The girl led me through the market, her trinkets ringing like tiny bells and catching the afternoon sunlight. She glittered from shoulder to wrist. She wore straw sandals with fraying edges, and her steps on the stone pavement whispered like wind through a stand of reeds, disappearing under the din of the market and the roar of the surf below the cliff. The smell of salt and fresh fish filled the air.
I had missed the sea. My persistent melancholy lightened, like a small weight removed from the heavy pack on my back, as the white sails bloomed like flowers on the far horizon and the sun touched the waves with gold. Perhaps I should not have gone to Nagara, and instead stayed with my companions on the Lady of Osona, making my way here by means of the trade winds. There was no guarantee that Captain Hamilcar would have brought me here any faster; he followed his own maps, and went where the call of treasure and adventure led him.
If I had stayed with him, I might never have left. The temptation to abandon my quest would grow greater with each passing day. It had been so long since I had seen Khalim, or heard his name spoken aloud—not since Nagara, if I did not count the foul lies and illusions of the serpent god. How easy it might have been to forget, and to leave Khalim to his fate, spending my life upon the sea I loved so well. Would I have kept a secret guilt, all the years of that life, or would I forget entirely as the time passed?
I could not know, and I would never find out. I would find the all-knowing sorcerer and the secrets of the book I carried, and if I did return to the sea, it would only be to continue my quest.
With Bran at my heels, I crossed the market and passed under the towering spires of silver, making my way to the edge of the cliffs. The streets sloped upward, but my guide’s steps neither slowed nor faltered as she climbed. She glanced over her shoulder once, to see if I still followed, her face indifferent. It mattered not to her whether I kept up or not.
We arrived at the base of a looming stone tower, its walls almost white in the sun. Atop it sat a glass dome, so bright that my eyes ached to behold it.
How strange, I thought, to build something so fragile. Glass could not defend against arrows from the shore or from a ship below, and I could see no openings from which to return fire. Either Deinaros the All-Knowing knew some secret way to prevent the breach of his tower, or his title described him poorly.
We stood before a heavy wooden door, its brass fittings polished and shining. The girl pulled a leather cord from the collar of her dress. A golden key emerged, dangling from her hand. “You’re here,” she said.
“You didn’t make it so difficult to follow you,” I replied.
She put the key in the door and turned it with both hands, her trinkets jangling. “It’s easy to find my master, but he only helps the worthy.”
“And how does he decide who is worthy?” I asked.
The door opened. My eyes were accustomed to the brightness of the day, and the space within was black. It swallowed up the girl, and her footsteps faded away, moving through the interior.
Bran snorted and tossed his head. He turned away from the yawning door, pulling my arm behind him.
“It will be all right,” I said. “Wait here for me.”
He turned to regard me with one baleful eye. I had led him into all manner of misadventure since he had been given to me, and he had yet to leave my side to find a better companion. I’d not repay him by forcing him to walk in the dark.
I left him there in the shadow of the tower, along with most of our supplies, and passed through the doorway. If the reputation of the all-knowing sorcerer did not keep thieves away, Bran’s sharp hooves would.
With each step, the gloom lessened, until I could make out the shape of a vast, spiraling staircase in the center of the room. Around it, an austere entry hall took form, with carved stone seats against walls covered in woven tapestries. It was too dark, still, to see what images were crafted there. I approached the stairs, my hand on the strap of my harpoon. A strange smell lingered about the place, like copper and burning herbs.
A familiar face appeared between the steps above my head. The girl had shed her many baubles as well as her sandals, and she moved silently, crouching on the stairs. “You’re an outlander. My master will be interested in you.”
I bowed, keeping my eyes on the girl. “Then I await him,” I said. “I’ve brought him a book from the southern isles. I was told that it was first written here in the West. I’ve come to find someone who can interpret it.”
The girl smiled, a cold, serpentine grin that did not match her young features. “You are wise. Many can read a book, but few can interpret it.”
I could do neither, but I kept that thought to myself. “When can I see the all-knowing one? Is he above?” I frowned and studied the small, brown face again. “Or are you the all-knowing one, and this is but a test I must pass?”
She laughed, the cold smile falling away to reveal childish delight. “No, he is at the top of the tower, observing the movement of the sun. He will come down soon. You may ascend one floor and wait for him.”
With that, she got to her feet and climbed the stairs, disappearing into the deeper darkness above. I went after her, the ancient wooden steps creaking under my weight. The weight of the tower’s age seemed to bear down upon me with every step. Its stone was worn smooth, its mortar turned to dust where it was exposed to the air and then swept away by a fastidious hand, though its dry smell remained, mingling with the stronger scents of whatever strange concoctions were being brewed elsewhere in the building.
