his palms grew sweaty

Here stood Peter. The tower erupted from the earth ahead, a column of ragged stone. Clouds parted for it, and raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun it seemed to him that it foreshortened to a point. At the base sat a door, old wood, built for the height of a man.

Armand found him smote upon an outcropping two hundred metres up. He buried the body and sat there for a time. In the end no words occurred to him and he rose stiffly to his feet. Growls carried down from the landing above.

As he passed the picked-clean bones of some gigantic hound Harland felt the air thicken with heat. Above glowered swirling fiery light. By now he was one thousand metres high. He risked a glance down and his palms grew sweaty.

Above the churning heat roots sprouted from the stone. Some of them were torn and dangled limp. Arms screaming, Martin tested one for strength and kicking his legs out behind him flung himself across the pit. He caught the edge and scrabbled. Lava spat at his feet. Panting against a wall he bent his gaze skyward. The cavern above, swallowed by darkness, breathed with insectine chirps and buzzing. He looked back. The pit was easily crossed from this side and for a moment he considered the climb down. When minutes later he resumed his ascent tears had traced clean lines through the grime caking his face.

Beaks and snapping pincers bit at his ankles as Nicholas dove, breath held. Water crashed cool over his skin. Movement rippled the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, and arcing toward him a deepness yawned. Samuel darted aside and tore clean lines through the water as dark shapes gathered in the murk. He thought of his wife as he heaved himself from the lake, or his debts as he scrambled up rampant vines, his crimes, his thwarted ambitions, his luck as bleeding fingers scratched at walls of crystal, his son or his daughter, stillborn or murdered or ruined or somewhere here in the tower; he thinks of his god as he claws a handhold chipped into the ice long ago, and he thinks of the tower when slipping he finds it worn smooth.

Here Roland sits shivering beside a campfire he did not make, its embers tired eyes fighting sleep. Another man named Peter will find him preserved that way in the snow, and he will be ten thousand metres high. At ten thousand and two hundred he will find a fissure in the wall. He'll look out and see the clouds a cotton blanket far below and for the first time in a long while hope will spark in the tower. He'll try to lean out to see how far he has to go, but the opening won't be wide enough. Then squinting he'll see the rearing silhouttes of countless other towers far away, spearing high, higher than he'll be able to see from his tiny window in the ice and stone, but he'll know that even if he could they would seem to foreshorten to a point.

He'll dig his axe into the ice and, air thin in his lungs, William will begin to climb.