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  Along The Watchtower

  Copyright © 2013 David Litwack

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by Double Dragon eBooks, a division of Double Dragon Publishing Inc. of Markham Ontario, Canada.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from Double Dragon Publishing Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  ISBN-10: 1-77115-096-3

  ISBN-13: 978-1-77115-096-5

  First Edition June 2, 2013

  Along the Watchtower

  By

  David Litwack

  *

  To the Memory of

  Dad, Mom, and Arlene

  ~

  "All along the watchtower, princes kept the view,

  While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

  Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,

  Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl."

  Bob Dylan

  Prologue

  I awoke on a slab.

  No. Too soft for a slab. Softer than a corpse would need. Not a slab but a stretcher.

  A fog swirled in my brain. I picked through its wisps, searching for a thought to cling to. Then my combat training kicked in. First rule-assess the situation. I steadied myself and tested my senses, starting with touch. I flexed each finger until it grazed the pad of the thumb. So far, so good. Next I listened. Not much to hear. More of a hum than silence. But I could feel a vibration nearby, a throbbing like the heart of a dying beast. My sight might tell me more, but I was afraid to open my eyes. Instead, I sucked air in through my nose.

  The smell of jet fuel. Then a wind so strong it rippled my cheeks into folds.

  I was outside on a runway. Alive.

  Minutes later, motion as my stretcher was wheeled up a ramp and locked into place. A gentle hand rested on my arm. A sting on the soft skin at the crook of my elbow, a needle inserted. Then, still in silence, a bump from below, wheels separating from tarmac.

  I knew what that meant. Farewell Iraq. Hello Ramstein.

  While the critical care air transport climbed, my mind churned, still trying to plan the raid. Not that morning's patrol into Al-Nasiriyah, but the World of Warcraft raid scheduled that evening with my guild. Gaming was how I always coped, at least until that morning when it nearly got me killed.

  I started gaming after Dad died and kept playing when Joey would go on a binge or while Mom prayed through the garret window to the ocean. I even played after Richie ran off. But I shouldn't have been gaming that morning. I should've been focused on my job as First Lieutenant Frederick Williams, leading my squad into bandit country. Instead I was channeling Sunstrider, head of the Lightbringer guild, trying to figure out how to get past the trolls at Blunderbore's Gate.

  I still didn't know the cost of my inattention.

  When the IED went off, I felt a shock wave but heard no sound. Maybe my eardrums had imploded. But the impact rattled the roots of my teeth. Then the pain in my legs hit, like shards of glass fraying the nerves. My first thought: not the legs. Better to die.

  I'd been training to dunk on that old basket at base camp and had just managed to curl one knuckle around the rim. Not bad at five foot ten. Now, like everything else I'd ever hoped for-blown away.

  Then I remembered. The archangel collapsing on me, spilling blood on my chest.

  The fog in my brain turned into a movie screen, replaying images from that morning. The roof of the Humvee blown off, the sky above turning from blue to white to red. The medics cutting open my shirt.

  "Help the archangel first," I yelled, though I couldn't hear my own words. "It's not my blood."

  I watched their lips move and tried to read them. Concussion, they seemed to be saying. The blast had battered my brain. It must be my blood since I was soaked in it.

  And while I tried to block out the pain, the oddest of thoughts struck me-I'll never make it to level eighty.

  Just what I had coming. Nine months and seven days in Iraq, my squad patrolling a hot zone, and I'd been daydreaming about a raid in a fantasy game. When the IED went off, I should've died.

  I grabbed the edge of the stretcher and tried to roll onto my side. Big mistake. My mouth opened, but I couldn't hear my scream. The CCAT nurse rushed over and fiddled with some tubes. Everything started to spin like the plane was in a dive. I blacked out.

  It happened sometime after that. Dreams of a fantasy world like in the game. Of course, I was frightened at first. But then I figured, what the hell. Couldn't be worse than this place.

  Chapter One

  A Ringing in the Ears

  I awoke to the tolling of a bell.

  Not the sweet chime of vespers or the carillon of noon. This bell had a more somber sound, one that I'd dreaded since childhood. With each lingering clang, my bed quilt weighed more heavily upon me until it felt like a paladin's shield on my chest.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and forced my mind to envision a different place, a garden I'd played in years before. I was nearly there, could picture the dust motes floating across the light that filtered through gaps in the pergola. I could almost smell the flowers.

  Clang. The garden vanished in a burst of black smoke. The scent of flowers was replaced by the stench of charred wood. I pressed my hands to my ears.

  Clang. On the seventh toll, I flung off the quilt and jumped out of bed.

  Why wait for Sir Gilly to burst into my chamber and announce what I already knew? I'd knelt by my father's bedside the night before, saw his face so pale, watched his lips struggle to speak.

  "Stay strong, Frederick," he managed to say. "And beware the cunning of the spinning wheels."

  "But how?"

  "Focus," he said, "on what you hold most dear."

  I'd prepared my whole life for the trials, and now they were upon me. I could feel them coming closer with each clang of the bells. For my father, the king, was dead.

