Sun Dog Howled at midnight, preferring to sup at the epitome of darkness than the vagaries of between times, he offered his first challenge to the million stars and the single bright moon. At his feet a great bluff fell forward, towering above an ancient stone bridge spanning black waters, and he shifted his gaze. His second Howl was aimed there, a calling out of earth and stone and depthless sea. Turning away from all things, again he Howled, three times in all; the last in defiance of night itself. For he was the Dog of the Sun.
Below the rising cliff three figures paused along the bridging span, sharp spikes of fear pounding from their hindbrains and shivering down their spines, pulsing like ancientrial drums through their bones. The reaction was instinctual, visceral, and physically painful as it vibrated through every inch of their bodies, from the top of their ringing skulls to the ends of their clenched fingers and tensed toes. One, a massive man called GraveHead, found himself growling out his own response to the call but kept it contained to his own cavernous chest. It would not do to alert the TollKeepers.
“Doren, what say you?”
“Not a wolf – bigger.”
“Keep it tight.”
GraveHead in the lead, the three moved forward as a unity, hands careful to hold weapons and packs firm to retard the slap and clank of equipment against mail and boiled leather. Humans were not allowed to cross the bridge and these three knew well the consequences of discovery. Merin, the female in the group, was the only one to have crossed before, but GraveHead still took the lead. For the first time since she joined the group, his chauvinist views were working her favor and she ceded the place with relief bordering upon gratefulness.
The howls had shattered something in the night, waking the creaks and groans of the bridge as the dark waters swirled and lapped, patiently eroding what man once built. The cry of a sea bird rose and fell, impossible to locate in the darkness and the echoing distortion of the waters and the mist. The City, as they entered it, moaned as if cognizant of their trespass, heaving its breath through the abandoned streets, throwing leaves and debris into the faces of the intruding party. A black cat with white paws watched them as they pushed through the winds, not a hair out of place as she jumped to the sill of an old guardhouse.
Merin caught the motion and pointed out the feline figure as it peered down at them in the moonlight.
“Cat,” Doren supplied unhelpfully.
“Ferals all over in here,” Merin pointed out.
“Rat control,” Doren again.
“Fine! Merin – which way?”
“To the left, keep to the water and then up the hill when we see the tower.”
“And it reaches the moon?”
“They say so.”
“Better.”
Shady Cat watched them leave but was not content with the dismissal, following as she might and wants, no longer visible upon their trail. The Tower of the Moon was dangerous and intriguing, even to her, and her curiosity was up wondering in what manner they might take in dying. Twice she was almost distracted by rats, but kept her cold and purpose, such that as the three humans approached the base of the old water stained white tower, she was already perched, paws lazily splayed, on the head of Aphrodite.
“This dirty thing?”
“Aye, it’s as they say..”
She yowled once to draw their attention, then a second time for an offering. The third time was just a yowl because she thought it sounded fine and proper to have a voice in the world.
“Is that the same damn cat?”
“Looks it,” Doren, the best one for animals.
“Following us? That normal?”
“Nothin normal here- Maybe hungry?”
“Feed it or kill it. We can’t have it yowling.”
Doren was reaching for his knife when Merin gave a shake of her head and brought out an old scrap of Jerky.
“Better ta kill it…”
“You might miss,” Merin ignored his sneer as she put her body between him and the cat. He was not the type to miss with a knife, but she had heard enough stories to know better than to kill anything inside the City unless under threat of your life. The cat did not look feral, clean and primping on the statue of a naked woman, she looked like a tiny new god perched on a much larger dead one.
“Did you kill her, kitty?” she held out the strip of dried venison.
The cat did not reply other than to take the meat in its needle sharp teeth, ripping it to pieces and swallowing in quick precise gulps. Satisfied with the offering, one claw fell to the eye of Aphrodite and drewa clean scratch along the time blackened stone orb, transforming it into a dead mockery of her own shining yellow slits.
“Quit playin and open the damn door.”
Merin turned away from the cat, but not before leaving one more junk of venison upon the old Goddess’s perfectly raised brow, just inches from her now cut eyeball. Shady Cat did not yowl again, as she was too busy devouring the additional offering, taking more time this round to savor the deep salty flavors of the dead.
“Lift me up to the window”
GraveHead was nearly seven feet tall, and strong as an ox, so lifting Merin to the window was a simple matter easily accomplished. Inside was dark, more shadows than light despite the large windows bright full moon that had lit their activities outside thus far. The angles were the problem, allowing only the tiniest slivers as the tower, which true to its name pointed directly at its namesake, seemingly without regard for the turning of the earth. To compensate she gestured down for a readied torch, the first fire that they had used, which was casting a wicked warmth of color into the cool white and black of the City.
