I reached at last the upper tower chamber. It opened all around me, a round chamber with a domed ceiling. Sixteen panels made up the walls of the room and eight were of thick glass, streaked and filthy. They subdued the winter sunlight flooding into the room through them, making it at once lit and gloomy. One of the windows was shattered and lay in shards both within and without the chamber, for a narrow parapet ran around the outside of the tower. A great round table was partially collapsed in the center of the room. Two men and three women, all armed with pointers, were gesturing at where the table had once dominated the chamber, discussing something. One of the men seemed quite angry. I stepped around the phantom table and bureaucrats. A narrow door opened easily out onto the balcony.
There was a wooden railing running about the edge of the parapet but I did not trust it. Instead I walked a slow circuit of that tower, caught between wonder and fear of falling. On the south side, a wide river valley spread out before me. In the far distance was an edging of dark blue hills that held up the pale winter sky. The river wound, a fat lazy snake, through the near part of the valley. In the distance I could see other towns on the river. Beyond the river was a wide green valley, thickly treed or populated with tidy farmsteads which blinked in and out of existence when I shook my head to clear my eyes of ghosts. I saw a wide black bridge across the river and the road continuing on beyond it. I wondered where it led. Briefly I saw bright towers glinting in the distance. I pushed the ghosts away from my mind and saw a distant lake with steam rising off it in the watery sunlight. Was Verity out there somewhere?
My eyes wandered to the southeast and widened at what I saw there. Perhaps there was the answer to some of my questions. A whole section of the city was gone. Simply gone. No crumble of ruins were there, no fire- blackened rubble. Only a great and sudden rift gaped in the earth, as if some vast giant had driven in a giant wedge and split it wide. The river had filled it in, a shining tongue of water intruding into the city. The remains of buildings teetered on its edge still, streets ended abruptly at the water. My eyes traced this huge wound in the earth. Even at this distance, I could tell that the great crack extended beyond the far shore of the river. The destruction had plunged like a spear deep into the heart of the city. The placid water shone silver under the winter sky. I wondered if some sudden earthquake had been the death blow to this city. I shook my head. Too much of it remained standing still. No doubt it had been a great disaster, but it did not explain the city's death to me.
I walked slowly around to the north side of the tower. The city spread out at my feet, and beyond it I saw vineyards and grainfields. And beyond them, a forested stretch with the road running through it. Several days' ride away were the mountains. I shook my head to myself. By all my bearings, I must have come from there. Yet I did not recall the intervening journey at all. I leaned back against the wall and wondered what to do. If Verity were somewhere in this city, I felt no tingle of his presence. I wished I could recall why I had left my companions and when. Come to me, come to me, whispered through my bones. An overwhelming dreariness rose up in me and I longed simply to lie down where I was and die. I tried to tell myself it was the elfbark. It felt more like the aftereffects of near-constant failure. I went back into the central chamber to get out of the chill winter wind.
As I stepped back in through the shattered window, a stick rolled under my foot and I nearly fell. When I recovered, I glanced down and wondered that I had not noticed before. At the base of the broken window were the remains of a small fire. Soot had smudged some of the hanging glass remaining in the side part of the window frame. I stooped to touch it cautiously; my finger came away black. It was not very fresh, but neither was it older than a few months; otherwise the winter storms would have weathered more of it away. I stepped away and tried to make my weary mind work. The fire was made from wood, but it had included sticks as from trees or bushes. Someone had deliberately carried small twigs up here to kindle this fire. Why? Why not use the remains of the table? And why climb this high to make a fire? For the view?
I sat down beside the remains of the fire and tried to think. When I leaned my back against the stone wall, it gave more substance to the arguing phantoms around the table. One shouted something at another, and then drew an imaginary line with his pointer over the collapsed table. One of the women crossed her arms across her chest and looked stubborn, while another smiled coldly and tapped with her own stick on the table. Cursing myself for an idiot, I leaped to my feet to look down at the ancient ruins of the table.
