Then she had a thought: What if leaving the warehouse had put Bidewell and the others in deeper danger? There wasn’t anything she could do about that now. She had made her choice, half hoping someone would follow her, argue with her; and then, reasoning it through, she understood that it would have to be someone carrying his own stone, Jack or Daniel, perhaps both—but would they bring Glaucous, too? That seemed bitterly incongruous—a strange team indeed. After a few minutes of rest—at least, it felt like a few minutes—she peered over the edge of the hollow and experienced another connection to Tiadba, this time while awake. They were closer. She had known that for some time now but could not understand what it meant; closerin what way? Their worlds had merged. She had guessed that much—doubted it, but could find no other explanation. Not that it was any sort of explanation.
Despite all her foolishness and “bad” decisions, she had always primly asserted her rationality—and now pondered for the ten thousandth time the reasons none of this could possibly happen. Her doubt was like tonguing a jagged, painful tooth. All the rules had been broken. What remained? Magic? Strength of will?
Some effect of whatever science or knowledge had created the sum-runners?
Ultimately, she knew there could be no explanation, only survival and completion. Results. In most ways, she had lived her short life—perhaps shorter than she was happy to consider—in clueless ignorance, wrapped in the baby blankets of culture and surrounded by the poor theories of fellow travelers—all of that amounting to another kind of protective atmosphere, off which the smaller, plunging impossibilities bounced or burned away before reaching her. Consensus reality.
Another kind of bubble, equally inexplicable.
Well, out here that was gone, too. She was alone.
She ducked back into the hole. Something huge swung past nearby—a glimpse of sparking shadow accompanied by a thin, strident howling or weeping, penetrating the bubble and hurting her ears. Ginny slowly gathered enough courage to look out again and saw that the shallow dip in the land lay beside a kind of road, colorless, neither bright nor dark—like something half seen by moonlight. The road stretched to a sawtooth horizon.
“Stay away from the trods,” she murmured. “Whatever rides them might be strong enough to break your little bubble. Or seeyou—and collect you.”
She understood that inner voice. Tiadba again. So close!
Despite this warning, Ginny walked alongside the trod, a dozen paces away—such as her paces were, difficult to judge—and descended a grade onto a broad, grayish-tan plain. The mountainous walls to either side were lined with a dim audience of monuments, strange, seemingly dead and still. Twice she had to hide behind rocks or in dips as huge, flat, elevated shapes glided past on the trod. These made no sound and gave no warning. She did not want to know what they were—her glimpses, from a distance, might have shown heads big as buses, twitching, sweeping eyes pointed down, searching. But they did not see her.
Ginny realized that she needed to think less and act more. Going mad out here would be less than pointless—like lighting a match inside a supernova.
She kept walking. The wrinkled, purple-black sky, devoid of stars, did not bother her so long as she did not look up. Strange, that feeling of silent resentment, like a fly flicked from the hindquarters of a sleeping horse. Whether or not she made any real impression, this place tried to repel her and negate every assumption she brought with her.
Still, she could not ignore a deep curiosity about the nature of the valley. Wherever she looked, the horizon was always curved. Perhaps light behaved differently here.
“I don’t know what that means. Stop thinking.”
The plain between the mountains…the monuments or statues—part of her had seen it all before. Tiadba had been here, was here now.
Or would be here.
Maybe they would meet.
“I’m not sure I’d like that,” she whispered, still walking. “I’m already stretched thin.” She dropped again as something on the trod skimmed by, like a huge dinner plate or a squashed crab with a human face. After it passed, when she got to her feet, she noticed a curved, shining green blade stuck in the black ground directly in front of her. A small handle on one side made it look like a baker’s dough-cutter. A weapon, I think. Why was it left here? Who dropped it?
She decided against touching the blade, much less picking it up. Could be a trap. Then the hair on her arms pricked—something was watchingher—and she swung around, dizzied as the entire horizon seemed to careen this way and that—
And faced her first ancient breed. There wasn’t time to look away. A male, she guessed. Not alive. Not dead.
And not alone. There were hundreds just like him, crawling or walking over the ridge into the valley, a river of figures, each smaller than her—this one barely up to her shoulder—and festooned with scraps of what might have once been thick clothing—armor? Red, orange, green, and blue, now faded, ripped and hanging like tissue.
They were marchers. She was sure of it. Their faces drooped like soft wax, their eyes—
She could not look into their eyes. Failed, lost, changed. Like ants they flowed into the valley, trying to reach something in the center, a structure hidden by a trick of the light, unless—as she did, frightened—you spun around twice, flinching and leaping between each spin to evade those who trudged past.
And after the second rotation—she saw.
Like a huge house or castle, it rose from a shallow crater in the center of the valley—could it actually be that many miles wide, that many miles high?—shining and cold, like hoar-frosted green glass. Every bend of her head or twist of her gaze made it almost impossible to simply seethe structure again. Still, with effort and focus, its detail grew—and its true immensity became more apparent. It had to be a city.
The line of failed marchers were indeed like ants, flowing toward the bowl and the city at the center—where they would slide in and be pinched up by a predator, like an ant lion, while all around the arena the silent sculptures formed a nightmare audience, caught in mid-hope, mid-stride, frozen into something like stone.
A history lesson, she thought.
She moved along with the marchers. It was time.
Time to go down there.
Into the False City.
CHAPTER 86
The Kalpa
Ghentun’s relief at leaving the Broken Tower was clear even to his young companion. They said very little on their descent to the upper urbs, and Ghentun made no attempt to hide the city’s dismal realities—such as they were—from Jebrassy’s bright, curious eyes. If the Librarian could educate them in his selective way, then the Keeper could supplement that education from a more grounded perspective—by taking the long way down, and showing how dire the city’s situation had become. Jebrassy said little as they moved through the highest urbs and levels of the first bion, carried along and between and around the sinuous tracks and channels that formed a silvery three-dimensional web. The web was cut through with complicated surfaces studded with spheres and extrusions that moved slowly like great boats on a fluid sea, though many stuck out sideways or hung upside down from the curves. He cringed at what must have once seemed supernatural power and arrogance—now fallen victim to extraordinary failure and disaster.