TOWER OF THE EARTH
“Dale!” Alton ran at the tower, slapped palms against
stone, but he could not enter. He tensed, clenched his fists, ready
to throw himself at the wall, but stopped himself and stood there
trembling, remembering his madness of last fall. After a moment, he
realized Estral had stopped playing. He touched the wall. It did
not resonate as much as before.
“Play!” he shouted
at her. “Play and don’t stop, no matter what!”
Surprise flitted
across Estral’s face, but she did not hesitate. Her music drifted
to Alton and he concentrated on rhythm and harmony—hummed it in his
mind, and it vibrated through him. The wall swallowed
him.
When he emerged into
the tower, Dale grabbed him before he could take another step. She
was backed up against the wall.
“Don’t move.” Her
voice was harsh and her face pale in the sickly green light that
illuminated the tower. Her shoulder was smoking, a patch of uniform
singed.
“Dale?”
“I’m all right,” she
replied. “Just—just don’t move.”
Alton glanced around
the chamber seeking whatever danger had attacked her. In a glance
he took in the blackened, scorched walls, the cobwebs that draped
from the shadowed heights waving in the air currents like restless
specters. Whatever furnishings had once existed in the tower were
now jumbles of wood. In the center of the chamber, the columns that
surrounded the tempes stone on its pedestal were scorched and
cracked, entire chunks missing from their fluted facades. One had
toppled and was nothing more than rubble. The tempes stone itself
looked like a lump of coal.
And there, in the
circle of columns was a skeleton in a pile of rags, a bony arm
stretched out as if reaching, reaching for the tempes
stone.
“Gods,” Alton
murmured. “It looks like there’s been a war in here.”
“There’s something
else,” Dale said, her eyes darting toward the shadowed recesses
above. “Something bad. In here with us.”
“What?” He’d shifted
his body just the slightest bit and lightning streaked through the
tower from top to bottom so bright it left a white-green afterhaze
in his vision.
“Duck!” Dale cried,
and she hauled him to the floor just in time as the lightning
forked and struck where Alton had just stood.
“Gods,” he
murmured.
“Told you not to
move.”
“I see
why.”
Something then
caught the edge of Alton’s vision, a flicker of shadow. Something
in the tower’s upper regions. The hair on the back of his neck
stood.
More lightning
exploded, this time high up, spreading like fiery lace, and he saw
it, the shadow thing flitting through
the air to the opposite wall. It was spindly, vaguely human in
form. A tendril of lightning stabbed at one of its limbs and its
cry was unearthly, terrible.
Dale covered her
ears. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Alton stared up into the dark, but nothing moved. The shaft of the
tower seemed to suck all the air upward. The silence was dense,
oppressive, filled his ears. He broke out in a clammy
sweat.
Moments crawled like
hours. He detected a whisper of movement, like a shadow caressing
his mind, subtle, close. Too close.
Lightning ripped
through the chamber again just above their heads, so near Alton
felt its heat. The creature hissed and scuttled away.
Silence.
“We need to get out
of here,” Dale whispered.
Alton agreed. He
hoped Estral had listened to him and continued to play her music.
He called upon his special ability and wrapped an invisible shield
of protection around them both. “Now!” he yelled. He grabbed Dale
and heaved her through the wall, following right behind her, just
as lightning blasted his footprints.
He lay on the ground
panting, not able to reconcile the scent of damp earth with the
darkness of the tower. Beside him Dale groaned. He rolled over and
found her sitting up, gingerly reaching for her singed
shoulder.
“Water!” he screamed
at Estral.
The minstrel, who
had listened to him and kept playing and singing no matter what,
now set her lute aside, grabbed a waterskin and ran it over to him.
She asked no questions, just thrust the waterskin at him. He liked
that.
He crawled over to
Dale. Her shoulder was an angry red.
“I’m all right,”
Dale said. The dazed look in her eyes suggested
otherwise.
Alton poured water
on the burn. Dale screamed and fell back, but did not resist. Alton
kept pouring.
Dale gasped. “Don’t
get all of me wet.”
“Well, hold still
then!” To Estral he said, “We need to get her back.”
“It stings like all
five hells,” Dale said, “but I’ll live.”
“Good,” Alton
replied, “but we’re still going back so Leese can have a
look.”
Dale
groaned.
“Plus,” he added,
“Merdigen will want to hear about the tower.”
“There was something
in there,” Dale whispered.
“Yes. Yes, there
was.”
To Estral’s credit,
as soon as Alton said they needed to go back, she’d set about
collecting their things and packing them, no small effort
considering they’d brought camping supplies so they could spend the
night at the wall if necessary. She then started bridling the
horses and tightening girths. Dale’s Plover almost dragged Estral
away in an effort to reach her injured Rider. And still Estral did
not question them about what happened.
