“The City Princes,” the Keeper said, making it a kind of curse.
“They agreed to send Ishanaxade on a secret journey, without your knowing,” Jebrassy said. “But why?”
Ghentun placed his hands together as if in prayer. “Ishanaxade offered herself up to save the Librarian. She carried away the key to the most complete Babel the Librarian had created in the Broken Tower.”
“That much seems true,” Polybiblios said. “Whatever our disagreements, the Astyanax and all the other City Princes knew—”
“That a complete Babel, with all its parts brought together, would dissolve what remained of the old cosmos,” Ghentun said—and then saw that this knowledge did not come from Polybiblios. This was part of the image the Astyanax had placed inside his mind. “The muses, what little was left of them, would revive to examine the greatest wealth of stories—all possible stories, and all possible nonsense.”
“Both nonsense and story necessary for any creation, though, as always, there is a vastly greater proportion of nonsense,” the epitome said, and got to his feet. “My daughter sacrificed herself, when others wished only to see my project come to an end, incomplete.”
Ghentun said, “The Great Eidolons wanted to live whatever sort of life was left to them, trapped in the Kalpa, repeating their amusements, lost in decadent boredom but also extraordinary comfort—they wanted this to go on forever.” He stood, fists in the air. “ Youwanted to jumpstart creation. That would have been the end of us all.”
Polybiblios looked between them, guileless as a child—an exceedingly old child. “That was my expectation.”
“The Eidolons allowed Ishanaxade to cross the Chaos,” Jebrassy murmured. “But they knew Nataraja was already dead.”
“The City Princes made a deal with the Typhon,” Polybiblios concluded. “We were all betrayed. But that does not mean we failed. Far from it.”
The air in this part of the Chaos was growing stuffy and unpleasant. Together, as if in silent agreement that there must be a pause in this conversation, they sealed up their helmets and prepared to move on. Jebrassy asked after they had resumed walking, “What is the Typhon, that it can make bargains?”
“Not to be known, young breed,” Polybiblios said. “But the Kalpa should have fallen long ago. It has not.”
“You knew this—yet you allowed me to send out marchers…” Ghentun was greenish-black with anger. He could no longer express himself in words.
Polybiblios looked around the changing landscape. “My daughter carried crucial parts of my creations, took them to Nataraja…Away from the reality generators. There was never any choice. But before she left, she asked both of us—Astyanax and Librarian—to join together and remake the oldest form of human being we could conceive of, in primordial matter. She asked that we assign their upkeep and education to the Menders. Of me alone, she asked that sum-runners be made and entrained—the most sublime of Shen technologies, more subtle even than the reality generators or this armor. And of me alone she asked that I place my fragmented Babels within the sum-runners, as a contingent plan—sending them back to course forward from the beginning of time, whispering to each other, and connecting all who touched them. Ishanaxade was mother to the ancient breeds. And she is mother to all who dream.”
“It isthe greatest story of all,” Ghentun admitted. “She left her city, she left Sangmer—everything and everyone she loved. And she thought she served even as she betrayed.”
“What about Sangmer?” Jebrassy asked. “How could he possibly understand? Did he ever find her?
What happened to him?”
“We live that story, young breed. We echo its flesh and bones, that we may tempt it out of hiding. And then, when it is finished, we move on—or come to our own abrupt conclusion.”
CHAPTER 97
Ginny felt something go out of her as she passed under the frozen gaze of the inner ring of giants. Her bubble of protection seemed to thin and breathing became difficult. The stone no longer tugged in a specific direction, but instead pulled her one way, then back, then another, its insistence growing weaker, until finally she stood as still as one of the statues, within sight of the defile where she had entered the valley.
There was only one conclusion she could draw from the stone’s reluctance to offer guidance. Either she had moved too far or traveled too fast…entering a place where one stone by itself could not protect her. Why lead her on at all, then?
She wiped her eyes and noticed particles of soot floating above and around her, made more obvious by contrast against a rapidly coalescing mountain of ice that hung upside down over the valley. Needles and flows of sapphire blue grew from the floor in complete silence while she watched, her head cocked and neck growing stiff. They formed a ring of columns around the valley’s perimeter, as if to cage the False City, the central jade structure. Mist draped the mountain rims, thickening into clouds like clouds back home—if home was anywhere now. If she had ever grown up, ever lived, if any of her memories could be said to have been real…
Out here, the ice pinnacle and pillars possessed an eerie beauty more terrestrial than Chaotic, like the bottom of an iceberg, maybe, or the Alps inverted. Strange that something impossible would look more convincing, surrounded by things only very unlikely.
Her exhaustion became dark and profound, and she lay down on the uneven softness of the bubble, but her eyes would not close. She could not sleep—had not slept since leaving Bidewell’s warehouse. But if she could sleep—and if she could dream—then she knew that her visitor, her other, was already inside the ghostly green city…and that Tiadba had also come to the wrong place. Both had been misled.
Both had been betrayed.
Ginny thought of the awful, stocky old brute and his insinuations. She had not even spoken with Jack or Bidewell before leaving. Or Daniel. What would either of them have told her?
They might have told her to wait.And so, that was what she was going to do now that she had no choice. She would lie here just a bit above the valley floor, surrounded by mountains and paralyzed giants, with an upside-down mountain of ice waiting to fall at any instant—and she would wait.She would stay here forever, if necessary, growing more and more tired, until she simply floated off like a bit of weightless ash.
The moment of rest stretched on. She tried to roll over—felt the bubble closing in until she could no longer move. She lay on her back, watching the ice mountain block out the rim of fire. The fire had turned dusky orange, the darkness within faded to grayish purple. The wrinkled sky beyond the ice mountain was slowly obscured by blue mists, clouds edged with glorious gold. The sky itself was shrinking. It was frightening and beautiful.
All she had seen so far was frightening and ugly.
“Something newis coming,” she murmured with numbed lips.
By which she meant something old.
CHAPTER 98
The three—Jebrassy, Ghentun, and the epitome of the Librarian—saw the paleness over the center of the vale.
They had walked many miles, approaching at times the innermost of the so-called Dead Gods that watched each other across the uneven plain. Their faces—if they could be called faces—seemed locked in a quiet, reflective arrogance, shaped by trillions of years of self-determined change, intelligence in control of all evolution; a variety of visages and shapes both handsome and incomprehensible, monstrous and beautiful at once, like so many sea creatures spread out on an immense, eternal reef.
“Will they ever live again?” Ghentun asked. Polybiblios seemed about to answer.
“No more time for lessons and leakings,” Jebrassy said. “Move on.”
The epitome listened with patient humor. “Time is indeed shorter. But time for others will not flow over this vale with the same speed, nor cover the same instants. This is a Turvy. Every pass, every gate, sends its entrants onto a different track to the center.”