by Ian Irvine
“How does he know that?” Tali said under her breath.
“Every visitor has come a long way. And considering how badly the war is going, our visit is bound to be urgent.”
“I trust you have no fear of heights,” said Rezire. “The design of Tirnan Twil, while breathtaking, makes no concession to practicality. The walls must be thick to support the weight, which leaves no room for a staircase.”
He went up the ladder, which ran vertically for thirty feet before passing through a six-foot-high hole in the ceiling, with no more effort than walking from one room to another. Tali followed wearily, then Holm.
“Is it too much to hope that Grandys’ stuff is on this level?” she said quietly.
“If memory serves me,” said Holm, “his journals and papers are on the fifth level, and various devices, artefacts and memorabilia are on the floors above that.”
“You remember,” said Rezire, beaming down at them.
“I should have warned you, my Lady,” he added politely. “The shape of the rooms focuses sounds to the centre, and upwards. There are few secrets in Tirnan Twil, but if you care to keep yours, make sure you’re above anyone who may overhear you, rather than below.”
The embayments on the second level had widely spaced, curving shelves made from thick glass that had developed a yellow tinge with age, though most of the shelves were empty. Tali looked into the embayment on her left. It contained only a pair of red shoes, the leather cracked, the toes scuffed. They were oddly shaped, almost square, with black laces.
“This room contains the oldest relics we have. Personal objects brought by the Five Heroes from our ancestral homeland,” said Rezire.
“Why so few?” said Tali.
“Space on the First Fleet was limited: one chest per person.”
“Even to the Five Heroes?”
“They were just ordinary citizens then.”
“Whose are these?” She indicated the shoes.
“They’re Syrten’s baby shoes.”
“Baby shoes!” Tali echoed. “They’re almost as long as my shoes. And three times as wide.”
“Syrten was an unusual man. Unique.” Rezire turned away. “Over here we have the wooden flute carved for Lirriam by her grandfather, and —”
“Alas, we must take the tour on our next visit,” said Holm. “Our time is short, and our enemies many.”
The third level contained items of personal adornment owned by the Five Heroes – amulets, rings, torcs, armbands, anklets, and other items, mostly in heavy gold, though to Tali’s eye they looked crude and unfinished.
“They’re very… um…” said Tali.
“You find them a trifle rustic?” said Rezire, frowning. “You may say so. We believe in plain speaking here.”
“They not what I’m used to, after Caulderon —”
“And Cython?” he said coolly. “The Herovians of old were craftsmen, but all their craft went into weaponry. Arts and crafts that were over-ornate, or sophisticated, offended them.”
“They would have found much to be offended by in Palace Ricinus,” said Tali. Everything in the palace had been elaborate, yet beautiful. And now it was all gone.
Every floor had one or two librarians or curators, silently dusting, polishing or writing in ledgers. On the fourth floor, which was empty as far as Tali could tell, three yellow-robed pilgrims knelt in the embayment on the right, facing each other, eyes closed.
“How many levels are there?” said Tali.
“Thirty-three,” said Rezire, who was heading up into the fifth level.
“It seems an odd way to protect their treasures,” said Tali.
“Ah,” said Rezire, “but Tirnan Twil wasn’t built to protect the Heroes’ treasures.”
“Why was it built?”
“To exhibit and glorify their lives.”
“So all this stuff —?”
“Items that would be seen as treasures by those who worshipped the Five Heroes.”
“Oh!”
“This level is entirely devoted to the papers of Axil Grandys,” said Rezire.
The layout was the same as for the rooms below. Five embayments, each with widely set shelves of thick glass, though here the glass had a purple tinge rather than yellow. There was a small blackwood desk to the left, and three wooden benches.
“The embayment to your immediate left contains Axil Grandys’ papers relating to the Two Hundred and Fifty Years War,” said Rezire. “At least, the first decade of it, when he led our armies.”
“Before he disappeared and was never seen again,” Holm said quietly.
These shelves held hundreds of bound volumes, some books, some journals, some ledgers of accounts, though most were collections of papers that had been bound together.
“The next embayment,” Rezire continued, “has documents dealing with the establishment, laws and government of Hightspall. The third embayment, his household accounts and personal papers. The fourth, correspondence with the other Heroes and important figures of the day, and the fifth, miscellaneous papers. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
He bowed and went up the ladder.
“What are we looking for?” said Tali quietly, so her voice would not carry.
“The key,” said Holm, drawing her away into the corner of the room and lowered his voice even further.
“I know that. But what could it be?”
“Just about anything.”
“Then how are we —?”
“You’re not thinking, Tali. Lyf wants the master pearl because it’ll help him to locate the key. And you’ve got the pearl…”
“So I need to look at everything that Grandys had, and see if anything resonates.”
The room contained thousands of volumes. It would take hours just to take them down and look at them. Tali took down a volume at random, Lessons from the Esterlyz Campaign, and flipped the pages.
Holm sat on a bench, staring at the shelves.
