There were more perks to the pilgrim papers than easy movement through the city’s many, many walls and the handful (literally) of stamps that came with it. Chiefest among them: no one questioned why they wanted to snoop around the Children of Endkiu’s most significant buildings, because they were far from alone.
They spotted the Eternal Palace well before they reached it. Even if they hadn’t, finding it would’ve been a simple matter of stepping into the street and following the flow of people who didn’t dress in the overly-accessorized style of the locals, the people who clutched their pilgrim papers in one hand and a map in the other and who looked up at every storefront and weathered signpost like it was the holiest piece of architecture in the worlds. The crowds of people surged in the direction of the palace as if they were all about to breathe their dying breaths and had to be sure they made it to one last kitschy gift shop in time.
The structure scraped at the skies over Urk like a bouquet of upward-pointing blades ready for someone to fall upon it. It perched atop a massive platform of sandstone reached by long wedge-shaped staircases—the building’s own pedestal. Several tiers of boxy stories and balconies rose above it to form the main wing of the palace, the smallest level at the base and each becoming progressively larger as they went up.
Onlookers often remarked that it didn’t look structurally sound, and they were right. The original plans for the Eternal Palace had been for a regular, gravity-appropriate construction of larger levels at the bottom and smaller ones up at the top, a simple pyramid design, tried and true. Unfortunately, when the architect hired a team, she’d talked through the design while standing on the opposite side of the table from the new recruits and with the blueprints right-side-up from her perspective. The next thing she knew, they’d recreated what they had seen in perfect detail.
In the builders’ defense, they’d done a truly remarkable job of making sure every element stuck up its nose and covered its ears whenever gravity came around with something to say on the matter.
Greenery hung from the narrow balconies and the bottoms of the overhangs, and plenty more sprouted from the large garden afforded by the unexpectedly wide rooftop. Tall, boxy towers reached up beyond the central building, some starting from the base and rising up along the side to offer much-needed support, others balanced carefully atop the highest and largest story. Each one gleamed with a roof of copper. More copper adorned the sides and jutted like bristles from the rooftops—a thousand razor-sharp points reflecting in the silver light.
Root couldn’t help but feel they gave the whole palace an unwelcoming and perhaps evil look. Not what she’d expected from the church, but a surprise in the same way one is caught off guard by a due apology from a parent; you just don’t expect them to admit it.
Several smaller wings took up the perimeter of the raised platform or hugged the sides. On the north end, a long, elbowed villa branched from the palace’s pedestal terrace so that the roof was flush with the immense raised surface, creating a long promenade that looked down at the city streets below before abutting one of the city’s inner walls.
Root and the others kept to the flow as it passed sluggishly through a gate and reached the base of the palace. People fanned out there to engage in tourist activities: finding their own private spot to stand in the way of passersby and gawk.
“That’s one hell of a building,” said Root, being a tourist.
“I think it’s on the other side of that matter,” said Beel.
“Look over there,” said Vit. “That sign by the staircase says there are tours. I’ll go check it out.” They ran off.
“It’s gotta be in there, right?” Root said, turning to Azriah.
Azriah stared up at the palace, brow creased, one hand pulling at the hair beneath his lip. “I can’t imagine there’s somewhere better to keep it.”
“It’s big.”
“It is.”
Vit returned a minute later. “I got us tickets for a tour. Pilgrim-exclusive! It covers the grounds and history, I guess. The cheapest of the options. Some of them were…” Vit scratched their head and made a sarcastic grimace.
“Well, that’s fine. Maybe it’ll give us an idea of where to start.”
Their tour guide was a tiny, mousy girl with an allergy to being looked at. She wore glasses with lenses so wide that she might’ve been trying to hide behind them—but if that was the case, she forgot a crucial characteristic. Her name tag said: “Anjeanette – Intern.”
“Okay!” she said in a voice so small Root almost asked to borrow her glasses just to find it. She cleared her throat. “ThanksforcomingI’mAnjeanetteI’llbeyourtourguidetodaypleasefollowme.” She turned and started walking at a pace that indicated an intent to lose her followers.
Anjeanette led them south around the wide, street-level base of the palace. The twenty-or-so other pilgrims on their tour walked with their necks craned back, staring straight up at the facade in wonder.
“Thisoverhere…” Anjeanette waved to a large hall jutting out from the south of the palace’s base, flanked on each side by a short tower and joined by several other smaller buildings that molded into the general mass like a stack of children’s toy blocks. She took a deep breath and continued at a more digestible pace. “This is the historic section of the Eternal Palace. Rarely used now, but still kept up with. Um, I think there are plans to do some restoration eventually and open up a new gift shop…”
They passed the door, which stood open. A wide, worn, only slightly crumbling hall stretched within. It looked like an old temple of the sort Root remembered from school history books, so old themselves that they might’ve been written as firsthand accounts.
