The Watchtower (3)
There was nothing at all at the top of the tower.
It looked like nothing more than an ordinary rooftop, and scattering his magic to all four corners changed nothing about that. Not a single thing set it apart. The tower itself was certainly special, of course... and yet he could see no reason why a structure this extraordinary should ever have needed to be built.
"Something on your mind, Miss Harad?"
"It had been a fair conclusion."
"Yes, Miss Harad."
Ellen giggled, then drifted over to the railing to take in the view.
It was a spectacle, if ever there was one. The slightest turn of her gaze brought something new into view: a typhoon on the move, a blizzard raging, rain falling in the distance. The Boundary was hell, without question — but seen from this far away, it was beautiful in a way that chilled the blood.
"You called this tower a watchtower."
That was what Hervis had named it — this tower that Ellen had taken for a magic tower of the old days, the tallest structure she had ever laid eyes on in her life.
"A magic tower would stand taller than this, I take it."
"Yes. The magic tower is our symbol and our pride. It must stand taller than anything."
The taller the tower, Hervis explained, the loftier its standing.
"Which is the tallest, then?"
"The Red Tower."
"I asked about the present day."
"..."
Hervis did not answer. It was his way of refusing to admit it. His pride in the Red Tower ran deep.
"So what is the purpose of this watchtower?"
If a watchtower were truly its purpose, it should have borne no shell at all — transparency would have suited that function far better. Yet the Red Tower had draped a shell over this transparent building. One designed to be seen.
"This place is a watchtower, a beacon, and a lighthouse," Hervis answered, as though he had been waiting for precisely that question. "It was raised by the King who founded the Red Tower, when he foresaw his own death drawing near. 'Light a fire here, and it shall show the way to the generations that follow.' So the King decreed."
Harad looked around them. There was nothing here — no object, no enchantment — that pointed anywhere at all.
"Only when a fire is lit does the direction appear. No one has ever managed it. So — forgive our presumption — we draped a building over this place." It was so that anyone who carried fire might make the attempt, Hervis said. He added that it would matter not at all if that someone was a magical beast.
"And what lies at its end?"
"A relic the King prepared for the next King."
Prepared. The word made Harad's eyes gleam. It could only mean the relic itself was the King's preparation — something like Kubel's smoke, perhaps. No. It would have to be something no mere wisp of smoke could even begin to be weighed against.
"And the previous King never used it?"
"The King who raised this place is the previous King."
Meaning there had been only one King since the founding of the Red Tower. And with barely that to its name, the Red Tower still called itself the greatest. Harad gave a hollow laugh. He would do well, it seemed, not to take Hervis's words at face value.
Still, it was probably true that they had once held the highest standing. The greatest of all — no longer. But as they say, it takes three generations for even the wealthiest house to fall, and it was precisely because the Red Tower had once been the greatest that it still had a little fight left in it. Even that was fated to vanish within fifteen years. The Outer Realm would invade the continent in the end.
"Will you light the fire?"
The words were an invitation, but what Hervis truly wanted was for Harad to light a fire here.
"Before that, just a few more questions."
"As many as you like."
Hervis's lips flickered restlessly, as if begging him to hurry.
"You said the Red Tower is searching for its King." Harad had no idea what a source of fire greater than the Sun could even be... but whatever it was, the magician who bore such an origin was a woman. The Red Tower was infiltrating the continent to find her — unlike the other towers, whose purpose was invasion.
"Once you find this King, what changes?"
"We will reclaim our former glory."
"And then?"
"We will fulfill the Long-Cherished Wish of Paradise, by the Red Tower's own power."
Hervis's eyes glazed over, soft and dreamy. He was seeing the future.
"This Long-Cherished Wish of Paradise — does it mean the conquest of the continent?"
"It does."
Ellen drew her sword. Harad stayed her hand. There were still questions left unanswered.
"Then why is the Red Tower opposing it? Why not simply conquer the place together, starting now?"
"Because our King is not yet here." Hervis's eyes snapped wide open, as though the haze had never touched them. "The one who conquers the continent must be our King. Their fire will lie coiled across the whole of it."
The Red Tower did not oppose the conquest of the continent. It opposed anyone who was not the Red Tower's King carrying out that conquest.
"A grand ambition."
"One that will soon be realized."
"And in that ambition, does Serzilla burn as well?"
