The stuff of which the Tower was being made was various and changeable. Its foundations were of rubble and wood. When the Tower’s builders had exhausted their supply of those, they had borrowed the style of building employed by hornets in the making of their nests, daubing mud and leaving it to dry. In this manner they were piling up many more stories, so that the top of their works was nearly of a height with the Palace. Likewise they had begun to copy the manner of construction favored by bees and hornets; while the Tower’s lower courses were in horizontal layers, piled one atop the other, the farther up they built it, the more they had caused it to resemble the style of a wax hive or a mud nest that is erected in a tree, with winding internal passageways and clusters of cells in which souls could live. Even at this remove, Egdod could hear on the wind a low hum that was being made by many of those souls speaking in consonance. It seemed that their habit of emulating the speech of bees, which had so puzzled Speaksall, had driven the words from their mouths and rendered them deaf and dumb to the old ways of talking. No strain of melody nor pulse of rhythm informed it, for they had forgotten music as well.

“These are very considerable changes,” Egdod said, “and I find it strange that no one of the Palace came to the Fastness to make me aware that such things were afoot.”

“It began slowly, then came on with a suddenness in the last few days,” said Longregard. “Freewander sought you there but was told that you had gone on a long journey. In the time since, the height of the Tower has more than doubled. The humming can be heard at all hours, for those souls no longer go into their houses of an evening, but stay together in the myriad cells of the Tower and join their voices into that weird song and combine their auras as well.”

“I shall ponder what to do about this,” Egdod said, “but in the meantime I am of a mind to build this hill and this Palace higher. For I do not like having yon Tower of a height equal to my abode, as I require silence and privacy in order to go about my work of bettering the Land.”