Chapter 33 Eder
EDER
E der ascended one of the lifts to the top of the Tower Majestic. Madeleine did not accompany him. The apex of what remained of the tower was for Eder and Eder alone.
“Luminary!” the nearby liftmaster said when Eder arrived at what was known as the rafters.
The dozens of liftmasters cranking the levers and turning the sand hourglasses cried out his name.
Those who could dropped to their knees, while those who couldn’t bowed their heads in respect.
The night was dark, and so they were illuminated in the glow of dozens of lanterns stationed equidistant throughout the floor.
“At ease, my friends,” Eder said, smiling at them.
They were strong men, bare-chested despite the cold wind that blew through the tower at all times.
This floor was not a true hardstone floor, but one constructed over decades, hundreds of crisscrossed wooden beams and a veritable jungle of ropes to suspend an octagonal platform.
All across it were gaps for ropes and chains, along with cranks to turn the many pulleys and gears for the tower’s lifts.
They were true machinery allowing civilization to blossom within the ancient structure, tucked away and unseen.
If not for them, traveling across the many floors would take dramatically longer, and the transporting of goods be near impossible.
The boards groaned beneath Eder as he walked a center path, gently touching the foreheads of liftmasters who approached him for a blessing.
Ever since occupying the Tower Majestic, he had made sure the liftmasters were treated with the utmost respect.
If he was to keep his secrets, he needed them to be loyal.
“Going to the Final Ascent?” one asked when Eder approached. He stood before three different pulleys, each one with an hourglass timer marking when to begin its ascent or descent. At this lift, unlike the others, two armed soldiers stood guard with him, silent and serious.
“I am.”
Behind the soldiers was a roped-off platform. Unlike the few platforms that led all the way up to the rafters, this was the only one that progressed even higher, to the true top of the broken tower. Eder stepped onto the platform, turned about, and then addressed the soldiers.
“I shall signal when I am finished,” he said as his platform began to ascend.
It was not far, twenty feet or so, to reach the final stretch of hardstone that jutted out from the tower walls. This was the Final Ascent, space reserved for Eder’s eyes alone.
The platform halted just shy of the hardstone, hovering over the deep pit that ran through the Tower Majestic’s center. Eder stepped off onto the small platform. High above, the tower ended, granting a beautiful display of the stars. Eder stared up at them, compelled to whisper.
“What secrets do you hide behind your lustrous curtain?”
Shaking his head, he turned his attention to the relics of the Etemen.
This collection was his pride and joy, salvaged from both the Hanging City and the tower itself.
In one corner, a bookshelf contained what writing remained of the Etemen people.
Much of it was nonsensical, but it was within those tomes that Eder had discovered the runes he used to send the souls of the devouts to the heavens.
That knowledge was just the beginning of his great work.
Dominating the center of the Final Ascent were the runestones of the Etemen.
They varied in height, somewhere between one and two feet tall, and were composed solely of unbreakable hardstone.
They curled and looped into one another, pale gray, bearing markings that should have been impossible.
No iron or steel chisel could even dent hardstone, and yet these runestones were covered in great swaths of intricate swirls and markings.
The stones spiraled inward, wide at first, rarely connecting, but then growing taller and more tightly intertwined as they curled inward.
To walk among them was dizzying. To see the starlight reflected off them set Eder’s nerves on edge.
This was a thing that should not be, and yet he craved knowledge of it above all else.
The lines of silver he drew for the devouts were but a pitiful facsimile of their grandeur.
Eder walked to the center, where the only other structure remained.
It was an elevated pedestal roughly Eder’s size.
The sides were sculpted to look like a multitude of hands rising.
Six-fingered, as Eder assumed the Etemen to have possessed.
Those hands reached and reached, the fingers and palms coming together to form a basin at the very top.
An empty basin. His ultimate mockery, this altar of hands.
Even when Eder placed the final runestone obtained from Nem, the runes never came to life. The magic of the Final Ascent remained dormant. Whatever they needed, it was missing from that pedestal.
Eder paused before it, letting the sight of those hands burn into his mind.
He had searched, oh, how he had searched.
