The Sea of Time

XI Night in a Lost City

The nearest building showed lights at every window and echoed like a seashell with voices. After Tai-tastigon, Jame knew the sight, sound, and smell of an inn, wherever its location. The cordial commotion within stopped as she opened the door and stepped inside, followed by her dripping retinue. A tubby, bald man, clearly the host, approached them, drying his hands on his apron, and asked a question in a language that none of them knew.

“We seek shelter,” said Jame in Kothifiran Rendish. “For myself, my friends, and our mounts.”

The man brightened. “Ah! Our kin from over the sea. At last! Welcome!”

The weary, bedraggled moas were led around to the stable where the local horses could be heard protesting at their alien smell. Meanwhile, their riders were given quarters, towels, and food—a fish stew, crusty bread, and coarse, red wine—while their clothes dried before the fire. The relief, after hours of uncertainty, was profound, and perhaps premature.

“How are we going to pay for all of this?” Jame asked, dipping her bread into the stew broth. Both were delicious, although something in the stew ate most of the bread before she could.

Timmon looked blank, as if he had never been asked to account for anything in his life, which was probably true.

Gorbel, however, opened his jacket and unhitched a heavy belt. Unfolded, it spilled a cascade of thick, golden arax onto the table.

“No wonder you sank,” said Timmon, enlightened.

The Caineron gave the snort that, for him, passed as a laugh. “This may yet turn into a trade mission, or into headlong flight. Either way, should I have come with empty hands?”

A knock sounded on the door. Gorbel scooped the coins out of sight as Jame bade their host enter.

“The company would be glad to hear your story,” said the man, beaming. No wonder he was pleased: from the growing noise below, their arrival had greatly increased the inn’s business for the night.

Jame stopped Gorbel from snarling a refusal. They had already argued about letting their presence be known in the city. While it carried some risks, Jame had pointed out that the alternative was that the twelve of them skulk in the shadows all night, wet, hungry and, worse, unable to learn anything useful, nor was the next day apt to produce anything better. The sea front was the place most likely to supply someone who spoke their own language or at least that of Kothifir, and so it had proved.

“I’ll go down,” she now said. “The rest of you, get some rest.”

“I’m going too,” said Gorbel with a stubborn set to his jaw. What, did he think she would conclude some bargain behind his back?

“And me,” Timmon chimed in, running fingers through his drying hair. Some of the tavern maids had been pretty.

Brier and Damson both rose, looking stubborn.

“Oh, all right,” said Jame.

The five descended into the common room, a whitewashed rectangle with a geometric frieze around the top in shades of blue and green. Substantial tables were centered under many-candled chandeliers, and fireplaces flanked either end of the chamber, unlit on this mild night. The room was full of dark-skinned, bright-eyed customers whose glances darted back and forth among the three lordan as they came down.

The host escorted them to a central table, which its occupants quickly surrendered. “If it please you, lady and lords, from where do you come?”

“Kothifir,” said Gorbel.

“Ahh . . . !” breathed his audience, recognizing the name at least.

“It has been a long time since anyone came by that route,” the host said.

The lordan exchanged uneasy glances. “How long?” asked Jame.

“Some fifteen years,” the host replied, turning to his customers for confirmation. “Is that not so? Yes. The last caravan arrived in a terrible storm. Our sea is changeable: these days sometimes fresh, sometimes salt; sometimes calm and shallow like tonight, sometimes as high as mountains and as deep. That night, it raged. Bodies were cast on the shore for days, men and beasts alike, also much treasure. Most drowned, except for the seekers and a few others who swam to safety.”

Oh Ean, oh Byrne, thought Jame, briefly closing her eyes. What will I tell Gaudaric?

“One of the survivors has a stall in the night market,” said a man wearing a blue, fish-stained tunic, speaking passable Rendish. “He sells armor.”

The door was flung open. An old man stood dramatically on the threshold. His robe, dyed saffron with a deep hem embroidered with copper thread, swirled around him in a wind unfelt by those within. His white hair and beard flailed upward serpentlike in shaggy braids threaded with gold. He looked vaguely familiar.

“Travelers!” he cried. The others good-naturedly made way for him as he plunged into the room. “What news have you from my fellow gods to the north?”

“Er . . .” said Jame, staring.

“The end is coming, you know,” he said with a broad smile, seeming to relish his news. He turned to take in his audience with a sweeping gesture that overturned tankards as far back as the corners of the room. “All of you have felt the earth shake,” he proclaimed over cries of protest at the spilt beer. “The sea changes its nature more and more often. Year by year, the climate grows drier and hotter. Clearly, a great change is coming. But this world is only an illusion. Are you ready to fly away with me to the true one that lies beyond?”

