'That's Burntos,' said Miphon. 'The Landguard keeps a permanent garrison there, because the Neversh sometimes fly out to the west, skirting round the end of Drangsturm, trying not to be seen. Often the Neversh rest on that island.'
Waves from the darkened sea tumbled up the beach, roiling seaweed, shells, barnacles and bones with armoured remnants of creatures of the Swarms.
'Will we be safe tonight?' said Blackwood.
'From the Swarms, yes,' said Miphon. 'None of those creatures moves in the hours of darkness.'
That night, the southern horizon was lit by a red glow; the flames of the Great Dyke, Drangsturm, illuminated the clouds. The next morning, drawing closer to the flame trench, the travellers began to hear its steady, regular, rumbling roar.
Then the Castle of Controlling Power came in sight, a chaotic farrago of spires, battlements and buttresses swirling around the central sky-punching upthrust of the Prime Tower. Hearst, who had previously consulted Phyphor's memories of the castle, had thought them jumbled and distorted beyond belief; he was shocked to find the castle matched the anarchic memories precisely.
'When we get to the castle,' said Miphon, 'let me speak for ail of us.'
'Agreed,' said Hearst.
He scarcely saw the blue ocean, the dull landscape, the stones of the Salt Road. All his attention was taken by the bizarre architectural monstrosity ahead of him, the product of eight orders of wizards, each with different ideas as to what should be built, finally raising a monument to ego that would, surely, have been enough to send any sensible draughtsman insane.
'Are you impressed?' said Miphon. it would look good if it was made of marzipan,' said Hearst, trying to make some sense out of a particularly confused array of gates, bridges, moats, arches and overhangs.
'So it's not your style,' said Miphon.
'Whose nightmare was the guiding inspiration?' it's not that bad,' said Miphon. isn't it?' said Hearst.
'Wizards are not warriors,' said Blackwood. 476 'When did you find that out?' said Hearst, his tone bantering. 'Certainly wizards are not warriors. No lighting man would build a monstrosity like that.'
'Still, you are impressed, aren't you?' said Miphon.
'Yes,' said Hearst. 'Insanity on a grand scale can be impressive. And this is. After Chi'ash-lan, I thought stonework could surprise me no further. At Stronghold Handfast I learnt otherwise: and now I've been proved twice wrong.'
They marched on to the main gate of the castle. Each of the eight orders had built itself a gate; the main gate, built by the order of Oparatu, was the one which had proved most convenient for travellers coming from the Salt Road.
At the main gate they were met by a detachment of the Landguard dressed in ceremonial skyblue uniforms. They were challenged; Miphon identified himself, naming Blackwood and Hearst as his servants, to get them into the castle without argument. The head of the guard gave them permission to enter. i wish to find the head of the Confederation,' said Miphon. i have urgent business. Who fills that position this month? And where will I find him?'
'This month it's Brother Fern Feathers of the order of Seth,' said the head of the guard. 'You'll find him in the Chamber of Communal Consent.'
'Why there?' said Miphon. is there a general gathering?'
'There is,' said the guard. 'There has been each and every day for the last forty-two days.'
'Forty-two days! That's unheard of! What's happening?'
'You tell me, then we'll both know. And I'd truly love to be told. Any truth, no matter how bad, would be better than the rumours we're living with. I don't deal in rumours – not me. But I hear them, all the same. The latest, master, says contagious madness is loose in the castle.'
'That's impossible,' said Miphon.
T know,' said the trooper. 'But many of my men have deserted because of that rumour. We must have a truth, and soon.'
'I'll deliver a truth to you myself,' said Miphon. 'Today.'
'Good. My name is Karendor of the Silk, but if you're asking your way from one of my gutter-mouthed men, ask for Old Bootstrap.'
There was suppressed laughter amongst the men of Karendor's Landguard detachment. iil be in the Meneren barracks if I'm not here,' said Karendor.
'I'll find you,' promised Miphon, and led Hearst and Blackwood into the depths of the Castle of Controlling Tower.
The maze within was, in many ways, stranger than Stronghold Handfast, where the travellers had, so many months ago, found Heenmor's dead body. The alien style of Stronghold Handfast had still had a basis in logic, its floors, roofs, stairways and doorways having rational connections with each other. In the Castle of Controlling Power, madness had run amok.
To Hearst and Blackwood, the building at first seemed to have been created for giants. The egos of the makers had demanded huge foyers, immense arches, ceilings rising to giddy heights, pillars greater than any forest tree, and walls built from gargantuan blocks of stone. This inhuman scale was combined with an absence of any appreciation of principles of natural lighting. Everywhere was gloom, dusk, shadows, darkness, except where firestones glowed ochre in the cavernous depths.
The castle had taken seven hundred years to build, and showed the results of wizards arguing for seven hundred years over the design. In places, corridors ran into solid walls, or ended in pits a quarter of a league deep, which had no discernible purpose whatsoever. One arched opening, a hundred paces high, was almost completely blocked by a solid ball made out of millions of bricks held together by mortar.
'If we get separated here, we'll never find our way out,' said Blackwood.
'I can remember the way back,' said Hearst.
'Can you?' said Miphon. 'Now I am impressed!'
Echoes from their voices wandered through the heights of the world's greatest monument to dissonance. It took a long time to reach the Chamber of Communal Consent.
When, after immense labours, the Castle of Controlling Power had been finished, it had held eight meeting chambers. Any one of them could have served as a common gathering place, but no order would consent to meeting in a hall designed by another order. Yet nobody wanted to go on holding meetings in the open air, which was inconvenient, undignified, and, at times, dangerous.
When the castle had been nominally finished, its centre was a confusion of narrow corridors, tunnels, arches, pillars, walls and cells where the ambitions of all eight orders had clashed. This space was useless. After much argument, the wizards had agreed to demolish enough of the masonry to create a central meeting place. The Chamber of Communal Consent was the result: an irregular hall with three hundred ways in and out of it.
Miphon, Hearst and Blackwood made a quiet entrance, slipping unnoticed into the gloom of the meeting place. In that place, lit only by ochre firestones – it had no windows – strangers could not be identified as such very easily, since a face could scarcely be made out at a range of ten paces.
It smelt, badly, of musty old men, pipe smoke, and the strange, penetrating odour or quelaquire, the keflo-oil used by wizards to help preserve manuscripts. It was filled with muttering, arthritic voices; hundreds of wizards were gathered in groups, arguing, conferring, advising, rumouring; they sounded like a conclave of people many years dead in a limbo far beyond the life of the living.
Hearst and Blackwood wondered what was happening, but did not dare ask; Miphon knew that a meeting must have broken up so members of the various orders could caucus. All had perfect privacy: the acoustics of the place were so bad that it took a determined effort to make oneself heard over any distance in the best of circumstances.
As Miphon led them toward the throne occupied by the head of the Confederation for that month, Brother Fern Feathers, Hearst and Blackwood cast covert glances at the wizards they passed. Such old men! Gnarled, driftwood faces; faded eyes; weathered, liver-spot skin; creaking voices; withered beards. And so many of them!