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By Root 997 0

an occasional song in the liquid tongue of his distant homeland. Daine brought up the rear, watching Jode and wondering. After all the years they’d spent together, the many battles they’d been through, Jode was still an enigma to him. The halfling had come from the distant Talenta Plains, a barren land said to be home to huge lizards. The glittering dragonmark of Healing was spread across his bald head as plain as day, but Jode had never acknowledged any ties to House Jorasco, and he did not wear the signet ring of a dragonmark heir. He was always ready with a cheerful story or a song, but his own past was a mystery. Daine had never pushed him. He had pain enough in his own past, and if Jode had secrets, it wasn’t Daine’s place to steal them.

Midday the clouds cleared, and there it lay before them—Sharn, the City of Towers. Even at this distance, the towers stretched up to the sky—dozens of shining spires, each bristling with minarets and turrets. The Old Road passed through flat farmlands, and over the course of the day it seemed less as if they were moving and more as if the towers themselves were growing, rising up higher and higher with every passing hour. Slowly details emerged. Daine noticed that a few of the smaller towers seemed to be floating in the air, unconnected to the main columns. Tiny dots moved to and fro—boats and other vessels darting through the air. As the sun sank beneath the horizon, the lights of the city became visible, twinkling like stars.

“House Cannith lit the city, you know,” Lei said. “Casalon d’Cannith perfected cold fire almost seven hundred years ago. The impact on Galifar was truly remarkable. In many ways it set the stage for—”

“I thought the elves developed cold fire thousands of years ago,” Daine said.

Lei scowled. “Yes, well … Cannith brought it to Khorvaire.”

Daine smiled, though Lei did not see it. The elves of Aerenal had been working with magic for more than three times the length of recorded human history, and Daine had once met an Aerenal ambassador who was over seven hundred years old. It was only natural that elven skills would exceed those of the younger race, but it was one of the only ways to derail Lei’s effusive monologues about the virtues of her house.

“How do they keep the towers from falling?” asked Pierce.

It was as much as he had said in the last week. The warforged warrior, never talkative in the best of times, had become positively taciturn in recent months. Daine was hardly surprised; Pierce had been built to defend Cyre, and now the country was destroyed, the war over. What purpose did Pierce serve in this broken world? So far he’d continued to follow Daine’s orders. But how long would this loyalty last?

“There are places in the world where arcane energies behave in an unusual manner,” Lei said. “Many sages believe that this is the result of other worlds touching this one. So a place touched by Dolurrh is filled with despair, while Lamannia causes vegetation to bloom. Along these cliffs, spells of air and flight are empowered. The enchantments that support these towers could not be performed in most places. The city itself is drawn to the sky. You’ll see flying boats and similar things—all the result of the magic of this place.”

“So if they’re all supported by magic … what happens should the spells unravel?” Daine’s mind flashed back to the stormship tumbling from the sky after Saerath disrupted its bindings.

“Well … actually, I believe that towers have fallen in the past. During the war. Presumed sabotage, though it was never proven.”

“And I imagine your beloved lives in one of the highest towers?”

“Yes.” Daine didn’t turn to look, but he could hear the frown in her voice.

“Wonderful.”

As the sun slipped below the cliffs, the Old Road came to the tower called Tavick’s Landing, then ran beneath a vast bronze statue of Queen Wroann ir’Wyrnarn, her sword raised in defiance of the laws of Galifar. Black-cloaked guards manned a dozen separate gates, listening to the tales of merchants, travelers, and peasants. The traditions of a century of war were