GLASS 4.2: THE TOWER OF MOURNING
“The Arch-Enchanter represents communication. The openness that precedes the transit of ideas. Reversed, she represents a pyramid of power that obfuscates all meaning. Bureaucracy above all.”
– from ‘Tarot for Beginners’
“E-N-D-E-A-V-O-U-R.”
“Very good, Jaroan. And…”
“It’s what an old guy says when he’s going to try something.”
“Can you put it in a sentence?”
“Er – ‘I… shall endeavour… to find thee a sentence of worth’…?”
I laughed. “Aha! Go on, it’ll do.”
Jaid had looked a little frustrated while Jaroan was struggling, and suddenly sat forwards. “Ooh, choose me, Kas, I’ve got a good one –“
“Jaid, endeavour’s not just a doing word. It’s a thing – give me a thing sentence.”
“Er –“
Jaroan pulled a pouting face at her, which only caused her to flounder more.
“Stop it! Oh – er –“
“She hasn’t got one,” our brother said smugly.
“I so have! Okay – ‘Everything the princess did… during her endeavour to… find the princess-pegasus! just brought her… further under the witch’s spell’?”
I clapped. “Very good!”
It was Jaroan’s turn to look a bit sulky. “You’re giving her a ‘very good’ even though she was going on about princess-pegasuses –“
“Pegasi,” Jaid said.
“– for like the fifty thousand hundredth time today –“
“Jaroan, I happened to think it was very inventive. I for one would like to know what happens to the princess on her quest.”
Jaid squealed, got to her feet and kissed me, then ran off to grab the new paper-book, crushed-bug ink and quill, so that she could scrawl down her ideas. We were all still getting used to writing with proper implements, and she’d taken to it much more quickly than either of her brothers.
I looked at Jaroan. “Card game?”
His eyes brightened instantly. “Squire of Slime?”
“Ladders.”
And then he was instantly sitting back again, moody once more. He hated Ladders – it had more arithmetic.
“Come on, accept your punishment – one game of Ladders, then we can play Squire.”
“Punishment? For what!”
“Misspeaking your numbers for, like, oh I don’t know – the fifty thousand hundredth time today…?”
“But the numbers in the game don’t even go nearly that high!” he protested. “It’s not going to teach me anything!”
“I agree, it’s not the best way to teach you a lesson – but I can hardly back down now can I? Come on, go get them.”
“Fine…”
It wouldn’t matter in two minutes anyway. My brother was damn good at the game; once he was beating me he’d have a smile back on his face. I didn’t know how he did it – it was a game of almost pure luck, but I couldn’t argue with the facts.
Xantaire came in with the washing-up bucket. “Do you feel like getting us a servant any time soon?” she asked with a tired smile on her face.
“It was your turn,” I said.
“It’d help you out too,” she cajoled, a devilish light in her eye.
“A serbant, mummy!” Xastur piped up. He was sitting with his new toys scattered around him on the amazingly-comfortable mattress Orstrum now used for his bed. (The old man had continued to refuse my request that he take mine, so we’d settled on this compromise.)
I chuckled. “I don’t think I could ever have a servant, you know – it’d be weird. I couldn’t pay someone to just… do what I wanted them to do.”
“Oh, I so could,” Xantaire said, throwing herself down on the bench opposite me, leaving space for Jaroan who was returning with the card-box. “Rub my feet… wash the dishes…”
I screwed up my face. “There’s a few hundred extra homeless out there tonight who would do almost anything for five copper, but I don’t think anyone’s going to rub your feet for less than a plat, and…”
I deftly evaded the kick she launched at me.
“Eww!” I remarked.
She glowered.
“More seriously – is there anything else I can do to help the people who lost their homes, Xan? You’ve been down there too, and –”
“You mean other than feeding them, sheltering them – giving them hope for the future, keeping their kids out of the drop? Seriously, Kas, the Incursion wasn’t your fault. You don’t have to shoulder all the burden. Let the guilds do their thing.”
“But… I’m rich, now. I’m sitting on some considerable wealth and…” Ciraya’s accusation from a couple of nights back had prickled me. I picked up the hand of cards Jaroan had dealt me. “And I don’t think that I should just be doing nothing with it. I mean –“
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“You’ve got enough on your plate,” Xan replied.
“Yeah,” Jaroan joined in as he played some cards. “Just focus on kicking ass.”
“Jaroan Mortenn!” Xan chided him. “Less of the bad language, please.”
I nodded in support of her words and he ducked his head, his way of confirming he’d heard. Paying lip-service to the notion of contrition.
“Anyway, it’s not like, spend money, or kick butt. I can do both.”
“Are you going to play, or not?” he grumbled.
I looked at the face-up stack – he’d played a one-five-six combination of Merchants. I rifled through my cards, looking for a suit-matched group of cards that gave an even number exceeding twelve, or an odd number that undershot it – if I couldn’t, I’d permanently lose a card from my hand.
“Maybe you can go down there as Feychilde some time,” Xan suggested. “Actually ask them what they want, ask them how you can help.”
“I suppose,” I grunted. “Feels a bit… inelegant.”
“Just do it,” she said with a sigh. “You’ll feel better afterwards.”
I placed down a three-four-seven of Mages and refilled my hand.
“What if someone recognises my voice?”
She snorted. “Change it, you clod.”
“Yeah, you could do this awesome booming voice…” Jaroan started giving it his best attempt in his unbroken voice, virtually growling in order to achieve the deep register: “‘I am Feychilde, demon-slayer, defender of Sticktown! Can I get you some gravy with that?’”
This made us all chuckle but it particularly tickled Jaid, who then started whinging because he’d caused her to spill some ink-dots on her magnum opus.
