by Jean Johnson
“That means you have to undergo trial by truth-spell so that when you apply it to everyone else who works for the Tower, you can honestly say I’m requiring it of everyone, period. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning having to do this manure pile of an obstacle course all over again just because that mage has accomplices I didn’t know about,” Kerric stated dryly. “Once you’ve undergone the test, then we will open up all the mirror-Gates in all the rooms and halls with people in them so that they exit directly out of the base of the Tower. Third priority, getting those people the food and healing attention they may need, and compensating them for the discomfort of being stuck in the Tower for however many hours it’s been.”
“Eighteen,” Jessina told him quickly. “We’ve all been stuck in here for just over eighteen hours and two minutes.”
“Good. Caros, contact the Adventuring Hall exchequers and have them compensate everyone, worker and adventurer alike, for . . . ten gold per hour?” Kerric glanced at Myal. “You think that’s a fair amount?”
She nodded. “That sounds fair.”
“Good. Once everyone has been ‘sent home,’ so to speak, you and the other senior leads will start interrogating maintenance personnel. Hopefully there won’t be any conflicting loyalties about who they work for, how they use the tablets, and what information they’ll give to outsiders. If there are, however, knock them unconscious, lock them in a White Room, and search their homes, lockers, and belongings for maintenance tablets, maps of the Tower, and any other information which could be used to disrupt the smooth running of this business.”
He gave his mirror-linked leaders a stern, sober look, ready to silence protests. Thankfully, they did not arise. This was not a city or a region subject to an outside king. The Master of the Tower was also the Master of the Adventuring Hall, the Master of Penambrion, and the Master of the outlying farms as well. He wasn’t a king in a traditional sense and he wouldn’t have taken on the title, the responsibility, or the trappings of a traditional king, but Kerric’s commands were as good as law when he chose to exercise his powers locally.
The deadly dangers of an un-Mastered Tower had just reminded them why he had that kind of power and authority. Not to wield all those dangers against others, but to keep it from being wielded.
Most of the time, he was content to let the region be governed by a council of the Maintenance leads, the mayor and his burgher, selected members of the various farming and crafting guilds, so on and so forth. This was not one of those moments. A flick of his hand activated the Gateways embedded in every threshold. “Jessina, bring a Truth Stone from Topside. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get back to scrycasting and earning all that income we’ve been losing. Brennan, contact the creativity teams at the Adventuring Halls and have them start thinking of ways to make up all the lost scrying time for our patrons.”
“They’re already on it,” Brennan reassured him. “As soon as we realized that a hostile takeover was in effect and that a shutdown was possible, I directed my daughter Menissa to start thinking of ways to make up for the lost time.”
“Good. I’ll see you up here within a few minutes. The sooner we can get everyone truth-tested, the sooner we can clean up the Tower and reopen it for business. Jessina, you want to handle the evacuation announcement?” Kerric asked her. “You have such a lovely, reassuring voice for it.”
“Of course. I’ll be up there in forty seconds,” she promised, shifting as she fetched something below her scrying mirror’s field of view. “I’ll go first, and bring Bradell up with me. I could use some sleep, but between the two of us, we’ll get everyone currently in Topside tested before they’ll be let go. Jessina out.”
The others murmured their own excuses. Kerric nodded and put his feet back up on the resting bars. A wave of his hand collapsed the mirror-views being projected around him. Glancing at Myal, he found her eyeing the Fountain pool and its bubble warily. “. . . What’s on your mind?”
“Does it hurt?” she asked him, lifting her gaze to his. “All that magic pulsing through your body?”
“Like plunging into a cold bath. Once you get past the shock of it, you get used to it,” he reassured her. “I truly expect this truth-scrying to be a formality. These are men and women I’ve worked with and trusted for years,” Kerric added in an aside. “They’ve had ample opportunity to betray me, to mess things up, even to seize control. A good half dozen of the strongest ones could’ve stayed in here and taken over once everything shut down, but they didn’t.
