“What did you have in mind?” Sam asked.
I walked over to the grooved stone stairs and looked up through the ragged hole in the ceiling above them. Through it, I saw only blue sky. “Shouldn’t these stairs be completely covered in snow?” I asked. “There’s only a little bit on them, near the windows. Why didn’t any come in through the roof?” I should have noticed how strange that was last night, but I’d had other things on my mind.
Two furrows appeared on Sam’s forehead. “That is odd. Perhaps it’s some trick of the wind?”
“Perhaps,” I agreed, testing the stairs with my foot. They didn’t feel inclined to collapse under me, so I started trotting up. “But I don’t think it is.” Talking about my imprisonment the night before had reminded me of one of the customary reasons to build a tower in the middle of nowhere.
I kicked my way past the few stray clumps of snow and approached the top. As soon as my head broke the plane of the ceiling, the bright sky overhead disappeared.
In the ensuing dimness, before my eyes adjusted, I wasstartled by horrific screams and shrieks. My nose was assaulted by animal smells, fur and musk and carrion flesh. I almost stumbled backward in fright, which would have been a bad idea on a stairway, but then my vision cleared, and I glimpsed the cages.
I pulled my head back into quiet and light. “There’s a whole invisible floor up here. This is a sorcerer’s tower. Let’s take a look.”
“This is a what?” Sam frowned as he came to join me. “Is it safe to go up there?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call any sorcerer’s tower safe. But it looks like all the monsters are imprisoned.”
“There are monsters.” He sighed and shook his head. “Of course there are. Up we go, I suppose.”
I strode into the hidden upper chamber, Sam at my heels. It was as ancient and broken as the one below; the stones of the walls were weathered and pitted, and the joints were pocked with holes where the mortar had crumbled, but there was even less snow—only a couple of sparse patches on the floor beneath the two narrow windows, resembling scatterings of spilled flour.
Dozens of cages lined the curving walls, row upon row of padlocks and iron bars, some of the enclosures so small a squirrel would barely fit inside, others stretching so high I could have stood on Sam’s shoulders, and my head still wouldn’t have reached the tops. More than half were filled with unnatural beasts.
The spider wolves were familiar from my own experience. Some of the others were ones I’d been told about, like the huge strange birds with serrated beaks and rings of thornlike protrusions sprouting from their heads. A furred, hooded serpent with feathery spines made a noise halfway between a growl and a hiss. Close against its body, dozens of tiny sharp claws clenched and unclenched as it slithered closer to the front of its cage.
The rest were ones I’d never seen or heard of before, writhingmasses of tentacles, mandibles, and spikes. They tried to launch themselves at us as we passed, rattling the bars of their cages and howling in rage. Sam and I looked around warily, but the padlocks held firm. We didn’t seem to be in immediate danger, as long as we stayed out of reach of any of the grasping limbs that poked through the bars.
These were not the harmless oddities we sometimes came across in the forest. These wanted blood.
“I understand why whoever lives here sleeps downstairs,” I said.
The cages weren’t the only furnishings in the room. A wooden chair sat before an ink-stained writing desk. Papers and quill pens lay scattered across it, along with a jumble of other paraphernalia—black candles, an ornate hand mirror with a silver frame, and what looked like the skull of a goat.
“How much of this tower is an illusion?” Sam asked, close to my ear so I could hear him over the howls. “Is it even as old as it looks?”
“Probably. The big tumble of fallen stone outside might just be set dressing, but I can feel drafts coming through the holes in the wall, so they’re real enough. The furniture’s in far nicer shape, though. My guess is that the place was built a long time ago, but a new sorcerer found it and moved in. They do that sometimes. Like hermit crabs. Saves the trouble of building one from scratch.”
Sam put his hand through a window, as if testing whether it was truly there. “I still don’t see why they’d build one in the first place. Is it really in case they ever need to imprison a maiden?”
“No. Well…maybe,” I said, eyeing the cages again. Not every last one was currently occupied, after all. “But the one my stepmom stuck me in wasn’t designed to keep me captive. It was adapted to the purpose. Mostly they’re meant to be secret places—hard to get into or hard to find.”
“Somewhere to experiment with magic,” Sam murmured, lost in thought, “far from any prying eyes.”
I nodded. “And they also”—I approached the desk—“make excellent hiding places for magical artifacts.” I tapped the mirror with my fingernail.
“Hey!” it cried out. “Don’t scratch me up!” The images on its surface rippled together to form the rough semblance of a face. Sam’s eyes widened in surprise, and I allowed myself a small smile. I’d developed a keen sense for spotting enchanted knickknacks over the years. Admittedly, this one had been blatant enough that any pride was unwarranted. No one leaves a regular mirror lying around next to their goat skull.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You should be.” The mirror didn’t seem much appeased by the apology. “I don’t go around shoving my finger in your mouth, doI?”
“You don’t have fingers. For that matter, you can’t exactly go around anywhere, can you?”
“Not the point!”
While I’d been chatting with the looking glass, Sam had started shuffling through the papers on the desk. “It looks like the sorcerer kept notes.”
I glanced over at the page he was holding, a sketch of a spider wolf. Leafing through, we found more of them—or rather, we found creatures that were almost spider wolves. Some had six legs, or no legs, or four pairs of tentacles instead. Octowolves? A few of the papers had notes scribbled in the margins: “Can’t walk. Flopped around. Kill it and start over.” “Poison bite?” On other pages were further sketches of different beasts.
