Morufu's Steeple

Thirteen appalons with riders tacked southwest against a gathering haboob, not in the caravaner's single file but in three parts: a center and two wings for skirmishing. A steady southern wind blew in close reach and whipped their cloaks around their speeding forms. Their turbaned hair was safely stowed away, their veils and eyewear made them all the same. The southern stars were obscured by rising dust lifted by winds far south of them, coloring Boraz's once-green face with age, like parchment yellowed past the point of reading. Silver Silenz touched the west horizon, soon to sleep beyond Morufu's Steeple.

That steeple! Taylor read what Clintus wrote but never saw it for himself when last he crossed the desert. He had come up from Gallia at speed and north along Talal Way. He might have seen the spire except his train had passed it in the night and at a greater distance than today. By morning they had flown halfway to the Teeth, the demarcating line between the desert and more temperate northern lands. The monument was in a ruined state which didn't dim the fascination of its towering height, the slender column rising almost as tall as Red Tower. Once, the top had flared out wider than the rest, the head of a flanged mace belonging to a god. A millennium ago, or maybe three, that section broke and fell, to lay still at the tower's feet.

They paused within the monolithic shadow, at a well barely a hundred meters from the tower's base. Taylor went to get a closer look, followed by a silent Milo, while others drew up water for the animals.

In the daytime, one would say its walls were black, made of strange and seamless stone unknown. Visitors took souvenirs for ages upon ages, by chipping off a splinter or a shard. Some had tried to quarry blocks from the fallen top without success. The substance, unnatural in almost every way, would spall from sufficient effort, but never crack a deep straight line. One chisel after another was blunted on that eldrich stone until the miners were defeated. Every generation brought its hopefuls, and every generation learned despair: a palace worth of solid and mysterious stone too stubborn to repurpose into something new.

At night Morufu's Steeple was a shape against the stars, a blacker night within the night. To a disciple's senses, it was darker still. The space around it had no spirit, not a drop to speak of anywhere, a void within Tenobre, a world where ambient spirit could be detected almost anywhere. Its looming presence was felt in lowly throbbing notes, just beneath conscious hearing: the wind's vibration as it fluted through the structure's massive windows. Up close, within a dozen meters, Taylor felt the sound inside his chest countering the rhythms of his organs.

A doorway stood empty, barely wide enough for a large man but three times the necessary height, pointed in an arch on top. On the threshold of that doorway, the steeple's noise was magnified until Taylor could feel it in his teeth. He passed through anyway, molars clenched against the alien vibrations.

Inside, the tower was too dark for even a disciple's night-enhanced vision, so Taylor raised a light. The floor was deep with dirt, colonized by hard-working shrubs, all blown in from the outside. Level after level rose above him, connected by a spiraling stair, passing windows of different sizes as it wound up and up to reach the broken circle, where the building's top had fallen off, pointing at the stars. The tower's sound was muted on the inside, but strange vibrations kept a constellation of dust motes suspended in the air, slightly vibrating with the steeple's humming.

His hand hovered near the steeple's walls but hesitated. Strange things weren't safe to touch, and wasn't this as strange to him as the buried chamber in Red Tower? The stone was nothing natural, or at a minimum not native, placed here (or created) in a single piece. The lack of surrounding spirit should concern him, too. He could not remember any place he'd found so far, except underground, so devoid of spirit. The surface of Tenobre, bathed by its odd sun, was awash in waves of mana in the day and ebbed only a little during the night.

Taylor considered his own spirit, and that was when he noticed the drain. Something was pulling at him, sneaking sips at his reserves. If he wasn't in the constant habit of keeping all his energies wrapped tight, to keep himself from leaking mana all the time, the tower would have taken more. He reached for his fragment, the special lantern he kept with him all the time.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

What appeared to be a wooden dowel was two halves that came apart when twisted. One could open it a little and expose the smallest sliver of the light, or open it wide. Taylor separated the halves entirely to leave the silver plate fully exposed, to gush out the silver-blue waves of light that normally would fill a space in slow-moving waves of holy light. This did not happen. Instead, strands of light were pulled from the fragment, in all directions and disappeared into the walls, sucked away like mother's milk into a greedy infant's mouth. The steeple didn't change in reply to this nourishment but kept on sucking at the light until Taylor closed his lantern with frightened hands.