“Enough of such desert talk,” someone called from his audience. “Next, you’ll claim to be the Karnids’ long-lost prophet, returned again. Show us a trick, old man!”

“Well, now, what would you like?”

“More beer!” shouted back a chorus of voices.

“Hmm. Will this do? Landlord, a round of drinks on me!”

Tavern maids ran about with ewers, pouring amid the cheers of the patrons. Jame had a feeling that the old man had performed this “trick” before, and was all the more welcome here because of it. Her sense was that she and her comrades didn’t really interest him. Rather, he had detected a center of attention and had rushed to usurp it. Timmon looked miffed and Gorbel bored, but she didn’t mind: the more other people talked, the more she might learn.

The tremor started with a faint rumble like a heavy cart approaching over cobblestones. The wine in her cup rippled in concentric circles. The candle flames wavered. No one seemed to pay much attention except the old man in the saffron robe who turned suddenly pale and clutched the back of a chair. Slowly, without any fanfare, his feet left the floor. Jame grabbed his arm . . .

. . . and was falling.

They seemed to be the only two steady people in that whole jiggling room, and yet the pit of her stomach plummeted sickeningly as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. A look of wonder crossed the other’s face as his braids flew upward. He let go of the chair, experimentally. Jame clung to him with both hands, hardly sure which of them she was anchoring. Then the rumble receded and his feet descended gently to the floor.

“I flew,” he said in astonishment, eyes as wide as a child’s. “I flew! You saw me, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“I saw you fall,” said Jame, shaken.

No one else apparently had noticed anything, nor did they seem to take the quake very seriously except to clutch their brimming cups against another upset.

“Here he is! Here! Master!”

In rushed a crowd wearing yellow tunics. They seized the old man and dragged him with them out the door.

“I flew!” he exclaimed in protest to them as he went. “I really flew!”

“Yes, yes,” they assured him. “Soon the entire city will know!”

The landlord shook his bald head as he shut the door behind them. “These uncertain days have bred many strange prophets and the rumor of gods, old and new. Sometimes I think the desert dwellers are right: our new king should never have buried the black temple.”

“The what?” demanded Gorbel.

“Ah, I keep forgetting that you are strangers here. The black rock is as old as the city . . .”

“Older!” called someone.

“Indeed. Langadine was built around it, although I only guess to call it a temple: it appears to be a huge, black square of granite without seam or opening. The desert folk claim that, according to their prophet, it is the gateway to another world and they make pilgrimage to it, or did until King Lainoscopes came to power and quickly grew tired of their frenzied worship. A stickler for order, he, not lenient like his father, the gods give him rest. At any rate, Lainoscopes tried to break up the rock. Failing that, he built it into the foundation of a new tower.”

The lordan exchanged looks.

“You said that your father’s expedition found the ruins of a Kencyr temple,” said Timmon in Kens. “Could it have been here? In which case at some point something destroyed it, and the city too.”

The host was still apparently thinking about his late guest. “Prophets and gods, forsooth. Foolish fellow, to have made such a claim. Now, I suppose, that pack of madmen in yellow will put him to the test. He has finally found his true believers, and they are apt to kill him. Poor Tishooo.”

Jame had chosen wine over beer. Now she choked on it.

“That was the Tishooo?”

“The Old Man, yes. Why?”

“I knew I had seen him before, but never clearly. This is serious,” she said to the others in Kens. “‘There was an old man, oh, so clever, so ambitious that he claimed to be a god. To prove it, his followers threw him from a high tower.’ You remember, Gorbel: it’s part of one of those Merikit rites you used to spy on.”

“Oh. That Tishooo. The so-called Falling Man. But what is he doing here if he belongs to the hill tribes?”

“He belongs to Rathillien. So do the Earth Wife—your Wood Witch, Gorbel—the Burnt Man, and the Eaten One. Remember her, Timmon? She ate your half-brother Drie. Wherever they originally came from, all of them were mortal once, I think, until our temples turned them into the Four, the elemental forces that personify this world.”

“You know the oddest people,” remarked Timmon. “Then again, since I met you, so do I. That peculiar old man is destined to become the manifestation of air? When?”

“Potentially, any minute now.”

Scowling, Gorbel planted his elbows on the table in a puddle of spilt beer. “Look here: we’re back in time now, or so you tell me, before our people even landed on this accursed world.”

“No one knows when the Builders constructed the temples,” said Jame, “but the structures preceded us here and apparently fired up just before we arrived.”

