Ageless

Chapter 3: The Tower

I stood looking out over the canyon, right where the lip of Sky Rock touched the rest of the world. At first I had questioned Ko'sa's decision to steer us away from the throngs of travelers and up a treacherous boulder for something as trivial as a pretty view. As I soon as we reached the top, I understood why she had us take the risk.

The entire way up, Ko'sa had been talking- the girl felt at ease when she was filling the air with a story. She had been telling me about the time she had slain a fish by skipping a stone across the ocean surface and striking it in the head at the exact moment that it jumped out of the water. She was just getting to the part where she tried to fight the Blacksmith's boy for calling her a liar, when we crested the top of Sky Rock. At once she fell quiet, her breath stolen by the scene before us.

The sun kissed the horizon, a liquid orange ball of lava resting over a massive valley crested by rolling hills. Those hills kept rolling themselves outward, getting higher and higher until they eventually formed mountains on either side to frame the valley like a painting. Directly to our right, a waterfall crashed down hundreds of feet below us and fed a wide river flowing directly into the center of the expanse. Cornfields, grassy plains, and forests of pine trees surrounded the river in squares like a patchwork quilt.

The nature would have been a breathtaking view in of itself, but my eyes were drawn to the dark city skyline rising high and proud against the backdrop of orange and purple brushstrokes. The capital, in all its glory, was like nothing I had ever seen. The largest building in the skyline stood dead center, dwarfing everything else around it. It appeared to be a massive Gothic spire, cylindrical in shape, arching neatly to a pointed roof. When Malcolm and I had visited Europe we had stopped in London and marveled at the Shard, the massive jutting tower that pierced the clouds and claimed the title of tallest building in England. The tower on the horizon was about the same height and lorded over the rest of the city in a similar fashion, but was constructed completely of sleek gray stone.

Smaller towers surrounded the massive spire until the skyline leveled out to single roof huts and shacks that sprawled out across the city until they were halted abruptly by a massive stone wall marking the city limits.

After a moment of taking in the scene, I tested my voice. "It's...it's..."

"Bloody ridiculous," Ko'sa finished for me. "Nobody needs a castle that big while people starve out here. Didn't use to be that big either- first time I visited it, it was only three quarters that size." She picked up a rock and chucked it at the river flowing far below us. The drop was so far the we never heard the rock hit. "All they do is build these days. Most of that tower is just for show- the servants tell me they don't even bother with the interiors past the first few levels."

I looked back at the tower and felt my stomach flutter. Was that now Malcolm's home? One day, would I also be able to call that home?

The fantasy soured as I pictured Malcolm sitting looking out over the tower with a strange, unfamiliar woman wrapped around him. His second wife. The queen.

"You said the King didn't love the queen, right?" I asked. "You're sure?"

Ko'sa let out a sound like a hyena spitting out a piece of raw meat. "Love had nothing do with it. Pa told me she married the bloke to save the Kingdom."

"Why's that?"

"Simple. The King was the leader of the crazy rebels that was overrunning the city, and the royal family was trying not to find themselves on the swinging end of a gallow. Queen Isabelle's hand was the family's last valuable bargaining chip. Them fanatics get a King that they support so they can stop wrecking shit, and the heir to the throne stays in the bloodline."