"Of course."
Hervis beamed.
"How unfortunate."
Harad smiled too. Smiling back at him, he kindled the flame. At the sight of it, Hervis's eyes melted into haze once more.
"Take me as your fuel, and become a still greater fire. And I pray that you will light the fire here."
Hervis did not resist. Far from resisting, he briskly saw to his last words.
"Do the other towers do this too? I mean dying without so much as a struggle against an origin of a higher concept."
"Only the Red Tower is like this."
Upon water floats ice; the earth is different wherever you stand. Winds collide with winds, and every iron keeps its own composition. And ivory has no root at all.
"Fire alone becomes one."
So Hervis smiled. He was simply rejoicing that he would belong to a greater fire.
"You people are like fanatics."
"We are merely fire."
"And what if the King you find refuses?"
"The King, too, is fire."
Harad gave another hollow laugh. Glancing back, he found Ellen's expression nothing short of murderous. If he said one word about sparing Hervis, she looked ready to kill Harad along with him. Not that he had any intention of it.
"One last question, then."
"Yes."
"Do you know the Torch?"
"The Torch, too, will honor you."
"...Bullshit."
The fire blazed.
The flames that had devoured Hervis were behaving in a way that was anything but normal. They had slipped free of Harad's intent, and no effort to snuff them out did any good.
Excitement, was it?
That had been his first thought. It had been rather a lot of fire for the killing of one man. By now, he judged, it had settled. And still the fire would not die. However he moved his magic, it refused to listen.
"Why won't it go out?"
"It won't go out."
As though it had lost its mind, the fire swelled and swelled. It seized the rooftop whole, then came whirling down through the floors below.
"I believe it's time we went down."
Harad looked over the railing, all the way to the ground far below. "Can you manage it?"
For Harad it was impossible. For Ellen, it was not. She swept him up into her arms and stepped out onto the railing.
"Do carry me, then."
"It really suits you, Miss Harad."
And Ellen leapt.
The fall was so great that the parched wind lashed at them like a typhoon. KA-BOOM! The bone-dry earth could not withstand the impact and gave way. Even standing in the crater it had left, Ellen did no more than knit her brows.
"Aww, my feet are all pins and needles."
She had dropped from the height of the clouds, and all it had earned her was a tingle in her soles. This was precisely why it was called Heavenly Might — strength bestowed by the heavens themselves.
"Much obliged."
Without letting anything show, Harad climbed down out of her arms. Praising her for it would serve nothing; it would only make things stilted between them.
"This isn't your doing, is it?"
The moment they clambered out of the crater, Ellen was pointing back at the watchtower. Somewhere along the way, the fire Harad had kindled had swallowed the tower's uppermost levels.
"It isn't."
The flames that had scoured the upper levels were streaming away into empty air. Which meant they were not content with the shell — they were burning the tower's true, transparent body as well.
"I suspect that's what he meant."
Light a fire, he had said, and a direction would appear. It seemed the watchtower itself was the firewood.
"You've stopped using his name?"
"He wasn't worth the name."
The corner of Ellen's mouth lifted. "Good. Then I won't call you 'Miss' anymore."
The fire had already eaten its way down to the ground floor. Even so, the watchtower did not lean. It grew thin instead — thin as a single drawn line — and that line seemed to become one with the smoke rising into the sky.
So that's how it was done.
A watchtower, a beacon, a lighthouse. Gazing at the smoke, Harad understood at last what Hervis had meant. The smoke born of the burning tower was inscribing a line across the heavens. And even after the tower had burned away to nothing and the fire itself was spent, the line did not vanish. Instead it stretched long and unbroken toward a single direction.
So at its end lies the King's relic.
The smoke — the line — ran straight to the southwest. Its far end was lost to sight, but the bearing it pointed was unmistakable. Somewhere near the Second Wall. The heart of the Boundary, or thereabouts.
"We're not going, right?"
"..."
The Red Tower's King was a woman. The relic waiting at the end of that line belonged to that woman. Which meant it would be useless to him even if he picked it up off the ground. But... was that really true? A relic the King had prepared for the next King. Hervis had declared it so, but Harad did not take his word for anything — it was distrust of a fanatic named Hervis, and confidence in himself. However he turned the matter over, he could not bring himself to believe that any origin stood above the Sun.
