“We’re in Malregard, aren’t we?” he asked Ghentun.
“Some once called it that,” Ghentun said. “We’re both of us far above our neighborhoods and rank, young breed. In the region of the Great Eidolons. They neither think nor act as we do.”
“But we’re allhumans,” Jebrassy said.
The Keeper touched his nose with amusement—a breed gesture.
“Watch your step,” the angelin warned. “You should close your eyes. We’re vectoring to the top of the tower—what’s left of it, of course.”
“What broke the tower?” Jebrassy asked.
Ghentun made a small, ambiguous sound. “You needn’t concern yourself with the past. There’s far too much of it. You should only look ahead. For once, the future is scaled to fit you.”
Jebrassy did not know whether to be insulted.
Silvery curves danced around them, as if they were moving, yet he saw no change. And then—they stood beneath a terrible sky, filled with hoops of flame and spinning worlds. Something looked down upon them, impossible to actually see or measure—and Jebrassy thrust his clenched fists to his eyes. He thought he was falling—that he was back with Tiadba flying over the Tiers, and the warden had let him go—
Voices sounded all around, saying nothing he could understand, and a deep booming buffeted his body. Jebrassy could not stand the thought of falling without seeing where he was going to hit. He had to know. He lowered his arms, but for a moment his eyes refused to open. He had seen too much already—something bright and multicolored, and from it great sweeps of silver rising high into an arched grayness, grasping and moving brilliant red shapes, like farmers using tongs to swing bales of chafe…
Above—below—he couldn’t tell which—thousands of white figures were arrayed in positions of restful waiting, hands clasped behind their backs. Each had two arms, two legs, and a round white head. They had no faces, no features, nothing but smooth whiteness.
He wasn’t falling. He was floating—upside down, it seemed—over an immense tangle of causeways, along which the many white figures stood in rows or moved about in astonishingly different ways. Some of the figures walked, many drifted close to the roads, a few zipped up and over the whole expanse with dizzying speed, swooping soundlessly and shedding more of those beautiful silvery curves. Still others simply vanished, and the rest, tens of thousands—in long rows that stretched off into obscurity—awaited instructions, like an enormous army of blanks.
The angelin came into view and gave Jebrassy a nudge. Even through the shimmer its touch nearly iced his toes, but he came right again with a slow rotation to face the rainbow brilliance and the tongs that reached up and out, grasping flame-colored luminosities and pulling them down.
“The Keeper has delivered a breed,” the angelin announced, its voice so sweet it made Jebrassy’s ears hurt. And then, another message—not from the Tall One nor from the blue form, and not so much a voice as a beam of words half seen in the shimmer that protected him. Let the primordial find a place where he can heal. We will meet when he is whole again and calmer. I would not wish to dismay him. He is, after all, the most important citizen in the Kalpa.Jebrassy looked up at the Tall One who stood by his side.
“So be it,” Ghentun said. “After five hundred thousand years, I have fulfilled my duty to the Eidolons.”
CHAPTER 57
Tiadba stood on the outskirts of the training camp, along the broad, flat outer reach of the channel, lost in melancholy. She could barely make out the distant shapes of the three tablelike isles where she had spent her entire life. Blocs were stacked high on each table like jumbled cards, softened and shaded by the mist that puffed from the channel floor.
As the light over the blocs dimmed, drawing those far Tiers into sleep, she turned toward the overarched blackness beyond which lay—so they had been told—the outer works of the Kalpa and the reality generators that protected them from the Chaos. Her body felt like a coiled whip about to be snapped. She was ready. Time was flowing too quickly—not quickly enough.
They were being trained. The march was on…
Just when she thought she might be able to go on without Jebrassy, might be able to stop obsessing over the paths they would never follow together…she remembered the last sight of her young breed male, dangling from the grip of the brown warden, and grief flooded back. There had been an awful noise, breath-snatching flight, painted swirls of darkness—a terrifying, inchoate presence. Tiadba had withstood all of that. The wardens had dropped nine breeds in the flood channel—so she assumed. She remembered nothing of those early moments. She did remember that they had crossed a wide plain under a darker portion of the ceil, featureless but for drifts of rock-dust. The short channel trees that clumped in the old mud had soon given way to an immense flatness, vanishing into shadow on each side. They were all close to panic, terror replacing bravado even as they neared the end of this first stage of their journey and saw the huge arches that marked the outer channel bounds.
Perhaps Jebrassy had been protected and survived as well; perhaps he was lost somewhere nearby and would wander into the camp at any moment. But she wondered how she could still believe. She doubted he was still in the Tiers. Either way, he was not with her and she longed for him. The breeds rescued from the intrusion were not entirely the mix Grayne had been planning. Denbord, Macht, Perf, and Tiadba were the only members of Grayne’s group that had made it to the channel. Nico, Shewel, and Khren had helped Tiadba and Jebrassy search for loose books in the upper Tiers—though they had found none of their own. Mash—the fourth searcher in the upper Tiers—was sucked up in the intrusion, so Pahtun said. Tiadba had liked Mash. Others in Grayne’s group also vanished, and so the substitutes had become necessary—willing or no. The two other females—Herza and Frinna—were unknown to her, kept to themselves, and said little to anyone.
Khren, the strongest, had known Jebrassy most of his life. He had trained to be a pede-runner and repairer of meadow carts—when not fighting alongside Jebrassy in the little wars.
“I’d have never joined a march, and they’d have never picked me—so it’s even,” Khren said in camp.
“Going out there might be better than kicking pedes and mounting wheels—or it might not. They just better not get too swift with me, that’s all I’m saying.”
“They” were the five Tall Ones who had guided them along the channel to this camp, and in particular the trainer, an experienced-looking Mender named Pahtun. They were all learning more about Tall Ones than they had ever imagined possible. Tall Ones were divided into two types, it seemed: Shapers and Menders. Shapers were rare and never seen. All the escorts were Menders. Esolonico—Nico for short—and Shewel were shop-breeds, loaders and stackers learning to run market stalls; common types, though Nico fancied himself an expert on hidden wisdom. Tiadba doubted Grayne would have agreed.
Denbord had been senior to her in Grayne’s group, but seemed unsure about that now, since she carried the book bag, and Grayne had not sent him on his own search. He was a slender, thoughtful type, just the opposite of Jebrassy.
Their small camp had rudimentary facilities—six tents of translucent fabric open at both ends, and inside, flat sleeping pads. One remained empty—two males each filled three tents, and Tiadba had a tent to herself.
Frinna and Herza were pale, quiet types from the lower Tiers on the second isle—what Tiadba’s mer and per would have called cart-glows, or worse, dims. Tiadba herself felt no discomfort at their stolid quiet, yet she was certain—again—that Grayne would never have picked them. None of them had dreams or visitors.