Thus saying, he and Doyle swung off their horses and settled themselves cross-legged on the roadway, Serge pulling out a bag of dice.
Avaldamon sighed, and dismounted as well. “I wish you well,” he said to Maximilian and Ishbel. “But please, think of yourselves before those people. If it is a trap, then get out. Leave them.”
“I promise,” Maximilian said.
He and Ishbel dismounted, handed the reins of their horses to Serge, nodded at Avaldamon, then walked toward Hairekeep.
There was a single door in the base of what had once been the sandstone fort. Maximilian took one of Ishbel’s hands, pausing them both at the door. It was cold here, unnaturally cold, and they both shivered.
“Are you sure, Ishbel?” he asked quietly.
She nodded.
“You know what to do?”
“Yes, the foundation stone is easily accessible. I should be able to unwind it, and,” she squeezed his hand, “with you with me I shall not have the same troubles and concerns which beset me in DarkGlass Mountain. It will be all right, Maxel. Not pleasant, but all right.”
Maximilian glanced up at the darkness extending so far above his head. He could see hands and faces pressing against the blackness, as if the tormented people inside were pressing their flesh against the walls.
“It is like the inside of the Infinity Chamber,” Ishbel said, looking also. “Then, the hands aided me. Perhaps they will here, too.”
Maximilian smiled at her, then leaned forward and kissed her softly. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
“Then let the Lord and Lady of Elcho Falling go forth and do battle,” he said. He took a deep breath, took the final step toward the door, opened it, and both entered.
“You really don’t like this, do you,” Serge said to Avaldamon, who was sitting looking toward the fort anxiously.
Avaldamon shook his head. “There is something wrong, wrong, wrong about this. There is the stink of trap, but I cannot see what it is. I don’t like it that Josia has involved himself in this. There is no reason why he should . . . ”
“He is a bodiless spirit locked in a memory palace,” Doyle said. “If it was me, I’d be trying to get my fun wherever I could.”
“Still .” Avaldamon said. “Still .”
“Do you want us to .?” Serge said, raising his eyebrows at Hairekeep.
“No, no. Stay here. There will be nothing you can do. This is power beyond you.”
“I’ll try not to take that personally,” Doyle said, his voice humorous. Then suddenly he started. “By the gods! Is that Ishbel’s rat?”
Serge and Avaldamon turned to look where Doyle pointed.
Ishbel’s rat sat perched on a rock a little distance away, staring intently at Hairekeep.
Ishbel and Maximilian stood a few paces inside Hairekeep, still hand in hand.
The atrium of the structure stretched up as far as they could see, probably right up to the pinnacle itself. Around the walls wound balconies and stairs.
They were all empty.
There was no sign of any people.
Ishbel frowned. “It isn’t like what Josia told us would —”
Then she and Maximilian jumped as a low moan reverberated through the interior of Hairekeep. It tore at their nerves and the deepening physical chill which accompanied it sent further shivers down their spines.
“I don’t like this,” Maximilian murmured. He looked over his shoulder, reassuring himself the door was still there.
“Ishbel!”
She spun about.
The door had vanished. There was no sign of it, or where it may once have been. Behind them wound staircases and balconies as well, everything twisting up and up and up.
The moan sounded again, then suddenly morphed into a sibilant hiss that lifted the hair on both Ishbel’s and Maximilian’s heads.
Before either could react, something screamed. It was so harsh that both of them cried out and crouched low, hands over ears.
The next moment came a grinding crash, and everything about them changed.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Avaldamon sprang to his feet, staring in total horror at what Hairekeep had become.
“What is it?” Serge shouted, as the fort changed shape and, at the same time, extended even further into the sky so that it almost blocked out the sun.
A vast shadow stretched over the land, falling across the three men standing with the horses and stretching for thousands of paces beyond them.
“Hairekeep has turned into the physical manifestation of the Twisted Tower,” Avaldamon said. “Maxel and Ishbel’s memory palace.” He stared at the door, then looked up and up the ninety levels of corkscrewed tower to the single window at the very top. “Oh my gods . . . ” he whispered.
They rose in horror, staring about. They were standing in an exact replica of the interior of the Twisted Tower, save that everything — the walls, the stairs, the tables, all the objects on the tables and flat surfaces — was made of bone.
Human bone. The small bones made up the objects, while the furniture and walls were made of tens of thousands of femurs and scapulas and skulls.
Her hand trembling, Ishbel lifted one of the objects, the pedestal belonging to a table lamp, and looked carefully at it. Each of the bones in its construction had writing inscribed into it.
I was once Ursula, mother of Claudat, wife of Imeldam. Now I belong to the One.
I was once Killony, daughter of Houral. Now I belong to the One.
I was once Mersiny, wife of Insharah, mother of Eleany, Faran and Jaillon. Now I belong to the One.
“Maxel,” Ishbel whispered, and dropped the object.
It shattered into dusty fragments at her feet.
“We need to get out of here,” Maximilian said, and, taking Ishbel’s hand once more, turned for where the door had been.
It was actually there. But in the instant after they’d taken their first step toward it, bones began to appear as if from nowhere and piled up at fantastic speed to cover the door completely . . . and continued to spill rapidly toward Ishbel and Maximilian.
The door vanished within a heartbeat, and the entire ground floor chamber of the Twisted Tower began to fill with bones.
Maximilian pulled Ishbel toward the stairs that led upward. They raced up them just in time, as the bones filled the entire first chamber.
Then the second chamber began to fill.
Avaldamon felt as though he had turned to stone in his horror. All he could do for the moment was stare; he could not move nor think. The massive structure of the Twisted Tower looked as if a gigantic fist was squeezing it from the very bottom. The tower was contracting, ever upward, as though that fist were trying to squeeze Ishbel and Maximilian toward the .
Avaldamon’s eyes drifted up to the window at the very top of the tower.
That window was death, whichever way he looked at it. Maximilian and Ishbel would die if they so much as looked through it, and they would also die if they were literally squeezed through it.
Everything here had been a trap set by the One.
By Josia.
Avaldamon could not think. He tried so hard to order his thoughts, but such was his state of shock — at what was happening before his very eyes and at the realisation of who Josia now was — that his thoughts felt as though they’d been buried in deep thick sludge —
A movement to his right caught his eyes.
Serge and Doyle, drawing their swords.
“No!” Avaldamon managed. “No.”
Thank the gods, his mouth and thoughts finally seemed to be working again.
“We have to —” Doyle began.
“No,” Avaldamon said yet again. “Touch that tower and you both die. Leave it to me. I am a Persimius and I was trained in the Twisted Tower. I know what to do. The thing is .”
He turned to look directly at Serge and Doyle. “The thing is, it will kill me, but at least in the doing I can stop this nightmare and hopefully free Ishbel and Maximilian.”
He stopped, expecting to have to field protests from both men.
Neither of them spoke. They just looked at him expectantly.
Avaldamon repressed a sigh. They were former assassins, after all. What was the value of human life to them?
“I will die,” Avaldamon said, “but I hope that Ishbel or Maxel, pray to the gods both of them, will live. Serge, Doyle, if they don’t, then you need to do something very, very important for me.”
“Name it,” Serge said.
“Get to Elcho Falling as fast as you can and tell whoever commands that citadel that Josia is now the One. The One has inhabited Josia. Do you understand?”
“It is a simple enough concept to grasp, Avaldamon,” Serge snapped. “Josia — the One — set this trap?”
Avaldamon nodded.
“Then go aid Ishbel and Maximilian,” said Serge, “and Doyle and I shall say prayers each day hereafter for the peace of your soul.”