this Tower,” continued the youth. “What is its secret? You say you know it?”
The youth’s attitude did not seem threatening, and by now the ale had well bolstered the boaster’s courage. He turned to his audience and swelled with self-importance, a grand sweep of his arm. “The secret of the very Tower of the Hungers itself?” he exclaimed. “Will you listen? This boy from the north, hardly more than a cave-rat, talks as though he aims to steal the treasures from the Tower before I can come for them!” To the youth, the boaster added, “Which secret, boy? The Tower holds many. By the Nine Remaining, any fool knows the Tower contains tributes paid by a dozen nations over nearly a hundred years, treasure enough for a thousand men. The Wizard of the Keep lives there at the very top of the Tower, with the jewel called the Hunger’s Eye, which holds the secret of his magic.“
“I’ve seen the Eye with my own eyes, boy,” one of the mercenaries added, voice even and slow but not friendly, a warning. “I was there at the Battle of Korra Keep, when the Wizard held it aloft. Large as a man’s head it was, and glowing from the power inside. The Wizard held it to the skies and called out a spell that sent forth lightning that destroyed the wall of the Keep and killed most of the army defending it too, in less time than my telling of it. You would do well not to bring yourself to the Wizard’s attention.”
The youth considered what he had heard and half-nodded. He said, “I have seen this Tower myself, here in Harper’s Keep. It rises from a broad garden surrounded by a high wall. The outside wall looks easy enough to climb, and I saw no guards. Why has someone not already stolen this jewel and looted the treasures of the Tower?”
The boaster stared open-mouthed at the youth’s simplicity, then roared a derisive laugh, and after a moment the listening mercenaries joined him. “Hear this boy!” the boaster bellowed. “He would simply stroll into the Tower to steal the treasure from the Wizard!—Hear him, everyone! I suppose, boy, you are some sort of northern tribesman whose people still live in caves and do not believe in the stories of the Wizard? Then, by the Nine Remaining, lend me your ear and I will teach you a bit of wisdom.” The boaster pointed his ale mug at the youth. “Here in Harper’s Keep are more bold thieves than anywhere else in the world. If any mere mortal man could have entered the Tower and stolen the gem kept somewhere inside, it would have been taken long ago. Even I who have learned its secrets know not to approach this lightly. You think climbing the wall is a simple matter? The wall is not there to keep thieves out but to keep the dire protectors of the place inside. In the watch-chambers, four of them just inside the walls and ringing the Tower are armed soldiers; they guard the garden and the outside of the Tower during the day. But at night when thieves are likely to be about their mischief?—You’ve seen no guards in the gardens at night because the Wizard needs no human guards there. Dark things patrol the inner garden around the Tower at night. And even if you were to reach the Tower itself and find its hidden door, even if you knew the secret words to open its locks, you would encounter even darker things waiting for you within. That’s the least of the secrets of the Tower, boy, and I give you that one free for the telling.”
“But,” considered the youth, “if a determined man could pass through the gardens, why could he not climb the Tower and enter from the upper part of it? Surely coming into the Tower from above would avoid the defenders awaiting those who would try to break in from the ground?”
Again for a moment the boaster gaped at him, then shouted, “Listen to this boy! The Tower is taller than thirty men and has rounded sides slicker than polished glass! This boy is no cave-rat!—He is a crow who would fly above the dangers and alight on the jeweled rim at the very top to steal its trinkets!”
The youth glared about, embarrassed by mocking laughter of the growing audience attracted by the boaster’s words.
“Come, boy,” shouted the boaster with exaggerated sarcasm, relishing the attention and working up the crowd, “and enlighten us ignorant men, who have only been thieves since years before you dropped from your mother’s cunt—tell us how you would steal the gem!“
Annoyance tightened the youth’s voice. “When desire is bound to even one man’s courage, a way can be found.”
The drunken boaster seemed to take this as a personal insult; he flushed red with fury and bellowed, “You dare tell us our business and call us cowards as well? You think we lack courage? By the Nine Remaining, boy, go back to the caves where your tribesmen cower in the cold!—Get out of my sight before I decide to run you through with my blade!” He pushed the youth hard.
“Do not lay hands on me,” replied the youth, and he returned the push with an open-palmed strike that knocked the boaster back against the rude-hewn table.
Ale spilled across the table, and the boaster roared his rage, clumsily tugging forth his short sword. Another bellow: “I’ll part your fool head from your neck for that!”
Steel flashed as blades were drawn in the crowded space, and the throng shoved themselves rapidly back out of the way, causing the crashes of upset benches, the pounding rush of feet and limbs, shouts, oaths of people stumbling over one another. When the crowd paused enough to make sense of the dimly lit room, the gray-and-black-clad blond youth had disappeared during the confusion.