“Oh, goody,” the giant replied, staring up into the tower again. “What now?”
“She wants our assistance—your assistance, actually—in bringing Entudenin, that dead geyser obelisk, back to life.”
Grunthor nodded, arranging the piles of colored glass with the toe of his boot.
“Oi told ’er a long time ago’twas probably a blockage o’ some sort in the strata. She got ’em to agree to let us drill?”
“Apparently.”
“And you’re willing to drop everything and leave at ’er request?”
Achmed shrugged, then went back to the pile of colored rubble.
The giant raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, returning his attention to the tower.
When Gwylliam founded Canrif he seemed to have a penchant for hollowing out mountain peaks. The Teeth were full of them, jagged summits that stretched into the clouds, multicolored, threatening, dark with beauty and secrets. They must have posed a challenge to the arrogant Cymrian king, because he spent a good deal of his time reinforcing them while chipping away at the mountain strata inside diem, filling them with needless rooms and grand domes. Grunthor, tied to the earth as he was, found the practice repulsive to the point of feeling violated.
When he, Achmed, and Rhapsody had come to Ylorc, they had found and restored a ruined guard-tower post in the western peak of Griwen, attached to a fortress and barracks that housed more than two thousand Bolg soldiers, and a towering observatory above the Great Hall, from which thirty miles of the Krevensfield Plain could be seen in all directions save east.
He, as a military man, understood the need for these renovations. He could even grudgingly abide the rebuilding of the inner mountain cities and the restoration of the art and statuary, things he had little use for. But none of the reconstruction projects had taken on the import, or produced the aggravation, that the Bolg king’s current undertaking had, and for the life of him, he had no idea why.
The Sergeant squinted as he looked up into the pinnacle of the broken tower, trying to discern what it was about this Cymrian artifact, this particular hollowed-out mountain peak, that so captivated Achmed’s attention. Each time he returned from maneuvers the king’s mood was blacker; now it had taken on approximately the same hue as pitch.
There were endless opportunities for renovation in the Bolglands. The place had once been almost a country, a multiracial settlement nestled in the protective arms of the mountains, inside the earth and in the open-air realm beyond the canyon, housing the greatest minds of the times, undisturbed for three hundred years, allowing great advances in every aspect of science and art to germinate and grow, unfettered. Even the seven hundred years of war that followed had not destroyed those engineering feats and architectural marvels completely. Besides, Grunthor reasoned, Achmed had all the time in the world to build them back up again.
All the time in the world.
“What is it about this thing that has ya so bollixed up?” he asked finally, gesturing at the tower. “Oi think it might be a good idea to ’ead off ta Yarim just ta get you away from this place. It’s enslaved your mind. Ya look downright awful.”
“I’m Dhracian. I always look downright awful.”
“More awful than usual, sir.”
“You can tell that even behind the veils?”
“Yup. Yer eyes’re all yella and red. Thought for a moment ya might ’ave gone F’dor on me while I was away.”
“Now that would be interesting; a Dhracian F’dor. I wonder what would happen if a demon tried to possess me. My guess is that I would explode or dissolve, so diametrically opposed are the two races, which might be worth it; at least I would take one of them with me. But no, I’m not possessed; we have merely been meeting with failure at each turn here. The domed ceiling is defying me, and I hate being defied by glass.” Achmed sighed and crouched down, running his gloved hands through the colored sand and shards. “Omet says we need to find a glass artisan of a much higher level of expertise, a sealed master.”
“Well, ’e would know.”
“Yes, and he has even acknowledged that the place to find one is Yarim.”
Grunthor whistled. “ ’E must really be growing desperate.”
“Or he knows that I am.” The two friends exchanged a smile; Omet’s terror of Yarim and his sensitivity even to the mention of the place had made for many entertaining moments over the last three years. It was a source of great amusement among the Bolg to see the calm young man who lived casually among them and was rarely at a loss for a wry comeback become instantly flummoxed at any reference to the province, going white and trembling violently. The guildmistress he had served there, whose name he had only mentioned once, must have been formidable; Omet had whispered to him, back when he was still a bald teenager they had rescued from the ceramics works, that evil in a purer form did not exist.
But of course, Omet had seen nothing of the world. Achmed knew that no matter how terrifying the guildmistress was, evil had a whole array of purer forms it could assume.
He had met a number of them personally.
“So I suppose that means we’re going,” Grunthor said.
“Yes, unless you can’t spare the time away.”
“Naw,” the giant said, stepping over the debris and going to stand directly under the tower. “Hagraith and the others can ’andle it while Oi’m gone for a bit. An’ it’ll be wonderful ta see the Duchess again; been too long.”
“Indeed,” Achmed agreed.
“Is that really why you’re going, sir?” Grunthor said, avoiding the king’s gaze. “It’s been fair on to impossible to break you away from this secret glass-tower project.”
Achmed exhaled shallowly, then went to the draftsman’s table and drew forth a sheaf of vellum pages, weathered with age, from a box beneath it.
“These are the plans I could find for this place,” he said, his voice soft, as if speaking more to himself than to the Sergeant. “They are incomplete, unintelligible in places, written in code or ancient languages in others. I can follow the basic diagram, but there is so much missing that I can’t find in Gwylliam’s library or the vault underneath it. I know that the dome is supposed to be formed from colored glass—it says thus in Gwylliam’s notes, and there were seven glass test blocks buried in the vault, one of each color, to use as a gauge—but which colors are arrayed where is not clearly spelled out. There is one manuscript—this one”—he separated out a ragged page—“that seems to make reference to the tower, but I can’t decode it. Perhaps Rhapsody can. Besides reading Serenne, as a Namer she is knowledgeable about the science of the vibrational scale. Some of the notations in the manuscript look like musical script of a sort.”
“Ah,” Grunthor nodded. “Oi knew there ’ad to be a connection between this and Yarim for you to be willin’ ta go, even more than the chance to see ’Er Ladyship again.” He sighed as Achmed held the ratty diagrams close to his eyes. “Perhaps could you finally break down and tell me what is so all-fired important about rebuildin’ this tower, sir?”
Achmed blinked. “What?”
“You’re obsessed, if ya forgive me for sayin’ so. An’ I can’t fathom why.” The Sergeant crossed his arms. “Ain’t never seen ya like this except when you’re huntin’. The troops are fully trained, the borders secure; the Alliance seems ta be goin’ well, from what an ’umble soldier like me can tell. We got plenty o’ battlements, outposts, lookouts. So why does this one ’ave you in its grip?”
The Bolg king’s olive complexion darkened as he contemplated the question.
Grunthor waited patiently until he was able to sort out his thoughts enough to give voice to them.
“When Gwylliam and Anwyn battled during the Cymrian War, it took her five hundred years to make it from the western coast to the Teeth,” he said finally. “Their sons had been divided against their wills, pressed into service by each parent, so as a result, Anwyn couldn’t even approach the Teeth to assault them for most of the war. Anborn held back his mother’s armies for his father with tremendous success. All across the continent there was zero-sum warfare; Llauron would take a town or a province for Anwyn, Anborn would take it back for Gwylliam. As long as the brothers were the generals, it was hardly a real conflict; you can tell they were not prosecuting the war too enthusiastically by the length of time over which nothing of any note was accomplished. That is not surprising, given that neither of them really wanted to be participating in it the first place.”