Unalaq and I step aside. D’Arnoq stands before his ex-master, or his current master, I do not know, and holds out his hands at his sides, palms up. To his left and his right, Arkady and Фshima press their palm-chakras against D’Arnoq’s. “Don’t even thinkabout getting off on this,” mumbles Фshima.
Pallid and sweaty, D’Arnoq shuts his eyes, opens his chakra-eye, and channels the ember-red light of the Shaded Way at the throat of the Holy of Holies.
The Blind Cathar is no longer dreaming. He knows he’s being attacked. Like a drugged giant, like my house in Kleinburg in the grip of an Arctic gale, the Chapel strains and struggles. I stagger, I think I blink, and the Blind Cathar’s mouth is twisted into aggression. His chakra begins to dilate, a black spot appearing on his forehead, growing like an ink stain. If it opens fully, we’re in severe trouble. An earthquake is trapped in the Chapel walls, and Elijah D’Arnoq is making a high, inhuman sound. Channeling so much psychovoltage is killing him. His defection must be genuine; this will kill him. I think I blink again and the icon is firelit and smoking and the depicted monk is roaring with agony, as two-dimensional flames burn him alive, his chakra-eye flickering here and not-here, here and not-here, here and …
GONE. SILENCE. THE Blind Cathar’s icon is a charcoal square and Elijah D’Arnoq is heaving, bent over double. “We’ve done it,” he gasps. “We’ve bloody well done it.”
Wordlessly, we Horologists consult with one another …
… and Unalaq confirms it. “He’s still there.” Her words are our death sentence. The Blind Cathar has merely left the icon and fled to the floors, walls, and ceiling. We have been participants in a charade to allow the Anchorites time to stream up the Way of Stones. Their arrival is imminent. D’Arnoq’s defection was indeed a trap, and the Second Mission has become a kamikaze attack. I’d subsend an apology to Inez and Aoife if I could, but their world is out of range. “Holly? Stand behind us, please.”
“Did it work? Is—is—is Jacko going to … appear?”
I’d like to hiatus her now so she won’t die hating me. The Script has failed us. At Blithewood Cemetery I should have turned around, called Wendy Hanger, explained there’d been a mix-up, and gone back to Poughkeepsie station. “I don’t know,” I tell Holly the mother, sister, daughter, widow, writer, friend. “But stand behind us.”
Message from Esther, subreports Фshima. She’s started the Last Act. She’ll need up to a quarter hour.
“We had to try,” Unalaq says. “While there was hope.”
Elijah D’Arnoq is still pretending: “What are you talking about?” He even smiles. “We’ve won! The Blind Cathar’s dead. Without him to maintain the Chapel fabric, where we’re standing will all be Dunes and Dusk within six hours.”
I look at what, in spy-novel terms, is an old-fashioned double agent. I don’t even need scansion to be sure. Elijah D’Arnoq isn’t as skillful a liar as he believes. For part one of the deception, at my house outside Toronto, he had indeed been “turned” into a genuine penitento, but at some point in the last few days, Pfenninger or Constantin turned him back to the Shaded Way.
“May I, Marinus?” asks Фshima. “Please?”
“As if mypermission ever mattered to you. But yes. Hard.”
Фshima fakes a sneeze and suckerkinetics D’Arnoq along the table, clean off the end. He comes to a halt only at the Umber Arch.
Xi Lo did the same to Constantin, I subremark, though he only managed to bowl her about halfway down the table.
“D’Arnoq’s more of a lightweight,” says Фshima. “It’s an obvious play: long, smooth, table; annoying person. Who could resist?”
“I … guess this means he’s not one of us,” says Holly.
“You,” Elijah D’Arnoq picks himself up and is shouting from the far end of the Chapel, “you,” he points, “will smoulderand shrivelin the heat!” Nine men and a woman melt from the air around him.
