“I think this is the building we were in.”
“You said that the building appeared to extend from the border zone between Tiamaris, to the one between Nightshade and Liatt.” The Arkon’s expression was now composed of chiseled lines.
Kaylin nodded.
“I do not believe that this building would cover that distance.”
“Not outside of the border zone, no.”
“The border zone itself is comprised of a space between the territories of each Tower. Those border areas do not, in theory, extend across fiefs in a fashion that renders the fiefs irrelevant, invisible.”
“Fine. But this building—I think it wasinthe border zone when the Towers were created.” As she spoke, the faint, flat map of the modern city faded into invisibility. The landscape changed abruptly, although some of the streets were old enough that she almost recognized the direction they traveled, the shape they retained, even now. The map that emerged from the heart of this mirror was foreign in most ways, a strong reminder that history was a different country, a different place.
The center of this map was notRavellonas it existed now. The fiefs were not the fiefs. Those who had lived near the center of this foreign city lived in larger buildings; there was greenery here, and a sense of wealth. The smaller buildings existed, as well; it was almost as if the people who lived in this place before the fall ofRavellonhad desired to be as close toRavellonhas possible, and had packed themselves into the various spaces accordingly.
In this context, the building was no longer its symbolic size; it was nestled in a large patch of otherwise unoccupied land.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Pardon?”
“What happened inRavellonthat things changed so much?”
“I would not ask that question if you do not wish to stand on that ladder for the next eight hours.”
“Give me the short version.”
“The short version? We don’t know. Some entity that madeRavellonits home fell, andRavellonwith it. There was no armed insurrection; no actual combat. Something changed. The change was slow and subtle at its beginning, and therefore hard to see; it was not so subtle at the end.
“But there was warning enough that the Towers could be built.” As the Arkon spoke, the area that was nowRavellondarkened; the buildings and streets that led to it vanished from view. A visual barrier of dark shadow spread from a point in the center of the map to the edges of the lands it now occupied.
“I thought you couldn’t speak to the mirror if you weren’t speaking in your native tongue.”
“I am not speaking to the mirror. You are.”
“I didn’t ask it for Towers. OrRavellon.”
“Not consciously, no. I find this both interesting and disturbing.”
“Can we just stay on the interesting side of that equation?”
He snorted smoke.
Towers grew as the shadow spread. Kaylin had no sense of time passing; it was her private opinion that she, and people like her, would never have noticed the “fall” that was so catastrophic; they’d be born and they’d die before it finally became what it now was.
Either that, or the Towers had been constructed in a day. Given they were created by the Ancients, that was possible.
Yes.
Kaylin didn’t recognize the voice. She shook her head, as if to dislodge all the other familiar voices that could intrude at any moment. She didn’t hear it again.
The Towers grew; the buildings around them were abandoned by those who had either the desire or the ability to move. The land surrounding the six Towers took on a tinge of color; six different colors in all. There was no overlap.
She watched the sentient building that had once stood so close toRavellon. It faded slowly from view. It wasn’t, like the other buildings, abandoned. It was bisected by two of the Towers, its land absorbed on either side by what would now be Nightshade and Liatt, the latter a fief that Kaylin had never seen except on maps like these.
The building itself vanished, crumbling into mist and nothing as Kaylin watched.
“What are the border zones?”
