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A greater moment of reunion was out there in the ruins.
Daniel sat on the edge, ignoring the small blue lances and sparks, and took his two stones from their boxes. As always, they would not fit together. One looking older than the other, if that was possible. Similar in shape, but destined for other combinations. One of the stones tugged strongly to the left and then down. Simultaneously, he heard a savage, nasty sound, like a beast in pain, echo from all around, and then—perversely—swoop up with a Doppler howl to echo again.
The ruins seemed to enjoy this. They played with that sound, tossed it back and forth. Hanging structures shuddered and sifted corrosion down the slope of the curtain-wall, and then made an attempt to move, as if in response to that unknown command. They managed to shift a few dozen yards along their silvery co
He suspected this was not the first time Nataraja had echoed with that pain. Daniel replaced the dormant stone and put the box back into his pocket. The other he kept in his hand, where it grew warm and then hot. He hung his head. Everything hurt. The wail…not a beast. A woman.
The stone tugged again. For now, it was the only part of him that showed decision and direction. He had killed and pushed aside so many to come this far. A meeting was coming—a meeting that would resolve nothing.
Never would.
Never had.
CHAPTER 111
The tangle of old Nataraja quivered above them, and the dreaded, all-too-familiar sound of collisions—mountains falling, caverns collapsing, dust swirling and sifting—a
Glaucous felt his body cramp inward, as if he were being pinched between a huge finger and thumb. Whitlow continued to lurch ahead, feeling his way through the city’s deadfall like a cockroach through a festering forest—with the occasional guiding touch of the Moth, a presence of gray authority but no real substance or location. Glaucous finally followed him again, breath stacked upon breath, eyes stinging at the way light and shadow torqued through the high, snarled skeleton of the corpse city. Whitlow stopped and touched finger to chin, scratching stubble. He examined Glaucous critically, as if blaming him. “Smaller still,” he said. “Less of everything. Distances change, and directions. Do you feel it?”
“Yes,” Glaucous said, hunching his shoulders as he imagined miners might in a cave-in, their candles fading, air turning to poison.
“Not done yet,” Whitlow added, shaking his head. “Might squeeze us to the size of a pea. What then?”
It was obvious to Glaucous that all they had to do—Whitlow and the Moth—was lose him in this tangle, and none of his skills would save him. That might be their intent—yet he had no choice but to follow.
“I bear no resentment for being left behind,” Whitlow said, watching his face with darting eyes. “New circumstances, new codes, not to say new honor. Indeed, not to say that.I might have left youbehind, had it been the other way.”
“The Mistress brought you here before?” Glaucous asked.
“Such a question!” Whitlow said. “She might have done so, and I might have forgotten. You might as easily forget that we are here now.”
“I recognize some things,” Glaucous said quietly. “Narrow escapes. Seeing what lay beyond.”
“When I was younger, I imagined this was a sort of afterlife. Didn’t you?”
“Never thought on it much,” Glaucous said, and that was mostly true.
“I had some feeble excuse that our prey might find a satisfactory existence here—render their own extended service, no worse than what we endure, or what the Moth endures, perhaps. Mistakes also deposit themselves. Hunters clumsy enough to fall into a Gape. Many such, over the ages. No going back when that happens. You’ve lost partners—would you like to reacquaint with a few?”
“No thank you, all the same,” Glaucous murmured.
“We may pass them on our way to the Crux. We are the only survivors. Of all the thousands—tens of thousands, I imagine…” Whitlow looked around. There had not been a touch, a guiding blink of gray authority, for some time. He whistled low and steady, as if summoning an invisible dog. “Where is that creature?”
“Does shereside in the Crux?” Glaucous asked.
Whitlow slowly turned, larger booted foot thumping, looked up, and lifted his hands, fingers feeling through the dark spaces as if he might grab a line and haul them up into daylight. “Not hers. Moth found it. Bigger game, now smaller and weaker, everything coming to its minimum. The small will loom large, Mr. Glaucous. Our last chance.”
“I do not know what you mean, Mr. Whitlow,” Glaucous said wearily. “Bad riddles always.”
“You wouldn’t say that had not all this brought me low. You would listen and smile, obsequious, and I would know there was an understanding. But the chain of command, broken…chain of authority, knotted and clanking. The Moth…”
“I don’t feel him,” Glaucous said, drawing closer to Whitlow. “Where has he gone?”
Whitlow regarded him with momentary apprehension—and then a mask of wry humor. “Tell me about your friend, the bad shepherd, before you decide to take your revenge, Mr. Glaucous.”
“You found him. I followed you.”
Glaucous drew back at another round of creaking and settling. Whitlow held up his fingers, separated by the distance of a pea, and shook them in Glaucous’s face, gri
Glaucous felt the breezy touch of a huge, soft hand on his back, accompanied by a scent of dry, sweetly irritating powder. The Moth had returned.
Whitlow resumed his off-kilter step. “Better. Shouldn’t wander off like that. What we have found is puzzling,” he said to Glaucous. “Curtains have been pulled aside. Powers have shifted. We suspect the Chalk Princess is no longer actively engaged. We have need of another opinion.”
Glaucous dropped his head.
“She may not know as much yet. More has been reduced than walking distance,” Whitlow said, and pulled Glaucous close, then whispered in his ear, “This does not bode well for the Moth, of course.” He winked and held his finger to his lips.
The Moth moved them again—a wrenching passage, swift but no more brutal than was strictly essential. Glaucous felt the change as a burning, as if his skin were crisping away. That subsided—and then he felt as if he were merely being tattooed all over his body. The pricking sting of predatory fates was something with which he had no previous experience. One normally lived one’s fate; these lived him.Their examination was swift, impersonal, basic. Glaucous had never before been so close to the basement layers of his being, and he found it both terrible and exhilarating. He had also never been so close to an explanation for his life, his existence, and to a last moment of hope—the hope that perhaps there might still be room for correction.
An impersonal offering of grace—a remote and pure shriving.
The pricking passed. Now he was his own powdery thing, still standing, but falling apart and being put back together each split second.
The Moth protected them as best as he could.
“Welcome to the center of the universe,” he heard Whitlow say or think. Their eyes—they no longer seemed to have bodies—saw in some ma