Tristan waited for me as I inched, calculated, and feared. And finally, I reached… and pulled my way up to the next section of the tree. And the next. My fear grew with every inch, but he bolstered me with encouragement.
“You can do it!” and “Don’t be afraid!” echoed in my mind.
I was just one section below him. I judged the distance. “I can’t make it. It’s too far! I’m not tall enough to reach the branch.”
He laughed and reached down with a hand. “Then I’ll help you!”
I reached up to take his hand. With Tristan’s help, maybe I could reach —
Tristan leaned forward too far. His hand brushed against mine as he fell.
I winced, blinking away the memory. Tristan had been fine. He’d laughed when I’d finally made it back down the tree, fighting fear to scale my way down far faster than I’d gone up. The branches had bloodied him, but he’d made it through the fall without any permanent damage.
But I remembered that he’d fallen trying to help me, and that was Tristan to his core. He was always trying to lift me up, even at his own expense.
After so many years of Tristan looking out for me, it was long past time I did the same for him. I knew that I wouldn’t be going back into the tower immediately, of course. Attempting to climb the tower was far more dangerous than simply going through a Judgment, and what I’d seen inside had made it abundantly clear that I was not prepared for the true dangers of the tower yet.
So, I’d need to be patient. I’d practice. I’d master my attunement, grow strong enough to survive.
But when I was strong enough, I’d reach for that highest branch.
I hoped that Tristan could keep waiting for me, just a little bit longer.
Riding on the train was a considerably different experience with Sera sitting next to me.
It wasn’t the first time we had traveled together; we had rarely been apart as children. Three years apart had changed both of us, however, and my father’s plans — maybe our father’s plans — had been deliberately formulated to create a degree of tension between us.
I wasn’t going to let things stand that way.
When we’d first left the station, she’d sat with perfect poise, looking out the window and waving at the house servants that stood at the station. The perfect image of a young noblewoman already missing her family and friends.
Within minutes, she’d shifted in her seat into something resembling a ball, curled around a book.
This was the Sera that I remembered. Someone I could work with.
I pulled out a book of my own. Trials of Judgment, the book from inside the tower.
Then, flipping to a blank page, I removed the quill and inkwell from my backpack.
I caught her eye flickering toward me, curious. She caught my eye catching her eye. I caught her eye catching my eye… you get the idea. We exchanged glances, saying nothing.
I began to write.
Oh, Great Mysterious Book Entity, Voice of the Tower, etc. etc.
Are you receiving this message? I’m not sure if this thing works, now that I’m outside the tower.
Really, I’m not sure if the book itself was ever significant or if you were just using it as a medium to communicate with me.
Please clarify.
Yours in an unspecified amount of indentured service,
Corin
I smirked, waiting and watching for a few minutes. In spite of my brilliance, there was no reply.
I sealed the ink container and stashed it, the quill, and the book back in my bag.
Sera glanced at me again as I finished putting the book away. “Magic book,” I said simply.
I knew of no reasonable creature who would not respond to a nonchalant declaration like, “Magic book.” Sera was a complex companion, I knew, but eminently reasonable when such hooks were presented.
Her eyebrow raised accommodatingly, and, for emphasis, she added, “Define magic book.”
I shrugged, stretching. “Oh, you know, just your typical book connected to a nigh-omniscient spiritual entity contained within the Serpent Spire. What are you reading?”
“Hartigan’s Compiled Treatises on Advanced Binding Theory.” She retrieved a bookmark from her bag, set it to mark her progress and closed the tome. “Nothing that would be applicable studies. It’s for Summoners.”
I nodded sagely. “Studying early? Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to interrupt that with something as uninteresting as—”
She uncoiled herself and leaned in closer. “No need to be so blithely manipulative, Corin. You’ve got my attention. Now, what percentage of that was actually true?”
I looked upward, and then tilted my face down, giving an exaggerated look of concentration. “Eighty… no, seventy nine point nine percent?”
She laughed obligingly, grabbing toward the back. “Okay, come on, show me.”
I showed her the book, and she sat a little closer while I went over each of the pages, telling her bits of the story that went along with each.
I stopped just before the prison, after the book told me that, “You shouldn’t have done that.” It was a good place to hook her interest, and beyond that, I was pretty sure I shouldn’t be sharing the incidents with the prison and beyond — and certainly not in public.
I really wanted to tell her about Keras fighting Katashi. The idea that there was a presumably mortal swordsman that could even hold a visage at bay was almost unthinkable. I’d been raised to believe the visages were unstoppable forces of nature. Everyone had.
Was Keras an exception? Was he truly that powerful?
Or was he another visage himself?
Wydd, the Visage of Forbidden Knowledge, was known to take on many forms depending on her current whim. Maybe Keras being another visage was a simpler answer than assuming he was a human with some kind of unknown power source.
But even if it was a simpler answer, I didn’t know if it was a better one. Two visages fighting each other was potentially more worrisome than a human managing to put up a fight. Some kind of in-fighting among our pantheon could not possibly be a good thing — and it probably wasn’t something a mere mortal should know about.
And Katashi knew that I’d seen the fight.
Even if he didn’t take direct action against me, there was a good chance I’d be in danger if I went back to the tower before figuring this situation out. And there was a chance he would do something, even if it wasn’t personally. Every visage had human agents. Priests, servants, that sort of thing.
Just one more thing for me to worry about.
I also wanted to tell Sera about the prison, both out of excitement and because I wanted to get her insight. I liked to plan for every contingency, but Sera had always been great at breaking down a situation into component parts and analyzing them. Maybe she would pick up on hints that I hadn’t, and I needed all the information I could so that I’d be better prepared to rescue Tristan when I was ready to climb the tower.
In spite of my desires, though, I needed to play it safe. The Voice had been clear that I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone else about the situation. It had probably saved my life by giving me a quick way out of the tower, so I owed it at least a bit of consideration. I’d still probably tell Sera eventually, but I wanted to see what this Lyras Orden had to say before I took any further actions.