Tenebros Flood Channel
Pahtun had grown accustomed to living in the perpetual tweenlight of the outer reaches of the old flood channels. He seldom went up into the Kalpa and was content performing his duties on the wide flats, away from the wakelight glow over the Tiers—he called them by their old name, the rookery. Pahtun had been training marchers for longer than there had been breeds. A lofty, slender man with an experienced brown face, he strode along the channel floor, eyes silver-gray with caution. He knew the city was dying. It had been dying by degrees since before he had been made. Now, it was likely to finish its dying quickly.
Wakelight grew fitfully over the distant ceil. Red rings pulsed and flickered around the cracked and battered patches left by the intrusion that had blown through the lower levels of the first bion, directly over his head, and nearly claimed them all.
He finished his walk of twenty miles from the camp up the Tenebros channel, to the rendezvous between the first and second isles, and waited for the brown wardens to descend with their half-conscious burdens.
This time there were only nine rather than the usual twenty. “Great destruction,” the lead warden explained. “Many lost. These may be the last.”
The young breeds crawled into the shade of the low channel trees, moaning softly. Pahtun examined them one by one as the wardens flew away. He lifted their heads, using his flower-finger to sense their vital levels, and found them fit—the wardens never delivered injured or incapable breeds. As they recovered, he helped them to their feet, soothing with low crèche songs. His three cohorts had walked across the channels to the sandy stretch by then. More obviously jaded, with much less time on the job, these younger Menders still attended to the recruits with patience and skill. They soon had them walking in a single column toward the dark outer wall and the training camp that had waited there for as long as there had been Tiers or marchers—too long to contemplate, as far as Pahtun was concerned. Six males and three females. He watched the dazed breeds and, as always, both envied and pitied them—they were few, they were small, they were confused. He wondered what they would see on their journey.
Only young breeds were ever sent on the marches—grown of primordial mass, cultured in the Tiers, and afforded the best instincts, some of which would truly awaken only in the Chaos. Personally, this version of Pahtun had never ventured beyond the middle lands. If these nine made up the last march to be delivered to his expert care, he might never learn the whole truth about the Chaos and the Typhon. He showed the breeds to their tents and made sure they were comfortable. Soon, they were sound asleep.
The cohorts made their own camp nearby, away from the breeds and away from Pahtun’s solitary tent. They held the trainer in some awe—but considered him old and peculiar. After all, what was the point of all of this?
Perhaps there was no point. None of the other Pahtuns, sent into the Chaos in violation of the rulings of the Astyanax, had ever reported their discoveries. And none of the marchers he’d trained had ever returned.
CHAPTER 56
The Broken Tower
As requested, a living breed, crèche-born of primordial matter, for whatever purpose the Librarian might devise.
Ghentun stood on one side of the high, empty chamber, a dozen yards from the nearest soaring window, surrounded by a slow, enveloping shimmer. At his waist floated the young male, curled in anesthetic oblivion, injured but already healing—treated and protected by Ghentun’s cloak. The Keeper of the Tiers could only feel numb. He could not conceive of any action that would make any difference now.
Delay, decadence, conspiracies beyond counting or comprehension—the inevitable sapping of the city’s vitality in the face of millions of years of warding off the unthinkable—had brought the end closer than even he had imagined.
Upon arrival, Ghentun had circled the chamber to look down through the high windows at the Kalpa’s three remaining bions. The intrusion had severely damaged the lowest levels of the first bion, whose foundations enveloped the Tiers and from whose rounded crown rose the Broken Tower. It also wreaked tremendous destruction on the southern and the tertian bions. Both sent up dismal, spiraling plumes of silvery smoke to the limits of the inner pressure barrier. Outside the border of the real, the monstrosities drew closer, as if warming themselves on the Kalpa’s fires of destruction. The Witness’s eternally spinning beam had accelerated, and its huge mountain of solidified flesh—once human, now ageless and beyond pity—pushed in toward the Defenders, anticipating another sacrifice.
The Tiers had always attracted the strongest, most destructive intrusions. Now Ghentun wondered if one reason for this attention was floating beside him. He comprehended that since the creation of the Tiers, the Typhon had been probing the city as if with special knowledge—if such a thing could know or make plans.
He looked to the east, away from the Witness, for the last party of marchers, hoping they might leave before the final collapse, before the Typhon’s triumph.
The Librarian had dallied for millions of years. Mind beyond measure—how could Ghentun criticize or
even understand? But there had never been a plan that he could discern—certainly not one that could be explained to a Mender or a breed. He was really no better than his charges, no better than this brash, crèche-born youngster, who had persisted despite all the deceptions and intellectual barricades set in his path.
Like Menders—like Ghentun—breeds understood shame, as if their primordial stuff preserved a heritage of that ancient emotion lost to the Great Eidolons.
An angelin approached, appearing at first as a tiny speck silvering outward from the center of the chamber, then suddenly nearby—a few feet away. As before, it was female in form, pale blue, and no taller than Ghentun’s knee—but this time it seemed to prefer the appearance of walking rather than drifting about or flying.
It might be the same angelin he had spoken with before—and it might not. Identity was of little importance to this class of servants.
Ghentun nudged the breed. Jebrassy raised his head and blinked, looked around, but remained curled, as if savoring a few last moments of warmth and sanity.
“All honor to the Librarian,” the angelin sang, its voice like trickling water. “Is the experiment concluded?”
“Yes,” Ghentun replied.
“You’ve brought the requested specimen from the Tiers?”
“I have. Does the Librarian request my presence?” Ghentun asked doubtfully.
“You will accompany the young breed.”
Jebrassy pushed out his legs and slowly dropped to the bottom of the cloak, where he stood on his own, beneath the gaze of the Tall One. He turned to stare in awe at the blue form a few feet beyond, radiating deep cold despite the cloak’s protection.
Jebrassy had moved well beyond confusion or fear. Anything could happen. He almost hoped it would—all of it, just to get it over with.
Then he thought of Tiadba. He shuddered at the realization that he had just emerged from a dark sleep. But for how long? Where was she? Had she been sucked into the intrusion? Was she even alive?
Jebrassy growled and shoved his hands against the shimmer.
A small voice spoke in his ear like the high chirrup of a letterbug. “Don’t do that. It’s cold out here, and the Librarian wishes you comfort and health. Both of you will follow this silly blue form. It is my pleasure to escort you to the most wonderful place in all the Kalpa. Possibly the most wonderful place left to humans in all the cosmos.”
Jebrassy looked up at the Tall One, then back to the small blue figure, puzzled—they thought they were allhumans, despite appearances, was that the secret? He began to move his feet in a shuffle and discovered that the shimmer followed him—and so walked at a normal pace, keeping up with the naked blue image. Ghentun stayed beside him.
Not even the sweep of a knife-edged beam of gray light across the smooth roof of the chamber—like a threat of instant blindness—slowed their progress, though it made Jebrassy cringe. When they came to the center—a walk of what seemed only minutes—he looked back and studied the far curved rank of high windows and suddenly understood where they were—remembering the stories in the books.