He waited as long as he could, then he called to StarHeaven.
StarHeaven! StarHeaven!
It took her a moment or two to wake from her sleep, moments that Axis spent pacing back and forth cursing under his breath. StarHeaven!
Yes?
I need you to wake Georgdi. Now. Ask him to call Josia to his window from his magical Twisted Tower. Tell Georgdi that Isaiah and myself consider a dawn attack and we wonder if Josia can tell us the disposition of the Lealfast and Kezial’s armies. Can you do that?
Axis —
StarHeaven . . . do . . . it . . . now! I need Josia to advise us!
Then, risking everything, Axis sent her a bolt of pure emotion — a combination of anxiety and urgency and desperation. Icarii rarely used pure emotion to communicate. It was unsettling and physically disturbing to the recipient, but Axis hoped that it would impress on StarHeaven, like nothing else, the sheer urgency and importance of his request.
He felt a stunned silence from her. Then .
Immediately, StarMan. I understand.
Thank you, StarHeaven. Please let me know immediately you have spoken to Georgdi. And please impress on him the —
I understand, StarMan.
Axis shut up. He wanted to shout at StarHeaven all the way along the corridors of Elcho Falling into Georgdi’s quarters, but he literally bit his tongue and kept his mind quiet.
Maximilian stopped suddenly, then turned to the campfire. “It will soon be time,” he said.
Ishbel and the two Emerald Guardsmen rose.
“Do you have the tools?” Serge said. Last night he and Doyle had taken two sturdy knives and fashioned them into digging tools.
Who knew how tough that simple stepping stone would be to raise.
“Yes,” Maximilian said. He looked at Ishbel and she came over to him.
“Ishbel .”
“What is it?”
Maximilian hesitated. “I don’t know what might happen. I don’t know what might go wrong.”
“Maxel —”
“Listen to me a moment, Ishbel. Ifit goes badly wrong either you or I, or both of us, are going to have to untether ourselves from the Twisted Tower.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“The Persimius kings and princes,” Maximilian said, “kept open the pathways to the Twisted Tower so that, should they ever need the knowledge, there it sat. Every young prince learned the pathways to the Twisted Tower. I had to teach you. Remember?”
She nodded.
“For thousands of years,” Maximilian continued, “in a direct unbroken line, all the princes and kings of the Persimius name kept open the pathway. Each of them travelled there and back. Each kept the mental skills needed to reach the Twisted Tower. That is the real connection. At the moment, Ishbel, you and I are the only two remaining alive who have the skills needed to reach the Twisted Tower and that is enough to keep the Twisted Tower tethered to this world. It is needed, it is used. Our minds, Ishbel, are the machinery that connect the Twisted Tower to this world.”
“I still don’t understand what you are trying to tell me.”
“If we forget those skills, Ishbel, if we lose them, then there is no connection left between this world and the Twisted Tower. It will simply drift off, perhaps even evaporate completely, I don’t know, but there will no longer be any connection between this world and it. We are the bridge, Ishbel.”
He took a deep breath. “Losing the Twisted Tower and all its knowledge is the last thing I want to do. I would prefer that I disconnect the pathway so that, if needed at a later date, I can put the stone back and reconnect ourselves to the tower. But if I cannot do what I intend this day, then we may have to untether our minds from the tower. If I fail, and the One takes me, then you will have to do it. Untether the Twisted Tower from this world.”
“And lose you with it?” Ishbel said.
“If need be, yes. Ishbel, we have to be prepared for this.”
She gave an unhappy nod. “How do we do lose the skill?”
“It is actually fairly simple. You remember how I put my hands about your head? How I cradled it?”
“It felt as if your fingers dug into my mind, shifting it slightly, twisting it.”
“And thus we can ‘untwist’ our minds. It is easier if we do it simultaneously, if we take each other’s heads in our hands and twist away the other’s mind, but we can also do it to ourselves. Ishbel, if I am trapped, will you do this?”
