Towers Fall

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Does it know? she wondered. Did it hear the Messenger’s announcement, or feel the chaos within these streets? Did it understand that the end of its life approached with the inexorable speed of the rising sun?

  She did not know, only leaned against that surface as if it were her only hold on the world.

  “Xhea,” Shai said behind her. “The ghosts…”

  She didn’t need to continue. Xhea could feel the market’s gathered dead turning to her; turning, in truth, toward the living Lower City’s rising power. Shai’s presence was the strongest, yet she felt the others, too, like distant points of pressure arrayed behind her. They drew closer, struggling against their tethers.

  She understood that pull; she could not look away from Farrow’s grown base. Its dark surface rippled, shapes and shadows racing from her touch like patterns in gray oil. Beneath her hand, something moved.

  Startled, Xhea recoiled—and saw a crack where her palm had rested. That crack widened like curtains being drawn back, vines shifting and moving until a space had opened before her. It was a hand’s span above her head, little larger than the shape of her standing body. She stared, mouth agape.

  Alive like the Towers are alive, she thought again. And this ground its claimed body.

  What else might it do, given the chance? A chance, it seemed, it would never have.

  “I think it’s an invitation.”

  “An invitation for what?” Shai’s voice held a hint of fear—and Xhea understood.

  She trusted her desire to walk into the Lower City’s dark magic as much as she trusted the sudden impulse to leap from a building’s crumbling edge.

  She thought, too, of the only time she’d seen a Tower’s transformation up close, in Allenai’s forced takeover of Eridian. Their walls had transformed into something that moved like living water, flowing and shifting until there was nothing she could name a wall, a floor, a ceiling. Neither Tower had hurt its citizens, but had instead drawn them into their living flesh, holding them close and safe.

  Xhea stared at the space before her, smaller than any rough-hewn coffin, and wondered if it was the same. But to keep me safe from what?

  Only then did she turn, that thought more powerful than even the dark magic’s call.

  There, on the market’s far side, stood two men. City citizens both—and not, unless she missed her guess, anyone from a poor Tower. It was easy, now, to look beneath the surface of things—and a body was no more barrier to her sight than a wall or ceiling or the ground itself.

  Magic glowed deep within their hearts, bright and steady and strong. Spells, too, were woven through their clothing and glittered about their ears and lips; magic imbued the plain, heavy rings that each wore on their right hands.

  They had not seen her, not yet—but they were seeking. She watched as they walked into the market and scanned the gathering people. No angry crowd this morning, no scavengers out in the ashes; only people who carried all that they owned on their backs. Even so, the pair made only a cursory attempt to blend in, the threat inherent in their stances enough to make Lower City dwellers step aside without question.

  They could be looking for anyone, she told herself, and did not believe it. She’d seen bounty hunters work before; these were only richer, better-equipped versions of the ones she knew. She could only be grateful that they weren’t Enforcers.

  The smaller of the pair tilted his head as if listening, and for once Xhea was glad of the binding around her magic; the pain was reminder to not fight its control.

  Instead, she stepped farther into Farrow’s shadow—and then, pushing past hesitation, into the dark chamber it had created.

  Xhea expected Shai to protest. Instead, the ghost rushed after her, her brilliance lighting that small space far better than the dawning sunlight. Sunlight that vanished as the dark tendrils moved and shifted around them, making room for Shai and then closing them into a space shaped like palms cupped together. The sound of Xhea’s breath echoed off the close walls.

  Xhea shifted, turning to look at Shai. The ghost’s face was but a hand’s span from her own. It was only here, so close, that she noticed that Shai was taller than she was; though they stood all but toe to toe, Xhea had to tilt her head to meet the ghost’s pale eyes.

  Silence settled over them, between them. Xhea’s breath caught.

  “Well,” she said softly, and had to swallow past the sudden tightness in her throat. “This might have been hasty.”

  “But they can’t see us here.” Shai, too, whispered.

  “No.”

