“What are they doing?” Axis said, keeping his voice muted for no reason that he knew of, save that this was, at the every least, an awe-inspiring sight. Now he could see why the Lealfast had needed the shoreline kept clear, and why they’d needed to dam the channel.
Eleanon had wanted to complete the circle.
The dam had been finished off with soil and trampled reeds, and the reed beds to either side had been beaten down to create a solid surface.
Isaiah didn’t answer. He took a step forward on the balcony (they watched from the north face of Elcho Falling this morning), put his hands on the railings and narrowed his eyes.
“Isaiah?” Axis said.
One of Isaiah’s hands came up briefly. Wait.
Axis looked back to the circles of stationary Lealfast, then past them to where Eleanon stood on his rise.
As if he knew Axis had shifted his regard to him, Eleanon raised his hands again, and recommenced his clapping.
Now it was a slow, powerful beat. On the fifth clap, the rings of Lealfast moved, instantaneously, and all in step. Each circle moved forward, each alternate circle moving in a different direction. They marched, not as an army, but with a slight spring in each step, so their feet slapped down absolutely in time with Eleanon’s clapping.
“Shetzah,” Isaiah murmured.
Axis thought that Isaiah spent way too much time muttering curses these days and little enough time on explanations.
“Isaiah?” he said, his voice edged with frustration.
All the circles were moving, springing up and down in perfect time with Eleanon’s slow, heavy clapping.
“Look at the lake!” Isaiah said.
Axis looked. The surface of the lake rippled with thousands of tiny wavelets, emanating in perfect circles from the shoreline and running toward Elcho Falling.
Then Isaiah grabbed Axis’ hand and rammed it down on the balcony railing. “Feel!”
The railing vibrated under Axis’ hand with tremors perfectly attuned to the marching dance of the Lealfast and Eleanon’s hands.
Axis raised his eyes and stared at Isaiah.
“When I led an army,” Isaiah said, his voice low and intent, “my army never marched over a bridge. They walked, all discordant. They did not march, on my orders. Did you ever march a large cohort of men over a bridge, Axis StarMan?”
“No,” Axis said, feeling sick to his stomach.
“No,” Isaiah echoed. “No. Never. Army commanders know how dangerous it is to march men in rhythm over a bridge because of the risk the rhythm will set up a fatal reverberation through the bridge and bring it down.”
Axis pulled his hand away from under Isaiah’s. “What can we do?”
“We meet in the command chamber, with Georgdi and Insharah and StarDrifter, and we stay there until we have a solution!”
Ishbel and Maximilian stood at the edge of their eyrie, looking down.
Like Isaiah, they well understood the significance of what Eleanon attempted.
“We’re going to have to leave Isaiah and Axis to try and do what they can,” Maximilian said. “We still have so many levels to work through.”
Ishbel laid a hand on his arm. “Then we’d best get to work,” she said.
Maximilian gave her a faint smile. They’d worked through the night redrawing designs and diagrams, remembering the levels they’d already been through. It had been easier and quicker this time and currently there were diagrams for fully one-third of the Twisted Tower, but there was a long way to go.
“Indeed,” he said, and together they turned away from the view and went back to their work.
The Lealfast continued their slow marching dance about Elcho Falling. Everyone in the citadel could feel it — a slight tremor under their feet or hands. It was only the slightest of tremors, yet still it unnerved everyone in the building.
Isaiah and Axis met with StarDrifter, Georgdi and Insharah in the command chamber. None of them sat. None wanted to sit and feel the floor and chairs vibrate. Instead, they all remained on their feet, moving restlessly about the chamber, trying, uselessly, to escape the sensation felt through their feet.
“We need to do something!” StarDrifter said.
“What?” Axis said. “Send out the army? They’d be slaughtered as they issued down the causeway, and Maximilian does not want to risk a transference. Should we rain arrows down on the Lealfast? We tried that, and look what happened. Send in the Strike Force? Oh wait, the Strike Force is useless.”
“Axis .” Georgdi murmured.
