The High King's Tomb (63 page)

D
ale was pleased. The tower guardians, instead of playing games and partying, were having serious discussions about the wall and its workings. Not that she could understand it all, and not that they weren’t passing ale around now and then to, as Itharos put it, “assist in the thinking process.” They filled up scrolls with equations and drawings, made diagrams in the air with points of light, and argued theories and philosophy. At least they were doing
something.

Alton had continued with his inspections and reported the wall, the section nearest the breach, was still oozing blood, sometimes more, sometimes less, and that he saw disquieting images in the cracks, usually the eyes watching him. At times it was only one pair, at others it was several. Today he’d hurried her into the wall, and he seemed more anxious than usual. She wondered what was wrong. Even her passage through the tower wall felt…tense? Stiff? Not the usual fluid sensation like passing through water but almost brittle. The wall had not trapped her this time, but she worried about her return. The mages assured her they would speak with the guardians to ensure her passage back was safe.

Dale shuddered and tried to focus on what the tower mages were talking about, but sometimes they fell into using Old Sacoridian or words from other languages she could only guess at. At times they were so incomprehensible in their discussions that she found herself dozing off. Suddenly a question rang through the tower that brought her fully awake.

“So who started the song?” Fresk demanded. “Who started the song they all sing?”

Everyone stared at him. Then a babble erupted and turned into an argument. Cleodheris was certain the Fioris had something to do with it, Winthorpe claimed it was Theanduris Silverwood, Itharos speculated it was the stonecutters themselves, and Boreemadhe was quite sure the Deyers originated the song.

“We were not there to know the origin,” a new voice said, “nor did we think to ask.”

Dale whirled in her chair and standing there in the middle of the chamber next to the tempes stone was Merdigen with his pack on his back and his staff at hand. Two others were with him, a long-bearded, solemn fellow and a wispy woman with leaves in her hair.

When the tower guardians saw them, they dropped what they were doing and exclaimed in delight. Even Cleodheris smiled and float-walked over in her ethereal way to greet the travelers.

Dale couldn’t believe it. After so long waiting for Merdigen to return, there he was standing among them. The two newcomers were introduced to Dale as Radiscar, from Tower of the Sea, the westernmost tower, and Mad Leaf of Tower of the Trees.

Mad Leaf?
What sort of name was
that?

The guardians showered the travelers with questions at once and Merdigen wearily gestured them to quiet.

“I need ale,” he said, “and I’m sure Radiscar and Mad Leaf would appreciate refreshment, too.”

This request was attended to, with the guardians conjuring a feast from the air, as well as mugs of ale, foam spilling over brims. Dale sat in the one solid chair at the table and waited for things to settle down.

Merdigen heaved off his pack, which dissolved to nothing before it hit the floor, and took in long gulps of ale Itharos handed him. “Ah, that is good,” he said. He inquired after his cat, and asked, in turn, how everyone was, including Dale.

“I see you’ve not abandoned us,” he said.

“I see you haven’t either,” she replied in a quiet voice.

Merdigen nodded. “Yes, I know I’ve been gone a good while, but the travel was not easy.”

“What of Haurris?” Itharos asked. “Why is he not with you?”

Haurris, Dale gathered, was the guardian of Tower of the Earth.

Merdigen’s features sagged at Itharos’ question. “We could not reach him, I’m afraid. Broken bridges everywhere. Messages sent from Mad Leaf’s tower went unanswered.”

The group grew somber.

“What could have happened to him?” Boreemadhe asked.

Merdigen shrugged. “Hard to say. Perhaps the breach in the wall has made him impossible to reach, but why him, and not me, when my tower is closest to the breach?” He shook his head. “Whatever the cause, we must assume the worst has happened and that whatever happened to Haurris could happen to any of us.”

The festive atmosphere at the arrival of Merdigen and his companions all but evaporated—except for Mad Leaf who grinned, well, madly, and played with a twig in her hair. It seemed one of Boreemadhe’s gray clouds settled over the table.

