The Obsidian Tower

by Melissa Caruso

  Karrigan stopped before the open Door, staring into its scarlet glow. The Rookery followed more cautiously, fanning out behind her; I lagged behind to give them space, my pulse ragged with fear.

  My grandmother would never have left it like that. But she was gone, and the Black Tower stood open, its secrets laid bare. The implications were far too terrifying to contemplate.

  I braced myself for outrage and reprimand from my aunt, for accusations that I had failed in my most important duty as Warden.

  Karrigan’s eyes narrowed and she breathed, “That’s what she was hiding all these years.”

  And without another moment of hesitation, she strode into the Black Tower.

  “Wait!” I protested, hurrying forward to face the bone-humming power pouring forth from the open Door. The Rookery gave way before me, exchanging worried glances as they made ample room for me to pass. “Have you forgotten the Gloaming Lore? Nothing must unseal the Door.”

  “Well, something did, and I’m taking my cursed chance to have a look.” She stopped a few paces in and gazed around her.

  “My lady,” Foxglove said quietly, too close to me for comfort. I stepped out of arm’s reach, my heart quickening. “Much as I hate to say it, we need to go in there.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was cross that threshold again. But I was Warden of this as well.

  “All right.” I took a deep, ozone-scented breath and stepped into the Black Tower once more.

  The vast circular room stretched above and around me, the lines and patterns and runes glaring with scarlet light. Karrigan stood gazing around with her face made hard and impassive to hide whatever she might be feeling at her first sight of the chamber we’d been guarding all our lives. The Rookery spread into a loose arc; by the soft gasps and low exclamations, I wasn’t the only one overwhelmed by the barrage on my senses.

  I had eyes only for the black obelisk that stood, stark and final, at the center of the tower.

  No line of white light split its center. It stood as it had when Lamiel first opened the Door, blank and flat and silent, the seal engraved upon it hidden by the harsh red light behind it. Only remnants of its searing power remained, like a lingering scent in the air, but those were enough to set me shuddering.

  Ashe’s fingers flicked out from her chest in the warding sign. Bastian started drifting toward the artifact, his eyes alight with fascination, but Kessa took a firm hold of his wrist and held him back.

  “Not so fast,” she said. “Remember what happened that time in Callamorne.”

  “Not so fast, indeed.” My aunt turned to face them, arms crossed on her chest. “Invitation or not, you’re intruders here. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t cast you from this chamber.”

  I bristled. I was the Warden of Gloamingard, not Karrigan; it was up to me to decide whether to throw them out. I was about to tell her as much, but Foxglove stepped forward first and bowed.

  “Because you have no idea what any of these runes and patterns mean,” he said. “We do. Without us you’ll never understand this tower’s dangers, let alone counteract them.”

  Karrigan grunted. I could almost see the calculations passing across her face: the truth of Foxglove’s words, the Rookery’s reputation for untangling the most difficult magical knots, the ancient weight of the Gloaming Lore. Her gaze swept the room—the countless glowing lines and runes intersecting in patterns of dizzying complexity, the magical energy palpable in the air—and came to rest on the black obelisk at the center.

  “I can’t believe she was hiding something this powerful from us,” she said. “She must have known about it, but she never told us a cursed thing. What does it do?”

  “Let’s find out,” Foxglove said, seizing the opening. He turned to Bastian with as much confidence as if she’d told him to go ahead. “What do you think?”

  Bastian gaped around the room, pausing occasionally to scribble and sketch in his notebook. “I’ve never even heard of an enchantment of this scope. The Sun Pillar in Osta is the closest thing I can think of, and you could fit five of those in this room. And look at all this obsidian!” He shook his head in awe. “Obsidian is one of the best sources of magical power. A chunk the size of my fist could hold enough to blow up a house. This much…” He gestured around at the massive obelisk and the obsidian-sheathed walls looming far over our heads. A chill shivered across my shoulders.

  My aunt listened, eyes gleaming with guarded interest.

  “It concerns me that the patterns are all wards,” Foxglove said. “Whoever built this tower really wanted to contain something.”

