The Tower

by Jean Johnson

  “So how do we do that?” Myal asked, looking up at him.

  FIFTEEN

  Kerric smiled at the “we” she used, because she had automatically included herself in their task. Tucking the toe of his boot back into the sphere beneath his seat, he opened up a set of controls, and a spotlight more or less centered over her chair. “Prop the drawing pad on your lap so the light lands on it, and you can help.”

  Bemused but trusting him, Myal nodded and squirmed in her seat. She finally settled on crossing one ankle over the other knee for a more or less flat support surface. As soon as she settled, Kerric centered the light projected from the suncrystal chandelier overhead with a few thoughts and a flick of his fingers. The spotlight vanished, and control runes appeared on the now shadowed page, lit by the projection spells overhead.

  “Can you read that?” he asked. At her nod, he relaxed. “Good. It’s touch-activated. Tap the page or slide your fingers over the surface to maneuver the viewing angles for the images. You won’t be able to alter anything you see, but if I’m to patch a connection channel around Menomon, I’ll have to close my eyes to ‘feel’ my way through the world. Establishing a new Fountainway is a very visceral process. I’ll need you to talk me through it, if I don’t want to take a full hour getting it right.”

  “Understood,” she said. Tapping the square with the runes for Fountainway Map on it, she expanded the image with a slide of her hand. It was easy enough; it made her smile. “This is fun. I always thought that if I ever did retire and get a non-adventuring job, it’d be on my feet as a combat instructor at the Adventuring Hall . . . but if this is how Tower Control interacts with everything, I could get used to a sitting job.”

  “The interface is simple. The Tower’s Fountainways are marked in green, Menomon is marked in blue, and Guardian Rydan’s channel is marked in gold,” he told her.

  “What about this faint white line?” she asked. “It parallels the gold. Is that a flaw in the display spell?”

  “No, it’s not; you can see when you magnify the view that it doesn’t follow the gold line exactly,” Kerric told her. “That’s why I need your help. The controls along the right edge of the pad adjust the tilt of the viewing angle and the focus elevation, plus north, south, east, west, zooming in or swinging out, the usual for scrycastings. The white line is brand-new. It wasn’t there before we went into lockdown, though it was there when I re-opened everything.

  “It’s some new channel that follows the old one to Menomon. I don’t know where it originates from, and at this point, it’s irrelevant because I know the gold one is the one I need. That’s the one I need you to direct me to. Tell me north, south, up down, whatever it takes, and remember to think in three dimensions. I’ll let you know if I run into anything that I cannot put a channel through, and we’ll just back up and reroute around it. The new patch will grow a brighter green than the old.”

  “Patch?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “The easiest way to connect to Guardian Rydan’s channel is to drive a patch-channel around Menomon, being careful of its local aether and protective spells—all that stuff in blue—and connect to his channel on the other side,” he told her. “We’ll see if we can get some news of what happened to Menomon out of Guardian Rydan first, then attempt a connection to the new Fountainway if he doesn’t know what happened, either. Zoom in and hit the multihued button. That will pull up what my Fountainway can sense of the local aether around Menomon. Red is bad, green is good. Try to stick to the chartreuse side of yellow at the very least.”

  “Understood.” Sliding and tapping her fingers across the light-infused pad, she marveled for a moment that her hand wasn’t casting a shadow. But then that was the essence of magic, bending the laws of the universe by the power of a mage’s trained will, confined and shaped by runes and words and who knew what else—tattoos, in her case—to perform things not normally physically possible. Or things that were physically possible, but without physical labor being involved.

  As she magnified her view of Menomon and its surroundings, however, she frowned and zoomed in further. “Kerric . . . the white line? It goes to the heart of what I presume is the Fountain Hall, since that’s where the green and gold lines connect, but . . . it doesn’t actually connect.”

