The Bone Clocks

Sadaqat’s broken body drops onto the ground, and a lesser Anchorite kinetics it through the east window, like a trash bag of household waste. His soul, at least, will find its way to the Last Sea, unlike those of other “guests,” who are brought here to be psychodecanted.

They’re about to attack,Unalaq subwarns me.

Feeling like a conductor raising his baton for the Orchestra of All Hell Breaks Loose, I say, “Now.”

UNALAQ INVOKES A shield from wall to wall, closing off the northern quarter of the Chapel. Even at thirty paces, its force shoves Pfe

I look behind us. Sickeningly, the charred icon of the Blind Cathar is restoring itself. The monk’s skin is emerging, and the gold halo is starting to shine. Worse, the black dot of the chakra-eye’s returning. Once it’s fully dilated, the Cathar will be able to decant us one by one.

Pfe

“This one’s mine,” Фshima calls out. “Marinus, Arkady, keep the shield up. Goodbye Esther.” Esther’s soul egresses from Фshima, transversing to one side, pulsing with her evocation of the Last Act. Then the grizzled warrior turns, grips the edges of the icon, and holds his head one foot away from the Blind Cathar’s. He shuts his physical eyes and pours Deep Stream voltage from his own glowing chakra straight at the black pupil on the icon’s forehead. Фshima ca

Pfe

We’re still outnumbered nine to three, pe

Arkady now pours his voltage into Unalaq’s shield, which bolsters it temporarily, but the Anchorites’ cascade of fire doubles, trebles, quadruples in intensity. The psychoduel becomes too magnesium-bright to look at, so it is through my chakra-eye that I see the long table rise ten feet into the air, hang there for a second like a bird of prey, then hurtle straight at Arkady and Unalaq. On reflex, I handsign the fastest countermand of my life, and stop it a fist’s width from Arkady’s clenched face, the two ends of the table on either side of the jammed-together shields. Now begins not a tug-of-war but a push-of-war, in which Pfe

Through an ever-redder shade of purple I see Pfe

Seeing my dead body against the wall, the Anchorites reason that no psychosoteric can now attack them, and their red shield flickers out. They’ll pay for this mistake. Incorporeally, I pour psychovoltage into a neurobolas and kinetic it at our assailants. It smacks into Imhoff and Westhuizen, the Fifth and Seventh Anchorites, respectively, and down they go. Three against seven. I ingress into Arkady to help him repair the shield, which turns a stronger blue and pushes back the remaining Anchorites. When Arkady glances back at Фshima, however, I see his fight is lost. His body is evaporating as we look. Go to Holly, suborders Arkady. I obey without even thinking to bid him goodbye, an omission I regret even as I transverse to Holly, ingress, evoke an Act of Total Suasion, and … Now what?

Infuriated by the loss of Imhoff and Westhuizen, the seven remaining Anchorites ca

THE LIGHT FILLS the Chapel, passing through hands pressed over eyes, through the eyelids behind those eyes, through corneas and vitreous humors, through bodies, through souls … The white is so white it’s black. Esther did it. Esther won. I wait for the bonesnapping crack as the Chapel splits down the middle. I wait for the screams of the Anchorites as their immortality machine disintegrates about them.

Seconds unspool … Many seconds.

The black beyond white fades back to white.

The white slips off its layers, back to milky flint-gray.

Vision returns. I open Holly’s eyelids and look up from where her body lies, up at the Chapel roof. It hasn’t fallen in.

I think, Esther’s Last Act wasn’t powerful enough.

I think, The Blind Cathar took countermeasures.

It hardly matters why Esther failed. The Second Mission was the last chance. Horology is now just L’Ohkna, a hacker, and Roho, a bodyguard. Horology lost and the Anchorites won.