Chapter 16 Eder #2
While certain delights might be illegal in Bridgetop, the same did not go for Underbridge.
Smoke billowed from a hundred torches lighting up its streets.
With every ladder they descended, they found a new layer of buildings, most windows open and lit with candles.
Songs flowed from a nearby tavern. Not far away was a gambling hall, with two gruff-looking guards set at the front to keep out those lacking the proper amount of coin.
Night women leaned at the entrances to the nearly infinite slender corridors and cracks between buildings, though they wisely covered themselves and slunk away when realizing who Eder was.
Eder accepted Underbridge like he accepted all other aspects of humanity’s sinful nature.
It was inevitable that imperfect beings would seek harmful indulgences.
These vices were but tiny blots on the soul compared to the true sins of murder, betrayal, thievery, and false witness.
So long as it helped suppress their worst desires, he would turn a blind eye in their direction.
Besides, when seeking to cleanse the sins of dozens of lifetimes, these little vices meant nothing.
Once he perfected his methods to render souls completely and utterly clean, all else would fade away.
It was a grand goal, perhaps impossible, but one day the whole world would be afforded the focus and attention of the cold cells, stripped of choice, free of temptation, and given purpose only in confessing their sins to loyal servants like Preacher Glasga.
But if Eder was correct about his guess as to the Tower Majestic’s purpose, such lengthy and drastic methods might not be necessary.
“What brings us to such a… locale?” Madeleine asked.
She despised Underbridge. As she did with most things, she preferred hard lines to define sin and acceptance.
A blurred city of gray in the shadow of the Tower Majestic was a thumb in the eye of that desire.
Eder did not like visiting, either, but for much different reasons.
“A matter has come to my attention that must be dealt with,” Eder said.
At last, they had descended their final ladder to the main road, and walked between towering multilayered stores, homes, whorehouses, and gambling halls.
The air was blotted with smoke, and the sky a solid black surface without hint of stars or moon.
Underbridge was a cave, and what little natural light it possessed came through the windows on the sides.
This was why Eder disliked visiting Underbridge. To be so thoroughly hidden from the stars set his skin to crawling. Instead, the guiding light was a series of oil lampposts unevenly spaced along both sides of the road, so that there were many gaps and deep shadows.
“And what matter is that?” she asked.
Eder smiled at a tubby old man sitting in a rocking chair at the front of a boisterous tavern. Lanterns lit the windows, and within drank a dozen men who would likely climb the ladders come daylight to haul crates and pull carts from Racliffe to the tower.
“Evening, shepherds,” the man said. Madeleine opened her mouth to correct him, then closed it. The old man’s eyes were milky white. That he could see at all was surprising.
“Why do you not drink within?” Eder asked, pausing.
“Too loud in there,” the man said, adjusting the blanket across his body.
“Too young. When they start to singing, I like to be a room away. Takes the edge off.” He sniffed.
“Could you spare a prayer for a believer, shepherd? Sleep has been hard to come by lately. Too many memories that won’t leave me be. ”
Madeleine’s eyes widened. A moment of prayer with the Luminary of the Church of Stars was a highly sought-after blessing, with dignitaries of the many little kingdoms throughout Kaus tithing exorbitant amounts of coin for the privilege.
“Such a request is—”
“No, Madeleine, it is all right,” Eder interrupted.
He stepped onto the porch and placed his hands upon the old man’s wrinkled face.
Milky eyes stared up at him, hazy and unfocused.
Though the stars might be distant and covered, Eder could still feel their presence, just muted, and he called out to them.
Their power would forever be his, radiant and limitless.
It kissed his eyes, and he saw through the old man’s flesh and bone to the soul beyond.
“You’ve seen much change in this one life, haven’t you, Gerald?” Eder said. The old man’s mouth dropped. He’d not revealed his name. Eder put his thumbs over the man’s lips, shushing him.
“No, be silent,” Eder said softly. “Let the song and music fade. There is only us, and your lives. All your lives, Gerald. When you were Langley and Savol and Tarry. You see them, too, don’t you?
You feel the weight of them as you sleep.
You hear the laughter of loved ones you should have long visited in the starlit lands beyond this life. ”
Eder leaned closer.
“But we are denied them. Your soul should never be so heavy, and your memories never so twisted.”
Radiance, visible even to the naked human eye, spun like silver threads from Eder’s fingertips.
It slid in through the man’s eyes, ears, and nostrils, winding its way deep into the hidden soul burning within the organic matter that was his mind.
Eder hissed as the memories struck him, now even stronger than before.