  Nothing must unseal the Door. I swallowed and hoped to the Nine Graces that whatever it was, it was still contained.

  Bastian’s pencil scratched furiously, grating at my nerves. “It’s definitely Ancient Ostan in origin. I can tell by the style. I’d say this tower is at least three thousand years old.”

  It didn’t look old. The polished obsidian walls, the precise lines of the wards—everything was clean and sharp-edged as if it had just been finished. And the power humming underneath my skin, making my bones itch, was fresh and deadly strong.

  “Are the seals intact?” I asked hopefully. “Can we just close the Door and walk away and not worry about it?”

  “No,” Foxglove said quietly. “Can’t you feel it? They’re leaking.”

  Karrigan’s breath hissed through her teeth, and my heart curdled. That couldn’t be good.

  “Do I need to evacuate the castle?” I asked.

  Foxglove exchanged a long look with Bastian. At last, he shook his head. “I wouldn’t let anyone into this chamber, but not much seems to be making it past the tower door. The rest of the castle should be safe for now. As for in here—well, let me know if anyone starts feeling nauseous, has strange compulsions, begins melting, that sort of thing.”

  I let out a nervous laugh, though I doubted he was joking.

  “The seals are working, but something compromised them,” Foxglove continued. “We need to make sure they won’t break open again—and figure out what will happen if they do.” He turned to me, the red light tracing shadows on his face, and uttered the words I’d been dreading. “Ryx. Tell us what happened here.”

  Expectant stares fell on me from every direction. I couldn’t lie to them—there was too much at stake—but I didn’t want to tell the full truth, either.

  “The Lady of Owls commanded me to secrecy on certain details of the circumstances,” I said slowly, “but I can tell you everything that pertains directly to the artifact.” Ashes, I’d have to step carefully here. “When it was touched, a line of white light appeared in that groove down the middle, and a wave of immense magical power came from it.”

  “Who touched it?” Foxglove asked sharply. “Was it Lady Lamiel? Is that how she died?”

  Her hair spread on the floor, limbs tangled in the senseless sprawl of the dead. I’d been trying not to look at the spot where she’d fallen, or to think about dragging her corpse across the rune-marked floor.

  “I touched it.” My voice came out ragged and raw. “I was trying to keep Lamiel away from it.”

  “There’s an astoundingly complex seal on the obelisk,” Bastian announced. He stood at the edge of the final ward circle, which glowed in vivid scarlet on the floor. “Between the door, the tower, the circle, and the stone, that’s a lot of nested barriers. I’ve seen similar layered wards in workrooms at the Mews, for when they’re using dangerous magic. Whoever created this wanted to be able to release the artifact’s power but contain its effects.”

  “So with the layered wards in place, it’s probably safe to activate,” Foxglove mused.

  Something between hunger and outrage leaped in my aunt’s face. “No one is activating that stone but an atheling of Morgrain,” she declared. I had a suspicion which atheling she was thinking of.

  Bastian bent closer to the circle on the floor. “Well, if I read these runes right, only a member of your family could pass this ward in t
he first place, so that seems to be a given. As for whether it would be safe, I suppose it should be, so long as you didn’t disturb the warding circle around it.”

  “No one should activate it at all,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Nothing happened when it was activated before?” Foxglove pressed. “A wave of power, but no other effects you could see?”

  Kessa raised a skeptical eyebrow. “It did kill Exalted Lamiel. That’s hardly nothing.”

  Now they were making assumptions about all this dangerous magic based on the half-truth I’d told them. I didn’t want my deception to get someone killed.

  “Not directly,” I said carefully. Grace of Wisdom, help me tread the narrow path between telling them too much, and too little. “It was the protections that killed her, not the activation of the obelisk itself.”

  My aunt stared at the stone, a hungry light in her eyes that I didn’t like. “You still haven’t told me what it does.”

  Bastian flipped through pages in his notebook. “Given all the obsidian, it’s possible the artifact is just a power source. Vast amounts of magical energy stored here in case the family ever needed it.”

