KARIGAN SAID
The next morning after a private breakfast in his
tent, Alton stepped outside, stretching his back and shoulders. The
weather was fine, and if it kept up, there would soon be no snow
left at all. The late winter chill freshened the air and he
breathed deeply. Most inhabitants of the encampment were up and
about attending to their various duties which brought to Alton the
sound of an ax splitting wood for cook fires and the clink-clink-clink of a farrier working a horse shoe
over by the pickets. He caught snatches of conversation from guards
on duty by the wall and heard the sloshing of a bucket being
emptied somewhere behind the row of tents.
He decided the plan
for this morning would be to enter Tower of the Heavens and comb
once again through the book of Theanduris Silverwood. He feared
missing something vital, some clue that could help him repair the
wall.
On the edge of his
vision he caught someone strolling toward him. He’d almost
forgotten about Estral Andovian.
“Good morning,” she
said in her pleasant voice.
“Morning,” Alton
replied. When she halted before him, he noted daylight deepened the
green of her eyes.
“It’s very
impressive,” she said, gazing toward the wall. “You hear about the
wall, but it really takes seeing it to get the full effect. Words
just don’t do it justice.”
It was true. It
dominated all else, soaring skyward and vanishing into the clouds
as though raised from the Earth by the gods, stark, monumental,
forbidding. The Tower of the Heavens shot upward like a spear shaft
to infinite heights. The wall and tower, however, were not a
creation of the gods, but the handiwork of Alton’s own very human
ancestors. He wondered how many of them were among the sacrificed
whose souls still inhabited stone. He would never know, for those
souls were no longer individuals. They had become one, united in
song to keep the wall strong.
“I chose right to
come here,” Estral murmured.
That may be, Alton
thought, but she must shortly be on her way. This was no tourist
spot like the hot springs in her home city of Selium. He thought
back to how several of his fellow citizens had treated the wall as
just that, like a holiday in the country, until an avian creature
out of nightmare had flown over the breach and killed one of them.
An innocent. A young lady. After that, the holiday revelers had
dispersed and the rule forbidding civilians at the wall came into
existence. Alton was relieved by the ruling, for it did not take
much to remember the tortured screams of that young woman. He
closed his eyes, hearing them now, until he felt Estral Andovian’s
gaze upon him. He frowned when he realized she must have been
gazing at him for some time.
“I don’t recall
Karigan describing you as the brooding, silent type,” she
said.
Just what had
Karigan told her? And what could he say in response that didn’t
sound defensive? He decided the safest course was to ignore her
comment.
“I trust you had a
satisfactory breakfast?” he asked instead.
“Very nice. And Dale
was the perfect hostess.”
“Good. Well, it was
very nice to meet you, but I’m sure you are ready to be on your way
to make the best use of daylight.”
She stared blankly
at him, as if surprised by the suggestion she leave, despite his
adamance of the previous night.
“I’d like to stay,”
she said.
“That is impossible,
as we discussed. You saw the danger. This is no place for a
civilian.”
“But I’m not exactly
a civilian.”
“Are you a member of
the D’Yer militia?” he asked.
“No.”
“Are you a
Sacoridian regular?”
“Well, no.” Then she
smiled. Alton was suspicious of that smile—it looked like trouble.
“The Golden Guardian supports the king’s forces with trained
musicians who entertain, parade, and play drum and pipe during
battle. So technically we are attached to the
military.”
She was creative, he
had to give her that much. “There are no musicians assigned to
either encampment. I am sorry, my lady, but I am in command here on
behalf of my father and I must insist you leave.”
“Very well,” she
said, but before Alton could be surprised by her quick
acquiescence, she asked, “Have you any messages for your
father?”
“My
father?”
“Yes. I believe I’ll
go to Woodhaven to visit him. I should think he’d listen to reason
and permit me to stay here. After all, I’ve official greetings to
present to him from my own father. My father tells me that Lord
D’Yer appreciates the importance of well-recorded
histories.”
They all did, since
so much about the wall and magic in general had fallen into
obscurity following the Long War, leaving them in their current fix
of trying to relearn what to their ancestors was common
knowledge.
“My father,” Alton
said, “also appreciates the dangers of this wall. It wasn’t that
long ago he lost his brother and nephew to it.”
Estral shrugged.
