Dragons of Winter Night - Margaret Weis [169]
An outer curtain wall of stone formed an octagon as the Tower’s base. Each point of the octagonal wall was surmounted by a turret. Battlements ran along the top of the curtain wall between turrets. An inner octagonal wall formed the base of a series of towers and buttresses that swept gracefully upward to the central Tower itself.
This was fairly standard design, but what puzzled the dwarf was the lack of internal defense points. Three great steel doors breached the outer wall, instead of one door—as would seem most reasonable, since three doors took an incredible number of men to defend. Each door opened into a narrow courtyard at the far end of which stood a portcullis leading directly into a huge hallway. Each of these three hallways met in the heart of the Tower itself!
“Might as well invite the enemy inside for tea!” the dwarf had grumbled. “Stupidest way to build a fortress I ever saw.”
No one entered the Tower. To the knights, it was inviolate. The only one who could enter the Tower was the High Clerist himself, and since there was no High Clerist, the knights would defend the Tower walls with their lives, but not one of them could set foot in its sacred halls.
Originally the Tower had merely guarded the pass, not blocked it. But the Palanthians had later built an addition to the main structure that sealed off the pass. It was in this addition that the knights and the footmen were living. No one even thought of entering the Tower itself.
No one except Tasslehoff.
Driven by his insatiable curiosity and his gnawing hunger, the kender made his way along the top of the outer wall. The knights on guard duty eyed him warily, gripping their swords in one hand, their purses in the other. But they relaxed as soon as he passed, and Tas was able to slip down the steps and into the central courtyard.
Only shadows walked down here. No torches burned, no guard was posted. Broad steps led up to the steel portcullis. Tas padded up the stairs toward the great, yawning archway and peered eagerly through the bars. Nothing. He sighed. The darkness beyond was so intense he might have been staring into the Abyss itself.
Frustrated, he pushed up on the portcullis, more out of habit than hope, for only Caramon or ten knights would have the strength necessary to raise it.
To the kender’s astonishment, the portcullis began to rise, making the most god-awful screeching! Grabbing for it, Tas dragged it slowly to a halt. The kender looked fearfully up at the battlements, expecting to see the entire garrison thundering down to capture him. But apparently the knights were listening only to the growlings of their empty stomachs.
Tas turned back to the portcullis. There was a small space open between the sharp iron spikes and the stone work, a space just big enough for a kender. Tas didn’t waste any time or stop to consider the consequences. Flattening himself, he wriggled beneath the spikes.
He found himself in a large, wide hall, nearly fifty feet across. He could see just a short distance. There were old torches on the wall, however. After a few jumps, Tas reached one and lit it from Flint’s tinder box he found in his pouch.
Now Tas could see the gigantic hall clearly. It ran straight ahead, right into the heart of the Tower. Strange columns ranged along either side, like jagged teeth. Peering behind one, he saw nothing but an alcove.
The hall itself was empty. Disappointed, Tas continued walking down it, hoping to find something interesting. He came to a second portcullis, already raised, much to his chagrin. “Anything easy is more trouble than it’s worth,” was an old kender saying. Tas walked beneath that portcullis into a second hallway, narrower than the first—only about ten feet wide—but with the same strange, toothlike columns on either side.
Why build a tower so easy to enter? Tas wondered. The outer wall was formidable, but once past that, five drunken dwarves