A white tower on a dark blue sky.
The sweep of the scattered city below.
And then the jungle-forest, the distances of Thaddra.
The tower had once been bowl-topped, forerunner of the towers of Dorthar. But the masonry had come down. Into what remained, the neck of the tower, a room with half a ceiling and many long shutterless windows, Tuab Ey trod like a cat. And stopped, staring.
Rarnammon stood in the center of the floor, looking at him, apparently waiting for him.
“I said I wouldn’t visit your new—abode,” said Tuab Ey, “but here I am. Now, tell me what you’ve been doing all these days and nights. Incantations and summonings? A few of them say they’ve seen lights flying to the windows like birds.”
Rarnammon shook his head, very slowly. Tuab Ey was uncertain whether this was denial or wondering contempt. The qualities of Rarnammon had intensified. He seemed less penetrable than any other object, and yet lucent, day pouring through the eyes—
“You are a magician,” said Tuab Ey. “Admit it. I don’t believe in magic, and will laugh. Then perhaps I can coax you forth, mighty lord. My dog-pack wants to go north or east, and find Free Zakorians to kill. Someone came, one of Jort’s pigs, said the north rivers were running with dead.”
“Tuab Ey,” said Rarnammon, “go down to the foot of the tower. Guard it for me. Keep the others out.”
“Why?”
“The magic you referred to is about to be woken up. Incantations, summonings . . . not quite that. But lightning striking this tower might be a little thing.”
“Don’t talk in conundrums if you want something done. All right. I’ll keep the gate for you. The others’ll be off, anyway, if anything happens. What will happen? Apart from lightning.”
“I don’t know. I told you that before. But you have Lowland blood somewhere. I think you’re necessary to this balance.” A hint of friendly bathos: “I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient. But go down now, if you will, Tuab Ey.”
Tuab Ey backed a step, collected himself and said, “You look like a god, standing there. Did you realize? Am I supposed to worship?”
Rarnammon walked toward him through the sunlight of the windows. It appeared to cling and cover him, that light, so that when he stretched out his hand and laid it without pressure on Tuab Ey’s arm, and the light seemed to stream into it and through Tuab Ey, it was only as expected.
Rarnammon put out his other hand to steady him.
Tuab Ey said quietly through the dizziness, “—Power. What do I do with it?”
“Keep the gate.”
Tuab Ey went down the stair, leaning on the wall, light filling him, to keep the gate.
The day was hot, hazy. There was nothing unusual about it. Yet he knew it was—the last day.
Ever since he had come into the tower—the high place stipulated in all lore—he had begun to move mentally toward this time. Even in his ignorance he had moved, as a child learns to walk in ignorance of walking.
There had been dreams, hallucinations, voids, the sense of dropping to earth from the stars, without impact.
Now there was the sense of crisis.
Rarnammon was not alone. Others gathered, as forces gathered. The world seemed one endlessly indrawing breath.
As the day turned, Rarnammon became aware of the tower shutting itself about him. The very glare and heat in the window-places solidified, making a screen where there was none. The haphazard noises of the ruin faded.
It was conceivable he might die. But then, he might have died on a hundred occasions. In his years as a thief, in Kesarh’s service at Tjis, in Lan outriding the caravans, in Dorthar, in the hands of Free Zakoris. Each moment of survival was a gift. Since he had come back to himself here in this fallen city, his physical persona had meant less. He had felt part of some entirety, one bough of one great tree.
Rarnammon lay down on the floor, and the lights crossed themselves in the air above him. A bird flew over the gap in the ceiling on yellow gauffered wings.
It was the final expression of external matter. He closed his eyes and went inward. The madness, the letting go of the fleshly self, had taught him. As his half-brother Raldanash was, Rarnammon also was now an adept.
His consciousness descended, entered another place, and so stepped forth.
One vast eye, seeing without sight, and in the sightless seeing, all other senses were bound, and yet further senses the flesh could not employ.
He sensed, in this manner, Tuab Ey below him at the foot of the tower, seated in the entrance. A shape—the man, Galud—was there, bending over him, asking what went on, and Tuab Ey was sending him off, and Galud obeyed, stumbling.
A coalescence of radiance and color was sinking to a river of moistures and shade; sun and forest. Every insect and beast of the forest gleamed and blinked. The lives in the city’s arid bones flickered like the wings of moths.
Under the city, through veils of stone and soil and rock, the well ran deep, and glowed. It was already awake, communing with itself. The tower delved it, like a vein into a heart.
Sightless, seeing, Rarnammon beheld the other glowing hearts away and away from him, yet near as his own hands lying on the floor forgotten.
He was not afraid. Only some fragment of him remembered his father at this instant, Raldnor, who had borne all this alone. And before Raldnor, Ashne’e, who had been the beginning, the first spark struck against the darkness.
Then he made contact with the starry, fiery heart, perhaps before he was quite ready. But unreadiness did not hinder him. He was blown upward, scorched and spun, but knew the strength of his sailing wings, to ride, and to pace, the whirlwind.
Galud, rushing in among his fellows, was caught by the One-Eared and shaken.
“Look at the sky!” hissed Galud.
They went to look.
Though the sun was setting, the whole heaven was throbbing with an extraordinary brilliance. It seemed as if they were about to see its arteries, or as if portions might be ejected.
“What’s that sound?” said Galud. They listened. The sound was not in the city. It could not be heard.
They stood listening to this soundless sound, as all over the ruins others had paused to listen.
In the colony of lepers to the west, faceless things crawled into cavities to hide.
Miles off in the forests, the chorus of the birds was chopped to dumbness, lizards froze, still water bubbled, creepers uncoiled like snakes from the trees.
The sun had already sunk beyond the ruined city of the south. Dusk sprinkled the colonnades and terraces that had had their youth in the era of Ashnesea.
The market of the Lepasin seemed deserted. Only a small wind played about there, with scraps of paper and petals and dust.
All around, the houses were boarded in, curtained over, shuttered. No light showed.
In the high place of the dark palace, seven figures, so white they seemed without blood, stood with white blowing hair between the broken sticks of columns. They were the guards, the custom. Their pale eyes took the tint of twilight, turning blue and uncanny.
Inward, flowers that had been brought rustled on the ancient floor paintings, the chips of citrine and garnet. The wind moved like the sea through the palace.
Lur Raldnor lay inside the darkness, his black hair poured on the mosaic. The Lowlanders, his kindred, had trained him. He had come to learn and to understand so much, that in the end he was afraid he would be the weakness that must lessen the chain.
Now he was beyond such fear.
His body lay like a corpse. The Amanackire guarded him as if he were a dead king. They would let no one through. They themselves, binding their minds with his, fenced and toughened his psyche.