  Pausing his preparations for channel-making, Kerric pulled up his own copy of the map, floating it in the air in front of him. Zooming in, he peered at the bubble-filled section where his line and Guardian Rydan’s line met Guardian Sheren’s Fountain. Sure enough, the white channel went almost all the way, but stopped short. “Huh. That’s a Fountainway channel, alright, capable of communicating, scrycasting, and even sending objects through . . . I’m honestly surprised it’s not connected, and even more surprised Sheren hasn’t cast it out. It’s just sitting . . . There, see the power levels? It’s almost completely shut down. Whoever built it isn’t using it.”

  “Was it used to take over her Fountain?” Myal asked.

  Kerric frowned in thought. “No . . . I don’t think so. Not directly. It might have delivered someone into the Fountain Hall, but not a direct takeover, no. And it had to have been pushed into that room after the Menomon Fountain’s defenses had been weakened or altered. The more I look at this situation, the more curious I grow. Ready to guide me?”

  “Ah . . . yes. The terrain around the eastern side of Menomon is less hazardous than the west,” she stated, double-checking the hues being displayed. “You’ll have to dip over or under the white line, but you should be able to reach the gold with fewer problems from the east,” she told him.

  Fixing the images in his mind, Kerric nodded and closed his eyes. A touch of his hand on the edge of his chair lowered it further into the Fountain, soaking him in magic up to his knees. The further into the singularity-well he delved, the stronger the magics he had to play with, but the more it affected his physical senses from the sheer power coruscating through his mind.

  Eyes closed, he surged his thoughts out to the edge of the underwater city’s limits, and bulged out a portion of the channel. Splitting channels for disparate scryings meant for distinct points of delivery was an easy task; the spells built into the Tower after so many centuries of scrycasting made it easy. And with Myal murmuring directions, watching what he could only feel, it only took a few minutes to craft a channel that detoured around the city, under the low-powered white line, and tapped up into the golden one.

  Tapped was the right word for it. Kerric “knocked” on the side of the channel, as if it were a door and he a guest coming to request a visit. This one took a little bit longer to get a reply than contacting Guardian Saleria had. He spent the time reinforcing his channel, warding the sides of the tunnel, installing protective spells that would filter out excessive energy or potentially dangerous packages. Such spells were equally familiar to him, since they were part and parcel of the Tower’s contract-signed promises to its many patrons that nothing harmful would be sent to them.

  It was also a reassurance that a patron could not send anything harmful to the Tower, though there were provisions for patrons to ship gold through the live scrycasts to shower upon their favorite adventurers. Sometimes the gold, which appeared literally flying through the air down at the adventurers, caused bruises and cuts when it struck, but they were always minor injuries when that happened, and the adventurers were usually grateful for the monetary praise.

  In this case, he just wanted a communications channel to start with, though he did build in future points of access. The rest could be opened up later; maybe Guardian Rydan felt lonely and bored, and would like to chat with someone. Or maybe he wanted to enjoy the sight of adventurers tackling difficult traps and dangerous monsters. The only reason why Guardian Saleria wasn’t herself a customer of the Tower was that whatever her tasks were, she spent a lot of her days in spell-backed prayer. She relayed along some of the scrycastings to a few wealthy Katanai . . . Katani patrons, Kerric knew, but that was it.

  Someone
knocked back, forming a starting-point bulge of their own. Kerric finished attaching the channel and opened it. As soon as he did, he got a male voice. A stranger’s voice.

  “Who is this?”

  Opening his eyes, Kerric stared at the new copper line on his mesh-screens. “I was about to ask you the same. Where is Guardian Rydan?”

  “Ah. Guardian Rydan has retired. I am Guardian Dominor. Who is this, and how can I help you?”

  Eyes narrowed in suspicion, Kerric asked, “What happened to Guardian Rydan? Where is he?”

  “I told you, he retired. Currently, he is asleep. Or making love to his wife, I’m not sure which.”

  Wife? Kerric thought. Of all the possible replies the stranger could have made, that wasn’t on the list of things he would have guessed. Kerric had thought this Guardian Dominor person had forced Rydan out of the position, but if he was talking about Guardian Rydan sleeping with a wife . . . “When did Guardian Rydan retire?”

