***
“What in the gods names do you think you will find there?” shouted Magist from his sling. He had already tried to stand twice, but Eris, Pird, and Sye managed to hold him down in fear of his broken leg. Zook did not flinch at his teacher’s rarely demonstrated anger, but continued to pack away his medicines and a few scraps of food.
“There is one, single, solitary, useless room!” Magist continued, “Scoured from bottom, if not necessarily to its infinite top, by hundreds of scholars, professors, tourists, and tower worshiping megalomaniacs! What is there that is worth risking life and limb for?”
“Please, Magist!” Sye pleaded, trying to calm him down.
“I will not have it!” Magist shouted over him, attempting a third time to stand and foiled a third time by his pupils, “I thought I lost you once, then I thought I lost Pird for sure. I will not bear it thrice! The entire island is falling apart, what looks like solid ground is nothing but a layer of dust over pits of razored rocks and splintered timber. I will not have one of mine storming across it because he thinks the inanimate tower is to blame!”
Now Zook paused and so did Eris. Saranoda? she thought, He thinks it did all of this? In her mind it seemed outrageously absurd, a part of the landscape slaughtering millions.
“Did you not see its glow?” Zook finally asked, turning toward them, “Did you not see its falls turn dry? The blue light that fell from the clouds within that tower and disappeared under...” He suddenly went silent, averting his eyes.
He can't even say its name, Eris realized, he can't bring himself to say Eretia! Oh, Zook, how far has this pushed you?
“Under here?” Zook decided to say, “Beneath us? Into the Lermur sea? And what came from the sea? What could have raised this very land so high and just let it drop? A flux, a great welling of water, bulging around that damned tower and crushing everything before it. You think its coincidence, a quake giving that pretty little spire a good shake? Nothing natural could have done this!”
“So you will go and look down its throat?” Magist retorted, “Offer your head to its maw? By Ignorance, you want me to sit here and explore all the many terrible ends Eretia has lying in wait fore you?”
“This was a place of beginnings,” Zook said, much more softly, “Saranoda made it a place of far too many ends.” With that he shouldered his pack and turned to leave.
“Do not dare turn your back on me!” Magist roared, startling Eris, “I am yet your godfather. Do not make me invoke the promises I made to your mother and father over your birth!”
Zook grew very still, “He would have nothing to do with this.”
“And neither would she,” Magist's voice grew quieter, “Please. Think this through. You are letting your anger make your choices for you. Your fate is not a broken body amongst the shattered stones.”
Zook turned to face him. He still wore a mask of anger, but his eyes showed his sorrow.
“Neither was it for the millions who died here,” he said. It was silent, save for the wind that tore at the meager tent, for a moment before Zook continued.
“I need to see, Magist, I need to at least try. If I don't it will never let me sleep. I need to, for our home’s sake, to see if I can't find out why.”
Magist’s brow slowly lost its angry slope, slowly turning upwards into a sorrowful hill.
“My crutch,” he said under his breath.
“Magist...” Sye began.
“By Idusces I will not throttle anyone! Old men think on their feet, not on their asses!”
Eris resisted the urge to laugh in light of the dire situation, Pird being less successful. Sye reluctantly gave Magist the conveniently crutch shaped piece of timber Pird had found for him earlier. With their help their teacher managed to get to his feet. He paused before the torn flap of cloth that was doing its best to be a door.
“Do not follow me,” he said, “I need to wander.”
“But-” Sye began.
“I know which places are safe. I know which are quiet. Trust me, I know.”
With that, Magist left.
Sye turned to Zook, “Why are you doing this now, of all times?”
Zook's answer was quick and scathing, “And what would you do? Sit here? Wait for someone to pick up the pieces for you?”
“And you would pick at the world until it falls around your ears?”
“Stop it.”
Zook and Sye turned to Eris, who returned their looks with a wavering gaze.
“Can we just...just quit while we're ahead? Please?”
Sye said nothing. Zook looked at her for a moment, then stiffly returned to organizing his vials. Eris watched him, looking at how Zook stood so rigidly, how each move of his hand was so forceful. He was angry; Zook was always angry. Eris closed her eyes and let her mind wander through everything she had just experienced. The loss of Eretia. The loss of the camp. And what was for too long, the loss of Pird.
Nothing came of it. No anger. No hate. It had been so long since she had felt any of those things it was difficult to understand Zook.
For a brief moment, Eris was a child again. Alone in a dark cavern. A monster in the shadows.
Eris opened her eyes, escaping from the past. She felt nothing but sorrow for all the loss. Anger had been left behind all those years ago. Left with the monster in the cave.
Never again, Eris gave the memory a parting thought before locking it back behind its old door.
The minutes slowly ticked past in their silence. After what felt like half an hour, Eris became concerned. Magist had just told them how dangerous the island had become. Pird also began to get restless.
