He felt a stunned silence from her. Then .
Immediately, StarMan. I understand.
Thank you, StarHeaven. Please let me know immediately you have spoken to Georgdi. And please impress on him the —
I understand, StarMan.
Axis shut up. He wanted to shout at StarHeaven all the way along the corridors of Elcho Falling into Georgdi’s quarters, but he literally bit his tongue and kept his mind quiet.
Maximilian stopped suddenly, then turned to the campfire. “It will soon be time,” he said.
Ishbel and the two Emerald Guardsmen rose.
“Do you have the tools?” Serge said. Last night he and Doyle had taken two sturdy knives and fashioned them into digging tools.
Who knew how tough that simple stepping stone would be to raise.
“Yes,” Maximilian said. He looked at Ishbel and she came over to him.
“Ishbel .”
“What is it?”
Maximilian hesitated. “I don’t know what might happen. I don’t know what might go wrong.”
“Maxel —”
“Listen to me a moment, Ishbel. Ifit goes badly wrong either you or I, or both of us, are going to have to untether ourselves from the Twisted Tower.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“The Persimius kings and princes,” Maximilian said, “kept open the pathways to the Twisted Tower so that, should they ever need the knowledge, there it sat. Every young prince learned the pathways to the Twisted Tower. I had to teach you. Remember?”
She nodded.
“For thousands of years,” Maximilian continued, “in a direct unbroken line, all the princes and kings of the Persimius name kept open the pathway. Each of them travelled there and back. Each kept the mental skills needed to reach the Twisted Tower. That is the real connection. At the moment, Ishbel, you and I are the only two remaining alive who have the skills needed to reach the Twisted Tower and that is enough to keep the Twisted Tower tethered to this world. It is needed, it is used. Our minds, Ishbel, are the machinery that connect the Twisted Tower to this world.”
“I still don’t understand what you are trying to tell me.”
“If we forget those skills, Ishbel, if we lose them, then there is no connection left between this world and the Twisted Tower. It will simply drift off, perhaps even evaporate completely, I don’t know, but there will no longer be any connection between this world and it. We are the bridge, Ishbel.”
He took a deep breath. “Losing the Twisted Tower and all its knowledge is the last thing I want to do. I would prefer that I disconnect the pathway so that, if needed at a later date, I can put the stone back and reconnect ourselves to the tower. But if I cannot do what I intend this day, then we may have to untether our minds from the tower. If I fail, and the One takes me, then you will have to do it. Untether the Twisted Tower from this world.”
“And lose you with it?” Ishbel said.
“If need be, yes. Ishbel, we have to be prepared for this.”
She gave an unhappy nod. “How do we do lose the skill?”
“It is actually fairly simple. You remember how I put my hands about your head? How I cradled it?”
“It felt as if your fingers dug into my mind, shifting it slightly, twisting it.”
“And thus we can ‘untwist’ our minds. It is easier if we do it simultaneously, if we take each other’s heads in our hands and twist away the other’s mind, but we can also do it to ourselves. Ishbel, if I am trapped, will you do this?”
“I would prefer it if you came back.”
That raised a slight smile from Maximilian. “I would prefer it, too. I would prefer it if we do not lose the Twisted Tower completely. But . . . if what I try does not succeed . . . ”
She nodded. “Come back, Maxel.”
He kissed her. “Be prepared. Do what you need to.”
They held each other a moment, then Maximilian moved away.
“Bloody Axis,” Georgdi grumbled, hauling himself out of his bed.
“It is urgent,” StarHeaven said, watching restlessly as Georgdi fumbled with his breeches and boots.
“I don’t see why he couldn’t have waited until —”
“Do it now, Georgdi,” StarHeaven said, and something in her tone made Georgdi pause and look at her with sudden understanding in his eyes.
“Very well,” Georgdi said, rising and grabbing a shirt and jerkin as he walked over to the window. He slipped his arms into the shirt, pulled it over his head, then called for Josia as he slid the jerkin on.
