TERRIS POLISHED ONE OF the Eye’s mirrors at the very top of the Eye, thinking how this would be yet another work-filled but terribly uninteresting day, when he heard the ruckus below.
Terris looked to Hindra, one eyebrow raised.
“Were we expecting visitors this morning?”
Hindra, her long brown hair tied in loose ponytail, shook her head slowly. She had been inspecting the core of the Eye’s apparatus, a large system of interlocking metal cylinders that punched through the top level of the Eye and continued down through the building below, all the way into the Eye’s foundation, anchoring the apparatus as well as the tower itself. Hindra had been inspecting the large, rune-covered amber stone the core housed near the apparatus, but now she pushed her protective brass-rimmed goggles up onto her forehead.
Terris sighed. “I’d best go see what that is about, then.” He couldn’t help the excited fluttering in his chest. Perhaps Roden was attempting another attack on Triah; perhaps they would have the chance to use the Eye again. Terris had been cleaning, checking, testing, and retesting equipment for so long that until recently he had completely forgotten what it was like to actually operate the Eye at full power. His experience a few weeks ago as Roden attacked had felt like an awakening.
And it was a glaringly clear day—perfect conditions for the Eye.
Slowly, Terris stood, his tall frame hunching over to avoid smacking his head on the bottom of the brass frame suspended above him. He moved toward the stairwell as Hindra spoke.
“Do you think Roden is attacking again?” she asked.
Terris sucked air through his teeth. “It is possible,” he said, “but I don’t hear warning sirens, as of yet. It may be Carrieri has received some sort of advanced intel. Or, most likely, another group of bumbling bureaucrats.”
Since the Eye’s success at the Harbor Battle, as people were calling it, all manner of senators, high-ranking Denomination clergy, generals, and even nobles and wealthy merchants had somehow procured permission to ascend the Eye and see the weapon that had wrought such destruction.
Hindra sniffed at the thought, and Terris could not blame her. These people had not cared one whit for the Eye before; they had called it a relic, a gimmick, something better left to rot while resources were put toward more promising projects. Only Carrieri himself had kept Terris and Hindra’s jobs—along with those of the other few dozen mechanics and operators— intact for the past few years, insisting they keep the Eye ready should need ever arise.
And, Oblivion, had need arisen.
Looking over the railing, Terris saw faint movement down the spiral staircase. The corkscrew pattern of the stairs curling around and around seemed infinite at times, and the view still made him dizzy, even after all these years. But the purposeful march of boots on stairs told him this was a military visit. Straining his ears, he could only make out a few words, but those words sent a chill through his spine.
The first was “Tiellans,” and the second was “attack.”
Terris sucked air through his teeth. Perhaps it would be an interesting day, after all.
* * *
“Khalic forces approaching, Your Majesty,” Urstadt said.
Winter nodded. Both of them looked up at the War Goddess. The sound of straining wood and rope filled the air around them as two Ranger teams on either side pulled on the ropes attached to the trebuchet’s arm. A system of pulleys made the task easier, but both Ranger teams—consisting of the strongest tiellans under Winter’s command—were still hard-pressed to pull the arm down. As the huge beam slowly lowered, a colossal counterweight rose.
“We knew this would be their reaction,” Winter said, her eyes still on the War Goddess. “How many?”
Urstadt glanced back at Triah. From where they stood, they could not quite see the force snaking east and then north toward the cliffs. “At last glance, at least twenty-five hundred soldiers,” Urstadt said. “I’d estimate closer to three thousand, all things considered. Perhaps more coming up from the city, but it should be some time before they arrive.”
“Rorie!” Winter called.
The tiellan rider approached quickly. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
“You and Urstadt will lead the defense of the War Goddess. Take fifteen hundred riders, find the best ground you can, and prepare for the battle. Defend our position.”
“Yes, Commander.” Rorie saluted.
Urstadt, however, remained behind.
“Is there something else, Urstadt?” Winter asked
The Ranger teams had fully lowered the beam, now, and secured the massive arm of wood. Another team placed one of the three-hundred-pound boulders into the sling.
Goddess, this is really going to happen.
“Your Majesty, I don’t think the incoming regiment is Carrieri’s only tactic. He’ll send another team, much smaller, to take out the War Goddess itself, if they can. He might even send psimancers. I’d like to remain here, at your side, to protect you.”
Winter’s eyes finally met Urstadt’s, and Urstadt resisted the immediate urge to look away.
“You want to protect me?” Winter asked.
Urstadt kept her face stone-like, with all the discipline she could muster.
