Sunset the Shimmerian

The brazen cries of desert men quieted down as the last one of them that had chased the traveller died on her spear. The lifeless wind kissed the red-stained cliffs and plateaus of rock struck the desert man in the face, pulling him off the spear and falling down a row of natural steps.

His body slumped halfway down, pinned against a barrier of his comrades, now perished by the bronze tip of a spear. The limp corpses, men clad in iron maille and sand-covered turbans, caught the stumbling fellow as if they longed to be united even in death. Had they not waited on the slope, however, plenty others laid strewn along the cliffside path, giving enough blood to pave it red.

Riding atop a great feathered raptor, a zilard strider, the traveller looked down to the valley where tendrils of the Tiphrates fed the desert earth. Here in this distant creek, only wandering crocodiles lurked in the shallow waters. She followed the bending water from the security of the cliffs. Though steep, the stones gave bountiful purchases for her zilard’s hooked claws to latch on with every step.

At the end of the cliffs, where the path dipped to the valley through sparse jagged steps, awaited a final desert savage. His long black hair was knotted up in a fashion common to his race and he was built like a lion. Upon one broad shoulder rested a bow of carved horn with a quiver of arrows, upon the other rested a hammer for stone breakers rather than a warrior. Still, he wielded its heft comfortably as he placed both weapons at his feet.

“Mighty trespasser!” he called out with his arms wide apart. “By what name shall I call you when I tell my tribe of the fool who crossed our lands to see the Tower.”

“Shimmer,” growled the traveller, “but you will not live to tell them.” She dropped from the strider to her feet, sinking in the sand with the added weight of her armour. She wore no mail, but beneath her jerkin, a suit of cotton covered in pockets and filled with clay plates swayed and bounced against her thin frame.

Quickly the man kicked up his bow and drew back an arrow and sneered. “No matter, my kin have passed to the Arali, and if I die, their libations will be shared with stories of how you withered at the Tower.”

“Why do you believe so?”

“All men do,” the desert dweller’s laughter swelled. “See for yourself, how scores of men of paper have died by its very presence.”

“You mean scholars,” Shimmer replied uneasily, eyeing the man’s arrow. It would not pierce her clay plates, though her head remained exposed. “What happened to them, how did they die?”

The desert savage eased his draw, relaxing his arm and smiling with wide eyes at Shimmer. “Such interest! I almost wish to see your face when you are spitting blood in your sleep. Come then, warrior!” He threw his bow aside and picked up his hammer. “My kin are restless for your head!”

He leapt forward in two bounding steps and swung his hammer in a deathly arc. Shimmer moved around him but stumbled as her vision was filled with dust and sand from broken stone. As she closed her eyes she thrust back instinctively and felt the familiar gush of blood trickle down her spear.

When her eyes blinked and cleared her vision, she found the savage clutching his shoulder and grimacing at her. He swung wildly again in a wide circle, chasing her down with a frightening dexterity that should have been impossible for a man with his injuries. One blow found its mark, crushing the clay plates covering her chest and throwing Shimmer to the ground.

She gasped for air, clutching her body as it convulsed from the shock of the blow. The savage laughed again, this time with a snarled, raspy voice, not unlike the cackles of hyenas.

Panic steadied her nerves, just enough that she could pinch her lips and deliver a shrill whistle towards the desert man. Before he could turn and see his fate, her zilard strider was already on his back, pinning him to the earth and tearing apart his neck with serrated jaws.

Shimmer grabbed her spear and leaned on it as she stood upright, a sudden weariness assaulting her. The heat from the glaring sun began to beat on her face now that the rush of battle had subsided. She turned away from the cliff where a trail of dead men awaited the vultures above and trod along the bank of the river, following only what she knew to do. The Tower of Glass could be seen from the end of the shallow river.

Moonlight guided Shimmer’s eyes when she awakened on the back of her zilard, aware of the cold wind nipping at her skin. Her cracked armour pressed against her bruised chest and caused pain with each careful breath. There was an audible crunch of bones, Shimmer did not need to look to recognize the sound, beneath her strider’s feet, and in the distant horizon, a looming grey tower reflected the pale moonlight.

Crossing the expanse was uneventful, the shimmering ground adorned only by occasional bones of men and animals, sun-bleached after countless passing years. The only thing of note in Shimmer’s mind was the ground itself. At times, the sand gave way to long stretches of fractured glass that cracked and crunched under the weight of her strider.

No other features drew her attention until she rode near enough to see the massive door at the base of the Tower. The Tower itself was not made of glass, but rather a whitish-grey stone which she had never seen before. The Tower of Glass stretched up with three tiered levels, the only windows being small circular cutouts, save for the very top where long panels of clear glass reflected the moonlight.