By the time Alton
had finished pouring out the contents of the waterskin over Dale’s
burn, she was shivering in the cold air. He removed his own
greatcoat and gently placed it over her good shoulder and wrapped
it around her in a way that would keep most of her warm but not
aggravate her burn. He then helped her to mount.
“I’m all right,
really,” she said, but there was an edge to her voice that wasn’t
entirely convincing.
He lifted her
waterskin from the saddle horn and thrust it into her hands, then
knotted Plover’s reins over the mare’s neck so they would not drag.
Before Dale could protest, he said, “Drink as we go. Plover knows
the way.”
Dale rolled her
eyes, but she did not argue. Alton was glad. He wanted to get her
going before shock set in. Even if it did not, the burn was
obviously painful, and the sooner it was treated, the better. They
had a long ride ahead of them, but he’d use all his Green Rider
training to get them home faster than they’d arrived at Tower of
the Earth.
It was not until
they were well under way, taking a break at a walk from the
ground-eating trot he’d paced them at, when Estral started asking
questions.
“What happened back
there?” Her eyes were large, her forehead crinkled.
“Hard to say,” Alton
replied.
There was an amused
snort from Dale up ahead. Alton made her ride lead so he could keep
an eye on her. Not that Plover would allow her Rider to fall, but
he wanted to make sure. The way was easy to follow anyway, with the
immensity of the wall to their immediate right.
“You just drink,” he
ordered her. He remembered hearing from Leese that it was important
for injured people to drink water. He wasn’t sure why, or even if
she meant all injured people, but at the very least it gave Dale
something to think about other than the pain of her
burn.
“I’m getting
waterlogged,” she complained.
“Good. Keep it
up.”
Dale grumbled
something he couldn’t quite make out, and probably didn’t want to
hear, but at least she complied and took a swig from her
waterskin.
“The beginning,”
Estral reminded him. “Begin with the music.”
When he explained
where the melody he’d requested her to play had come from, she
gazed at him in amazement.
“The guardians
resonated with your music and allowed us to enter the tower. That
begets a lot of new questions, one being how and why they are
responding like that to your playing, and another being why they
were stubborn about letting us through in the first
place.”
“I don’t know about
the latter,” Estral mused, “but as to the former, music is
powerful. It can make you laugh and sing along, or move you to
tears. It has started wars, and brought peace. If the wall’s
strength is really the harmony of the guardians’ song, then it
makes perfect sense to me they should respond to my music. I am,
after all, descended from Gerlrand Fiori, and one certainly gets
the impression from the stories that there was magic in his
music.”
Alton just didn’t
know, but her explanation made as much sense, if not more, than
anything else he could think of. He was also impressed by how
casually she discussed such ideas. He was so used to the antagonism
expressed toward magic by those other than Riders that her
acceptance of it surprised him.
“So you got into the
tower,” Estral said. “Then what?”
Alton removed his
feet from his stirrups and rotated his ankles to stretch his legs.
He kept Night Hawk on a very long rein, but the messenger horses
appeared to understand the need to make time, so kept to a fast
walk.
“There was ... there
was lightning,” Alton said. “It struck at anything that moved. Not
regular lightning, but magic.”
“That’s what got
Dale?”
“I did not get
got!” Dale protested. “I was grazed. If
I’d been gotten, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”
Alton suppressed a
chuckle, thinking she was probably right.
“The tower was in
shambles,” he told Estral. “And there was someone’s skeleton on the
floor. The walls were all blackened with scorch marks. Even worse,
there was something else there. A creature ... or something.” He
shuddered.
“Is that what caused
the lightning?”
“I don’t think so
because it got struck as well. It’s almost as if the tower
generated the lightning.”
“I wonder what the
creature was,” Estral said, “and how it got in there.”
“So do I. If some
evil creature from Blackveil penetrated Tower of the Earth, what’s
to say the other towers aren’t vulnerable as well?”
Dale suddenly halted
Plover.
“What’s wrong?”
Alton demanded.
“My bladder is
sloshing.” She flung her leg over Plover’s neck and slid to the
ground. “I’ll be right back,” she said and dashed into the
woods.
Estral watched
thoughtfully after Dale. “She’s hiding how much that burn hurts,
and the riding is taking a toll.”
He almost retorted
that Riders often rode while injured and bore it, but her
expression was one of genuine concern and he did not want to sound
like an oaf, reinforcing anything Karigan had told her about him
being “mean.” Her approval of him had somehow grown significantly
in importance, so he kept his peace and was content to sit in her
company while they awaited Dale’s return.