“I hadn’t realised it would be this hard to read,” she said. Grandys’ handwriting was spare, as befitted the simplicity of Herovian life and philosophy, but the language had changed in two thousand years and many of the words and expressions were meaningless.
Holm said something she could not make out. She was turning back to the book when again she had that feeling that someone was watching her – no, looking down at her.
She went to the ladder hole and looked up. There was no one in sight save a white-haired woman labouring up a ladder three levels above. She walked around the room, trailing her fingers across the spines of the books, but they told her nothing. She did the same with the two lower shelves, then the one higher than that, which was as high as she could reach.
“Nothing,” said Tali. “Holm, I don’t think it’s here. Do you think —?”
“You’re the one with the pearl.”
“I think I’ll try the next level.”
It contained an array of weapons and armour – swords, daggers, war axes, bows and crossbows, and other weapons she did not know the names of, dozens of different kinds of each.
“They don’t look like Cythonian weapons,” she said to Holm, who had come up behind her.
“They’re not, so they definitely didn’t come from Lyf’s temple. You don’t have to worry about them.”
It made her task a little easier. She wandered across to the opposite embayment, and recoiled. The shelves contained dozens of severed, embalmed heads, some worm-eaten and others, judging by the odour and appearance, beginning to decay despite the embalming fluid.
“Did Grandys collect these?” said Tali.
“Afraid so. Tells you what kind of man he was.”
She went up to the level above that, which was a portrait gallery. There were nine portraits of Axil Grandys, plus several of each of the other heroes, but she gave them only a cursory glance. They hadn’t come from Lyf’s temple either.
The far embayment contained five portraits of Lyf, the young king of old. This
is more like it, she thought.
“Would he have had portraits of himself in his temple?” she said to Holm.
“It hardly seems likely. It was his private temple; no one else ever entered there save at his invitation.”
Four of the portraits were formal ones, masterly but stiff and over-formal. She continued to the fifth, a grimy, battered little miniature entitled Self-Portrait of the Newly Crowned King, Age 18. It showed Lyf in his temple, looking boyish, anxious and vulnerable.
“So he was eighteen when he became king,” said Tali, drawn to the lonely figure despite all he had done since. “The same age as me.”
“And not much older when they betrayed him and walled him up to die,” said Holm. “Any resonance from it?”
“No.” She went closer. “But it’s so dirty, it’s hard to see what he was like.”
Tali continued around the portraits, but felt that feeling of foreboding again. She shuddered.
“What’s the matter?”
“I keep feeling that we’re being watched.”
She drew a tiny amount of power and probed with her magery, above her, where the forebodings seemed to be coming from. They were diffuse and spread out over a wide area. What could it mean?
Tali looked up; looked down. Her foreboding was growing with every thickening breath, every racketing heartbeat.
“It feels like the danger’s above us… But not directly above. Not in the spike.”
Tali paced around the five-lobed level. She had never felt claustrophobic in Cython, yet she felt trapped in this tower suspended over one of the most glorious views in Hightspall but lacking a single window. She had to see out; she was practically choking. She ran up the ladder to the next level. A young archivist, clad in green robes, was huddled over an object in an unlighted lobe of the room.
“Excuse me?” she cried.
He seemed surprised that she had addressed him, but bowed and said, “Yes, my lady?”
“Is there a window nearby? I’ve got to see out!”
“Tirnan Twil was designed without windows in the library and archive rooms, my lady.”
“Anywhere?” she said thickly.
“In the early days, when the world was less benign, our designer had an eye to defence. Between a number of the levels there are places for sentries to hide and watch. And even defend if necessary, though I hardly think —”
“Where?” she screamed, barely restraining herself from shaking him. “Where’s the nearest?”
“Just above, my lady. Would you like me to —?”
“Yes!” she shrieked. “Now!”
He bolted up the ladder, as if to escape her. As it passed through the hole to the floor above, he reached out to his left and opened a small, concealed door. He stepped through into a low-ceilinged service level, dark and musty.
“This way, my lady.”
He had to crouch, and even Tali had to bend her head under the low ceiling. She followed him. Fifteen feet across, a pair of shutters had the same five-lobed shape as the tower.
He threw them, revealing a window set in the yard-thick wall. “There you are, my lady,” he said with a trace of condescension. “You’ll be all right now. You’re not the first —”
He was turning away when something outside caught his eye. He thrust himself against the window, staring up, then heaved on a lever and the thick glass groaned out and down. He leaned out, his mouth hanging open.
“What is it?” said Tali.
He tried to speak but no words came out. Though he was much bigger than her, Tali thrust him aside and looked up.
Gauntlings! Dozens of them, circling around the tip of the spike that topped Tirnan Twil. Her heart stopped for a moment, then restarted with a lurch. But what could gauntlings do, up there?
“They can’t get in, can they?”
His mouth worked; a globule of red saliva oozed onto his lower lip. He’d bitten his tongue in terror. Useless man! She ran past him to the ladder hole and yelled down.
