The Watchtower (2)
Unlike the Boundary, this was a land without biting cold or wind sharp as knives. In their place a fitting heat had settled, and the sun stood risen in a cloudless sky, bright enough to blind anyone who so much as glanced at it.
Set against this land, Harad was far too small. His mana sank without a trace into the mana of the earth. It felt like a flame being swallowed by a greater flame.
Then that relationship inverted. The heat pressing down upon the land thinned almost before anyone noticed; the sun in the sky seemed to shrink. That thing was devouring the land. Merely to look upon it was to feel one's eyes catch fire.
But Ellen did not look away. Her own peculiar aura somehow made it bearable.
It was a sphere the size of Jeshult's body. Its color was dark, though not absolutely so — a faint reddish tint bled into it, and that tint only made it more ominous. Light gleamed across the ominous sphere's surface. The sight was like an eclipse, fire writhing inside the light.
That was all. The fire merely raged upon the surface. And Ellen understood why: it had no need to advance.
Jeshult was shrinking. The sheer fact of that thing hanging overhead was enough to melt him, to kill him. What was it they said about wings that fly too near the sun?
Jeshult had been that wing. The fault was not his — for it was not he who had come down. It was the sun.
Yes. The sun.
So thought Ellen, forcing her parched eyes upward. Even without knowing Harad's Origin, she would have called it the sun. Nothing else could explain it.
A 3rd Circle that could pass for a 4th?
Bullshit. Ellen laughed at the sheer absurdity. Where in that thing was there anything resembling a 3rd Circle? She would have strained to believe even a 4th. Jeshult, himself a 4th, was dying before it as though his life meant nothing at all.
Thanks to this land, was it?
Projection. That pitch-black sun had risen over the North once before. Ios had died to it too.
Then, unbidden, the patchwork magical beast came to mind. Ellen had lost to that thing. Harad had won. Back then she had felt the sting of defeat — not on Harad's behalf, but toward the beast itself, because Harad's victory had been possible thanks to her own contribution.
Of course, even that alone made Harad a truly extraordinary magician. And yet not once had Ellen ever considered him her equal, let alone her better. She had sometimes wanted to cross blades with him, but the reason had been pure and simple curiosity.
…Not anymore.
Ellen felt a hunger to compete rising from the very tips of her toes. Could I cut that thing down? She couldn't say for certain. It seemed like something she would only know by trying. And she found she wanted to try. That was reason enough. Her body drew the sword on instinct and settled into a stance.
Then their eyes met. Harad had, at some point, been watching her for a good long while.
Jeshult could no longer be seen. Something that had once been Jeshult was streaming into the black sun.
“Mind the time and the place.”
Harad's eyes looked languid. They might have been angry; they might have been smiling. Reading the emotion in them was difficult. Come to think of it, Harad had always been that kind of man — and yet he always seemed to see straight through her.
“We'll have plenty of chances to meet, just the two of us.”
Ellen disliked that — and yet not enough to truly dislike it.
“That is, if you want them.”
So there would be no shortage of chances.
His whole body creaked, and yet inside he was, surprisingly, unscathed. Part of the sun had undeniably manifested, and still no wound had opened in the window called Harad. That had to be the land's doing — a land ruled by fire, existing for the sake of fire. Here, giving form to magic was easy. Even Projection.
Tempting.
If his heart had its way, he would have taken this land for himself. If not for the regression, he might even have thought a life spent here wouldn't be so bad.
“You all right?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“It made a wreck of Gulen once. An Origin that can't tell friend from foe.”
“Apart from my eyes stinging, I'm fine.”
Ellen truly was built of different stuff than Gulen.
“Why did you do that at the end?”
Ellen asked out of nowhere.
“Me?”
“That magician you ate.”
“Ah — the Origin ate him.”
Harad said it as if it were nothing.
“A magician's essence is his Origin, you see. The magician called Harad is, in the end, a vessel for the sun.” He pressed hard against his left breast. “When the vessel shakes, its contents spill out. That's what happened to Jeshult.”
“……”
“I told you before, didn't I? An Origin is never docile. These things are always trying to devour the magician who holds them.” An Origin was a double-edged sword.
“There are exceptions, of course. I call those gentle Origins. Kubel's Smoke may well be one.” In his previous life, Kubel had perhaps grown addicted to hearts — but his Origin had never devoured him. Not even sunk as he was in vengeance.
“Could that happen to you too?”
It never had in his previous life. Whether it would this time, there was no telling.
“The possibility stands open to every magician. It isn't yours to worry over, though. It's my problem.”