“Unfortunately, the Tower employs a couple hundred people. Not everyone can be personally vouched for through years of loyal service in the face of opportunity,” he finished.
Myal nodded. “This shouldn’t take long, though. Would you like me to take a Truth Stone oath as well?”
He smiled, one corner of his mouth twitching up higher than the other. “You’re like Jessina. I know you wouldn’t betray me. Unfortunately, that’s not the point . . . and you do bring up a good point. I should have all the adventurers tested as well. But if I did that, it might be bad for business. After all, part of the point is to brave the hazards of the Tower to get to the treasures hidden deep within. Of which, this is the biggest prize.”
“The biggest prize, yes.” Jessina’s voice rang out, echoing across the hall. She had emerged from an alcove-shaped depression not far from the hidden door Myal and Kerric had used. “But not exactly a portable one. Most adventurers come here to make their fortune and leave with said fortune. The Fountain, praise the Gods, is not at all portable. Hello, Myal,” the darker-skinned woman added in greeting, smiling at the tall Mendhite. “I don’t know what tricks and traps you had to put up with to get Master Kerric here, but I thank you deeply for your efforts.
“Nothing personal, Myal,” she added, before turning to Kerric, “but will you test her to make sure she won’t sell the secrets she knows of how to get in here?”
“I’ll do so freely,” Myal stated, holding out her hand for the white marble disk in Jessina’s grip. Sensing Kerric was about to speak, she shook her head as she looked his way. “Don’t protest, Kerric. It’s a completely valid concern. One which I am happy to allay.” Accepting the Stone from the other woman, Myal gripped it. “My name is Jessina.”
Black fingerprints outlined the lie. She waited for the marks from her fingers to fade, then gripped the rounded white disc once more.
“I will not tell anyone else the full details of the correct path to the heart of the Tower and its Fountain Hall, nor write about it in full, nor reveal the full sequence of events in any shape or way,” she stated. A touch of humor quirked up the corner of her mouth. “Though I reserve the right to joke about some of the more amusing details, such as the Hairy Naked Thing.”
A flash of the Stone showed it pristine white. Jessina nodded in approval; behind the other woman, the other two men appeared from similar alcoves. More would arrive soon. Myal didn’t relinquish the Stone immediately, as she did have one more thing to add.
“I have one request. I would like to write a heavily edited account of our passage to the heart, with the understanding it will be heavily censored for content by Master Kerric and his topmost trusted staff, and only cover a few of the traps we met. But Herding Cats and the Battle for the Banqueting Hall are too amusing not to share . . . and I think too harmless to be denied. But that is my opinion. I will let the decision rest in your collective hands,” she finished, finally handing the all-white Stone back to Jessina.
Brows lifting, the older woman considered Myal’s request, then shrugged. “I’ve read some of the Mendhite’s little booklets. They’re entertaining, popular, and heavily edited. She hasn’t covered more than a quarter at most of the traps she’s run through. I think it’s safe enough.”
“What, Myal the Mendhite?” Caros asked, reaching their side. He stuck out his hand, offering it to Myal. “If she wants to write an edited account of what happened while we were all offline, that would
be fantastic! Master Kerric, I’d strongly suggest getting this little . . . er, this big lady under contract. The exchequer is already demanding to know if we got any footage of your run through the Tower. They said they’ve had a tonne of requests for it, and that if we can provide them with a scrying of the Master of the Tower running the gauntlets, they’ll pay five and ten and more times the going price.
“I know the Adventuring Hall tried their best to block out news of what you were doing, but obviously the rumors ran wild, and everyone wants to buy a scrycasting of you in action,” Caros added. He shrugged and scratched at his mustache. “But since we don’t have any active scryings from the blackout period, and we wouldn’t want a scrying to get loose, one of Myal’s booklets will probably sell huge if she covers a tiny fraction of it in text. Not just here around the Tower and in the closest kingdoms, but I think with our patrons all the way around the world as well.”