The second that I perceived it was a map, I was sure Verity had made the fire. A foolish grin spread wide across my face. Of course. A tall windowed tower looking out over the city and surrounding countryside, and in the center of the room, a great table holding the most peculiar map I had ever seen. It was not drawn on paper, but made of clay to mimic the rolling countryside. It had cracked in the collapsing of the table, but I could see how the river had been wrought of shining chips of black glass. There were tiny models of the buildings of the city beside the arrow-straight roads, tiny fountains filled with blue chips of glass, even twigs leafed with green wool to represent the greater trees in the city. At intervals throughout the city, small crystals of stone were fixed in the map. I suspected they represented compass points. All was there, even tiny squares to represent stalls in the market. Despite its ruin, it delighted the eye with its detail. I smiled, very certain that within months of Verity returning to Buckkeep, there would be a similar table and map in his Skill-tower.
I bent over it, ignoring the phantoms, to retrace my steps. I located the map tower easily. As luck would have it that section of the map was much cracked, but I still was fairly certain of my path as my fingers walked where my feet had the night before. Once more I marveled at the straightness of the roads and the precise intersections where they met. I was not certain exactly where I had first 'awakened' the night before, but I was able to select a section of the city that was not too large and say with certainty it was within that square. My eye returned to the tower and I carefully noted the number of intersections and the turns I must make to return to my starting point. Perhaps once there, if I cast about, I might find something that would awaken my memories of the missing days. I wished suddenly for a bit of paper and a quill to sketch out the surrounding area. When I did so, the meaning of the fire was instantly clear.
Verity had used a burnt stick to make his map. But upon what? I glanced around the room, but there were no hangings on these walls. Instead the walls between the windows were slabs of white stone, incised with … I stood up to get a closer look. Wonder overtook me. I put my hand on the cold white stone, and then peered out of the dirty window beside it. My fingers traced the river I could see in the distance, then found the smooth track of the road that crossed it. The view out of each window was represented by the panel beside it. Tiny glyphs and symbols might have been the names of towns or holdings. I scrubbed at the window, but most of the dirt was on the outside.
The significance of the broken window was suddenly clear. Verity had broken out that pane, for a clearer view of what lay beyond it. And then he had kindled that fire and used a burnt stick to copy something, probably to the map he had been carrying since Buckkeep. But what? I went to the broken window and studied the panels to either side of it. A hand had smeared the left one, wiping dust away from it. I set my own hand upon the print of Verity's palm in the dust. He had cleared this panel and stared out the window, and then copied something down. I could not doubt that it was his destination. I wondered if what was marked on the panel somehow coordinated with the markings on the map he had carried. I wished in vain that I had Kettricken's copy with me to compare the two.
Out of the window, I could see the Mountains to the north of me. I had come from there. I studied the view and then tried to relate it to the etched panel beside me. The flickering ghosts of the past were no help. One moment I looked out over a forested countryside; the next I was looking at vineyards and grainfields. The only feature that was in common to both views was the black ribbon of road that went straight as an arrow to the mountains. My fingers tracked the road up the panel. There in the distance it reached the mountains. Some glyphs were marked there, where the road diverged. And a tiny sparkle of crystal had been embedded in the panel there.
I put my face close to the panel and tried to study the tiny glyphs there. Did they match the markings on Verity's map? Were they symbols Kettricken would recognize? I left the tower room and hastened down the stairs, passing through phantoms that seemed to grow stronger and stronger. I heard their words clearly now and caught glimpses of the tapestries that had once graced the walls. There were many dragons depicted on them. 'Elderlings?' I asked of the echoing stone walls, and heard my words shivering up and down the stairs.
I sought something to write upon. The tattered tapestries were damp rags that crumbled at a touch. What wood there was was old and rotten. I broke down the door to one inner chamber, hoping to find its contents well preserved. Inside, I found the interior walls lined with wooden racks of pigeonholes, each holding a scroll. They looked substantial, as did the writing implements on the table in the center of the room. But my groping fingers found little more than the ghosts of paper, crisp and fragile as ashes. My eyes showed me a stack of fresh vellums on a corner shelf. My groping fingers pushed away rotted debris, to find finally a usable fragment no bigger than