“We must not let this deter us,” Merdigen continued. “In fact it should spur us to find answers, and that’s why I have called you all together: to find answers, for the wall is constantly weakening. We cannot fix the breach, but there may be other things we can do. We were always more powerful as a collective than as individuals.”

“We have been looking at the problem of the wall,” Itharos said, with a wink at Dale. He conjured out of the air copious diagrams and equations scrawled across scrolls.

However, as if this was some sort of cue, the tower began to rumble, the floor shuddering beneath Dale’s chair. She stood in alarm and the guardians cried out in consternation. The shaking grew, encompassing the whole of the chamber, raising dust. Crockery fell out of cupboards and crashed to the floor. A crack jagged up one wall and the floor pitched so much, Dale staggered from side to side as though she were on a ship at sea.

Blocks of rock tumbled from the unseen ceiling above and smashed to the floor. Dale dove under the table, knowing it would not be enough to protect her if the whole tower decided to collapse.

She was aware of Merdigen shouting orders and the mages running to and fro in the dust haze until they disappeared beneath the arches on either side of the chamber.

Another block crashed to the floor just inches from Dale and she gritted her teeth, wondering if this was the end of all things.

A
lton paced alongside the wall. His night’s sleep had been worse than usual, filled with murmurings in his head. Uneasy, ghostly murmurings full of fear and despair eating at his mind. He awoke full of trepidation.

And yet everything about the morning was as usual. The encampment went about its day-to-day business and the wall and tower remained, as far as he could tell, unchanged. He’d hurried Dale through breakfast wondering if the mages in the tower would note any difference and provide an answer to his disquiet. He hadn’t told Dale how he felt, but he had practically pushed her through the wall.

Now he apprehensively awaited her return. Waited, waited, and waited. He was sick of waiting when he should be able to get answers for himself.

On impulse, he halted in front of the tower and pressed his palm against the stone facade. Shining strokes of lettering hurled away from his hand. He had not seen this in so long. He knew it was the wall guardians sending out messages of alarm. What was going on?

He was joyous that the guardians allowed him this much communication, but he feared what it meant.

Just then the ground pitched beneath him and he almost lost his footing. He did not jump away from the wall or seek cover, but pressed both hands against it, leaned into it, and tried to remain standing as the ground rolled under his feet.

“Dale!” he screamed in anguish.

A
s the lettering continued to scroll out from beneath Alton’s hands, he became aware of the encampment behind him breaking into chaos; heard the shouting and running feet, the screams of horses. He glanced up, and to his horror, saw Tower of the Heavens swaying back and forth, as if it were made of some more pliant material than granite.

He pressed his palms hard against stone and willed the guardians to allow him entry, but a jolt from within the wall, a surge of anger, threw his hands off it. He knew that anger, felt familiarity.
Pendric.

Still he did not retreat, but planted his feet wide and offered a silent prayer to the gods, then plowed his will into the wall past Pendric, past all resistance. Suddenly, after the long silence, his mind filled with voices in chaotic song.

We are lost. We are broken. We are breached.

If the song fell apart, so would the wall. But how could he fix the song from here, and alone?

There was no way.

Then without warning, the stone yielded beneath his hands and he sank forward into the wall till it swallowed him entirely. The passage was not fluid. He was buffeted from side to side, thrown against hard angles, his flesh bruised and abraded by rough stone, and an underlying thread of song tried to repel him. Pendric again.

Alton pushed forward like a swimmer in battering seas and emerged in the tower chamber, but rock solidified around his ankle. He pulled his foot out of his boot just before the wall crushed it.

He was elated he’d made it through the wall after being denied passage for so long. Maybe the guardians were so weakened, so caught up in chaos, that their barrier against him failed. Or maybe they were ready to embrace him again and accept his help. He hoped it was the latter.

His elation turned to apprehension as he peered through the haze of dust. Rubble littered the floor, and another tremor nearly knocked him off his feet. The columns in the center of the chamber weaved precariously. He could not see Dale and he feared the worst.

Merdigen poked his head out from beneath the western arch. “This way, my boy!” He waved at Alton to join him.

