City at the end of time

“The Crux has no center and no radius,” Whitlow said. “Brace for a nasty residue—a powerful thing once focused its heart of frustration and misery here. It ate our world and spat it out in nasty chunks. You’ll feel it.”

“The Typhon?” Glaucous asked.

Whitlow shrugged. “These steel threads are the last two fates. In one, the Typhon fails and we all pass into nothingness. In the other…there is a kind of success. Who can say which would be better? Now—

“Tell us where we are—draw up the proper thread, and tell us what remains for us to do. That is your talent, is it not?”

Glaucous could not shut his eyes, could not find any private place in which to make his decision—but that did not matter. He had decided long ago.

Fifty years and more had passed since he had decided.

Somehow, in this abstract heart with no center, and without the Moth’s help, he chose the best fate—the last remaining good fate—and drew it down like a fortunate hand of cards, the one lucky flip of a coin. And—always deferent to his employers—he made sure both the Moth and Whitlow approved. Far away, an awful sound echoes again throughout the False City.

And the Dead Gods begin to move.

CHAPTER 112

The False City is quivering, snapping, shrinking. Jebrassy does not know why he is still walking, still seeing.

He looks down on Polybiblios, who has inexplicably collapsed, and then kneels beside him. Some steps away, Ghentun has also fallen. Both are wavering in substance and outline.

“The Kalpa is reaching its end,” Polybiblios says. “The City Prince’s bargain means nothing. I ca

The epitome reaches out to give him the thing he has carried since their journey began. Jebrassy holds the small gray box. The epitome of the Librarian winks at him through the armor’s faceplate, then lies back on the black surface.

Jebrassy then moves to Ghentun and lies down beside the Keeper, to hold him as best he can while the Tall One—the former taskmaster and protector—stares up into the ice-crusted darkness. His eyes sink.

“I chose to become noötic,” the Keeper confesses. “When I was young. My only betrayal. I reconverted when I became Keeper. But my fate-lines were cut and remade, and tied up with the Kalpa. I won’t be going any farther.”

Ghentun touches the breed’s hand, feeling Jebrassy’s solidity, then moves his fingers to his own nose and makes that strange, explosive sound that signifies humor. “Let me see what he gave you.”

Jebrassy holds out the box.

“Open it for me. Show me.”

Jebrassy touches the top and turns it one way, then another, shaking it. He knows instinctively how to open it. The lid pulls away, and within there is a new, bright twist of gray metal, cradling a small reddish stone. The stone gleams within, like a star growing on the tweenlight ceil.

“Four is the minimum,” Ghentun says, and his sunken eyes turn away. “Some say three. But it isfour. Enough. They have had enough time and power. At the very end, the City Prince wins all.”

Dying eyes now focused on the young breed, with his last strength the Keeper pulls the stone up and away from Jebrassy’s suddenly frantic, grabbing hands, and smashes it against the littered floor. It does not break but makes a strange squeal and tries to pull away from the Mender’s armor. As if remembering something obscure, a last bit of instruction, Ghentun nods, then with his other hand reaches for the lid of the box—and examines the design engraved there. “Why play Eidolon games, young breed?”

Holding both away from Jebrassy, he lurches to his feet and clasps them to his breast, then closes his eyes.

There is nothing Jebrassy can do. He turns between the Keeper and Polybiblios, like a child caught in a tormenting game played by cruel adults.

The incarnate fragment of the Librarian seems at first to share Jebrassy’s horror, then holds up one hand, as if waving good-bye, or dismissing all further effort. Polybiblios crumbles to gray dust within the armor. The armor falls inward, shrinks to a wrinkled pebble.

No more words, no more information.

Trillions of years of memories—gone.

The Keeper turns white eyes upward, and then passes—becomes dust. His armor likewise shrinks, and pieces roll on the ground, sparking, sizzling around the box and the stone. All crumble.

Jebrassy tries to gather the remains in his gloved hands, but at this touch, the destruction begun by Ghentun’s passing is complete. Nothing but fine sand sifts through his fingers. All pointless.

Jebrassy gets to his feet. He is learning for the first time what it means to be utterly and completely alone. The False City, like his heart, is filled with a terrible screaming. He knows that voice, recognizes it from his dreams—from his origins.

Someone throws a rock. The rock continues on its arc to a destination. So long as it flies, a life goes on—a fate remains in play.

But now the purpose is gone, and there is only the fate.

Why play Eidolon games, young breed?

One last glance at the piles of sand.

Something new has formed there—a larger, polyhedral shape with seven sides and four holes, made of the same substance as the gray box.

His fingers twitch. He touches it—the armor does not interact. It is inert. Jebrassy picks it up and carries it with him, as a pede carries nesting material even after its clutch of eggs has been stolen and eaten.

He walks the last remaining distance under the deadfall, through a storm of whispering shadows—

The central shape of his most hidden dreams is gathering, he can feel its motion—a great revolving, spi

He has stepped onto a lake of translucent blue-green, the same color as the pieces of the muse collected by the Shen and gathered into humanlike form by Polybiblios.

The final part of his journey begins.

Toward the screaming.

CHAPTER 113

Jack has reached the center of the city. It looks like a center—everything spins out around it—though the scene is cockeyed and difficult to define, and so he turns, looks back over his shoulder, then bends over and stares between his legs—through the last iridescent film of bubble. The stone is hot in his hands, quivering with its own excitement. But everything else…very cold.

The center is a circular, emerald-green lake surrounded by revolving and whirling circular bands: the ever-moving, ever-slicing and parsing bars of a special prison. He is inside them. Somehow he has passed through the cut and slice. The bands are flat, of no thickness, and smooth, reflecting light with a brazen, defiant sheen.

A cross formed of two straight ribbons meets above the lake. From one angle the revolving bands move behind the cross—from another angle they surround it—and from a third angle they whirl in front. This is very like the symbol carved into the puzzle box. So he is where he should be, finally. And the others?

All he really wants now is to find Gi

Time to see things better. He turns around again, refreshing the polarity of his perception, and this creates a kind of clarity.

Curls of pale gray dart down and around, forming particle-chamber tracks through the distance above the frozen green lake, like greenish snow—all the snow in the world, summing to a peculiar blizzard here at the end of time.