“It’s not real!” Solon breathed.
“What?”
“Don’t you see,” the Archkeeper said in excitement. “The moon is not a natural thing! The Makers created it from their material; it is artificial, Raffi!”
Amazed, they stared at it. Then Galen nodded. “The Sekoi have tales that say there were no moons before the Makers came. I’ve always scorned them, but maybe they were right. Maybe the Makers formed all the moons and put them in the sky for a reason.”
The thought of such power chilled Raffi to the core. When Solon spoke again his voice too seemed smaller. “Incredible.”
“To us. Not to Flain.”
Solon came forward. He stood beside Galen and gazed up, the ghostly light silvering his hair and coat. “I feel strange things,” he said quietly. “As if there was a great field of power all around the world, finely adjusted, delicate as hoar-frost.”
“The weather-net.” Galen’s hooked profile was dark against the moon. “And the movement of Agramon has disrupted it.”
“Or the other way around.”
“Look.” Raffi pointed between them.
On the moon’s surface broken domes were coming into view, made of the same pale stuff as the land, bubbling out of it like boils. Beside one a vast antenna stood.
The moon’s drift slowed. Galen held the image, and closed in.
“The Coronet,” he hissed.
“My son?” Solon glanced at him.
“There! Look at that!”
It was a pattern, marked out in great globes on the surface, some strange enormous sculpture. Seven globes, some small, some larger. Red and gold and pearl. Familiar.
“Where have I seen that before?” Solon murmured.
“It’s the Ring! The circle of the moons. At least we’ve always called it that, but maybe it had another name once, an older name.” Galen’s voice was tense with joy; Raffi felt it surge in him. Instantly the screen blacked, and then as the keeper spread his hands wide over it, it crackled into bewildering life; rows of figures rippled over it, hundreds of numbers that shot upward in columns. Diagrams flickered, patterns and formulae gone in seconds, as if Galen had broken into some deep file of knowledge and was racing recklessly through it.
“What are you doing?”
“The Coronet!” Galen’s voice was choked; he jerked his hands back, but still the screen convulsed with symbols until one appeared that stayed and they all recognized it.
The seven moons in the formation of the Ring.
Galen turned, the power of the Crow rustling in his shadow. “That’s it. Kar says it in a poem somewhere. The moons are Flain’s Coronet.”
He caught the Archkeeper’s arm. “Think of it! The moons control the weather, the tides, everything on Anara. It’s deep in them that the Makers’ power is concentrated! There may be a relic that links with them—that’s what we need to find—but the real Coronet is there in the sky. All the time, Solon, it’s been in front of our eyes!”
Raffi swallowed, his mouth dry. Something snagged behind his eye. He blinked, but Solon was reaching for the screen in fascination.
“You must be right. And think what else this machine might tell us, Galen. How far can we see with it? Out beyond the stars, maybe, even to the home of the Makers themselves!”
Galen turned, impatient. “There’s no time for that! We need to find the crown Flain wore!”
Solon stared at him. The older man’s face was lit with a strange hardness of longing; for a second he almost looked angry. Then he rubbed his scarred hands over his face. “You’re right. Forgive me. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted. I confess I . . .” He stopped. “There’s someone here.” He glanced at Raffi. “Isn’t there?”
But Galen was already through the door. They ran after him, sensing the man in the other room, the door crashing open. Racing in, Raffi glimpsed Marco’s swift turn, his yell of fear as the keeper grabbed him, broken pieces of Maker-work falling from his hands.
“Galen!”
The keeper slammed him against the wall, eyes black with rage. “I should kill you now,” he snarled.
Marco slew his head sideways. “But you won’t,” he gasped, trying to grin.
“Since the beginning you’ve been an evil weight on us!”
“Don’t blame me that you had to leave those people,” Marco spat. “Blame the Watch. Or shouldn’t the Crow be able to make it all better with one magic word?”
Galen hissed. He hauled the man up and struck him hard in the face.
Marco staggered, pulled back and whipped a long knife from his belt.
“No!” Solon cried. “Stop this!”
“Stay out of it, Holiness. It’s been coming a long time.”
“Galen! I insist!”
The keeper was silent, breathing hard. There was a terrible wrath in him; it churned like a black pain. Even though he knew Galen’s temper, Raffi was appalled at the depths of this; it was an abyss, like the dark between stars, like the pits of Maar.
Marco crouched, his hand waving the knife. “You may have your own weapons, keeper, but that’s never stopped me. I’m waiting.”
In the charged room no one moved.
Then a cool voice spoke from the doorway. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. Galen, it’s not him you have to worry about.”
Raffi whirled around.
The Sekoi stood there, looking travel-worn.
Galen didn’t move. “Isn’t it?” he said, his voice hard.
“No, it isn’t. And we don’t have time to waste.” It walked right up to them, took the knife swiftly from Marco’s hand, and tossed it down.
Confused, Raffi looked at the door. “Where’s Carys?”
“Not here, small keeper. I’ve got things to tell you that you won’t like, Galen, but first we have to leave this place. At once. The Watch know we’re here.”
Galen turned and looked at it. He seemed barely to understand, his eyes still black with anger. “How?” he asked.
“Later. We need to go. I’ve sent messages on—they’ll be waiting for us.”
“Who will?” Solon asked.
The Sekoi scratched its fur, yellow eyes sly.
“My people. At the Circling.”
CARYS MOVED QUICKLY. A few miles inland she found a village and stole a horse, riding it relentlessly north all night. In the rain it was hard to tell direction; she used her old Watch lodestone and grinned as she thought of Jeltok’s boring lessons.
For hours she pushed on, through mud and rutted tracks, climbing into the hills. The horse was a poor beast; by early the next morning it was too winded to do more than stagger, so she sold it heartlessly at a roadside farm for food and directions, then set off on foot, half running, in the Watch pursuit pace.
The Sekoi had a day’s start, but it must have gone on foot. She had to catch up with it. Fury drove her, fury at herself and it. Of course the creature didn’t trust her. Why should it? Why should any of them, after all the tricks she’d pulled? And who had told the Watch about Sarres? Because the Sekoi was right. That could finish them.
Scrambling wearily through wind-blasted woods and flooded fields she brooded on that, their one safe place lost. It drove her on through exhaustion and mud and swarms of bloodflies and the aching stitch in her side. She had to find Raffi. She had to tell him it wasn’t her.
At midday she limped past a cave, low on Mount Burna. A man came out of it and stared at her. She gripped the crossbow tight.
He looked like a hermit, gray and starved, his hair clotted and uncut. A wildness about his eyes warned her. A string of small bones rattled around his neck.
“Has a Sekoi passed this way?” she gasped. “Gray, striped?”
The man clutched his ragged sleeves. He seemed witless, so she strode on toward the trees, but after a second his voice drifted after her, hoarse and strained.