The alchemist stops picking glass from his robes and nods his head once. "Yes, your Grace. Certainly. I understand."
The Glaistig takes a deep breath and shuts her eyes, letting a few more seconds slip past, and she silently curses the gods of chance and circumstance that she has lived to know how the damned-to-be feel in that last instant before the trespass that will insure their spirits are forever consigned to perdition. She opens her eyes, and steam is still pouring from the crack in the floor; the air has begun to stink of sulfur and rotting eggs.
"The Weaver's constructs, these Seraphim, may not be killed," she says. "This much I understand, and also I understand why. But I have been told there may be another way, something which you've learned from the red witches. I ask you, is this true?"
When Kypre Alundshaw doesn't reply, she strikes her scepter against the dais with enough force that sparks fly from the impact of silver against the flagstones. Alundshaw flinches and immediately looks back down at the floor.
"Alchemist, you will tell me now, is this true? Or have I been wrongly advised?"
"No, your Grace. You have not," the alchemist replies, a quaver in his voice. "There may, indeed, be another way, but it would be a terrible deed if-"
"I am not asking you for a lesson in ethics," the Glaistig snarls and turns back towards her husband's tomb. She places one hand flat on its polished lid and listens to the foundations of Kearvan Weal trembling beneath her.
"No, your Grace, but the consequences-"
"I'm only asking if it might be accomplished," the Glaistig explains, wishing that the heavy lid of the tomb had not been closed so soon, that she could look one last time upon the face of her King and find there the answers she needs. Answers that might save her world without bringing harm to some other universe.
"I think so," the alchemist says, and she can hear the reluctance in his reply. "The red witches' calculations seem sound enough. We can find no fault."
"And why do you believe that we can trust the Nesmians, Alundshaw? They have ever been enemies of the Dragon. Might not this be some deceit?"
The alchemist glances nervously over his shoulder at the steam billowing from the fissure, then clears his throat. "I need not remind your Grace that the Nesmians despise the Weaver, perhaps even as much as do our own people. In this instance, our enemy has become an ally against a common threat."
"And this sorcery would take them all, not merely that one the vampire has captured?"
"Yes, your Grace. If the process works as the Nesmians have predicted, it would take all of the Seraphim, each removed to another…" and he pauses, as if he's forgotten how to end the sentence.
"To another world," the Glaistig finishes for him.
"Yes, mum," he says. "They would be forever scattered across the celestial planes."
"Beyond her recall?"
"Yes, your Grace. Forever beyond her recall."
The floor groans and rolls again, and the alchemist waves his arms about and shuffles his feet to keep from falling. Near the rift in the floor of King's Hale, the glass tiles of the mosaic have begun to melt, their candy colors bleeding one into the other. And now a second fissure has opened, this one a vertical rent in the northern wall of the tower, wide enough that dim streaks of daylight shine through.
"Is there still time?" the Glaistig asks.
"I believe so," Kypre Alundshaw answers. "The place of sacrifice has already been prepared. We've done precisely as the Kenzia woman has directed. We only await your command."
"Then you tell her to do it," she says. "Tell her to do it immediately. And by the spokes and all our fathers, may the gods show mercy on us in our desperation."
Before the next tremor shakes the Hale, Alundshaw and the other alchemists and the astronomers have filed out of the chamber, and the Glaistig motions for the men and women of her court to kneel once more. She leans against the tomb of the King of Immolations, her cheek pressed to the cool, consoling granite, and, in another moment, she begins her prayers again.
VIII. PensacolaBeach (December 1982)
Julia Flammarion swims until the cold has done its job, exactly what she's asked it to do for her, and her arms and legs have grown too stiff and numb to possibly swim any farther. Which means that she'll never be able to swim all the way back to shore, either, so there's no losing her nerve now. It doesn't matter if she turns coward and changes her mind or decides that life as a crazy girl who talks to angels is still better than drowning in the Gulf of Mexico. She squints back towards the beach, nothing visible but a faint white stripe against the blue horizon, and wonders about the handsome man with the guitar, what he thought as she walked into the water in her clothes and shoes and began to swim away. Did he even notice? Is he watching her now? Has he gone looking for help? She hopes not. She hopes that he's still sitting there on his apple crate playing beautiful songs she'll never hear.
"And what now?" she asks the high and unconsoling sun, the sun that might as well be the eye of God staring bitterly down at a fifteen-year-old suicide. The eye of a God who's finally washing his hands of her once and for all. A moment later, Julia gets a big mouthful of saltwater, and it strangles her and burns her sinuses and throat.
"Is that your answer?" she sputters weakly, and the sun continues to hang mute in the cloudless winter sky, however many tens or hundreds of millions of miles away from her it might be.
Much too far to matter, she thinks and shuts her eyes. The cold and the effort of swimming out this far have made her very sleepy, and so maybe that's what happens next. Maybe it's as simple as shutting her eyes and drifting on the swells until she falls asleep. Maybe there will even be one last dream, something warm and gentle that shows her another way her life might have gone, if she weren't insane and had never spoken to the angel that first day in the clearing in Shrove Wood. If the rattlesnake had never been burned to charcoal. If the angel had never started telling her stories about monsters. Julia uses the last of her strength to imagine a dream just like that, a very good dream in which she marries the handsome man with the guitar and they have children and even grandchildren, and she grows old and dies at home in her bed with all of them about her. She tells herself that the sound of wings close by is nothing but a curious seagull or a pelican, and only a few seconds later, too exhausted to tread water any longer, she slips beneath the welcoming surface of the sea.
IX. The Demon of HopekillSwamp