Know your place , he commanded, forcing them away.
He ordered these past lives, putting them in their proper sequencing.
But even as he did, he saw their many sins, affronts to the will of Father.
They were so common and simple, Eder had witnessed them countless times before.
Life after life, stacked one on top of the other, compounding the debt.
The past parted, and Gerald’s most recent life rose to the forefront.
Again, Eder saw the sins. Lies spoken in greed.
A spouse betrayed through infidelity. A friend’s coin purse stolen after an argument.
That same friend, pushed from one of the platforms built along Underbridge’s windows, to fall to the sea.
Eder’s grip on the old man’s face tightened, his wrinkled skin stretching as Eder’s thumbs slid upward.
“How many years has it been?” he asked as the silver threads brightened. “How many nights have you lain awake in bed, remembering Roeb’s screams?”
Gerald pushed the blanket aside, his bony hands shaking wildly.
He couldn’t reach out. Couldn’t stop Eder from imposing his unbreakable will upon him.
Eder clutched that wretched moment in this man’s life and ripped it free like tearing a thread from a ball of yarn.
Gerald screamed, but Eder’s palms were over his mouth, muffling it, while his thumbs pressed into the milky eyeballs, rupturing them with a burst of silver light.
“You will remember,” Eder whispered. “Every slow, agonizing second of your sin shall be your world. Every thought you felt, every fleeting doubt, all your guilt, your anger, the excitement of betrayal, they will burn forever bright in your chest. Your sight, I deny you. Let your murder be all you see.”
Blood and fluid trickled down Eder’s wrists. The silver departed. He pushed the elderly man away, setting his chair to rocking. Gerald gasped, weeping blood, and he held shaking hands in the air before him.
“Roeb,” he murmured. “Roeb, look, over there, just keep looking. If only you’d listened. If you’d let me keep it.” Sobs overcame the words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Eder stepped away. Madeleine stood perfectly still, an offered cloth in hand.
She kept it for when he must send the devouts to the stars.
It was useful now. He took it, cleaned his hands, and gave it back.
All the while, her face remained as perfectly still as a statue’s.
All the while, Gerald wept and cursed his murdered friend’s name.
“Come,” Eder said. “I have spent long enough in this star-hidden cave.”
The rickety sign hanging by a lone screw read NEM’S PLACE , a meager explanation of a store that dealt in curiosities and relics.
Tonics supposedly made of faerie wings, qiyan toenails, dragon entrails, and dryad hair filled his disheveled shelves.
Many were lies, and Eder suspected Nem had hidden stock involving weeds and mushrooms that were illegal under his laws.
He overlooked them, for there were none better at hunting down Etemen artifacts.
“Welcome, welcome,” Nem said when Eder entered, Madeleine trailing just behind. He was a burly man, his hair curly and his muttonchops bushy and gray. He hurried around the counter and then dropped to one knee. “I am blessed as ever to be in your presence, my Luminary.”
“Stand, Nem,” Eder said, in no mood for any theatrics. “You requested a meeting, and so I have come. I pray it is with good reason?”
Nem licked his lips and grinned as he stood.
“The best reason,” he said, and hurried back around the counter. He knelt and pulled up one of the floorboards, revealing a trapdoor. Eder watched, fighting against hope. Nem couldn’t mean…
But then the man pulled out a stone object the size of his two fists and set it on the counter. Eder’s pulse quickened.
“You found another?” he whispered. He’d scoured Racliffe, the Hanging City, and the Tower Majestic when he first took control.
The claim had been a search for heretical material counter to Father.
The truth of it had been a search for artifacts linked to the tower, scattered throughout cities dating back to the tower’s initial collapse countless years ago.
Eder stroked the stone with his fingers, tracing the intricate runes carved upon its surface. All the while, Nem beamed with pride.
“I’ve had feelers for these since forever,” he said. “But this one was in the closet of an old bag who finally passed last week. Her son found it when preparing to move his family in. I take it the same price as always will suffice?”
“Madeleine will send you triple,” Eder said, cradling the hardstone against his chest like a child. “Thank you, Nem. May Father’s gaze shine lovingly upon you.”
“Hopefully not all the time,” Nem said. “A man does like to have his privacy on occasion.”
Eder ignored him while rushing out the door, Madeleine quickly at his heels.
“Luminary?” she asked, having to hurry to match his long strides.
“This is it,” he said breathlessly. “This is the last runestone.” He turned to her, stars glittering in his eyes, and he did not hide their burning radiance, so great was his excitement.
“At last, we can awaken the Tower Majestic.”