As Oli hurried along the bank the ground became ever less familiar. Rocks replaced tree roots and dust blew up around him. He strained to recall the rest of the conversation he had once overheard about the ford in the North. He’d been young. It was a distant memory, in which the world was smaller and the grown-ups bigger. The ford that Joturn had found was lodged in his memory for a reason. It was in the early days of their current village location, when the clan were still exploring the new surroundings. There was some detail, some debate around the crossing that had caused him to take interest. He retraced the memory in his mind and the details came back to him.

“The crossing up North, was it hard?” Otmer asked.

“Easy,” Joturn replied. “The water’s fast, but shallow too. A strong child could get across it.”

The other adults nodded appreciatively.

Then Oli remembered what Joturn had added, as though to him it were an afterthought. He slipped down the side of a boulder as he recalled it.

“I could see the tower from the crossing. I thought at first it couldn’t be real. I didn’t know anyone could build something so tall. But it’s there. It was the tower. We’ve come a long way North.”

“Then it’s a crossing we’ll not use again,” Elder Oslef declared, before stalking away. Those were the days before Kassha died and Joturn replaced him as an elder. He did not argue but grunted in his enigmatic way and set to work skinning rabbits.

“I’ve seen it,” Heridan announced, frowning at the receding form of Elder Oslef, “When I was living with the Sullin I saw it all the time. It’s an ugly thing, but it doesn’t burn your eyes out. You should show us where that ford is, Joturn, in case we ever need it.”

“Didn’t the gods knock it down?” Ingo, Heridan’s son, peeped out from behind his father to ask the question.

It was a fair question, thought Oli. Every legend about the tower ended with its destruction, so why was it still there? Now he knew why he’d remembered this conversation. It wasn’t only for the reason they had never used the ford, but for the questions Ingo had asked, and the awkward answers the grown-ups had given.

“They did knock it down,” came the reply from Elder Mildred.

“Hurean smote it down three times. They built it again with the same stone. That’s why it’s black and you can only see it in the daytime. Maralon brought in hurricanes and tore it to its foundations. When the fools built it again, even Terlos made common cause with his younger brothers. He set aside his fight with Hurean and shook the whole godless city in a terrible quake. They say that even as far West as the Godsroof you could feel the ground tremble. For seven days he shook the city. Every time they rebuilt it the gods taught them a lesson.”

“So, why’s it still there, did the gods get bored?”

The provocative question came again from Ingo, whose lips curled into a smirk. Mildred’s eyes, usually full of doting affection for the great warrior’s prodigal son, lit up as she snapped back.

“Do you think the gods are so fickle? They left it alone because it spoke a truth, in the end. A tortured, twisted, blackened thing, like the hearts of the men who built it. Their own shame towers over them.”

Oli would hear that reason again from his mother and father when he asked each of them separately the same question. It was one of those grown-up explanations that sounded rehearsed, like how Tion gets his sweets around the whole world in a single night before the feast of Terlos. It was an explanation that left something missing. It almost worked, but didn’t quite fit, like last year’s trousers hanging above his ankles.

Suddenly Oli’s memory of the story and the imaginary picture of the place he sought collided with reality. He stopped in his tracks. There ahead was a bend in the river. He inched toward it. The trees were spaced farther apart here, and he could see more of the sky through their tips. As he approached, he saw the tallest peaks of the mountains on his left, through which the river passed. To his right, the slightly lower homes of the hoarders stood. And in the middle of those two clusters of ragged points, the mountains dipped into a low pass. Straining his eyes, Oli thought he saw movement on it, but that was not what caught his attention.

Rising behind the pass itself, into the heavy clouds which hung in the skies around it, was the tower.

Oli had seen a tower before. He’d seen the clocktower of Scursditch, opened by the mayor with so much pomp that even the forest clans had been enticed to send witnesses.

This tower was not like the clocktower of Scursditch. With its base obscured behind the pass and its tip hiding in the clouds, it seemed to be without beginning or end. Tributary constructions, some leaning at sharp angles, coalesced at a point that held up the final spire. The dark frame shot upward into the bright sky like an inverted lightning bolt returning to its source. The Tower of a Thousand Follies. To the cursed people of Dombarrow it was their great triumph against the very gods of this world. To all others, it was a monument of arrogance and a herald of endless misfortune for the lost souls who lived in its shadow.

Oli shuddered and stepped back. It was like Heridan said, though. It did not burn your eyes out to look at it. He retreated to his memory from that day long ago, smiling when he recalled his grandfather’s part in it.

Back home, Oli snuggled under the hides and clung to his grandfather’s hand. Gurithen winked conspiratorially and whispered as he unrolled a parchment.

“I picked this up in the town of Anartha. You can find all kinds of writing there, from all over the world. But this was penned beneath the Godsroof by the King’s own poet before his exile.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“What’s it about?” Oli inquired eagerly. He loved these evenings when his parents and Ada stayed out later. He and grandfather only pretended to be asleep when they returned.

“That tower you asked me about. They say the poet Devarta went to live there, that he ended his days beyond the reach of the gods. Terrible, terrible.” Gurithen shook his head disapprovingly before looking again at the parchment in his hands, “Shall I read it?”

Oli nodded, and Gurithen read.

