by Ian Irvine
“There aren’t enough words,” said Holm. He seemed as overcome as she was.
The other side of the chasm, two hundred yards away, was as sheer as the cliff she was standing on. The slanting afternoon light touched veins in the yellow stone as though there was a fire behind them. It was beautiful, but that was not it.
Tirnan Twil was it.
Five slender arches of golden stone, spanning the chasm. Each buttressed against the cliff on either side. All intersecting over the centre of the chasm, and that was marvel enough. It was incomprehensible that anyone could have built such vast unsupported spans, far greater than the greatest dome in Caulderon.
At the centre, rising up from the point of intersection, stood a building unlike anything Tali had ever seen, or imagined. A spire. No, a spike, for it did not aspire to the sky — it transfixed and impaled it.
It was extravagant, astonishing, impossible. It made no concessions to structure, function or practicality. Tirnan Twil was pure form.
No more than thirty feet in width, the golden stone smooth and unornamented save that the outside was shaped like a five-sided cloverleaf, it soared a thousand feet into the heavens. It was simplicity itself, and astoundingly beautiful.
Tali swallowed. “Five arches.”
“For the Five Heroes who founded Hightspall. Though back then they were still known by their real name — the Five Herovians.”
“Why the change?”
“The Herovians fell out of favour, but a nation has to have its heroes.”
“And a five-sided spike.”
“Like a nail through the celestial dome,” said Holm. “An insight into the way they viewed the world, if you like.”
She did not care to dwell on that. “I don’t understand what holds it up.”
“Arches are strong. And the weight of the spike on it only makes it stronger.”
“Even the strongest stone will break if you put a big enough load on it. So the Cythonians say, and they’re masters of stone.”
Holm shrugged. “It’s stood for a very long time.”
“How do we get in?”
“We walk across the central arch. The shortest one.”
“Aren’t there guards, or gates?”
“There used to be. During the Two Hundred and Fifty Years War, and for a while afterwards, there were five Guardians, but then Tirnan Twil fell on hard times. Anyway, once the Cythians were defeated, Tirnan Twil faced no threats.”
“Why not?”
“How would anyone attack it? Every approach runs along a cliff like this one, and from their cliff-top guard posts intruders can be seen coming for miles.”
The broad ledge ran in a gentle curve out of sight. They reached the first arch which, though it appeared slender from a distance, was twenty feet deep and fifty feet broad. And the way across it was blocked.
“Every piece of stone in the arches is shaped to interlock like a three-dimensional jigsaw,” said Holm.
“Like the pieces of the heatstone helmet you made for me,” said Tali.
“Where do you think I got the idea?”
They passed the second arch, which had the same cross-section as the first but was shorter, and reached the third, the central arch. It crossed the chasm at right angles and was shorter yet, and unblocked. Holm headed across the arch, which had neither rail, kerb nor gutter.
“I wouldn’t fancy walking across this in a high wind,” said Tali, plodding after him and trying to look neither down nor up.
“Nor snow or ice. But I dare say one gets used to it.”
At the other end, a large wooden door stood open. It was so old that the surface of the wood had weathered into corrugations along the grain, leaving little fibres standing out from the surface.
“After you,” said Holm.
She didn’t move. “Surely we can’t just walk in unannounced?”
“If they didn’t want us to come in, they wouldn’t have opened the door.”
A shadow passed across the sun. Tali shivered and looked over her shoulder. Again she felt as though someone was watching her, but there was nothing to see. Nonetheless, she felt as though she was an intruder, open door or not.
She went through and was immediately struck by how thick the walls were, and how small the rooms. Or room, for there was only one on this level. It was also shaped like a five-leaved cloverleaf on the inside, and each embayment contained an ancient tapestry depicting the life and glories of one of the Five Heroes. In the centre, a fixed steel ladder ran up vertically through a hole with the same shape.
As Tali studied the tapestries, the feeling of being watched grew until all the skin on her back crawled. She turned, looked across into the embayment on the other side, let out a yelp and instinctively sprang backwards.
Its tapestry depicted a man with the heavy-jawed, florid face she remembered from the Abysm — the face she had seen contorted in agony on the opalised figure of the First Hero.
Axil Grandys.
CHAPTER 45
A cool hand on Tali’s elbow steadied her, and a soft, amused voice said, “He affects many visitors that way. A formidable man, our Axil Grandys.”
She turned to see a neat, compact fellow dressed in an embroidered shirt and yellow pantaloons, and soft white shoes with the tips curled up.
Her face must have indicated surprise because he said at once, “You thought we would dress like monks? This is a place of scholarship, my lady, and preservation. Some people do worship at the altar of the Five Heroes, but I do not. My name is Rezire, and I am the curator. Your companion I remember from several visits, long ago. Greetings, Holm.”
Holm bowed. “This is the Lady Thalalie vi Torgrist. But she answers to Tali.”
Tali shot him a furious glance.
“We deal in truth here,” said Rezire, who had intercepted Tali’s glare. “Visitors must give their real names.”
He returned Holm’s bow, and bowed to Tali. “You are welcome, Lady Tali. But you have come a long way, with some urgency. If you would follow me.” He turned to the ladder.
