Cyrus had just removed the spells from Francesca's robes when the hierophantic apprentice returned with orders to report to the warden and marshal on the jumpdeck. After delivering her message, the girl hurried away.
Cyrus stared at Francesca. “I refuse to lie.”
“Then don't,” she said. “Just leave out what's dangerous. You were flying above Avel when you saw me fall from a kite. After catching me, you learned that the sanctuary might be under attack and came here to warn the wind marshal.”
He crossed his arms. “You want me to be a storyteller?”
“Unless you can keep our fat from the fire with another art form. Dance perhaps? Want to double step around the warden while I pirouette for the marshal? Or maybe sculpt a bust of theâ”
“Don't be difficult,” he said. “Very well. I'll tell them just what they need to know.” He paused and then added, “For now.”
“Good. Until we know what's truly happening, it's your duty to be careful.”
“Don't tell me about duty, Magistra.” He turned toward the flap. “Come on then; let's get this over with.” She followed and discovered a rope ladder and the long sandstone side of the garden tower. Fifty feet below, a field of knee-high grass waved in the constant wind.
Cyrus climbed up the ladder as sure as a squirrel on a tree. Every gust made Francesca cling to the rungs. When Cyrus was more than ten feet ahead, she called out for him to wait. He looked back, his black curls flying, his face unreadable.
When she was close enough to touch his heels, they climbed twenty feet more to a narrow ledge that led into a dim hallway. Cyrus helped her off the ladder but then pulled her aside so that three hierophants could pass. Each man had a large cloth pack strapped to his back. Francesca hadn't noticed them on the ladder, but they must have been climbing impatiently behind her.
Cyrus led her after the three hierophants down the dim hallway. Eventually they entered a long, narrow space that stretched upward for a great
length. Far above them shone a strip of blue sky dappled with seaborn clouds. It was like standing at the bottom of a deep mountain fissure. But the fissure walls were made not of stone but of row upon row of scaffolding. Some supported elaborate pulleys and chains. About half of the scaffolding was filled with folded sailcloth.
Francesca watched one of the hierophants climb among these scaffoldings and then remove his pack. He handed it off to another man, received another pack, and began hiking up a long staircase.
Suddenly Francesca understood what she was seeing. She had known that the garden tower was a warehouse. Mundane sailcloth was shipped down from Dar and Queensport and unloaded at Coldlock Harbor. From there it was flown to the garden tower, from the tower to the windcatchers, where it was saturated with hierophantic language.
The men she was watching had just returned a batch of saturated cloth and were about to fly blank cloth out to the windcatcher. She was watching a link in the long chain of literary production that supplied the hierophants of Daga, Queensport, and Erram with enough language to keep their airships aloft and their merchant ships sailing faster even than the legendary Ixonian catamarans.
If the hierophants failed to produce enough cloth, their kingdom's great trading wealth would vanish. Worse, the Spirish armies and fleets would lose their aerial and naval support. Like all other literary disciplinesâthe wizards, the pyromancers, and so onâthe hierophants had sworn never to directly participate in the wars of the six human kingdoms. But this promise did not stop them from providing reconnaissance, communication, and limited transportation to the Spirish forces. Without this advantage and the gold brought in by merchant ships with hierophantic sails, the east coast of Spires would once again become a thoroughfare for the armies of Lorn and Verdant as the old enemies once again went for each other's throats.
As Francesca thought about all this, Cyrus led her through the fissurelike space to a narrow set of stairs.
Twice, Francesca saw where the stairs branched off into hallways. Once she glimpsed a dormitory. Everything was crampedâsteep steps and low ceilings. It reminded her of being inside a boat's hull, which made sense considering that half of all hierophants served on Spirish merchant ships. Many male hierophants took to seaships, where their greater weight was not as much of a disadvantage as it was aboard an airship.
“I'll do the talking,” Cyrus said as they neared the tower's top. “If you must speak, don't show off. And always show equal respect to both the warden and the marshal.”
They stepped outside. The brilliant sky now held tall white clouds that flew overhead with dreamlike speed. The wind was strong and carried bursts of rain so fine it was more like mist. Below them, the redwood jumpdeck was perhaps twenty feet wide and thirty long, still wet from the last rain.
In the upwind direction, the tower sloped down like a shark's fin to provide a row of smaller decks, where incoming airships and windcatchers docked. To the east, the pass stretched away inland. All the wide mouths of the windcatchers faced them. Francesca focused on the nearest one.
Inside the windcatcher, hundreds of radial sails were arranged like windmill blades and rotated around a central point. Somehow a hierophant was suspended within the windcatcher. The many sails focused the energy of their rotation into the hierophant's heart and accelerated its spellwriting. Each augmented heartbeat produced a hundred thousand times more runes than it otherwise would.
This was the hierophantic key to power. Their language was produced only in heart muscle, was limited to cloth, and melted into a wind when cast. However, they had harnessed nature's power, transformed the wind into words. From a school of kite-flying hermits on the slopes of Mount Spires, they had grown into the linguistic backbone of a powerful kingdom.
“Warden!” a man yelled.
Suddenly Francesca noticed two hierophants standing under a small wooden pavilion on the deck's downwind side. Both were of average height for hierophants, which was to say barely five feet tall. Neither wore a turban or veil. The first was a man with pale skin, short white hair thinning in the front. The second was a gaunt, dark brown woman who kept her dense black and silver hair trimmed close to her head. She was facing away, seemingly studying her wind garden.