“It’s a really good place to hide,” said Anjeanette, her voice quickening and getting quieter again. “Especially back there past those pillars or in that wing here on the left. Okay, um, moving on!”
They wound around the far corner of the palace base as Anjeanette kept talking—something about the founding and history of Urk. On the other side of the palace was yet another huge building, this one more like what Root expected.
It looked like the church they’d slept in the attic of in Midden—if someone took that church and kept adding embellishments, then embellished those embellishments. The walls had so many different carvings and spires and buttresses and layers that it made Root dizzy. The steeple at the front towered high above, a bell tower topped with the most gold Root had ever seen in one place. At the peak sat an enormous symbol—eight prongs, four of them plain, the other four widening to triangles.
The tour filed inside the church—the Numinous Cathedral, Anjeanette called it. They paused just inside to discuss the history.
Light filtered in through a dozen judgmental expressions: figures in stained-glass that painted the room in a kaleidoscope of magenta and blue and green and a thousand other hues. The glass faces in the windows looked down at Root. She hadn’t been in many churches in her life. She wondered if she might combust.
Books, wooden pews with dusty cushions—she’d take half the building with her.
Anjeanette’s voice echoed off the walls, making her the loudest she’d been yet. “… And up there, behind the altar, there’s a tiny spot between the organ and the wall juuust big enough to squeeze inside and hide…”
Root sized the girl up. She was about Root’s age—perhaps twenty or so—and scrawny, like evolution had handed her a series of adaptations best suited to fitting into whatever hiding places presented themselves. Combined with the disposition of a prey animal, Root felt it was in everyone’s best interest that she position herself between the girl and any open window for fear of what she might resort to if she felt cornered. She was pretty, too, but Root tried not to spend too long looking at her since clearly it made her start to break out in hives. But Root couldn’t help a glance while she led them around with her back turned.
Root’s face flushed. She hadn’t meant it like that.
Soon enough, they left the cathedral. They took one of the wedge staircases up to the palace proper next.
“Um, originally, before the Children of Endkiu took over the building, the Eternal Palace was the home of the Unsightly King,” said Anjeanette. “It used to be called the Copper Towers. Or, um, most people called it the Barbs.” She pointed to the row of needlelike copper spikes that formed a guard along the side of the stairs—the worlds’ most dangerous safety precaution.
“Why all the spikes?” asked an older woman. Root was impressed with her ability to keep up with Anjeanette’s flying pace.
“Um, the Unsightly King became very paranoid as his reign went on, I think,” said Anjeanette. “There are rumors he built a mess of trap-filled hidden tunnels all throughout the palace so that he could move around without even his most trusted servants knowing his whereabouts, or to escape any corner at any moment.”
The other pilgrims seemed absorbed by mention of this king. The same woman spoke again. “This was back before he was defeated by the Grand Priest!” She wasn’t asking so much as apparently trying to prove her knowledge to the rest of her tourmates.
“Um, yes,” said Anjeanette, moving a little faster now as the woman’s push to say more instead drove her away up the stairs.
Vit raised their hand. “Could you tell us more of that story?”
“!” said Anjeanette as the siege came in from all sides.
“I know it!” said the old woman. “A very long time ago, the Unsightly King used to rule Urk. He was a terrible tyrant—and ugly! And the people of Urk—our people—feared him. Then the first Grand Priest arrived and cast him out of the palace and imprisoned him!”
“And took from him the halo,” added a man. “The Halo of the Unsightly King, it was called.”
“I was just getting to that bit!”
“The church’s Crown of Samesh.”
“And we were all liberated. And the Children took back their rightful place in Urk, our homeland.”
Root shared a look with Azriah, Vit, and Beel.
Anjeanette had escaped several stairs ahead in the wake of the other pilgrims taking over the touring duties. They caught up with her at the top and began a slow lap around the palace proper—tiered overhangs high above them, foliage cascading like waterfalls as it reached down toward them. They paused when they reached the main entrance: a high, guarded door into a foyer with a wide stone courtyard beyond. Past the courtyard were more doors and many more guards.
“What’s in there?” asked Azriah.
Anjeanette took a sharp breath. “The first level of the palace is a courtyard, which is open to the sky up above the upper levels, and the Hall of Relics.”
