Time was hard to keep track of in cat form, so he had no idea how long he had been climbing when they reached its end, when a splash of light began to reflect off from the glassy surface just around a sharp turn in the tube above them. "There's the end," Sarraya said.
"I see it."
What he didn't count on when he turned the corner was that it was indeed the end. It opened to the sky, a daylit sky, and that the mouth of the tube was covered by a metal grate. The Aeradalla had noticed the tube, and had barred it off, probably to keep children from getting too curious. The metal grate was thick, heavy, and the bars were too close together for him to wriggle through them.
"Daytime? Did I sleep that long?" Sarraya said in confusion.
"Don't ask me, you know I can't keep time like this," he told her. "Can you get that out of the way?"
"Sure, hold on," she told him confidently. She flitted up to it and put her hand on one of the bars, and it began to rust away at an astounding rate. In seconds, little miniature rivulets of rust dust were drifting down past his paws, sliding down into the unfathomable darkness of the lava tube. In mere moments, two of the bars were totally rusted away, and that gave him enough room to squirm through it and into the open. It wasn't easy, for it was a tight fit and he had no traction on the glassy surface of the lava tube. But he managed to wriggle through, and put his paws down on a flat, level surface, a surface not of black basalt, but of mortared cobblestones.
Cobblestones? Why cobblestones? That made little sense.
They had come up out of the tube between two tall buildings, covered with a strange wattle-like substance, like dried mud. They were the color of sand, and they towered over him on both sides of what looked to be a small alley between them.
He padded along the alleyway with sarraya on his back absently, curious as to why a race of winged beings would waste time paving over black stone for cobblestones. Maybe to cover the black stone, which must heat up something fierce in the daytime sun. That was a possibility.
He stepped out from between the buildings, and stopped dead in his tracks.
The top of the rock spire was a city.
Not just a city built atop the spire, but extending out past its boundaries. From his vantage point, he could see many tiers with buildings built atop them, gradually going down from the center. He had come out at the edge of one of those tiers, and he looked down on the rest of the city in awe. It extended for longspans, far beyond the radius of the spire, and from the look of it, nearly out to the boundary of the cloud itself.
Amazing! That barrier had to be the beginning of a vast platform, upon which the entirety of the city rested! The Rock Spire was like the neck of a champagne glass!
He was absolutely stunned, and from the silence, so was Sarraya. They looked down on the lower tiers with awe, total awe, unable to believe that anything like this rested above the concealing cloud.
"Unbelievable," Sarraya finally whispered. "It's unbelievable!"
Tarrin looked around, at the city itself. Its architecture was alien to him, full of graceful curves and elegant slopes. There were very few right angles, and none of the buildings seemed to have a door at ground level. They all had a tiered construction like the city itself, with a smaller tier resting upon a wider base, which served as the landing platform and entrance into the buildings. It was upon those ledges that the Aeradalla themselves took off and alighted, and the sky was peppered with individual Aeradalla as they flew here and there on their daily business, much as a human city dweller would walk along the streets.
Looking out at the incredible city, he now understood the extents that could be reached with magic. The place screamed of it, radiated it like heat, but it was not active magic. The magic that had created this floating city was ancient itself, and it had seeped into the stone of the city's bowl and the Rock Spire itself, making it strong enough to support its own weight. It was certain to him that without magic, this place could not be. The stone could never survive the stress of such weight upon it without any support, not without magical reinforcement. The Conduit running through the heart of the Spire probably sustained the ancient magic that had created this place, since the proximity of such a power would prevent the magic that made this place work from fading.
"Unbelievable," Sarraya muttered in awe. "How could this be here?"
"Magic," Tarrin told her, shaking off his astonishment. He still had something to do. He had to find that object and make sure it wasn't the Firestaff. He could wonder at this place all he wanted after that task was accomplished.
"It must rest on top of the Rock Spire like a plate balanced on a pole," Sarraya said quietly. "How does it stay up?"
"Magic," he told her again. "There's magic permeating everything here. It keeps the stone strong."
"An entire city," Sarraya said in disbelief. "Who would believe me if I told them?"
"I would," he said calmly. "Then again, I know you're not lying."
Sarraya laughed, and that seemed to snap her out of it. "It is pretty amazing, isn't it?"
"Only to us," he shrugged. "They're probably used to it."
An Aeradalla landed on the edge of the tier not twenty paces from them, next to the building to his left. He ducked back into the alley and looked at this winged person. He was tall and thin, and he had those large white-feathered wings on his back. His hair was a long blond braid hanging down his back, his skin bronzed from the sun, and he was quite attractive by human norms. He wore little more than a cross harness and trousers with a wide leather belt, upon which hung a small crossbow and a slender sword, and soft half-boots of leather. A crossbow was a clever weapon for a winged warrior, since it didn't need to be held in a drawn position, and they were relatively easy to aim. For a highly mobile warrior, it was a sensible weapon, for landing to engage with a sword was taking away from one of the Aeradalla's fundamental advantages. It was smarter for them to shoot crossbows at their enemies at a distance from which the opponent could not retaliate. That crossbow looked small enough to be recocked without a windlass. Tarrin would bet that learning to reload that thing while on the wing took a great deal of practice.
The Aeradalla didn't seem to notice him, instead moving up to the building before him. He knocked on a door that Tarrin didn't see before-mainly because the city itself had swallowed up his attention-and was soon allowed inside. When the door closed, Tarrin padded back out towards the edge of the tier, looking at the building. He saw the door now, which was a set of double-doors that, when taken together, were significantly taller and wider than normal doors. To give room for the wings, he realized.
He stopped at the edge of the tier and looked down. It was about forty spans to the next tier, but some of the roofs of the houses and buildings below were close to the level of the floor of the tier he was currently occupying. The effect wasn't one of blocky descent as one looked out over the city, but rather one of gradual sloping towards the edges of the magical city. There were a few holes in that sloping regularity, but they were too far away for his cat's eyes to see much. Tarrin's vision wasn't very sharp in cat form, more geared for seeing motion than making out details. Seeing at distance required vision able to pick out details. He could see to the end of the city, but that far away was little more than a blur of different colors against the continual sky. Those empty areas were dark splotches against the tan backdrop of the city.