Chapter 3 Eder
EDER
A re you watching, Father? thought Eder as he gazed up at the clear night sky. Are you ready for the souls to come?
Eder descended on one of the Tower Majestic’s seventy-five lifts, a square platform hanging from thick ropes tied to metal rungs bolted to all four corners and then given a wooden guardrail.
Before him stretched the emptiness at the heart of the tower.
Lanterns swayed along the other side of that enormous black abyss, hundreds of them, yellow stars a quarter mile away.
A chill wind teased the thin fabric of his black robe and fluttered its silver tassels.
A wind always blew through that vacuous center, as if nature itself decried its emptiness.
The lift traveled smoothly, the boards beneath him groaning and swaying only a little, inevitable given the great distance they covered.
“There are nine devouts prepared for tonight,” said Madeleine, the only other passenger on the lift.
She was a brilliant young woman, her blond hair tied back in a bun to lend a severe look to an otherwise beautiful face.
Like all officials of the Mind of the Father, she wore a black vest and trousers.
Pinned at her breast was a silver pendant, a mimicry of the tower, with three stars beneath to signify her as a Celebrant, her order’s highest achievable rank.
Buckled to her waist was Eder’s knife, sleek and silver.
“I have not the heart for nine,” Eder confessed.
Madeleine crossed her hands behind her back.
She stood beside him, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder.
He wondered if she saw the same beauty he did when gazing out across the expanse.
The emptiness frightened most people, a quarter mile of nothing between the Tower Majestic’s interior walls of hardstone.
Far, far below swirled the ocean, sparkling faintly from the unobstructed starlight.
It was said, if one fell, one’s heart would burst from fear long before one hit the water, and only a corpse would greet the hungry creatures of the sea.
Eder suspected the people of the tower preferred that story to the truth, that the churning water would crush a body like a man’s heel upon a cherry.
“If you have not the heart, then let others bear the burden,” Madeleine suggested.
Floor after floor passed to Eder’s right, hardstone jutting out from the tower’s side to allow dozens of buildings to be constructed of wood and sandstone atop them.
People moved through their tightly curled streets, human shadows lit by torches and starlight.
More lifts moved up and down between the juts, crossing far shorter distances, many of them at an angle to connect the different floors.
Those were pulled by liftmasters, strong men who twisted and turned gears connected to pulleys to safely and smoothly wind and unwind the heavy ropes.
Though stairs circled the tower’s sides, it took most people more than an hour to climb them from top to bottom.
Much faster, and easier, to take lifts to the many floors built into the hardstone.
Most lifts would have multiple stops, but not the one Eder and Madeleine rode.
It served a special purpose. Its only entrance was near the top of the Tower Majestic, and permanently guarded.
Its only exit, the cold cells far below.
“This burden is mine,” Eder said. “I will not force upon anyone that which I alone must bear.”
He looked to the sky for strength. The Tower Majestic, two thousand vertical feet of hardstone, was built in an era long before humans, by a people forgotten to time known only as the Etemen.
No matter how grand it was now, it had once been grander, for the tower rising out of the ocean had cracked in half and then collapsed onto the cliffside.
This meant the upper portions ended abruptly at open sky.
A blessing, so far as Eder was concerned, for it granted those living within the sight of the stars glittering above.
Madeleine stepped closer to the lift’s edge and touched the guardrail.
“Then rest for tonight,” she said. “The cells can accommodate the devouts for a bit longer.”
“The moon is full, and the devouts’ souls are ready,” Eder said. “They deserve their freedom, not another month trapped and waiting.” He smiled at her. “Do not worry. I am long accustomed to these burdens. They will not break me.”
“All things may break,” Madeleine said. “Is that not the lesson of the Tower Majestic?”
Eder chuckled at her stubborn wit. He should expect as much from his Celebrant.
The hardstone that comprised the tower could not be worked, chipped, or cut by any tool known to man, and yet somehow the tower had split and fallen.
Stories of why were more numerous than the stars, and Eder suspected all of them were wrong.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But I know my limits. Hold faith in your Luminary.”
