The Tower Broken(32)

Sarmin considered this. ‘We know that rock turns to dust in the emptiness. The wind stops, the fire dies. Why would water be different?’

‘Earthly elements are nothing against the Storm – but what of elements from another plane?’

The young mage Moreth spoke. ‘To learn such things, High Mage, we would require an unbound elemental spirit.’

‘Indeed,’ said Govnan, ‘since the bound are corrupted by our earthly bodies.’ He sighed. ‘In this world Meksha reigns over the elements. Over the years I spent with Ashanagur I felt a strong connection to Her. I felt Her power singing in the stones, beating in my heart, running in my fingers whenever I drew a rune upon the air.’ Govnan leaned on his staff, tracing the crack with his gaze. ‘Do you think Her power remains with us now?’

‘I cannot sense such things,’ Sarmin said, disliking that it was true. ‘Can you no longer sense Her?’ He was reminded that he had taken Ashanagur from the high mage, and for the first time wondered whether that had been the wisest course.

Govnan shook his head and directed them across the lowest floor of the Tower, a dark circular space, his staff tapping against the streaked marble beneath their feet. ‘Come. I have prepared a journey for us.’ He lifted a hand and the tip of his index finger began to glow, faintly at first, then with a rosy redness that showed the shadow of his bones through his old flesh. Perhaps some ember remained of the elemental fire once trapped within him. The glow increased and finally it shone with an incandescence that made Sarmin look away and threw their shadows black upon the walls. He wondered then what fed the fire now Ashanagur had gone.

‘This is the key,’ Govnan said, and he started to trace runes into the air. His writing hung before them, as if he had cut through the fabric of the world into some bright place beyond. The archways changed in the moment Govnan set his last rune into the air. One opened now onto a white and endless sky. Opposite that entrance, natural bedrock replaced the tower’s stones, granite shot through with glistening black veins. The third archway opened into blue depths, dark and unrevealing, a wall of water undulating across the entrance in defiance of reason. And opposite that archway fire rimmed a gateway into the hottest of Herzu’s hells, an inferno landscape of molten lakes and trees of flame beneath a sun so large and close it left no room for sky.

‘Doorways into the elemental realms,’ said Govnan placing a hand on Moreth’s shoulder. No heat came from the flames, no sound or sensation from the other portals.

‘Why are we here, High Mage?’ Yet Sarmin stepped forwards.

Govnan pointed into the burning arch with a steady hand. ‘I need to go back, to revisit Lord Ashanagur in the City of Brass.’ Something flickered past the archway, something fast and large and trailing strands of fire like burning hair. ‘He will tell us something of Meksha.’

Sarmin took another step. The place mesmerised him; every part of it was suffused with the fascination that burns in a dancing flame. ‘Will he?’

‘Yes. Come.’ Govnan entered the realm of fire, and Sarmin followed.

No heat burned him; no smoke filled his lungs. Those were the by-products of combustion in his own world. Here all was pure flame, and he walked on it and through it. It licked his skin, touched his hair, slid against his lips in seductive caress.

Govnan led on without pause, seeming to know his way through intersecting rivers of liquid fire, blue and orange. At last he stopped near a vast expanse of molten rock, golden in colour but reflecting the sun’s crimson across its rippling surface. Beyond it stood a great city, its walls shimmering with heat.

‘The City of Brass,’ said Sarmin.

‘And the Lake of Fire, Lord Ashanagur’s home,’ Govnan replied, swinging his cane in a circular motion towards the centre of the lake. In seconds a pillar of flame rose from the depths. From it rose a churning ball, streaked with black and green, fire dancing along a surface twice Sarmin’s height. It pulsed before the mammoth sun, spitting showers of sparks down into the liquid metal, before moving towards them, dragging behind it tendrils of white flame.

In Sarmin’s tower room it had taken the form of a fiery man. Now Sarmin understood Ashanagur was no man.

‘Ashanagur,’ said Govnan, his voice regaining some of the timbre Sarmin had thought lost to age.

The spirit’s voice hissed and crackled. ‘You have returned, High Mage, old Flesh-and-bone. And you, who gave me my freedom. And this.’ It darted towards Moreth, who flinched. ‘Is this my payment for the crime of trespass?’

‘No. I plan to offer you something greater than one man.’