“How does he know that?” Tali said under her breath.
“Every visitor has come a long way. And considering how badly the war is going, our visit is bound to be urgent.”
“I trust you have no fear of heights,” said Rezire. “The design of Tirnan Twil, while breathtaking, makes no concession to practicality. The walls must be thick to support the weight, which leaves no room for a staircase.”
He went up the ladder, which ran vertically for thirty feet before passing through a six-foot-high hole in the ceiling, with no more effort than walking from one room to another. Tali followed wearily, then Holm.
“Is it too much to hope that Grandys’ stuff is on this level?” she said quietly.
“If memory serves me,” said Holm, “his journals and papers are on the fifth level, and various devices, artefacts and memorabilia are on the floors above that.”
“You remember,” said Rezire, beaming down at them.
“I should have warned you, my Lady,” he added politely. “The shape of the rooms focuses sounds to the centre, and upwards. There are few secrets in Tirnan Twil, but if you care to keep yours, make sure you’re above anyone who may overhear you, rather than below.”
The embayments on the second level had widely spaced, curving shelves made from thick glass that had developed a yellow tinge with age, though most of the shelves were empty. Tali looked into the embayment on her left. It contained only a pair of red shoes, the leather cracked, the toes scuffed. They were oddly shaped, almost square, with black laces.
“This room contains the oldest relics we have. Personal objects brought by the Five Heroes from our ancestral homeland,” said Rezire.
“Why so few?” said Tali.
“Space on the First Fleet was limited: one chest per person.”
“Even to the Five Heroes?”
“They were just ordinary citizens then.”
“Whose are these?” She
indicated the shoes.
“They’re Syrten’s baby shoes.”
“Baby shoes!” Tali echoed. “They’re almost as long as my shoes. And three times as wide.”
“Syrten was an unusual man. Unique.” Rezire turned away. “Over here we have the wooden flute carved for Lirriam by her grandfather, and — ”
“Alas, we must take the tour on our next visit,” said Holm. “Our time is short, and our enemies many.”
The third level contained items of personal adornment owned by the Five Heroes — amulets, rings, torcs, armbands, anklets, and other items, mostly in heavy gold, though to Tali’s eye they looked crude and unfinished.
“They’re very… um…” said Tali.
“You find them a trifle rustic?” said Rezire, frowning. “You may say so. We believe in plain speaking here.”
“They not what I’m used to, after Caulderon — ”
“And Cython?” he said coolly. “The Herovians of old were craftsmen, but all their craft went into weaponry. Arts and crafts that were over-ornate, or sophisticated, offended them.”
“They would have found much to be offended by in Palace Ricinus,” said Tali. Everything in the palace had been elaborate, yet beautiful. And now it was all gone.
Every floor had one or two librarians or curators, silently dusting, polishing or writing in ledgers. On the fourth floor, which was empty as far as Tali could tell, three yellow-robed pilgrims knelt in the embayment on the right, facing each other, eyes closed.
“How many levels are there?” said Tali.
“Thirty-three,” said Rezire, who was heading up into the fifth level.
“It seems an odd way to protect their treasures,” said Tali.
“Ah,” said Rezire, “but Tirnan Twil wasn’t built to protect the Heroes’ treasures.”
“Why was it built?”
“To exhibit and glorify their lives.”
“So all this stuff — ?”
“Items that would be seen as treasures by those who worshipped the Five Heroes.”
“Oh!”
“This level is entirely devoted to the papers of Axil Grandys,” said Rezire.
The layout was the same as for the rooms below. Five embayments, each with widely set shelves of thick glass, though here the glass had a purple tinge rather than yellow. There was a small blackwood desk to the left, and three wooden benches.
“The embayment to your immediate left contains Axil Grandys’ papers relating to the Two Hundred and Fifty Years War,” said Rezire. “At least, the first decade of it, when he led our armies.”
“Before he disappeared and was never seen again,” Holm said quietly.
These shelves held hundreds of bound volumes, some books, some journals, some ledgers of accounts, though most were collections of papers that had been bound together.
“The next embayment,” Rezire continued, “has documents dealing with the establishment, laws and government of Hightspall. The third embayment, his household accounts and personal papers. The fourth, correspondence with the other Heroes and important figures of the day, and the fifth, miscellaneous papers. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
He bowed and went up the ladder.
“What are we looking for?” said Tali quietly, so her voice would not carry.
“The key,” said Holm, drawing her away into the corner of the room and lowered his voice even further.
“I know that. But what could it be?”
“Just about anything.”
“Then how are we — ?”
“You’re not thinking, Tali. Lyf wants the master pearl because it’ll help him to locate the key. And you’ve got the pearl…”
“So I need to look at everything that Grandys had, and see if anything resonates.”
The room contained thousands of volumes. It would take hours just to take them down and look at them. Tali took down a volume at random, Lessons from the Esterlyz Campaign, and flipped the pages.
Holm sat on a bench, staring at the shelves.
“I hadn’t realised it would be this hard to read,” she said. Grandys’ handwriting was spare, as befitted the simplicity of Herovian life and philosophy, but the language had changed in two thousand years and many of the words and expressions were meaningless.
