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A russalka stuck her head in the office. "Allie, we've just gotten word that the West is moving."
"Yes, thank you," Alcyone said, subtly shifting her stance so that her coworker would not see her holding hands with a stranger. Then, when the intruder was gone, "You find—?"
"I find that—"
A muera rode into the office atop a bureaucrat who walked bent over and leaning on two short canes, so that the saddle on his back was level to the floor. There were blinders on his eyes and a bit in his mouth. She was a goat from the waist down and went naked, save for her tattoos, and with her hair all in tangles and witch-knots as an outward sign of her devotion to the welfare of the city.
"The West is astir!" she cried.
"Yes, yes, I'll get to it soon." To Will, Alcyone said, "You have to understand—"
"It's moving! The West! It moves!"
"Thank you, Glaistig." She pulled away from Will just as a black dwarf came in with a crate of chickens and a requisition slip for her to sign. Two haint messengers arrived almost simultaneously, striding through opposing walls, and began speaking at once. A follet knocked on the door and waved a sheath of telephone message slips.
The russalka reappeared. "Allie, the Lord High Comptroller wants to know—"
"Enough!" The battle-light shone about Alcyone's head and her hair whipped in a wind that touched nothing else in the office. Beautiful beyond enduring was she in that instant, and terrifying as well. "Cover your eyes," she said.
She clapped her hands and thunder pealed.
They were flying. The hippogriff swam strongly upward beneath them, and Will's arms were about Alcyone's waist. The crate of poultry was lashed to the back of the saddle behind Will. They were high in the air outside of Babel.
"How did you do that?" he gasped.
Alcyone glanced over her shoulder. Her face was stern and strong, like unto that of a warrior. "You're playing in the big leagues now, feyling. If you find this startling, then maybe it would be a good time for you to reconsider the wisdom of continuing in your rash and fraudulent impersonations."
Pale faces stared out from windows that flashed by and were gone. The air was cold and the winds were so strong that they shoved Will like enormous hands one way and another, threatening to tear him from the saddle and fling him to his death. But in the presence of his beloved, Will discovered that, however fleeting the moment might be, he was happy.
The ring of skyscrapers that sat atop Babel like a ragged crown were named after the sacred mountains of the world: Kilimanjaro, Olympus, Uluru, Sinai, McKinley, T'ai Shan, Amnye Machen, A
"Where are we going?" Will shouted.
"You'll see."
The palace itself, almost hidden in its arboreal gardens, was a Second Empire wedding cake of gleaming white marble. But the fortress walls beneath it were blank and gray and windowless for the space of many floors. There, four Titans were shackled and chained, one facing each direction: Gog to the north, Magog to the east, Gogmagog to the south, and a fourth giant without a name facing westward. These had been the Guardians of the Four Quarters, who in the First Age held up the world but had subsequently rebelled against Marduk's heirs and so for punishment were imprisoned where operatives of His Absent Majesty's governance could keep a close eye on them —and call upon their divinatory talents at such times as might be politic, as well.
The hippogriff alit on a balcony so small as to be invisible from a distance, located directly beside the western Titan's face. Her head was twice as tall as Will was, but the Titan gave no notice of their presence but continued to stare vigilantly straight ahead of herself.
"Hand me a chicken," Alcyone said. "There's a tape recorder in the saddlebag. Make sure there's a windscreen on the microphone and then perform a sound check. The documentation on this has got to be tight."
Will eased a chicken out of the crate and gave it to her. When the tape recorder was up and ru
The cracked stone lips slowly parted. A tongue as gray as granite emerged to lick them clean. "Ahhhh," the Titan sighed. "It has been long, long since I was fed."
"Show your gratitude, then. You moved in your chains — our observers saw you. What is it you saw that so alarmed you?"
"The sun blackens. Lands sink into sea, The radiant stars fall from the sky. Smoke rages against fire, nourisher of life. The heat soars high against heaven itself."
The Titan fell silent.
"Fabulous," Alcyone said. "They're really going to love this one back in the office."
Will hit pause, so his voice wouldn't be on the tape. "It's from the Motsognirsaga. That's one of the sacred books of dwarvenkind. I was told that no surface dweller had ever read it, though."
"Well, believe it or not, it's more straightforward than the kind of crap they usually teed us. Give me another bird." Alcyone nodded for him to start recording again and repeated the ritual bleeding. "What form does this menace take?"
"And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth."
"I don't know that one," Will said.
"I do, and it's never good news,'' Alcyone snarled. "Another bird!" More blood spurted. "Is it the War that comes?"
"I have seen war. I haw seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood ru
"This just gets better and better. Another." "This is the last bird."
"Just record, okay?" To the Titan, Alcyone said, "Is the doom in flight? Or is it something you see in the future?" "Chicken blood is weak stuff," the Titan grumbled. "I wouldn't know."
"So long have I hung here, and so dry! How I yearn tor something stronger." "Too bad."
"Once I drained millions of your kind for their blood. The swarming multitudes came to my hand to be crushed to pulp and squeezed for their juice. I drank and drank, so much overspilling my mouth that it stained the hills red and the seas as dark as wine."
"Answer the damn question. Is what you see on its way? Or yet to come?"
Those enormous stone eyes turned slowly to stare down at Will and Alcyone. Then, equally slowly, they moved away. "It is already here." The great stone face once again froze into immobility.
Will turned off the tape recorder.
In a rage, Alcyone kicked the chicken carcasses off the ledge and threw the crate after them. "It's always the same — high sounding words that mean nothing and ominous warnings of threats they will not define! Now I've got to spend the next three days dummying up reports to make it sound like we've actually learned something from this fiasco. I don't know why we don't just close the whole fucking office down." She swung up into the saddle and thrust out a hand lor Will. "Come on."
"Wait." Will took out his Swiss Army knife and cut a large, shallow X in the palm of his hand. He smeared his blood across the gray stone lips. "It's not much," he said, "but it's the best I have and better than you're likely to get anytime soon."