“They’ve made up their minds,” Ellen said.
“Who is going?”
Agazutta raised her hand. “Children, grown and moved out—France, Japan, far away, but maybe they’ve left messages for me at home. Maybe there’s still a way to speak to them. I have to try.”
Miriam raised hers. “I need to get back to the clinic—if it’s still there. My patients must be scared out of their wits. My staff…They’ve been with me for years.”
Farrah stood and stretched. “I’m alone,” she said. “But I’ll go with Agazutta and Miriam, just to watch out for them.”
“I’ll stay,” Ellen said. “Whether I’m needed here or not—no one out there needs me.”
“Not even us?” Agazutta said. “Is this the end of the Witches of Eastlake?”
“It’s been good,” Ellen said. “You are all the best friends, the finest adventurers one could hope for.”
“Well, it ain’t over…”
“Until I sing,” Farrah said.
The women exchanged hugs. More tears were shed. Then they took up their bags and purses, and Bidewell escorted them to the northern door.
“You have your books?” he asked. “Do not lose them. Keep them close at all times.”
They gave him wry looks. “Slender tomes,” Agazutta said.
“What does 1298 mean?” Farrah asked.
“They are your stories, dear ladies,” Bidewell said, “penned long ago in Latin, by your obedient servant, copying from even older texts—scrolls that were burned at Herculaneum. So long as you keep your stories near, you will be afforded some protection. I do not suggest reading ahead or skipping to the end—not yet.”
“Will we get out of this alive?” Farrah asked.
Bidewell lightly snorted, but gave no answer.
Miriam opened the door to the outside. The air over the city had cleared a little. “Oh, look,” she said with a sigh. “It isn’t raining.”
“What will happen to the rest of you?” Agazutta asked, taking Bidewell by the elbow as they walked down the ramp side by side.
“ Thatis well known,” Bidewell said. “I am marked. I have been in the fray too long to go unnoticed, and so…I fear all our fates hinge on the outcome, and before that arrives, we must enter a kind of storage, along with this city—all cities, all histories, all times. The world out here is not the only record, and not the final version in the edit.”
Agazutta shook her head in wistful irritation. “I’ve never understood you, or why we did all this.”
“I’m a seductive fellow,” Bidewell said.
“That you are,” Miriam said, and kissed his cheek.
The gate was opened, and three of the Witches of Eastlake departed into the grayness, holding bags or purses, and their books, before them. They left their youngest, Ellen, standing beside the ancient man with wet cheeks, who looked even older now.
“We should go back in,” Ellen said, peering after the figures. They were limned by barely visible halos, and the flickering of the sky—the leaning and grinding of the walls—slowed as they departed.
“It will not long matter where any of us stands,” Bidewell said.
Ellen grasped his face and looked straight into his eyes. “You didn’t tell them. You think things have gone wrong.”
“In the short run, now equal to any long run, we are all together. There are only two fates, two paths remaining. We shall all be moved along one path or the other—to be reconciled and ordered in our conclusions by Mnemosyne, or played with by the Chalk Princess as she sees fit. And it is our visiting children who will steer us, ultimately.”
He pulled himself straight and waved his hands at the curtain of gloom where the women had passed. “I wish them well,” he said. “It is cold out here.” He closed the door but did not shoot the bolt home. “We have been dealt all our cards.”
CHAPTER 76
The Chaos
The branches swung aside as this Pahtun—he had no other name—led them deeper into the trees. Tiadba knew they would never be able to find their way out. The branches had parted reluctantly, and then tried to enclose them, perhaps as defense. And the armor no longer responded to her commands to close up and form a seal. Obviously, the Tall One was in charge, and seemed to know what he was doing.
Macht wore a steady scowl, and Denbord had frozen his face in a look of insolence, though he said nothing. They had already been through too much.
“Did you try out your claves?” Pahtun asked. “How effective were they?” The Tall One spun about, arms extended, and the tips of the branches overhead brightened almost into wakelight.
“We tried them,” Denbord said. “They were hard to manage. But some of the old marchers fell back—the dead ones, I mean, whatever they were. They fell apart.”
“Echoes, no doubt. They’re thick around here.”
“Were they dead?” Tiadba asked.
“Perhaps not dead, but most unfortunate. They might have been versions of youwho made wrong choices and got trapped, their fates snared and looped by the Typhon. The Typhon uses whatever it captures or finds. Not a pleasant end. No end at all, from what I’ve seen over the past few tens of thousands of wakes. I work out here, save what I learn, and pass it along to such as get this far.”
“How many breeds have survived?” Denbord asked.
Nico lifted his hands in a counting prayer.
“I’m not sure. A hundred…fewer.” Pahtun touched the ground and a box rose up, about the size of a clothes box. Walking around it, he scratched his palms, spoke a few soft words, jerked his head. The box responded and its sides fell open. Within, thin branches spun and grew with dizzying speed, throwing sharp little sparks. They were miniature versions of the trees that surrounded and covered them.
“Take off your suits. Lay them out on the ground. Once they air out, we’ll throw them in here.” He pointed at the spinning mass in the box. “Your armor will be remade and improved—new knowledge, better guidance. And then you’ll go. I’ll be breaking this camp and fleeing myself. The trod is close, and I don’t want to be caught by a Silent One. Besides, we’re all much too near the Witness.”
“How is that possible?” Tiadba asked. “We were let out into the Chaos far from there.”
“Distance, angle, the metric—all changing, I’m afraid. And it isn’t getting any easier to plan and prepare for.”
He gestured with his hands, flower finger prominent, and one by one, reluctantly, they peeled off their suits—all but Macht—and laid them on the ground. Herza and Frinna stayed close to the box, as if comforted by its apparently benign mystery. Shewel joined them.
Pahtun gathered the suits and flung them into the spinning branches, where they sizzled and vanished. He
waited for Macht to make up his mind.
“Tall magic,” Denbord said, with a wink and a nod, and then touched his nose. He still did not believe, but what else could they do? The protection was obvious—if temporary.
“Just do it,” Tiadba instructed Macht. He glared at her but finally handed his suit to this Pahtun, who dropped it into the silvery tangle.
The breeds lay mostly naked around the box and took turns telling of the last large intrusion, the damage to the Kalpa, their training, the end of the first Pahtun, the starboats in the valley that went away, the shattered ghosts of cities, the strange way light moved out here.
And the echoes.
“No doubt Perf is with them now,” Macht said, and Nico knelt and tented his hands, a prayer of supplication—though to what, out here, no one could say.
Pahtun listened intently, though Tiadba suspected he had heard such tales before. “You’ve done well against all odds, young breeds,” he said. “Good to know we can still shape such as you. But the city is ignorant about much of the Chaos—always has been. I can’t go back, nor can I communicate what I know, because the city must not take such a chance. We might be products of the Typhon, after all, made to misinform.”