Holm said something she could not make out. She was turning back to the book when again she had that feeling that someone was watching her — no, looking down at her.
She went to the ladder hole and looked up. There was no one in sight save a white-haired woman labouring up a ladder three levels above. She walked around the room, trailing her fingers across the spines of the books, but they told her nothing. She did the same with the two lower shelves, then the one higher than that, which was as high as she could reach.
“Nothing,” said Tali. “Holm, I don’t think it’s here. Do you think — ?”
“You’re the one with the pearl.”
“I think I’ll try the next level.”
It contained an array of weapons and armour — swords, daggers, war axes, bows and crossbows, and other weapons she did not know the names of, dozens of different kinds of each.
“They don’t look like Cythonian weapons,” she said to Holm, who had come up behind her.
“They’re not, so they definitely didn’t come from Lyf’s temple. You don’t have to worry about them.”
It made her task a little easier. She wandered across to the opposite embayment, and recoiled. The shelves contained dozens of severed, embalmed heads, some worm-eaten and others, judging by the odour and appearance, beginning to decay despite the embalming fluid.
“Did Grandys collect these?” said Tali.
“Afraid so. Tells you what kind of man he was.”
She went up to the level above that, which was a portrait gallery. There were nine portraits of Axil Grandys, plus several of each of the other heroes, but she gave them only a cursory glance. They hadn’t come from Lyf’s temple either.
The far embayment contained five portraits of Lyf, the young king of old. This is more like it, she thought.
“Would he have had portraits of himself in his temple?” she said to Holm.
“It hardly seems likely. It was his private temple; no one else ever entered there save at his invitation.”
Four of the portraits were formal ones, masterly but stiff and over-formal. She continued to the fifth, a grimy, battered little miniature entitled Self-Portrait of the Newly Crowned King, Age 18. It showed Lyf in his temple, looking boyish, anxious and vulnerable.
“So he was eighteen when he became king,” said Tali, drawn to the lonely figure despite all he had done since. “The same age as me.”
“And not much older when they betrayed him and walled him up to die,” said Holm. “Any resonance from it?”
“No.” She went closer. “But it’s so dirty, it’s hard to see what he was like.”
Tali continued around the portraits, but felt that feeling of foreboding again. She shuddered.
“What’s the matter?”
“I keep feeling that we’re being watched.”
She drew a tiny amount of power and probed with her magery, above her, where the forebodings seemed to be coming from. They were diffuse and spread out over a wide area. What could it mean?
Tali looked up; looked down. Her foreboding was growing with every thickening breath, every racketing heartbeat.
“It feels like the danger’s above us… But not directly above. Not in the spike.”
Tali paced around the five-lobed level. She had never felt claustrophobic in Cython, yet she felt trapped in this tower suspended over one of the most glorious views in Hightspall but lacking a single window. She had to see out; she was practically choking. She ran up the ladder to the next level. A young archivist, clad in green robes, was huddled over an object in an unlighted lobe of the room.
“Excuse me?” she cried.
He seemed surprised that she had addressed him, but bowed and sai
d, “Yes, my lady?”
“Is there a window nearby? I’ve got to see out!”
“Tirnan Twil was designed without windows in the library and archive rooms, my lady.”
“Anywhere?” she said thickly.
“In the early days, when the world was less benign, our designer had an eye to defence. Between a number of the levels there are places for sentries to hide and watch. And even defend if necessary, though I hardly think — ”
“Where?” she screamed, barely restraining herself from shaking him. “Where’s the nearest?”
“Just above, my lady. Would you like me to — ?”
“Yes!” she shrieked. “Now!”
He bolted up the ladder, as if to escape her. As it passed through the hole to the floor above, he reached out to his left and opened a small, concealed door. He stepped through into a low-ceilinged service level, dark and musty.
“This way, my lady.”
He had to crouch, and even Tali had to bend her head under the low ceiling. She followed him. Fifteen feet across, a pair of shutters had the same five-lobed shape as the tower.
He threw them, revealing a window set in the yard-thick wall. “There you are, my lady,” he said with a trace of condescension. “You’ll be all right now. You’re not the first — ”
He was turning away when something outside caught his eye. He thrust himself against the window, staring up, then heaved on a lever and the thick glass groaned out and down. He leaned out, his mouth hanging open.
“What is it?” said Tali.
He tried to speak but no words came out. Though he was much bigger than her, Tali thrust him aside and looked up.
Gauntlings! Dozens of them, circling around the tip of the spike that topped Tirnan Twil. Her heart stopped for a moment, then restarted with a lurch. But what could gauntlings do, up there?
“They can’t get in, can they?”
His mouth worked; a globule of red saliva oozed onto his lower lip. He’d bitten his tongue in terror. Useless man! She ran past him to the ladder hole and yelled down.
“Holm! Gauntlings, dozens of them, high above!” She shouted the same message up to Rezire.
Holm came clattering up, the curator silently down. He thrust past her into the service level and across to the window. When he turned to them, his face was the colour of white marble. “It’s an attack!”
