The Hammer Unfalls

The woman had clearly gone mad. Glim stared at her.

“Climb what?”

Ryn studied the tower. “Well, you could take that wall to that beam, walk across it to there—” she squinted, “—then climb up that wall to the staircase. If it holds, you could reach that beam there. If not, you’d have to come down and try a different way.”

“No. Rutting, Way.”

“There is an easier way,” she said.

“Great. Let’s try that.”

Ryn walked back down the stairs and stopped at an archway. She strained, tugging on a lever. Two metal panels flew open, releasing a shower of snow into the room with a whistling wind.

She stepped onto the ledge of the window and pulled him towards her.

Glim coughed as a frigid blast of air hit him. Peering through a flurry of snow that seethed in the sky, he looked down.

The tower fell away into a gray chasm. Far below, he could barely make out the tiny shapes of everbrown trees. Trees which, Glim knew, probably towered far above him were he on the ground.

Sickened, he looked up. Between the slashes of white that assaulted his eyes, Glim saw a stone bridge. It arched from a nearby cliff to the tower.

Ryn said something, but he couldn’t hear her over the wind. She placed her lips near his ear. “Wind’s a bit rough, but at least the tower’s not iced over. I’ll toss you this rope when I get up. Curl it around your hand, take a step, curl the other hand, take a step. You get the idea. I’ll come back down to help.”

Ryn shouldered her pack and cinched it tight. She stepped further onto the ledge and shimmied along it. Kicking off, Ryn gripped a protrusion above her head and pulled herself up. One leap after the other, with the occassional sidestep, she climbed her way up to the bridge.

Glim watched her, stomach clenching. Several times he gasped, certain she’d fall. Then she curled up like a ball and he saw her head, then legs, disappear onto the bridge.

Glim’s heart raced. Moments later, a writhing shape fell from the sky and swapped him in the face. He looked up to see Ryn peering at him. She took the rope and slid down the side of the tower.

“This pack will do fine,” she said into his ear. She belted it tight around his shoulders then threaded the rope through. She did the same with his belt, then tied the bottom of the rope off against the metal window. “Hop on up!”

“No way,” he said through clenched teeth. He had no interest in leaping for the protrusion as she had done.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t reach the handhold.”

“You’re an Icer, right? Make yourself a step. Once you get past that first hold, it’s easy. Like climbing a ladder.”

Glim walked back to the ledge and held the rope. He made a double loop and gripped it so hard it dug into his palm.

Breathing intentionally, he tried to calm his racing heart. He tied to form a block of ice, but only made a handful of icy pebbles.

“Forget it,” Ryn said. “I’ll boost you up.”

Before he knew it, she’d grasped his foot and hefted him into the air. Glim grabbed the protrusion and hauled himself up to the next ledge. Trembling, he gripped the next groove in the wall, an easy reach.

Leap, panic scramble, he thought wryly.

Ryn had been right: scaling the tower did seem easy. The size and spacing of the ridges in the wall almost made it seem like it had been designed for this purpose.

The only problem was the wind. It battered Glim as he climbed.

“Something on your mind?” he yelled into the swirling snow.

I was looking for you. You’ve been gone a long time.

“Don’t suppose you’d mind backing off a little?” he shouted.

No need to yell. I can hear you just fine. You should save your voice for your new friend. You two obviously have a lot to talk about.

“What’s your problem?” he shouted.

The wind found Glim’s sleeves. They puffed out and lifted him away from the wall. For a moment, he thought he might fall.

“Seriously, what is your problem?”

I don’t trust her.

“But you trust Master Willow?”

His agenda is easy to read.

“Ryn doesn’t have an agenda.”

You clearly do not understand women.

“I haven’t known many.”

The wind settled some, and Glim saw the bridge looming above him. He sidestepped diagonally upward until it came into reach, and pulled himself up. With a smile of relief he lay on the bridge, glad for solid rock at his back.

Ryn popped over the ledge and looked down at him. “Stand up.” She hauled up the rope and unthreaded it from his belt and pack.

“Now we’ll try inside.”

Glim groaned.

“First, let me show you how to get in.” She led him to a massive doorway twice as tall as his father. “Any unlocked tower will let you into the first floor by pressing these in sequence.”

Ryn showed him a panel of nine buttons in a grid. Each had squiggles on the top of the columns and the side of the rows. “Go diagonally down. The intersection of algidon and algidon at the top left. Then aeolia crossed at the center. Finally phyr/phyr at the bottom right. Like so.”

The door resonated with a thump from inside, and swung open a little. Ryn pushed so the door swung inward. Once they went inside, she closed it behind her.

“To get out, just turn this handle and pull.”

Glim looked around at the circular chamber. Smooth, dark granite with stones that fit together perfectly, like the plant beds. The room had very little decoration: a rectangular bank of switches and dials to one side, a pile of rotted timbers, and huge cobwebs. A strip of light orange around the curve of the wall cast a faint light in the room, which his eyes soon adjusted to.

“What do we do now?” he asked. “Why are we here?”

“To give you a break. There’s nothing to do here. This is one of the most remote towers we can still get to. There are more in the mountains beyond, but the tunnels are collapsed. You’d have to walk from here.”

“How long?”

“A week or two, I suppose? Judging by the map at least.”

“There’s a map?’

“See for yourself.”

She led him to the bank of equipment. Pipes ran along the wall. A few lights fluttered but otherwise the panel of switches had gone dark. On the wall, an embossed brass plate showed a bunch of lines with triangles along them. Glim peered at the picture and saw mountain ranges. The triangles were presumably towers. One had a star in the middle.

Ryn pointed to it. “We’re here. This one back here is Wohn-Grab. Tomorrow I’ll show you this one and this one. You can see this one in the morning. This one lights up at night. We can’t easily get to it, but it still produces.”

“Produces what?”

“Some kind of algae, I think. It’s what we call spinach soup. It’s not really spinach, though. Here, I’ll show you.”

She took her mug from her pack, and held out her hand. Glim handed his over and followed her to the rectangle in the floor, framed by brass railings. She walked down the twisted stairway to an iron beam below, and walked along it to the wall to a row of spigots. She turned one. A thin stream of brown goo dribbled from it. Ryn let it fall down into the tower. The stream sputtered, and a thinner liquid spat out of it. She caught it in their mugs and walked back up.

“Cheers. It’s best not to think about it much. Just drink it down, and make a face afterward.” She guzzled the contents of her mug in one go.

Glim sniffed the pungent, thick liquid in his mug. It smelled like cold soup. He tasted it and grimaced before following her lead. The viscous goo clung to his throat. With some difficulty, he swallowed it. The bitter aftertaste coated his tongue.

“…aaand, that’s dinner,” Ryn said, smiling at his expression.

“Seriously, Miss Daryna. What are we going to do here?”

“Ryn. Tomorrow we’ll practice climbing some more. I have a second rope you can use. Maybe we’ll play around with some plying. Get your head out of your rear end.”

“I thought you couldn’t ply?”

“I can’t. But I know a thing or two. Now pick your spot and set up your bedroll. I suggest staying away from the beams. They have a way of dropping stuff onto you in the middle of the night.”

Glim unrolled his mat along the curve of the wall. It reminded him of home. Familiar.

As he lay there, his thoughts raced. He suddenly felt overwhelmed. Ryn hadn’t given him time to think. From the moment she’d caught him sneaking out of the fortress until now had been a whirlwind. The moving closet, the questions, and the casual way she’d goaded him into climbing a tower in the middle of a snowstorm. None of it made sense.

Even so, Glim felt exhaustion overtake him. Before he drifted off, he considered one final, troubling thought: What agenda did Ryn have for him?