Joe didn't try to get his head around that notion. He simply threw up his hands and said, "Let's just get the hell on with this," and turning his back on Noah he pressed against the door. It didn't swing open, but nor did he remain on the outside of it. Instead he felt a sudden ache through his body, almost like an electric shock, and the next moment he was standing in a buzzing darkness on the inside of the temple. He waited for the ache to subside, and then looked round for Noah. There was a motion in the murk behind him, but he was by no means sure it was his fellow trespasser, and before he could look again he heard somebody call his name.
He looked ahead of him, and saw that the dark ground at the center of the chamber was glittering, the light coming down upon it from a round hole in the roof. Joe crossed the floor to study the phenomenon better, and as he did so realized that he was looking at a pool, perhaps twelve feet across.
It was filled with Quiddity's waters, he had no doubt of that. He could smell the piquancy of the dream-sea, and his skin tingled with the subtle energies it gave off. But as he came to the edge of the pool he had further proof that this was indeed an annex of Quiddity. There, a little way beneath the surface, lurked a 'shu so large it could barely be containe in the pool, but was wrapped around itse in a tangle of encrusted tentacles, from the nest of which one of its eyes-which was from rim to rim a yard across, or morestared up and out, gleaming gold. Its gaze was not upon Joe, at least not directly. The creature was looking up through the roof of the temple, into the roiling wall of the invader.
"It's holding the lad Joe breathed. "My God. My God. It's holding the lad." He had no sooner spoken than he heard Noah from somewhere in the dark. "Do you feel it?" he said. "Do you feel the power in this place?"
"Oh yeah," Joe said softly. It was so palpable it almost felt like an act of aggression. His flesh ran with sweat, and every bruise and wound his body had sustained-back to the beating he'd taken from Morton Cobb-ached with fresh vigor, as though it had just been sustained. But still he wanted to get closer to the pool; to see what the lad was seeing, when it gazed into the 'shu's majestic eye. He took another step towards the water, his body wracked with shudders.
"Speak to it," Noah said. "Tell it what you want."
"It doesn't matter what we want," Joe said. "We're nothing here. Do you understand? We're nothing at all."
"Damn you, Afrique," Noah said, his voice closer to Joe now. "I've done all the suffering I intend to do. I want to live in glory when the lad's passed by." He drew closer still. "Now put your hand in the ivater-"
"What happened to all that talk about being buried in your own country?"
"I'd forgotten how fine it was to be alive. Especially here. There is no finer place in your world or mine than this city. And I want to be the one who heals it, after the cataclysm. I want to be its protector."
"You want to own it," Joe said.
"Nobody could ever own b'Kether Sabbat." "I think you're ready to try," Joe said.
"Well that's between me and the city, isn't it?" Noah said, moving to press the blade against Joe's back. "Go on now," he said. "Touch the waters for me."
"And if I don't?"
"Your body will touch the waters, whether there's life in it or not."
,it's holding the lad-"
"Very possibly." "If we disturb it@,
"The lad finishes its business here and moves on. It's going to happen sooner or later. If you make it sooner then you've changed the course of history, and maybe got yourself power at the same time. That doesn't sound so terrible, does it?" He pushed the blade a little harder. "It's what you came here for, remember?"
Joe remembered. The pain in his balls was a perfect reminder of why he'd made this journey: to never be powerless again. But in the Process of coming here@f seeing all that he'd seen, and learning all that he'd learned-the pursuit of power had come to seem like a very petty thing. He'd had love, which was more than most people got in their lives. He'd had physical pleasures. He'd known a woman whose smile made him smile, and whose sighs made him sigh, and whose arms had been an utter comfort to him.
they would not come again, those smiles, those sighs, and it was a worse ache than the sum of his wounds to think of that, but life hadn't cheated him, had it? He could die, now, and not feel his time had been wasted.
"I don't... want power," he said to Noah.
11 Liar," said the face in the darkness.
"You can say what you want," Joe replied. "I know what's true and that's all that matters."
The words seemed to dismay Noah. He made a little moan, and without another word of warning drove his blade into Joe's gut. Oh God, but it hurt! Joe let out a sob of pain, which only inspired Noah to press the blade home. Then he twisted it, and pulled it out. Joe entertained no hope of doing his killer damage in return. He'd invited this, after his fashion. He put his hands to the wound, hot blood running through his fingers and slapping on the ground between his legs, then he started to turn his back on Noah. The darkness was becoming piebald; gray blotches appearing at the corners of his sight. But he wanted to look at the Ishu one last time before death took him. Just to meet its golden gaze...
He started to turn, pressing both hands against the wound now, to keep his body from emptying. There was still pain, but it was becoming more remote from him with every heartbeat. He had just a little time.
"Hold on... " he murmured to himself.
He had the gaze in the corner of his eye now, and it was vast. A ring of gold and a circle of darkness. Beautiful in its perfection and in its simplicity. Round and round, gleaming gold, uninterrupted, unspoiled, glorious, glorious...
He felt something shifting in his head, as though he was slipping towards the golden circle.
Going, going...
And oh, it felt fine. He was done with his wounded flesh, done with bruises and bleeding balls; done with Joe.
He felt his body start to fall, and as it did so-as the life went out of it utterly-he fell into the circle of the 'shu's eye.
He was granted a moment of rest there: but a moment filled with such grace and such ease it wiped all the sufferings of the days that had brought him here, and of the years that had proceeded them.
There was no confusion, nor fear. He understood what had happened to him with absolute clarity. He'd died on the edge of the pool, and his spirit had fallen into the eye of the Zehrapushu. There, in that gilded round, it stayed for a blissful moment. Then it was gone, up and away along the line of shu's sight towards the cloud of the lad.
In the temple below him he heard Noah let out a cry of rage, and for an instant, though he had neither eyes nor head to put them in, his spirit saw quite plainly what was happening below. Noah had stepped over Joe's corpse and had plunged his blood-stained hands into the pool of Quiddity's waters. The 'shu had responded to the trespass instantly.
Its tentacles had started to flail wildly, and one of themwhether by intention or chance Joe would never know-had wrapped around Noah's arm. Enraged and revolted, Noah picked up the sword he'd just set aside and even as Joe watched he plunged the blade into the 'shu's unblinking eye.
A tremor passed through Joe's world. Through the gaze in which he traveled, through the temple below, and out, across the plaza of columns and through the streets of b'Kether Sabbat. He knew on the instant what had happened. The 'shu's hold on the Iad had slipped; and the great wave that had been frozen over the city began to curl.
Joe turned his spirit-sight up towards the Iad, and to his astonishment saw that he was almost upon it, flying like an arrow into its roiling substance.