  Again, silence stretched between them. Shai’s face was but a breath away from her own. Xhea was suddenly aware of her shallow breathing, her clammy palms, the way her hand trembled against her cane’s metal top. Magic flowed between them, with other things caught up in that tide. Thoughts, flickering lightning-fast; emotions too tangled to name. Xhea’s heart raced, pounding against her ribs, and she did not want to think why.

  So she touched the cool surface of the wall beside her, and shivered as a trickle of dark magic flowed into her through that contact. It calmed her, steadied her, even as she struggled to slow her breathing. She blinked, forcing herself to look away from Shai—to look up at the uneven peak of the small space around them, and imagined the caught skyscraper that loomed somewhere far above.

  “How long do you think it will hide us?”

  Shai’s shrug was almost graceful; she, too, looked upward. “How long do you want to stay hidden?”

  Again Xhea swallowed, choking back her answer. Focus, she told herself.

  “I don’t think that ‘forever’ is workable in this situation.”

  Shai gave a soft laugh, glancing back to Xhea’s face. “In this situation? So little is.”

  No kidding.

  Xhea tried to think only of the defensive spell generators up on the rooftop, dragging her thoughts back to where they belonged.

  “Maybe,” she started, only to stop in surprise as the walls around her shifted once more. It wasn’t anything like she’d imagined, that motion: no shuddering, no grinding sound of stone-on-stone; only a smooth flow, as if these surfaces became liquid and re-formed at the Lower City’s command.

  A path opened before them, spiraling upward.

  Xhea looked at that path; it was not nearly as steep as the stairs carved into Farrow’s sides, not nearly as rough or rocky. Still a very long walk. Even so, she was grateful. She stepped forward and felt the moment that Shai’s light no longer fell full upon her face. That magic had been like sunlight, warm and ever-present; outside the sphere of Shai’s radiance, the shadows felt cold.

  “Stop,” Shai said. Xhea hesitated, then turned, coins and charms chiming as her hair fell across her shoulders. Shai’s thoughts, it seemed, had run a similar path to hers. “It will take a long time to walk that far. And then all the stairs in Farrow to get to the roof.”

  Xhea nodded, but Shai hesitated a long moment before continuing, her voice so soft it was little more than a whisper.

  “I said I wouldn’t let you fall. Perhaps I can help you fly.”

  Xhea wanted to stare; wanted, in truth, to smile. Yet for all of Shai’s impact on the living world, the things she knew how to do were hardly physical. She could heal and transform and protect, create great workings of shimmering light—but lift someone? They couldn’t even touch.

  “But how…?” she tried. “But you…”

  “That’s not a no,” Shai said, and moved closer until there was barely any space between them. “May I try?”

  Xhea nodded shakily.

  “Hold to me.”

  Hold? Xhea couldn’t bear the thought of reaching for Shai and having her hand pass through unfeeling, only mist and magic where her heart said there should be a person, warm and real. Instead she drew her cane toward her body, clinging to it.

  Magic flared, bright and warm, and wrapped around her, pushing back the darkness. Shai’s expression was intense, her face lit with a joy so sharp it seemed
almost to cut.

  A dream fueled this spell, Xhea thought—a dream or a memory or some powerful thought, she knew not which; she only saw its echoes as brilliant spell lines arced around them. Or perhaps she could imagine, for as she stared at Shai all she could think of was their fall together from the City above, Shai’s arms holding her, her magic flaring about them like wings.

  Xhea gasped as her feet lifted from the ground.

  Did the path before them change? Xhea did not look, could not see; Shai, before her, seemed to fill the whole of her vision. It did not feel as if they took that slow, winding path. Instead they rose like a bubble through that twining, coiling black—and the Lower City’s grown tendrils reshaped around them.

  No time seemed to pass, or perhaps it was an hour, a day—Xhea did not know, only stood blinking as Shai set her down on solid ground once more.

  “I…” she started.

  Shai smiled and slowly, slowly drew back.

  Xhea took a long, shuddering breath, feeling as if she hadn’t inhaled in forever, and made herself look away. The ground beneath her was black and smooth—yet the walls, the ceiling? Xhea blinked and blinked again, then walked in a slow circle, staring at the space in which she found herself.