“So,” Timmon said, “if that old man is about to become the Tishooo, the black rock—pardon, temple—is about to come to life. That means that, even now, Jamethiel Dream-weaver may be dancing out the souls of the Kencyr Host. The Fall is happening, the greatest disaster in our history, and here we sit, its unfortunate heirs, warm and dry, drinking in a tavern in a lost city.”

Gorbel grunted. “Lost. Destroyed. How long have we got?”

“How long before the Tishooo’s worshippers find a high enough tower and get him up it? He may come to his senses and resist, but still . . . My guess? Sometime tonight.”

Timmon ticked off the events on his fingertips. “The Fall occurs, the temples activate, the Four are created, the Kencyrath flees to this world, the temple destroys Langadine, something destroys the temple, and you’re assuming that all of this happens more or less simultaneously. But in our time it’s actually three thousand and twenty-eight years after the Fall, if you believe our scrollsmen. Langadine could have decades yet to live. It all may not fall out exactly so pat.”

Jame shrugged. “Yes, I’m making several assumptions. Do you want to take the chance, though?”

Timmon sighed and scanned the room. “Should we warn them?”

“Would they listen?” said Gorbel. “You’ve convinced me, girl. We need to finish our business here and get out as fast as possible.” He stood up. “Ahoy! Who wants to sell us a boat? We can pay well.”

“You manage that and get my ten-command on board,” Jame said to him under cover of a sudden stir of interest. “I have errands to run in town.”

Langadine sprawled across several foothills in the shadow of the Tenebrae mountain range. The highest hill was crowned by a white, shining structure that must be King Lainoscopes’ palace. Walled terraces descended from it, curving to fit the contours of the land. The streets on each level thus whorled like the ridges of a massive fingerprint. Whitewashed houses lined them, presenting a solid face to the pavement. Most were two stories high at most, given the illusion of greater height by the rolling ground on which they were set. Jame saw, as she climbed higher, that each building had a small, walled garden behind it like a green jewel set in stone.

A gibbous moon lit all with a glowing, nacreous light, nearly as bright as day to Kencyr eyes. It was a beautiful city, far more orderly and lovingly kept than any Jame had yet seen. Was it really to die tonight? She hoped not. While not fond of her god—no Kencyr was—could he (or she, or it) really be so cruel as to smash so much grace and innocence?

Brier and Damson walked behind her. The former had insisted on coming, she said, to make sure that her lord’s heir came to no harm. The latter had simply followed, discovered too late to turn her back. Jame wished that both of them had stayed behind. This was a mission where the Talisman’s skills might serve her best. Brier didn’t know about that aspect of her life and was unlikely to approve of it. Damson, on the other hand, might see entirely too much, if she was still set on imitating Jame.

Most of the city was dark, its daytime residents gone to bed, but there were occasional clusters of lights. Jame headed toward the brightest of these constellations.

The night market swarmed with life, as active as any of its peers in Tai-tastigon, if cleaner. Stallkeepers hawked wares from finger food to erotic spices, from tin trinkets to heavy goldware. Bolts of silk dominated many a stall. Jame wondered what defect the dark was supposed to cover, unless Langadine was so rich that even these night offerings were of prime quality as their merchants proclaimed.

“Talisman!”

Jame started as big hands grabbed and spun her around. A young man with curly chestnut hair stared down at her with disbelief and dawning delight.

“It is you, isn’t it?” He shook her until her teeth rattled. “I always knew that you would come!”

“Byrne?” She waved back Brier, who had stepped forward and loomed over them both as if set to protect her. “It’s really you?”

He was at least her age now and much taller, but he still had that small boy’s mischievous grin.

“I’ll take you to my father. After all these years, he won’t believe this!”

Ean’s quarters were a block from the market in a shabby, second-story apartment, half workshop, half sparse but well-kept living space. He started up in alarm from his bed as they entered. “Has something happened in the market? Who is tending the stall? Byrne! Night rent may cost less than day, but it’s all we can afford.” Then he noticed his visitors and his agitation grew. “Who are these people?”

Jame observed that his hair was now streaked with white, his face creased with wrinkles, and he was missing several teeth. The intervening years had not been kind to him.

“Ean,” she said, “we came as quickly as we could, starting out the day after you left the oasis. Nonetheless, I’m sorry we arrived so late.”

Like his son, Ean grabbed her; unlike Byrne, he burst into tears.

“I’d given up hope. Evensong, Gaudaric, are they well?”

“As much so as when you left, if a few days older. Why didn’t you return? What kept you here all this time?”

He backed away, wiping his face, then turned as if without thinking to scrounge for the makings of tea. “I tried,” he said, over his shoulder. “The Kothifiran seeker, Lady Kalan, survived the storm, but in all these years the king hasn’t let me see her.”