“I would prefer it if you came back.”
That raised a slight smile from Maximilian. “I would prefer it, too. I would prefer it if we do not lose the Twisted Tower completely. But . . . if what I try does not succeed . . . ”
She nodded. “Come back, Maxel.”
He kissed her. “Be prepared. Do what you need to.”
They held each other a moment, then Maximilian moved away.
“Bloody Axis,” Georgdi grumbled, hauling himself out of his bed.
“It is urgent,” StarHeaven said, watching restlessly as Georgdi fumbled with his breeches and boots.
“I don’t see why he couldn’t have waited until —”
“Do it now, Georgdi,” StarHeaven said, and something in her tone made Georgdi pause and look at her with sudden understanding in his eyes.
“Very well,” Georgdi said, rising and grabbing a shirt and jerkin as he walked over to the window. He slipped his arms into the shirt, pulled it over his head, then called for Josia as he slid the jerkin on.
“Josia? Josia? There is a matter of urgency. May I speak with you?”
Maximilian hovered at the very edge of the Twisted Tower’s strange immaterial world for as long as he dared, then stepped forth to the beginning of the path.
He stood there, not daring to breathe, certain that the One would any moment fling open the door and destroy him . . . then he looked upward.
It was a long, long way to the top of the tower, but he could see a tiny figure there, balanced easily on the windowsill, one leg swinging in the air.
Maximilian felt a rush of gratitude for everyone who had come through for him at this moment, then he bent down to the ground, drawing the digging tools from his belt.
“Path, I break thee,” he murmured, then jemmied one of the tools under the thick stone of the first step.
“Axis would like to know how the Lealfast and Isembaardians are disposed,” Georgdi said.
“Now?” Josia said.
Georgdi spread his hands in a gesture of innocent helplessness. “Who can know the ways of the StarMan,” he said. “I’m sorry to raise you at such an unearthly hour, Josia . . . or do you not sleep at all? I’ve often wondered how you —”
Josia made a noise of irritation. “The Lealfast are arrayed as they were last night when Axis had his damned eagle out flying. The Isembaardians the same. I don’t know why Axis has to ask me. Now,”
“Maybe he doesn’t trust the eagle,” Georgdi said and, as the words fell from his mouth, he had an extraordinary revelation.
Axis didn’t trust Josia,
And as he thought so, Josia caught his thought, and everything changed.
The stone was thick and settled firmly into the soil by thousands of years of the booted feet of the Lords of Elcho Falling passing over it.
Maximilian dug around it frantically, earth flying everywhere, scratching and grazing his fingers. Every now and then he’d glance upward, his heart racing.
And then he would bend to his work, beads of sweat on his forehead, and he cursed the damned, damned stone.
“Maximilian!“ Josia hissed, and Georgdi took several paces backward as Josia suddenly turned into something dark and loathsome.
Georgdi heard StarHeaven cry out and scramble for the door and Georgdi took a moment to hate her for being closer to the door than he.
By all the gods in heaven, what was it that now writhed in the window?
“Go!” Georgdi managed to wrench from his fear-tightened throat, and he wasn’t sure if he meant it for the thing in the Twisted Tower’s window, or for himself, or for StarHeaven.
All three he decided.
“I am going to kill you,” the malevolent mass in the window said, and Georgdi hoped he meant it for someone other than himself.
Maximilian knew the instant the One realised. It hit as if all the force of one of these cursed stepping stones was thrown from the window of the Twisted Tower and he cried out in horror.
His fingers scrabbled frantically, but the stone still wouldn’t move, it still wouldn’t move, the cursed bloody thing still wouldn’t move .
The One flew down the stairwell of the Twisted Tower. He had morphed into a mass that was not human or animal or anything even remotely recognisable as one of the creatures of this world. He was sheer anger and hatred and fear, pure emotion and power, a whirlwind of Infinity gathering to himself ever more dark energy and force as he rounded each bend in the stairwell.