“They have been dead for a couple of hours.” Athryn nodded toward the bodies arrayed on the ground before him. “They have no weapons. They did not kill each other. Someone else did and brought them here.”
“But why? What happened?”
Athryn glanced up at Khirro. “This is Poltghasa.”
***
They crept through the city, stealing from shadow to receding shadow as dawn inched into the sky. The only people they saw were asleep or passed out-or perhaps dead-and they didn’t stop to determine which. Khirro wondered at the lack of people in the streets. Was Poltghasa such a terrible place that even those who lived in it wouldn’t venture out in the dark?
The city’s architecture contrasted with the plain wall surrounding it. Pillars carved with heroic scenes supported arches over the main boulevard; buildings built not just for shelter but also for art lined the streets. Stretching above them all, a spire two hundred or more feet tall in the center square presided over the city. But all the buildings and statues showed disrepair and neglect, the city’s beauty muted by centuries of dirt, grime and damage. Statues of ancient kings, with missing limbs or broken heads, stood guard outside shattered buildings. Once proud gargoyles lay smashed in the streets, thrown off their perches by the hands of attacking warriors or drunken wretches. They passed by it all, awed as much by the neglect of the city’s residents as they were by the incredible workmanship.
What should I expect of banished criminals?
They stole along garbage strewn streets, drawn toward the spire. Chipped cobblestones passed beneath their feet as the sky lightened and in the distance a rooster heralded dawn, followed quickly by someone telling the bird to shut up. Athryn took Khirro by the elbow, hurrying him along.
A hundred yards from the tower, they stopped. Athryn raised a finger and pointed at the rough flight of stairs climbing alongside the spire.
“The Killing Stairs.”
Khirro stared. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people’s lives had ended on those stairs, thrown off the top of the tower in the days before anarchy ruled Poltghasa. Gods alone knew how many more in the days since.
They moved forward quickly, as life began to stir around them. A woman threw her gray water out of a second story window; a cat raced across the avenue chasing a mouse; the sound of voices embroiled in an argument spilled out through the broken door of a building.
They stopped at the first step of the granite stairs and saw each edge was chipped and worn by a thousand years of sandals and boots thumping against their surface. Instruments of death. Part way up, spread over twenty of the steps, Khirro saw a dark stain on the light colored stone.
That’s where they died.
Athryn nodded, confirming Khirro’s thought, then gestured toward the door at the base of the tower.
“In there,” he said and moved toward the door.
A layer of verdigris covered the bronze door, muting the intricate pattern carved across its surface. Despite the neglect, the door hung straight on its hinges. Khirro grabbed the handle and pushed, expecting it not to budge, but it swung open easily, like a portal well used and oiled, though the odor of dust and mold wafting through the open doorway suggested otherwise. Athryn crept through; Khirro followed.
The air within seemed like it might have been undisturbed for centuries, existing to be breathed by spiders and vermin scuttling about in the dark and no one else. Khirro pulled the Mourning Sword from his hip; the red runes glowed dimly but it was enough for them to discern shapes in the chamber as Athryn closed the door. The room was empty of furnishings or decoration except for a staircase carved into the wall winding its way up and up and up into the darkness above. Khirro extended the sword over his head, hoping to see the ceiling, but saw darkness and nothing more beyond the glow of his blade.
“The ceiling is two hundred feet above our heads. Maybe more.” Athryn’s voice echoed away in the heights. Somewhere above a bat squeaked and fluttered.
“What?”
“There are no floors, only this one and the roof from which Shyctem cast his enemies. Those and the stairs in between.”
“It seems like no one’s been in here for a long time.”
“I do not think they bother to take the condemned all the way to the top before killing them anymore.”
Khirro thought about the men and woman they’d found and wondered how many people in this so-called ‘free city’ found their deaths innocently. He suspected it could happen anytime if you made the wrong man angry. But the same could be said of any city, couldn’t it?
“We will rest here until nightfall,” Athryn said clearing cobwebs, dust and loose pebbles from a place on the floor with his boot. “After dark, when we can move with less chance of notice, we will find supplies and be out of this place before the sun rises.”
Khirro nodded, his chest tight. “I’ll take first watch.”
“As you like. You have but one door to watch.”
Athryn settled onto the floor, his breathing soon settling into the deep, easy pattern of sleep. Khirro wandered the round chamber, examining walls and testing the stairs. He rested his foot on the bottom step and dread filled him as he felt what it must have been like for the condemned mounting the stairs on the final march to their deaths. The only choices before them were complete the climb and die on the Killing Stairs, leap from these steps and die a death unseen by the crowds gathered in the square or be killed for refusing to climb. Any of the three yielded the same result.
Khirro looked back over his shoulder at Athryn sleeping on the floor and the closed door beyond him. It looked like no one had entered this place in a very long time; he doubted there was any chance anyone would do so today.
No one saw us come in. We’re safe here.
Khirro turned his attention back to the stair and stepped up onto the first step. Beneath his boot, it felt like any other step. It could easily belong to any one of the sets of stairs leading to the top of the wall at the Isthmus Fortress, would have only felt out of place leading to the hay loft in his father’s barn because it was stone rather than wood. The sense of dread he’d felt disappeared, no feeling of impending doom shivered up his leg and into his heart.
They’re only stairs.
He stepped up onto the next stair, then the next, his shoulder brushing the wall his only guide to keep him from going over the edge. Step after step he climbed, fingers trailing along the stone wall beside him. After several dozen steps had passed under his feet, he stopped, listening. He still heard Athryn’s gentle breathing on the floor below, but there was nothing else; no bats or birds flitted overhead chasing bugs, no sounds from outside the tower penetrated its thick wall.
Another step. Another. Khirro climbed the staircase following the curve of the tower wall, each step forward taking him higher and deeper into darkness. He moved slowly, cautiously, silently counting each stair as his foot set upon it without knowing why he was climbing.
When his count reached two hundred, he stopped again, listened to the silence. The only sounds now came from within him: the beat of his heart, the whisper of breath in his throat, the creak of his armor each time his chest expanded. He saw nothing ahead and above him but darkness; behind and below was the same.
A wave of vertigo overtook Khirro, spinning his head in the dark. He leaned toward the wall and felt as though it would surely be gone; it startled him when his back touched it. The dark spun around him, shortening his breath and bringing nausea from his gut to his throat. He flattened himself against the wall, arms spread, and closed his eyes to stop the world from spinning. After a minute that felt as though it stretched on for an hour, his head steadied, his stomach settled, and Khirro opened his eyes to the same darkness they’d observed before.