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She wiped her eyes and noticed particles of soot floating above and around her, made more obvious by contrast against a rapidly coalescing mountain of ice that hung upside down over the valley. Needles and flows of sapphire blue grew from the floor in complete silence while she watched, her head cocked and neck growing stiff. They formed a ring of columns around the valley’s perimeter, as if to cage the False City, the central jade structure. Mist draped the mountain rims, thickening into clouds like clouds back home—if home was anywhere now. If she had ever grown up, ever lived, if any of her memories could be said to have been real…
Out here, the ice pi
Her exhaustion became dark and profound, and she lay down on the uneven softness of the bubble, but her eyes would not close. She could not sleep—had not slept since leaving Bidewell’s warehouse. But if she could sleep—and if she could dream—then she knew that her visitor, her other, was already inside the ghostly green city…and that Tiadba had also come to the wrong place. Both had been misled.
Both had been betrayed.
Gi
They might have told her to wait.And so, that was what she was going to do now that she had no choice. She would lie here just a bit above the valley floor, surrounded by mountains and paralyzed giants, with an upside-down mountain of ice waiting to fall at any instant—and she would wait.She would stay here forever, if necessary, growing more and more tired, until she simply floated off like a bit of weightless ash.
The moment of rest stretched on. She tried to roll over—felt the bubble closing in until she could no longer move. She lay on her back, watching the ice mountain block out the rim of fire. The fire had turned dusky orange, the darkness within faded to grayish purple. The wrinkled sky beyond the ice mountain was slowly obscured by blue mists, clouds edged with glorious gold. The sky itself was shrinking. It was frightening and beautiful.
All she had seen so far was frightening and ugly.
“Something newis coming,” she murmured with numbed lips.
By which she meant something old.
CHAPTER 98
The three—Jebrassy, Ghentun, and the epitome of the Librarian—saw the paleness over the center of the vale.
They had walked many miles, approaching at times the i
“Will they ever live again?” Ghentun asked. Polybiblios seemed about to answer.
“No more time for lessons and leakings,” Jebrassy said. “Move on.”
The epitome listened with patient humor. “Time is indeed shorter. But time for others will not flow over this vale with the same speed, nor cover the same instants. This is a Turvy. Every pass, every gate, sends its entrants onto a different track to the center.”
“I thought there were only two fates left,” Ghentun said.
“Fates, yes—but in a Turvy, those paths can be swirled until they seem to lie parallel. You can jump from one to another—but they are the same, part of a spiral. In many regions of the Chaos the rules of the very tiny have been writ large. You have to spin twice just to face the same direction. Here, it is even more complicated. We can see behind us—there seems to be a way back, a retreat—but if we reverse course and try to leave, we will fail.”
“We could jump to the other track and get to the center faster, couldn’t we?” Jebrassy asked.
“No,” the epitome said. “We are where we need to be.”
Ahead, the gathering cloud had hardened into an upside-down mountain of ice, its edges like scalloped blades.
“The tracks will merge soon enough,” the epitome said. “The cosmos is in its final moments. The revolt of the very small is about to begin—and I don’t mean you, young breed. The pressure on the Typhon is growing. Out here, the former master does not know howto change.”
“What pressure?” Ghentun asked.
“This is all that remains. The Chaos has shrunk to two circles. One circle surrounds this vale. The other surrounds what is left of the Kalpa. There may still be a path between them, sprinkled with bits and pieces of the past. I don’t know. Maybe that’s closed, too. Outside lies nothing. That is the Typhon’s legacy. For all its power, it can leave no mark—only void. It tried to be a god, and it failed. There is no nowhere left for it to go. No escape.”
“All the stories left unfinished?” Jebrassy asked, unsure, then disgusted.
“No. If we succeed, what comes after, not even the whole of my self could understand. We will be as children before wonders. There is a greater force, who thus far has paid little heed to most of our trillion centuries.”
“Hmph. The Sleeper?” Jebrassy was tired of being ignorant until taught. He wanted to teach himself—learn on his own. Learn what had happened to Tiadba.
He was almost afraid to know.
“The Turvy will be the Typhon’s last chance,” the epitome said. “It will need to capture us and prevent the sum-ru
They moved on toward the bowl and the green center of the vale. Ahead, blue pillars of ice grew to meet the upside-down mountain’s gleaming edges.
“Something’s coming,” Jebrassy said. “Not trods. Not monsters. Something else—I can feel it.”
“So can I,” the epitome said. “So can they all.”
They could hear a thin, shrieking bellow now—pulsing in from all around, an awful nastiness, like strangling, screaming, and shouts of warning commingled.
The giants lining the mountains were struggling to speak. Some seemed to struggle to move—shivering and stiffly casting off soot and rubble from around their bases.
“They’ve seen this before,” Polybiblios said. “It’s this vision that filled their blood and marrow and turned them fossil. It’s what the Witness has tried to warn us about for half an eternity.
“The Typhon has nowhere left to hide. It is coming here with all its servants—all those it has captured and tormented. Here we will find my daughter.”
CHAPTER 99
The seeing had not gotten any easier. There was an optical perversity that no ma
Not much comfort to be had from resting his eyes.
Jack was aware that Glaucous had been trying once again to hook his affection and trust, to consign these little fish to one or another basket—his, or failing that, Daniel’s. Daniel was a fake, of course—without actually slinking, he slunk, and without saying anything, he lied. Even the truth from his lips was deceptive, because they were not his lips.Glaucous was little better—honest in shape, but that shape worse than lies.