They had been unable to resist the blood of their ancient enemies and, as their god came at last, they died in joy to feed her.
Sena saw Naen fill Bablemum, balloon and then abruptly turn, lured by the huge number of souls Nathaniel had brought from the north. Millions of them. They were like a great bait ball in the sky.
But more than them, it was her: the Sslia, standing on the brink of escape. Naen moved toward her automatically, intent on her destruction.
Sena was afraid.
Her eyes, which saw everywhere, witnessed the Chamber under Sandren where the golden holes had stretched and broken. They were dark now. The wet stone made of dreams had fallen away, great pieces dropping into Yoloch’s relentless surf.
Beneath her feet, Sena could feel the fringes of the continent collapsing, the world eaten at a harrowing rate, racing across the steppes, the desert, the jungle, coming toward her. And it made her sad. She felt Caliph’s sorrow, vicariously.
Because the number was only two.
CHAPTER
53
Caliph sees Sena drink from a small steel flask. He knows it is tincture by the smell. Then he sees her toss the flask aside, touch her stomach with one hand as she reaches for him with her other. She looks worried.
Her face is lit by the gray dawn and gathered into tense angles.
Caliph notices how time feels differently now. As if everything has already happened. Maybe it is part of the dream, part of the tincture. He can still feel the poison coursing through him as Sena pulls him along, down the escarpment. Wind is blowing.
“Come on Caliph—”
He cannot feel his feet against the ground. The boulders, the treacherous clefts and snarls of vegetation might as well be paved causeways. Everything is running smoothly now, just the way he likes it.
They enter a desolate quadrangle. The trees cradle the poisonous colors of a new set of ruins.
“It’s a necropolis,” says Sena.
He hears the leaves moan.
These new ruins, the necropolis of Ooil-Uauth, are so striking he knows he must still be dreaming. No real place could look like this. Far above his head, strange jungle foliage rumbles with air currents. Trees like kelp slosh against a dead blue sky.
He makes his way among huge cucullate structures, like beehives, mathematical and sharp, some tumbled down and broken, all organic and contradictorily vague.
For a moment he loses track of Sena and finds himself alone.
Only in dreams can you be so alone, he thinks.
Only in dreams can the entire universe be emptied of your species and leave you to haunt the cosmos, a solitary morsel of meat.
He looks up into heavens the color of paint mixed with ash.
The sky hates him.
He stumbles into the middle of the square, feeling catarrhine, barely capable of balancing without all four feet on the ground. He swaggers, hardly standing. For a moment the heat is incredible, then that whimsical-strong ocean breeze tongues the trees. Stray currents swirl into the square and goose bumps rake his skin.
The jungle moves. It unrolls and blooms and sways. It mouths the ruins and the beach, slobbering, drizzling nectar from millions of blossoms. Caliph appreciates the sticky mist coating the back of his neck, spattering against his cheeks, like strange rain, like bat urine. Sweet, aphrodisiacal and repugnant.
Jungles are not really black. But this one is: in perfect counterpoint to the variegated colors of masonry, blossoms and acid-pink water that laps at the beach.
Hurry, Caliph.
Ah. He has found her again.
Movement stirs at the north end of the square. Darkness pours from the undergrowth in tendrils and clouds. Black butterflies, big as his hand. Even the shimmery lunulae of their hind wings glister like fresh tar.
“So beautiful.”
He has found her. Through the wings and disembodied spirits. Eyes made of blue crystal. No. Black. Her eyes have turned black.
She stands at an altar or a lectern and beckons him. It, like the necropolis, is made of dreamt stone.
Its shape is long and threatening. It looks old. Like something that has existed from the beginning. Because of it, thinks Caliph, even if tourists crawled all over this place, ferried from some nearby village in solvitriol cabs, this would be a terrible—
“Are you all right, Caliph?”
He feels pressured into saying yes, because of the desperation in her voice. She sounds hurried.
And then, as if the idea is planted, he has a moment of clarity, which can be compared to only one or two other experiences in his life.
He starts talking without fully understanding what he is saying. But he can feel that he is onto something. “Did you read the papers last summer? When you were away?” he asks her while she is doing something frantically at the altar. “They were so full of the news about Bablemum?” He almost laughs. “The treaty? You know? How the city was going to go back to Pandragonian rule?
“I remember they published excerpts of letters sent from citizens of Bablemum to Emperor Junnu, begging him not to do it. They wrote to senators, diplomats, even foreign powers, asking them to intervene. Even I got one.
“As if—right? But they went door-to-door for signatures. They held rallies. ‘Don’t follow through with this treaty,’ they begged! Because it was going to, you know, modify a whole lot of lives. Change laws. People’s freedoms and families and everything were on the line.”
Caliph gasps as a blast of ocean wind takes him straight in the face. “But you know what? Nothing changed. The day arrived and the treaty went into effect as planned. Because you can’t fight inertia. Not even when you know it’s going to be a disaster. Not with all the reasoning in the world. Because the receipts win out. The money and time spent have too much weight. And people want what they paid for, even if it’s going to kill them. So the police moved into the streets. And no one could do a damned thing about it. People jumped off buildings that night rather than become Pandragonian.”
He looks at Sena closely. “That’s what happens when whole cultures are annexed. That’s what happens when the world loses its ability to steer. And you know, I guess I thought … that people were more sensible.”
“I’m just the sexton,” says Sena. “I dug the hole.” Her mouth is beautiful. Her teeth are an omegoid array of enamel shields standing in pink gums. Her tongue dances behind them.
He doesn’t know why he notices this.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he asks. “Why fill me up with drugs?”
“No matter what I did, I couldn’t get to three.” Sena looks more sincere and more bereft than she ever has before. “This is about transcendence. And you need permission. You have to forgive me for that. I hope you’ll forgive me for that.”
Caliph believes that there are interminable seasons bracketed by proterozoic soup and stars—wheeling over him.
“I wanted to tell you,” she says. “But I couldn’t. It was too dangerous. Your uncle could have—”