Looking down over the railing, she spotted more than a dozen shadowy things on the floor of the tower, aimlessly drifting. Some of them were crouched on the dais in the center. The birds clung to the walls, slowly beating their wings.
Yorda looked up. At this height, she could finally see the top of the tower. There, hanging from the roof, was something like a giant metal birdcage. There was no other way to describe it. It was cylindrical in shape, the gleam of the iron darkened with age. Yet when the wind that whipped around the tower blew in through the windows, past the ragged shreds of curtains, the dim light of the sun glinted off the thick-looking bars. Yorda realized that this was what she had seen when she peered at the top floor of the tower through her spyglass.
She was amazed by its size. Though its design mirrored a birdcage, it was large enough to contain a grown person. There were sharp spikes all around the bottom and top edges-a strange, deadly looking adornment. Perhaps to keep people from coming too close, Yorda guessed.
A chilling sensation ran up Yorda’s spine. Maybe it was built to hold a person. Maybe there’s someone in it right now.
She heard a voice shouting but could not make out any words. Then she realized it was her own voice, and the sound brought her back to reality. Once again, Yorda dashed up the stairs. She had to go higher. She had to learn what was inside.
Pressed by desperation and fear, Yorda ran, taking two steps at a time. Finally, she approached the base of the cage. A little farther, and her head was level with the bottom. She clung to the railing and leaned out as far as she could.
“Father?” she heard herself call out.
An old, faded robe lay in tatters on the bottom of the cage. She could faintly make out the remnants of gold embroidery around the sleeves. It was her father’s tunic-woven of wool, a deep navy color, softer than silk to the touch. This was the same tunic he often wore for public occasions; the clothes he had worn as he lay in his coffin at the funeral.
She looked closer and saw a tuft of white hair protruding from one end of the robe. My father’s body is here too. Confined even in death. He was the master of the Tower of Winds.
Yorda fell to her knees and wept out loud.
12
YORDA LOOKED AROUND desperately, trying to find some way to release her father’s remains from the cage.
The cage hung from the ceiling of the tower by a chain thicker than Yorda’s arm. The chain was old, its luster long gone, and it was covered with rust. From what she knew of similar devices in the castle, Yorda expected there to be a winch somewhere to raise and lower the chain, but she saw nothing. Tears still streaming down her face, she continued to climb the spiral staircase.
Unused to such exertion, her legs were beginning to give out on her. Her calves were painfully cramped, and her knees and ankles ached. But sorrow and indignation kept her moving, even when she had to crawl up the last ten steps on her hands and knees.
At the top of the stairs was a square landing surrounded by pointed spikes. At the edge, she spotted a metallic lever. She followed the chain from the cage up to the ceiling where it connected with a winch, then ran back down to the lever by the landing.
That’s it!
The lever was set firmly in the stone floor, and when she touched it, the device wouldn’t budge. Whatever oil had been applied to it was long gone, and the lever was stiff with rust. She took it in both hands and brought all her weight to bear on it, forcing the lever very slightly back with a horrendous creaking noise. She saw the chain holding the cage shudder, and the cage dropped a few inches, its base tilting.
Yorda pulled with all her might. She blinked against the sweat and tears that mingled in her eyes. Again she pulled. The skin on her hands was raw and bleeding. One of her fingernails cracked. Once, the sweat on her hands made her lose her grip, sending her sprawling onto the ground and biting her lip. Her entire body screamed in protest at the effort-it was more physical work than she had ever attempted. But Yorda did not give up.
The cage continued to descend at an obstinate pace. She stopped only once to check on its progress and found it was halfway down the tower. This gave Yorda hope, and she turned back around and continued her battle with the lever.
At last, there came a thud she felt in her hands. The lever was all the way down. She heard a heavy, reverberating clang drift up from the floor of the tower far below. Yorda looked over the railing once to check that the cage had, indeed, reached the bottom, then she began climbing down the stairs. She had to fight her legs to make them do as she bade. For a moment she paused, hands on her knees, steadying her breath and wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of a hand.
Suddenly, she felt dizzy, as though her legs were swaying beneath her. No, I can’t fall now, she told herself, but the swaying sensation continued. She realized it wasn’t dizziness-she really was swaying.
Spurred to action by animal reflexes Yorda never knew she possessed, she leapt just as a part of the landing beside her feet crumbled and gave way. The stone of the stairs dissipated in the dust, tumbling toward the base of the tower.
There was no time for fear. The staircase was continuing to collapse beneath her, cracks running through the stones directly toward her feet. She fled down the spiral staircase, the sound of crumbling stone close behind her. Ahead of her, too, there was a gap where several stairs had fallen away. She cleared it with a jump, landing with the tips of her toes on the far edge. She lost her balance and slammed into the wall but was back on her feet immediately and resumed her mad dash.
She felt like she was playing a game of chase where the stakes were her life. She wondered that the stairs in the tower should suddenly grow too weak to support her weight, but then she understood the darker truth. Her mother was trying to smash her against the stones of the tower floor. Had the tournament ended? Had Ozuma emerged victorious?
Now she was practically sliding down the stairs. When she finally reached the bottom, her legs collapsed beneath her, completely numb, and she sprawled across the floor. For a while, she just lay there, gasping for breath. No matter how much she breathed, her chest ached, and her vision grew dim, the floor on which she lay shifting nearer and farther in turns.
Finally she was able to get her arms beneath her and pick herself up. I did it. Just a little farther.
She looked up to see the spiral staircase hanging above her in the tower, as though nothing had happened. It was so quiet, it seemed almost like she had dreamed the collapsing stairs around her, though she could spot the gaps where she had had to jump, and there were piles of rubble around the edges of the tower.
Yorda hugged her arms across her chest. The giant cage holding her father’s remains sat directly atop the round platform in the middle of the floor. The shades were nowhere to be seen.
Careful not to catch herself on the metallic thorns, Yorda approached the door of the cage. With a trembling hand, she reached out and touched the door, grabbing hold of one of the bars.
With a screech that made her teeth ache, the door swung outward.
I guess you don’t need to lock the door that holds a dead man, she thought with relief, though it made her father’s imprisonment seem that much more contemptuous. A fresh tear rolled down Yorda’s cheek.
“Father…”
She stepped inside and tried to pick up the faded tunic. The fabric disintegrated like cobwebs in her hand, sending up a plume of dust. Yorda spotted her father’s bones beneath the tattered cloth. With her eyes she marked the curve of a rib. There was a shoulder. She brushed away more of the tunic and found the bone of an arm. She guessed the bones protruding from the bottom of the tunic were his legs.