“That does make sense,” Jessina agreed. She half laughed to herself a moment later as Brennan finished his own approach, trailed by two more, who emerged through the alcove-Gates. “We might even start a new fashion in Senod-Gra, the ‘sinful’ vice of reading for pleasure.”
Myal choked on a hastily smothered laugh. Despite the fact that Senod-Gra stood more or less on the far side of the vast sphere that was the world, everyone associated with the Tower had heard of the City of Delights and its many, many vices. Reading was not considered to be one of them.
“I’ll consider it. I’d write it myself, but I’ll concede my literary skills are more technical than narrative in nature,” Kerric admitted. He lifted his chin at the stone disc in Jessina’s hand. More people were arriving, making the transition through the hidden Gateway links. Most of them looked as tired as the trio of Maintenance leads did, though one of the Middle Maintenance seniors, Heral, looked literally as if he had been awakened mid-sleep, for he wore only a pair of loose trousers for clothing, and was still yawning mightily behind his hand. “Alright. Start stating where your loyalties lie.”
Mindful of her lowly place as a mere adventurer, Myal moved back as the dozen or so people came forward. She didn’t leave—it wasn’t as if she could—but she did give the others some respectful distance. Recommended or not, she wasn’t yet a part of the Tower staff, and this was clearly a top management staff meeting. As she sat on a blue-colored bit of the floor, Myal noticed an occasional searching look from Kerric, seeking her exact location as if seeking reassurance she was still there. Seeing him do so every once in a while kept her from feeling forgotten.
Those little looks gave her a warm spark of her own to hug deep inside her chest while she waited. It was no Fountain-style singularity, empowered with enough magic to have been shared out across a thousand lives, but it did warm her spirits and empower her sense of hope for her personal future. No spoken promises, just a few implied and several unspoken ones, but they were enough to keep her patient.
* * *
“And your City’s patience has been deeply appreciated during our little maintenance and scrycasting difficulties,” Kerric repeated as smoothly as he could without sounding either unctuous or impatient. From this seat, it looked like he was connecting the scrying from within a book-lined room, as a point of discretion to protect the true nature of the Fountain Hall, as all such calls were screened. A similar spell had been set up for Guardian Keleseth to use in far-off Senod-Gra. “As I said, we’re quite happy to credit hour per hour of lost viewing time toward your next bill, Guardian, but I cannot issue a refund at this time.”
“It’s been almost nineteen hours, Guardian Kerric,” Guardian Keleseth groused, her wrinkled brow furrowing deeper as she scowled. “Just refund us nineteen hours’ worth and start shipping out the next ’casts!”
It was a good thing his toes weren’t dangling in the singularity-bubble underneath his seat. Rubbing his forehead, Kerric exercised some mental patience to keep from scowling back at her, and to keep his tone from being snappish. “As much as I would love to do that, Guardian, I am unable to at this point in time. We’ve restored power, but we still have to do a full sweep of the Tower to fix various issues that were affected by the outage. Then we have to finish reworking the scheduled gauntlets, and the Tower scrycasts have to be restarted by the Guardian.
“That would be me, and that would require me to be at my full strength. Since I personally had to attend to the problem, my reserves are a little low. Senod-Gra will just have to wait until I’ve had a chance to eat and sleep—you can distract your people by laying bets on exactly how long it’ll take for the first scrycasts to resume, and which gauntlets will remain the same and which will have been replaced.”
Seeing her draw in a breath to argue the point, Kerric held up his hand in a curt gesture, cutting her off. His patience was almost at an end.
“Please, Hostess,” he added, addressing her by her formal title. “Your account has been our biggest and best customer for hundreds of years, yes, but you are not our only customer. You can make requests on which gauntlets your people would like to see, and we have been good suppliers by doing our best to fulfill those requests, but you do not control the Tower. You are not in charge, and you can turn yourself blue from lack of breath in protest, but that will not speed up the delivery of the next scrycasting. Have a good whatever-time-of-day it is out there, and I’ll contact you when I officially can tell you the moment the ’casts will resume.”