Soldiers had torn apart both Underbridge and Bridgetop alike.
Every floor of the Tower Majestic was swept clean.
Nothing. Despite slowly piecing the runestones together over decades, linking the heavy stones into their proper place on the floor, he had failed to find the key that brought it to life.
“To come so close,” he said, resting his hand upon the basin. “Did the sea swallow the key? Will the water lock away its secrets, denying me, as my brothers come marching to destroy all I have built?”
A voice startled him from behind.
“But what is it you have built, Eder?”
Eder slowly turned. He recognized that voice…
“Calluna?”
His little sister squatted beside the bookshelf, her shoulders hunched, her arms crossed behind her, and her head tilted so her hair hid much of her face. When he called her name, she glanced up at him, her dark eyes burning into his. Tears filled them.
“Hello, Eder.”
Eder rushed across the space, careful not to trip over the runestones, and then knelt before her. He spread his arms, and she eagerly fell into them, her small self cuddling against his chest. He wrapped her in an embrace, her face pressed to his chest, and his lips upon the top of her head.
“Dearest Calluna,” he whispered as he held her. “Where have you been?”
“With Faron,” she said, her voice soft and trembling. “And Sariel.”
Eder was glad she could not see his frustration.
He knew well their plans. There was no preventing the stories of the Bastard Queen from crossing the Sapphire Mountains and reaching the ears of those living in Racliffe.
Upon conquering the Blue Rivers Alliance and winning over the Council of Worship, she had declared Doremy Leliel’s Protectorate.
All churches dedicated to Father were destroyed, and the faithful ordered to repent or be banished forever.
Multiple little kingdoms had pledged allegiance, and many others had been quickly conquered and added to the protectorate.
There was no hiding Isabelle’s aims any longer. She was coming for the Tower Majestic.
And pulling her strings were his two brothers.
Isabelle was their dutiful puppet, building the army they themselves could not.
Two-thirds of the west was united under the protectorate’s banner, with only King Silvein and his allies still holding out in the more isolated, mountainous regions known as the Crowning.
It was only a matter of time until they, too, folded against the growing crusade.
“How fare my brothers?” he asked, working to keep his tone light. Best to pretend he knew none of that with Calluna.
“They’re mad at me, Eder,” she said, sniffling. “They’re mad I tried to kill Isabelle and stop this stupid war.”
Eder stroked her hair.
“Precious one, killing her would stop nothing. They will have this war. Even if you had succeeded, they would have found another puppet to put in Isabelle’s place.”
Calluna leaned away from him. Her tears were dried, her weakness now safely hidden.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I never have. You knew they would protest, and yet you built this kingdom anyway. You spread your faith. You claimed the tower. Why, Eder? What is worth so much animosity between us?”
Eder gestured to the runes.
“Wisdom, my sister. The only true pursuit. The skies are false. I know it. I feel it in my bones. With the Etemen runes, I can finally pierce them and shout out my protest to Father.” He sighed. “If only I could find the final key.”
Calluna slowly separated herself from him, and when she stood, she wiped a bit of dust from her dress. Her voice hardened, as did her expression. Growing duller. Colder.
“What if I gave you the key?”
Eder’s breath caught in his throat.
“Do not tease me, Calluna,” he said, once capable of responding.
His sister crossed her arms and stared at the spiraling runes.
“Follow me,” she said. “And I will show you.”
They rode lift after lift, steadily descending each and every time. Calluna refused to explain where they were going until there was but one location left: the final step leading to the small military encampment, and beyond it, the cold cells.
Eder escorted Calluna through the camp, his presence ensuring soldiers said not a word about the strange woman’s arrival.
When descending the final steps, he expected Glasga to be awake, but it seemed the hour was so late even he had ceased questioning his devouts and gone to bed.
There were eight hanging from the ropes, purifying their souls for the next full moon.
Calluna stopped at the very edge. She saw the ropes of the cold cells, frowned, and then peered over into the dark.
“People are alive in there?” she asked, seeing the wrapped canvases swaying. She turned, her glare accusatory. “How could you? After what Sariel—”
Eder felt those memories claw at his mind, threatening to return. He pushed them away.