“Well, you tell me what we can do!” Axis shouted, frustrated beyond measure. Oh stars, to be on horseback and riding the plains, not stuck in this tower of death!
“How long will it take?” Insharah said to Isaiah, and it took Isaiah a moment to realise what he meant.
“To destroy Elcho Falling?” he said. “Not in a day, nor in several days. But a week or more of this . . . and, I wager, with an escalation as that week progresses? Any building will have cracked and fallen to its destruction by then. With Elcho Falling, I just don’t know.”
“We need to inform Maximilian about this,” StarDrifter said.
“Maxel will be well enough aware of it,” Axis said. “He knows. He and Ishbel have their own concerns. We need to deal with this.”
He turned to Isaiah. “Isaiah . . . we can discuss trying to physically stop the Lealfast. Would a counter-rhythm help? The danger is that a regular, rhythmic beat will shudder Elcho Falling apart . . . but what if it was arrhythmic? Can we turn it from a regular beat to a discordant one?”
Isaiah stared at Axis. “By the gods, Axis, you may have some —”
He was interrupted by StarHeaven, who was in such a rush she almost stumbled in the door.
“Isaiah, Axis,” she said. “Come see. Now . . . please.”
They hurried out of the chamber after StarHeaven. She led them down two flights of stairs, then into a chamber that backed onto the external wall of Elcho Falling.
“Look,” StarHeaven said, pointing at a spot on a wall clear of any furniture.
There was a dark splotch on the wall from where lines of fracture radiated outward.
With every succeeding tremor, so the fracture lines spread a little further.
Axis stared, then hurried to a nearby window, hanging out to inspect the exterior wall.
“They’ve gone right through,” he said. The outer wall was sheer water here, but the fracture lines manifested themselves as bloodied lines in the water.
“It is one of Ravenna’s ‘eggs’,” Isaiah said. “Georgdi, Insharah — organise your men. I want an inspection of every wall in this citadel.”
As they hurried away, Isaiah turned to Axis. “Are you certain Maximilian wants Ravenna kept alive?” Isaiah said. “Because if I had the option of laying my hands on her right now, I would tear the traitorous bitch from limb to limb.”
Three hours later Isaiah and Axis had the results of Georgdi’s and Insharah’s search.
There were almost one hundred and fifty “eggs” embedded in the walls, all in the lower third of the citadel where the walls of water merged into the walls of crystal, and all were breeding fracture lines.
The Lealfast continued their slow, rhythmic circling of Elcho Falling until dusk when, the moment Eleanon stopped beating his hands, they too stopped, broke out of their lines, and walked wearily back to their camps for a good evening meal and a night’s rest.
Chapter 12
Elcho Falling
Maximilian and Ishbel sat sifting through the floor by floor plans of the Twisted Tower. They had stayed up all night, save for two brief rests, and were now exhausted, but they had only five more levels to go.
Maximilian reached down a hand to lift up one of the diagrams, then swore softly as a vibration sent it skittering just beyond finger reach.
The Lealfast had started the second day of their encircling rhythmic march not an hour ago.
Ishbel looked at him. Her eyes were hollow and ringed with fatigue, her skin drawn and grey. Maximilian lifted the hand he’d tried to use to pick up a diagram and cupped her face.
“We are almost done,” he said.
“Maxel . . . the Lealfast are going to dismember Elcho Falling if we don’t find a way to break the power of the Dark Spire.”
“I know. Ishbel, be still. We will finish these last five levels and then we will rest.”
“But —”
“We will rest, Ishbel. Elcho Falling will not fall today.”
Ishbel pressed her cheek against his hand briefly. “We have reconstructed the objects in eighty-five levels of the Twisted Tower, Maxel. There is nothing yet to help us against the Dark Spire or the One. What hope we find something on the final five levels?”
“Ishbel —”
“The Dark Spire is nothing our forebears could have anticipated, Maxel. We are going to find nothing. We have spent useless days here making lists, and for what? For what?”