“It sounds,” said Jame, “as if I should pay her a visit.”

Ean turned around, an empty teapot forgotten in his hand. “You can try, but she lives in the new palace tower, well guarded.”

“I can show you the way,” Byrne said eagerly.

“No!” Ean dropped the pot, which shattered unnoticed at his feet. “It’s too dangerous! Remember how they beat me, the last time I tried?”

“How close can you safely get us?” Jame asked Byrne.

The boy pouted. “To the palace gate, anyway. Anyone could do that.”

“Ean?”

“That far and no farther.”

“Accepted. Then you both need to get to the harbor and take ship there. When we left, Gorbel was negotiating for a boat. The whole city may be destroyed before dawn.”

“You would do that?” Ean looked aghast. “These are good people, for the most part. They don’t deserve such a fate!”

“Why does everyone always blame me? Now go, and you, Byrne, lead on.”

The boy escorted them up the hill past more terraced dwellings toward the palace. True enough, guards paced back and forth before its western gate, more than Jame had expected.

“That’s the new tower just within the walls, the tallest in the city,” Byrne said, whispering conspiratorially although no enemy was close enough to hear. “King Lainoscopes is afraid that the desert tribesmen will storm it to regain their precious black rock.”

“Led by their prophet?”

“Oh, he died a long time ago. They’ve waited for his return ever since.”

Jame considered the situation. There were too many guards to fight without raising the alarm. Somehow, the Talisman would have found a way in. Was the Knorth Lordan so much less talented?

The nearest guard stopped, yawned hugely with cracking jaws, and leaned on his spear. The next moment, he had toppled over, sound asleep. Others started toward him, stumbled, and also fell until all were down, snoring.

Damson shrugged. “Would you rather that I gave them terminal diarrhea?”

Brier looked down at her, frowning. “If you ever try that with me, brat, I’ll kill you.”

They entered the gate. The new tower rose out of a small courtyard, marble-faced, three stories high. There seemed to be no way into the first level, but an external stair led them up to the second.

Jame cautiously opened the door into what appeared to be a wide, square, low-ceilinged hall. Thick columns around the edges supported the floor above. Once away from the circling walk of white marble, nothing else broke that sable expanse except for rectangles of moonlight streaming in through open windows.

Could this be the top of the black rock? If so, it was embedded in the tower as well as buried under it, neither of which seemed particularly safe. Against her better judgment, Jame stepped out onto it. She had never encountered an inactive temple before. It was like setting foot on the back of an inert monster disguised as a black dance floor.

“Even now,” Timmon had said, “Jamethiel Dream-weaver may be dancing out the souls of the Kencyr Host.”

She remembered that dark pavement shot with veins of luminous green in the great hall of the Master’s House. A delicate, bare foot touched it, and the veins began to throb. Glide, dip, turn, star-spangled gown aswirl and power swirled with it. She danced to her own hummed tune, smiling, and the watchers swayed forward entranced, seduced. Such beauty, such power, such innocence servant to such evil . . .

Strong arms grabbed Jame and flung her off the black rock into the wall. Marble shuddered against her back as the tower swayed, grinding against the temple’s sullen, immobile flanks.

“The Fall is happening, even now,” she said, blinked, and focused on Brier’s face above her. “Sorry.”

The Kendar let her go. “Sometimes,” she said, “you frighten me.”

“Do as I say,” Jame snapped at Damson, who was watching her with raised eyebrows. “Not as I do.”

“No chance of that, Ten,” said the cadet. “You teach me my limits.”

Some of the columns had cracked and fallen. Most, however, still stood, supporting the upper floor.

But the rock didn’t move, thought Jame.

It was like a square peg rammed into this world’s living flesh. It also felt solid, unlike other temples she had encountered. How would the priests control it when they arrived if they couldn’t enter it? Were they even meant to? Nascent power was already stirring in it, and Langadine writhed. Were all temples like this, capable of shaking their hosts to pieces? Did the Builders, those small, gray, innocent folk, know what destruction their work could produce? Rather, she blamed the Kencyrath’s Three-Faced God, who used the materials at hand so ruthlessly in its seemingly endless battle against Perimal Darkling.

The three Kencyr retreated to the outside stair and mounted it gingerly. Everything tilted, as if only the black rock below prevented the entire structure from falling over. There was no outer guardrail. One felt as if at any minute one might tip off into space.

Guards sprawled at the third-story entrance, asleep. One of them might have been dead. Damson shrugged. Accidents happen.

Jame knocked on the door. It opened a crack, then slammed shut, but the lock failed to catch. They entered.

“Hello?”

No one answered.

