“How? By what mechanism?” Mikel asked.
Pao started to answer but a touch from Rensat stopped him.
“Your attire, the materials are—unfamiliar to us,” Rensat said. “Where are you from?”
“The north,” he answered. “Far from here, both in time and place.”
“By your reckoning, how old are we?” she asked.
“Judging from the map I saw out there, the contours of your coastline are familiar yet they had not yet been defined by the end of the Ice Age. That would make it about thirty thousand years ago.”
“An ‘ice age,’” Pao said, shaking his head. “The Technologists were right about that, at least.”
“Yes, and they should have stopped where they did,” Rensat said.
“Please explain,” Mikel implored. “There is so much I do not know. These Technologists—what were they trying to do?”
“In the beginning of their rise to power, they sought to tap heat from inside the earth, to melt the ice and protect our city,” Rensat said. “That project was accomplished and it led to the development of a larger idea. To burn their way to Candescence.”
“What you were discussing with the other man, Vol, at the ritual,” Mikel said.
Pao’s eyes showed surprise. “You saw that too?”
Mikel nodded.
“Have you seen Vol elsewhere?” Pao said, pressing him.
Mikel shook his head.
Pao and Rensat exchanged glances. A flicker of hope had risen and quickly perished.
“You’ve mentioned the Candescents several times,” Mikel said. “Who were they?”
“Who are they,” Rensat said, gently correcting him.
“I’m sorry,” Mikel said sincerely. That was clumsy. He had to be careful.
“They are unimaginably ancient beings who inhabit the cosmic plane,” Rensat explained.
“So you believe,” Pao added. “We do not know.”
“The tiles,” she said confidently.
“That is one explanation for the power of the stones,” Pao said. “Some of us agree with the Technologists that the tiles are simply minerals that vibrate in alignment with the planetary poles, that by some unknown mechanism they store and release everything they encounter along those lines: the energy of human thought, of animal memory, of all that has ever been witnessed or conceived.”
Mikel thought of Flora’s vectors. He was with the Technologists on this one.
“Some of us do not believe in miraculous physical ‘mechanisms’ that have defied understanding,” Rensat said. “The stones could not exist without intelligent creation.”
Mikel had heard this very same argument many times in many contexts; it would not be resolved here and now.
He had the sudden urge to drop it on the conference table before the Group, let them finger through it like an unassembled jigsaw puzzle.
Pao interrupted his thought process. “You said something was out there.”
Mikel nodded. “Fire. The… the ghost of a woman who died recently, on the ice. Burned to death.”
“You saw this—this ‘ghost,’ the ascended one?” Pao asked.
“No, she said her name,” Mikel answered. “I knew of her.”
“Did she say anything else?” Rensat asked.
“Yes,” Mikel told her. “She said, ‘Release me, please.’” He studied the two. “What was holding her?”
The spirits did not answer. But he remembered something they had been discussing earlier.
“Is it your ‘blessed Enzo’?” Mikel asked. “Is Enzo in the flame?”
“It is to be hoped,” Rensat said.
Pao regarded her sternly. “Enough!”
They stood mutely, stubbornly. That line of questioning was closed but Mikel had a great many other things he wanted to ask.
“Tell me about the Source,” he said.
“The Source is everywhere in Galderkhaan,” Pao told him. “Tunnels of magma connecting pool to pool.”
The orange spots on the map, Mikel realized. “The winds I rode to get here,” he said. “Those tunnels were conduits for lava?”
“Yes,” Pao said. “The entrances to the tunnels were placed where the winds were fierce and could be channeled underground, used to drive the sails of the digging apparatus.”
“They were expanded in secret, like so much of what the Technologists did,” Rensat added. “It is why the Source was so much stronger than any of us knew. No one realized the pools were already linked.”
Pao approached Mikel. “It is one of the reasons we have remained here,” he said. “We seek the identity of the one who turned the Source on. Do you know anything of that?”
“No,” Mikel said. “And—why should that matter now?”
The two souls fell silent. Their selective cooperation was starting to frustrate him. They were like Flora, always holding secret cards.
“Pao, Rensat—I don’t know much, but I’ve learned enough to know that there are inordinately dangerous forces here. I need to understand much more in order to protect my people.”
“How are they in jeopardy?” Pao asked, suddenly.
“I found a stone,” Mikel said. “It was drawn from the sea near here. It had the same olivine insets as these many others, and like them, it would vibrate, unpredictably. It gave me… visions. One of my associates was studying it. We think it killed him. It melted his brain.”
“Describe this stone in detail, please,” Rensat said.
“I just told you it melted a man’s brain,” Mikel said with rising irritation. “Does that even matter?”
“I am sorry he died,” Rensat said. “So many have, you know.”
Mikel did not appreciate the mild rebuke.
“The stone,” Pao said. “Tell me about it.”
Mikel did not have the patience to argue. He closed his eyes, visualized the design, and described it in detail.
Pao nodded, nodded again. “You found a stone from the motu-varkas—the tallest and most powerful tower, farthest out at sea. One point of the grand triangle.”
“That ring of tiles was the oldest and strongest in all of Galderkhaan,” Rensat said. “It contained a great concentration of energy.” Her tone grew somber. “That ring was crafted by Aargan, the chief Technologist, the one who made the whole construct come together.”
Pao added, “I have long suspected that she was the one who activated the Source, just to prove she could control it with the ring of motu-varkas.”
Rensat took a moment to consider her next words. “The Technologists used to call us, the Priests, a ‘cult of suicide,’ yet they were the ones who ravaged Galderkhaan. The Priests believed—we proved—that bodies are simply a vehicle to the ultimate goal of soul bonding to reach the higher planes.”
“You proved the existence of these other planes—how?” Mikel asked dubiously.
“In the cazh rituals we performed, stopping short of physical death, we had visions of the transpersonal plane, even the cosmic plane,” she said.
Pao approached Mikel. There was something new in his expression: impatience.
“There is another one we seek,” he said. “We have been searching for her as long as we have been down here.”
“Who is she?” Mikel asked.
In response, Pao plunged his hands at the tiles again. The tiles hummed, formed an image of a woman’s face. It was indistinct, distant, but obviously in pain or stress. Given the flames that glowed below it, it appeared to be a part of the same recording Mikel had seen earlier, of the destruction of Galderkhaan.
“You must tell me,” Pao said. “In your searches, you have encountered no one like this woman?”
Mikel looked at the face. Nothing registered. “Why is she so important?”