The Tower

by Todd Fahnestock

  Oh, she was still dangerous. It lanced out every now and then. But she also had more depth than any of them could have guessed. She was loving and surprisingly gentle. She was frightened and courageous. She was daring and reckless. Whatever she did, she plunged in headfirst and her emotions vacillated wildly. There was no halfway with Vale. She was either all in or all out. When she’d decided to trust her Quad, her commitment had become absolute. She bound them together with a passion.

  With Royal, she’d started acting like a little sister. She would stand close to him most days, no matter what they were doing, taking an unconscious comfort from being near the big man. And Royal had responded in kind. He liked feeling like he was protecting her. She would fling “large” jokes at him. He would fling “tiny” jokes back at her, which usually ended with her punching him in the arm. One day, the big man had spontaneously tossed her into the air and caught her like a little girl while she whooped. Vale had laughed until he set her down on the ground. Then she’d sneered and drawn her dagger, put it against his belly and said in a scathing tone, “Try that again and I’ll spill your guts, ox.”

  Brom and Oriana had frozen in shock. She’d been like the old Vale, the Vale who’d stabbed Royal on that first day.

  Then Vale had deftly spun the dagger and sheathed it.

  “How was that?” She’d grinned. “Did you believe me?”

  “Gods!” Brom had exclaimed.

  “Brilliant,” Oriana had said, amused. Royal and Brom had started laughing.

  Like with Royal, Vale had also made a bridge to Oriana through the princess’s expertise: academics. To everyone’s surprise, Vale had an excellent mind for book learning. She had put her newfound knowledge of how to read to powerful use and devoured book after book. She became Oriana’s academic assistant, following her to the library and digging through old texts on behalf of the Quad. Vale wasn’t as talented at research as Oriana, but she easily surpassed Royal and Brom.

  It was Vale’s passion, Brom had decided, that made her so successful at everything she did. Her fire drove her past fatigue, past the point where most would quit. And her time on the streets of Torlioch, struggling to stay alive, had given her a relentless tenacity.

  And with Brom... Well, she’d been his lover.

  She had orchestrated that fateful day in the practice room, he was sure. But after his initial shock, he’d happily tumbled down her well and hadn’t come up for air since. Gods, had it only been five months? It seemed like they had always been together.

  It was dangerous, what they were doing. They both knew it. They’d seen the price for failing to keep their secret. At the beginning of the year, a couple in a new first-year Quad—Quad River—had been discovered having sex. The entire Quad had been expelled, their magic stripped away. They’d been sent home in disgrace as the Forgotten, damned to be normals for the rest of their lives.

  Brom had been stunned at the harshness of the sentence. After connecting with Caila in his first year, Brom had met quite a few other students who had broken the rule of “fraternizing,” as they called it. None of them had been punished. He began to suspect that what Caila and he had done was merely frowned upon. Sex between two students from different years and different Quads was discouraged, but the masters didn’t seem to spend any time looking for it, nor meting out punishment.

  But inside a Quad, the punishment was swift and irrevocable.

  “Are you soul-seeking?” Vale asked, rubbing his arm affectionately and bringing him back from his reverie.

  Brom blinked, realizing he’d simply been staring at her. He did that sometimes, often when he was looking into someone’s soul. The others had become accustomed to his moments of “soul-seeking,” as Oriana called it.

  “Just thinking,” he said.

  “About me?” She winked.

  “I was, actually.”

  She turned her head to the side, clasped her hands in front of herself and batted her eyelashes in mock coquettishness. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “Never.”

  “You have a reputation.”

  “Me? Gossip.”

  “Is it?”

  “Tell me you’re not jealous.”

  “Jealous?” She was suddenly holding her dagger—he hadn’t even seen her draw it—and turned it so the blade glimmered in the moonlight shining through the window. “When I’m feeling jealous, you’ll know.”

  He laughed, though he wasn’t sure it was a joke. She was still that feral urchin somewhere deep down. Even reading her soul didn’t help him to fully understand her. It showed who she was and what direction she might go, but what did that matter when Vale was so unpredictable that even she didn’t know what she might do from moment to moment?

  Whether she was a hateful calf-stabber or everyone’s favorite Quad mate, she was never dull.

  “You were saying you had another way of using up the rest of my Soulblock,” she reminded him.

  “I want to test something. The Soul of the World. I want to try giving it to you.”

  Her eyes went wide. “That’s fourth-year magic,” she said, excited. “Can you really do it?” The internal and external applications of a given path were the easiest to master, usually. Most students learned to master these in their first three years. But transferring a connection to the Soul of the World from an Anima to someone else was part of the constructive aspect of the Anima, far more complex and far more difficult. Most Anima students studied the constructive and destructive aspects in their fourth year. And some never accomplished this particular spell at all.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  “Brilliant.” Vale mimicked Oriana’s over-articulated speech.

  “Let’s go.”

  “We’re going somewhere?”

  “By the river.”

  She sprinted to the window and leapt, catching the sill with her fingers and pulling her lithe, compact body up. She winked, swung her legs out the window, and dropped from view.