The engineers cleared a space around the trebuchet, moving tiellan Rangers—those Rorie had not already called to move for their defense—out of the way in a wide arc around the weapon.
“Yes,” Urstadt finally said. “I do not agree with what you are doing here. I have made that clear. But… I am still with you.” For now. Those last two words, unsaid, nevertheless remained in the air between them, and Urstadt suspected Winter sensed them there, too.
Slowly, Winter nodded. “Very well. Stay here. Protect me, and the War Goddess, from whatever other attacks Carrieri might be sending our way. Thank you, Urstadt.”
She turned back to the War Goddess. “Ready?” she asked.
Goddess, not so soon.
“Ready, Your Majesty,” the chief engineer said.
“Fire,” Winter said.
“Fire!” the chief engineer ordered.
A lone pin—the size of Urstadt’s arm, but a lone pin nonetheless—held the trebuchet’s beam down against the counterweight. Now a team pulled a rope attached to the pin, and the long metal trigger sprung out of the trebuchet’s beam.
For a moment the trebuchet remained still, and Urstadt thought, with an overwhelming hope, that the entire project might have failed before it even began.
The feeling was short-lived. The counterweight dropped with aching slowness at first, then it picked up speed and swung low with a whoomf. A deep crack sounded above her, and the sling flung wide, hurling the missile as it whooshed through the air toward Triah.
* * *
Cinzia was surprised at how quickly Jane found Odenite sympathizers in Triah.
“You’d think she already knew exactly where she was going,” Eward muttered.
“We should be used to such things by now, brother,” Cinzia said, trying to push aside her fears for Knot, and of the towering weapon atop the cliffs. They stood within the walls of a merchant’s estate. The grounds and mansion looked like they had once belonged to a family of noble birth, but the merchant had likely bought the estate a generation or two ago. It was an old-fashioned type of place to find in Triah; most nobles nowadays preferred tower-houses, building their wealth skywards rather than buying up large plots of land.
Jane had led them to a crossroads, where the Radial Road met the Twenty-Fifth Circle, and there a nervous young man had stood waiting for them. When Jane had introduced herself, the man’s eyes lit up, and he led them excitedly to his family’s estate, where Jane, her disciples and Prelates, and about two dozen followers now gathered.
The lad had told them that he had been inspired to wait on that street corner—he knew not what for at the time, but having found the famed Prophetess, the woman he and his family had already begun to venerate, he knew he’d been inspired by Canta.
Or so he said. Cinzia had a difficult time believing such things, even after all she’d seen. Odenites continued to join their cause outside the walls, so it made sense that they had a large following within the city, as well. The pilgrims who found them often came out with such strange stories, tales of the supernatural circumstances that led them to find the Odenite camp.
And yet she still could not believe them.
“You are one of the Prophetess’s disciples?”
Cinzia turned to see a woman of about her own age approaching.
Smoothing her skirts, Cinzia nodded. The smile on her face felt fake, plastered there, as if it would crumble should she move it too much. “I am Disciple Cinzia,” she said.
Priestess Cinzia, Disciple Cinzia. Is there even a difference?
Would it matter if there was?
The woman’s eyes widened. “You are the Prophetess’s sister! I am so happy to meet you. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be so close to the Prophetess. Is she this amazing all of the time, or just when in public?” The woman had said that last part in jest, Cinzia could tell, but it was difficult to actually take it that way.
“My sister is an incredible woman,” Cinzia said, the smile on her face unmoving. Goddess, she could not keep this up for long.
“I am so sorry, where are my manners,” the woman blustered. “I am Cinzia Grinatan. My husband, Garand, owns this estate.”
Cinzia curtsied, bowing her head. “Well met, Cinzia. I do like your name, wherever did you get it?”
The woman laughed. “Oh, please. Call me Cin. Everyone else does, and with you around it’ll make things less confusing, anyway.”
“Very well, Cin.” Cin was rather young to be the lady of such an estate. “Is the young man who brought us from the Radial Road your husband?”
Cin laughed, the sound raucous and unhindered. “Oh, Goddess, no! That was my husband’s younger brother, Garald. My husband is over there.” Cin pointed at a man currently speaking with Ocrestia. Cinzia was relieved to see that he did not seem to have a problem with a tiellan in a place of power. Ocrestia was still the only tiellan woman who had been appointed to the disciples. Cinzia had asked Jane to appoint more, but Jane had shrugged, as if the matter were out of her hands. “Canta will call whom She will,” Jane had said. Cinzia did not see things that way. Appointing more tiellans would help their cause, help connect them with the tiellan people, and help the tiellans who had already flocked to the Odenites feel safer and represented. The thought made her glance back to the cliffs, and her heart froze. She did not know much about siege weaponry, but the arm of the weapon now swung back and forth, slowly settling into an equilibrium.
