Thornton
Thornton had seen more of Derenar in the last few weeks than he had in his entire life, but nothing could prepare him for the sight before him: the entrance to the mighty city of Ellenos, First City of the Athrani.
Outside the city walls, higher than the surrounding countryside by many hundreds of feet, was an enormous steel structure. Its base was situated in an expansive body of water that stretched out like the biggest moat he’d ever seen. The “wheel” that everyone seemed so relieved to see didn’t look like much of a wheel, despite its name; it was mostly steel beams that crossed as they climbed upward, with smooth white brick that dug into a grass-covered mountain beside it. But even more perplexing was the fact that Thornton could not see the city. Why did Endar seem so excited to see this?
“I don’t understand,” he said as he scratched his thick brown hair. “Where is Ellenos?”
Endar laughed so heartily that Thornton was afraid he might rupture something. “Up there!” he said as he pointed.
Thornton followed Endar’s finger to the top of the wheel, where the end of a long, straight canal was flowing into the center of a mass of great green hills. Ellenos, it appeared, was built into a caldera, with the sides of the mountain serving as natural walls surrounding the city.
“Then how do we get to it?” Thornton asked.
Turning in his saddle to look at him, Endar smiled. “We ride.”
The half-eye took off the purple cloak that was draped around his shoulders and handed it to a pikeman who was standing beside him. The pikeman fastened it to the end of his weapon, raised it high into the air, and began waving it back and forth.
As he did, Thornton felt a rumbling below him. “What—” he started to say, but his words were caught in his throat as he witnessed a marvel of Athrani Shaping. The very water in the lake in front of them started turning into stone, forming a bridge that stretched from the shore, where the army stood, to the base of the so-called Wheel of Ellenos.
“But first we walk,” Endar said without looking back. His heels did the talking, and his horse, who trotted forward and onto the stony bridge, did the walking.
Thornton and Yasha stood in awe as the soldiers of the legion streamed past them and onto the bridge. Thousands upon thousands of men, Athrani and human alike, made their way onto the platform, which until only moments ago had been water.
“Are you going to stand there gawking all day,” Endar shouted back to them, “or are you going to get on?”
Thornton and Yasha exchanged glances, finally deciding to follow the rest of the men. Kethras walked hesitantly behind them.
“I guess the worst that could happen is that we drown,” Thornton said, grinning sheepishly. No one was amused.
The bridge they walked across ended at an enormous platform with great steel beams on both ends. Following the beams up, Thornton saw that they crisscrossed in the middle, halfway up the gargantuan steel wheel, and looked to be attached to a second platform on the top that mirrored their own.
Just as the two of them planted their feet firmly on the platform, Thornton felt a rumbling again.
“The Athrani are particularly proud of this next part,” Endar said.
Thornton looked over the edge of the platform and saw that it was lifting off the ground. Craning his neck upward, he saw the corresponding platform above them starting to come down in a reciprocal, circular arc. With his eyes as wide as the steel floor they stood on, Thornton watched as the world below them fell away.
“H-How . . . How . . . ?” he stammered.
“How does it work?” Endar said, finishing the sentence for him. He pointed at the platform that was beginning to come down on the other end of the mighty wheel. “In a word: water. The canal at the top fills up with enough of it to create a counterweight. When it’s full enough, the wheel begins to turn. After that, it’s a simple matter of weight distribution and balance/counter-balance.”
Despite Endar’s use of the word simple, Thornton thought it was anything but. He looked off the platform to watch the trees below him shrink from sight, and his head was spinning faster than the wheel as he tried to comprehend it all. He’d never seen anything like it, never imagined something like it could even exist, as his blacksmith brain focused on the enormous gears in the center of the wheel that seemed to be responsible for their movement.
“Believe it or not,” Endar said as he leaned in close, “the wheel was a man’s idea. A human man. It’s a part of Ellenian history that the Athrani won’t tell you. Oh, sure, they built the thing,” he said with a wave of his hand. “And it’s hard to say if something this massive could have been created without the use of Shaping. But Athrani minds don’t work like that. It would have taken them another thousand years to come up with the design.”
On the edge of the mass of men and Athrani, Thornton was acutely aware of his insignificance as they moved through the air on a ton of steel. He watched the plains disappear as they blended into a singular green mass, dwarfed by the side of the mountain they slowly scaled. When they had nearly reached the top, their starting point looked like one great stretch of green, and Thornton realized just how far they had marched—and how high they had climbed—by the fact that he could take in the whole countryside with a glance.
The great wheel suddenly shuddered to a stop, opening into a canal that led into the city. As Thornton’s eyes followed the watery road, they fell on a sight that he almost believed he was dreaming instead of seeing: a city draped in gold with forking towers and sky-scraping buildings that he could hardly believe were real. The low-lying clouds that blanketed the city made it seem like a waking dream, and the fingers of fog weaving in and out of the towering houses and buildings provided the most amazing backdrop for the sunset that was working its way through the city as the legion came ashore.
Waiting for them, just off the edge of the platform, was an enormous wooden ship that was bigger than some of the buildings Thornton had seen in Annoch. It had windows carved all around it, and Thornton counted at least five levels. There was a wooden ramp at the bottom that the men of the legion used to start filing onto the ship.
“Now, to get you to the High Keeper,” Endar said as he started toward the transport. He looked at Thornton and Yasha, and smiled. “I hope she’s in an understanding mood.”
Thornton felt unease creeping back into his throat as they moved slowly down the waterway. Moods are like the weather, his father used to say. Mostly unpredictable and oftentimes dangerous.
Looking out past the city lined with gold and fog, he took a deep breath.
I just hope we can ride out the storm.