  By the gods, that woman!

  He followed her with a grin, and she led him across the moonlit Quadron Garden to the river. Only Fendra was out tonight, a quarter moon of silver-blue light that made it seem like the goddess was winking at them. The light lent a cool, silvery cast to the grass and the trees. The fresh smell of wet earth grew stronger and the rush of moving water grew louder as they neared the river. They slid down the bank into the little cove beneath the willow tree where Brom and Oriana had broken the first barrier of the Quad.

  “Let’s run,” he said, and they jogged north along the river. Vale had a short stride, but she was fast. For several minutes, they just ran, leaping fallen trees and ducking branches, skirting the rushing water and running up and down banks when the shore shrank. Then, Brom opened his second Soulblock.

  The magic crackled through him, and he reached into the Soul of the World. He felt the rushing of the river like it ran through his own chest. He felt the limbs of the trees like they were his own arms, the sand like it was his own feet. Unconsciously, he ran faster. He didn’t close his eyes, but he stopped using them. Obstacles ceased to exist because they were all a part of him now.

  He felt Vale behind him, struggling to keep up. She was smaller, lither, and she had far more practice dodging and ducking, but her instincts couldn’t match his any longer. Her feet thumped hard on sand and fallen trunks as she labored to see her way. Branches cracked as she burst through them.

  Slowly, Brom began his experiment. He twisted the lightning of the magic into a thin thread, then pushed it out of his back. He imagined it trailing behind him like a shimmering string in the wind. His concentration burned, but he held tight. Painstakingly, he let the thread out until it tickled Vale’s forehead. Once it touched her, the bond between them sparked. Just as he felt the river, the trees, and the ground, he felt Vale’s surprise.

  He widened the bond, turning the thread into a thick crackling rope of lightning, and sent the Soul of the World through it. He connec
ted their bodies, let his senses become her senses, let the things that he felt become the things she felt.

  She drew a swift breath as it rushed into her. But in moments, her labored breathing eased. The thumping of her feet quieted. The cracking of branches ceased. With Brom’s senses, she stopped fighting the terrain and began moving with it.

  Together, they sprinted through the night like wolves.

  “Try it with your eyes closed,” Brom barely whispered, but he knew she would hear him. She obeyed immediately.

  “Gods, Brom,” she said.

  They ran blind, racing along the river. The passage of time twisted, and it seemed only seconds before they jogged to a stop before the white wall of the academy. The river pushed into fierce rapids through a perfectly circular hole, covered with a portcullis.

  Brom felt the steel of the barrier, the wild rush of the water. He could feel a space at the very bottom of the river, a break in the iron grate where a person could slip through. He could have dived into the water and found that space, swam under the wall, and Vale could have followed him. A part of him wanted to leave the academy, swim through that hole and simply keep running, but the foreboding within him surged, warning him not to go any further.

  He was so deep in the Soul of the World that the foreboding jolted him. He thought he saw green flame where the rapids churned beneath the wall, but then it was gone.

  “Wait,” he murmured as Vale drew up alongside him. She was lost in the sensation too.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The green flame,” he said.

  “What green flame?”

  She hadn’t seen it. There was something here. Something...magical.

  Brom let his awareness expand outward, becoming one with the wall, stretching to find that magical thing...

  The green flame flickered again, and this time he was part of it. This was a spell that had been left behind, something worked on the wall itself, but he couldn’t tell exactly what. A protection, some kind of barrier, perhaps to keep invaders out? Or was this the spell that safeguarded the students’ Soulblocks? Kept them from crumbling until they became Quadrons and were allowed to leave?

  The fuel from his second Soulblock ebbed. He was running out of magic. But he was afraid if he stopped now, he’d never know what this spell was.

  He hesitated. The instructors required that students not open their third Soulblock until their fourth and final year at the academy. It was simply too easy for the uninitiated to hurt themselves. With every Soulblock drained of magic, a student moved closer to draining his entire soul. Using the first Soulblock was invigorating and tiring, like playing hard for a few hours on Quadron Garden. It usually took an hour of rest before the magic of that Soulblock refilled. Using the second Soulblock left a student feeling like they’d worked a fifteen-hour day in a mine. It took a good night’s rest to recover and refill the second Soulblock. Using the third, the instructors said, could put a novice in bed for a week, make them susceptible to sickness, possibly even give them a chronic problem, depending on how they had used the Soulblock.

  But the most dangerous aspect was that using Soulblocks was addictive. Many who opened the third felt an almost irresistible compulsion to keep going and open the fourth.

  And opening the fourth Soulblock was certain death.

  But Brom had to know about this spell. His foreboding was connected to it....

  He opened his third Soulblock and gasped.

  The magic crackled into him, so intensely it was like the lightning had turned into a thundering river. His awareness shot straight up like a catapult stone, high into the air. Fendra blazed like a sickle of silver-blue fire. If he’d had a mouth to gasp with, he would have gasped, but he’d risen out of his body. He had connected to the spell in the wall, and now he realized it wasn’t just in the wall but over the entire academy, like a dome. His awareness spread across it like he himself was the magical protection.