Given their ranks, both hierophants had to be powerful spellwrights, and so would have aged only slowly. Though he looked late into his forties, she late into her fifties, Francesca would guess they were both past their first century.
“Cyrus!” the man was calling. He gestured for them to approach.
“What's this news about an attack?”
Cyrus and Francesca walked over. “Warden Treto,” he said, bowing to the man and then the woman. “Marshal Oria.” The woman looked away from the pass only long enough to nod at the newcomers.
Cyrus cleared his throat. “Apologies for my sudden appearance. We had an unexpected event at Avel.”
“Go on,” the tower warden said.
Cyrus's eyes flickered to Francesca and then back to his superiors. “This is Magistra Francesca DeVega, a cleric of our canonist's infirmary. I was flying above Avel, coordinating the watch patrols when Magistra made an emergency blind jump. When I caught her and learned the infirmary was under attack from a curse, I flew here to warn the wind garden.”
The tower warden's eyes narrowed. “What orders did you leave?”
The light around them dimmed as a cloud covered the sun. Cyrus shifted his weight. “My pilots had patrol orders. The lycanthropes had just ambushed a caravan at the North Gate. We were on watch for a second attack.”
The tower warden frowned. “But regarding the curse in the sanctuary, what orders did you give?”
“None, sir.”
“Aren't you concerned for your city? What didâ”
Without looking away from the pass, the marshal laid a hand on the tower warden's arm. He fell silent. “Magistra DeVega,” the marshal said in a powerful voice, “what makes you think it was an attack?”
Francesca cleared her throat. “My lady, aphasia was spreading among all spellwrights in the infirmary.”
The marshal looked at Francesca. “You knew the dangers of opening a jumpchute?”
Francesca met the older woman's eyes. “I judged them merely disastrous compared with the catastrophic danger of not opening the jumpchute.”
The marshal paused before turning back to the pass.
The tower warden was still looking at Cyrus. “But why, Air Warden of Avel, did you abandon your city?”
Cyrus opened his mouth to reply, but the marshal preempted him. “Do not answer that, Air Warden,” she commanded. “Avel exists to support the wind garden, not the other way around.”
The tower warden pursed his lips but said nothing.
The marshal spoke again. “An attack on Avel threatens its citizens; an attack on our wind garden threatens all of Spires.”
Just then two hierophants emerged onto the jumpdeck. Both wore white cloth packs on their backs and carried folds of bright orange cloth. They trotted over to the pavilion.
The marshal pointed to one of the nearby windcatchers. “The first of you to the third rig.” She pointed to another farther back. “The second to the eighth. And tell Julia to pull herself down ten feet; she's draining the wind from number twelve.”
Both of the new hierophants threw the orange folds into the air. The bright cloth snapped into wide crescents, catching the wind and hoisting
the pilots aloft. Within moments, the wind had blown the hierophants far away from the garden tower. Their kites changed shape, causing each to fly toward the designated windcatchers.
Francesca realized that she had been holding her breath in amazement. Even watching from the deck, she had an almost dizzying sensation of velocity and control.
Marshal Oria looked at the tower warden. “Pull the second watch out of the mess. Arm all pilots and form two wings. Take command of the first and set up a hovering patrol on the pass's northeast edge. Should you judge the wind garden to be threatened, drop the flag signal for all windcatchers to dock. I will loft all kites. You are to command any needed defense. Am I clear?”
The tower warden bowed.
The marshal continued. “For the second group, name your most trusted author wing commander. Charge them to circle Avel looking for signs of conflict or distress. They're to relay by flag any report to you. If it appears safe, they're to tether with the city flock and have one pilot who's seen combat pull down to investigate. Questions?”
The tower warden's face had gone blank. “The
Queen's Lance,
my lady?”
The marshal looked away to the pass. “I want her aloft until we know what's happening in Avel. I won't allow her to dock without your presence.” She looked at the warden and said, “Don't worry; I'll respect your office.” There was nothing friendly about her tone.
“Permission to speak to the air warden of Avel?”
“Granted, but I want you aloft immediately after.”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Dismissed,” she said before turning back to her view of the pass. “Magistra DeVega, join me.”
Francesca started. “Yes, Lady.” She glanced at Cyrus. He had become as still as stone and was staring straight ahead.
“Cyrus,” the tower warden commanded, “you'll accompany me to the mess.”
After turning to Francesca, he brought his hand to his heart and glowered.
She flicked a short spell into his chest. “You'll be fine for a quarter hour,” she whispered. “It won't start contracting until then. But don't you dare leave me here!”
Cyrus only grunted before heading off with the tower warden.
Acutely aware of the three hundred foot drop beyond the jumpdeck, Francesca carefully approached the marshal. “My lady Oria?” When standing next to the other woman, she realized that she was almost a foot taller.
The marshal did not seem impressed by this. “Magistra, forgive my ignorance. For the past thirty years, I've done little other than fly oversized kites.” She gestured to the windcatchers. “But do I recall that as a wizard you are not a subject of any crown?”
Francesca nodded. “You do.”
“Therefore you represent only the wizardly order?”
“It's a shade more complicated in my case, Lady. After mastering both wizardly languages, I trained in the clerical academy in Port Mercy. There I learned how to write medical texts. In effect, I left the wizardly order and joined the clerical one. Clerics have no language or deity or political interests as the wizards do. Our purpose is only to relieve the burden of disease.”
The marshal nodded. “An admirable purpose, cleric. Admirable. And, as one woman of purpose to another, I ask you frankly not to toy with me.”