  ***

  I grabbed my sword and rushed into the hallway, buckling my scabbard as I went. It was well into the night, and the candles along the wall had burned low. Their flickering cast gloom into the corners of the vaulted archways, and the wax dripping down their length sculpted ghastly shapes over their sconces. I hurried past. When I reached the office of the lord chamberlain, the door stood open. He was waiting.

  I'd known Sir Gilbert since birth. He had been my mentor in all things that mattered and my father's before me. By the time I was ready to be trained, his features had settled with age. The most prominent were jowls that hung about his chin and jiggled when he laughed. When I was little, I thought they resembled fish gills, and so I called him Sir Gilly.

  I spent more time with Sir Gilly than with my father. He was an affable man, quick with a jest or a magic trick. But when I was seven, everything changed. My mother died that year, and I became the sole heir to the throne. I knew then that someday the future of the kingdom would depend on me. Now that time had come.

  The gleam was gone from Sir Gilly's eyes. His jowls trembled, but not from laughter.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "He was your father and my friend. A
great man. But neither of us has the luxury to mourn."

  I understood. I'd been taught all my life about the Burning Legion, and the treaty that kept the Horde at bay. But the treaty relied on magic bestowed on the reigning king. Now Stormwind was without a reigning king, and the magic that protected it would begin to fade. For the next thirty days, I'd be tasked with the trials and only if I overcame them would I succeed my father to the throne. If not, the Horde would overrun the Alliance-the end of life as we knew it. For all my lifetime of training, I felt unprepared.

  "What happens now, Sir Gilly?"

  "For a start, you must stop calling me Sir Gilly. I am the advisor and you the dauphin until the days of anointment are finished. If you prevail, I will be Sir Gilbert, lord chamberlain, and I shall call you Sire. If you fail, what we are called will no longer matter."

  "I won't fail," I said, wondering if failure were possible. For the past millennium, an unbroken line of Stormwind kings had kept the world of Azeroth free.

  His gaze bore into me, no longer my mentor, no longer my friend. But every bit the advisor.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because of everything you've taught me." I rose to my full height and lifted my chin. "And because I'm my father's son."

  "You're a brave dauphin, but you know nothing of what's to come."

  "But all your teachings, the stories of trials past-"

  "Mean little now." He leaned on the oaken table, his fingers splayed wide against the wood grain. It was a familiar pose, the teacher urging his student to comprehend. "Each generation is different, each trial unique. Every prince must stare into the spinning wheels alone."

  I felt a fluttering in my stomach, a tightening in my chest. Sir Gilly must have seen my distress, because he came from behind the table and rested a hand on my shoulder, as he'd done so often when I struggled in training.

  "Come, Dauphin. Walk with me."

  He led me up to the parapets of the castle. Despite the pre-dawn haze, I could make out the land below. I looked out past Elwynn Forest to the village of Goldshire, with its thatched-roof cottages and patchwork quilt of green pastures stitched together with stone walls. But beyond them, looming over the houses and fields, I could see the mountains of Golgoreth, high, jagged peaks where the world of the Alliance ended and the realm of the Horde began. Already, storm clouds gathered over the ridge. As I paused on the ramparts to watch, a wind gusted from the east, an unnatural gale that roared in my ears and caused ripples in my skin.

  "You feel it?" Sir Gilly said. "Their power builds in the hope that you will fail. Everything is changing now, different than what you've come to expect."

  "How so?"

  He stretched a trembling finger toward the distant mountains.

  "Their evil flows like fog on a November day, seeping into everything. When your father died, the protection he gave to the countryside began to weaken. It will grow weaker still until only the walls of Stormwind provide protection. At the end of the thirty days, they too will fail." He turned to me, his face inches from mine. "First lesson: you must not, under any circumstances, go beyond the castle walls during the days of anointment." His brows wriggled and knotted. "And the castle itself will not be safe. The mist will enter the smallest of cracks and transform into strange beings, the source of the trials."

  I took two quick breaths and steadied myself as I'd been trained. "Tell me what I must do."

  "Second lesson: you know about the watchtower?"

  I nodded. As a child, I'd sneak up there to play but knew well how it changed during anointment.

  "None but you may go there for the next thirty days. For as you know, following the death of a king, the advisor is charged with mounting two bejeweled disks, one facing east and one west, transforming the watchtower into a dream chamber-a place where the dauphin must go to dream, twice each day, at sunrise and sunset. What you are shown and how you respond will determine the fate of the kingdom."

  "What will I see?"

  "That, I cannot say. No prince before you has left word, written or spoken, about what he saw through the spinning wheels. Most claimed they remembered nothing at all. Others refused to tell. But in some mysterious way, what you dream will influence how you respond to the trials. The answer lies in the castle, if you have the courage to explore."

  "Explore? But I know every inch of this castle. I've wandered throughout it since I was a child."

  "Ah, but you were never a child during anointment. The castle you know will change. Stairways will come into being where none existed before. You'll go down them, but when you turn back, they'll be gone. Archways and tunnels will appear, leading to odd chambers where you'll meet the beings I spoke of. Some will be guides-elves or priests or mage. Others will mean you harm, spectral demons, agents of the Horde. Assassins."