Within, the floor was strewn with damask pillows and shards of porcelain vases jolted off high shelves. Murals covered the freshly cracked lower walls, depicting meadowlands and forests in jewel colors. Silken veils separated interior spaces. Some were ripped. All wavering in an errant breeze. Everything spoke of a comfortable, sheltered life, rudely disrupted. A woman crouched in the far corner, clutching a bright-eyed, five-year-old child.

“Crash!” he said, with evident glee, reminding Jame of the younger Byrne. “Do it again!”

“Lady Kalan?” Jame advanced slowly so as not to frighten the woman more. Glass crunched under her boots. The marbles of some board game rolled.

The seeker looked much as she remembered, if older, her blond hair tarnished to silver gray, and thinner, with flesh beginning to sag on the bone. She blinked at Jame in surprised recognition.

“Lordan? What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. Why didn’t you come back?”

“Back?” Kalan rose, still shaken. For her, after all, it had happened more than a decade ago. She spread her hands.

“Behold my cage, the latest of many. Before, I lived in the palace, first with Laurintine to nurse after that terrible storm. Then, when she died, the old king demanded that I stay, marry one of his cousins, and start a new line of Langadine seekers.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be. I loved my husband, but I bore him only sons, five in all. This is Lanek, the youngest, a late blessing.”

“Hello!” The boy waved.

“Hello,” Jame replied gravely.

She remembered how desperately Kalan had wanted a family. After losing her first in Kothifir, here, it seemed, she had found another. “Where is your husband?”

“Dead these eight months, killed on the same fatal hunt that claimed the old king’s life. Now Lainoscopes has built me this new prison. He wants me to remarry and try again for a daughter, but I am too old. Besides, two husbands are enough.”

“You already have an infant girl, left behind in Kothifir.”

Kalan wrung her hands. “I have thought about her every day, these past fifteen years. She was so ill when I left, and my first husband so recently dead. I always hoped that I would go back to her in the end, please the gods, to find her alive, still a baby, still waiting for me.”

“You can do that now, and rescue your Kencyr escort on the way.”

The seeker looked bewildered. “What, they didn’t return to Kothifir? I thought they would, after they had waited long enough. Surely their scouts could have led them there from the oasis.”

“From the oasis in the future, yes, but something did go wrong, as you and Laurintine foresaw. After the caravan left, the wind swept the rest of us back into the past too, although we arrived long after you did.”

“This is making my head ache,” Damson said to Brier. “Besides, aren’t we in a hurry?”

“Quiet.”

“Mother?” called a voice from outside. “What’s happened to your guards? Mother!”

A well-dressed boy rushed into the apartment. He had Kalan’s blond hair and a rangy build that probably reflected that of his late father. Jame guessed that he was in his early teens.

“My second oldest, Lathen,” said Kalan, confirming her suspicion.

“Who are these people?” the boy demanded. “Does Cousin Lainoscopes know that you have visitors?”

Kalan drew herself up with an effort. She looked terrified. “Dear, this is an old friend. She’s come to take me home.”

The boy paled. “What do you mean? This is your home!”

“You know that I came here from over the sea, from a future when Langadine no longer exists. A daughter waits for me there. Don’t you remember? I used to sing to you about her, your little half-sister. She’s still only a baby and she needs me. Now I am going back to her.”

The boy shook his head, distraught. “No, no, no. Those were only foolish stories, and you’re deluding yourself now. I told my brothers that the king was pushing you too hard, but no one listens to me, not the way they did to Father. You can’t leave! What about us?”

“Lanek will go with me. You and the rest are old enough to look after yourselves, unlike your sister. Please, dear . . .”

“The king won’t allow it. You’ll see.” His voice broke. “Let go of me!”

Brier had taken his arm. He twisted futilely in her iron grip, simultaneously terrified and outraged that she could overpower him so easily.

“You can come with us,” said Jame.

“Where? Into some fantasy of future days? This is my time. I belong here.”

“Yes. I suppose you do.”

At a nod from her, Brier released the boy and he darted out the door, bound, no doubt, to inform the king of their imminent escape.

“I don’t understand,” said Damson in Kens as they descended the outside stair, Jame supporting the seeker, Brier carrying a delighted Lanek. “If he finds any guards still awake—and he probably will: I couldn’t put them all to sleep—they’ll be after us. So why let him go?”

Jame sighed. “He was right: this is his time, even if it kills him. Brier could have knocked him unconscious, I suppose. That would have been more sensible. But it just didn’t seem fair. He’s terrified of losing his mother. Why take away his self-respect on top of everything else?”

“Why? To get us safely out of here. Ten, sometimes you think too much.”

