Chapter Three Hundred and Sixty-Six -The Storm Tower

The first sight of the Storm Tower wasn’t the tower itself. That was because Stormtower and the Storm Tower were two different things, confusingly named the same thing. Stormtower--one word--was a city. The Storm Tower was the big tower in its centre.

As our second night away from the fleet progressed, I could slowly make out an oasis of light in the darkness of night, a spot of red and orange in the distance.

My watch ended, I took a long nap, and when I woke up and returned onto the deck, the sun had risen, and that distant spot had grown much larger, but still, that wasn’t the Storm Tower. Instead, it was a small city, maybe half the size of Goldenalden with a sprawl of small homes with big gardens around them and big, wide roads crisscrossing each other.

The city was without walls, though there were small towers all around it, each one thin and narrow and quite tall, with a capped roof of green copper over a lookout post.

What was most interesting of all though, at least to me, was the road leading away from the city and towards the actual Storm Tower.

It was a wide road that wove between large hills which could have been a six-lane highway back on Earth. On either side of it was a thin strip of homes and businesses and all sorts of buildings.

It was like a long, extended city reaching out and away from the first larger city and all the way over the hills and to the coast.

That’s where the Storm Tower was, right on the edge of a bay that I couldn’t see the other side of.

The Storm Tower... kind of just took my breath away.

A monument of stone, iron, and glass, the tower dominated the horizon. The base of it was perhaps twenty times as wide as the Beaver Cleaver was long, occupying an area best measured in dozens of acres. From this foundation, the tower soared up in a cascade of terraces and monolithic walls, rising beyond the lower wispy clouds that drifted in off the bay. Above that cloudy mantle, the tower gathered itself into a dome, which was further crowned with a narrower tower that could've rivaled Big Ben.

It was practically a manmade mountain, but the sprawling complex that radiated out from its base was just as stunning. Countless interlocking buildings flooding out a kilometer in every direction, every one of them no less than ten stories in height, many of them stretching up to skyscraper level in their own right. Roads entered the complex and vanished into vaulted passages like tunnels. The original ground was long since built over, but the wooded courtyards hundreds of feet in the air felt like slabs of hills had been installed in place of some of the roofs.

Buildings had been built on top of other buildings, reinforced, and then built on top of again. It all combined into an organic layer-city with no defined edge, seeming to be bursting apart at the seams. Some buildings of castle-like stone, others of glass and wrought iron, some still only shells of new construction, surrounded by a forest of scaffolding.

It was clear, at a glance, that this place hadn’t been built in a day. The tallest of the towers, to the north of the Storm Tower’s main... tower part, had a skeletal structure and walls of glass. It almost looked like a modern skyscraper except this was made of wrought iron with decorative curves and its base was all interlocking stone.

Further along the coast, to the south of the tower, was a second city. This one seemed less built for people and more for industry. Big factories sat next to the bay, spewing coal smoke into the air from long chimneys, and a huge port extended over the water where more traditional ships were docked.

Was the reason this city was so far from the others to keep the smoke and smog away? Or were the two cities inhabited by dwarves and elves? What about that big road, with all of the homes built alongside it? And the tower! Oh, I had so many questions, but no one to ask.

The air was filled with ships. Little zippy ones that flew past at blazing speeds and bigger, lumbering giants that barely looked like they were moving at all. Most of the ships circled the main tower, but a number of them hovered over the more industrial area, where I could see airship docks where stuff was being loaded on and off of waiting ships.

We flew past a ship whose entire side was made of two bulbous, glass-covered cars filled with little figures on seats. At a glance it looked like they were reading newspapers or chatting. Were those air-buses?

Our approach was noticed soon enough, and a small ship not much bigger than the Redemption came to a hover nearby. A small figure stood on its deck and pulled out semaphore flags to signal us.

I raced to our second deck to reply, of course. They wanted to know if we had a transceiver, and when I said that we didn’t, they asked if we were there on business or Tower business.

After a very quick conference with Caprica, we decided on Tower business, and the ship told us to follow them and that our berth was five-zero-one.

I relayed that to Clive, but he didn’t know what it meant any more than I did. Still, we did as instructed and followed what was clearly some sort of air-traffic-direction ship closer to the tower.

There was a system in place that decided who could approach and when, but we weren’t privy to whatever that system was, so we had to wait and do as told.

“Whoa,” Awen said. She’d been on deck ever since we could see the city, a magic-made spyglass in hand the entire time so that she could better see what was going on and take a look at the ships we passed. Her attention, and mine, was now on the main tower. The dome at the top could slide open.

It revealed that the whole of the massive tower was hollow, and the interior was lined by a circle of docks and gantries and catwalks and big cranes that could unfold from the walls to grab onto ships.

I imagined that maybe the largest airships around couldn’t fit into the tower, but most of those we saw weren’t much bigger than the Beaver. And with ships of our size... Well, I imagined that the tower could hold hundreds.

I couldn’t just stare with my jaw slack though, there was piloting to be done, and even with Clive at the wheel and everyone in top form, it wouldn’t do for the captain to slack off.

