As she stared, black specks flew into it, like motes swimming in a huge eye, and horrified, the margravine realized that these were people, people and rickshaws and buildings, all manner of things from within the city, sucked upward by the rocketing change in air pressure. Nike clapped her hands to her ears and screamed—she could feel it now, something pounding at her skull, but without a sound because suddenly she could no longer hear. Everything around her was whirling, flying, falling. In the numbing silence walls and floor gave way, and then she too was falling only something caught her, someone—she glimpsed the Quir, white with terror but pulling at her desperately—and then there was an explosion, and she could hear again, and she was lying behind piles of broken stone and there was glass everywhere, shining, and blood, but she was safe for the moment and alive.
“What—” Nike coughed. The Quir, his indigo robes torn and bloodstained, gave her a cruel look.
“Shut up,” he said hoarsely. There were other people with them other galli she saw now, some of them badly injured but all seemingly able to walk. They were in a sort of alcove hidden behind the stairs leading down to the beach. Rain flooded the floor, driven through gaps in the wall through which Nike could glimpse the mayhem outside. Waves were lashing at the steps, driving those who had survived the collapse of the domes upward; but at the top of the steps there was nothing but wreckage now, human and stone and steel.
“We must—go somewhere—” Nike gasped. “Rooms—my rooms—”
“Don’t be a fool,” the Quir shouted. From his toneless voice she realized he too must have been partially deafened when the domes gave way. “It’s like this everywhere—”
He fumbled at his waist, withdrawing a wire reticule. He pulled out a vial of petroleum that he opened and pressed to his fingertips. Angrily he flicked petroleum in Nike’s direction.
“Your sister Âziz is an evil horrible woman,” he spat. “It was her dream of the Green Country that opened the way to this disaster.”
He pointed through a gap, to where Nike could see a swollen black hump on the horizon. As she gazed at it, the dark mass grew. It was a moment before she realized that it was not really growing larger. It was growing nearer.
“We could find the morphodite and make amends,” she gasped, brushing a droplet of petroleum from her cheek. “Some sort of inaugural ceremony, this evening perhaps—”
The Quir raised his face to hers. His bulging eyes were very bright. “Don’t be absurd. The domes have failed us. Within the hour we will all be dead.”
Nike nodded, sickened, and looked out to sea again. Behind them another explosion tore through the city.
“Some of us have readied ourselves for this day,” he said. He raised one hand, his azure sleeve flapping around his wrist, and beckoned to one of his followers. “I have not until today been among his faithful, but it’s never too late for converts. Even at the end of all things, Blessed Narouz was able to wrest a shred of meaning from disaster. It was he who said, ‘It is never too late, and there will always be enough to go around.’ ”
He paused reflectively. His voice had grown hoarse from shouting, and when he spoke again it was nearly in a whisper. “He was speaking of petroleum, of course, and of course he was wrong,” he added. “There never is enough, and this time it really is too late. Although certain of Blessed Narouz’s rites will prove useful to us now. Goodbye, Margravine.” He raised both hands and shouted something Nike couldn’t understand. As she turned to see who he called to she glimpsed five or six people in indigo and green, their robes soaked and filthy with sand and oil. Some of them were in the alcove with them; others forced their way through the gaps in the wall, yelling. Several carried torches that sputtered in the rain. There was an overpowering stink of petrol and smoke. Nike started to protest, to suggest that they retire to the Four Hundredth Room to discuss the possibility of canonizing Reive Orsina, but then the ground beneath her buckled and she fell to her knees. The Quir shouted again, louder this time, and as Nike tried to get to her feet she saw one of his followers heaving a plastic bucket at her face. She screamed as it sloshed over her, burning her cheeks and hands as she scrabbled at the steps, and screamed again as one of the brands was thrust at her and the galli fell back, chanting and shrieking. Very dimly above the thunderous roar of flame and wind she could hear the Quir’s voice, quite calm now, reciting the Ethyl Spiritus even as the waters rose about his ankles and then his thighs and finally engulfed him. By the time the rushing waves claimed her body there was really nothing that remained of her, save blackened bones and a twisted cone of metal wrapped about with greasy rags, and a charred morpha tube bobbing in the turbulent sea.
Âziz was surprised at how easy it was to reach the Gryphon. She fled as the first explosions swept the area beneath the Lahatiel Gate, just as Reive and Rudyard Planck were staggering along the beach with the Compassionate Redeemer behind them. Already she could tell that it had all gone wrong—Nike’s refusal to wear proper Æstival attire, the blatant rudeness of the Archbishop and precentor, that storm raging Outside when there should have been the more restrained horror of a still blue sea and little waves lapping at the sand. Instead, the Lahatiel Gate had opened upon Ucalegon itself, and there was no way the Orsinate could pretend to have anticipated that. Not even the thin bands of sunlight slicing through the clouds, not even the sight of the Compassionate Redeemer nosing along the beach could placate Araboth’s populace, once they had glimpsed that storm raised like a gigantic fist ready to crush the Quincunx Domes. There was no Scream, none of the orderly chaos of the Great Fear; only a few moments of stunned murmuring before the throng broke into shrieks and enraged shouts and turned to flee back into the city.
Âziz gazed out at the storm, the wind tearing at her crown so that it tipped over one eye. Nasrani was right, the bastard, she thought. She straightened the crown and turned, slipped through the diminishing crowd on the Narthex balcony to a small plain door nearly hidden behind a line of toppled columns. A steady grinding thunder rang out, as joists and beams collapsed and storage vats burst into flame on the refineries level. For an instant it was all nearly too much. Âziz’s head roared and she would have given herself over to the Fear like everyone else; but then her hand found the little doorknob, the metal warm beneath her palm, and without thinking she ran into the passageway and let the door slam behind her.
Inside it was hot but blessedly quiet, the stillness broken only by muted roars and the groan of the wind raging at the Lahatiel Gate. An unblinking line of dim yellow lights ran along the tunnel floor and Âziz followed these, her booted feet slapping against the ground and her breath coming in loud spurts. After a few minutes the yellow lights grew brighter and a soft voice intoned, “Privileged area, please stop.” She stopped, gasping as the sentry pierced her hand, and whispered, “Âziz Orsina. Pass.”
Before her the door slid back to reveal another balcony, semicircular, its floor inlaid with garish mosaics. It seemed to jut out into the very heart of the storm, buckling and swaying as though made of corrugated leather. A sonic fence should have surrounded it, but the power must have failed—there was no warning hum, no flicker of blue light to indicate where the fence ended. If she wasn’t careful she might plunge hundreds of feet into the crashing sea.
But Âziz was very careful. In the center of the balcony the Gryphon Kesef waited, its wings tucked tightly against its sides, its nose drawn in as it crouched against the floor. Rain gusted in sheets across the open space, dashing against the Gryphon’s legs. As the margravine crept onto the balcony her boots crunched against something solid; glancing down, she saw the surface pied with hailstones like rice pearls. She cursed, sliding on the ice; caught herself and inched forward again. In a few minutes she had reached the Gryphon.