There didn't seem to be much choice.
"What is this prison?" she asked. "And the judgment? Will I get to speak my side?"
"Yes, you will be able to speak," said the Mother Crone. "And here is the prison."
She drew a tall bottle of golden metal out of her robes and unscrewed the stopper.
"I can't get in that," said Odris. "It's too small." "I think you will be surprised," replied the Mother Crone. "Will you try?"
Odris felt a strange power in the old woman's voice. Power that was building, as if the next time she spoke, her words would fly out like a Storm Shepherd's bolts of lightning.
"Oh, all right!" she said.
The Mother Crone held out the bottle. Odris billowed down two legs and trudged over, her head downcast in defeat.
"Are you sure this is big enough?"
The Mother Crone nodded. Odris pushed a finger in the top, then another. Somehow she got her whole hand in, and arm, and then the rest of her was sucked in, like being caught up in a whirling storm.
Strangely, Odris did not feel cramped. There was even some light coming in from outside, so she did not feel sick. But when the stopper was screwed back in, Odris did get a strange feeling. There was the hint of other shadows here, from long ago. Shadows who had never been released, who had long since faded into nothing…
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tal concentrated on his Sunstone, willing orange light to form. Dimly he was aware of Adras shouting and swearing, and the Keeper hissing, but he blocked them out. The Light was the only thing that mattered.
Slowly, he wove the orange light out of the ring. It came out as a bright, narrow strand that thickened as it rose up. It became a rope, as broad as Tal's arm. He kept drawing more of it out, until it rose straight up above him for twenty or thirty stretches.
Sweat beaded on Tal's forehead as he concentrated on the end of the rope. He directed it into a loop, tying a slip knot. Then he gently lowered the noose of light down toward the struggling Spirit-shadows.
The noose hung there, Tal holding it with his mind and his Sunstone, as he waited for an opportunity. It bobbed down a few times, but he never completed the cast. Adras always got in the way.
"I can't hold it," whispered Tal, after the fourth attempt stopped suddenly in midair, as Adras swayed back under the noose.
"Adras!" roared Crow. "Push it away!"
Adras grunted. For a second he made no move. Then he suddenly let go and instead of hugging the Keeper, pushed it away. At the same time, Tal dropped the noose. It went perfectly over the Keeper's head. Instantly, Tal tightened it, the rope of light cutting deep into the shadowflesh. Then he quickly wrapped the rope around the rest of its body as Adras leapt free, pinning the Spiritshadow in place against the bronze pole.
"Quick! I can't keep it going!"
This was the moment Crow had waited for. He jumped to the higher pole and swung himself up in front of the struggling Spiritshadow. The bag in his hand was made of gold mesh, and he slipped it over the Keeper's head, though it struggled to evade him.
"Let it go!" shouted Crow.
"What?" screamed Tal. "Are you crazy?"
The Keeper's head was in the strange gold-mesh bag but Tal didn't see how that would help. It would just pull out and knock Crow off, before killing Tal and Adras.
"Let the rope go!"
Tal shook his head. But that had much the same effect. He lost concentration, and the rope began to fade. Tal looked to Adras, ready for a quick getaway.
Strangely, the Keeper did not pull its head out of the bag. Instead it actually slithered farther in. Crow held the bag open until all the Spiritshadow was inside, then closed the drawstrings tight and hung it over the end of the pole.
"Pity it's the last one," he said, sitting astride the pole and dusting his hands in the attitude of a man finishing a job well done.
"Last what?" asked Tal, staring at the bag.
"Shadow-sack," replied Crow. "We only had three. Jarnil found them for us a few years ago, I don't know where. He wouldn't say."
"Can it get out?"
"Only if someone lets it out. Someone real. Shadows can't touch that golden metal. Didn't you know? I thought you'd get all this in your Lectorium."
"No," said Tal. "I'm only beginning to realize all the things I wasn't taught in the Lectorium."
"We'd best move on," said Crow. "That was a noisy fight."
He started to climb up to the next rod. Tal looked at Adras.
"Are you all right?"
"Hah!" boomed Adras. "I would have won. It was weak."
"I guess that means you are," Tal said. There were some holes in the Spiritshadow's shoulder, but he didn't seem bothered by them. Besides, Tal knew Spiritshadows healed very quickly under the sun. "Come on."