“Quick, get it inside-”
Merin did as he asked, taking the torch deftly from his offered hand and jumping to the dusty floor inside, covering its flicker and light from unwanted eyes. The tower was cramped due to a large brass and hardwood instrument, a concentrically constructed pipe organ, taking up the center of its almost thirty foot diameter. It was so large that there was barely room to walk the circumference two abreast, though Merin only had to walk a few steps to the front entrance. Quick as she could, she lifted the old bar that braced the doors closed, noting it could have only been placed from inside. The three, once in, closed the door and replaced the bar, leaving it in a state that did nothing to assuage any apprehensions as they turned toward the conch inspired organ that dominated the room.
Torchlight cast high revealed no ceiling on the Tower, just ever extending darkness pierced by long brass tubes of varying length and diameter, all conspiring to create a sense of infinite majesty even to three thieves in the night.
“No stairs.”
“Climb the tubes?”
“Play it?”
“How’s that work?
“On the side.”
“This great lever?”
GraveHead moved to work the lever, its size and length seemingly left here only for him. As he began the long slow pups, a great knocking bgan to emanate from the guts of the instrument as the ancient bellows began to rise from their resting place. Doren, thinking quickly and following the sound, found a small door crafted into the front, and opened it to reveal inner clockwork mechanisms and a ladder leading upwards.
“We’ve a ladder.”
“Stop?”
“Maybe.”
“Dammit. I’m pumping just play..”
Merin was the only one left with hands free so she reached forth with small hands against the large yellow ivory keys, hundreds of them in semi-circular rows like the jaws of an atavistic shark. She was no player, only able to recognize the instrument from books and research done, never having touched one in all her twenty odd years of life. The first Tone was low and sonorous, too great and wide to be contained in the tower, it’s waves like the ocean spreading out and beyond, cracking and fragmenting the walls around them. The second Tone, though higher, flowed like a whale speared by a dingy, ripping and thundering with concussive force tearing the tower to ruins. The third Tone she reached left and found a deepness that only dreams may live in, removing all barriers until the air vibrating with the voice of a god.
Three Tones in all she plays, each in equal parts defiance and harmony with the world that had created her. GraveHead upon hearing the first tone, dropped his hands from the great bellows lever. Upon the second he removed his own head, and placed it on the body of a great snake. The third, he never heard, not able to move past the second where he devoured his own body.
Doren, more sensitive in his ears and soul, felt the walls coming down with the first Tone, and brought his hands to his eyes, willing them not to explode. The second Tone pulled a living string from his navel, spiralling out into infinity as he began pulling it with his aching tongue. The third Tone his string vibrated in sympathy, cutting a red sliver of time into the universe where his blood may one day seed life.
Merin saw and heard none of this, being solely part of the instrument she played; it’s epicenter and not the audience of its word. Her hand was reaching for a fourth Tone when an answering Howl cuts the night, breaking her from her reverie and pausing her stroke. About her the tower was gone and she stood alone on the hill under the brilliant white moon, staring into the breach of blood left by her companions, now exited. Alone, that is, except for a small black cat with white paws, and a great hound of yellow coat and piercing blue eyes.
“Three Tones is enough,” the hound growls, aiming his suspicion not at the woman at the keys, but the small cat lounging on a great warrior’s body, now fallen prone to the earth.
“It won’t wake them,” the cat replied pretending to care.
“It woke the TollKeepers.”
“Not my business… The little one got it done.”
Around them figures began to move on the hill, icons and shadows of ancient gods, fragments of history given a ghostly semblance upon the hill of the Tower of the Moon. They gathered up stones as they walked, now thousands of them, moving up the hill and placing them piece by piece around the still form of Merin and the ancient organ.
“What about her?” the dog sat down, raising a leg to scratch at a flea.
“She’s a little god now.”
“She made an offering?”
“Yes, it was the flesh of a deer.”
“Well she can’t stay that way.”
“Up to you – you Howled.”
The Dog of the Sun raised his gaze back up to the fullness of the moon and smiled a long droopy sort of smile with tongue half out of cheek. For the fifth time that night, almost a record for him, he Howled. But this Howl was different from the rest, as he Howled not in defiance of the stars, but as an entreaty for fate to do its will. His Tone was pure, and joined the night like a middle pipe, clearing a path for Merin to walk from the tower just before the doors closed and the bar came down once more.
“You know I have no control here,” spoke to Cat.
“It’s for the best. Now back off Dog, this one is mine.”
And for the sixth time that night Sun Dog Howled, but this time it was just in laughter as he turned away to greet the coming dawn.
THE END