“Where the Grand Priest keeps the Crown of Samesh?” asked another pilgrim with starry eyes.
“Um, usually, yes.”
Root looked around. From a quick turn, she counted no fewer than forty-two guards inside the palace, out on the massive terrace, on balconies above, and along the staircase leading down.
They couldn’t go into the palace—apparently that was a different tour, and one that, by the sound of it, cost quite a hefty bit more. They walked down along the promenade, around the building that supported it—the Villa Apostolic, Anjeanette called it, where many of the church leaders lived and studied—and back to the spot where they’d started. The other pilgrims stuck around asking questions—and, frequently, filling in the answers themselves just to flaunt their knowledge a bit—as Anjeanette backed closer and closer against the wall. Root wouldn’t’ve been all that surprised to find out she could mold her body into the gaps between the bricks and hide there.
Root tipped her before they split from the lingerers; it felt like the least she could do, and hopefully would help fund a career change. Or at least make up for the money she surely wasn’t making as an intern.
The four of them went to sit on the low wall surrounding a huge fountain across the wide street. Half a dozen statues spat water in crisscrossing arcs that sprayed their backs with refreshing mist.
“I don’t want to get wet,” said Beel, keeping his distance.
“It feels nice,” countered Root.
“The water smells like metal, though.”
“Probably all those coins at the bottom.”
“And do you see where that statue’s spray is coming from…?” Beel shuddered.
“So it sounds like we have a pretty good lead,” said Vit, changing the subject away from the plaster anatomy. “Matches up with what’s in the book, too.” From their bag, they produced Ajis’s old book with its scant few intact pages.
Root nodded. “The Halo of the Unsightly King. That sounds important. I’d wager good money on that being our periapt.” She lowered her voice on the last word. There weren’t any other tourists too close to them, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.
“No more wagers,” said Azriah. “But you’re right. The Crown of Samesh, I think they also called it? The others seemed enamored by it.”
“Here,” said Vit. They held up a picture from the book—a crown encircled by writing. The page’s title had washed away in some long-forgotten spill alongside a bite out of the crown’s side. “This bit here talks about the Children of Endkiu. This is the periapt—and now we know where it is.”
“Yeah,” said Root sarcastically. “Right up past all those spikes at the top of the stairs, through multiple sets of guarded doors, and with more guards in every direction.”
Azriah nodded grimly. “This isn’t an abandoned crypt or some dinky pop-up political rally. That’s a fortress.”
Vit glanced back up at the palace. They pursed their lips and looked back at the others.
“I think this might be harder than we thought.”
The-sound-of-the-summer-wind-in-the-canyon felt like their whole life had been a joke, and they weren’t too pleased about it, thank you very much.
When a seed started putting down roots and sending a shoot up to gather nutrients, there was always a bit of a sorting-out that came with the territory—that was just the way of things. Sometimes the way your seed ended up in the dirt meant your roots started going up and your sprout went down, but that was easy enough to rectify.
That had been the case for The-sound-of-the-summer-wind-in-the-canyon. They’d been all turned around, but quickly righted things and gotten on the right path.
“Not finding anything up here,” the sprout had said after a few scrambling days working up towards the surface.
“Uh, you might want to see this,” the roots had replied.
But sprouts had to make a beeline for the surface. That was just basic survival. The plant needed light—needed to photosynthesize—and if it didn’t get that ball rolling quickly, the roots wouldn’t have any time left for sightseeing.
“No, really. And hurry,” they’d said. The roots still hadn’t had any sway, and it’d taken backtracking, wrapping around the sprout, and yanking it down after them to change that.
Light! But… had they gotten more switched around than they thought?
In the end, the roots went “up” and then “down” and then back “up” and the sprout had gone “down” and then “up” and then back “down”—a confused spiral, like a dance of limbs desperately scrambling for life.
For whatever reason, the soil (and shallow soil, at that!) was up and the sky was down. The-sound-of-the-summer-wind-in-the-canyon had an ache of some kind but no head to keep it in. The genetic manual hadn’t said anything about this.
What was more, now they had to hold on, and it seemed like that reality was permanent. The roots—so haughty after being the ones to find the sky—had only complaints now.
“We’re slipping; we’re going to let go!”
“Don’t!”
“Well, stop growing, then! We’re getting too heavy!”
“Stop growing? But what else are we here for?”
“Ahhh—I can’t hold on much longer!”
“Just hold on until we bloom, damn it!”
Mammals walked upside-down across the sky. “What a nice, tranquil garden,” said one, looking up.
“Hm. Needs a trim,” said the other.