Bruce Blake - Spirit of the King

No one saw us come in. We’re safe here.

Khirro turned his attention back to the stair and stepped up onto the first step. Beneath his boot, it felt like any other step. It could easily belong to any one of the sets of stairs leading to the top of the wall at the Isthmus Fortress, would have only felt out of place leading to the hay loft in his father’s barn because it was stone rather than wood. The sense of dread he’d felt disappeared, no feeling of impending doom shivered up his leg and into his heart.

They’re only stairs.

He stepped up onto the next stair, then the next, his shoulder brushing the wall his only guide to keep him from going over the edge. Step after step he climbed, fingers trailing along the stone wall beside him. After several dozen steps had passed under his feet, he stopped, listening. He still heard Athryn’s gentle breathing on the floor below, but there was nothing else; no bats or birds flitted overhead chasing bugs, no sounds from outside the tower penetrated its thick wall.

Another step. Another. Khirro climbed the staircase following the curve of the tower wall, each step forward taking him higher and deeper into darkness. He moved slowly, cautiously, silently counting each stair as his foot set upon it without knowing why he was climbing.

When his count reached two hundred, he stopped again, listened to the silence. The only sounds now came from within him: the beat of his heart, the whisper of breath in his throat, the creak of his armor each time his chest expanded. He saw nothing ahead and above him but darkness; behind and below was the same.

A wave of vertigo overtook Khirro, spinning his head in the dark. He leaned toward the wall and felt as though it would surely be gone; it startled him when his back touched it. The dark spun around him, shortening his breath and bringing nausea from his gut to his throat. He flattened himself against the wall, arms spread, and closed his eyes to stop the world from spinning. After a minute that felt as though it stretched on for an hour, his head steadied, his stomach settled, and Khirro opened his eyes to the same darkness they’d observed before.

He looked down and saw nothing. If he hadn’t counted two hundred stairs passing under his feet, he might have thought he could step off right onto the floor, but he knew that would be the death of him, the end of hope for the kingdom. He looked up and thought he saw a sliver of light. It invigorated him and he began moving up the stairs, keeping as close to the wall as he could.

As he climbed, the sliver of light grew brighter, and with it his mood lifted. He moved faster, driven to get out of the dark and into the light. His thighs ached from climbing, sweat ran from his temple, but the light got closer until he recognized it as the sun shining through the narrow crack beneath a door.

Khirro made his way cautiously up the last few stairs, suddenly aware again of the fall awaiting him if he misstepped. Finally, his eyes drew even with the crack under the door and he could see the last few stairs dimly lit, and the landing at the top of them.

He rested a moment as he reached the top, sucking deep breaths into his lungs in an attempt to recover from the climb. How horrible it must have been to be a condemned man making such an ascent, having so much time to contemplate your coming demise. Khirro shivered at the thought but put it aside as he reached for the door.

It wasn’t locked, of course. At such a height, there was nothing to keep out, and who in their right mind would climb the steps to the door.

Only me, I suppose.

The city stretched away in all directions from the spire, its broken down buildings bathed in the golden glow of early morning sun. Beyond the far city wall, yellow-brown steppe led to forest and the ground rose to hills. Khirro didn’t know if he looked toward Kanos or Lakesh, but either way, the view was breathtaking.

As was the sheer height of the spire.

Khirro stepped gingerly onto the ledge outside the door. It was big enough for a few men to stand on at once-perhaps ten feet wide and extending out five feet from the tower-but the lack of any handhold or railing to separate platform from empty air made it a poor idea to crowd it with too many. One was probably enough.

The soles of Khirro’s boots scuffed the rough stone as he shuffled away from the doorway, curious to peer over the edge. He leaned forward, dragged his feet ahead another few inches, then leaned again.

The stairs two hundred feet below were tinted pink, painted that color by the lives they’d taken over the centuries. After the climb to get here and now standing on the platform, Khirro realized that the death at the end of the fall might have been a relief to the condemned who took the plunge. The dread anticipation and exertion of climbing the stairs, the opportunity to contemplate the value of life while standing on the platform looking over the city and the land beyond, the fearful descent to the stairs so far below all must have been tortures heaped upon tortures that hitting the stairs would finally relieve.

Tortures heaped upon tortures.

Like having the life you were raised for torn from you against your will. Like being cursed to carry out a task you didn’t want. Like watching friends and companions die in the name of helping you. Like never having the chance to love the woman you truly loved.

Khirro moved closer to the edge, his toes less than an inch from open air. A bird flew by close to the tower but beneath the level of the platform; cold wind touched his cheeks, drying the sweat on his temples and making him shiver. He looked down at the pink stone stairs and drew a long breath in through his nose.

One death could save so many: Athryn, the child in my dreams, my family. If only it could bring back those already lost.

The wind rose again, flapping his breeches against his legs, tugging at him. He crossed his arms, hugged himself against the cold, but he knew it wasn’t only the cold that made him shiver. It was also where he stood, and it was temptation.

But how many more would die along with that one death?

The thoughts were like words in his head that didn’t feel as though they belonged to him. He swayed slightly forward and back again, forward and back. His legs ached, tired of holding him upright, tired of holding the burden.

Smoke curled from chimneys of many of the decrepit houses below and Khirro caught a whiff of pork frying, bread baking. He saw people moving through the streets. These weren’t his people, but they made him think of his own home, of people like the widow Breadmaker who liked to entertain foreign merchants, and of Maree who showed him her lady flower when they were but children. Did they deserve to die because Khirro didn’t want to go on any longer?

Do they?

The voice again that didn’t belong to him. He knew whose voice it was: the tyger's.

“No,” he said aloud. “They don’t.”

Khirro turned his shoulders to move away from the edge, but his feet wouldn’t do as they were told. The world tilted and he stumbled, arms pinwheeling, desperately seeking balance without finding it. Khirro threw his weight backward, away from the edge, felt air rush around him and the sensation of falling. Saliva flooded his mouth with the coppery taste of panic.

Then his backside hit the platform.

His heart beat fast in his chest, pumping blood and adrenaline through his veins at the speed of racing horses. He scuttled away from the edge like a crab fleeing the sea and scrabbled through the doorway, closing the door behind him to sit atop the stairs in the dark.

Half an hour later, when Khirro stepped off the bottom stair onto the flat stone floor, his hands were still shaking. He paused and found the sound of Athryn’s breathing in the darkness, then peered back up the stairs. The sliver of light from under the door was invisible in the dark, as were the stairs set into the wall and the ceiling so far overhead. He swallowed hard. His heart had returned to its regular rhythm, and the urge to throw himself from the platform was gone, but as he’d made his way down the stairs, another feeling came over him and it returned as he crossed the floor to take up a position beside the door.