Near the entranceway were stone pillars, erected by some earlier civilization, that bore naked men and women chained by their arms around them. Shimmer recognized the architecture and cuneiform of Oruk. Squinting under the dim moonlight, she read out the words for “thief” or “adulterer” or some other crime. The ones chained down did not look like people from the cities, their skin was too rough and their hair, though some of them were bald, was too dishevelled.

Those still alive enough to move raised their withered heads and stared at Shimmer with empty eyes. She came down from her strider and moved towards them, though remaining far enough that any disease they had would not spread.

“If it’s freedom you want, you need only answer my questions honestly,” she told them. “Have you seen a woman with skin as pale as tonight's moon and golden hair like mine?” Shimmer held out a streak of yellow that ran like gold veins through her red hair.

A bald old man whose withered skin had already peeled away at his joints coughed weakly before speaking. “Yes. I saw a figure, but not the face that belonged to it. They wore a dark hood, you see.”

“I saw,” another woman whose voice sounded like dried paper eagerly answered, “break my chains and I can show you how she opened the door!” The woman was frail, but not so withered as to look like a living skeleton. While she had the look of the desert’s barbarian tribes, she spoke with a clarity that was clearly from the cities. Perhaps Akaad, or Zagrea.

Shimmer raised the back of her spear and struck the chains, and immediately the woman fell to the floor. She waited a moment for her to recover her strength, and turned back to the strider’s pack to retrieve a spare tunic for the woman’s naked skin. When she turned back, however, the woman was in a sprint, if her weakened hobbling could even be called that, and following the stars westward towards the Tiphrates.

A few other men condemned to the stone pillars laughed at Shimmer’s foolishness, but not the old man. “The hooded figure came with a work-zilard. They pulled the Tower’s doors open and shut.”

“And you expect me to believe you?” Shimmer growled. “Until I find this hooded figure, you will stay as you are.”

“No!” the old man cried. “You will not survive the Tower. This woman you seek, if she was the figure, is surely dead as well. I do not ask to be unchained. Simply kill me. The Tower sickens the body, weakens it in agonizing ways. I only wish it would end quickly. Please, I would not give my life just for a lie.”

“Very well. There is sincerity in your words.” Shimmer thrust firmly into the old man’s chest cleanly, his body so reduced that she could scarcely tell if he had died yet or not. Then she walked up to the other men, placing the tip of her spear along a vein just below the groin.

“If the old man was lying,” she grumbled a warning, “next time, you will tell the truth.”

She tied her zilard’s lead to the large bronze handle of the Tower’s door before dressing down and tending to her armour. The shattered plates of clay were taken from their pockets and discarded, replaced with spares from her saddlebag. Finally, Shimmer stood beneath the structure’s moonlit shadow, staring and wondering what she might find inside.

She was aware of the sudden chill pumping through her heart. Mortal foes, the savage men and women of the desert, she did not fear. But things beyond the rim of her knowledge gave her pause to think. After a while, however, curiosity overturned uneasiness, and she signalled her beast to begin pulling. As warm air spewed from within, she retrieved a torch from her saddlebag before entering, ready for whatever may come.

Shadows danced on the edge of her torch, but the Tower within was by no means completely dark. The chamber at the ground was completely circular, with a wide curved stairwell that ascended to the next level. Across the first chamber, a distant hallway was lit by rods of white light in its walls, more brilliant than a glowing crystal, yet it produced no heat as a candle or torch did. Shimmer could approach it, in fact, and place her hand upon its glow and feel nothing.

That corridor, and the many others that stretched from the centre of the Tower like spokes on a wheel, held many small rooms whose thick glass doors continued to protect their contents. Shimmer could look in and see moth-eaten beds and cracked glass tables, or tools that made some rooms look more like a smithy or tailor’s workshop, yet she could not open any of them. Their locks were firm, and the glass was too thick to shatter through with her spear.

Left with no other path, the traveller made her way up the flight of stone steps to the second level. By the light of her torch, she noticed a peculiarity of the Tower’s grey stone. There were no lines where bricks would interlay. In fact, there were nearly no imperfections on the wall whatsoever, almost as if the wall itself had been poured and cast rather than assembled.

“What kind of place is this? And who could have built it?” Shimmer awed. Even the masons of Ituru, who built great pyramids to the heavens, could hardly show such skill and craft.

Without warning, a crackling voice in the walls responded. “A marvel, is it not? I do hope you see why now I had to come here. Perhaps, then, I could convince you not to return me to my home.”

Shimmer spun, clutching her spear in fright at the phantom voice. “What? How?” She held her torch high above her head. “You are the woman I was asked to find? You are Sygrun?”