Alton dashed for the arch, and across grasslands where he had a brief impression of a raging storm of snow and lightning exploding around him till he emerged past the columns into the ordinary tower chamber again. One of the columns crashed to the floor beside him, breaking into sections. He ran beneath the arch. Merdigen shone with a faint glow, revealing little in the darkness. Straight ahead the corridor dead-ended where it intersected with the wall.

“The others are merged with the wall,” Merdigen said. “We must restore order, and we need your voice. Will you help?”

Alton thought it a ludicrous question. He nodded.

“Good,” Merdigen said, and he walked into the wall, merging with it, leaving Alton in the dark.

Alton licked his lips, tasted salty sweat and the grit of stone dust, and groped forward to press his hands flat against the wall. With his mind he announced who he was and his consciousness flowed into stone, leaving his body behind.

L
eave,
Pendric’s voice thunders, the force of his will almost dislodging Alton’s contact.

Alton braces himself as if facing into a windstorm and with his own strong resolve impelling him forward, he drives his mind past his cousin and deeper into the wall.

The song is in complete disarray. Crackling fills Alton’s awareness and he almost retreats, for it feels like it’s his own mind that is breaking. It hurts.

The guardians do not welcome him or deny him, nor does the stone tell him stories of its birth and weathering, its quarrying and shaping as once it did. He is surrounded by a forest of crystals—symmetrical trees of feldspar and quartz and blades of black hornblende. The limbs of the trees vibrate with violence and one by one they explode into fragments, the granite a sandpaper scream in his head. The very constitution of the wall is breaking down.

We are breached. She passes, she passes, she passes. We are breached…

The wailing shreds his mind and the once unified beat of the stonecutters’ hammers is out of time.

Broken. Lost. Dying.

Alton does not know what to do now that he is here. He joined with the wall once before and sang with the guardians, but it was a song of unmaking, a deception given to him by Mornhavon the Black. He realizes he does not know the true song. He cannot discern its refrain from the chaos.

Betrayed. Broken. Unweaving.

Then Merdigen is with him, and the other mages, too.

“You must sing,” Merdigen says. “Try to get them to sing with you.”

Another tree explodes nearby and Alton feels it as if the fragments cut and puncture his flesh.

“I do not know the words.”

“Then listen.”

The mages begin to sing. Alton strains to hear them amid the clamor. They are not harmonious singers, but they have the words and melody.

Alton listens hard, trying to block out the cries of the wall guardians. Note by note he joins the mages, stumbling over words, trying to capture the tune and rhythm.

A surge from the wall guardians counters him with their lament:
Our song unravels, erodes stone and mortar. We are breached. Our song weeps.

Alton wants to shout,
No!
but Merdigen says, “Sing. It is the only way. Sing so they hear you.”

So Alton does, forcefully, allowing his voice to gather volume. He sings with surety, for now it feels instinctual, as if he’s always known the song, as if it has always flowed through his veins. His birthright.

He perceives a nearby cluster of crystals vibrating and prismatic colors flaring from geometric planes. The cluster does not tremble with the turmoil of the guardians, but resonates his song, enlarges it. Encouraged, he sings with more confidence and more crystals resonate. It is as if there is more than one of him singing. He is singing in harmony with himself. His voice spreads calm outward in ripples, like rings on a lake.

Merdigen and the mages buoy him, hold him steady, ground him. They are his bedrock.

He opens fully to the wall. Feels the emptiness of the breach, the pain and destruction around it, the suffering and deaths of guardians. But he feels also, away from the breach, a tide of unity and strength, and if those guardians once felt uncertainty and despair, now they hear him and add their voices to his, the blows of stonecutter hammers in sync with his heart. Slowly they reweave the song, preserving crystals that have not broken. Those that have been destroyed, however, cannot be remade.

Alton stretches his consciousness as far as he can, trying to flood each fracture with song, like filling a dry river bed with water. More guardians take up the song and echo him. The forest flares with red pulsing light, like blood flowing through veins.