The noises of civilization, even those of the night, such as the bawdy songs of taverns, the ripple of window curtains, fabrics drying on clotheslines, and the flutter of midnight birds nesting on rooftops, all came to silence here at the lowest portions of the Tower Majestic.
A new sound replaced them: the roar of the waves below.
The lift slowed to a halt before a ledge.
Two guards were there to receive them, standing at attention before a wooden gate sealing off the rest of the hardstone jut.
One guard grabbed hold of the handrail to steady the platform, while the other offered his hand to Madeleine.
She took it and hopped over the thin gap to the ledge.
Eder crossed it himself, not needing or desiring any aid.
Once they were free of the lift, the first guard took a sand hourglass atop a nearby pedestal and flipped it.
The largest and longest lifts were all moved by pulleys built on the tower’s second-highest floor, known as the Rafters.
With such tremendous distance between floors, and so many different levers to pull, the various destinations used matching hourglasses to know when the lifts would be raised or lowered.
Four minutes; that was the rule. No matter the destination, no matter the size of the lift, it would move again in four minutes.
“Greetings, Luminary,” the first guard said. He was an older man with swaths of gray in his beard. Those who protected the cold cells were always the eldest of the kingdom’s soldiers, battle worn and tested. He bowed and put his fist to his forehead. “May Father bless and keep you.”
“And you as well, soldier,” Eder said.
Another guard stood watch atop the gate, and seeing Eder, he quickly opened it.
Together, Eder and Madeleine entered the encampment protecting the cells.
Most of it was comprised of tents, the poles and fabric far easier to transport than planks of wood or heavy bricks of stone.
To their right were bedrolls, and to their left, tables and chairs.
Farther toward the edge of the jut were stacked crates of supplies.
Given the late hour, one would expect most soldiers to be asleep, but it was a full moon tonight, and they knew their Luminary would soon arrive.
They stood at attention, their heads bowed and their right fists raised to their foreheads.
Lantern light flickered off their steel armor.
All of them wore the tabards of the Astral Kingdom, black cloth bearing the image of the broken Tower Majestic sewn with silver thread in the center.
“Praise be to the Luminary,” their commander shouted as Eder passed.
“Praise be!” the soldiers echoed.
Eder walked among them, careful to keep his shoulders back and head held high.
Among his brothers, he was not as beautiful as Sariel, nor as muscular and handsome as Faron.
His dark hair he cut just above his shoulders and allowed much of it to fall across his face.
A protective veil. Not handsome, not beautiful, but intense.
Focused. Slow to anger, slow to smile. A soft jaw, a sharp nose, and eyes that would imprison if he allowed them to do so.
Where he walked, people noticed and bowed low.
Before he ever wore a crown, before he ever labeled himself a prophet, people sensed the radiance within him and trembled.
Stairs awaited at the far wall, and unlike most places throughout the tower, these were blocked off with a wooden barricade to prevent any arrivals from above.
The only way was down, and waiting there was an elderly man wearing a thick black robe.
It was rarely warm far at the bottom of the tower, where the sun was at its thinnest and the shadows their deepest.
“I bid you welcome, Mitra,” said the man, a preacher named Glasga.
While most preachers were assigned to the far corners of Kaus, specifically areas lacking a church and shepherd, Glasga was special.
The people of the cells, and only those of the cells, were his to nurture and prepare.
A difficult task, one that few would choose if given the chance.
Glasga, however, had relished the challenge when Eder offered it to him.
“I hear there are nine ready for tonight?” Eder asked as they descended.
The hardstone stairs were so wide ten men could walk them abreast, yet the trio kept close to the wall on their left.
No railing protected the other side. It was also a good five strides from step to step, which birthed claims that the Etemen were, while not giants, extremely long-legged, portrayed to an almost comical degree when painters and storytellers attempted their imaginings of the Tower Majestic’s original builders.
“Eight, I am afraid,” Glasga said. He touched the balding portion of his head with his fingers. “Poor Desdemona perished this morning. The chill, I suppose. She could not endure the chill.”
“Such a shame,” Madeleine said without a hint of emotion.