Tower of Trials: Book One of Guardian Spirit Read Online Free Page B

an ivory-white tower. “Is that our destination? How interesting! It’s as craggy as a giant tree. But it has external stairs! And are those stained glass windows? How pretty!” She craned back her head to where its spire disappeared into a perpetual cloud. “And very tall. But where are the doors?”
    Though it counted as a delay, Guard was caught up as she. After all, it struck him this was the last time he’d see the Tower with mortal eyes.
    Unlike the other buildings, all built from both common and uncommon stones, this one came from an amarant named stone- wood. In fact, it came from the stone-wood of a single white tree centuries old. It was a majestic structure. Solid, unbroken, and white throughout, except for two things: The external, railless stairway and landings that spiraled along its length. And the spectral windows that punctured the undulated walls. That glass represented every color of spirit—yellow for sylphs, red for reapers, gray for guardians, white for ghosts, and black for shades. Ghouls deserved no color; abominations with caliburn, their corrupted aether, had no place in the spirit realms. Besides, spectral windows couldn’t be used to spy on the monsters anyway, not without The City being spotted back. And like the aetheric reaper’s mark placed on the soon-to-die mortal, it too drew the monster’s unwanted attention.
    After Guard finished in The Crypt below, he would ascend to the Cloud Chamber. Like all other Chambers, for security reasons, it was reached only by the external staircase and the hidden entries that Threshold Guardian Hasp managed, yet it differed greatly in purpose. The Cloud Chamber was set aside for the goddess Purgatory and her attendant sylphs. Therein, one of Purgatory’s most trusted sylphs would slay him—he dared not hope the goddess herself would so honor him with her presence. He’d rise from his own ashes and claim his new life as a full spirit. Thereafter, he would be admitted into the regular Chambers. He’d peer out a spectral window. Sit at their round Council table. Make decisions. Be one of them.
    Percy intruded on this reverential moment with:
    “Yes, quite imposing looking. I refuse to go further with him without a name to summon him by.”
    “Oh, Perce! Don’t be so rude!”
    “I have no name to give. Only the designation I am apprenticed to: guardian. ‘Guard’ if you prefer.”
    “No name?” Lydia asked.
    Guard shook his head. “I will be given it once I am fully a guardian spirit.” That name was something he’d not share with iron-loving humans or care to hear on a human tongue.
    “That is . . . he is tricking us, Lydia, can’t you see? He was—is—mortal. He must have had one once. I compel you, I compel you, I compel you to give it, Spirit.”
    Guard cocked his head at the man, who paled under his stare. After a moment, Guard spoke, “If I had one, Percy, I do not remember it.”
    “Oh, that is terrible! How can that be?”
    He turned to the young woman, who had a natural friendliness about her. Were all human women this way? It had taken years for Victoria, she who had hidden herself in the courtyard at these humans’ arrival, to be that way with him. Mostly it emerged when Victoria grew excited, talking about her future destination—that was, her future destination once she had shorn off the last of her sins. A richness would creep into her melodic voice then.
    Only because Lydia reminded him of his closest friend, only because she—and not her foolish man—was asking did he answer at all. “I was only three when my mother abandoned me here.”
    But it wasn’t the same. Sharing this information with Lydia didn’t make him feel less human but more. Not so with Victoria. When he had spoken on it to her, she simply said, in the same unimpassioned manner she spoke on anything but her future home in Pleasance’s Garden of Plenty:
    “I recall something about that. Humans once considered it an honor to offer children up to