On the rod above, Crow had stopped to reach into the nets to fill his pockets with Sunstones. But he had picked up only a handful when he threw them down again.
"These aren't Sunstones!" he exclaimed angrily.
Tal joined him and picked up a handful himself. The stones were shiny black ovals, with only the slightest hint of inner fire.
"Sunseeds," he said, not admitting to Crow that he had never actually seen them before. "Jewels from Aenir. They must have harvested the ready Sunstones just recently, and put these out to grow in power."
"Just my luck," grumbled Crow. "Let's hope the Keystone's still there."
He started climbing again, even faster than he had earlier.
"Anyone would think it's a race," Tal complained. Then he thought, maybe it is. He didn't know what Crow really wanted up here, or what he had really agreed to.
"A bond without blood is no bond," Tal muttered. He reached up to the next pole and swung up. "Adras! Give me a hand!"
It was a surprisingly long way to the top of the Tower, almost as far above the Veil as it was below. With Adras's help, Tal caught Crow before too long, but night had fallen before the very pinnacle of the Tower was in easy reach.
They had been tempted to go onto one of the balconies or walkways and continue up the stairs, but caution had prevailed. So they had kept to the outside, the bronze rods and the nets of spun gold with their carefully arranged Sunseeds. Every now and then Crow had taken up a handful, just in case, but he had yet to find a proper Sunstone.
At last they came to the final bronze rod, half Tal's height below the topmost walkway. They could see the spire of the Tower, not far above, surrounded by a crown of distant stars. Light still spilled out above them, but not the bright red rays of the lower windows, just a dim, pinkish glow.
The Tower had grown slender at its peak, little more than forty stretches in diameter. Tal and Crow sat on the pole, listening, hoping to hear if anything was inside the room above. But all they heard was the wind and the soft rattle of the Sunseeds and the nets.
"There may be traps," said Crow. "I'd better take a look first."
"There may be," said Tal. "Light magic traps. We'd best go together."
Crow nodded. He crouched on the pole, hanging on with one hand as he reached up to the railing above, careful to put his hand between the sharp serrations. Tal moved up next to him and had to reach out farther across. Adras hovered next to him and reached out a steadying hand.
Crow jumped. An instant later, Tal followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tal and Crow landed on the walkway together. Both were scratched by the sharp railings, but not seriously. They stood carefully at the very edge of the narrow path and looked into the room in front of them.
The top of the Red Tower was a domed room, open to the air, with four arched doorways, one at each cardinal point of the compass, leading to the circular walkway. Inside the room, the ceiling was covered in a mosaic of tiny Red Sunstones, glittering like a seam of jewel-filled rock. The floor was tiled in red and white, but not in any regular or obvious pattern.
Hanging upside down or perhaps growing from the very center of the domed ceiling was a tree of red cry
stal. Its trunk was straight and bare for several stretches, before it branched out into a canopy that covered most of the room. Each branch had a silver bell on the end.
Tal stared at it, trying to figure out what it was for. There was a strange cluster of small silver hands around the base of the trunk, at the apex of the dome. They seemed to have some purpose… every hand held a thin wire that went back into the trunk of the tree.
"What is that?" asked Crow. He spoke quietly and pointed at the tree.
"I don't know," Tal whispered. His attention had been caught by what was under the upside-down tree.
On the floor of the room, there was a pyramid-shaped plinth of a darker red, about as high as Tal's chest. Two silver hands were mounted upon it, and between them was clasped a large, slowly pulsing Sunstone. It had to be the Red Keystone.
"I don't like the look of all those bells," said Crow, studying them with a burglar's practiced eye. "Or the silver hands."
Then Crow saw the Keystone. He started forward, and stopped only a step from the doorway.
"Maybe you should send Adras in to get it," he suggested.
"Sure," said Adras, before Tal could speak. The Spiritshadow surged forward, but as he tried to enter the arched doorway, the Keystone flashed and a solid sheet of Red light slammed shut like a door. Adras bounced off it with a startled "oof!"
The Red light faded as he bounced back, and the Keystone was quiet once more.
"No Spiritshadows allowed," said Tal. "There must be other defenses, too."
He looked up at the tree and the bell-branches again, and then at the floor. The red tiles seemed to be placed in line with bells above them.