“Josia? Josia? There is a matter of urgency. May I speak with you?”
Maximilian hovered at the very edge of the Twisted Tower’s strange immaterial world for as long as he dared, then stepped forth to the beginning of the path.
He stood there, not daring to breathe, certain that the One would any moment fling open the door and destroy him . . . then he looked upward.
It was a long, long way to the top of the tower, but he could see a tiny figure there, balanced easily on the windowsill, one leg swinging in the air.
Maximilian felt a rush of gratitude for everyone who had come through for him at this moment, then he bent down to the ground, drawing the digging tools from his belt.
“Path, I break thee,” he murmured, then jemmied one of the tools under the thick stone of the first step.
“Axis would like to know how the Lealfast and Isembaardians are disposed,” Georgdi said.
“Now?” Josia said.
Georgdi spread his hands in a gesture of innocent helplessness. “Who can know the ways of the StarMan,” he said. “I’m sorry to raise you at such an unearthly hour, Josia . . . or do you not sleep at all? I’ve often wondered how you —”
Josia made a noise of irritation. “The Lealfast are arrayed as they were last night when Axis had his damned eagle out flying. The Isembaardians the same. I don’t know why Axis has to ask me. Now,”
“Maybe he doesn’t trust the eagle,” Georgdi said and, as the words fell from his mouth, he had an extraordinary revelation.
Axis didn’t trust Josia,
And as he thought so, Josia caught his thought, and everything changed.
The stone was thick and settled firmly into the soil by thousands of years of the booted feet of the Lords of Elcho Falling passing over it.
Maximilian dug around it frantically, earth flying everywhere, scratching and grazing his fingers. Every now and then he’d glance upward, his heart racing.
And then he would bend to his work, beads of sweat on his forehead, and he cursed the damned, damned stone.
“Maximilian!“ Josia hissed, and Georgdi took several paces backward as Josia suddenly turned into something dark and loathsome.
Georgdi heard StarHeaven cry out and scramble for the door and Georgdi took a moment to hate her for being closer to the door than he.
By all the gods in heaven, what was it that now writhed in the window?
“Go!” Georgdi managed to wrench from his fear-tightened throat, and he wasn’t sure if he meant it for the thing in the Twisted Tower’s window, or for himself, or for StarHeaven.
All three he decided.
“I am going to kill you,” the malevolent mass in the window said, and Georgdi hoped he meant it for someone other than himself.
Maximilian knew the instant the One realised. It hit as if all the force of one of these cursed stepping stones was thrown from the window of the Twisted Tower and he cried out in horror.
His fingers scrabbled frantically, but the stone still wouldn’t move, it still wouldn’t move, the cursed bloody thing still wouldn’t move .
The One flew down the stairwell of the Twisted Tower. He had morphed into a mass that was not human or animal or anything even remotely recognisable as one of the creatures of this world. He was sheer anger and hatred and fear, pure emotion and power, a whirlwind of Infinity gathering to himself ever more dark energy and force as he rounded each bend in the stairwell.
&nb
sp; When he reached the bottom of this tower and opened that door, nothing was going to save Maximilian.
Not this time.
Maximilian could sense the One flying down the stairwell, feel him coming closer and closer with every heartbeat.
“ Move, you sod!” he hissed at the stone, thinking that if he couldn’t get it in the next moment or so he would give up and flee.
But he’d never have another chance. The One wouldn’t allow him near the Twisted Tower again.
Now he could hear the One roaring, screaming out what he intended to do to Maximilian once he flung open that door . . . and the stone moved under Maximilian’s fingers. He thought for an instant that his fingers, now wet with sweat, had slipped on the stone, but, no, it had moved.
He scrabbled even more frantically, trying to get his fingers under the stone, and then, suddenly, appallingly, the One flung open the door of the Twisted Tower and rage and power seethed down the path toward Maximilian.