“GUESTS, GUESTS, GUESTS!” Baptiste Pfenninger claps his hands and smiles. The First Anchorite is a tall man, utterly at ease in his well-toned, well-dressed body. He sports a fastidiously trimmed, silver-tinged beard. “How the old place loves guests, and so many!” I’d forgotten his bass, actorly voice. “One per quarter is the usual quota, so today’s a very special occasion. Our second very special occasion.” All the men are wearing dinner jackets of various cuts and fashions. Pfenninger’s looks Edwardian. “Marinus, Marinus, welcome. Our only repeat visitor in the Chapel of the Dusk’s history, though, of course, last time you’d left your body back on earth. Фshima, you’re looking old, burned, tired, and in need of a resurrection. It won’t occur. Thank you for killing Brzycki, by the by; he was showing signs of vegetarianism. Who else? ‘Unalaq’—do I pronounce it correctly? It sounds awfully like a brand of superglue, however one says it. Arkady, Arkady, you’ve got taller since I last sawed your feet off. Remember the rats? Dictators really were dictators in the days of Salazar’s Lisbon. Seventy-two hours you took to die. I’ll see if I can’t beat it with Inez, eh?” Pfenninger clicks his tongue. “A pity L’Ohkna and Roho can’t be here, but Mr. D’Arnoq,” the First Anchorite turns to his double agent, “netted the fattest fish. Good boy. Oh! Last and least, Holly Sykes, mystic lady author turned Irish egg farmer. We’ve never met. I’m Baptiste Pfenninger, interlocutor of this miraculous”—he gestures at the walls and dome—“engine, and, oh, titles, titles, they drag behind one like Marley’s chains, Jacob’s not Bob’s. Two of our number are even more thrilled than I to see you here at last, Holly …”
Dressed in a black velvet gown and gratuitous webs of diamonds, Immaculйe Constantin steps forwards. “My singular young lady is all grown-up … menopausal, cancerous, and fallen in with quite the wrong sort. So. Do I match my voice?”
Holly looks at this faceless girlhood figure, speechless.
Constantin’s smile fades, though it was never sincere. “Jacko could carry a dialogue. Only he wasn’t really Jacko by then, was he? Tell me, Holly, did you believe Marinus when she claimed your brother just happened to die of natural causes while Xi Lo was hovering nearby, mmm?”
Seconds pass. Holly’s voice is dry. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, my.” Constantin’s smile fades into pity. “You didbelieve them? Forget everything I said, I beg you. Gossip is the devil’s radio, and I shan’t be a broadcaster, but … try to put two and two together before you die. I’ll take care of Aoife, too. Just so, you know, she won’t miss you. In fact, why not go the whole hog and kill Sharon and Brendan and collect the full Sykes family set? As it were.”
Esther’s had about three minutes. The Sadaqat denouement should take five, if Pfenninger’s feeling voluble. I calculate our chances for when the psychoduel begins. The newest three Anchorites shouldn’t cause us too much trouble, but the Chapel is devoid of projectiles to kinetic and eleven against four is still eleven against four. We’ll need to buy Esther about seven minutes. Can we hold them off that long?
“You willregret threatening my family,” Holly’s saying. “I swear. I swear to God.”
“Oh, you swear, do you? To God, no less?” Immaculйe Constantin looks concerned. “But God’s dead. Why don’t we check if I’ll regret my promises with our friends the Radio People, shall we?” She cups her diamonded ear and pretends to listen. “No, Holly, no. You’re misinformed. I’ll regret nothing; you, however, are going to writhewith remorse that you deserted your secret friend Miss Constantin when you were sweet, seven, and psychic. Think about it. Only one Sykes would have died, instead of five Sykeses plus a Brubeck. You’ll positively screamwith regret! Well, Mr. Anyder? Was this brittle-boned widow a screamer in her pliable, pheromonal days?”
Hugo Lamb steps into view. Cleft-chinned, his body preserved at twenty-five years of age, and scornful-eyed. “She was the silent type. Hello, Holly. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”
Holly steps back. Being warned about a ghost and seeing him are not the same. “What did they doto you?”