I want to see it.
He wanted to lay eyes on this King's relic with his own two eyes. And to confirm for himself whether it truly could not be used.
But saying so plainly was another matter — not with Ellen's eyes on him. It wasn't because he had scolded an overexcited Ellen back when they climbed out of the tunnel. Harad was confident enough in his own shamelessness to walk back something he'd said as many times as need be. But... he had no confidence whatsoever in his ability to withstand Ellen's fist.
"If you hit me, I'll die."
"We're not going, right? Even after everything you said to me earlier."
"It's in the opposite direction from the Outer Realm."
"You're the one who called it the most dangerous place in the Boundary."
Ellen's fist was smaller than Elaine's had been in his past life. But the strength packed inside it would be just the same. Harad had seen that fist — one that carried not even a trace of aura — split human forms apart more times than he cared to count.
"I don't intend to go right now. The conditions are poor."
"So you do mean to go."
"And you're coming with me. After all, on my own I wouldn't even dare to dream of it."
The fist eased, just slightly — down to precisely the force needed to kill a man.
"Next time, the turn is yours. Make that twice over, in fact — I stepped in twice today."
Going strictly by the rotation, Hervis should have died at Ellen's hand.
"I'm curious what lies at the end of that smoke. It won't be the King's relic alone. A treasure that precious wouldn't be sitting there all on its own, surely."
The fist loosened a little more.
"Things no mouth could describe will be lying scattered everywhere. There may even be magicians or magical beasts who have lived for hundreds of years."
Ellen's ears pricked. Her trademark voracious curiosity was being stirred awake.
"Didn't he say so himself? The King who prepared the relic was the first King. Which would make it a land that has remained unknown for an awfully long time."
The unknown. No word whetted curiosity quite like it. At some point, her fist had opened flat. For that, a punch would have been worth it.
"Strike me later, if you would — Shura will be watching."
They had agreed to spend the night together at Kubel's house.
The road back to the tunnel was safe. No blood was falling from the sky — the colossal magical beast had apparently moved elsewhere in search of prey. Ellen was bitterly disappointed about that. She had been hoping for a glimpse of the great beast's face, or perhaps an ambush by some other beast.
Arriving at the tunnel, Ellen crawled in first. It was a kind of pact between them. Heading out to the Boundary, Harad went first; coming back, Ellen did. That was the only way to keep the chill and the wind of the Boundary from ever touching her.
Though she could easily have crawled many times faster, Ellen held her speed in check. It was repayment, and consideration, for Harad — the man who stood between her and the cold.
"By the way."
About halfway through the tunnel, Ellen asked, almost as if to herself. "Why did you stop asking questions?"
"Hm?"
"About the Outer Realm."
"Whether it's heaven?"
"Yes."
Whether the Outer Realm truly was a magician's heaven, whether the magicians who defected there lived well — Harad had asked none of the questions any magician born on the continent would have ached to ask. The only things he had asked were things Ellen herself might have wondered.
"I found I had no great wish to know. Not before, and not going forward."
"Explain that in plain words, please."
"I didn't want to be shaken."
Heheh. A small laugh escaped Ellen at that. In that dream, does Serzilla burn as well? — the question Harad had put to Hervis came back to her. She didn't know why, but Harad was looking out for Serzilla.
"Do you really intend to become Serzilla's vassal?"
"That is my intention. Still dislike the idea?"
"I'm fine with it. What the Grand Duke's heir thinks, I can't say."
"Then that's all that matters."
Harad answered, sounding satisfied. Ellen found that amusing. And he doesn't know a thing. What on earth does he think he's becoming?
"May I ask one more thing?"
"As many as you like."
It was the same answer Hervis had given. But this time Ellen did not laugh. Uncharacteristically, she hesitated for a moment.
"Who is the Torch?"
Harad's final question. The only one whose meaning she couldn't fathom. Asking had felt a little awkward — and in the end, she hadn't been able to help herself. It couldn't be helped. That had been the first time she had ever seen Harad curse.
"The sworn enemy of House Iagar."
"What?"
Thunk. Ellen cracked her head against the tunnel ceiling. But the tunnel was far too narrow for her to turn around and see the look on Harad's face.
"My enemy. The one who killed my family and turned my home to ash."
House Iagar had not burned.
Not by Harad's hand.