Krothen groaned.
Jame circled him. The princess was trying to shake the much heavier prince, only succeeding in shaking herself, but Jame ignored them both. Krothen exhaled with a rattle, and his eyes rolled up in their sockets. Then he was still.
The crone closed her box and faded away.
From outside at a distance came the crash of falling towers. Jame wondered if the treasuries had been taken, but the sound came from the wrong direction.
“That’s your temple,” said Mother Vedia. “It’s coming to life again, knocking over its neighbors. Where did you place it, anyway?”
Jame thought that she could feel the return of power, when she extended her sixth sense. She certainly felt the high priest’s rage; somehow, he had learned of his grandson’s fate, if not necessarily of its circumstances.
“Quick now!” hissed Mother Vedia. “Help him!”
“Who?” Jame stared, helpless, at the edifice of inert flesh before her. “How?”
Krothen sat there with mouth agape and blank eyes. His exposed flesh had taken on the waxy translucence of marble. When she touched the folds of his robe, they were hard, and cold, and she could see the shadow of her fingers through them.
The chamber’s doors burst open. Amberley skidded into the room, propelled backward by Brier’s attack. Ton and Amantine scuttled out of the way, clinging to each other. Brier followed her lover’s retreat.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said.
Amberley laughed breathlessly and drew a hand across her mouth, smearing blood from a split lip. “I always said that you were good. Would I have settled for anything less?”
Gaudaric and Ruso appeared in the doorway. The latter’s red hair and beard, which had hung limp during the Change, now bristled with energy and sparked at the tips. “I can’t believe it,” he was saying, excitedly waving his once-too-heavy axe as if it were made of balsa, making Gaudaric duck. “I’m Lord Artifice again!”
Amberley backed toward the gap in the stone petals, into the slanting stream of morning light. Her hair glowed like a golden crown. Bloody face notwithstanding, she looked magnificent.
“You have the advantage here,” she said. “I see that. Another time, then.”
“Amb—”
“No.” She stepped over the broken marble stub onto the outer walk. “Where I am going, death cannot follow, nor can you. Good-bye, sweet Brier Rose.”
With that, she took another step out into space and was gone.
Brier had taken a hasty stride after her but now halted, staring at the vacant slice of sky beyond the dome. Then she turned to Jame with a blank face and stricken eyes.
“What did she mean?”
“About death? The Karnids claim to have conquered it. From what I’ve seen, though, I doubt it.”
She also wondered if Amberley had counted on landing some twenty feet below on the spiral stair, not realizing that on the north side of the Rose Tower, due to the twist in its construction, the drop was sheer.
“Brier.” She tugged on the Kendar’s sleeve, trying to reclaim her dazed attention. “I need your help. Gaudaric, M’lord Artifice, yours as well.”
The latter two approached Krothen’s motionless hulk.
“Is he dead?” asked Ruso, staring.
Gaudaric touched the marmoreal vestments and jerked his hand back, as if cold could burn.
A faint sound escaped from between those parted, rosebud lips:
“. . . help . . .”
“Kroaky!” said Jame. “He’s still inside! Mother Vedia, how do we save him?”
Gaudaric started, having apparently just seen the Old Pantheon goddess standing in Krothen’s shadow. So his god-given status as guild master had also returned.
“I don’t know!” wailed Vedia, wringing her hands in agitation while her snakes tried to wring each other’s necks. “Just get him out!”
“This looks like a job for a mason,” said Gaudaric. “What we need is a chisel and a mallet.”
“No time for that.” Jame looked around frantically for something to use. How much air did Kroaky have? “We’ve got to smash our way in.”
Princess Amantine pushed past her to stand in the way. “Sacrilege!” she boomed. “This is my nephew’s sepulcher. I forbid you to desecrate it!”
Ruso picked her up and put her, sputtering, aside. Prince Ton attacked him with a flurry of plump fists.
“How dare you lay hands on my mother!”
“Not now, sonny. King Krothen is dead, but the white hasn’t come to you, has it? So stand aside.”
He turned back to the petrified former monarch.
“A sculptor once told me that marble is softer when first quarried than later,” he said, and tapped the figure’s distended belly with his axe. The translucent marble robe covering it shattered like thin ice over a pond. Beneath was dimpled, marble skin apparently drawn over billows of former flesh.
“Go on,” said Gaudaric, leaning in to watch.
Another harder blow near the deep navel cracked the surface. It gave way. They stared at the next layer, which resembled tightly packed pebbles.
“I think this was fat,” said Jame, and poked it with a finger.
Her touch broke the surface tension. They jumped back as a landslide of stones crashed down to rattle and bounce on the floor. More and more fell, hundreds of pounds’ worth. Was the entire abdomen emptying? No. As the dust cleared, inside they could see the petrified organs: loops of frozen intestines, an enlarged liver, but most of all the stomach, which filled most of the enormous cavity. From within this last came a faint scratching.
Ruso scrambled back through the sliding, shifting pile of pebbles. He took careful aim, but as he swung his axe, stones rolled under his feet and he nearly fell.
“Again, again!” said Mother Vedia, clasping her hands in an ecstasy of agitation.
Ruso grunted and regained his stance. This time he used the butt end of his weapon to rap on the distended organ, lightly at first, then harder and harder. Cracks laced its surface. Then it disintegrated and a body spilled out.
“Kroaky!” said Jame, and rushed to help.
Krothen’s younger, thinner self sprawled on the pile of rocks, gasping for breath. He was coated with dust but otherwise naked. Also, he appeared to be choking.
Mother Vedia waded to his side and gave him a firm slap on the back. He exhaled a cloud of dust, then began to breathe more naturally. His eyes opened.
“Well,” he said, gasping, “here I am . . . again.”
Gaudaric regarded him dubiously. “So we see. And yes, I remember you from some fifteen years back. Where have you been?”
Kroaky laughed and drew a shaky hand across his face. Dirt and dust smeared. “Most recently, being introspective. Before that, having fun.”
He looked back at the former shell of himself and sighed. “I suppose those days are over now. No more frolicking anonymously in the Undercliff. Well, I’ve had a good run.”
Amantine and Ton had been edging closer, eyes round.
“I don’t believe it,” said the princess. “You can’t be he. This is a trick to deprive my son of his rights.”
“On the contrary,” said Kroaky, not unkindly, “I hereby name him my heir apparent, unless I should have children of my own. What do you think?” he appealed to Jame. “Will Fang marry me?”
“Queen Fang.” Jame tasted the words. “I like it.”
“Well, I don’t.” Princess Amantine drew herself up, ruffled as a disturbed partridge. “I will fight this. No one will believe it anyway. Ton, come!”
She trotted to the door in her high heels, only noticing when she reached it that her son had not followed.
The prince looked at Kroaky askance, sheepishly. “Er . . . peace?”
“Ton-ton!” bellowed his mother.
“Mother, I’m sorry, but this has gone much too far already. Besides, I’m tired of fighting.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. Her eyes were bulging. “You . . . you little ingrate!”