  It had been an apartment once. Crumbling plaster clung to the ceiling, while paint flaked from the walls in long, gray curls. There was a doorframe, a blackened window. At waist height, all of that ended: the walls broken off unevenly, cracked and scorched. Below, there was only black.

  “Farrow,” Xhea whispered.

  Shai slipped through the wall, then peeked back. “The hall is clear.”

  Xhea struggled through the half-open wreck of the door. Only Shai waited beyond. Carefully they made their way down the ruins of the hall and into the stairwell.

  It was dim there, closed-in and quiet. The only source of true light filtered down from high above. Xhea grabbed the railing and started to climb, her brow drawn low. There were no candles, no light spells, not in the stairs or in the halls they slowly passed. No sounds of life or movement that were not her own. Around her, Farrow rose tall and silent.

  Has everyone already left? Because long before the Messenger’s arrival, she’d seen them—Farrow citizens abandoning these dead walls, their backs laden with whatever they might safely carry. She had not envied them the long, precarious climb down to the ground. Others had made a makeshift pulley system by which goods might be lifted or dropped from the skyscraper’s higher levels—though Xhea had only ever seen things being taken away.

  Not that she blamed them. For all that Farrow proper still existed, she’d yet to see a wall without cracks or other structural damage, where the living Lower City’s black tendrils didn’t invade the structure entirely. Perhaps things were better, stronger, more habitable in the levels above; but she did not think so.

  Xhea had only climbed a half-dozen flights of stairs when something made her slow—something other than the pain in her knee and the growing shortness of her breath. She stopped on the next landing and turned, frowning.

  Beside her, Shai too had paused. The ghost moved without speaking, one shining hand raised. She pressed her hand to the wall and let it sink into the concrete.

  Xhea pushed the stairwell door open and peered into the hall beyond. Only silence here; only stillness. Nothing that might cause the disturbance that even now brushed against the edges of her senses.

  Not a ghost. Not the living Lower City. But something.

  A moment passed. “Xhea,” Shai said slowly.

  But Xhea was already nodding. She had followed that instinct and looked up, changing her eyes’ focus to see past the stained ceiling above her, and the one above that.

  There, near the building’s peak, was a glow. It was faint, and flickered like an erratic heartbeat—far brighter than she would expect from any Lower City citizen. Brighter than any person who was not Radiant.

  Magic, Xhea thought. Bright magic—here, in the midst of so much dark. Bright magic not in human form, not forced into a storage coil or running through the wires in the walls, but formed into a glowing sphere of light.

  A Tower’s heart.

  Xhea met Shai’s eyes, the ghost’s shocked expression a mirror of Xhea’s own, and whispered what they were both thinking.

  “Farrow is still alive.”

  Xhea did not ask where she needed to go, little though she knew Farrow; she did not wonder what she would find at her destination. She needed only time, and the strength to climb, and felt as if both were failing her.

  If the floors below had felt quiet, Farrow’s thirty-fourth floor felt like the underground: so long deserted that absence had become a physical force. The sound of her footsteps, her cane, her hair, her breath: all seemed loud in that long corridor, each sound only emphasizing the silence.

  The doors to the rooms were closed; no spellcasters or medics walked between them. Of the magic she’d once seen shining within these walls, spells and charms alike flaring to life in Farrow’s concrete bones, there were only flickers like embers burning to ash.

  “Hello?” Xhea called, neither expecting nor receiving a reply.

  She pushed open a door; it was not locked. Inside, there were four empty medical beds, rumpled sheets and the trailing wires standing testament to the one-time occupants. A fifth bed held a person—or, Xhea realized, a person’s body.

  The man’s pale, freckled skin had turned waxen, and the stained sheet that covered him up to his chest lay unmoved by the rhythms of breath. His IV had run dry, and the wires attached to his shaved head, wrists, and above his heart were only wires; no magic flowed along their lengths.