  “One of my family could use this power?” Karrigan asked, too eagerly.

  My spine stiffened. “This thing was sealed away for a reason.”

  “I suppose you could.” Bastian scratched his head with the tip of his pencil. “I’m not certain how you’d harness it without some sort of intermediary device, though.”

  My aunt rubbed her hands. “Well, then. Will it help your investigation if I give it a quick touch, so we can see what happens?”

  “Are you mad?” The words burst out of me. “The Gloaming Lore—”

  “Says to keep the Door sealed,” my aunt finished. “But it’s too late for that. Mother has left us with this puzzle, for reasons she declined to share with us. If she wanted us to simply seal it away again, she wouldn’t have called in the Rookery.” She turned to face Foxglove. “Well? Can you understand it well enough to do your duty without seeing it activated?”

  Bastian and Foxglove exchanged a long look.

  “Perhaps, given time and reference materials…” Bastian began dubiously.

  Ashe snorted. “It’s your castle, Atheling. Up to you if you want to risk destroying it.”

  It wasn’t Aunt Karrigan’s castle. It was mine. My one and only charge, while my cousins were all Wardens of several castles and villages and towns each.

  “If it would actually risk destroying the castle, I can’t allow it,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t think it should.” Bastian gave Ashe a dubious sideways glance that suggested she was not the expert on magical sciences in the group. “Any danger should be confined to this room.”

  “Shall I, then?” Aunt Karrigan asked.

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  It was as if an invisible finger laid itself on my lips: Shh.

  I felt her presence, in the walls themselves and the land beneath me and the pulse of my own blood through my veins. My grandmother. She was here, her focus entirely upon us, stronger even than the oppressive magic that hung in the air.

  My heart leaped despite the gravity of the situation. Wherever my grandmother had gone, whatever had happened, she was at least well enough to spare some attention for what was happening here.

  If anyone else noticed, they showed no sign of it. Foxglove spread his hands. “It’s your risk to take, my lady. We’d certainly learn something. I’d keep it to a quick touch, though; I can’t guarantee it’s safe.”

  Ashe gave him a skeptical look, but she didn’t say anything. Bastian pulled out great round rune-marked spectacles ringed in artifice wire and settled them on the bridge of his nose.

  Karrigan stared at Foxglove, and then at the obelisk. Beads of sweat formed on her brow. What she was about to do went against centuries of lore, and she knew it.

  My stomach clenched so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. Even my grandmother’s presence couldn’t reassure me. Karrigan wanted this too much.

  “Don’t,” I whispered.

  My aunt never did listen to me.

  Without another word to any of us, she crossed to stand just outside the final circle. She stood a moment, regarding the obelisk with grim resolve. Then she reached across the barrier and laid the tips of two fingers against its glossy black surface.

  I swallowed a cry of alarm, my chest tight with fear, bracing myself for a blast of eye-scouring light.

  Nothing happened.

  “See,” Bastian said into the silence, nodding, “That’s the thing I don’t understand. There’s nothing in the runes telling it to activate if you touch it.”

  Foxglove’s brow creased. He turned to look at me. “You said it did something when you touched it.”

  I nodded reluctantly.

  My aunt stepped back from the obelisk, her face guarded, rubbing her fingers against her thumb as if some residue clung to them. A wild, deep darkness haunted her eyes beneath the careful crease of her frown. I wasn’t so certain that nothing had happened.

  Fear. I’d never seen it on her face before, but that was fear. And something more, as well. Loss? Yearning?

  Her gaze flicked to me, almost accusatory. “There’s no reason it would work for Ryx and not for me.”

  Foxglove beckoned me forward, his expression mild. “It can’t hurt to try, then, can it?”

  All I could think of was that sickening blast of blinding white light and the crawling intensity of the power that had flowed from the gate—and the dulling of Lamiel’s eyes, the life fleeing her body. Had I conflated the two too much? Was I overreacting under the pressure of that violent memory, and the weight of power in the air, and the ominous red light that bathed us all in blood?

