He advanced, rolling the ‘fingers’ of the knotted contraption he had for a hand. “I need this tower.”
“No.”
Four minutes.
“I should’ve simply killed you and fulfilled the queen’s mandate myself.”
He made a wide swing, and Shea caught him by the wrist—immediately realizing how futile an attempt it was. It was like trying to stop a horse at full speed.
The Drakiri hand must’ve weighed at least three pounds, and Aidan knew how to use it. All Shea was able to do was deflect it an inch; for a few seconds, he felt his head existing separate from his body, a torn-off part of a rag doll. Next came the pain and the wall’s stones, crashing into his forehead.
He slipped and steadied himself. “Fulfilled her mandate?” He spat blood at the white boards. “The duke would’ve disposed of you, same as he tried with me.”
Aidan smiled. “I’m afraid the good old duke is unwell at the moment. Something in the food, I hear. He won’t be bothering me any longer.”
Three minutes.
Another swing—this time, Shea ducked, and Aidan’s fist sent a cloud of crushed rock into the air.
“Think about your country!”
“You’re blind in one eye because of your Duma hatred.” Shea stabbed his finger at his own bloodied face. “Get it through your head: they aren’t attacking us.”
“And we won’t be waiting for that, either.” Aidan spun his arm as though preparing to shoot a sling. “From here, we’ll stage a preemptive strike. We’ll attack ourselves.”
“You’re fucking insane.”
“Put it back, you idiot!”
“I won’t.”
Two minutes.
The blow landed on Shea’s left biceps, pain spreading through the body like fire: a bone had broken inside.
A spasm made him double over, and at that moment a wave of heat licked his face. He froze. The tulip he’d rigged was opening; it swelled—as though it were a wart the wall tried to push out—and tore itself apart in the process. The heat came from the expanding crease, and he remembered the skin of his fingers melting against the surface of another device, in a different life.
He shifted his gaze to Aidan.
“Time's up,” his adversary said, raising his fist. “You’re walking away from something I should’ve had.”
“I’ve never needed it, you fucker. You can have it.”
This time, he didn’t try to block. With his healthy hand, Shea grabbed Aidan’s wrist and deflected the motion right into the purple crease.
The knuckles went in with a screech. Aidan grunted, trying to free himself, and that was when the tulip changed its song. It seemed bigger, a moment later smaller, alternating between two ends of an invisible compressed path.
The device spat Aidan’s hand out. The arm bounced in a wide arc like a wooden toy.
Halfway through, the hand exploded.
With a wail, the wall began to bend, the mist at its base collecting itself into a funnel.
Aidan must’ve been dead the moment his body touched the platform.
Shea froze, staring at the disfigured lump—dreams, ambitions, and memories, under a film of blood and thin white cloth fluttering in the wind.
For a moment, he considered dragging Aidan to safety. Then he realized he had no more time.
The next tulip opened, pulled into the implosion radius of the first. And the next one: a chain reaction.
The beautiful garden his sister had wished for, coming to life.
Shea dashed toward the staircase, a ripple passing through the boards underneath his feet, and he almost made it—right to the first step, where he felt his body being hauled back.
Not like this. Not like this. Ignoring the white-hot pain in his left arm, he waved his hands like a bird and propelled himself forward.
Even in free fall, as the darkness sped up past him, he sensed the tremor which shook the mammoth structure: the collapse had begun.
I did it, Lena. I did it.
And, to his surprise, the abyss answered. Come home, it said.
The abyss responded in Lena’s voice—only he didn’t know which of the two anymore.
Does it matter? he thought, enjoying the numbness that comes with the air battering the body. He let the voice carry him and remembered the dog he’d seen on his penultimate day at the capital, the poor mongrel who’d tried to get at the lamp post. It staggered him how, back then, he’d failed to recognize that desire—to reach something huge, but utterly useless.
A gust of wind spun him around. A treadwheel, a whirl of the staircase. Purple glow from above, blooming for the last time.
It’s a dance, it dawned on him. Not the one he’d wished for—an illusion, all lacquer, all empty hopes—but something real, something that rendered even his mistakes, his earlier indecision, insignificant.
“It’s a dance!” he shouted, the wind immediately snatching his words.
And who knows, perhaps the final pas isn’t the fall.
Perhaps the real dance takes you through the halls, father and farther away, until you come across a room with flowers where a girl with hands made for weaving or playing a harp, a black wave of hair rolling down her shoulders, would raise her head and smile at you.
Welcome you home.
Author's Notes
About the story
I saw the novella in a dream. I was my own hero, banished from the capital to a province which sheltered a magical race. An exile that turned out to be something more.
Another thing was, I wanted to write a story about architects and artisans. I briefly toyed with the idea of an architect main character, but my knowledge in this area is non-existent and my laziness is great. So there you go—we've got Shea who is sent to oversee the construction of the biggest defensive tower in history.
About the author
After leaving his ball and chain at the workplace, Yaroslav Barsukov goes on to write stories that deal with things he himself, thankfully, doesn’t have to deal with. He's a software engineer and a connoisseur of strong alcoholic beverages—but also, surprisingly, a member of SFWA and Codex (how did that happen?). At some point in his life, he’s left one former empire only to settle in another.
See more at www.barsukov.com and @Ybarsukov
Copyright
Title information
Tower of Mud and Straw
ISBN: 978-1-64076-189-6 (e-book)
ISBN: 978-1-64076-190-2 (paperback)
Copyright
Copyright ©2020, Yaroslav Barsukov.
Cover art © 2020, Kevin Barbot
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