“……”
Harad turned his head. Hervis, too, looked better than expected. He was still unconscious, but nothing about him seemed wrong.
“Let's get inside the tower first.”
Harad took Hervis by the nape and started walking. No — he tried to walk. Hervis did not move. It wasn't that the man was heavy; Harad's own body had lost its strength. Compared to the aftermath of Ios, it was a trifling price.
“Could you carry him for me?”
“That's your problem too.”
For some reason, Ellen was cold about it.
The cold spell was brief. He didn't know the reason it ended — only that, whatever else was true of her, Ellen was a person for whom curiosity came first.
Ellen stood pointing at the tower, mouth opening and closing without a word. Astonishment had stolen her voice. Jeshult had razed everything between the first floor and the thirtieth; the walls were no different, and on some floors they had vanished entirely. And yet the tower still stood — even with its middle section sheared clean away.
No. Floating was the more fitting word. The upper section — the tower from the thirty-first floor to the fiftieth — hung there in the sky, upheld by nothing at all.
“Remarkable.”
Instead of an explanation, Harad simply marveled along with her. He had never once seen a building float in the air, not even in his previous life.
“Is the magic tower itself something foreign, then?”
“This land does not wish it to fall.”
Hervis, having come back to his senses at some point, sat up. He stared straight at Harad. It was a terribly burdensome face to meet. Harad turned away from the look and studied the tower hanging in the void. He felt no particular interference from the land.
“You treat this land as something special. No — not you. The Red Tower, rather?”
“Yes. We hold it to be the land upon which heaven descended.” As he spoke, Hervis pointed up at the sky. “Let us ascend, for a start.”
“How?”
“That is merely a shell.”
Hervis began to walk. Ellen pointed at his back — it looked as though she were asking, Shall I kill him? Harad shook his head. He was curious about the tower.
Seen from below, the tower resembled an icicle — an icicle hanging beneath a ceiling of clouds. Which meant the lower floors had left not even a trace behind. And yet Hervis moved as though the first floor still existed. He reached into the empty air as if for a handle, gripped it, turned it, even went through the motion of opening a door. He kept behaving as though the tower were all around them. He jabbed a finger into the void, waited a moment, and stepped one pace forward. For all the world like a man calling a lift.
Is he mad? …No, he isn't.
Harad's narrowed eyes went round. There was nothing there, and yet there was. A shell. Hervis's word had been perfectly chosen.
“So the land doesn't wish for the tower to fall. It was built this way from the very beginning.”
“It is because this is this land that it could be built so.”
It was only when she followed the two of them inside that Ellen finally understood their exchange. A sensation of weightlessness rose without warning, and it was no illusion. Her body had truly lifted; she was climbing through empty air.
“The lift we rode earlier.”
“……?”
When she felt along beside her, there was a wall she could not see.
“The building was transparent to begin with. The Red Tower simply plastered a brick-like shell over it.”
How was such a thing possible? If the building were truly transparent, then back when Jeshult blasted the floors apart, the two of them should have been standing on transparent floors.
“Don't try to understand. That's exactly what makes it magic.”
As always, Harad asked no understanding of her. Ellen didn't much care for that. It felt like being looked after and looked down upon in the same breath.
Some time passed before the weightlessness faded. Hervis pressed a button — invisible, yet surely there — and stepped out one pace.
“The thirty-first floor. From here on, you must proceed on foot.”
Hervis stood beside the entrance and waited for Harad and Ellen to come out. To be precise, for Harad. When Ellen emerged first he stood still; when Harad followed, he fell in behind him. From here on, the shell called a tower existed.
The thirty-first floor was nothing but stairs, the whole of it a spiral. Their end was lost to sight — they seemed to run unbroken all the way to the top.
“I have a great deal to ask.”
“Then ask it as we climb.”
Harad started up the stairs with Ellen at his side, and Hervis respectfully trailed behind.
“Walk beside me.”
“I could hardly presume to—”
“That is an order.”
“Yes.”
Ellen's eyes went round. Harad merely shrugged. He couldn't say why, but Hervis was clearly serving him as one serves a superior.
“You're remarkably obliging. Even though you must have realized long ago that I'm not of the Outlands.”
There was no more point in pretending. Jeshult was already dead — and still Hervis trotted faithfully at Harad's heels. Which meant Jeshult had never mattered to him at all.
“Is the whole Red Tower like this?”
“Fire is precious. Each of us reveres it in our own way.”
“Reverence, is it.”
Harad smiled. To Ellen, it looked like a sneer.
“3rd Circle, are you?”