The song grows and builds until he hits a barrier of seething hate.
Pendric.

Leave.
Pendric’s voice is like the tolling of a ponderous bell. Crystal trees shudder with the tone. Alton’s song falters.

Betrayer.

“No,” Alton says, his voice small by comparison. “You are the betrayer. You are killing the wall.”

Do not trust. Hate him.

Hate, hate, hate…
pounds through the wall.

Alton senses uncertainty in the guardians, the song weakening. The underlying chaos surges while the order he restored ebbs.

We are breached.

We are broken.

We do not trust.

Pressure crushes Alton, entraps him so he cannot move forward or backward. Crystals vibrate with so much anger they slice into his mind.

“You are killing the wall!” Alton cries. Then he remembers who and what he is, and from deep within he calls upon his special ability. Though he has never used it before from within stone, it rises from him, builds a wall around his mind that shields him from harm and thwarts his cousin’s attack.

Pendric screams his rage, battering Alton’s shield, but it holds.

“Sing!” Merdigen urges him.

The mages help Alton find the song again, and he sings it as powerfully as he can, once again bringing confidence to the guardians. They drown out Pendric, coax unsure voices to join them. In a rising crescendo, he calms the voices, homogenizes them, and they become one. Pendric can no longer be heard. Now he is no longer an individual, but part of the wall’s chorus.

There are empty broken spaces in the wall, and try as Alton might, he cannot make them resound with song. The guardians in those places are dead. At least he has helped halt the cascade of destruction, and the guardians that remain sing together.

Sense of self flees Alton as he soars in the joy of the song. This is where he should be, singing among the guardians, rejoicing among the beauty of crystals, becoming a guardian himself and helping the wall remain strong.

Then, like someone grabbing his collar, Alton is hauled out of his contact with the wall and his consciousness thrown back into his body.

A
lton flailed backward, tripping over rubble, and fell halfway beneath the arch. He stared at dust funneling up a shaft of daylight that pierced through a hole somewhere high above in the tower’s height.

“I should think that’s the end of the observation platform,” Merdigen said, following Alton’s gaze and stroking his beard.

“Observation platform?”

Merdigen looked down at him and crooked an eyebrow. “You don’t think the tower contains only this chamber, do you? That would be a terrible misuse of space.”

Someone coughed and Alton sat up. “Dale?”

“I’m fine,” she said, coughing again. Through the haze he saw her picking her way across the chamber, stepping over the fallen column, and patting dust off her sleeve. Her hair was gray with it. “I see you finally found a way in.”

“Yes, I—”

“Good. Then I don’t have to relay your messages all the time and worry about you pulling out your hair.”

“Pulling out my hair?” He stared incredulously at Dale, then at Merdigen. The wall may have just fallen and they worried about observation platforms and hair? “The wall!”

“What about it?” Merdigen asked.

“Is it…is it still standing?”

“Heavens, my boy. If it collapsed, so would this tower. It was shaken for sure, and the breach may be wider than it was, but with your aid I think we stemmed the tide. Remember, this wall was made of great magic, and a little jostle isn’t going to throw it down.”

“A little jostle…” Alton swiped hair out of his face. “What happened? What set it off?”

“A very good question,” Merdigen said. “The guardians were already in disarray, as you know, helped along in no small measure by the other Deyer, the Pendric fellow.”

“My cousin.”

“Well
I
know that. Off key, he was, and that’s putting it mildly, but I think he’s a tad more attuned to the wall now.”

“He trapped me,” Alton said.

“Yes, yes, but you defended yourself well, though in the end we almost lost you. If we had not pulled you out, you would have become like him, absorbed as a presence in the wall without corporeal form. And while that’s all fine and good, you’ll probably be more useful to us as you are now that the guardians are ready to deal with you again. But you must learn restraint so you do not lose yourself in the wall.”

Dale overturned a chunk of granite with her foot and it clacked on the stone floor. “Probably a good idea,” she said. “It wouldn’t make Captain Mapstone very happy if you up and sacrificed yourself.”