Beneath Dombarrow’s burdened skies,

A thousand wicked follies rise,

Which thrice the Lord of Heaven smote,

Singeing stone as black as night,

Twice in winds the Sea God wracked,

Once even sullen Earth attacked,

With tremors, quakes and roiling waves,

Of land, of rock, of rubble shattered,

Yet every time the fools built up,

Ruins beneath, proud banner atop,

And through its ruined heart they ran,

Giant-bones of steel, wrought by hand,

Tortured, twisted, tall and dark,

It stands defiant, taunts from afar,

Into Dombarrow’s burdened skies,

The Thousand Splendid Follies rise.

“The Thousand Splendid Follies.”

Oli mouthed the last line of the poem and looked again, tracing the jagged lines that met and cut a path between earth and sky. Could folly become splendid, if a people persisted in it enough? There was something splendid about the tower, but also something wrong and out of place, like a tree full of fruit in the middle of winter. He would be happy not to come any closer. He wondered, briefly, how close his grandfather had come.

He sat down and wiped his face, smearing dust and mud in with the sweat. I made it, he thought. Water bulged over the rocks here and, though it looked treacherously fast, the river did appear shallow enough to wade through. If he crossed now and kept up the pace, he could be home before nightfall. Whatever trouble he was in was nothing. He’d take the punishment. He just wanted to see his parents and Ada. A fresh energy moved him, but he resolved this time to be careful. He needed his full strength to make the crossing. He crawled toward the edge of the river. He breathed deeply and looked at the fragments of his face that danced in the water before him. He plunged in and the reflection plunged up to meet him. He sucked in the cold, clean water, slaking his thirst and delighting in the icy feel of it on his skin.

He raised his head and wiped the water from his eyes. Then his gaze fell on the far bank, on movement between the trees there. He saw them before they saw him. Outsiders.

A column of men moved through the forest on the other side of the river, traveling toward the ford from the opposite direction. Oli scuttled behind a tree. He breathed in quick, shallow breaths. As they approached, though, their movements and appearance reassured him. They wore bright red tunics which stood out plainly among the trees. They tramped and stomped so loudly that a crow on Oli’s side of the river took flight. Were they King’s soldiers? If you could trust any outsiders, surely you could trust the King’s own soldiers. They moved in a sort of formation, like you’d expect. They reached the ford and stopped, and the man in front began talking to another behind him.

Oli watched. Then he noticed Ingo. He had never felt so happy to lay eyes on that overpopular son of his father’s rival. What luck! Ingo had been saved by the King’s soldiers and he, Oli, would return with them and prove his own innocence. He could even lead the way back to the village from this ford. Oli put his first two fingers into a curved V, holding his others balled.

“Sindrah, who dwells in shadows.”

He muttered his thanks to the god of fortune, forgetting that she was also the god of caution, and leapt out waving his arms.

Ingo was the first of the group to spot him. Oli began to shout, and Ingo waved back.

“Ingo! Ingooo! Over here! Loo-”

The words died in his throat.

The column of men rapidly repositioned. They drew short, gleaming swords from their sides. Ingo’s eyes met his and the sickening realisation dawned on Oli that Ingo was not waving to greet him but trying desperately to warn him off. Then Oli absorbed other details he had missed in his enthusiastic delight. The smattering of facial hair on Ingo’s chin, of which he was rather proud, was hidden by mud that covered his face. His lower lip bulged into an ugly bruise. Ingo suddenly jerked back, and Oli realised with horror that someone had tugged on a rope around the older boy’s wrists.

“Oli! Run! Run now!”

The shout carried across the river between them, a shriek of fear on his behalf. The soldiers called crisp, clear orders to one another. Three ran downstream whilst others made for the ford. Oli froze, just as he had done when he first saw the stranger. Ingo yelled at him to move again, until the soldier holding his bonds slapped a hand over his mouth.

Oli grabbed the spear from the ground. He caught movement and a flash of red in the corner of his eye. When he looked back before running, he saw the three soldiers who had gone downstream storming toward him on his own side. Where had they crossed so quickly? Those who had entered the ford were pushing through the fast water. As it washed around their legs, shining steel sparkled under the sunlight, around the edges of their red tunics.

Oli ran hard, across the rocks he’d just scrambled over a moment before. To his right, red shapes moved through the trees. He tried to look over his shoulder and lost his footing. When he leapt back up, three soldiers stood around him.

“What are you doing out here, little fellow? Friend of the other one? A friend of the priest, perhaps?”

“Come on now,” said another. “Come with us.”

The second to speak had grey hair and a big, broad face. He smiled and beckoned with his left hand. Even as he did so, the three of them closed in. The third soldier chuckled.

“We’ll see if this one talks more.”

Oli threw his spear. It took more strength than he knew he had and, as it sailed through the air, he felt a momentary satisfaction. It was a fine throw.

The spear struck the beckoning soldier square in the chest. With a dull thud, it bounced off and fell into the dirt. The expression of surprise and fear turned into a mocking jeer. In a moment they were upon him. One held his arms while the others started to bind his legs.

Then an ear-splitting howl surrounded them. Neither the scream of a man, nor quite the roar of a beast, it seemed to pass through the hard, hot bodies of the men who held him and into his head, where it bounced around inside as though looking for a way out. He gasped and staggered, suddenly aware of being free but unable to direct his movements. The three soldiers held their hands over their ears and one of them groaned loudly, then spluttered. Oli lifted a hand in front of his face. It seemed to double, then triple. The world melted before him, like an image in still water disrupted by a stone’s throw, and he fell into the darkness of sleep.