They had reached the courtyard. A cluster of men advanced on them—guards, Jame thought; Damson was right—but then she saw that they were all clad in yellow and that they escorted an old man who held back, talking fast:

“. . . you see, it wasn’t as if I actually flew. Think more metaphysically. You know that my intellect far exceeds your own . . .”

“Yes, Master, of course, Master,” they soothed him.

The Tishooo spotted Jame. “You were there! You said that I fell!”

“So I did. So you will. But it won’t hurt you.”

He looked up at the tower, his head tipping further and further back. For only three stories, it was remarkably high, “the tallest in the city,” Byrne had proudly claimed.

“Don’t tell me what will or won’t hurt!”

“Just keep talking!” she called after him as he was hustled past. “Stall!”

They went as quickly as they could down through a city shaken awake by the latest tremor. Some dwellings had collapsed while others were on fire. Many had left their inhabitants huddled outside in the street in their nightgowns while their neighbors tried to comfort them, meanwhile keeping a wary eye on their own shaken houses. The night market was a kicked ant’s nest full of merchants scrambling to save their wares. Jame hoped that Ean had taken her seriously concerning the need for haste.

At the waterfront she found not only Ean and Byrne but her own command, moas and all, piled into a sturdy fishing boat.

“Get aboard!” Gorbel shouted from the prow.

There was no wind to speak of, so the oars were out and manned by the cadets. The former owner stood on the marble wharf, his pockets bulging with golden coins, some of which he fingered, as if unable to believe either his luck or the foolish extravagance of some people.

“Are you sure you don’t want to hire a crew?” he called to the newcomers as they rushed past him. “Then at least remember to cast off!”

Gorbel threw off the front hawser, Brier the stern. The boat rocked away from its mooring and began to drift sideways. The moas swayed, squawking.

“Pull, damn you!” roared the Caineron Lordan.

Some oars crashed in midair like inept duelists while others splashed into the water. The cadets hadn’t had any practice rowing since their flight from Restormir in Caldane’s barge more than a year ago. The Silver didn’t promote such sport.

“All right, all right, calm down and start over. Up, down . . . pull!”

The boat backed away from the wharf, stern first. How did one turn the thing around? No matter, as long as they were making progress.

Jame stood on the prow, watching Langadine recede ever so slowly. From here, she could see several broken terraces with shattered houses spilling down through the gaps, also flames reflected on whitewashed walls. People shouted. Dogs barked. Perhaps nothing else would happen, tonight at least. Oh, to get away while that doomed, many-tiered city still stood . . .

Whoomp!

The palace folded in on itself in a billow of dust, then the hill on which it stood. Not so the black temple. As the built-up ground fell away, more and more of it was revealed, still square and immobile but looming higher and higher. At first it wore the tilted remains of the tower like a hat, until Kalan’s former quarters fell apart and away, with the hint of a figure in gold flung from its ramparts even as it crumpled.

“Fly,” Jame whispered. “Fly!” But she knew that even now the Old Man had begun his endless fall.

The collapse spread, terrace by terrace, flattening the city as if a great weight had been laid on it. More dust rose, obscuring details, muffling screams cut short.

“What’s happening?” asked Timmon, wide-eyed, standing beside her.

“The temple has come to life and our people are about to arrive on Rathillien,” said Jame. The weight of history bore down on her and the ancient words rose in her throat as harsh as vomit:

“‘Two-thirds of the People fell that night, Highborn and Kendar. “Rise up, Highlord of the Kencyrath,” said the Arrin-ken to Glendar. “Your brother has forfeited all. Flee, man, flee, and we will follow.” And so he fled, Cloak, Knife and Book abandoning, into the new world. Barriers he raised, and his people consecrated them. “A watch we will keep,” they said, “and our honor someday avenge. Alas for the greed of a man and the deceit of a woman, that we should come to this!”’

“Don’t you see? It’s all happening now. We are fallen, and in flight.”

Oh Dream-weaver, oh Mother. Do you see, will you ever see, what you have done?

“Fallen or not, we aren’t fleeing fast enough,” said Gorbel, coming up to stand between them. “Are we going to be squashed flat, too?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Everyone, clear the foredeck.”

While the others retreated to the waist (Timmon, reluctantly), Jame ransacked her memory for master runes. The Book Bound in Pale Leather was out of her hands, still hidden in the cave behind Mount Alban where the thing that was once Bane sat guard over it. In her mind, however, she flipped over its pages, quickly so as to recognize but not accidentally animate any of its dire sigils.

Nothing, nothing, nothing . . .