  Xhea did not recognize him—did not think that it had been her hands that had held those wires, her magic that had bound them, metal to flesh and the spirit beneath. She did not think so, but did not know, and uncertainty made her stare long after she should have turned away.

  “They’re just leaving him here?” Shai whispered, shocked.

  “It can’t have been long.” As if that were any excuse. But Xhea did not want to touch that death-pale cheek to see whether it had gone cold and stiff. Instead, she closed the door.

  She did not open any of the other doors. Empty beds, beds occupied by the dead or the dying: she could not stand to see any of them. Instead she walked, head bowed and cane clutched in her unsteady hand, toward the skyscraper’s center. Toward its living heart—even if the transformation was nothing like any of them had imagined.

  “This way,” Shai said, urging Xhea in her wake. There was a glow before them, a dim and sputtering light that Shai dwarfed unthinkingly.

  Xhea needed no encouragement. She could hear Farrow’s heart now, more than she could see it: a faint song that quivered through the walls, not breaking the silence but deepening it. She tried to put words to the sound and could not; not its tone or pitch, not its melody. Only its rhythm seemed clear, and it was a thrum like blood through thickened, aging veins: a slowing beat of weariness and hurt.

  Here. They stopped. This section of hall looked like any other, closed doors with peeling paint, the carpet worn to tatters and showing the glue-stained concrete beneath. But from around one of those doors came a light, and the air tingled against Xhea’s exposed skin. She touched her cheek, as her fingers and face grew slightly numb. Bright magic, she realized. It was a haze in the air, and Xhea had no magic of her own to push it back.

  Shai slipped through the door, leaving Xhea to fumble at the handle with fingers gone clumsy from pins and needles. No lock here, either; the door swung wide.

  There were no beds inside, occupied or otherwise; no trailing wires, no IVs. Only a ruin that had once been the far wall, rubble scattered across the floor—and Farrow’s heart. Seeing it, Xhea could not look away.

  In her brief time in the City, Xhea had seen the hearts of some dozen or more Towers. Each had been different, vibrating at its own frequency, glowing its own shade—its own colors, she supposed, little though she could see them. Eac
h, had she known then how to hear them, would have had its own song. Yet, for all their differences, every Tower’s heart was a massive sphere of pure bright magic that shone like a miniature sun. Each had been as big across as the Lower City market, some even larger, and had been haloed with flaring arcs of pure power.

  Farrow’s heart was no larger than one of the bundles of tied rags that Lower City children kicked through the streets, and as uneven. It hovered inside a hollow smashed in the far wall, the drywall around it ripped aside in great chunks. It shone, but dully—its light was gray like old silver, dented and tarnished, and it sputtered and flickered as she watched.

  In the heart’s shadow, a man sat on a chair that was more rust now than metal. His hands were curled in his lap, his pale skin turned bone white with plaster dust, his salt-and-pepper hair speckled with flecks of concrete. It smelled as if he had not bathed for some days.

  He did not look up as Xhea entered, nor as Shai glowed brighter, dispelling the gloom. He only stared at Farrow’s heart as if it were the only thing left to him of value—and perhaps it was. If he had reached out, he could have held it in his hands. He did not try.

  A moment passed, and then the man spoke.

  “It’s dying,” said Ahrent Altaigh, his words low and uninflected. He spoke as if Xhea had always been here, beside him; as if she had not left, had not ruined everything with that leaving.

  Xhea looked at him, the man who had stolen her away—the architect of Farrow’s rise and fall—and felt no anger. She should have, perhaps; yet it seemed that he was as ruined as his home. All the resentment she’d harbored, all the fury, fizzled away to nothing.

  “It was stronger than this?” Xhea asked.

  But of course it had been stronger, brighter. She’d heard the wail of this heart being born, felt the pain and numbness of its raw energy. Once, the whole Lower City had seen its glow.

  “It’s dying,” Ahrent Altaigh said again, “because they are dying, one after another, as we knew they would.” He meant the people they’d bound to Farrow’s walls, magic and spirit both. She’d seen the truth of that. “It’s dying because the people of Farrow are fleeing. No reason to stay and every reason to leave.”