By the time we finished Ladders the sun was setting, and after Squire it had set. I barely had time to skim Jaid’s still-dripping-wet story while I was packing my satchel and daubing some stinger lotion on my freshly-shaven cheeks, but it was a really good little tale. There was little-to-no structure, of course, and the princess found the princess-pegasus too easily for my taste, but it dripped with character as much as it did ink. The centaur-jester, clearly based on her brother, was a highlight with his three sarcastic songs – so what if each song was only two lines long? It was basically a masterpiece.
I told her as much as I headed out into the rain, then I kissed them both and bade them goodnight before letting Xantaire lock me out. She’d leave the chains and bolts off when she went to bed, so I could get in with my key.
This was becoming a more and more common experience, I reflected as I made my way to my customary shadowy spot on Springwalk. I was waking later, staying out later… seeing the others less. Every day, more of my thought and energy was being expended on my night-time activities, my struggle to pin down the vampires who were waging a quiet campaign of terror on the folk of Mund. I was determined to juggle the two opposed lives I now had to lead, but sometimes it felt as though I were being torn in two, worse than when I raised two shield-sets at the same time.
If I could just catch even one, I could extract information from the blood-drinker, find out where to begin. My inability to leverage my unique capabilities to help my girlfriend was starting to grate on me.
I summoned my wings and started flying north-east. Below me the streets were filled with more than the usual amount of travellers for this hour, and a few spotted me as I sailed over Ebondock Knot, pointing and voicing wordless cries. Stragglers heading to the cleansing, probably. The druids of the Unwilted Bloom would maintain the spell from moonrise to moonset, curing the minor wounds and diseases afflicting those who entered the Fountains of Merizet. Many of the poor with more serious conditions or injuries would go back time and again, hoping that this would be the time their sickness would be lifted, their diseased limb be made whole again. And many of them would come back disappointed, too broke to do anything but knuckle-down and wait for the next cleansing, praying that next time it would be different…
As I progressed farther I was in the perfect position to see just how clogged the muddy streets were getting, despite the drizzle. They said that somewhere between one in a hundred and one in fifty Mundians attended the ritual. That was a lot of people moving through the city, and whole industries of stalls had sprung up out of nowhere throughout the evening, lining the commonly-used roadways, hawking alcoholic refreshments and rain-covers, cooked snacks and witch-doctor remedies. Those who were too unwell to transport themselves (but whose friends and family still retained their dreams of a miracle-cure) were being hauled in carts and on wagons. I caught the dejected gaze of a young girl with a wasting-sickness, slumped back in her rickety seat with her eyes on the sky. I gave her a little wave as I coursed overhead and saw the flicker of a smile briefly replace her pained expression.
She wasn’t the only one to get a wave off me. More than once I caught the attention of whole groups of pilgrims, given how low I was flying. My take-down of Shadowcrafter was still recent news, and my name came easily to the lips of my fellow Mundians.
Hilltown started to give way to Hightown and then I could see it before me – my destination, the three-sided Tower of Mourning, its smooth black rock pulsing with bright threads of colour, lines as blue and pure as any shield of force.
I landed at the edge of the huge grey courtyards surrounding the tower. I could’ve kept on flying, but down this low the wind had dropped, and my otherworldly wings felt ungainly without a breeze. It wasn’t that it was particularly difficult for me to maintain my momentum, but I sensed it would only be appropriate, somehow, to use my own two feet in this place.
Okay, so I was nervous.
There were no people here. The nearest buildings were run-down, mostly abandoned. The Tower of Mourning wasn’t on the route to the Fountains. The place was accounted creepy by most, and even those from around here who didn’t outright fear the place probably wouldn’t trespass on the grounds in case they got on the bad side of one of the patrols. I could see a band of magisters on the far side of the courtyard; it didn’t look as though they were stationed there in any kind of permanent capacity, but neither were they moving. Peering back at me.
If they saw us here –
They’ll be briefed, won’t they? Minds secured against the knowledge-thieves… Perhaps even their memories adjusted…
I doubted they could see as well as me. Thin wisps of purpled clouds crossed the face of the full moon, but to my eyes it was almost as bright as midday and getting brighter. I strode across the cracked paving, rain in my face, skirting the low remnants of long-destroyed walls now more moss than brick, treading the great grey squares of stone and avoiding the rows of black weeds, the leafless, skeletal stalks that had burst through the narrow fractures in the rock. This place was a living shrine to Illodin, the very air redolent with the scents of sorrow, memory, stillness. Perhaps that was why the wind had dropped unnaturally around its base – an open space as wide as this should’ve had a fair breeze if not gusts, but the air was barely tickling my fey appendages. It seemed even the elements themselves only whispered in the presence of the God of Grief.
As I drew closer to the tower I made out the doorway. It was an irregular, almost rectangular hole, yawning open like a blackness in the blackness – and it was then that the excitement finally began to overcome me. The pace of my steps quickened. I was glad to have my mask and not my old scarf covering my face as I drew in deep lungfuls of the cool, morose night air.
Was I early, or late? What awaited me in that blackness? Who would I meet, and how would I be received? What were the ‘foundations of the tower’ like and why were we meeting there? I’d never been anywhere like this. I kept telling myself I’d been to the Maginox – all the way to the top, to the strange rooms of Magicrux Altra – and I’d dealt with enemies and events a thousand times more terrifying. Yet still, I was nervous, feeling the thrill of this place tingling in my very bones.
This was it. I was a champion now. This was my official entrance into my new world.
Zel. I’m here.
I forced myself to stand a little straighter as I walked, and took control of my jittery breathing. It was time.
“So it appears.”
I passed beneath the lintel of black stone, cutting off the soft blue radiance of the tower’s glowing walls, plunging into the shadows that were dark even to my eyes.
* * *