City at the end of time

“What are those things in those mountains?” Shewel asked.

“Nightmares,” Denbord said. “Perf was lucky. He wouldn’t have liked any of this.”

Tiadba sat between Denbord and Nico, who had a thoughtful expression, as near as she could tell through the dusty golden glow of the faceplate. The armor was not offering much more in the way of explanation. “I think I understand,” Nico said cautiously. “It’s like a shelf of prizes—trophies from a little war. Only much bigger.”

“How’s that?” Khren asked.

“Who’s collecting?” Macht asked simultaneously.

“We’ve seen a lot since we left the Tiers,” Nico said. “We’ve met Tall Ones, and things out in the Chaos that might or might not be breeds…We know that people don’t always look like us, not now and certainly not long ago. So…the world outside the Tiers was once bigger than we can imagine. If we just stretch out and think about all the people…so many peoples, all different, all strange but somehow us, like in the stories in Tiadba’s books, if the stories are real…”

“They seem real,” Khren said.

“They contradict each other,” Shewel said.

“True,” Nico said. “But imagine…for once, do more than a breed can do and think outside.Think of all the time and all the people, how different they must have been, and think of the Typhon burning and shrinking everything, playing and destroying at the same time—filled with hatred…”

“Or filled with nothing,” Khren said.

Nico nodded. “The emptiest of empties. Think of all the times past and all the stories we haven’t heard, and all the people who lived those stories and didn’t look anything like us, big and small—giants bigger than the Tall Ones, smaller than anyone we know, and stranger than anything in the Kalpa, wakes and sleeps beyond count between them, but still us…” He let out a sad, soughing breath. “Maybe some of them werelike gods. But all were defeated. Their stories were stripped away, mangled, burned, but their images and maybe even their bodies might have been collected and carried here, put out on the mountains as prizes, or maybe just to scare us. But if we think of it this way,” he concluded, “they’re not dead gods. They’re just people. They’re us.”

“We might be stuck out there right beside them,” Khren said. “More trophies.”

“We’d be with family,” Nico said.

Tiadba felt her chest fill and her breath catch.

“They’re still scary,” Herza said softly.

“If they get up and scoot around, they might not remember we’re kin,” Fri

Tiadba sat up and tuned her faceplate to define something she saw gathering over the vale—a cloud that blurred the arc of fire, a mist that dropped from the ruckled sky. “Do you all see that?” she asked. They gathered in the harsh, high rocks, and their helmets took multiple points of view and worked to discern a pattern, an image, above the greenish mass at the center of the vale.

“It’s like an upside-down mountain, just hanging there,” Khren said.

“A mountain made of ice,” Denbord said.

“A Turvy,” the Pahtun voice said. “This can be dangerous.”

“What’s a Turvy?” Tiadba asked.

“No one in the Kalpa knows much about them. They jumble positions in the Chaos. Turvies are dangerous because all the forces in the Chaos will concentrate around them—new trods will form, the Typhon’s servants will gather, and prisoners will awaken to a new level of slavery. It will bring rapid change and great unknowns.”

“More monsters?” Fri

Macht had turned to walk a few paces away from the group, looking behind at the land they had crossed.

“Everything’s shrinking again!” he called. “I can see the Kalpa. The Witness…there itis, too!”

Tiadba turned and felt herself go dizzy. Light was bending in screw-like loops, and it was certainly possible—even likely—that the Chaos had begun another great deflating, like a toy balloon. If they had all waited…would they have had to walk so far to get where they were now?

Fri

The rocks smoothed and become sticky, trapping their boots with shocking speed. They seemed to plummet with the flat, pale surface to the level of the floor of the vale. All around the vale, gaps were opening in the mountains and trods were flowing down toward the greenish mass in the center. Khren lifted their one remaining clave, but before it could activate, a whip shot out and grabbed it away. No escape.

Already shadows loomed over them, half-blind eyes sweeping and twisted, bruised faces spread flat beneath high, arched bodies…and surrounding them, the slender limbs that glided, pulling and pricking at the surface of the trod.

Tiadba watched, paralyzed, as the others were grabbed and raised one by one in flickering, half-seen talons, then held clutched and squirming in the air.

The strangest and largest Silent One of all—three joined faces, sharing four whited, frosted eyes with black pinprick pupils—moved up to bend over her and leer. An arm with a hand like a thorn bush snatched her.

From the center of the vale—the frosted, uncertain green edifice and the icy mountain now hanging over it—came an awful, squealing trill, like millions of things lost beyond hope of rescue, all forced to demonstrate their joy, their happiness…

Forced to sing.

From the mountains all around, the huge frozen shapes quickened in a way that did not involve life, beyond a breed’s understanding—reluctantly juddering down from the mountains, gathering as if by decree to watch and perhaps participate in the Turvy.

One by one, as Tiadba watched, her companions were stripped of their armor. And then came her turn. First the Silent One with three faces and four eyes exposed her arms and legs, all the while the eyes vibrating and shivering, and then thorn-claws pulled at her helmet, which split and gave way just as the Pahtun voice spoke its final message:

“This is not the destination. The beacon—”

Tiadba felt no pain. Yet a kind of vacuum sucked all hope from her mind—then searched, cut, pushed aside…and found what it was looking for.

Your sister.

Not a voice, not a presence…the emptiest of empties, the quietness of a thing that did not have a voice, but used thousands of other voices to express its message.

You shall not be joined.

Your stories shall not be told.

Her companions were not dead. They were very little changed, in fact still struggled despite the loss of their armor—dangling and squirming, moving their lips without being heard. The Silent Ones swifted these tiny burdens along the new trod toward the center of the vale. Tiadba spun slowly, saw in flashes of spiraling light the giants gather, saw the central greenish mass resolve, take on rough edges and serrated shapes beneath the hovering whiteness…an ancient, shimmering illusion now profaned, and mocked, its translucent jade towers and domes spreading throughout the vale, and she knewit, recognized it for what it had once been and was no longer.

I’ve been journeying here since the begi