Had the weapon been fired?
“He’s the ugly one, I know,” Cin said, oblivious to Cinzia’s realization. Someone—perhaps Eward—shouted something in the distance.
Cinzia gripped Cin’s arm. “Perhaps we should—”
She stopped as another nearby shout split the air, this one much louder and more urgent. Cinzia had not heard whatever the person had said, but the tone… She only had a second or two to try to process what she had just heard when a deafening explosion rocked the earth beneath her feet.
Then Cinzia was on the ground. She wondered, for the briefest moment, whether this might be another earthquake caused by Morayne. But immediately she knew the truth. The trebuchet had struck Triah, and somewhere very nearby.
Cinzia slowly rose to her feet, looking frantically around her. Everything was hazy and shadowed, as if a tremendous dark cloud had overshadowed the sun. But the morning had been cloudless.
Many others rose slowly from the ground, while some remained there, hands covering their heads.
“Is everyone all right?” Cinzia called out, coughing. Coughing, she realized, because of the dust thick in the air. That was why it was so dark.
Apart from the choking dust, it seemed that everyone nearby was uninjured. Cinzia helped Cin to her feet, the woman coughing and spluttering, then walked quickly to Jane. Whether her sister had not fallen at all, or gotten up quickly enough to begin helping others up, Cinzia could not be sure, but Jane was already up and about, seeing to everyone around her.
“The trebuchet,” Cinzia said. She had pointed out the weapon to Jane that morning, but Jane, in typical fashion, had chosen to go about their business, citing Canta’s protection.
Jane nodded, coughing.
“Where did that explosion come from?” Cinzia asked, loudly so anyone in the courtyard could hear. Her gaze moved around the small area, but there was no damage that she could discern.
“Not sure.” Eward came up to his sisters. “I’ve sent Prelates outside to see if they can tell what’s going on, but… I think for now it’s best we stay inside these walls.”
As Eward spoke, the dust cleared a little more. Cinzia’s gaze rose upward, following the outline of the Grinatans’ manse through the settling dust. The house had been a three-story affair, with a small bell tower jutting up from the third floor. Or at least there had been one there when Cinzia had walked into the courtyard.
“Was there not a bell tower up there before?” Cinzia asked.
The others followed her gaze. Eward mumbled something under his breath.
Fast footsteps approached them from behind, and they all turned to see one of the Prelates running toward them, panting.
“Prophetess! Disciples!” he called. “I think you should come outside and see this.”
* * *
Terris looked out across the battlements on the topmost floor of God’s Eye. The city spread out around them in all directions, the harbor and the Wyndric Ocean beyond that to the west, and the great plains to the east. Terris knew it was an optical illusion, but it almost felt as if they were on a level with the plateaus atop the Cliffs of Litori. In reality, the cliffs stood another hundred rods taller.
“They’re preparing to launch again,” Hindra said.
“Our forces have engaged them,” General Marshton said. “With any luck, they will push them back and destroy that cursed thing before it does any more damage.”
A few moments before, they had witnessed the first missile strike the city. Those with sharper eyes than Terris had watched it arc across the sky to land in the nobles’ district, where it had sent up a cloud of dust and debris. From their vantage point atop the Eye, of course, such things seemed small. Inconsequential. Normally Terris loved the feeling of detachment, the global sense of understanding he felt from observing so much from such a high place. Today, however, he felt sick. He’d been so busy thinking about the missile’s trajectory, speed, and striking power that when the dust flew into the air, he’d watched dispassionately.
It took him a few moments to realize that the missile had destroyed lives—perhaps someone he knew. The next missile might strike his own district, his childhood home, or his parents.
“Where did it hit, exactly?” one of the general’s aides asked.
“Looks to be…” Terris calculated the streets in his head.
“Around the Twenty-Fifth Circle, near the Radial Road,” Hindra said.
Terris nodded, grateful for his assistant. He looked to General Marshton, the commanding officer, now, at the Eye. “What were they aiming for, do you think? That isn’t a military area.”
“The elves don’t care who they kill, what they destroy.” Marshton was a big man, not quite as tall as Terris himself but far broader in the shoulders. He looked perpetually hunched. His voice was low as he stared out at the city. “They have no honor, and no respect.”
Honor and respect? Terris was not sure the Khalic Legion valued such things, either, when life and death were on the line.