Then it came to her: the Great Dance, which even now her mother had perverted, the one intended to direct the power of the temples, of their god itself. Trinity, how long it had been since she had first learned that fearsome variant of the Senetha in Perimal Darkling, taught by golden-eyed shadows. More recently, she had danced in the Tastigon temple after its priest Ishtier had lost control of it.

Child, you have perverted the Great Dance as your namesake did before you, the Arrin-ken Immilai had said in the Ebonbane afterward, passing judgment on her. You have also usurped a priest’s authority and misused a master rune. We conclude that you are indeed a darkling, in training if not in blood. On the whole, your intentions have been good, but your behavior has been reckless to the point of madness and your nascent powers barely under control.

Three days before, she had nearly destroyed Tai-tastigon.

Then there was Karkinaroth crumpling behind her, but that had been Tirandys’ fault for sealing its temple’s priests in until they died.

Darkling . . . No one had called her that in a long time. Tentir had almost made her forget. Nonetheless, she still was one, as the Arrin-ken had said, in training if not in blood.

The dust billowed closer. Lightning flashed within it from cloud to cloud and blue fire crept, crackling, up the boat’s rigging. Jame snapped her fingers, and smiled ruefully at the resulting spark.

Tai-tastigon had survived her.

Karkinaroth hadn’t been her fault.

“Your friend Marc warned me that I would probably find the Riverland reduced to rubble and you in the midst of it, looking apologetic.”

Tentir had only been slightly damaged.

Langadine was dying anyway. No one could blame her for that—could they?

G’ah, don’t think of it.

She might be both a darkling and a potential nemesis, but destruction had its role to play too, as Granny Sit-by-the-Fire had said. Her duty now lay with those still alive.

She could feel the power looming over her. Rather than the fierce torrent that she had experienced with other temples, it was thick and clogged with the debris that made it visible, as if the newly awakened edifice were expelling its own afterbirth. The moon and stars dimmed, then disappeared. Jame saluted the on-rolling darkness, turning the gesture into one of defiance. Time to dance.

Glide, dip, turn . . .

Each move summoned power and expelled it. Violet flames ran down her limbs and crackled at her fingertips. Freed of its cap, her braided hair cracked like whips as she spun. Blue lightning snapped from the ship’s rigging to be met by a blinding return stroke from the roiling clouds. As one, the moas flopped over to hide heads under wings. Jame barely noticed. Darkness arched over the boat and pressed down. The mast groaned, but the light flaring at its tip held the shadows at bay. Her dance was creating a space within the clouds, a partial haven from their crushing weight.

An oar shattered. Cadets hastily withdrew and shipped the rest, then went back to holding their ears against the relentless pressure.

Whomp!

Suddenly they were falling, but only a few feet. The sea had been driven back, leaving their keel on its salty bottom among flopping fish.

Just as abruptly, the weight lifted. Jame fell to her knees on the prow. Dark stars splashed between her shaking gloved hands: her nose and ears were bleeding.

“Mommy, is it over?” asked Lanek in a piping voice through a mask of tears and snot.

“Not quite,” said Gorbel, looking out to sea. “Hold on. Here it comes!”

The sea was returning in a towering wave, flinging whitecaps and fish off of its crest as it came. It rolled under the boat’s stern, pitching it upward and nearly flinging out its passengers. The moas screamed. So did Lady Kalan.

The wave rolled on, driving the clouds before it up through the broken tiers of the city. Then back it came, dragging the dead with it. Jame clung to the rail staring down into all of those blank, smashed faces. The ship bobbed in a sea of corpses. Over all, power still roiling about its base, loomed the black temple crowned by the gibbous moon.

The wind returned in a swirl of tattered gold, not quite landing on the deck beside her.

“You were right,” said the Old Man in a tone of wonder. “It didn’t hurt at all.”

“You think not? Look.”

The Tishooo stared down, his seamed face going slack with shock, then taut with outrage. “Oh, my poor people, my poor city! Who has done this terrible thing?”

That, thought Jame, was a good question. Hers was supposedly a sentient god, yet his actions seemed mindless. All of this destruction—to what end? A temple had come to life, and in the process had slaughtered an innocent population. Where was the justice in that? Never mind that he might be said to have saved his own people through her actions. But honor didn’t only apply within the Kencyrath, whatever some Kencyr like Caldane believed—did it? Not to her understanding. Was such an action any worse than what Perimal Darkling had done to the previous world, through the agency of the Master and the Dream-weaver? Were they also only tools, and if so, of whom? What difference was there, after all, between the Shadows and the Three-Faced God? Did her own people also worship a monster?

“There,” she said, dragging herself upright and pointing at the tower.

The Tishooo breathed deep, and the air flexed with him, in and out of her own lungs until her head spun.

