“Be safe,” he said to her. They were standing close but not touching, and Axis was feeling awkward. He hated goodbyes, and he had a terrible feeling that Inardle might not come back — or at least not as someone who would want to be his companion.
She smiled. “I will be safe. I do not fear the Skraelings.”
“Still .”
She leaned into him, their bodies touching in myriad places, and they kissed, softly.
“You are a different person, now,” Axis murmured as she leaned back.
“Which do you prefer, Axis? This, or the other?”
“Come home,” he said.
“This is not your home,” she replied, the waters shifting behind her eyes, and with that ambiguous reply she turned away from him and disrobed. She gave him one last, long look over her shoulder, then, before Axis could say anything else, turned into a column of water, which then crashed into the pool.
This is not your home, she had said, and Axis stood there for a long time, staring at the blank pool, feeling terribly lonely and dislocated.
Eleanon had escaped into invisibility as the Lealfast Nation left, and secreted himself within the reed banks surrounding the eastern shores of the lake. He would get wet, violently wet, but the thick, tall reeds would give him protection against the ferocious winds.
The mayhem hit suddenly, forcing Eleanon to grab onto thick bunches of reeds to keep himself from being blown away and sucking the air from his lungs. For long minutes it was all Eleanon could do to breathe and keep himself within the shelter of the reeds, but gradually he became used to the wind and the driving rain and managed to settle himself in among the reeds in such a manner that he no longer needed to fear being blown away.
He was drenched, and the sheer force of the storm had stripped away his cloak of invisibility, but that no longer perturbed Eleanon. No one in Elcho Falling could possibly see him through the thick, sheeting rain.
He relaxed, communing with the mayhem, seeking to understand it amid all its twists and secrets.
It was not, for one as skilled as Eleanon, all that difficult. The mayhem was a very basic enchantment, although one wrought with a vast power that Eleanon could not match.
Matching that power did not worry Eleanon.
All he wanted to do was reflect it.
Eventually, even as the storm worsened about him, Eleanon began to grin.
Then, he began to commune with the Dark Spire.
Deep within the Dark Spire, the One concealed himself from Eleanon’s power. It was easy enough to do and he did not want Eleanon realising his presence.
If Eleanon knew the One had returned, he’d not do what the One wanted, which was to continue to aid the Dark Spire.
The One lurked in the shadows of his power and listened to what Eleanon whispered to the Dark Spire.
He grinned. It was a shame Eleanon would eventually have to die, for he was gifted with a fine sense of humour.
There were several Enchanters, as always, hovering about the Dark Spire deep within Elcho Falling. They were there to watch it and, in the most hopeful of universes, to glean some understanding of it.
They were also here maintaining a watch lest the One’s presence grow closer.
But for today, as for the past few months, there was nothing they could learn.
One, an Icarii named StarSlider, had just decided he would return to one of the higher levels in the citadel when he paused, frowning at the Dark Spire. There was something odd . . . StarSlider couldn’t quite place it and he was about to call out to the other two Enchanters present when he stopped, mouth agape.
Storm clouds had gathered about the spire’s peak.
“Spring—” StarSlider began to call to one of his companions, SpringStar, but suddenly lightning forked out of one of the clouds and struck close by him.
StarSlider jumped out of the way, then cried out in horror as torrential rain swept him off his feet and toward the Dark Spire.
The mayhem had come to visit within Elcho Falling.
Completely unaware of what was happening behind her, Inardle merged with the water as she entered the underwater tunnel, moving with it and through it until she entered the lake. Here she paused, looking around.
Above her, the surface of the water was pockmarked by the driving rain — Inardle could see each individual droplet of rain drive into the water, briefly creating a long foaming tunnel before it lost its energy and merged with the waters of the lake.
Far beneath her Inardle could see the ‘roots’ of the Dark Spire lying along the bottom of the lake. They were longer and thicker than she remembered and she wasted a moment wondering for what purpose they were intended, and for what purpose they might be used.
What would a River Angel do with those long, black, tapered fingers?
Finally, Inardle looked toward the entrance of the channel to the sea.
The water was still murky from the settling boulders, but Inardle could see that the channel was now well over halfway blocked.
Another day, once this mayhem was done, and the Lealfast would have completed their task.
A sigh ran through her being and Inardle turned for the lake’s edge. She could not afford to waste any more time for Isaiah had told her the mayhem would be sharp and furious, but not lengthy.
At the edge of the lake, Inardle flowed onto the gravelled edge of the land. She moved fast, a writhing stream of water that, in this storm of raindrops battering into the ground, was virtually invisible.
She slithered as fast as she could, working her way over the dips and cracks in the earth’s surface, following the natural contours of the land.
Axis had been climbing the main staircase toward the command chamber, needing to speak with Isaiah, but within the space of a breath he was pummelled to his knees, gasping for breath as howling winds and driving rain filled the interior of the citadel.
He couldn’t understand what was going on — had the walls of Elcho Falling been breached? Water began pouring down the stairs and Axis was swept to one side. He grabbed at a newel post and wrapped his arms around it for support. Several soldiers, less fortunate than he, tumbled past him in the torrent of water.
What was happening?
Eleanon has reflected the mayhem inside, Isaiah said in his mind.
Stars! Axis tried to think, shaking water off his face in a useless attempt to stop the rain-blindness. Isaiah, he said. What can you do? Can you stop the mayhem?
No, came the response, and Axis cursed. He began to inch his way up, grabbing at the newel posts, pushing with his feet, slipping every so often but hanging on grimly as the water raged past him. Above the noise of the storm he could vaguely hear shouts and thumps — people doing whatever they could to escape the mayhem.
At the next landing a hand reached down to grab him.
It was Georgdi, with a rope about his waist which extended back into one of the chambers running off the central staircase.
Georgdi was shouting something, but Axis could not make it out. He just gripped Georgdi’s hand and slowly the two men, aided by someone unknown keeping a firm pull on the rope, worked their way into a chamber off the stairwell.
Here it was a little calmer — the wind and rain still bore down on them, but at least they were out of the raging torrent of the central staircase.
Georgdi shouted something almost unintelligible at Axis, which Axis interpreted as What the fuck is happening?
Axis gestured uselessly, then, pulling Georgdi as close as a lover, shouted in his ear, “We’ll have to ride it out!”
Georgdi nodded understanding, and then the two men and their companions huddled in the shelter of the door and a large table as the mayhem screamed about them.
Throughout Elcho Falling men and women sheltered from the storm as best they could. Water from the torrential rain swept down corridors and tumbled down stairs in rushing waterfalls, semi-filling lower chambers before slowly draining out into the lake via sewers and pipes in the citadel’s walls. Someone had the foresight to open the doorway in the great entrance arch and water cascaded out the opening as if from the bursting of a great dam.
In their top chamber, Ishbel and Maximilian were no luckier than anyone else. They sheltered in the lee of a closet, watching in disbelief as all the charts and diagrams and notes that they had made about the contents of the Twisted Tower were swept away.
The One? Ishbel said in Maximilian’s mind.
No, he replied. Eleanon.
Privately, he wondered if Axis and Isaiah could manage the Lealfast, and, as the storm swept on and on, drenching and ruining every piece of furniture in their once-lovely chamber, Maximilian had to fight to believe that something postive could be done, and that there really wasn’t any merit in the idea of just abandoning Elcho Falling to whatever Eleanon wanted of it so he and Ishbel could live out what remaining months they might have in some distant, sunnier and drier land.