Chapter 7
Isembaard
Ishbel had been pacing back and forth just beyond the warmth of the fire, her eyes constantly on Maximilian’s form where it reclined to one side.
Serge and Doyle sat by the fire, their eyes tracking Ishbel.
“Ishbel —” Serge began, unable to bear the tension any longer, when Maximilian twitched, his eyes flew open and he rolled to one side before scrabbling to his feet.
“Ishbel!” he cried. “We have to —”
She knew, instantly. Before Maximilian had finished speaking, she was with him, grabbing his head in her hands.
“We have to —” he began again, taking her head in his hands.
“I know,” she muttered. “Do it now, Maxel!”
Serge and Doyle had sprung to their feet. They didn’t know the specifics of what was happening, but they reacted instinctively to Maximilian’s obvious fear and urgency by unsheathing their swords.
“Shetzah!” Doyle cried, turning in a tight circle.
They had walked far from that ring of disintegrating bodies around Hairekeep, but now, as Serge and Doyle watched in horror, those dismembered bits of bodies — in a state of ghastly putrefaction — began bursting from the earth all about them. The body parts writhed on the surface of the ground for several heartbeats then, to the guardsmen’s horror, the bodies began to reassemble themselves.
Already the lower half of a man’s torso was staggering toward Maximilian’s camp, its arms, shoulders and chest scrabbling furiously after it before they caught up and the arms began hauling the chest and shoulders up their companion legs.
Behind it, thousands of bodies were, in fits and starts, sorting themselves out for an attack on Maximilian.
A black mist rose over the entire field of the reassembling dead.
The One’s power.
Doyle glanced at Ishbel and Maximilian.
They were standing close, holding each other’s heads in their hands and apparently unaware of the rising death about them.
Eleanon was sitting on a stool in the middle of the Lealfast camp, shaving his chin, when he felt the influence and power of the One surge into the land.
His hand halted, then dropped the razor as Eleanon rose, looking frantically about.
By the stars, what was happening! Was he under attack from the One?
All he could feel was death rising in a great tidal surge about him.
Eleanon began to panic.
They took a long moment to reorientate and concentrate, to shut out what was happening about them, to forget, as much as they were able, the sense that the One’s power roared toward them.
They had to forget, somehow, that they were within moments of death and concentrate only on each other.
“Do you feel?” Maximilian murmured.
“Yes,” Ishbel whispered, and then they slid fingers of power into each other’s mind, and gently twisted.
“I don’t like these odds,” Serge muttered, standing shoulder to shoulder with Doyle, facing the advancing horde of half-reconstituted bodies lurching toward them. They were within fifteen or sixteen paces and both men could hear the peculiar squelchy sound of the bodies’ movements.
Very few of them had found their heads.
“You don’t say,” Doyle said, squaring his legs as he adjusted his balance.
To one side, the rat scrambled over to where Ishbel had left the Book of the Soulenai, and tucked its front paws inside the front cover of the book.
The first of the bodies reached the campsite, and Serge and Doyle stepped forward, fighting with the skills of former assassins and current Emerald Guardsmen.
Their swords flashed in the firelight, slicing through bodies on both forward and backward swings.
Bodies, dismembered, fell to the ground and began once more to reassemble themselves, their movements frantic.
More and more of the dead lurched into the camp, and Serge and Doyle began to sweat, then, horrifically, Doyle slipped in a pool of rotten blood and fell over, one shoulder and arm slamming into the fire and sending up a shower of sparks and flames.
Now, Maximilian said, and something simultaneously clicked in both of their minds.
Emptiness, where once had rested the knowledge to walk the paths to the Twisted Tower.
For the first time in thousands of years, there was no Persimius left alive who could remember the pathways to the Twisted Tower.
For the first time in thousands of years, there was no connection left between the Twisted Tower and this world.
All the bodies shambling toward the camp suddenly stopped, then fell apart.