“All the more reason he may wish to have everything recorded for
the future. I’m sure I’ll be back soon.” She spun on her heel and
started walking away while Alton could only watch after her in
astonishment. But then she paused and turned back to him. “You
know, Karigan never mentioned how inflexible you
were.”
“Inflexible?”
Estral nodded
slowly. “Yes, I’d definitely say inflexible.” Without further ado,
she was off again, striding away, leaving a fuming Alton behind
her.
“Inflexible?” he
muttered. “I’m not the inflexible
one.”
He faced the wall,
arms crossed. In regard to Estral Andovian, the term insufferable came to mind. He’d never gotten the
impression from Karigan that her friend was such a pain in the—in
the rear.
He grumbled and
headed for the tower. Let Estral travel to Woodhaven to see his
father. If Lord D’Yer approved of Estral’s presence at the wall,
then he could be responsible for her
well-being. Problem was, Alton reflected, if something happened to
Estral, Karigan would not blame his father, but him. He
sighed.
He paused before the
tower and tried to clear his mind of Estral Andovian and whatever
Karigan would think or say. It was not easy to do, but once he
pressed his palm against the granite of the wall, the throb of
music pulsing through it, the song of the guardians, helped him
focus.
The tower possessed
no door, not even any windows or arrow loops on its impassive
facade, but it allowed certain persons to permeate its wall. So far
those persons had been primarily Green Riders. He brushed his hand
against his brooch and sank into the wall. He was absorbed through
stone, the passage no more difficult than a brief submersion in
water and taking no longer than half a breath. When he emerged into
the chamber within, the wall he had just passed through rippled and
then hardened into solid granite behind him.
The tower chamber
had seen better days. Columns in the center of the chamber had
fallen over and broken, and stone had crashed to the floor from
above. The damage occurred when the wall guardians had been on the
verge of insanity, driven there by both the breach and the
influence of Alton’s late cousin, Pendric. They’d lost their
rhythm, the thread of song that unified the magic of the wall began
to unravel, almost causing all to fall into ruin.
There was still a
hole far above where snow and rain had seeped through all winter
and Alton did not know how he might fix it, for no ladder reached
it. Apparently there had also been an observation platform that was
now a pile of rubble on the floor, but how the wallkeepers of old
reached it, he had no idea for there were no stairs he could
find.
Living wallkeepers
had once been stationed in the towers to keep watch on Blackveil
and the wall itself, but with the passage of the ages and various
wars, their duty diminished until it was entirely forgotten and the
wall taken for granted. The towers, however, were not left
completely uninhabited. Magical presences remained. They’d once
been great mages, fully corporeal beings, but once their physical
selves passed on, they continued to reside in the towers in their
current ghostly manifestations.
Merdigen, the
resident of Tower of the Heavens, constantly nattered at Alton
about the poor state of his tower, as if Alton could fix the mess
with a snap of his fingers. If only it were so easy! He’d done his
best through the winter to sweep up debris and move rubble, but it
would require more strength and craftsmanship than he possessed to
remake columns and return the chamber to its former
condition.
There was a table in
the chamber that miraculously survived the destruction, and Alton
did much of his work there. Books were piled on one end. Dale had
promised the tower mages books if they’d work on solving the
riddles of the wall, and since then, Alton’s father had shipped
them a large quantity of books. The mages did not seem to care what
they were about, just that they were books.
“There you
are!”
Merdigen’s voice
made Alton jump. As often as he entered the tower and expected
Merdigen to be there, the mage always managed to surprise him with
his sudden appearances. Alton turned to face him.
“It’s about time,”
Merdigen said, tugging on his long flowing beard. It was the color
of old ivory.
Alton braced
himself, wondering what the mage would complain about this
time.
“This is not the
most convenient method to read a book.”
“What’s
not?”
“One page at a
time,” Merdigen replied. “You left me on page ten of Chettley’s
Theories of Light and then never came
back to turn the page.”
Merdigen was right:
it was not the most convenient way to read a book, or to have it be
read. Merdigen was not a corporeal being, and therefore could not
affect physical objects. It was wonderful that the mages now had
access to all these books, but it was not wonderful that Alton and
Dale had to flip the pages for them.
“Sorry,” Alton said,
though he was not sorry at all. “We had a busy night.” He went on
to describe the incursion of the creature from Blackveil and the
arrival of Estral Andovian.
“I am sorry about
your soldiers,” Merdigen said. “I am very sorry. We must remain
ever vigilant.”
