The Real Tower
Cassia traced the intricatecarvings on the pendant. Power. Answers. Right under her fingertips yet out of reach.
“There’s only one problem,” she said. “I have no idea what this enchantment is for. It’s still useless to us.”
Lio’s smile faded, giving way to the harsh determination she had come to recognize. His impossible vow to restore her lost magics. As if he would shake the world with his bare hands until it yielded up her power.
“So much has been preserved here,” Cassia said. “Perhaps we can learn more than we did at the other Lustra sites.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Let’s search the rest of the tower. There could be clues that will help us understand the enchantment.”
Knight was waiting for them outside the Ritual circle. She stroked the soft fur of his ears to reassure him, then reached for the door to the stairwell. It opened before she touched it. “I take it the entire tower has recognized me as Ebah’s descendant. It’s about time.”
Cassia finally sheathed Rosethorn. Mak surrendered his heavy weapon belt to Lyros and let him carry it.
Her heart ached at the sight of them leaning on each other for support. “This tower is our errant Sanctuary now. Let’s find you a place to rest.”
They made their way downward through other rooms just as impossibly transformed from their abandoned state. In the bedchamber, a bronze chandelier cupped spell flames that cast a warm glow over the ancient tower’s glory. Luxurious furs covered a large bed carved from thick beams. Ivy flourished on the walls, and the cold floor was now warmed by rugs woven in designs like the triquetra on Cassia’s pendant.
“What in the name of all the stars of old…” Lio went to the window and looked out.
There was a look of uneasy wonder on Lyros’s face. “It feels like we stepped into another time. But that’s not possible, is it?”
“No.” Lio pointed out the window. “We’re in our own epoch, in the same tower.”
Cassia joined him there, looking down to see the snow-dusted forest, the dreary bailey, and the thatched roof of the stables.
“All of this should have disintegrated,” Lyros protested. “Without Hesperine tending, cloth and wood and such don’t last sixteen hundred years.”
“Cassia’s pendant lasted,” Lio pointed out. “The magefires are still burning. The Lustra sustains all of this somehow.”
Cassia turned in a circle, taking it in. “So, this…version…of the tower was here all along?”
“The real tower,” Lio said, “protected by the crumbling facade that men can see. Just like the passages at Solorum and Patria, only concealed in a much more complex way.”
“None of that makes any sense.” Mak yawned.
“No, it doesn’t.” The grimness in Lio’s aura hadn’t lifted. “But it will by the time we’re done, mark my words.”
Cassia’s mind whirled, thinking of all the nights she had slept within the Changing Queen’s secrets without knowing it. She ran a hand over one of the woven blankets on the bed. Had Ebah made it with her own hands? “This place is different from the other sites. More personal, somehow. As if she only just stepped out the door and will return at any moment.”
They found another spacious room across from Ebah’s bedchamber. This one had a decidedly masculine touch, from the empty weapon rack to the tidy bed that did not appear much used.
Lio raised a brow at Cassia. “Seems like Lucian visited his queen in her room most of the time.”
Lyros, although still limping, guided Mak to the bed and sat him down on the edge of it. “You need to get off your feet now.”
“We should finish searching the tower,” Mak protested.
“Cassia and I will do that,” Lio said.
“We’re safe here now.” She headed to the door with him by unspoken agreement.
“The horses,” Mak called after them. “We should bring them inside the keep so they’re protected by the Lustra’s spells too.”
“We’ll make them a place on the ground floor,” said Lyros. “Later.”
Mak started to grumble again.
“You need more blood,” Lyros interrupted in his most commanding tone. “Now.”
A grin tugged at Mak’s lips. “In that case, I might be persuaded to put up my feet in an ancient warrior’s bedchamber, as long as I won’t be resting alone. Not everyone can say they got their fangs polished where the famous Mage King slept.”
Smiling, Cassia closed the door behind her and Lio.
They drifted through the lower levels of the tower. In one room, the vacant armor stand spoke of a king gone to war. A collection of Lucian’s shields and banners still adorned the walls, perhaps trophies of victories that gave him particular satisfaction.
But it was clear this tower was the domain of a sorceress. There was a weaving room with a half-finished tapestry still on the loom. One chamber appeared entirely dedicated to her alchemy, with still-fragrant herbs hanging from the rafters.
Lio paused to examine the mortars, pestles, and jars. “This is definitely Lustri pottery dating from the end of the Great Temple Era! I’ve only seen broken fragments in Prince Iulios’s museum!”
Cassia tried to close her jaw, but she was too much in awe of everything they found.
When they reached a dining hall on the first floor, Lio sighed. “No library. I suppose it was too much to hope for, considering that the Lustri had a primarily oral culture.”
“So much died with them,” Cassia murmured.
Two high-backed wooden chairs stood in front of the hearth. Knight lay down on the fur rug in the glow of the flames. For the eternal magefire of a dead king, it was remarkably cozy, although her Hesperine senses warned her away. Like all the magic here, the flames both called to her and repelled her.
Her arm throbbed with the pain Lio had been ignoring. She patted one of the chairs. “Come here. Let me see to your injury.”
He sank onto his seat. Even weary from battle, he looked noble and powerful sitting there. No fire mage for her. This Silvicultrix now ruled the tower with an immortal sorcerer king at her side.
She sat on his lap and examined the break. “It doesn’t need to be set. A good long drink should set you to rights.”
He traced the vein on the inside of her wrist. “And you, my rose? Are you all right?”
She knew he wouldn’t accept her blood until she set his mind at ease. But she struggled to find any reassuring words. “I’m not sure I can forgive my ancestor for what her magic did to Mak.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“You are not allowed to tell me to stop blaming myself when you are so occupied with your own self-blame.”
He sighed and looked away, the fire casting his elegant profile in gold.
She turned his face back to her. “We learned this already, my Grace. Hespera taught it to us at the End, when my Gifting might have destroyed me. We have to forgive ourselves. Can you help me remember that?”
“You’re right. That lesson is a gift we must carry with us always.” He gave her a sad smile. “Let us remind each other of it, every time we have a new regret, until our stubborn minds finally learn.”
She ran her hand down his chest. It was not their minds that were the trouble, but their broken hearts.
“I know,” he whispered.
“Since we had to leave home, we’ve done nothing but get ambushed. We cannot afford to go into our next battle so blind.”
“No,” he agreed. “But we don’t have much time.”
“No,” she replied tightly.
Peace and war. Preparation and time. So many imperatives pulling them in opposing directions. So many conflicts that seemed to have no solution.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Lio said. “We have to stop here until we’re ready to face Miranda. When we go to meet her at Castra Roborra, we need to be prepared for anything.”
Cassia traced the furrow on his brow, and he closed his eyes. “How close do you honestly think Kallikrates is to the door?”
“Closer than us,” Lio confessed.
“Yes.”
The magic inside her felt so heavy suddenly, too much even for her immortal frame to carry.
She saw the heart hunter’s lifeless body in the snow. The broken bodies of innocent mortals at the lighthouse.
The blood pouring from Mak’s heart. Her own bleeding hand, reaching toward the door.
“I’ll keep trying,” she promised Lio and herself and everyone Kallikrates would destroy if she laid down to rest.
“And I will keep trying with you,” her Grace swore.