Serge stared for one single heartbeat, then he spun around and helped Doyle roll away from the fire, and to beat back the flames that licked at his jerkin.
No! the One screamed as he realised what had just happened, what they had done. He still stood at the open doorway of the Twisted Tower, staring down the path.
But now, instead of looking at Maximilian and Ishbel’s camp, he looked into a featureless void.
No.
Untethered, the Twisted Tower gently spun away into eternity.
Eleanon had just been about to scream for the Lealfast to rise into the air and to escape, escape the One’s wrath, when he froze on the spot, his mind trying to grasp what had just happened. First, the One’s full power surging into this world from the Twisted Tower, raging at . . . someone.
Then, nothing. It stopped, like a gushing faucet dammed in an instant.
There was no sense of the One.
Eleanon’s mouth opened, then closed, his mind churning. How . . . what . . . had Maximilian somehow cut off the Twisted Tower? It was the only thing that made sense.
Eleanon stood there, all his senses scrying.
The One was gone.
Truly gone. Not relocated, not dismembered, not hiding.
Gone.
Completely.
But . . . and again his senses scried forth . . . Eleanon’s ability to touch Infinity had not been affected. It still throbbed through him, nowhere near the same power as that the One had commanded, but still there.
Coming through the Dark Spire.
There was no one to stop him now.
Exultation filled Eleanon, and he sprang into the air. He went up and up and up, high into the sky, almost vertically, his powerful wings driving him upward at an extraordinary speed.
Then, when he was a mere speck in the sky, Eleanon flipped over and plunged for the earth, wings left limp to stream behind him, rippling in the force of the downward plunge, feathers ripping out now and again, leaving a haze of soft white to drift down in the wake of his crazy plunge.
He pulled himself up just before he hit the ground, landing breathless before the Lealfast elder, Falayal.
“The One is gone!” Eleanon hissed, his face jubilant. “Nothing stands in our way now!”
Falayal gaped, trying to find something to say.
“But I can still feel the power of Infinity,” he said finally.
&nbs
p; “It is still here. We can still touch Infinity through the Dark Spire. Maximilian must have cut the One off. Ha! The Lord of Elcho Falling may have thought to have done himself a favour, but he has done us an even bigger act of kindness! The pathways to the power of Infinity remain open, yet the One himself has been isolated. Nothing can prevent us taking what we want now, Falayal.”
Falayal looked at Eleanon, then finally, slowly, he smiled.
Maximilian and Ishbel let go of each other’s heads, then fell into a tight embrace.
“Thank the gods,” Ishbel murmured, hugging her husband to her as hard as she dared.
He laughed, kissing her forehead and cheek and mouth. “What can stop us now?” he said. “It is home to Elcho Falling for you and me, my darling.”
To one side, Doyle — his garments a little singed — and Serge sheathed their swords, grinning at the couple. Then Doyle looked to the left of Maximilian and Ishbel, and frowned.
“The rat and the Book of the Soulenai have vanished,” he said.
The One could not believe it. He was utterly stunned in disbelief.
Tricked.
By something so simple a child should have thought of it.
He stood at the open doorway of the Twisted Tower, one hand resting on the doorframe, staring down what had once been a path but which was now black, empty nothingness. All the One’s rage had gone. Emptiness had replaced that, too.
Think. He had to think.
Maximilian and Ishbel had cut the ties from their world to the Twisted Tower. They had destroyed their knowledge of how to tread the path between their world and this tower, and thus cast it adrift.
Where was he? Where was he?
Anxiety now replacing his initial disbelief, the One looked about, sensing empty wilderness. Had his connection to Maximilian’s world been lost, too?
Nothing . . . there was nothing?
Now the One had to fight down panic. Surely there must be something . . . some connection remaining?
Nothing. He could sense nothing.
Suddenly the One moved. He took a single step back inside the Twisted Tower, slammed shut the door, and with huge, hungry strides raced up the stairs toward the top chamber.