Marshton looked over his shoulder. “What is the status of the harbor?”
“Still nothing, sir,” one of his aides called back from the opposite side of the Eye. They had to shout around the Eye’s apparatus itself; the brass circles, mirrors, and magnifying glasses were not in use, but Carrieri had ordered Terris to keep the weapon at the ready.
Wind whipped Terris’s clothing against his body, and he was grateful for his goggles. Below, at sea level, it was a soft sea breeze, but at the top of the tower the effect was magnified to a strong, gusting wind.
“The trebuchet is preparing to fire again!” one of Marshton’s men called.
“Chief Operator, we need to do something.” Marshton’s attention was on the brass mirrors now. “Are you really sure we can’t—”
“I’ve already told you, General: the Eye’s range is limited. It can reach anything on the ground for almost two-radials, but it cannot be angled above its own plane.”
“You’re telling me that a thing this complicated and expensive can’t do something as simple as point up?”
Terris took a deep breath. He had explained the science of God’s Eye to many generals, lieutenants, senators, and even priestesses in the past. Marshton wasn’t a fool, and he was speaking out of pique rather than a failure to grasp Terris’s explanation. “It is not a matter of expense, but of design,” Terris said, as patiently as he could. “Had the original builders desired, they could have installed mirrors to angle the light upward. But their focus was on the sea. I don’t think they ever expected an enemy to come from the cliffs. And we do not have adequate time to create a new mirror now, nor the machinery to install it.”
Terris would have gladly pointed the Eye at the massive siege engine atop the cliffs, were it not for these limitations. The anger he saw so evidently in Marshton’s creased eyebrows, his reddened face and clenched fists, slamming on the battlements every few moments, pressed within himself, too. He was simply better at masking it.
“Should we evacuate the tower?” Hindra asked, her dark eyes wide as she stared at the trebuchet atop the cliffs.
Terris hesitated. He had wondered the same thing, when he’d first seen the siege engine. God’s Eye seemed a prime target for such a thing.
“Nonsense,” Marshton said. “We’re too far away. And even if we were struck by one of those missiles, the tower is strong. A little boulder would cause some damage, but nothing unfixable. Right, Terris?”
“Speaking strictly scientifically,” Terris finally said, “chances are unlikely we’ll be hit at all, let alone suffer any serious damage. Their weapon is big, but that means its aim is uncertain. And a clifftop is not a good site for such a weapon—they’d have to calculate for crosswinds and other irregularities. The first missile landed in a residential district—not exactly a strategic victory—so it is clear they are not practiced in this art. And, yes, even if one were to strike, it would likely not cause enough damage to…” Terris’s voice trailed off. He cleared his throat before speaking again. “To be honest with you, General, I would strongly consider evacuation of God’s Eye, if I were you. Even that small chance… if circumstances were to somehow allow such a thing, the consequences would be… Goddess, they would be catastrophic.”
“It is a good thing you are not me, then, Terris,” Marshton said, his face even more red than it was before. “The moment we evacuate this tower, the Rodenese fleet will come flooding through that harbor. We will thwart them with the power of God’s Eye, just as we did two weeks ago. And this time, we will make sure they do not forget the lesson.”
“Incoming!”
At the sound of the word, all eyes atop the tower turned to the trebuchet in time to see the great counterweight swing down. Despite the growing terror in his gut, Terris marveled at the feat of engineering. The counterweight had to weigh… Goddess, almost twenty tons, and he calculated the entire machine at close to a hundred rods tall when the beam was fully upright. He would never underestimate tiellan engineering again.
The counterweight swung beneath the trebuchet’s frame and the beam flew above as the sling launched another projectile into the sky.
Terris’s stomach dropped as the missile flew. He squinted to see it as best he could, but his eyesight was too weak. He sucked air through his teeth rapidly.
“Where—”
Then he heard the crash, and turned to the west to see another puff of dust, pitifully small from this height. Terris strained his eyes, trying to determine…
Goddess, where was the Glass Pyramid?
“Goddess rising,” Hindra whispered.
The structure, while not quite as impressive in size as anything around the Trinacrya, or God’s Eye itself, was nevertheless one of Triah’s signature buildings. A giant triangular pyramid, made of glass and metal, eight stories in height. Construction had finished only recently, about three years ago, and it had been a major attraction for people all over the Sfaera. The structure had sat in the new arts district, at the Fifteenth Circle, along the Coastal Road.
But now, as Terris looked to where the pyramid should be, he saw nothing but dust and debris, and perhaps, if he squinted, the jagged remains of something that had once loomed large.