“Holm! Gauntlings, dozens of them, high above!” She shouted the same message up to Rezire.
Holm came clattering up, the curator silently down. He thrust past her into the service level and across to the window. When he turned to them, his face was the colour of white marble. “It’s an attack!”
“Surely gauntlings can’t hurt this place?” said Tali.
“There is a way,” said Rezire. “A flaw in the design. Though it was not a flaw when Tirnan Twil was built —”
“What flaw?” snapped Holm.
“The early curators discussed the issue for many decades.”
Tali wanted to shake him. “What issue?”
“Whether an intelligent flying creature could ever be created. The best advice in Hightspall said no.”
“So you did nothing.”
“Are you without personal failings,” said Rezire coldly, “that you judge others so readily, on so little evidence?”
“The question, however badly put,” said Holm, “is an urgent one, Rezire.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tali. “But if the gauntlings have ill intentions —”
“This is a place of guardianship and contemplation,” said Rezire. “We’re used to thinking before we speak. Not a virtue held in high esteem in the outside world, I fear.” His cold stare included Tali in that category.
“What was done?” she said.
“At crippling expense, Guardians were stationed at the ends of the arches, and up top, but no threat ever eventuated. The Two Hundred and Fifty Years War ended in our victory, and the danger passed. The Herovians who were our chief supporters fell on mean times. Support for Tirnan Twil dwindled, and we could no longer afford the Guardians. We kept watch ourselves, though Tirnan Twil has never been threatened…”
“And now it is,” said Tali. “What’s the flaw in the defences?”
“Water.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We need water to drink, and cook with, and bathe in,” said Rezire, “but we can’t carry it up a thousand feet from the river.”
“How do you get it?
“Fans inside the top of the tower draw the misty gorge air in through slits in the stone. An array of condensers extract water from the air, and it’s piped down to tanks on each level of the spike.”
“Why is that a flaw?”
“An attack on the slits at the top of the tower could make its way all the way down the tower.”
“What kind of an attack?” said Tali.
“Remember how the gauntling attacked my boat after Lizue was killed?” said Holm.
Tali stared at him. “Fire?”
“Fire.”
CHAPTER 46
“Can’t you block the slits?” said Tali.
“We could, if we had people stationed up there,” said Rezire. “But it takes an hour to do so…”
“And the gauntlings can attack in minutes,” said Holm, “if that’s their intention.”
“If you turn off the taps,” said Tali, “it’ll stop fire coming down the pipes.”
“However if the top level of Tirnan Twil should be set alight,” said Rezire, “burning books and embers will cascade down through the ladder holes. There’s no way to seal them.”
“Then you’ve got to stop the gauntlings.”
“I don’t know how.”
Tali tore at her hair. Could Rezire be that obtuse? But then, he was a man of learning. Battle and bloodshed wasn’t real life to him, as they had become to her. War was something he read about in dusty old books. She looked to Holm to take the lead but he waved a hand as if to say, continue.
“You have defensive magery, don’t you?” said Tali.
“We used to, devices of great power brought from ancestral Thanneron, but they failed long ago.”
“They failed?”
“The land fights back. Most of the old magery has failed. Everything fails in the end, even steel and stone…”
Rezire sounded resigned, accepting,
and she could not comprehend it.
“Not Tirnan Twil!” said Tali. “Send men up to the tower top, armed with bows and spears.”
“What would they do?”
“Attack the gauntlings. Drive them away from the air slits. Hurry!”
Rezire went to the ladder hole and shouted orders. Tali looked out the window at the circling gauntlings.
“Are they carrying riders?” said Holm.
“No.”
“So what are they doing here?”
“They could be just spying for Lyf.”
“Then why so many of them? One would be enough to shadow us here.”
“I’ve ordered my most reliable people up to the defences,” Rezire said dolefully, “but I fear it will do little good. Those attributes that make a good fighter are of little value in our work.”
“Then you’d better tell your people that they don’t have much time to escape – just in case it is an attack.”
“Tirnan Twil is our home, our hope, our life, our future.”
“If the gauntlings attack the air slits, some of your people may die.”
“Everyone dies, Lady Tali.”
“Not before their time.”
“If Tirnan Twil’s time has come, so has ours.”
He trudged off, bent-shouldered and flat-footed.
“You’ve been very quiet,” she said to Holm, who was looking up through the window.
“I’m wondering why the gauntlings are circling the tower. If they knew you were coming here – and presumably they’ve been spying on us from on high – why didn’t they try to capture you on the way?”
“And carry me to Lyf?” said Tali. “I don’t know.”
“Wait a minute,” said Holm, staring at her. “I don’t think they’re under Lyf’s command at all.”
“Why not?”
“He wouldn’t order them to attack this place with you inside. That would risk losing the master pearl.”
“Then who is commanding them?”
“No one,” he said grimly.
“I don’t understand.”
“We talked about gauntlings after Lizue was killed, if you recall. They’re troublesome, rebellious creatures, and Lyf would never send them out on attack without a rider to command them.”