The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  The gatekeepers were delighted. One called back, “You are the ones who are to dig through the vault of heaven?”

  “We are.”

  The entire city was celebrating. The festival had begun eight days ago, when the last of the bricks were sent on their way, and would last two more. Every day and night, the city rejoiced, danced, feasted.

  Along with the brickmakers were the cart-pullers, men whose legs were roped with muscle from climbing the tower. Each morning a crew began its ascent; they climbed for four days, transferred their loads to the next crew of pullers, and returned to the city with empty carts on the fifth. A chain of such crews led all the way to the top of the tower, but only the bottommost celebrated with the city. For those who lived upon the tower, enough wine and meat had been sent up earlier to allow a feast to extend up the entire pillar.

  In the evening, Hillalum and the other Elamite miners sat upon clay stools before a long table laden with food, one table among many laid out in the city square. The miners spoke with the pullers, asking about the tower.

  Nanni said, “Someone told me that the bricklayers who work at the top of the tower wail and tear their hair when a brick is dropped, because it will take four months to replace, but no one takes notice when a man falls to his death. Is that true?”

  One of the more talkative pullers, Lugatum, shook his head. “Oh no, that is only a story. There is a continuous caravan of bricks going up the tower; thousands of bricks reach the top each day. The loss of a single brick means nothing to the bricklayers.” He leaned over to them. “However, there is something they value more than a man’s life: a trowel.”

  “Why a trowel?”

  “If a bricklayer drops his trowel, he can do no work until a new one is brought up. For months he cannot earn the food that he eats, so he must go into debt. The loss of a trowel is cause for much wailing. But if a man falls, and his trowel remains, men are secretly relieved. The next one to drop his trowel can pick up the extra one and continue working, without incurring debt.”

  Hillalum was appalled, and for a frantic moment he tried to count how many picks the miners had brought. Then he realized. “That cannot be true. Why not have spare trowels brought up? Their weight would be nothing against all the bricks that go up there. And surely the loss of a man means a serious delay, unless they have an extra man at the top who is skilled at bricklaying. Without such a man, they must wait for another one to climb from the bottom.”

  All of the pullers roared with laughter. “We cannot fool this one,” Lugatum said with much amusement. He turned to Hillalum. “So you’ll begin your climb once the festival is over?”

  Hillalum drank from a bowl of beer. “Yes. I’ve heard that we’ll be joined by miners from a western land, but I haven’t seen them. Do you know of them?”

  “Yes, they come from a land called Egypt, but they do not mine ore as you do. They quarry stone.”

  “We dig stone in Elam, too,” said Nanni, his mouth full of pork.

  “Not as they do. They cut granite.”

  “Granite?” Limestone and alabaster were quarried in Elam, but not granite. “Are you certain?”

  “Merchants who have travelled to Egypt say that they have stone ziggurats and temples, built with limestone and granite, huge blocks of it. And they carve giant statues from granite.”

  “But granite is so difficult to work.”

  Lugatum shrugged. “Not for them. The royal architects believe such stoneworkers may be useful when you reach the vault of heaven.”

  Hillalum nodded. That could be true. Who knew for certain what they would need? “Have you seen them?”

  “No, they are not here yet, but they are expected in a few days’ time. They may not arrive before the festival ends, though; then you Elamites will ascend alone.”

  “You will accompany us, won’t you?”

  “Yes, but only for the first four days. Then we must turn back, while you lucky ones go on.”

  “Why do you think us lucky?”

  “I long to make the climb to the top. I once pulled with the higher crews, and reached a height of twelve days’ climb, but that is as high as I have ever gone. You will go far higher.” Lugatum smiled ruefully. “I envy you, that you will touch the vault of heaven.”

  To touch the vault of heaven. To break it open with picks. Hillalum felt uneasy at the idea. “There is no cause for envy…” he began.

  “Right,” said Nanni. “When we are done, all men will touch the vault of heaven.”

  The next morning, Hillalum went to see the tower. He stood in the giant courtyard surrounding it. There was a temple off to one side that would have been impressive if seen by itself, but it stood unnoticed beside the tower.

  He could sense the utter solidity of it. According to all the tales, the tower was constructed to have a mighty strength that no ziggurat possessed; it was made of baked brick all the way through, when ordinary ziggurats were mere sun-dried mud brick, having baked brick only for the facing. The bricks were set in a bitumen mortar, which soaked into the fired clay, forming a bond as strong as the bricks themselves.

  The tower’s base resembled the first two platforms of an ordinary ziggurat. There stood a giant square platform some two hundred cubits on a side and forty cubits high, with a triple staircase against its south face. Stacked upon that first platform was another level, a smaller platform reached only by the central stair. It was atop the second platform that the tower itself began.

  It was sixty cubits on a side, and rose like a square pillar that bore the weight of heaven. Around it wound a gently inclined ramp, cut into the side, that banded the tower like the leather strip wrapped around the handle of a whip. No; upon looking again, Hillalum saw that there were two ramps, and they were intertwined. The outer edge of each ramp was studded with pillars, not thick but broad, to provide some shade behind them. In running his gaze up the tower, he saw alternating bands, ramp, brick, ramp, brick, until they could no longer be distinguished. And still the tower rose up and up, farther than the eye could see; Hillalum blinked, and squinted, and grew dizzy. He stumbled backwards a couple steps, and turned away with a shudder.

