Chapter 45 Eder #2
“Both of which I am certain Sariel cast in a most flattering light,” Eder said, unable to hold back his sarcasm. Something about Aylah’s presence peeled back his prim and proper veneer. He would never be Mitra Gracegiver, not with her. Just Eder.
“Correct,” Aylah said. She gestured to the tower ahead. “But I would hear your truth, Eder, before I cast my judgments. After the shattering, I thought you were done with building empires. What changed?”
He took his dear sister’s hand, she who had suffered so terribly.
“I will tell you,” he said. “But first, we must visit the cold cells.”
The entrance to the Tower Majestic was its busiest and most bustling portion.
If there had been a door of sorts, it had been gone since ancient times, leaving only a staggeringly large rectangular gap in the hardstone.
Into that gap had wedged the jagged protrusion of the broken portion that had fallen and connected the tower to the cliffside where Racliffe was built.
“When was the last time you visited the tower?” Eder asked as he helped her down the gap between the broken portion and the walkway through the grand entrance.
“The shattering,” she answered. “I have never been fond of this place, and came only because I must.”
Enormous storefronts populated either side, major drop-offs for the exchange of goods ever flowing across Bridgetop.
Wooden platforms braced with weights and rope hung over the edges, adding storage and space to an ever-crowded home.
Two new additions flanked the entrance itself, statues chiseled from white marble that towered more than twenty feet tall.
On the left was disheveled and long-haired Helal Gracegiver, and on the right, the cleanly dressed and finely pampered Mitra Gracegiver.
Eder had overseen their construction and used it to add tiny differences, most of them false, between him and his supposed father.
Each day, thousands passed by those statues and had their memories of Helal shifted and warped to match Eder’s construction.
Aylah paused near the foot of Mitra’s and stared up at the marble.
“Your smile,” she said. “It’s false.”
He shrugged. “Are you surprised? It is only with my siblings that I am my true self.”
They walked the winding steps downward, circling the tower, passing in and out of giant swaths of daylight shining through the tower’s windows.
After three steps down, they boarded one of the lifts, with soldiers ordering the other passengers to depart so that Eder and Aylah could ride alone.
They traveled ever farther downward, until arriving at the soldiers’ camp stationed just above the final step.
Once through, they arrived at Glasga’s cabin, where the preacher was deeply involved in his work. Eder guided his sister into the room so she might watch. Witnessing this was important to understanding his goals.
A naked man sat on a pillow before the preacher, his legs crossed and his left arm extended.
His other held a small bowl filled with sliced mushrooms. Between them was a small table cluttered with metal instruments.
Most were for cutting, but not all. Some were sharp and akin to a pen, and Glasga dipped one into a shallow inkwell, coating it with dye, before pressing it to the naked man’s flesh.
“But why did you lie?” Glasga asked as he pricked away at the skin. He shot a glance at Eder and Aylah but did not stop his work. “Think hard.”
The man swallowed as if his tongue was too large. His eyelids drooped, his eyes heavily bloodshot.
“I was scared,” he said.
Tap-tap-tap.
“Scared of what?”
“Being caught. Being punished. And so I…” He paused. Swallowed. Began to cry. “I told the lawmen it was Jeffry. I said Jeffry did it to me, did it when I didn’t want it. That’s why I was with child.”
Tap-tap-tap. The image was forming now, well detailed and intricately tattooed upon his arm. Glasga could have been an artist, if he so wished. Perhaps he still viewed himself as one. A pregnant woman, crying and pointing. A faceless crowd. In the distance, a noose.
“Your lies killed a man,” Glasga said, tapping faster now, his pen flashing back and forth between skin and dye. “Do you understand that, Sven?”
“I do,” the naked man said. Despite his tears, his voice was weirdly light, as if he were lost in a dream. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Glasga set aside the pen, and he reached behind him for the leather handle of a whip with seven individually knotted threads. He glanced at Eder, then pointedly glared at Aylah.
“Go on,” Eder said. “She is here to learn.”
Glasga shrugged, and as Sven cried, the preacher walked behind him and readied the whip.
“What is your sin?” he asked.
“I am a liar.”
A crack, and the whip lashed his naked back, leaving bleeding welts.
“What is your sin?”
“I am a liar.”
Another crack. More blood.
“What is the cost of your sin?”
“I murdered a man!”
A third crack. Glasga paused, grabbed a cloth from his pocket, and dabbed away the blood, inspecting each and every wound. When satisfied, he put aside the cloth and readied the whip.
“Again.”
Eder guided Aylah out, and then shut the door to muffle the sounds of pained screams.
“I don’t understand,” Aylah asked. “What did I just witness?”
“Have you encountered blackwall mushrooms before?” he asked.
When Aylah shook her head in the negative, he continued.
“They grow at the borders of fey lands to serve as warnings. Their intent is to leave a man or woman confused and disordered if they disturb them. Most intriguing is how they do so. They take the soul and confuse it with the memories of its past lives. Problematic, if done unprepared, but with Glasga’s help?
We can find the sins of not just a person’s current life but all their lives, going back dozens of histories. ”
“And then purify them,” Aylah said, finishing for him.
“As best as we can with our methods,” Eder admitted.
His sister shivered at a particularly harsh scream.