  “I’ll tell you that, if you tell me who you are. This channel connects to Menomon, but the last thing we heard was that the Council of Menomon ordered it shut down. So who are you, and how did you get into this conduit?”

  “Ah—This is Guardian Kerric, from the other side of Menomon. I’ve patched a channel around Guardian Sheren’s Fountain, because it seems to be shut down and I cannot get ahold of anyone in the city. I would like to speak with Guardian Rydan, please, to confirm that you are who you say you are, and have the right to be in control of his Fountain.”

  There was a long pause, then the man’s voice came back. “You know, I would argue that point with you, except I suspect you’re feeling belligerent because of the same problems we had about a day ago. Your own Fountain must have been attacked by the one in Menomon, am I right?”

  “Yes. Where is Guardian Rydan?” Kerric asked. “Him, I know. You, I do not.”

  “I’ve called for him. He’s not going to be happy about it, but he’s on his way. He did mention the whole paranoia-protocol thing to me when I took over, but didn’t mention your name. Of course, we were in a hurry at the time,” the stranger, Dominor, added in a tinny-sounding aside, “but given the circumstances, it’s understandable.”

  “We’ve only spoken a few times, but I’m sure he will remember me,” Kerric admitted. “Can you tell me why the switch in Guardianship, while we wait?”

  “He got married. An event which shocked the Netherhell out of his brothers, since we never thought he’d lower his prickly, isolationist defenses long enough to even look at a woman,” Dominor stated dryly, voice echoing through the line.

  Off to the side, Myal listened with a touch of amusement. She whispered to Kerric, “He sounds like a true curmudgeon, if that’s his own brother saying bad things about him. I wonder what woman took pity?”

  “Shhh,” Kerric hissed back, though he grinned. He addressed the other man. “So you are his brother?”

  “One of them. Here he is. Rydan, a man named Guardian Kerric is calling . . . Stop glaring and stick your damned finger in the communication stream.”

  “I know very well how to operate my Fountain, Brother,” a much more familiar voice echoed through the line. “This is Guardian . . . ex-Guardian Rydan. Identify yourself.”

  “This is Guardian Kerric. Last time we spoke, it was in a joint channel with Guardian Sheren about importing food via the Fountainways. You said the best you could send her were some seeds for growing trees of her own, as you were running low on stasis-spelled fruit. I said I would send her a cartload of . . . ?”

  “A cartload of pears, yes, I remember you. Now why the hell are you interrupting my sleep?” the ex-Guardian growled.

  “I am interrupting because the Tower Fountain was attacked through the Fountainways from either Menomon’s Fountain or a spot beyond it,” Kerric stated, “which caused the Tower’s defenses to shut down for over eighteen hours. When I got everything back to being operational, I found Menomon shut down tight, a stranger claiming to be in control of your Fountain, and a strange new channel paralleling yours in its approach to the city from the south. These are all things that any Guardian would find alarming, particularly when they all happened more or less at once. So. What has been going on?”

  “Ask Domin—Guardian Dominor,” Rydan corrected himself. “He knows everything. I’m going back to bed. Guar . . . Gah. Rydan out.”

  “I’ll answer any questions you have,” Guardian Dominor reassured them, speaking up as his apparent brother fell silent.

  “Old habits do die hard, don’t they?” Myal murmured, feeling sympathy for the married curmudgeon. “I hope he’s kind to his wife, at least.”

  “I heard that.” The voice belonged to Guardian Dominor. He wielded it with a tone laced with humor. “It was more like his wife being kind to him. She’s very good for him, and he loves her very much. I suspect his current crankiness is from lack of sleep. Or unrequited lust. They are newly wed, as of yesterday. So . . . you wanted to know what happened with Menomon and the attacks?”

  “Yes, please,” Kerric said, wishing he could see the other man’s face. “What happened?”