“I fall short, I fear.”
“On this land, you might even stand against a 4th Circle.”
“Yes. We call it the Sacred Ground of Fire.”
That was why Hervis had shown no fear of Jeshult.
“Other towers must have their sacred grounds too.”
“None to compare with this one.”
Hervis looked enormously proud.
“And you belong to the Red Tower?”
“That is the shared understanding of the Outlands — and the truth.”
“The Red Tower is more formidable than I took it for, then.”
“No tower in all of history has ever surpassed the Red Tower.”
Hervis's eyes finished the sentence for him: none ever would. His gaze burned like fire.
“I heard the Red Tower has no master.”
“The King has merely stepped away for a time.”
Hervis called the Red Tower's master the King.
“And I hear it is damming the current toward Paradise. You said as much earlier, I noticed.”
Had even the Ivory Tower turned, the Red Tower would not have been able to hold back the current toward Paradise. That was what Hervis had told Jeshult.
“What current?”
“The conquest of the continent.”
Ellen's eyes flared wide. Her hand rose toward her sword, and Harad lifted an arm to bar her.
“That sounds to me as though the Red Tower opposes the conquest of the continent.”
“You heard correctly. We do.”
“Why oppose it?”
“Because the King has not returned.”
The Outlands' invasion was still fifteen years away. Until then, the Outlands had chosen infiltration over open assault. So that was the best they could manage. The Ivory Tower stood neutral, and the Red Tower opposed. So the Outlands have factions of their own. That was why the conquest of the continent had been realized only fifteen years on — which meant, put the other way, that the Red Tower would change its heart within those fifteen years. Or else be destroyed.
The latter, more likely.
In his previous life, Harad had known precisely two fire magicians. One of them was himself.
“What is your Origin?”
“Matchstick Flame.”
Hervis was the third fire magician Harad had come to know.
“Do all the Red Tower's magicians bear fire Origins?”
“They do.”
“Many of them?”
“Not many, as I am sure you have guessed.”
Meaning not few, either.
“Just as I thought.”
Harad asked a great deal after that. Most of it concerned the Outlands; the rest, the Red Tower.
“The Outlands have their own nobility. It begins at the 4th Circle.”
The King was a Tower Master. In effect, the Outlands held many kings.
“And the child of a 4th Circle — is that child noble as well?”
“Not by our rules, but in practice there is no difference. The parent bird is noble, after all.”
It meant the harvest of hearts was funneled down to the child. Gorging on them did not guarantee a higher Circle, but it unquestionably gave an advantage.
“So the Tower Masters aren't hereditary either.”
“No. The finest magician becomes that tower's King.”
The finest. Harad knew those words did not refer simply to Circle. In the Outlands, talent meant one's Origin. A great Origin made for a great Circle — one of the truths the Outlands lived by.
“As I understand it, the finest Origin in a tower's history becomes its name.”
In proof of that, every tower's name borrowed the Origin of the greatest magician among all its past Masters. As far as Harad knew, the tower where the winds gathered was named Storm.
“That is correct. They say the Storm was a truly great King.”
As expected. Hervis had called the Origin — not the magician — the King. It was the Outlands' guiding principle: they ranked the Origin above the magician who bore it. It was one of the reasons Harad had come to believe that a magician's essence was his Origin.
“Then why is the Red Tower named for a color, and not an Origin?”
“Because it must not be dared spoken. The Red Tower is the greatest tower in the Outlands.”
Which meant its master was the greatest King in the Outlands.
Harad's face prickled with fresh embarrassment. The Outlands measured genius by Origin, and the Sun was the most immense concept fire possessed. If the Red Tower ever chose its King, it would be Harad. Not something a man should say of himself — and he had no intention of going to the Outlands, either — but even judged objectively, it was plain fact.
He took Hervis's attitude as the evidence. The man was scrupulously deferential and answered whatever was asked of him.
“Am I the magician who will be your King?”
“I pray for it myself, truly… but no. It will not be you.”
Hervis smiled sheepishly.
“The Red Tower keeps a prophecy. We are searching for the one it points to.”
The search and the prophecy. He had heard those words from Ios — that the Red Tower was obsessed with both.
“Our King belongs to a woman. So the prophecy says.”
Earlier, Hervis had called the Origin — not the magician — the King. Whatever that Origin was, it meant the magician who bore it was a woman.
“Might you perhaps be a woman, Lord Harad?”
Hervis asked without a trace of prejudice.
“Pfft.”
Ellen laughed beside him.
“Ah. We're here.”
…The top of the tower had come into view.