  No, this had to be a genuinely terrible idea.

  “With all respect,” I said, “I know you’re the expert, but I’m not certain we know that it can’t.”

  Ashe snorted. “Good instincts, for a mage. You’re right. But we’ve dealt with dozens of these sorts of things, and there always comes a point where you have to poke it. Sometimes you regret it, but you have to poke it, or else give up and go home. You’ve got no other way forward.”

  Kessa laughed ruefully. “She’s not wrong.”

  Ashe grinned. “I never am.”

  My aunt jerked her head toward the stone, jaw tight, eyes calculating. “Do it.”

  “Please,” Foxglove added, with a little bow.

  I could say no. I wanted to say no. The word formed in my throat.

  Do it, said my grandmother.

  Her voice came not from the air around me, but from the blood that connected us, the land that bound us, the magic that wove between us. It was more a feeling than words—a pressure, an urge—but it was her familiar, watching presence that pushed the impulse into my mind.

  Do it, Ryx.

  I had no idea why she would want me to activate the artifact. It went against my every instinct. But if there was one person in the world I trusted absolutely, it was my grandmother.

  I pushed down my fear and forced myself to walk to the edge of the glowing ward circle. The black obelisk loomed before me, filling half my vision. Its power pulled at me, like a sucking wind, resonating through me until all I could hear and feel was its deep, humming pulse.

  Graces protect me.

  I pulled off one glove, tucked it in my belt, and reached through the barrier. The magic tingled across my fingertips, my arm, all the way to my shoulder as I strained toward the stone.

  There was something old and horribly familiar about the seal carved into its heart, crossing that deep cut of a vertical line. Like the face of someone I’d met a long time ago, in a bad dream.

  I braced myself and brushed the tip of one finger against its center.

  The world split open in a dazzling, burning flood of white light.

  Agony ripped through me, the foaming crest on a wave of vast and terrible power. The room shuddered wi
th it. Searing radiance blazed from the groove down the center of the black stone, and heat blasted me as if I’d opened an oven door. I was barely aware of a great commotion in the room, of voices crying out in shock and fear.

  Someone grabbed my arm, fingers digging into my flesh, and yanked me back.

  I let out a yelp of anguish—No, not again, I don’t want anyone else to die—but it was Aunt Karrigan who squeezed my arm painfully tight and then let go, face pale with shock and very much alive. The white glare from the obelisk immediately began to fade.

  “That’s quite enough,” Karrigan said roughly. She rubbed her hand as if it ached.

  I shuddered, my whole body still buzzing with residual power. Bastian knelt on the floor, spectacles off and hands over his eyes, muttering, “Ow, ow, ow.” Kessa bent over him, a concerned hand on his shoulder; Ashe glared at the obelisk through a squint, her sword eased half an inch from its sheath.

  “Right,” I gasped. “You’ve seen it. Now let’s get out of here and close the Door.”

  “Good idea,” Foxglove agreed, his usually smooth voice gone rough.

  I turned toward the Door, swaying on my feet, eager to get out of this accursed place and seal it behind me.

  An iron-haired woman in a sumptuous sapphire-blue gown stood just beyond the threshold in the alcove, dark eyes wide, staring in at us as scarlet light flooded her shocked face. A cluster of others hovered uncertainly behind her, all dressed in the Raverran fashion, with corseted gowns and frock coats. Odan’s nephew Kip, a bright-eyed boy of about eight and a castle page, hopped up and down beside them; he appeared to have been frantically attempting to signal me.

  The envoy from the Serene Empire had arrived.

  “We seem to have arrived at an unfortunate time,” the envoy said, her voice smooth and controlled even though strain showed around her eyes.

  I stood blocking the open Door, red light bathing my back. With the Raverran delegation clustered just beyond the alcove, I was trapped, and the Rookery couldn’t leave the tower without coming far too close to me. My bones throbbed with the unsettling heat radiating from the stone, and every muscle still ached. All I wanted was to get everyone out of here and close the Door. It was madness that I had to be polite and political now, but I forced the lines of my face into a smile.