A slash of his hand, a pulse of will-backed power, and her image vanished. He traced a trio of runes in the air and pushed it toward the mesh, ensuring that any further attempts at communication would go into a series of recording crystals for later viewing. Slumping back in his seat, Kerric rubbed his forehead again, then his temples. Off to his left, the image of Jessina’s face—back at her desk in Topside Control—gave him a wry look.
“Not exactly the most diplomatic of endings, there,” she murmured, “but at least you can get away with doing that. If I tried, you would not only get the original arguments, but a diatribe on uppity underlings as well.”
“I know. I also know that I am done for the day. I am done with contacting these people. I am done dealing with problems, and I am done working. Set up a standard ‘Please wait while we perform maintenance on the Tower; your patience is appreciated’ message as an automagic response to all incoming calls, and then . . .” He sought for something tactful to say, and gave up with a shrug. “Well, unless the Tower is melting, or on fire, or crumbling to pieces, don’t call me. I’m going to go eat, and sleep, and excrete, and who knows what else that rhymes with those three ‘eet’ things, and I’ll be doing them for the next several hours. Try to get some rest, yourself.”
“All we’ve been doing is resting. Well, resting and worrying. Now that power has been restored and our biggest clients reassured, we can manage the smaller details for you,” his senior-most lead reassured him in that unflappable way of hers. “I took the liberty of ordering food prepared for everyone, including several dishes sent to your quarters. Will Myal be joining you for a meal? There should be enough for her as well.”
He glanced at his gauntlet partner, who had settled on the floor at the base of one of the innermost columns to rest. At the sound of her name, she glanced over at Jessina’s image, then looked up at him. Kerric, catching her interested gaze, nodded. “Yes, I do believe she will be.”
“Then I shall wish you a good rest,” Jessina stated. “Enough was sent under stasis domes just a few minutes ago to feed around five or six people, from what the Tower kitchen staff said. They grew bored during the lockdown and started experimenting with new recipes, and have sent a couple variations of each final dish for your approval.”
Kerric bowed slightly, pleased that not everyone had spent the time during lockdown worrying or fretting or bored out of their minds. “Thank you. Remind me to raise your overtime bonus for going the extra mile . . . and the kitchen staff’s bonus, for being productive in spite of the lockdown. Goodnight, Jessina.”
She smiled. “Good day, Master Kerric.”
A spiraling slash of his finger ended the link. A second one dimmed all the images on the screen, leaving behind rectangular and oval frameless views of various rooms, corridors, and one still brightly lit room filled with five disgruntled would-be thieves. Kerric started to spin the chair around, then turned it back, dipped in his toes, and opened a connection to a small closetlike room with a sink, a vending cabinet stocked with dried meats, crackers, and the like, and a toilet.
He watched the smallest woman, the one with the thick accent, look up, jump to her feet, and gingerly test the door. When it proved to be a simplified refreshing room, her shoulders slumped and she returned to the others. They were still prisoners of the Tower, and would remain so until Kerric, Master of the Tower, decided what to do with them.
Right now, he had far more pleasant thoughts on his mind. Spinning his chair around, he walked down the now-trap-free ramp and headed over to Myal. He reached her just as she pushed to her feet. “Ready for a meal almost as good as the Banqueting Hall? And I say ‘almost’ because there won’t be quite as much variety, but it’ll be equal in quality. Far better than what you’ve been eating at the Honey Spear.”
Myal nodded. She was tired, her backside hurt from sitting on the hard marble floor, and she wanted a bath, but the mere mention of food made her stomach rumble, protesting the delay of its implicit delivery. “Where are we going now?”
“My personal quarters. You are invited to dine with me, relax with me . . . bathe with me, so we can help each other get those hard-to-reach spots,” he added lightly, “and sleep with me. And possibly at some point make love again with me . . . if that is your desire.”
She blushed and ducked her head at the blatant invitation in his tone as well as his words, but nodded. “Yes.” Catching his hand, Myal twined her fingers with his. “Please.”
