Heirs of Prophecy - Lisa Smedman [108]
She tried to get Leifander's attention, but he seemed unwilling to recognize her plight. Instead it was Gold-heart who aided her. The tressym circled above what appeared to be a small opening in the forest. As Larajin drew nearer, she saw it was the circular rooftop of a slender stone tower. It looked long abandoned. The wrought-iron rail that surrounded the top of the tower was rusted and bent, and ivy grew thickly on its stonework, disappearing inside broken windows.
The tower itself, however, looked solid enough, its timbered roof still intact. Larajin felt her limbs lengthening and changing shape, and she realized it was her only option if she didn't want to fall headlong from the sky.
She was just able to land on the mossy rooftop before her magic left her, returning her with a wrenching jolt to human form. Rising to her feet, Larajin searched the sky for Leifander and Goldheart.
Leifander was a rapidly disappearing dot in the distance, winging his way north. Goldheart however, had remained close by. Larajin waved to her, and as the tressym descended to where she stood, quickly repeated the prayer that would allow them to communicate.
"Goldheart, I need to pray-to regrow my wings," she told the tressym. "While I do that, I need you to follow Leifander. See where he goes, then come back and find me. Tell me where he lands."
Goldheart nodded her head in agreement, then growled low in her throat as she sniffed the wind. Her tail fluffed to twice its size.
"Be watchful," she hissed softly. "He comes." Larajin withdrew her hand in alarm. "Who? Is it Tal who…?"
Before she could complete her question, Goldheart launched herself into the air. She winged away through the night, following Leifander.
A chill breeze whispered through the treetops, making Larajin shiver. Above her, the cold orb of the moon beamed down, throwing a dark puddle of shadow at her feet. Feeling exposed, she wondered for a moment if she shouldn't try to climb down inside the tower and find a more secluded place to pray. The tower was tall and thin, no more than a few paces wide. The decorative leaf pattern of its rusted railings hinted at elven construction, and Larajin wondered if the tower had been built back in the days when Gold elves ruled Cormanthor.
Remembering Goldheart's warning to be watchful, she crossed to a darker patch of shadow that was an open trapdoor hanging from one rusted hinge. She kneeled beside it to peer down into the tower. As she'd expected, it was hollow, with a single metal staircase spiraling down the inner walls to ground level, more than a hundred paces below.
The inside of the tower was choked with spiderwebs that glinted silver-white in the moonlight. Larajin jerked back in alarm as a fist-sized spider scuttled across one of the strands of silk, a few paces below her. She forced herself to take another look, to make sure there weren't larger spiders moving around down there. After a moment, she sighed with relief-there weren't.
The staircase, she saw, was no longer whole. It ended at a distance of about five paces up from the floor. It was as if the bottom of it had been torn from its moorings by an invisible hand. Frayed bits of metal littered the stone floor.
There was no way Larajin could have descended that twisted mess, even if she'd wanted to brave the spiders. If it was indeed Tal whom Goldheart had said was coming
to this lonely spot, she'd have to fly down to meet him.
Just as she was about to sit down and begin the prayer that would return her to tressym form, another movement in the tower below caught her eye. At first Larajin thought she was looking at a pair of spiders, but after a moment she realized they were dark hands, reaching out of a hole in the ground. With a growing sense of dread she watched as the hands grasped a piece of the broken staircase and pushed it aside, widening the hole.
Larajin watched, transfixed, as a woman with glossy black skin climbed