  Hillalum thought of the story told to him in childhood, the tale following that of the Deluge. It told of how men had once again populated all the corners of the earth, inhabiting more lands than they ever had before. How men had sailed to the edges of the world, and seen the ocean falling away into the mist to join the black waters of the Abyss far below. How men had thus realized the extent of the earth, and felt it to be small, and desired to see what lay beyond its borders, all the rest of Yahweh’s Creation. How they looked skyward, and wondered about Yahweh’s dwelling place, above the reservoirs that contained the waters of heaven. And how, many centuries ago, there began the construction of the tower, a pillar to heaven, a stair that men might ascend to see the works of Yahweh, and that Yahweh might descend to see the works of men.

  It had always seemed inspiring to Hillalum, a tale of thousands of men toiling ceaselessly, but with joy, for they worked to know Yahweh better. He had been excited when the Babylonians came to Elam looking for miners. Yet now that he stood at the base of the tower, his senses rebelled, insisting that nothing should stand so high. He didn’t feel as if he were on the earth when he looked up along the tower.

  Should he climb such a thing?

  On the morning of the climb, the second platform was covered, edge to edge, with stout two-wheeled carts arranged in rows. Many were loaded with nothing but food of all sorts: sacks filled with barley, wheat, lentils, onions, dates, cucumbers, loaves of bread, dried fish. There were countless giant clay jars of water, date wine, beer, goat’s milk, palm oil. Other carts were loaded with such goods as might be sold at a bazaar: bronze vessels, reed baskets, bolts of linen, wooden stools and tables. There was also a fattened ox and a goat that some priests were fitting with hoods so that they could not see to either side, and would not be afraid on the climb. They would be sacrificed when they
reached the top.

  Then there were the carts loaded with the miners’ picks and hammers, and the makings for a small forge. Their foreman had also ordered a number of carts be loaded with wood and sheaves of reeds.

  Lugatum stood next to a cart, securing the ropes that held the wood. Hillalum walked up to him. “From where did this wood come? I saw no forests after we left Elam.”

  “There is a forest of trees to the north, which was planted when the tower was begun. The cut timber is floated down the Euphrates.”

  “You planted a entire forest?”

  “When they began the tower, the architects knew that far more wood would be needed to fuel the kilns than could be found on the plain, so they had a forest of trees planted. There are crews whose job is to provide water, and plant one new tree for each that is cut.”

  Hillalum was astonished. “And that provides all the wood needed?”

  “Most of it. Many other forests in the north have been cut as well, and their wood brought down the river.” He inspected the wheels of the cart, uncorked a leather bottle he carried, and poured a little oil between the wheel and axle.

  Nanni walked over to them, staring at the streets of Babylon laid out before them. “I’ve never before been even this high, that I can look down upon a city.”

  “Nor have I,” said Hillalum, but Lugatum simply laughed.

  “Come along. All of the carts are ready.”

  Soon all the men were paired up and matched with a cart. The men stood between the cart’s two pull rods, which had rope loops for pulling. The carts pulled by the miners were mixed in with those of the regular pullers, to ensure that they would keep the proper pace. Lugatum and another puller had the cart right behind that of Hillalum and Nanni.

  “Remember,” said Lugatum, “stay about ten cubits behind the cart in front of you. The man on the right does all the pulling when you turn corners, and you’ll switch every hour.”

  Pullers were beginning to lead their carts up the ramp. Hillalum and Nanni bent down and slung the ropes of their cart over their opposite shoulders. They stood up together, raising the front end of the cart off the pavement.

  “Now PULL,” called Lugatum.

  They leaned forward against the ropes, and the cart began rolling. Once it was moving, pulling seemed to be easy enough, and they wound their way around the platform. Then they reached the ramp, and they again had to lean deeply.

  “This is a light wagon?” muttered Hillalum.

  The ramp was wide enough for a single man to walk beside a cart if he had to pass. The surface was paved with brick, with two grooves worn deep by centuries of wheels. Above their heads, the ceiling rose in a corbelled vault, with the wide, square bricks arranged in overlapping layers until they met in the middle. The pillars on the right were broad enough to make the ramp seem a bit like a tunnel. If one didn’t look off to the side, there was little sense of being on a tower.

  “Do you sing when you mine?” asked Lugatum.

  “When the stone is soft,” said Nanni.

  “Sing one of your mining songs, then.”

  The call went down to the other miners, and before long the entire crew was singing.

  As the shadows shortened, they ascended higher and higher. Shaded from the sun, with only clear air surrounding them, it was much cooler than in the narrow alleys of a city at ground level, where the heat at midday could kill lizards as they scurried across the street. Looking out to the side, the miners could see the dark Euphrates, and the green fields stretching out for leagues, crossed by canals that glinted in the sunlight. The city of Babylon was an intricate pattern of closely set streets and buildings, dazzling with gypsum whitewash; less and less of it was visible, as it seemingly drew nearer the base of the tower.