As we approached the tower, a signal must have been sent by our pilot boat because a magical beam of green light appeared before the Beaver, tracing a route through the tower’s doors and into its depths.

“I guess we follow that,” I said. For some reason, I hadn’t expected there to be magic around such an industrious city, but of course, there was no reason for them to abandoned magic.

We moved in, going perhaps a lot slower than we could have, but slow was safe and the inside of the tower, even if it was so grand it probably had its own weather, was still a busy place.

Ships were moored against the walls, loading and unloading cargo, being repaired, or just sitting and waiting. The tower’s interior was lit by big searchlights and a thousand torches hanging above the catwalks, but the space was still relatively dark compared to the bright morning sun outside. Actinic splashes of light flared up every so often, and when I looked for the source I found a team of workers with what looked like welding equipment working on a ship to one side.

The space was cacophonous. Clangs of metal on metal, distant shouts, even a lot of music of a few different genres competing for loudness. Combined with all of the moving parts, and the many strange and new scents, it made for something of a sensory overload, and I found myself fighting back dizziness, so I refused to take it all in and instead focused on what was ahead of me.

The various berths had numbers above them, but it wasn’t organised all that easily. The numbers seemed to correspond to a space, and that space was obviously somewhat changeable since some ships were bigger than others, and it looked as if the landing areas could change size, with the clamps and gantries and cranes all being built on huge rails pressed up against the walls that let them shift from side to side.

Eventually though, the green line ahead of us led us down, and five levels off the ground--or at least the ground within the tower--floor. Clive did a bit of expert flying, spinning us around so that we could enter the berth back-first.

I saw figures on the sidelines, both short and squat and tall and lithe and those inbetween, all working to adjust the space where the Beaver eventually came in for a landing. Clamps thumped gently against the ship’s hulls and Clive set the engine to idling and we pulled in all of our sails, letting the retreating clamps pull us into our mooring.

Finally, once we were properly locked in place, a catwalk unfolded from the side and came to rest a pace above the rightmost deck. The end of the catwalk had a ramp which the Scallywags hurried to drop.

We had arrived at Stormtower.

Someone walked across the catwalk, each step eliciting a clang and a bang, so I rushed to meet them at the end of the ramp while tugging my captain’s hat on straighter.

The person was... someone. I couldn’t tell if it was a dwarf or an elf. They were a bit shorter than I was, and rather on the stalky side, but they had a thin face and pointy ears, as well as thick but long hair tied up in a ponytail dangling out the back of their hardhat. He, of course, had a beard. It was a rather neatly trimmed one that only went down to his sternum, but it was clean and had a few little beads woven into it. “Greetings!” he said with a deep bass of a voice. “And welcome to the Storm Tower. Permission to come aboard?”

“Hello,” I replied. “And permission granted. Welcome aboard the Beaver Cleaver.”

He grinned and stepped up onto the ship. “Thank you. Are you the captain of this strange vessel?”

“Oh? Yeah, that’s me. I’m captain Broccoli Bunch, this is my crew and friends,” I said with a gesture to everyone, because no one was staying below deck and missing this. “Pleased to meet you, ah, sir?”

“Thorin Rootbreaker, Clerk of Landing Floor Five, at your service, captain. Now, I know my records like I know my beard, and I don’t recall a ship called the Beaver Cleaver heading to my docks today or any other day.”

“Ah, that’s because we haven’t told anyone,” I said.

Amaryllis stepped up and curtsied to Thorin Rootbreaker. “I’m the one who usually cares for the ship’s paperwork. I’m Amaryllis Albatross, the first mate.”

Amaryllis was my first mate? I supposed she was!

“Which forms do we need to fill for an impromptu landing and how much are the standard docking fees?” Amaryllis asked.

“Before all that,” Thorin said. “I’m mighty curious to know what brings you here? Your ship doesn’t look fat with cargo, and that there’s a tower-made skiff you’ve got grabbed in your midships.”

Amaryllis made a disgusted face. “We’re here on political business, I’m afraid. One of the Beaver’s guests is a noble who has affairs to take care of here. You know how it can be.”

“Ah, I do, I do,” Thorin said. “Well, in any case, no one will be calling a Rootbreaker a penny pincher. Standard fare’s good enough. Your ship’s unusual, but not stranger than some of the hulls we see here, and besides, the berth wasn’t going to be filled for another week. That does mean you’ll be needing to find accommodations elsewhere for this ship of yours between now and then, can’t be giving away promised places.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” I said.

“Good as iron then,” Thorin said. “The administration’s at the tower’s base.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Um, Mister Rootbreaker, if we wanted to find out about another ship? Like a ship that might be docked at the tower, is there any place we could ask about it?”

Thorin frowned, big bushy eyebrows meeting in the middle of his brow like two blind caterpillars bumping into each other. “Oh, sure, administration ought to be able to do that for ya. Looking for a friend?”

I wouldn’t call Vonowl a friend unless his personality improved a fair bit. “Not quite. I’m just looking for someone.”

“Well, good luck to ya, then. Now, will your ship be needing fuel? Provisions? Some elbow grease to get it up to snuff?”

***