I arrived at the next floor, a mirror to the first, though this one possessed slitted windows at regular intervals around its circumference. They were too high to be used for arrows, and too small to allow in much light. Thin stripes of sun crossed the floor. A single tapestry hung between two windows, its faded pattern a lattice of golden knots on a scarlet background.
From the bottom of the ascending stairs, my guide had hung several bunches of herbs wrapped in twine, as well as a second dress in a faded blue, still damp from washing. A set of shelves against the wall held glass jars of more herbs, dry and gray. A single eyeball stared at me from another jar of pale fluid.
“What is this place?” I wondered aloud.
The girl, already almost a floor above me, ignored my question. “Wait here,” she said, and climbed away out of sight.
I walked around the circular tower, examining the tapestry and the shelf of herbs. If I stared too long at the disembodied eye, its braided cord of flesh appeared to move, so I kept my gaze away. Beside it, a great insect the size of my hand floated in the same fluid, its legs curled up to its segmented belly. Its dull, black eyes stared unseeing at the cork above it.
A trophy was not such a strange thing. My father’s hall had the antlers of great elk and the tusks of seafaring creatures hanging on its walls, but I could not fathom the purpose of these creatures and parts of creatures suspended in liquid. It was not such a difficult feat to catch a large insect—the girl might have done so, with a net and a basket, rather than the sorcerer. Why keep it here, in a tower behind a locked door, where there was no room for a long table or a party of guests? Who would observe this dead thing, if not for the girl and the sorcerer himself?
Despite the words of my guide, I had begun to doubt that this Deinaros existed. The girl might not have lived in this tower alone, but if two or three of her younger brothers, stacked on one another’s shoulders and wearing one long robe about them, came down the stairs next, I would not have been surprised. Or, perhaps, he was imaginary, a figure invented to keep others away from the tower so the girl could live in peace.
I waited, and the beams of sunlight moved across the stone floor and came to rest on the shelf of jars, refracting wavering, yellowish light onto the objects hanging from the stairs.
By the time I heard someone moving above, the light had all but faded. I stood at the base of the stairs, my hands at my sides, the long wait and the staring eyeball raising the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck.
The girl appeared again, bare feet first. “Ascend,” she said. “Deinaros will see you now.”
I bowed, mostly to keep the frustration on my face away from her eyes, and climbed the stairs. I had waited at her leisure for most of the day, with no hospitality becoming for a guest. I had not eaten since breaking camp, and I had no idea what might have become of Bran, waiting alone outside the tower.
On the third floor, a diminutive man in a long garment sat in a high-backed chair, facing the staircase. The girl stood to one side, half-hidden in shadow, her hands tucked into hidden pockets in her skirt. A pair of tapestries flanked the man, each tattered on the bottom, the stark white figures of dancing skeletons picked out in thread against a soft, dark background of swirling blue currents.
“Welcome, outlander,” the man said. His voice was a low, rasping murmur, too easily lost in the sound of the sea below, but deep and strong enough to prove he wasn’t a pair of children trying to fool me.
I bowed again, dropping my pack from my shoulder. “I have come here to seek your aid in the matter of a certain book,” I said. “I have heard your name as Deinaros the All-knowing. I hope you can help me.”
“Let me see the book,” he said.
He was younger than I had expected, his hair black as volcanic glass and his eyes sharp. A long, thin hand emerged from his voluminous sleeve. On one finger sat a silver ring, set with a jewel the color of the sea.
I produced the volume from my pack, but I hesitated before placing it in his outstretched hand. If I gave it away, would I lose it forever?
But it was an evil book. If it did not return to me, perhaps it would be better to be rid of it.
Deinaros took the book and opened it, laying it flat across two hands. A drawing of the carcass of a man, hollow but for the swirling currents in his chest, gazed up from the page.
“These are the scrolls of the river-cult of Eripas, bound into a single volume,” Deinaros said. “How did you come to be in possession of it?”
“I took it from a king who wished to live forever, and the priest who performed the rituals, on an island far from here.”
“You must tell me of your journey,” he said. “But for now, I ask you this: is it your wish to evade the clutches of death? You are a young man, yet, but I see the scars of battle upon you.”
“No,” I said. “I will die when fate decrees it. I wish only to travel beyond death for a short time—as long as it takes to retrieve one who did not die, but was unjustly stolen from life.”
Deinaros’ smile was kindly, though his eyes remained flint-hard. “Well, outlander, you were wise to bring this book to me.”
“Can you help me?” I asked.
“I can,” he answered. “This book contains a certain ritual that I have long sought but could not find. It will require much of you, and more of me.”
I nodded. “I am willing to do what is necessary.”
Back to Chapter XLI: The City on the Cliffs
Forward to Chapter XLIII: The Book-Collector
This story has a LOT of chapters. Significantly more than Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea. Some of them are going to be cut, and many more of them will be combined, probably by location. In the meantime, thanks for reading!
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