Then he was gone.

Jame couldn’t see his progress directly, but the clouds around the base of the tower recoiled. Something buffeted them, then drove them back round and around the temple’s black shaft, higher and higher. The embedded dead seemed to rise with the blast as if they were storming their destroyer. The wind drew tighter and grew faster, dispersing the clouds of god-power. The tower cracked. Massive shards toppled off of it, plummeting into the chaos below. Then it shattered and fell.

“Good,” said Jame, and collapsed.

Jame woke to a still night, broken only by the dip and splash of oars. She still lay on the foredeck, but now under an assortment of cadet jackets with one rolled up under her head. Trinity, how long had she been asleep? The moon had set and the stars were obscured by haze. Glassy water stretched out on all sides of the boat to a featureless horizon.

Brier stood nearby, at the prow. At least they had managed to turn the vessel around. The Kendar gave her a stiff nod as Jame joined her, clutching a coat around her shoulders. It wasn’t cold, but she couldn’t stop shivering.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Somewhere in the Great Salt Sea, north of Langadine.”

“Oh. Helpful. Where’s our seeker?”

Brier glanced toward the waist. Kalan huddled at the mast’s foot between the rowers with Lanek clutched in her arms, having at last cried herself to sleep over her four lost sons.

“Don’t worry,” said Brier. “We’re on course.”

Following her gaze, Jame peered down into the water before the prow. Something pale swam there, the barest glimmer under the smooth water.

“Is that . . .”

“I think so.”

The boat’s side rose too far above the water to reach down into it, as Tori had done.

“Will you join her?”

“Should I leave you? Besides, you know that I can’t swim. Go back to sleep. You need it.”

Jame yawned, wide enough to hear her jaws crack. “You’re right. Wake me when we get there.”

“Yes, lady.”

Back in her nest of jackets, still shivering, she burrowed down to the wooden deck. Oars splashed. The boat glided forward. In the morning, she would think about what she had done, or not. Whatever.

It seemed that all but Brier eventually slept, even the cadets at their oars. At dawn, laughter woke them. The child Lanek capered about the deck, stomping on it, but it gave back no more echo than a stone, for stone it had become. They were on the petrified remains of a boat in the middle of a dry salt waste.

“Is this what Tori saw, after Rose drew him to the far shore?” Jame asked Brier.

“Probably.”

The Kendar’s eyes were bloodshot from her sleepless watch, her movements stiff as she turned to stare back at what had been a sea and the memory of what it might have held.

“I’m sorry,” said Jame.

Brier shrugged, dismissing old grief. “My mother died a long time ago. Now, where are we?”

Kalan hobbled up onto the foredeck, cramped from her night’s sleep on hard planks and still red-eyed with weeping.

“Kothifir lies that way,” she said, pointing north-northwest, “and your camp there.” Her finger swung straight ahead, in line with the prow. Wherever she had come from, wherever she had gone, Rose Iron-thorn had aimed them true.

They unloaded the sleepy moas and set out, four birds short. Kalan and Lanek led the procession, the little boy in high glee, his mother rigid in the saddle as if sure that at any minute her feathered mount would bolt. This, of course, made it more likely to do so, until Brier took its reins in a firm hand and led it. The rest followed, trading off who walked and who rode to accommodate Ean and Byrne.

At first they saw nothing, and wondered how far from the ancient shore they were. Gorbel had had the foresight to bring sacks of fresh water, but not enough for a long trek. Hours passed. It was so hot that sweat dried on the brow and gave no relief. The sun rose, beat blindingly down against the white salt plain, then tilted toward the horizon. In its wavering glare, the mirage of mountains appeared to the northeast and to the west—hopefully the curving Tenebrae and Urak ranges. A dot appeared on the horizon ahead. Bit by bit, it grew into the single, bedraggled palm that overlooked the tiny oasis.

“We wondered if we would ever see you again,” said Onyx-eyed as they limped into camp at dusk.

Jame kicked her bird’s shoulder, obliging it to kneel. “How long were we gone?” she asked, swinging stiffly down.

“Only two days, as it turns out. I see that you found the seeker.”

“Yes, and she found you. I’m afraid she and these other two are all that’s left of the caravan. The rest drowned. Also, Langadine has been destroyed.”

The randon eyed her askance. “You’ve been busy.”

“It wasn’t my fault, dammit—or at least not most of it. Anyway, that establishes where we are now. As to when . . .”

“Back in our own present, I assume. The east wind blew through last night, and this morning the sea was gone again. We’ll only know for sure when we return to Kothifir. In the meantime, eat. Sleep. Tomorrow—if we’re still here—we have a long trek home.”