Lysander Spark's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The cart squealed the whole way down. By dawn Lysander reached the tower. It rose from cracked stone, taller than any building he had seen. A domed chamber crowned it, ringed with tall windows. Half the dome had fallen in. He pushed through the door at its base and found the ruin waiting inside. He climbed the stairs until they ended in broken air. Above him, mounted in the collapsed dome, hung the great lens. It caught the morning light and threw it down in a pale disk. The lens was huge, far bigger than anything in his manual. It was also far out of reach. The stairs that once led to it had crumbled to a heap of rubble on the floor below. Lysander stood on the last whole step and stared up. Forty years of work hung there in old glass, and he could not touch it. He tested the wall. The stone was smooth and slick with moss. His hands found no grip. He was too old to climb, and there was nothing to climb. He sat on the step and thought. The manual said two lenses paired together gathered more light. He did not need to reach the great lens with his hands. He needed to line his small one up beneath it. If the light already fell straight down from the dome, he could stand in the beam and catch it. He pulled his staff apart and drew out the small brass telescope. Then he walked to the pale disk on the floor. He knelt in the light and raised his telescope up into the beam. He turned the tube slowly until the two lenses stacked. The image swam, then snapped clear. The great lens fed light straight into his small one. The sky above the broken dome sharpened until he saw stars in full daylight, faint and true. His hands shook. He held the tube steady and searched the patch of sky where the seven stars should burn. He counted. One. Two. Three faint points swam into view, dim but real. Then a fourth. His heart pounded. He had never seen even one of them before. But the dome was small and the beam was narrow. The rest of the constellation sat outside the broken opening, where the great lens could not point. He shifted, and the light slid off his lens. He shifted back and found only the same four stars. The paired lenses worked. The tower did not turn. Lysander lowered the telescope. Four stars. He needed seven. He looked at the fixed dome, then at the great lens locked in one dead angle. He could see the missing constellation now, but only a piece of it. To catch the other three, he needed a chart that showed where the whole shape ran. He remembered the old library of star charts near the deep. He packed his telescope into his staff and started down the broken stairs.