We made it to the Spire.
That’s not quite the right way to put it. We made it to the town at the bottom of the Spire. The Spire itself goes up so far I can’t see where it ends. It looks less like a tower from this close and more like the trunk of some enormous dead tree, and when you crane your neck back you can see the layers of it stacked up above you, each one apparently more civilised and more ornate than the last. Down here at the base there’s fog, and mud, and people who have been changed by the land in ways that aren’t comfortable to look at. Patches of scales. Clumps of feathers growing from the wrong places. Horns coming out of temples at angles that can’t have been comfortable to grow.
The river nearly did for us before we even arrived.
The path ran right into it. The water had burst its banks and taken the road with it, moving in a way that water isn’t supposed to move, and I could tell from looking at it that going in would be a very bad idea. There was a boatman. Old, skeletal hands, jewelled box on the seat beside him. He said he’d take us across in exchange for truths. Not stories about the truth. Actual truths, removed from the person who had them, signed over in a contract.
I signed one. I told him I don’t know if I am a good person.
He liked that one. Wrote it down with great enthusiasm. Said it was truly wonderful. When we reached the other bank he gave me something in return, a kind of sense I hadn’t had before, an awareness of whether what we’re doing is good or bad from some unnamed perspective I can’t identify. I don’t know whose perspective it is. He wouldn’t say.
I’m not sure it’s changed anything yet. But I notice I’m using it.
Bawbaggins had taken rather too many mushrooms before we crossed and had told himself he’d only had a small amount. When we reached the other side the truth became, properly and fully, his again. He spent most of the walk to the Spire town convinced he was inside a cave.
Gloom told a lie on the boat. In the Feywild, lying marks you. His teeth sharpened. He won’t know what else has changed until it comes up.
Daisy gave the ferryman the worry that he might burn us all alive as his power grows, and it was taken from him. He’s been noticeably more casual with his fire since. I am choosing to stand further away.
The town is called Ika, I think. At least that’s what the river is called. The tavern we found had food that was worse than it should have been and rooms that were cheaper than the food, which tells you something about the food. The barman told us that there’s a substance in the upper layers that reverses the changes the Feywild makes, undoes the mutations and the effects of lying. We can’t get it here. We’d need to speak to someone called the Baron, who controls access to the higher floors of the Spire via something the barman called a thread of light, which I didn’t entirely follow.
The barman pointed us toward a man who used to work for the Baron. An elf. Sitting in the corner, head down, in half-plate armour, surrounded by empty tankards. Very deep asleep when we found him. Not dead. I checked.
We paid for his room and put him to bed. The plan is to talk to him in the morning when he’s in a state to be talked to. Gloom stayed in the room with him in case he woke confused and ran off before we could get anything useful out of him.
I was asleep when someone came in.
Gloom was in the elf’s room. The rest of us were across the hall. I don’t know who it was. I didn’t hear anything until after it had already happened, which is a thought I will be sitting with for a while. Someone entered our room in the night, looked around, saw Gloom watching them from the elf’s doorway, and turned and ran.
That’s where it was left.
I’m writing this in the morning while it’s still dark outside. The Spire is up there, above the fog. Famine is in there, somewhere, in a god called Dandelo, waiting for us.
The town is quiet except for whatever is happening in the hallway.
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