“Naveh!” Metron cried. “Badawa! Belhorwa!”
Garric’s skin tingled as though he’d just stepped out of salt water. Hakken must have felt the same and been frightened by it, because he gave a shout, flailing his arms to shake something off him.
“Start climbing,” Metron ordered. He sounded tired and his voice was even more distant than usual. “Just put your feet against the wall. But hurry, please hurry.”
Garric lifted his right leg and set the sole firmly against the stone as if he were pushing off from it. His balance changed. He started to fall forward until he threw up his left foot as well.
“Duzi!” he gasped. He was standing on the tower’s side, his body parallel to the ground below. The Spike stretched before him like the trunk of a felled tree, sloping to either side but an easy passage to a youth who’d walked fence rails for fun.
He wasn’t sticking to the stone; it was as if the Spike had turned onto its side so that gravity held Garric and all his equipment in the normal way. Hakken cried out and fell against the tower. He rose onto his hands and knees, still against the stone, looking at Garric in wonderment.
“Gar!” Tint cried. She leaped to the wall beside him. Her nails scratched for purchase, but the stone was too smooth even for her. She slipped to the ground. “Gar, come back!”
“Wait, Tint!” Garric said.
He turned the crystal up to look at the wizard. “Metron,” he demanded. “Why isn’t Tint able to climb?”
“Do you think I’m the Mistress herself?” Metron snarled shrilly. “Do you know how much power it takes to shift the cosmos for the weight of just two of you? Get on with it! Don’t keep delaying, please!”
Garric felt clammy. He thought his bare skin glowed with red wizardlight. The color was too faint for certainty, and it wasn’t something he wanted to think about anyway.
He shivered. “Let’s go, Hakken,” he said. “Tint, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Wait here for me, all right?”
“Gar!” the beastgirl cried. She poised to jump.
“No, Tint!” Garric said, but she leaped onto the smooth stone anyway. When she slipped, she tried to catch Garric’s leg. He strode ahead to avoid her grip.
“Come on, Hakken!” he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the wail as Tint slid to the ground. He jogged up—along—the sheer tower, keeping his eyes focused on the sky to avoid seeing that the ground was increasingly far behind him.
Tint continued to jump and wail. There’d been no sign of human guards, but Garric still found the noise disconcerting.
The top, two hundred feet in the air, was as smoothly rounded as a sword pommel. Garric paused, wondering what would happen if he stepped over the end—down, as it felt to him now. Hakken joined him, walking carefully. The tower was broad enough that the two men could have safely stood side by side, but the business was already too uncanny to take further chances.
Metron was chanting. Hakken held his axe in both hands, his elbows close to his sides. His face was set in a rictus, beyond fear and probably beyond hope as well.
Tint still shrieked; the distance wasn’t great enough to mute the nerve-wracking cries. Garric felt a surge of anger, which he suppressed in embarrassment. Anger at the beastgirl’s inability to understand was as foolish as getting angry at a rainstorm…and in this case, a rainstorm that had repeatedly saved his life.
He turned his head to the side and looked out over the darkened city of Durassa. A few yellow glows moved slowly through the streets, lanterns lighting partygoers to their homes. Most of those out at this hour either couldn’t afford the price of a linkman or would prefer the dark for their business.
The call of a rattle showed that at least one watchman was alert. Did Hame’s cousin wait in a doorway, looking up at the Spike?
Light outlined a score of shuttered windows; the folk in other rooms might be awake as well, staring into the night. Any of them could see Garric and Hakken on the tower, completely exposed.
It probably didn’t matter. Human danger wasn’t of immediate concern, not now….
“Chermarai!” Metron cried. A wedge of the dome’s curve turned black and dissipated like mist struck by the full sun. Perfumed air puffed out, warm and damp and green-smelling.
“Inside quickly!” the wizard said. “I’m holding it until you’re inside, but hurry!”
“It’s dark as arm’s length up a hog’s ass!” Hakken protested.
“I’ll light it after you’re in,” Metron said. “Please!”
Garric didn’t like the dark interior any better than the sailor did, but it seemed to him that this time Metron was doing the best he could. He stepped forward; gravity changed again. Hakken, more afraid of being alone than of what might be waiting inside, jumped after him.
The wedge of sky vanished, at last silencing the beastgirl’s cries. For an instant Garric was in darkness that breathed lush odors. The crystal on his breast crackled. Metron’s image stood with its left arm outstretched, its fist balled. Azure wizardlight shot from the sapphire ring, spreading into an ambiance which lit a corridor bent into the organic curves of a muskrat’s burrow.
Hakken looked about in silent wonder. Though it appeared to have been chewed from the rock rather than being built, the corridor was luxurious beyond the halls of any palace Garric had seen.
Tapestries of thick, lustrous silk hung the walls, showing different pictures depending on the angle Garric’s eye fell on them. Between each pair of hangings was a patch of blank wall, a sconce, and a velvet rope attached to the top of the wall.
Metron spoke a word. The sconces lighted one after another, throwing up pale flames like those of the purest olive oil. The blue glow of moments before sucked back into the ring. Wavering lamp flames made the shadows beneath the cords writhe as if they were alive.
The corridor split twenty feet from where Garric stood. Each of the two branches curved off in its own direction; one of them climbing, the other seeming to slope slightly downward.
“Lord Thalemos will be in one of the cells,” said Metron. His voice was broken, but the sound of panting didn’t reach Garric’s mind the way the words did. “I can’t tell which. Open the viewslits one at time and look in, but be careful.”
“What viewslits?” said Hakken. “I don’t see—”
“The cords!” Metron snapped, angry at his own failure to communicate and taking it out, as people generally did, on those they’d failed. “Pull the cords, you fool!”
Garric pulled the nearest cord, a braid of gold-and-scarlet plush. It dipped easily; as it did, the section of wall beside it became transparent. Garric touched the space. He felt stone though his eyes told him there was nothing there. He looked in.
A child of no more than six sat on the floor playing with a pull toy, a painted pottery duck on clay wheels. The room was appointed with an ornate gilt bronze table and a chair inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. There was no bed.
“Go on, go on!” Metron squeaked. “We have to find Thalemos.”
“Why—” said Garric.
The child turned to look in his direction. There were pits of orange hellfire where its eyes should have been. Garric dropped the velvet cord and backed away. The stone was again unmarked.
“Hakken, you check the other side of the corridor,” Garric said. His voice was hoarse for the first few words. “I’ll take these.”
He walked quickly to the next pull, this one purple with an ermine tassel on the end. He had to force himself to take the cord in his hand. He tugged it down fiercely to get it over with.
The cell on the other side of the window looked like the interior of a cave covered with the pearly translucence of flow rock. Garric couldn’t tell where the light came from. Nothing moved, nothing in the room seemed to be alive. He lowered the cord and moved on.