"We're leaving." When Milo didn't move he took the bulwark by the arm and led him out, through the foreboding doorway, out into the starlit night, down the steps, and kept on walking towards the well, not looking back. Milo walked automatically, inattentive, unspeaking.

"What's happened?" Inez was the first to notice.

"Milo, sit," commanded Taylor, and pushed the young man down to his knees. Milo complied, which put the black-tipped spines he had instead of hair at Taylor's waist. With a touch to Milo's forehead, Taylor's suspicions were confirmed: all his enhancements had been stripped away, eaten by the hungry stone. His body was intact, and his organs were all working, but his nervous system had gone the way of someone recovering from anesthesia: sluggish and disorganized. The brigandine armor he wore was made of tirun scale crafted from mobeen. Normally, it should be thrumming with enchantments but now it was entirely empty.

"Morufu's Steeple absorbs spirit. Milo doesn't have any sensing or control, so it took all his protections. I think this is just a side-effect." Taylor tried to push some spirit into him, a technique that normally was pointless with anyone who couldn't use it, but he found the bulwark's body to be receptive. Milo took a little, the minuscule amount that was typical for laymen, but it was enough.

Milo's eyes came into focus and, after a few inquiring glances around him asked, "What happened? Are you all right?"

"Am I all right?" Taylor gripped the bulwark's shoulder to steady himself. "Am I all right? It's you I'm worried about. What do you remember?"

"We were inside the steeple and then … I don't remember." Milo looked Taylor over for wounds. "You sure you're fine?"

"That snake! I'll kill him!" Mila stomped past the gathered crowd to where Iraj was managing the appalons, pouring well water into a trough for them to drink. The unfortunate Calique, on spotting the infuriated bulwark bearing down on him, wisely dropped his bucket and tried to flee, his robe and cloak flapping wildly in the wind. But a barely-enhanced tourist is no match for a charged-up bulwark and she caught him easily, threw him down then sat on his chest with a dagger of monster bone against his neck. His struggles were futile, a toddler's strength against a monster.

"You knew there was something off about that place, didn't you? Didn't you!"

"It's taboo!"

"Fuck your taboos! Our master could have been killed because of you! We're out here trying to help you people, but all we get from you is all the shit you won't say! Tell me about that fucking tower now, or I swear I'll cut your thieving head off and bury it right here!" She put her face into his and hissed at him, "Your body will never return to Pashtuk. It'll rot, in the wilderness, and blow away. You'll never be part of your garden. Or any garden."

"Please, I don't know any more than you do! It's taboo and that's all I know."

Taylor squatted next to them, curious. "Iraj, if nobody talks about taboos then how do you know what's taboo and what isn't? Is there a list? It would be useful to have a list."

"There's no list, only teaching." A slight increase in pressure from Mila's blade encouraged him. "When Calique reach a certain age they take a journey. For a year they travel, garden to garden, and learn from different spears and tablas. Sometimes, not many but a few, they bring us to a place like this. We explored the ruin on our own. We asked the adults, who built it and how long has it been here, and they told us it was taboo. That's how we learn."

"So if I want to know, I have to be shown."

"Yes! It's just an empty building, I swear! You can climb the stairs and look around, but that's all there is. The fallen part has rooms you can explore, but all you'll find is dust and small animals. There is nothing to know."

"He could be lying," Mila said, "what do you want me to do with him?"

Taylor sighed. "He wouldn't know about it because he isn't sensitive. He's probably telling the truth. Let him go."

Mila got off the hunter but didn't offer him a hand up.

"Know about what?" he asked, still on the ground.

"It's disciple business," Taylor said with a vengeful smirk, "you don't need to know."