What am I supposed to do?
You must stop them. Pao seeks your intervention to restore Galderkhaan, but Rensat wishes to do that… and then destroy it.
Destroy it again? After they save it?
Yes. I have watched her when she is alone, seen her collecting ancient names, assembling an army. I believe she wishes to build the Priest class to unprecedented numbers and then in one stroke she and Enzo and their myriad followers will cause mass death—as many souls as it takes to reach the cosmic plane. There, they will become Candescent. But at a price.
Azha didn’t have to spell it out. Caitlin could do the math: ancient Galderkhaan would die and the course of history would shift. It had become apparent through Ben’s research that survivors of Galderkhaan had spread throughout the world. But if there were no survivors—or very few—the world Caitlin knew would be vastly changed. It was genocide of an existing race, and preemptive genocide of billions of others who would never be born.
You must not be taken, Azha said. Yet they must be stopped.
What can you do to help? Caitlin asked.
Like Rensat and Pao, I and Dovit are ascended but without power. This that I have conveyed is all I can do. You must succeed on your own.
And with that she was gone
Caitlin swore loudly. She was not certain if any of that was really imminent or truly possible. The one thing she did know: Azha had access to Jacob. Yokane had gotten to him. Now that the other Galderkhaani knew who she was, they could probably find him as well—if not through agents like Yokane, then through his dreams.
She had to end this now.
CHAPTER 23
Caitlin left the mansion with barely a word to Ben.
“Caitlin?” He turned after her.
“Later, okay?” she said as she hurried down the steps. “Everything you need to know is in the text,” she told him over her shoulder.
“All right,” Ben said. “Be safe.”
Ben had seen this side of Caitlin enough to trust that “need to know” was sufficient right now. Caitlin on the other hand felt far less prepared than when she faced the previous Galderkhaan crisis. And there was so much more at stake. If only Yokane were there to help.
Caitlin had an unknown span of time before Davies’s stone regained awareness. That could work for her or against her: she might be able to use its powers, or it might try to take her over to connect with other stones. She had to use her time prudently.
First, she had to find a place to use time prudently.
Turning down Fifth Avenue, she walked at apace partly to focus herself. Three souls, two of them bonded. Together, they had an agenda. The agenda had a focal point: Antarctica. Specifically, a place with active mosaics. If she could find that in her mind, she could use it the way she had used the courtyard tiles when she disrupted the cazh in ancient Galderkhaan.
That effort was going to require a powerful access point. Orienting toward the ocean had worked for a small bit of outreach like locating Yokane. But this?
For a much larger move through space and time Caitlin needed a big boost, something akin to what the trauma-soaked United Nations had provided the last time she accessed Galderkhaan. Preferably nearby since time mattered and preferably powerful. She was dealing with professional Priests. Priests who were also apparently resourceful psychopaths.
Briefly, she considered going downtown to the memorial park that was now stamped upon the former World Trade Center site, but something deep within her recoiled at the thought. Caitlin realized that if she relived any moment from that day and the weeks following, tapped the living terror of so many souls, she might run too hard in the opposite direction. She could take off so high and far into the transpersonal plane that she wouldn’t come back, not even for Jacob.
Unconsciously she had been walking south and now she was facing the mercifully rat-free arch of Washington Square Park.
She looked to the east, where the Brown Building, the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, still stood. A hundred and forty-six people had died there in 1911, having burned, suffocated, or jumped to their deaths. She was drawn toward it, across the park, open to the horrible energy… then stopped.
There was also power below her feet.
Of course. Washington Square Park itself had been built upon a former potter’s field. Tens of thousands of bodies, mostly dead from yellow fever, still lay below its diagonal paths and shrouding trees.
There was pain here, the agony of the forgotten dead. It clung like smoke. And there was running water here as well, not just in the central fountain but also Minetta Brook, which flowed through a series of culverts beneath the park and regularly flooded the basement of NYU’s law school library. Though it wasn’t big water, she had a fond association with the brook: it was the subject of one of the first little stories Ben had told her the day he spilled coffee in her lap and they became friends.
“ ‘Minetta,’” he’d explained, “is a corruption of a Lenape word, ‘Manetta,’ which means ‘dangerous spirit’ or”—Caitlin shuddered suddenly, remembering the other meaning—“ ‘snake water.’”
She looked around, suddenly frightened by the place… and by the task, which wasn’t clearly defined. She was going to power up with the ascended souls of this place, hope that the boost was strong enough, and hopefully ride that wave to a vague destination.
This is not very wise, she told herself. But as her father often lamented, there was no one else in the batter’s box.
Was there anything else she hadn’t considered? The lateness of the hour was a concern; the last thing she needed was to be interrupted by a well-meaning police officer. Caitlin would have to remain standing upright and hope that the gestures she used would just look like Tai Chi to an outsider.
She chose the southeast corner, which seemed less populated than other sections of the park. A thicket of trees, a small patch of evergreens, and a blessedly burned-out park lamp provided some measure of privacy. Caitlin squeezed between the trees and oriented herself toward the unseen harbor. There weren’t many cars traveling around the park, especially at night, which was good because the headlights would be a distraction even through the tree branches. Caitlin had decided that while she was concealed she needed to layer images, if she could, to keep an eye on the park. Yokane’s unexplained death demanded extra precaution.
She raised her hands. Before they were halfway elevated, a soul was there—but not outside her as Azha had been. He was within her. The figure was bearded, his flesh lined with age, but the eyes and mouth were vital… sinister.
Ny! she told him. No!
He did not reply. Perhaps he did not understand.
“You don’t have permission to be inside my head!” she said aloud.
I do not require it, he replied. In English.
You speak my language.
There is no need to use very much of it, he replied. I am Pao. You destroyed a great cazh. You will atone by helping me.
You will get out of my head and stand before me, she replied.