The Hunger’s Eye
by Wrestlr
2. The Wall
The tavern’s stink and noisy confusion fell away behind the blond youth. He walked bare-chested through the darkness, in only his black trousers and boots, having wriggled out of his tunic when a hand grasped it as he slipped past to make his escape. No matter—he had taken the tunic from a passed-out beggar, and he preferred the feel of the night chill against the skin of his shoulders and back; the coolness reminded him of the mountains and home where, in spite of the boaster’s insults, his tribesmen did not cower in caves but confronted the world under the open skies and survived. He moved with the confident grace of a mountain jaguar, steely muscles shifting under his pale skin in the faint light. He would have liked to spend time testing one or two of those taverners’ mettle in a bed, but he had no coin left for even a cheap room and he had to meet his comrade soon. The shadowed moon—an unclear omen—was nearing the agreed hour in the sky. Well, after tonight, if his comrade was to be believed, they would have plenty of coin and more riches by the morning.
He passed into the part of the Keep reserved for temples and shrines, some devoted not only to the Nine Remaining Gods worshipped here but also to myriad other gods, great and minor, from lands near and far. These worship-places glittered with marble, domes of gold and silver, statutes painted in vivid colors, glittering jewels for eyes. He passed no watchmen, for thieves by an understanding both innate and sensible never came here to practice their art: to rob from a house or business would bring the wrath of the offended citizen and a watchman or two if they cared to bother and hadn’t been sufficiently bribed, but to steal from the temple of a god would incur the relentless righteous indignation of the entire Keep and the deity besides—more trouble than a few pilfered coins and gems were worth.
The youth knew little of the Keep’s various religions and cared for them even less; like all matters of a civilized and long-settled place, the daily affairs here seemed based on complex conventions, the gods themselves held at a distance by rituals that had lost most of their connection to anything divine. His own gods were simpler and more immediate; they were motivated by war or lust, harvests or hunts or tides, things understandable to any man. They sat in their great palaces in the clouds or crouched in dark and fiery places under the mountains, watched the masses of mortal men from afar if they cared to or ignored them completely. But they gave each man at birth a share of their defining essences—their lusts and hungers, their strengths, their speed or slowness to love or anger, the cunning of their fingers—which to the youth seemed all any mortal man should expect of a god. Above all else the youth’s gods prized courage, a wordless and direct thing: to hear the unknown sounds in the night and remain standing beside one’s comrades, ready to face whatever came out of the darkness.
Even the cobblestones were cleaner here. His boots, of good leather and taken a few weeks ago from the body of some traveling merchant who died in the snow of a harsh mountain pass and therefore had no more need of them, made little sound on the street. Ahead was the great outer wall, and beyond that against the night sky and stars stood the Tower of Hungers.
No one seemed to know why it had been named such. He had never seen a Hunger but had heard of them, a monstrous creature, shaped like a man but all emptiness and darkness inside; they were creatures of the darkest, foulest magic, who could enter into a pact with a mortal human who could then draw that dark magic forth and manipulate it; but such pacts were risky and according to the stories often left the mortals as mere shells enslaved to the Hunger’s bidding. The Hungers and their human thralls had warred with the gods for some unknown ambition, but the gods finally prevailed and ended the war when they locked magic away beyond any pact and beyond any expression. Some few mortals born of the old blood might sometimes be able to find enough access on their own to perform a simple trick, and even then they risked the displeasure of the deities, because the gods in their wisdom declared that no man who worshipped them and respected their power should ever again toy with magic or enter into a profane pact to gain more. The youth and his comrade had met and traveled with a party on the road to Harper’s Keep; at night around the fire, one of the party told them a story of Hungers, swearing that he had seen such beasts by the hundreds in a land far to the west, and there the monsters walked openly among men at night and slaked their dark thirsts for sex and life upon them even in public!—Truly a land of corruption and perversion, all would agree! But all men knew that stories told around campfires are just fantastical lies told to shock and scare the hearers. Anthoc put little stock in stories of gods, for every tribe of mankind had its own stories and its own gods, and seldom did they align one to another. At any rate, the youth had seen no Hungers in Harper’s Keep.
In front of him stood the outer wall, bricks and stones whitewashed some years ago but not recently, perhaps the height of two and a half men, enough to keep out most. This wall enclosed first a confusing labyrinth of bushes, just taller than a tall man’s head, then a lower inner wall, and within that a garden of exotic trees and bushes from a dozen lands. From those trees and in the precise center of the garden, the Tower itself rose, tall and straight as a virile phallus. The shaft, built of some type of polished white stone and silver metal embellishments, sparkled like ice under the moon and its attendant stars. By day, in sunlight, the cylinder shone so brightly that none could look at it. By night, it still shone but too modestly to defeat a gazer’s eye. Slim, an impossibly perfect cylinder. That tavern boaster had said it was the height of thirty men, which seemed right. Its sides and the wide rim of pure silver around the top glittered in the starlight, as did the great jewels embedded into the tower. No lights shone from within it—the Tower seemed to have no door or windows, at least none the youth or his comrade had been able to see from outside the garden, as if the Tower was all of one piece, perhaps formed entire of magical means, which seemed foolish, or more likely molded entire by the clever tricks of tradesmen of the stonework craft. Only the gems and silver decorations in its sides sparkled in the night. He hesitated, thinking about the strange dangers said to be within, but he and the comrade he would soon meet had come too far to turn back.
Thick, thorny bushes crowded the Keep side of the base of the outer wall, a further deterrent against climbers. The youth crept close and removed his boots, stashed them behind a distinctive bush for retrieval later, for they were too good to leave behind. He stood alongside the barrier, assessing the irregularities in its bricks and stones. The northern realms were mountainous—windswept, stern, cold—and like most of his people he was skilled at climbing with his fingers and toes, even sheer rock cliffs. The outer wall was high, but he reached, found purchase at the uneven end of a brick, and pulled himself upward, up, up. When he reached the top and could sling an arm over, most of his struggle was done. He swung his body up and over before he could be seen. A glance below to ensure a clear landing, and he dropped into the labyrinth.