The wind playfully swept through her hair then splashed up the river. The narrow, briar-free path along the river made for an easier journey. Overhead, the familiar song of ashbirds welcomed her back to their roosting trees while the moonlight peeked in and out between the dense canopy. Dnara held out the everbright lantern with one hand while holding onto Athan with the other. Aside from his holding her arm in return, he remained unresponsive and hadn’t said a word since leaving the deadwood knoll.
As they crested a small hill, Treven let out a soft bray and drew Dnara’s attention to a large shadow looming ahead in the distance. She knew its shape immediately, though something about it seemed different. Tilted, almost. Not quite as it should be.
“That’s the tower,” she assured Treven. “But...” A chill ran up her arms and the lantern’s light dimmed. “Something isn’t right.”
Treven looked back at her, waiting. They’d come so far; too far to stop now. She took in a deep breath, calmed her nerves and held the lamp more steadily.
“Well, it had been on fire the last time I saw it,” she said, trying to lighten things with a touch of humor even if the butterflies in her stomach were far from laughing. “I don’t know what we’ll find; what might be left,” of the people and animals, she added silently and swallowed against a uncomfortable knot in her throat. “But I have to see it. I have to know.”
Treven turned his head back to the shadow and walked forward, leaving the brook behind as it turned sharply northward. The trees and thicket thinned and the songs of the ashbirds dwindled until not a sound broke the night. There were no signs of ravens sitting in the darkness, but also no owls nor insects, and even the moonlight appeared to shine less brightly so close to the tower. The air clung to her cloak and skin, not damp but heavy and oddly stale, like the air within the sealed vault where Keeper Ishkar had kept the most ancient of his books.
She’d only been allowed near the vault a few times, to help Keeper Ishkar carry the gigantic tomes up to his room, but she could never forget how the vault had felt different than everything else. Not oppressive nor frightening, but almost out of place and heavy in secrets. Separate from the outside world. Apart from time.
They came first to a stone wall no taller than Treven. Long stretches of it had tumbled down to the ground, over which had grown thick vegetation and thorny rose vines. She stared down at the mounds of stone as Treven passed. When last she’d seen the wall, it had been whole and unbroken. Those fallen pieces looked as if they’d been there for countless ages, weathered by rain and sunken deep into the mud.
Treven followed the road, which too had been covered in overgrowth, its cobbled stones no longer visible along most of its length and the patchy grass being the only true indication it was ever a road at all. When they reached a break in the wall where an archway only partially reached out to meet the other side, Dnara could only guess at where the entry gate had gone.
“There used to be a gate,” she said and Treven stopped to glance up at her. He must have thought her mad, as it didn’t appear there ‘used’ to be much of anything there. It looked as if the gate and its walls had been left to rot for much, much longer than a fire and a few weeks of abandonment could explain. The tower from her memory began to unravel, and with it her confidence. “And this wall... This isn’t right. Maybe we should wait for Jenny?”
Athan’s hand gave her forearm a small squeeze where it held around his waist. “Keep going,” he said on a voice trapped within pain. “There’s more you must see.”
Her heart leapt to her throat at the sudden sound of his voice. “You... You knew it was in ruins like this?”
“Yes,” he rasped. “When I found you, I...” His words faltered into a hard-fought breath. “Go and see.”
With those words and a small nod from Dnara, Treven walked them under the broken archway and into the courtyard. Where once there had been a vegetable garden, there now grew untamed vines, a large mulberry bush and the rotting trunk of an oak tree that had been at least a hundred years old when it fell. Across from the garden had been a barn full with pigs, chickens, and a milking cow named Honey. The animals had long departed, and only a few courses of cobbled stones remained to show where the barn walls had been. Still, it was in better shape than the squat kitchen. Only the stone floor and half of the main chimney gave any indication there had been a kitchen at all. Gone too was the bunkhouse, where the apprentices had slept. Not even a floor remained of the wooden shacks that had housed the other kept and collared slaves. A rusted anvil set atop an ancient hardwood stump surrounded by thorny bushes marked where the workshop once stood.
And there, rising from the center of the courtyard stood the tower. Well, part of it. The stone steps spiraling upwards remained intact up to the fourth landing, but the outside wall and the topmost floor had tumbled to the ground, exposing barren stone rooms. Keeper Ishkar’s office, the place Dnara had spent most her life, had become nothing more than a pile of weathered rubble that had crushed Keeper Ishkar’s beloved apple orchard. Not a single apple tree remained, nor piece of furniture or book or cloth or...
There were no bodies, Dnara realized with a gasp. She had prepared herself to see the charred remains of her