  "How will I know the difference?"

  "Trust what's in your heart. If that's enough, you will save Azeroth for another generation. If not-" A sorrow came over him, weighing down his features. "I've lived too long. I put your father through this and now you. I wish I had died before this day."

  I'd never seen him so downcast, my source of knowledge and strength. I fingered the hilt of my sword, as I had at the start of so many training sessions. My grip on the braided leather tightened.

  He looked at my hand and shook his head.

  "No, Dauphin. You cannot fight this enemy with a sword."

  "But to defend against assassins?"

  "It's not your body they seek to harm. These assassins can't threaten your being."

  "Then what is their purpose?"

  "To extinguish your spirit. To make you abandon the kingdom to darkness. Their purpose is despair." He turned toward the watchtower, standing erect, every inch the advisor. "Come. It is time to begin."

  Chapter Two

  Ramstein Air Base

  An echo of an echo. A dream interrupted by hushed voices talking the way people do near the deceased at a wake. One voice gruff, a man's, possibly a smoker. The other mousy, almost a squeak. Three fingers pressed on the inside of my wrist. Thick fingers.

  "His pulse is strong. Let's give it a try." The man's voice rose. "Freddie, can you hear me?"

  I recognized the name. Freddie. Short for Frederick. A name that must be me. Then panic. I'd been dreaming of castles and kings. Why would I want to be Freddie?

  "Try his rank," the woman said. "They're trained to respond by rank."

  "Lieutenant Williams."

  An image flitted across my mind. Iraq. An explosion. My mind recoiled. I groped about in the darkness, trying to find the castle again.

  "Did you see that?" the man said. "His eyelids twitched."

  "Lieutenant," the woman said, louder now. At least I was no longer deaf. "Can you wiggle your thumbs?"

  There was somewhere else I needed to be, something important I was supposed to do. My mind was a jumble. When I couldn't fit the puzzle pieces together, I sent a signal to my thumbs.

  "Wonderful." A touch on my palm. The woman this time. Slender fingers. "And can you squeeze?"

  I did. She squeezed back. At least I wasn't alone. I'd always worried hell was being alone for eternity.

  "Good. Now your toes." I felt a draft as she removed the sheet. "Can you wiggle your toes for me?"

  I concentrated and wiggled my toes. She sounded pleased. But then I reached for the next level before I was ready. I tried to bend my knee.

  My back arced like an electric shock had run through me. I wanted to scream but had forgotten how to make a sound.

  "A convulsion, Doctor?"

  "Don't think so, Mary. More likely pain."

  "Should we keep trying to wake him?"

  I waited, not understanding the question but feeling it was important. The pain kept distracting me. Please, send me back.

  "No. He needs more time. We've done all we can here. Put him back under and we'll send him home. Let the boys in the States do the rest. He has a long road ahead."

  I wasn'
t sure what "under" meant, but I had questions before I got there. What road was he talking about and why was it so long? I shifted my weight onto my elbow and tried to sit.

  Oh Christ, my legs.

  The smooth sense of plastic gliding across the small hairs on my arm. The pain subsided. My mind began to drift.

  A bright flash. Soldiers screaming. Dogs barking. Where was my castle? Where was my quest?

  Then slowly, sweet darkness. And the dream resumed.

  Chapter Three

  The Bequest

  Sir Gilly led me to the death chamber. Already I could feel the mist from the mountains creeping into my bones, intruding like a malaise. The trials weighed heavily upon me. That, and the watchtower. But Sir Gilly insisted I bid farewell to my father first.

  "We're in unfamiliar territory," he said, "and I know little of the right path. But of one thing I'm certain. We can do no good by forgetting our humanity."

  We stopped outside the entrance. He grasped me by the elbow and whispered, as if the ghost of my father might hear, describing the protocol of succession, though he'd explained it twice before.

  "The king's remains will lie in a casket on a gold pedestal. Once the pallbearers remove the cover, you'll see a gray shroud covering his face. I will peel it back to below the lips. Bits of clay will cover your father's eyes and mouth. Look until you recognize him, then nod. I'll give you a parchment to sign and seal, your first act as the dauphin. Then kiss his forehead, a last goodbye. Be prepared for the taste of death, like dust in winter. Take a moment. He was your father as well as the king. When you're ready, I'll replace the shroud and close the cover for the last time. As a sign of respect, back away from the casket, never turning until you're out the door. Do you understand?"

  I was too numb to do anything but nod.

  "You must answer, Dauphin."

  "Yes."

  "Say 'I do, Advisor.' I'm sorry, Frederick. It's the law. We must follow the proper form."

  "I do . . . Advisor."

  Once we entered the death chamber, Sir Gilly did as he had described. I stared at the corpse, the muscles of my shoulders throbbing as if I'd held them stiff throughout the months of my father's slow decline. I loved him and was heartbroken to see him die. But more than anything, I dreaded becoming king.