“Tell me something
new,” Alton mumbled.
“Eh?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
Alton moved over to the table and started sorting through
papers.
“So where is she?”
Merdigen asked.
“Hmm?
Who?”
“The
minstrel.”
“Oh, I sent her
away.”
“Why would you do
that?”
“It’s not safe
here.”
“A pity, though I
suppose you’re right to send her off.” Merdigen conjured himself a
chair and slumped into it. “It’s been many a long year since I
heard true music. Oh, Dorleon plays his reed pipe, but it does not
compare to a Selium minstrel. Not at all.”
Alton hardly
listened as Merdigen prattled on about minstrels he once knew and
the songs they sang. He supposed it was better than getting nagged
about the condition of the chamber.
When finally he had
sorted his papers and cleared a space for himself to work, Alton
pulled up a chair and started flipping through his copy of the book
of Theanduris Silverwood. He could not believe the king wanted him
to destroy it when he was finished with it. He understood, but
still couldn’t believe it. So Alton took as much time as he could
to absorb the words of the great mage who had worked the magic of
the wall. Theanduris Silverwood had been pompous, and callous to
all the sacrifices he insisted be made to accomplish his
goals.
These people are no more than cattle, he had
written of those who died. Their sacrifice
will elevate them to a new existence, and they will serve their
land more usefully as rock and mortar than as
individuals.
Theanduris
Silverwood saw himself as a savior, since the wall had been his
grand plan, though it was the D’Yers who built it, and thousands
were sacrificed to create it. The true saviors, Alton thought, were
those whose blood made the wall possible. Theanduris Silverwood had
not seen fit to sacrifice himself.
Alton wondered if
the great mage had truly been any better than Mornhavon the
Black.
“Oh, you’re looking
through that thing again,” Merdigen said, gazing over Alton’s
shoulder.
“I don’t want to
miss anything.”
“Can’t miss
Theanduris’ overly inflated estimation of himself.”
“No,” Alton
agreed.
“Wasn’t there
something the king wanted you to look at
particularly?”
Alton raised his
eyebrow at the pointed tone of Merdigen’s question, but he reached
for the king’s letter and briefly scanned it. “That measure of
music,” he mumbled. He turned the pages of the manuscript until he
came to the one that contained it.
“Do you know how to
read musical notation?” Merdigen asked.
“No,” Alton
admitted.
“Can
Dale?”
Alton shook his
head.
“Can you think of
anyone else who can?”
There were a few
others in the encampment who played instruments, but none were
formally trained. They had learned to play by ear.
“No,” Alton said in
growing consternation.
“Then why, my boy,”
Merdigen said with exaggerated patience, “did you send away the one
person who can?”
Alton stood so fast
he knocked over his chair. “Idiot!” he
cried.
“Why there’s no
reason to call me—”
“Not you,
me!”
Alton dashed from
the chamber, through the wall, and out into the
encampment.
“What is it, my
lord?” an alarmed guard called.
“My horse! I need my
horse!”
Estral Andovian
could not have gotten far, but Alton was not about to waste another
moment. Once he tacked up Night Hawk and mounted, he gave his horse
the bare minimum of time to warm up at a walk and then galloped
from the tower camp to the main encampment and down the rudimentary
road that broke northward through the forest.
She’d only gotten
about a mile down the road when he caught up with her.
He reined Night Hawk
up in front of her to block her way. Estral’s mare spooked, and
while it was clear she was no expert horsewoman, she maintained her
seat well.
“What—” she
began.
“I need you to come
back,” he said. Then realizing how abrupt his behavior and words
were, he said, “I mean, could you come back? Please?”
She sat there
glowering at him. “I see Karigan was not exaggerating when she said
you were capable of being rude.”
Alton groaned. They
were back to this, were they?
“In fact,” Estral
said, “I’d say you’d been mean to
her.”
“I apologized to her
for that. She’s forgiven me.”
“Apologized, eh?”
Estral tapped her riding crop against her boot,
waiting.
“Apologized, yeah,”
Alton said. “I mean yes, apologies. I apologize if I came across as
rude.”
“Hmm.”
“Or mean,” he
added.
She squinted at him
as if assessing the sincerity of his words and character. Finally
she asked, “What is it that made you change your
mind?”
“It may be,” he
said, “that you can help us save the wall.”
“Then what are we
doing sitting here?”
Alton smiled. “My
thought exactly.”