Mikel pulled off his mask, took a deep breath, unzipped a pocket, and stowed the mask inside. He hesitated, preparing himself for the onrush of that feeling again before placing his hands on either side of the tiles. His fingers fidgeted, until he realized there was something for them to fidget with. The bank of tiles was loose. With a quick push and pull, the tiles came off as one whole section in his hands. It didn’t feel accidental. The panel was designed to be removed, and there were tiles around the back as well.
He looked again at the projection of the room. The two people inside seemed suddenly uneasy.
“What was that?” Rensat asked.
“I don’t know,” Pao said. “But we must go. It is time.”
Rensat shook her head and returned to her work. With a glance toward Mikel—and eyes that appeared to be searching, seeking—Pao sighed and then also resumed his studies.
What are you looking for… still, after all these eons? Mikel wondered.
He looked at the panel of tiles in his hands. They were pulsing and burning, not just with heat but with light. He had the sense that if he screamed at them, into them, the ghosts would hear. But Mikel was methodical. He was not there yet, not ready to act rashly… irrationally.
If any of this can be called rational, he thought.
Mikel set the tiles down and rooted his fingers into the empty slots where they had been fixed. The ghosts didn’t change, reinforcing the idea that they were present in the moment. But by accident, fumbling around in the opening and perhaps activating another tile, he revealed a map. Ancient, it seemed, with unfamiliar contours. It appeared like a scrim between himself and the specters, and then was gone.
“Damn it—I want that!”
He jabbed his fingers in all directions, but nothing. And then he hit a sweet spot. Images flashed this way and that like minnows. Airships with nets strung between them, plumes of lava shooting into the sky, crops growing in clouds, seagoing vessels, faces, pyres, alabaster buildings, plans for buildings and then—the map was back. Mikel froze his fingers. Relaxing his hand slightly without so much as moving his fingertips, he glided the map into a prominent place. Swelling—seeming to anticipate what he wanted before he struggled to achieve it—the map filled his vision, layering across the tunnel and glowing blue. It was beautiful. Its key elements were ten black dots or points grouped in one area—settlements, towns, cities, hunting grounds… he had no idea which. There were also orange dots clustered around one region. He memorized the pattern. If he could figure out where he was, he could find the others.
Mikel took a moment to regard the image in its entirety, continental contours familiar in some spots, utterly unrecognizable in others. Still, there was no doubt what he was looking at.
Galderkhaan, he thought. After all these years, after centuries, the Group would have it.
Mikel Jasso did not have an ego, not in the same way Flora did, but there was pride of accomplishment: he would be the one to bring it home.
The emotion of the moment was overwhelming but there was no time to savor it. Not far from the orange spots was a fine, fine series of lines in red, blue, and black. He concentrated on the network and it expanded.
So you can read my mind, he thought incredulously. The mechanism didn’t matter right now, but he couldn’t help but wonder what else the tiles could do. And how they did it. Clearly, the infinite possibilities in the arrangement of the stones brought up different information—an impossibly complex but brilliantly compact data storage system.
In one spot on the map, he recognized the path he had taken. It was black. He pinpointed his location generally and mentally marked the spidery legs of the tunnels. He assumed that blue meant water, red—magma? He wondered if those substances still flowed there. Probably not; tens of thousands of years would have altered the pools or bodies of water from where they’d originated. Mikel let go of that spot on the wall and the map disappeared.
He carefully replaced the panel and positioned his hands in their previous position on the tiles. Pao and Rensat filled his vision as before, the room reappearing as if the tiles had gone transparent—or, more likely, were projecting data like the big TVs at sporting events, only at a far greater level of detail. He wondered if they were doing the same thing on the other side, feeding data to the Galderkhaani. The two were in slightly different positions; of course they were. The present day had unfolded while he studied the map.
Once more mentally present, Mikel was swept up in the shuddering feeling of unearthliness. The tiles also felt it, felt something, or maybe they were causing it: the glow intensified slightly.
What’s going on? Mikel thought uneasily.
He looked into the ghostly room. Rensat was closing a door in the glass panel behind her, having just come from the massive chamber.
“I do not understand,” she said. “You felt it, I felt it, yet the tiles tell me there is no one else out there.”
Are they feeling it too? Mikel wondered. Or are they somehow sensing me?
“Is it possible?” Pao asked, a trace of hope in his voice. “After so much time, their eternal silence—is it possible?”
“I would like to think that devotion is rewarded,” Rensat said with a bitter smile. “But why would the Candescents wait until now to reveal themselves? Now, when we are very nearly beaten.”
“Perhaps that is the reason,” Pao suggested. He raised his shoulders weakly. “Who can know the mind and will of the Candescents?”
Unlike Pao, the woman’s voice and expression seemed utterly without hope. “Everyone has been so elusive for so long. The traitor. Our dear Vol. This witch or ascended soul or demonic Technologist—whatever she was who tore the rest apart at the end.” She looked at Pao. “Maybe it is time to depart.”
Pao looked around. “Our existence mattered, though, Rensat. We have failed to save Galderkhaan but we proved the cazh, finally. We remained bonded.” His eyes sought hers lovingly. “That is not a small thing.”
“I still feel as though I have failed.” Rensat smiled thinly. “We are denied the higher planes. We are denied the fellowship and richness of others, of rising to the cosmic plane. That was the reason for the cazh. That was the reason you joined us that first time when we were much younger.”
“I stayed because I loved you as I loved Vol,” Pao said, gently correcting her.
Rensat hugged herself. “I am afraid to leave, Pao. I am afraid to face an eternity in this way.”
“At least we are transcended, not merely ascended,” Pao pointed out. “We are not in silent isolation.”
Mikel recognized the words from the library. Ascendant… transcendent… Candescent. Was there a hierarchy, like angels? Was this the root of all faith? There was still so much he did not understand in just the few things they had said. A witch—what kind of aberration was that?
Without realizing it, Mikel’s hands had moved, like they were resting on the planchette of a Ouija board. Suddenly another image, this one clearly a window into the past, swept across his field of view. Momentarily disoriented, then horrified, he was looking at a courtyard, hearing human screams. The floor of the courtyard was full of carvings—and stones. Olivine tiles. All around him people in yellow and white robes were engulfed in walls of fire. They were shrieking in anguish as they died a torturous death. Feeling sick, Mikel forced himself to keep looking, to see the volcano erupting in the distance.