“But why?” she asked.
He beckoned her to follow. “You will see.”
He took her to the very edge of the last step, where the ropes hung over the edge. There were eleven occupied currently, the cold cells swaying above the distant ocean. Eder gestured toward them and waited for Aylah to realize people were inside.
“How?” she asked, suddenly recoiling from the edge. “After what Sariel…”
“Because it is here that I heard Father’s voice,” he interrupted, peering over the edge to the darkness that hid the ocean. “It is here I felt the thin walls of our world for the very first time.”
Aylah was the noblest of the siblings, the one most proud of her resolve and self-control. It was… unsettling to watch her appear so disturbed.
“I thought your speeches of Father were falsehoods,” she said. “A way to unite a populace under your rule, with the goddess as a useful foe.”
“The goddess must be eradicated if humanity is to be saved,” Eder said, shaking his head.
“Her doctrine of rebirth and easy forgiveness is a seductive harm. She is false, and her teachings a cancer to be excised from Kaus. The comfort she gives will only lead to our destruction. Father is our true creator, and it is he that we must abide.”
Aylah rejoined him at the edge, careful with her balance.
“I have a hard time believing this, Eder, but I have never known you to lie. If you heard the voice of this… Father, what is it he told you? What wisdom did he impart?”
Eder took in a deep breath, letting the memory fill him. He had been in the space between lives, normally black and dreamless, while waiting for his body to recover. But not that time. That one unforgettable moment, the darkness had lifted like a veil.
“No wisdom,” he said. “No commands. Just a question, Aylah. One question, and a lifetime of interpretation to follow.”
He closed his eyes and spoke with the exact same tone as he had heard all those years ago. The same confusion. The same desperation.
“Where are you?”
The words shocked her silent.
“I have spent many sleepless nights pondering the many implications,” he continued.
“To be so profoundly lost? At first, it horrified me. I wanted to deny them and cast them aside as delusions or madness. But they never left me, Aylah. They never faded. With each passing year, they grew more true, and so I was forced to reckon with their potential meaning.”
He gestured toward Glasga’s little cabin and the purification happening within.
“We are lost to our maker. This cycle that humanity endures, it was never meant to be. Life after life, piling on top of one another, until threatening to break under the weight. No salvation, just another lifetime of failure and weakness. Sins are left to fester like rotting meat. It cannot go on.”
He stood, and prayed his sincerity, and his wisdom, would be enough to convince his sister.
“We must be found. We must make ourselves known to Father, and in death, go to his arms instead of yet one more interminable life. That is my hope. That is my salvation, for which I have built this entire church. These cold cells are but the beginning. When they are stripped of sins and made weightless and pure, I vault their souls into the heavens. They are flares, sharp and piercing, and I send them screaming out to Father. See us! Hear us! But the few I prepare each month are not enough. We need more, ever more, perhaps more than are alive on Kaus, to create a light so blinding Father can see us through the veil that somehow hides our presence from him. But I am not alone in this dream. This hope was shared by the Etemen when they built this tower, and with its aid, I believe I can send forth a light so brilliant it will penetrate any darkness and a call so thunderous it will be heard through any void.”
Aylah stared over the edge, watching the cold cells sway. What he would give to know her thoughts.
“Show me,” she said, breaking the silence.
Upon reaching the Final Ascent, Eder revealed his prized work, the intricately placed runestones, and the key resting in the pedestal of hands. He walked through their maze of loops and curves while Aylah lingered by the lift.
“We are not the only ones adrift,” he said, approaching the key. “The Etemen, I believe, were also separate from Father, but unlike humanity, they were aware of the chasm. They built this tower with the goal of piercing the heavens and crying out their presence.”
Aylah knelt by one of the runes, tracing its faint circles and spirals with her fingers.
“Did they ever succeed?”
He shook his head. “Doubtful. Not knowing the great cost that must be paid.”
“And what is that?”
Eder pointed to the pedestal.
“For the grand machinery to activate, it requires blood blessed with radiance. Our blood, Aylah. Enough to kill us, and grant us a permanent death.”
“Permanent…”
Frustration overwhelmed him, and he lifted his fists and bared his teeth like an animal.
“And so here I stand, at the edge of greatness, and I cannot take the final step. I am too weak. Too sentimental. The grandest of causes, and yet…” He lowered his fists and sighed.
“And yet I cannot pay that cost. We are so few, this family of ours, and no matter our disagreements, no matter our faults, I will not dare lose a single one of you. You are each too precious to me. And so I do what I can, cleansing souls within the cold cells, purifying all their past lives, and then sending them to the heavens like a flare in the night, screaming for Father to notice us, wherever he may be.”
He startled. Aylah was at his side, her hand clutching his arm. Again, he failed to read the look on her face. It was so serious, so… thoughtful.
“Humanity is wretched,” she said. “They are broken and adrift. Left as they are, they are beyond redemption. Do you truly believe that?”
He pressed his hand over hers.
“After what you suffered,” he asked, “don’t you?”
She leaned against him, and he accepted her weight, opening his arms to embrace his beloved sister. She nuzzled his chest as he held her close. She shivered in his grasp, and when she spoke, her voice was a whisper.
“Eder… it need not be us. There is another.”