  High above, Brom saw the academy like he was looking at a map. He saw Westfall Dormitory for first-, second-, and third-year students, and the smaller houses for fourth-years. He saw the building with the practice rooms for third- and fourth-years, Quadron Garden, the river, the white stables, the guard towers at the front gate, the three towers on the northeast, southeast, and northwest and, of course, the Tower of the Four at the southwestern corner, looming over everything.

  He felt drunk, wanting to laugh at the thunderstorm of magic inside him. Suddenly, he could see the souls of each student in the school like little different-colored candles burning far below, flame after flame after flame in the many dorm rooms. He also saw flame after flame of the instructors in their individual mansions on campus. He looked at himself, at his own floating soul, a translucent charcoal-colored replica of his own body.

  Charcoal black. That was the color of an Anima. He laughed finally, overwhelmed by the scope of this new power. He almost looked away again, then something caught his eye.

  Little wisps of green smoke trailed from the tips of his fingers. They leaked out, floating upward and joining with the dome of the spell over the school, becoming part of it. Brom looked closer and realized that it wasn’t just his fingers leaking. The entire charcoal projection of his body was doing the same: the backs of his forearms, his thighs, his calves, his feet. And the more he looked at it, the brighter the green became.

  The dome, this spell...it’s pulling something out of me, he thought.

  It was so minute it was almost impossible to see, even as deep as he was into the Soul of the World.

  He tore his gaze away, looking back at the academy sprawled beneath him.

  Each soul below was just a flicker of color, but he could see the same tiny green streams going up from them, high up, into the arch of the green-flaming dome. He looked back at Vale, and that green smoke was being pulled from her body as well.

  He blinked and looked at the tower of The Four. It burned like a giant, sickly green torch.

  That’s where it was all coming from. That was the source of the spell. Brom had never seen that light burning at the top of the Tower of the Four before, and it was horrible. He tried to tear his attention away, but he couldn’t. Panicked, he tried again and still he couldn’t. He could only stare at that churning, flickering bonfire of green.

  His instincts screamed at him to flee, and he knew that if he looked too long he’d go insane. This magic was awful, some horrifying act that he didn’t understand.

  What are they doing? he thought. What are they doing!

  This was the source of his growing foreboding. It was as though the more facile he became with his magic, the more he became gradually aware of this thing, this green fire. It was pulling something from every master and every student in the academy. What was it pulling? Magic? Life?

  Glistening green eyes formed in the midst of the tower’s flame, angry eyes, and their gaze flicked left and right, searching.

  It’s looking for me, he suddenly realized. I’ve seen this horrible thing, and the eyes... They’ve sensed me somehow.

  The disembodied eyes searched the campus, their gaze sweeping toward him. He froze, preparing for a godly wrath to fall on him...

  ...but the gaze swept past and continued on as though it hadn’t seen him.

  Why? Why would it overlook him...?

  I don’t have time to wonder, he thought. I have to get away from here, have to get Vale away from here. Right now.

  He jerked, trying to leave, but still he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the burning green light over the tower. Was it a trap? Did the green fire hold any student who might see it, keep them transfixed until they could be found?

  A jolt ran through him, and his vision wobbled.

  The vengeful gaze reached the far side of the campus, then started back toward him, more slowly and cautiously this time, like a person who’d dropped something and, after a quick glance at the ground, finally got down on hands and knees to look in earnest. The gaze came inexorabl
y closer.

  Brom...

  The jolt ran through him again, and his view of the entire campus wobbled.

  “Brom!” Vale barked, slapping his face.

  Brom slammed back in his body.

  He gasped. He was beside the rushing river and he suddenly realized Vale had been calling his name repeatedly and slapping him. His cheeks stung, and her eyes were wild. Their connection to the Soul of the World faltered, about to dissipate. Hot fear washed over him. No! He couldn’t let that happen!

  He suspected the only reason the terrible eyes hadn’t found him was because he was so deep in the Soul of the World that he had blended with nature. If he let go of that connection, he might become as apparent as a stick bobbing to the surface of a lake.

  He redoubled his focus, pulling more magic from his third Soulblock, and he held onto his connection.

  “Don’t talk,” he whispered, grabbing her hand. “We’re in terrible danger. Stay connected to me. Don’t drop that connection. Follow me close.” He plunged into the undergrowth near the river, hopping and skipping and dodging, dancing with his connection to the Soul of the World, and Vale followed. He felt the power of his third Soulblock dwindling. He was reaching its limit but he had to push through. He couldn’t let the connection drop until they were safe.

  He couldn’t see the disembodied, vengeful eyes anymore, but he didn’t look for them either. Somehow, he knew looking for them would only help them find him faster. He pushed forward, waiting for those eyes to appear in front of them, to burn him up in a foul green flame.

  Then, suddenly, they were at the weeping willow, right across from Westfall Dormitory.

  He led Vale up and over Quadron Garden. Only when they had reached the dormitory, walked swiftly through its quiet halls, entered his room, and shut the door did he drop his connection to the Soul of the World.