Martin Silenus raised his face. His eyes were red. “This thing that is going to kill us tomorrow—my muse, our maker, our unmaker—it’s traveled back through time. Well, let it. This time, let it take me and leave Billy alone. Let it take me and let the poem end there, unfinished for all time.” He raised the bottle higher, closed his eyes, and threw it against the far wall. Glass shards reflected orange light from the silent explosions.
Colonel Kassad stepped closer and laid long fingers on the poet’s shoulder.
For a few seconds the room seemed warmed by the mere fact of human contact. Father Lenar Hoyt stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning, raised his right hand with thumb and little finger touching, three fingers raised, the gesture somehow including himself as well as those before him, and said softly, “Ego te absolvo.”
Wind scraped at the outer walls and whistled around the gargoyles and balconies. Light from a battle a hundred million kilometers away painted the group in blood hues.
Colonel Kassad walked to the doorway. The group moved apart.
“Let’s try to get some sleep,” said Brawne Lamia.
Later, alone in his bedroll, listening to the wind shriek and howl, the Consul set his cheek against his pack and pulled the rough blanket higher. It had been years since he had been able to fall asleep easily.
The Consul set his curled fist against his cheek, closed his eyes, and slept.
Epilogue
The Consul awoke to the sound of a balalaika being played so softly that at first he thought it was an undercurrent of his dream.
The Consul rose, shivered in the cold air, wrapped his blanket around him, and went out onto the long balcony. It was not yet dawn. The skies still burned with the light of battle.
“I’m sorry,” said Lenar Hoyt, looking up from his instrument. The priest was huddled deep in his cape.
“It’s all right,” said the Consul. “I was ready to awaken.” It was true. He could not remember feeling more rested. “Please continue,” he said. The notes were sharp and clear but barely audible above the wind noise. It was as if Hoyt was playing a duet with the cold wind from the peaks above. The Consul found the clarity almost painful.
Brawne Lamia and Colonel Kassad came out. A minute later Sol Weintraub joined them. Rachel twisted in his arms, reaching toward the night sky as if she could grasp the bright blossoms there.
Hoyt played. The wind was rising in the hour before dawn, and the gargoyles and escarpments acted like reeds to the Keep’s cold bassoon.
Martin Silenus emerged, holding his head. “No fucking respect for a hangover,” he said. He leaned on the broad railing. “If I barf from this height, it’ll be half an hour before the vomitus lands.”
Father Hoyt did not look up. His fingers flew across the strings of the small instrument. The northwest wind grew stronger and colder and the balalaika played counterpart, its notes warm and alive. The Consul and the others huddled in blankets and capes as the breeze grew to a torrent and the unnamed music kept pace with it. It was the strangest and most beautiful symphony the Consul had ever heard.
The wind gusted, roared, peaked, and died. Hoyt ended his tune.
Brawne Lamia looked around. “It’s almost dawn.”
“We have another hour,” said Colonel Kassad.
Lamia shrugged. “Why wait?”
“Why indeed?” said Sol Weintraub. He looked to the east where the only hint of sunrise was the faintest of palings in constellations there. “It looks like a good day is coming.”
“Let’s get ready,” said Hoyt. “Do we need our luggage?”
The group looked at one another.
“No, I think not,” said the Consul. “The Colonel will bring the comlog with the fatline communicator. Bring anything necessary for your audience with the Shrike. We’ll leave the rest of the stuff here.”
“All right,” said Brawne Lamia, turning back from the dark doorway, gesturing toward the others, “let’s do it.”
There were six hundred and sixty-one steps from the northeast portal of the Keep to the moor below. There were no railings. The group descended carefully, watching their step in the insecure light.
Once onto the valley floor, they looked back at the outcrop of stone above. Chronos Keep looked like part of the mountain, its balconies and external stairways mere slashes in the rock. Occasionally a brighter explosion would illuminate a window or throw a gargoyle shadow, but except for those instances it was as if the Keep had vanished behind them.
They crossed the low hills below the Keep, staying on grass and avoiding the sharp shrubs which extended thorns like claws. In ten minutes they had crossed to sand and were descending low dunes toward the valley.
Brawne Lamia led the group. She wore her finest cape and a red silk suit with black trim. Her comlog gleamed on her wrist. Colonel Kassad came next. He was in full battle armor, camouflage polymer not yet activated so the suit looked matte black, absorbing even the light from above. Kassad carried a standard-issue FORCE assault rifle. His visor gleamed like a black mirror.
Father Hoyt wore his black cape, black suit, and clerical collar. The balalaika was cradled in his arms like a child. He continued to set his feet carefully, as if each step caused pain. The Consul followed. He was dressed in his diplomatic best, starched blouse, formal black trousers and demi-jacket, velvet cape, and the gold tricorne he had worn the first day on the treeship. He had to keep a grip on the hat against the wind that had come up again, hurling grains of sand in his face and sliding across the dune tops like a serpent. Martin Silenus followed close behind in his coat of wind-rippled fur.
Sol Weintraub brought up the rear. Rachel rode in the infant carrier, nestled under the cape and coat against her father’s chest. Weintraub was singing a low tune to her, the notes lost in the breeze.
Forty minutes out and they had come even with the dead city. Marble and granite gleamed in the violent light. The peaks glowed behind them, the Keep indistinguishable from the other mountain-sides. The group crossed a sandy vale, climbed a low dune, and suddenly the head of the valley of the Time Tombs was visible for the first time. The Consul could make out the thrust of the Sphinx’s wings and a glow of jade.
A rumble and crash from far behind them made the Consul turn, startled, his heart pounding.
“Is it beginning?” asked Lamia. “The bombardment?”
“No, look,” said Kassad. He pointed to a point above the mountain peaks where blackness obliterated the stars. Lightning exploded along that false horizon, illuminating icefields and glaciers. “Only a storm,” he said.
They resumed their trek across vermilion sands. The Consul found himself straining to make out the shape of a figure near the Tombs or at the head of the valley. He was certain beyond all certainty that something awaited them there … that it awaited.
“Look at that,” said Brawne Lamia, her whisper almost lost in the wind.
The Time Tombs were glowing. What the Consul had first taken to be light reflected from above was not. Each Tomb glowed a different hue and each was clearly visible now, the glow brightening, the Tombs receding far back into the darkness of the valley. The air smelled of ozone.
“Is that a common phenomenon?” asked Father Hoyt, his voice thin.