Wood exploded within a breath of Big Leo’s face. Shrapnel tore his cheek. “What are you waiting for?” he bellowed.
Kip heaved on the lever. He pulled it all the way back until it touched stone. They heard something grate and grind. They all looked around, expecting a hole to appear.
“Where’s the entrance? You think it’s some kind of chute?” Teia asked.
“Uh, there’s a whaddaythingit over here,” Ferkudi said, pointing.
On the inside of one of the crenellations, a bolt had appeared. Wrapped around the eye bolt was woven a steel cable that disappeared into the stones at their feet, which were glowing.
“Don’t stand on it!” Teia said.
“It … it ratchets, the lever,” Ben-hadad said.
“What?” Teia asked.
But Kip got it. He threw the lever forward and pulled it back again.
“Not much time left!” Big Leo shouted.
“Not acceptable!” Cruxer yelled. “Light ’em up!”
Who yells, ‘Not acceptable’?
With each throw of the lever, more steel cable popped out of the ground, slowly crossing the entire diameter of the tower. “What is it doing?” Kip asked. “Where’s the damn hole? There’s got to be some kind of chute, right?”
He heard the sounds of luxin being flung and shouts and musket fire and the wood door disintegrating, but he had time for none of it. His world had shrunk to this duty, this place. The steel cable finally popped fully free of the floor and wrapped over what looked like a pulley on a post at the edge of the tower.
Kip pulled it again and this time it stopped. He pushed the lever and pulled back with no resistance. It was finished, whatever it was. “That’s it!” he said. “What do we got?”
“That’s no chute,” Ferkudi said, looking off the edge.
“Captain! Can you hold the door without Ferkudi? I need him!” Ben-hadad said.
“Yes! Go!” Cruxer said. He had his spectacles on and was throwing luxin through the holes in the door. The door was barely hanging by its hinges, splintered and torn by musket balls.
Suddenly, there was a lull.
“Ferkudi, carry me over there,” Ben-hadad said.
Ferkudi did it immediately, joining Kip, who was standing at the edge. The steel cable had been freed not just from the top of the tower, but from the sides of it as well, buried under mortar and stone for hundreds of years. It had only been freed from the top ten paces or so of the tower.
“Orholam have mercy. It’s broken,” Teia said. “Look.”
The stones at her feet, directly under the post, had some text in archaic Parian.
“What’s it say?” Kip asked. “Anyone? Cruxer’s busy.”
“Says, ‘The Isle’ or ‘The Island.’ Actually I’m not really sure of the difference between those,” Ferkudi said.
Of course Ferkudi knew archaic Parian. Of course he did.
They looked out to Cannon Island, which was almost a straight shot west out into the sea from here. “There’s a post all the way over there.”
He was right. A perfectly matching post had popped up on Cannon Island. It, too, appeared to have steel cable wrapped over it, pointed toward them.
“What’s the point?” Kip asked. “Is it supposed to be an anchor for magic? Who can draft over that kind of distance?”
“No, no, no,” Ben-hadad said. “They’re supposed to connect by steel cable. But that would require a vast counterweight to take up all the slack and keep the cables taut.”
“Need some help over here!” Cruxer shouted. The battle had resumed. Cruxer was doing his best to reinforce the door with luxin, but it was a losing battle. The blue just shattered or dissolved when hit with musket balls. Big Leo’s red and sub-red weren’t any help at all.
“I’ll go,” Ferkudi said. He pulled two powder horns out of his pack and ran over to join them.
Ben-hadad said, “The counterweight. It would have to be huge, see, to tear the cable free … Ah! Look!” He pointed to the side where another crenellation had popped open to reveal a compartment filled with some machines of pulleys and belts. “You snap one of those onto the cable, and ride the cable all the way to Cannon Island.”
“The cable doesn’t go to Cannon Island!” Kip said. “It doesn’t go anywhere!”
“Something’s wrong, then. We have to release the counterweight.”
They were interrupted by Cruxer shouting, “We need shot for the blunderbuss! Anyone have anything we can use?”
Usually, you could put nearly anything into a blunderbuss: rocks, nails, musket balls, whatever. But the top of the tower was bare. Any luxin short of perfectly crafted solid yellow wouldn’t survive the shot, so that was out.