A thunderous explosion split the night, making the tiles beneath my feet tremble. Flashes of light reflected from the pale stone of the columns and walls. At first I thought these but a violent escalation of the storm. But the guards pointed off to the south, and I peered around the column back toward the lower city. There, where the ramparts of Avonar had held fast against the Lords for a thousand years, the sky had burst into shimmering blue-and-white flame. The wall defenses had been triggered.
"What are you doing, Gerick?" I mumbled, aghast. I had never expected him to go this far with his deception. "Give me some time."
The alarm pierced the rumbling thunder in gut-twisting suddenness and spread like fire in a haymow.
Trumpets blared from the palace walls. Bells rang from the palace towers; soon echoing from clock towers and watchtowers, from great houses and schools. Atop the wall towers that rose behind the opposite colonnade, fonts of scarlet flame burst into life—balefires. Soon they would burn on every tower and wall throughout Avonar and the Vales as they had not since victory quenched them five years ago.
I had not witnessed that signal of Prince D'Natheil's victory over the Lords, but I well remembered the day— the day the thunderous bellows of the Lords had sent their slaves and servants cowering into cracks and corners lest our bodies be flayed by their anger, the day the brittle towers of Zhev'Na cracked and shattered over our heads, the day grown men had wept and women danced as we slowly emerged from the rubble and realized we were free. And now the balefires were lit again. The scar on my neck burned as if ignited by the warning.
The right-side riders' gate burst open and a troop of horsemen rode out at a gallop, racing across the deserted parks and streets of the central city. At their head, astride her gray stallion, rode the Princess of Avonar, clad in silver ring mail, her yellow hair flying. She raised her sword, and it blossomed with blue flame, causing her band of riders to burst out in a cry of joy and defiance. Two bands of infantry followed them out of the gate, marching double time.
I sped through the colonnade, sacrificing stealth for speed, hoping to slip through the gates before they were closed. But I was too slow and too late. The portcullis had dropped, and the iron-banded gates slammed shut before I reached the last column. Guards held pikes and lances at the ready; whatever lethargy had settled over them on a cool rainy evening had been well banished. I sagged against the smooth, damp column, banging the back of my head against the unyielding stone. What now?
The tower I'd envisioned in the warehouse cellar was not one of the great defensive works of the Heir's citadel, which stood as lumbering giants about the palace perimeter. This one was as slender as a spindle and had a slightly bulbous top with a steep-pitched conical roof of slate. The gray conical roof indicated the tower was part of the original structure of the palace in the northeast corner, and the unusual shape should be easy to spot.
As I retraced my steps down the colonnade and took a shortcut through the sheltered gardens behind it, Avonar rose to war. Peering down Mount Eidol between the Mentors' Library and the Hall of Music, I glimpsed the lights of the lower city flaring bright, and at every succeeding opening I saw lanes alive with boys collecting horses, with armed men and women loading wagons with water barrels and bags of sand, with running messengers, identified by their bright blue handlights.
How many defenders remained in the city? How many of D'Sanya's Restored held positions on the walls? How many of those had met with Gerick in the riverside warehouse preparing to betray us?
I ran.
Chapter 35
Once I rounded the southeast tower of the palace walls, I threaded my way through narrow lanes of fine shops, shuttered and deserted on this night, and across the slopes of the grassy apron that skirted the walls. The palace was built on the south-facing slopes of Mount Eidol, and the higher I climbed, the less uniform the walls, some sections built of the rose-colored, clean-dressed stone of recent centuries, some sections the age-mottled gray blocks of D'Arnath's time.
When I reached the northeast corner of the citadel, I was surprised to discover that the newer wall cut straight through this ancient quarter of the palace. The steepness of the apron slopes in this area had prevented the Builders from enclosing the entirety of the original structure with the thick new wall. Those parts left outside the wall had fallen into ruin. And among the collapsed walls and crumbling foundation stones stood the spindly tower like a bony finger with a swollen tip, pointing at the sky.
Though a scarlet balefire burned on the great wall, and palace guardsmen would certainly be patrolling the wall and the hulking northeast tower, the object of my search displayed no lights and no guards. This tower would have existed when D'Sanya was a child, far more imposing before the taller towers were built. Perhaps the tallest of its time. And certainly no potential rescuer would ever look for the dethroned Prince of Avonar in such a place, outside the palace enclosure. Everyone would assume he was confined in the prison block in the bowels of the palace itself.
Excited, I crept up the steep apron through a wet, grassy gully, staying low, avoiding any sound that might attract attention from the walls. Once atop the long hill, I caught my breath, then slipped from one ruined structure to another until I pressed my back to the side of the spindle tower that faced away from the palace. Raindrops dribbled down my nose and cheeks, and had long ago soaked through the back of Mae'Tila's cloak.
Though my feet were planted firmly on the ground, a glance upward left me a bit dizzy. The smooth, regular facing stones that had once sheathed the tower's exterior had long fallen away, leaving a mottled outer skin. Numerous stones protruded from this exterior like warts on a finger. Far above, the ruddy glow of balefires outlined the slight bulge of the top. I eased slowly around the base of the tower, marveling at its compact dimension and imagining the steepness of the stair cramped inside it. When I reached my starting point again without encountering a door, I was disconcerted.
I circumnavigated the tower base again, eyes upward this time, assuming that the doorway must be just above my head, its entry steps just broken away. When I returned to my starting point, my heart was in my throat. I leaned my head against the tower stones, closed my eyes, and let the rain pour over my face.
I had seen no doorway. But I had seen the way to get inside. The stones that protruded from the face of the tower were no Builder's whimsy, but an open stair— widely spaced nubs of stone that spiraled up the outside of the tower to the very top. If Ven'Dar was held prisoner in this tower, I would have to climb to get him out.
"Great Vasrin, do you amuse yourself in the eternal nights by devising these wretched tests?" I mumbled through gritted teeth as I set my foot on the first excruciatingly narrow, rain-slick step. "Or perhaps you think to force us to accept your existence." Surely godless fortune could produce no such perfect horrors.
I pressed my left shoulder to the rough wall, found a precarious handhold in the crumbling stone, and extended my left foot over the gap of open air to the next weathered protrusion, not daring to think what that gap would look like when I was five stories from the solid earth. Using my hand on the tower wall to brace me, I brought my right foot up beside the left. Again. Left foot forward—the part of the step nearest the wall would be the most solid. Secure a handhold. Push. Bring up the right foot. Again . . .
Twice I came near turning back. Once when I came to the first broken step, so narrow a stub that I could not rest both feet on it at once. I had to take an immediate second step with my right foot, trusting that the outer edge of the second stone would hold my weight while I brought the left foot up beside it, hoping not to get my boots tangled, praying that no watcher from the palace walls would see me perched there, paralyzed, for of course this had to happen on the side of the tower exposed to the balefire. The second time I faltered was when I came to the first missing step.