“I am. And I see that you are not one of the desert tribes. Your red hair interests me. From where have you come?”

“You can see me?” Shimmer said as she collected her nerves, though she remained vigilant as she explored the corridors for the next flight of stairs. “I am not of the Aesir if that is your meaning. Though I have seen plenty of your people as merchants in Zagrea.”

“Is that where my father found you?” asked the voice, which sounded the same no matter where in the Tower she walked.

“He waits for you in Akaad, south of the city-state Oruk.”

A soft laugh came through the walls. “I know the place. But I will not go. I have only just begun to uncover the secrets interred within the Tower. Its architects were people of a great civilization that had mastered natural philosophy in all its aspects.”

“How great could they have been?” Shimmer asked. “They are gone now.”

She left one corridor, returning to the centre and then trying another path. Simple and repeating in its design, the Tower was deceptive and easy to get lost in, if one did not keep note of where they had already searched. Down the final corridor, Shimmer found a short flight of stairs up to the top level of the Tower, where the gold-haired woman stood behind a wall of glass.

If more confirmation was needed that this was the figure the old man had seen, Shimmer noticed the butchered remains of her zilard lying on her size of glass, while scraps of bone from a finished dinner laid pushed to one corner on the woman’s side.

“Ah, and there we have it,” Sygrun said, walking up to the middle of the room where the glass bisected it. “Let me get a closer look at you now. Yes, I see the scars on your hand and your shoulders. A true fighter you must be. Then you should understand this Tower as I do, once I share with you its secrets.”

“Why would you give them to me?” Shimmer asked as she inspected the room behind the glass. Along the wall was an array of levers in various positions, and at the centre stood a long silver table with more tools than tasks that Shimmer could use them for.

Besides that table, three thin golden beams held up a circular glass plate, with a bright white light shining above it. Shimmer stepped back in surprise when she realized the plate was clear, but rather presenting images of the other parts of the tower.

The Aesir woman, Sygrun, smiled at Shimmer’s amazement. “See? I shall give this knowledge freely, for when you understand, you will know why I must stay, regardless of what my father has promised for my return.”

“But this Tower kills those who dwell near it for too long, you must have seen the withering prisoners outside.”

The woman laughed wryly and walked away from the glass, motioning to the levers along the wall as she took up a gold-coated garment. The clothing was unlike anything Shimmer had seen, its bulk far bigger than necessary for any human, though, for the Aesir, her stocky build fit snugly within. It stretched and warped in a way that was not like cotton or silk, and its gold surface was more than mere dye, it had a true luster under the room’s white light.

“When a smith handles a red-hot iron, he does not work bare-skinned by the forge, does he?” Sygrun asked and then quickly answered herself. “No, he covers himself in wool against the flash of embers. This Tower is much the same, and with this protection, I climbed the Tower and silenced it for a time. That is how you have made it, naked as you are against its power.”

“I have never seen its like,” Shimmer said. “Where did you come by it?”

“A place far from here, near my homeland, where a structure similar to this one once stood. Its own power had died out from its destruction, but the artefacts left by its lords were well preserved in sealed lockboxes. Here, you may take one, a spare in case my own ripped.”

Sygrun unfolded another golden garment and held it out, pulling the leftmost lever on the wall to remove the wall of glass. Shimmer stepped back as the wall moved on its own accord, sliding up into the stone ceiling. Not wanting to delay and fall victim to whatever machinations Sygrun had planned, Shimmer quickly pulled the gold suit and stepped into it. It engulfed her entire body, more like a massive bag than actual clothing, and sealed tightly over her head with a series of interlocking steel pins. Only through a narrow window of glass could Shimmer see anything. Immediately, she felt the warmth of her own breath. The only source of air was a small gap between the pins above her head.

Just then, within the circular glass lens, Shimmer saw the chamber at the entrance. And at the door, the woman she had freed stood with a stone in her hand. She and the other prisoners gathered just inside the door, peering around and whispering among themselves. By some power or mechanism that she could not sense, the glass lens began vibrating and the escapees’ voices could be heard.

“We’ll be as dead as she is if we stay,” one man hissed.

The woman snapped back. “We need her spear, unless you plan to fight the tribesmen with your bare hands.”

Sygrun pulled two levers, so focused on her preparations that she did not notice the voices. Shimmer tried to call out, but it was too late for those below. The floor opened to a small chamber below where there stood a wide pedestal, presenting a massive glowing stone. Immediately the woman, who stood furthest in the room, screamed and clutched her face. The glass was small and hard to see through, but Shimmer could just make out the blisters and burns forming on her skin.