  “A mage named Xenos was rescued by the Menomonites when his ship crashed on the Sun’s Belt Reefs. They helped rescue a lot of the passengers on board the wreck, while others ended up floating south down to Nightfall, here. At any rate, this Xenos fellow was ambitious and cunning. He managed to lull the city officials into thinking he would be a good citizen, and somehow managed to work his way into the system far enough to poison Guardian Sheren, all to gain access to her Fountain Hall.”

  “Poison?” Kerric asked, alarmed. He wasn’t the only one; Myal gasped in shock. He quickly asked, “Is she alright? Did he kill her? Is that why the Fountain was shut down? How did you learn all of this?”

  “She was poisoned, but she managed to get help, and will be spending the next few months recovering. One of her apprentices, some woman named Danau, was ordered to shut down all magical access to the city in the Guardian’s absence. Once the Guardian has recovered and the Council has stopped being a pile of petrified fish dung, we should be able to communicate with her again,” Dominor stated. “As for the attack itself . . . Xenos was using controlling scrolls on all the Fountainway terminus points. We knew at the time that we were under attack via some very subtle yet strong subversion spells, and suspected that the other Fountains were being subverted as well.

  “Rydan and I switched the Guardianship to buy us more time, since Xenos was using aura-matching spells in his takeover attempt. We created the second channel to form a second angle of attack, and disrupted his efforts—speaking of which, do not attempt to make contact with that second channel. Rydan is still a vastly powerful mage, and that channel connects directly to his, ah, his own personal energies, shall we say. He’d be extremely upset if you attempted to contact or tamper with it in any way.”

  “Understood. I’ll leave it alone—I’ll even set up some warning sigils around it, in case anyone else tries,” Kerric offered. “Though it might be easier just to remove that channel entirely, if his powers are bound to it. I’m quite sure your Katani mage instructors have told you never to leave a conduit into your personal energies out where anyone can access it.”

  “I’ll warn him about that. Anyway, Xenos was then sufficiently distracted that the apprentice Danau and a group of Menomonite guards were able to get inside the Hall and kill him directly. So he’s dead and gone, but Menomon doesn’t have anyone who can step up to take Sheren’s place, so they’ve shut it all down.”

  “Well, the Tower owes you a debt of gratitude for taking out the interloper,” Kerric stated, seizing on the opening made by a new Guardianship. “I don’t know how much Guardian Rydan may have told you about what we do, but we provide scrycastings, live and previously spell-recorded entertainments of adventurers running gauntlets through rooms and halls filled with puzzles, tricks, traps, monsters, plus damsels and gents in distress, ranging the gamut from light comedy with little da
nger to literally lethal situations.

  “If you’re interested, I can connect a scrycasting channel to your Fountainway so you can view a sample of what we do on a mirror. We have patrons from all around the world who pay our modest viewing fees for our unique form of entertainment.”

  “I . . . don’t think that’s something the citizens of the kingdom of Nightfall would be interested in at this point in time,” Rydan’s brother hedged, his voice echoing not only with the odd resonances of Fountainway communications, but with bemused doubt as well. “But I’ll keep it in mind for later.”

  “Kingdom of Nightfall?” Kerric asked. “Aren’t you in the Empire of Katan?”

  “Not anymore. We’re an incipient kingdom, with all the headaches that entails. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?” Guardian Dominor asked.

  “Yes, actually. Did you have a recording of the exact time when Xenos was killed, and the exact moment the Fountainways for Menomon were sealed off? We’re not just trying to establish what happened in Menomon that caused our own defenses to activate, but to track down a sort of Seer prophecy about . . . well, we’ve been given a vision of a Netherhell invasion, and the nature of the Seeing is such that if we can track down what event triggered it, we can alter those events so that it doesn’t actually happen.”

  “Ahhh, yes, the meddlings of a Seer. My twin’s wife’s first husband was a Seer—I don’t know if you know Guardian Serina, but she worked with him for a while. Actually, he was a Guardian, forgive me for forgetting that part. My extended family has been through a lot in the last few days.”