The dials I installed connected to cables that snaked down through the chapel’s entrails, into the basement and out through the foundations into several of the most probable dimensions.
That is a joke, by the way. No, I don’t expect you to laugh.
Actually I am quite certain of my figures. The dials have been calibrated. The cables that connect them to other worlds will carry the sound of their ticking. In other words, once my shade … or rather, when I have gone walking, I shall be able to hear them despite the fact I will have no ears. They will resonate with my pneuma and call me back under a variety of conditions.
The church itself will be my nose, my eyes, my ears and fingers when I will have none. It will tell me when the time is right.
It will also be my mouth.
This is the unfortunate part of the contingency; one that I am not pleased to be initiating, but alas, the tinctures have caught up with me and I was forced to make a choice: use what few journeys I had left to try and find a replacement (hardly certain) or create the machine that would allow me some measure of power at the end of time.
I chose the latter.
Once I have gone walking, I will have no mouth. I will have no blood. Already I am bloodless, baking rotten in the jungle’s heat. A perfect algorithm and the grume of every bird or mammal that passes overhead cannot hold this form together another year. The jungle will have its way.
So I will go walking, in far places.
I will leave the stink that has gotten into my skin, my hair. But St. Remora will call me back when the time is right.
I used many journeys to find the correct building. In alternate timelines my granddaughter examined the empty shell of Teapetal Wax, an old factory in Growl Mort, an elementary school on the corner of Grindosh and Bane. But eventually I found it—St. Remora—the one that she would buy.
She will also find my gold in the box I sent to Pandragor, while I dragged my servants to the jungle. She will carry it for me, while I will lack hands. The church will know of her arrival.
My successor has been chosen, though they will not call her my successor. They will call her Sslia, Deliverer, and say I was a fraud. But it will be my numbers that she will use to slip through. It will be my plans she confiscates from diverse libraries and vaults. She will find the way. She will not use wires or jewels because They will give her the set They never gave to me.
I have foreseen it. I am still a Writer and Eater of Time. Yet Their logic eludes me. Why have They chosen her instead of me? Because she is Hjolk-trull? Because They wish to toy with idle irony. Perhaps They laugh in Their dreaming cities in the dark; perhaps They think she will kill herself making the ink.
She will lack the blood to do so.
Perhaps They laugh at the happenstance arrangements of the patterns, of the movements and relationships of men. She will love him. She will kill him for the ink. They could never have wrung such a catastrophe from me.
I care only for my daughter.
The book will tell me of my successor’s arrival. I have put my mark on its pages. When she opens it, I will know.
Yes, you. You: SIENAE IILOOL.
I see your cunning face.
They will write Their runes in your skin and for a time you will try to fight against those strictly metered designs—clabbered in their loveliness. But I know, in the end, you will find them too gluey, too consolidated to work against. The runes will trace your every movement. Your every action will be known to Them. You will give in. And then, my dear, I will return from my far wanderings. I will bargain with you for my daughter’s release.
By the time you read this, it will be too late for you. You may think you can escape without me, but you will be wrong. You will find it in the math. Look. Take all the time you want. You may think I am powerless now. I have no mouth to speak, no blood to draw. But you are wrong.
St. Remora is my mouth.
I can open it. There is an eleventh dial that connects with Them, down below the church, in a womb of vesicated black. It is the trigger of my weapon, my postlude, my ultimatum. Do not tempt me with its use.
On my whim, I can draw the Old Thing out, a Sectua’Gaunt22 still ravenous for souls. When it births into the church, its first thought will kill a hundred thousand people. Its second will kill a hundred thousand more. Souls.
Do you think solvitriol technology was dreamt by man? Invention is reinvention, finding the path that has been found uncounted times before. They are the dreamers, the inventers of solvitriol technology, not us.
1600 S.K./537 Y.o.T. Moons
—N.H.
I have inherited a diaper-dragging brat along with the house. While it would be convenient in some regards for him to become permanently lost in the mountain woods and thus join his relatives, I have determined that he is a remarkable creature. His father was at least part Hjolk-trull. This means, if nothing else, he is the serendipitous second ingredient (since Gringlings are extinct) for ulian ink! Sad news that we cannot pen the other sheets yet. I am, however, able to begin on the stopping point of our escape, our own little island in the stars—which won’t have to pass the same touchstone as the others. In the meantime, I feed him like a little tick; once he’s swollen with a few more pints he’ll be a fabulous capsule!
(undated loose page)
She cannot dig me out! She cannot ignore me.
I am the one who installed the eleven dials in the church! I am the one who cut the ruby bottles and turned them black! I fitted the house on Isca Hill with her windows shining bright! Your lovely trat did nothing but find the book in a bin on March Street! She is going to show you these pages. Do you not think I knew how all of this would turn out? What? AM I NOT A GOD?
I am the one who found Naen’uln! I am the one who hunted the jungles for it endlessly, who bent numbers around it so that it could be moved! I am the one who painstakingly prepared years of notations, filling the margins of the Gymre Ta23 with enough instruction that a drooling retard could have discovered the truth! She is no prodigy! I fucking made her!
I have been here from the beginning! Not her! I! Me! All of me! In every pathetic fibrous cyst I endured! Me! Who once wept for my lost humanity but now laughs at the stupidity of attempting to … For the sake of what!?
What!
I found the book. I found the ink! I have done everything. And now? To be relegated finally to the role of watcher? While she proceeds with Their blessing?
I despise you. All of you. And you will not escape without me. I have laid it into the foundations. You cannot extricate yourself from ME! In the end, I will encompass you and devour you. And you will dissolve slowly across a billion years.
I have fit myself with jewels and darkened them to the moment, bound them to me as I did in the desert. Only this time: this time it will be different.
Caliph,
I know this has been hard for you to read. He was never your uncle. You wonder why I gave you these books. You wonder what I did at Sandren and why. I know you. You will figure this out.