  Hillalum was again pulling on the right-hand rope, nearer the edge, when he heard some shouting from the upward ramp one level below. He thought of stopping and looking down the side, but he didn’t wish to interrupt their pace, and he wouldn’t be able to see the lower ramp clearly anyway. “What’s happening down there?” he called to Lugatum behind him.

  “One of your fellow miners fears the height. There is occasionally such a man among those who climb for the first time. Such a man embraces the floor, and cannot ascend further. Few feel it so soon, though.”

  Hillalum understood. “We know of a similar fear, among those who would be miners. Some men cannot bear to enter the mines, for fear that they will be buried.”

  “Really?” called Lugatum. “I had not heard of that. How do you feel yourself about the height?”

  “I feel nothing.” But he glanced at Nanni, and they both knew the truth.

  “You feel nervousness in your palms, don’t you?” whispered Nanni.

  Hillalum rubbed his hands on the coarse fibers of the rope, and nodded.

  “I felt it too, earlier, when I was closer to the edge.”

  “Perhaps we should go hooded, like the ox and the goat,” muttered Hillalum jokingly.

  “Do you think we too will fear the height, when we climb further?”

  Hillalum considered. That one of their comrades should feel the fear so soon did not bode well. He shook it off; thousands climbed with no fear, and it would be foolish to let one miners fear infect them all. “We are merely unaccustomed. We will have months to grow used to the height. By the time we reach the top of the tower, we will wish it were taller.”

  “No,” said Nanni. “I don’t think I’ll wish to pull this any further.” They both laughed.

  In the evening they ate a meal of barley and onions and lentils, and slept inside narrow corridors that penetrated into the body of the tower. When they woke the next morning, the miners were scarcely able to walk, so sore were their legs. The pullers laughed, and gave them salve to rub into their muscles, and redistributed the load on the carts to reduce the miners’ burden.

  By now, looking down the side turned Hillalum’s knees to water. A wind blew steadily at this height, and he anticipated that it would grow stronger as they climbed. He wondered if anyone had ever been blown off the tower in a moment of carelessness. And the fall; a man would have time to say a prayer before he hit the ground. Hillalum shuddered at the thought.

  Aside from the soreness in the miners’ legs, the second day was similar to the first. They were able to see much farther now, and the breadth of land visible was stunning; the deserts beyond the fields were visible, and caravans appeared to be little more than lines of insects. No other miner feared the height so greatly that he couldn’t continue, and their ascent proceeded all day without incident.

  On the third day, the miners’ legs had not improved, and Hillalum felt like a crippled old man. Only on the fourth day did their legs feel better, and they were pulling their original loads again. Their climb continued until the evening, when they met the second crew of pullers leading empty carts rapidly along the downward ramp. The upward and downward ramps wound around each other without touching, but they were joined by the corridors through the towers body. When the crews had intertwined thoroughly on the two ramps, they crossed over to exchange carts.

  The miners were introduced to the pullers of the second crew, and they all talked and ate together that night. The next morning, the first crew readied the empty carts for their return to Babylon, and Lugatum bid farewell to Hillalum and Nanni.

  “Take care of your cart. It has climbed the entire height of the tower, more times than any man.”

  “Do you envy the cart, too?” asked Nanni.

  “No, because every time it reaches the top, it must come all the way back down. I could not bear to do that.”

  When the second crew stopped at the end of the day, the puller of the cart behind Hillalum and Nanni came over to show them something. His name was Kudda.

  “You have never seen the sun set at this height. Come, look.” The puller went to the edge and sat down, his legs hanging over the side. He saw that they hesitated. “Come. You can lie down and peer over the edge, if
you like.” Hillalum did not wish to seem like a fearful child, but he could not bring himself to sit at a cliff face that stretched for thousands of cubits below his feet. He lay down on his belly, with only his head at the edge. Nanni joined him.

  “When the sun is about to set, look down the side of the tower.” Hillalum glanced downward, and then quickly looked to the horizon.

  “What is different about the way the sun sets here?”

  “Consider, when the sun sinks behinds the peaks of the mountains to the west, it grows dark down on the plain of Shinar. Yet here, we are higher than the mountaintops, so we can still see the sun. The sun must descend further for us to see night.”

  Hillalum’s jaw dropped as he understood. “The shadows of the mountains mark the beginning of night. Night falls on the earth before it does here.”

  Kudda nodded. “You can see night travel up the tower, from the ground up to the sky. It moves quickly, but you should be able to see it.”

  He watched the red globe of the sun for a minute, and then looked down and pointed. “Now!”

  Hillalum and Nanni looked down. At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight.

  Hillalum rolled over and looked up, in time to see darkness rapidly ascend the rest of the tower. Gradually, the sky grew dimmer as the sun sank beneath the edge of the world, far away.

  “Quite a sight, is it not?” said Kudda.

  Hillalum said nothing. For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.