“Well,” said Pird, standing, “I don't know about you but I'm not going to wait for someone to come tell us that Magist fell in a hole-”
The shelter's drapes were suddenly cast aside and Magist limped in. He leaned on his crutch far more than he needed to and he didn't meet the eyes of any of his godchildren.
Taking his place back on his sling, Magist spoke, “I still believe this is rash and foolhardy, galloping off all for the sake of-” Magist stopped himself, shaking his head. He sighed, “But I also believe that you must go and see Saranoda for yourself.”
This took all of them by surprise, but Magist continued before anyone could say anything, “Make your peace with the tower, Zook. I doubt we will ever come to understand what happened here, but if this is what will make you content, so be it. Saranoda will not have any answers for you, only an empty room.”
It took Zook a moment to realize that his wish had just been granted. “Thank you,” he said simply, then turned to leave.
“There is, however, one condition.”
Zook paused. Eris looked to Magist, waiting. She couldn't imagine what Magist had in mind. His face was oddly expressionless, as though he didn't want them to know what he was feeling.
“Sye, Eris, and Pird must go with you.”
Eris felt a stir of relief, Now I don’t have to confront Zook and insist we go with him.
“Why, Magist?” Zook asked.
Magist looked at him levelly, “Even if I did not already know how well you four work together, the wave has demonstrated that there is nothing more this place can do to threaten you while you have each other.”
“My father-” Sye began.
“-Has already been spoken to,” Magist finished, “He is the hole I fell in.” Pird turned red. “And he has agreed. He thinks that you would be the best suited to deliver a message for him.”
“A message?” Sye asked.
“Yes. Apparently a group of survivors have set up around Saranoda. The Mayor wishes that they come here, to better organize them. A tradeship has been spotted off the coast.”
“We're leaving?” Eris asked. It had crossed her mind several times, when Sye had said that they would disappear in the city Mirith's shadow, but she neve
r gave it much thought. She had been born here, raised here. Everything she had ever known, everything that had ever happened to her, happened here. It made sense to leave, but she had never been away from Eretia for very long.
Is this how an apple feels? Eris thought sadly, When it must finally let go of the tree?
Magist slowly nodded, “There's nothing left for you four here. We'll have to find somewhere to start over, someplace to recover from this. Without a proper port it will take a few days for the tradeship to remove its cargo and make room for people. Even then, we should be leaving before our food stores run out.”
“Magist-” began Eris, her voice trailing off. There was so much she wanted to say. Couldn't they stay? Help rebuild? This place used to be paradise, couldn't it be so again? Eris just couldn't find the words to describe these thoughts, for they had to be said together to make any sense. To make as much sense as she felt.
“Go now,” said Magist, “If you do not leave soon you will not reach Saranoda before sun down.”
“But it's only a little more than a few kilometers from here,” said Pird.
Magist looked at him sadly, “I am afraid there are no roads for you to run on, good thief.”
“Oh...” Pird said, his face falling.
“Let's go,” Zook said shortly, hand already opening the tent.
“Wait,” said Magist sharply. They looked at him but he didn't answer immediately. He seemed hesitant, “If you do find...anything, there is something I know that might be useful.” Again he paused, slowly meeting each of their eyes, “Can you name the towers for me?”
Eris shared puzzled looks with her friends. Sye answered, “There's Bandui in the Korlith desert, Krakrenenor in the Bowels, near the city Bakaar, and then there's Saranoda.”
“And what attributes, besides from being enormous, identify them?”
Eris didn't see where this was going. Sye didn't seem to either, “Bandui seems to represent wind, Krakrenenor fire, and Saranoda...” The irony was not lost on Eris, but Sye still finished, “Water.”
Magist nodded, “By what little research has been done on the Second City, our forgotten ancestors would have called those misnomered 'elements' Aero, Pyre, and Aquae. Now, from an archaic point of view, why are the three towers unusual?”
Sye did not answer right away, so Eris picked up the slack, “Everything that was written before the Second City says that people believed that everything was somehow divisible by four. By their count, there should be a fourth tower.”
“One for earth, or Terra. There is a name that appears again and again in my preciously small collection of books from the Second City. 'Tumbar'. I believe this is the fourth tower.”
“I don't think we could have overlooked something like a tower,” said Sye doubtfully.
Magist gave him a knowing smile, “Do not think that because we have circumnavigated the globe that there are not places waiting to be found.”
“Is that what you told the Priests?” Eris asked. For some reason Sye visibly jumped in his seat.
“No,” said Magist, “I would never impart something of such consequence to those baboons in robes. They merely wanted to know the circumference of Saranoda.”
“Why?”
“They were going to do some ritual and needed to know how many of them it would take to make a ring around the tower.” Magist shook his head in amusement, “I do not think there are enough of the fools for such a feat, but I have been wrong before.”