The other men turned to flee, one of them making it through the narrow crack in the door, though to make his escape he had kicked the other’s back into the Tower. They fell and covered themselves with their arms in hope of protection, but blisters burst from their skin as quickly as the woman’s. Sygrun turned at the sound of their screams, running to the glass and picking it up to see the stone even closer.

“Curious,” Sygrun awed. “Outside the Tower, men grew sick after days of exposure. For clear reasons, none alive has seen its true power so closely before.”

“What have you done? Shimmer demanded, taking her hand and throwing the glass back to its stand.

“I have shown you a glimpse,” she responded. “You cannot weigh the price of a few barbaric prisoners against the knowledge of the ancients.” Shimmer snarled, but the Aesir’s shrugging and casual stride tacitly conferred her heedless thoughts. “Leave then, if you wish to bury their bones while there are still bones to bury. As I have said, I am simply here to work.”

Afraid of what might happen if she left the Aesir alone, Shimmer followed closely behind Sygrun down the same way she had come. “That stone,” Sygrun explained, “is the heart of this Tower and the source of the power with which the ancients built their civilization. I know not by what means they ended, but that power remains here still.”

“Why do you seek such a thing?” Shimmer asked nervously.

“For the coming battles, traveller,” she answered plainly as if such a fact should have been easily known. “The seats of Valholl spill with great warriors in preparation for the final days. But mortal hands are no more anathema to the tides of fate than an arrow is to a charging rhinoceros.”

“Final days? Is that some kind of prophecy?”

Sygrun laughed. “The one of Ragnarok, traveller. The one that no person of the mortal races need worry about if I can come to know the truth of this ancient stone.”

They came to it just as she spoke, stopping at the edge of the pedestal. Now within arm’s reach, Shimmer felt the heat of the stone through her suit, squinting her eyes through its tinted glass as she took a fragment of the stone. It was hot to the touch, and she dropped it immediately.

“Great weapons were built from this stone,” Sygrun said, amused by Shimmer’s worry. “There are inscriptions in this Tower that speak of all that was built here by the ancients. I’ve yet to decipher their ancient language, but the imagery is enough to tickle the mind. Spears that can flatten a city in hellish fire, chariots that ride the sky as if the clouds were paved roads, all those and more are possible by this sky-stone.”

“You mean a meteor?” Shimmer said, looking at Sygrun with fresh incredulity. She spoke of it like worship, but whatever unnatural powers lay within, it was still but a rock.

“More than a mere meteor,” she said, still gazing. “Even in this raw, unrefined form, just look at its power!”

Shimmer furtively cast her eyes to the dead prisoners, now nothing more than red pools among white bones. Though they entered for her spear, she felt that no thief or bandit deserved their kind of death.

“It is a grim power indeed,” Shimmer said irritably. “The kind no man or woman deserves to wield if even half of what you say can be created.”

Shaking with a mix of bewilderment and rage, Shimmer grasped her spear tightly and raised its point to Sygurn’s chest. Silence hung over the empty chamber, save for the faint echo outside from Shimmer’s zilard pawing at the sand. At the next instant, the Aesir’s hands were on the shaft, twisting and wrenching Shimmer around in a bout to see who would win over the weapon.

Sygrun, like most of her kind, was tall and muscular, hardened by their homeland’s long winters. But while she was strong, Shimmer was nimble, and she managed to trip Sygurn to her back with a deft kick with her heel. The woman lurched and clung onto the spear but her weight was too much.

Shimmer let the spear go to avoid Sygurn’s pull, and the jolting release of tension from her arms sent the spear flying faster than either woman expected. The glass plate covering Sygurn’s face shattered, and at once the Aesir bellowed a blood-curdling shriek. She covered her face with her protected arms, fleeing for the door only to slip on the slick blood left by the prisoners.

Panic enveloped the Aesir almost as fast as the stone’s accursed power, and blinded by her blistering face, she could no longer find the door once she lost her way.

“I will leave with you!” She begged Shimmer. “Save me!”

But the traveller did not speak. She did not reach out and guide Sygurn back through the Tower’s metal doors. For Shimmer had already gone, stepping out to the desert and whistling to her zilard to pull the door shut.

“You would only return once you have healed,” she muttered and then faltered, choking on her words as Sygurn crawled along the floor. Her pock-marked liquid skin was the last sight she saw within the Tower of Glass. The door satisfactorily slammed shut, its tremendous weight locking itself into place once again.

Shimmer gazed about the desert at her strewn belongings, all scattered by the escaped prisoners. She looked to their crudely shattered chains, bent in erratic ways. Though the woman had lied and torn through her saddlebag, the clear desperation of the prisoners to survive only filled her heart with more grief.

Let the Tower terrify trespassers, Shimmer thought as she picked up her belongings and returned them to her saddle. For the secrets of that glowing stone should never belong to the hands of humanity.