A second image materialized, that of a woman. Rensat. Caitlin wanted to surprise the Galderkhaani woman, acknowledge her by name, but that would inform the woman that she was prepared at least a little.
Rensat spoke next. I see a sleeping boy and I see a woman not far from him, she said. You will obey.
I see two dead Galderkhaani who can do no physical damage to anyone, Caitlin replied, finding courage in indignation.
The boy dreams of flight, of our great airships, the woman said. I can burn his mind.
Caitlin felt her resistance drain with her courage. The thought of her sweet little man having his inquisitive, creative mind assaulted was as great a violation as she could conceive. She knew she would not allow his innocence to be brutalized that way. She had one secret, just one, but it was not time to bring it out.
Caitlin forced herself to put fear aside and concentrate as she never had in her life, bringing to bear what she had experienced in Galderkhaan, on the subway, with Odilon, in her visions, and most recently with the stone. She needed that Galderkhaani artifact.
Caitlin extended a hand to the north, to the Group’s headquarters… to the slumbering stone. She was going to try to harness its energy and blast these souls out of their immaterial existence.
In an instant, the power she felt was stronger than ever before. She had plugged into two stones, Caitlin realized too late… the one belonging to the Group and the one belonging to Yokane. They were together, somehow, in the same place. There was no time to consider how or why they were together: it was all Caitlin could do to manage the power flowing into her left arm. She needed to balance that and extended her right arm—
A burst seemed to explode Caitlin’s hand, her arm, her body. The trail of energy continued inward and slammed into Caitlin’s soul. She began to shake so hard she was sure she would collapse—but there was no body to fall. She was suddenly outside of it, pulled free by stones somewhere else in the world… or time, she couldn’t be sure. Her right hand rose as the power continued to course through her, seeking the other tiles in the south. It found them, nearly wrenching Caitlin’s immaterial arms from their sockets; the stress pulled at her soul, causing it to cry out.
For one instant, Caitlin saw Ben’s face.
Ben saw her too and his expression flashed a look of madness.
“Cai!” he cried.
Then his face disappeared, lost in the electric conflagration that followed. Caitlin saw walls of olivine tiles flare to blinding life, burning out her vision but only for a moment—
They were hovering in a well wider and deeper than any she had ever seen; it was almost the size of a small lake. Caitlin’s arms were in a different position now. They were extended up, toward a ring of tiles that lined the high roof of the well. The tiles glowed lime green and pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She felt their energy coursing through her arms, throbbing in her chest. She no longer felt the stones at the Group mansion; it was as if they didn’t exist.
The psychiatrist in Caitlin saw this as the archetypical well in which so many hypnotherapy patients said they were trapped. But Caitlin’s increasing understanding of Galderkhaan told her something different: this was part of the Source. The well was the inside of one of the great columns she had seen when she stopped the cazh. She surmised that they were in the past, inside the hollow column, almost certainly before the Source was activated. They seemed to be vents for the magma that flowed underground, throughout the ancient state.
Pao and Rensat stood across from her, near but at what she judged to be a respectful distance. It was almost as if they were in awe of her… or of her power. At least, they didn’t charge her. She understood, then, that they hadn’t pulled her here: she had brought them. She and the powerful arc she had created between the stones in New York… and here.
“The tower of the motu-varkas,” Pao said. “The most powerful tiles… and we are in time. It is not yet destroyed.” His features took on an angry, hawkish cast. “You will stop the bloody Galderkhaani traitor who killed us all!”
Without turning from them, Caitlin saw a sea of seething red ooze below, flames dancing across its surface, rock walls flickering from red to brown shadow to red again. All along the granite, reaching up to the tiles, were carved figures that moved and danced as the light changed. She understood, in a moment of epiphany, that these figures, like the carvings on the stones she had seen in New York, were not just representations of the arm and hand motions during the cazh; they were the entire ceremony but without the verbal component. The Technologists meant for the Source to do the heavy lifting; all the Galderkhaani had to do was gather around.
You bloody idiots, she thought angrily. The Priests and the Technologists believed the same damn thing, used the same basic idea of bonding. Only the Priests did it through what amounted to prayer and the Technologists’ method was, in effect, automated and impersonal.
But it is the same!
Smoke rose in hundreds of hellish plumes, twining like vines and reaching up into whiteness beyond the glowing stones. Caitlin wasn’t sure what to do next. She continued to watch her opponents, waiting for them to attack.
Instead, they were very still. “We are here,” Rensat said in triumph.
Caitlin understood, then, that she had done exactly what Pao and Rensat wanted. She had used the power of the stones to go back, just as she had done by tapping into them at the UN.
“You will save us,” Rensat continued. “You must.” The Galderkhaani specter moved a hand. The smoke moved sinuously and began to form a face.
Jacob’s face. His sleeping face.
It quickly gained clarity, texture, personality. Caitlin felt pain in her soul. Even if she could throw all the energy in her body at these two, Rensat still had a grip on her boy.
Another face formed, this one brought forth by Pao. It was a middle-aged man, his features rugged but tired looking, almost drawn.
“You will find Vol,” Rensat said. “You will stop him from activating this column.”
“If I do that,” Caitlin said, “my son will die. My world will no longer exist.”
“You will cease to exist with it,” Pao assured her. “There will be no sorrow.”
The casual, almost dismissive quality of his voice caused Caitlin to tremble. She had intended to continue trying to reason with them, to reveal what Azha had told her—but anger possessed her.
Caitlin swept her arms up, bringing heat from the magma to tear through the image Pao had created. The smoke flew apart and almost at once Caitlin brought her arms back down. The tester of smoke swept down, hot and thick, and the souls of the two Galderkhaani were caught in it. The draft pulled them down, dull shapes of light that were thrust into the boiling mud—
But only for a moment. The lava bulged and surged as the burning liquid filled the souls of Pao and Rensat, like molds, creating distorted demons in red with fiery eyes and gaping mouths. Then, very slowly, the lava fell away and the radiant spirits glowed even more brightly as they returned to their previous positions… hovering, drifting closer.
Rensat came nearer and shrieked at Caitlin, a cry of pain that had been building for millennia. The scream knocked Caitlin back, drove her into the stone. She did not feel the concussion but she could not move from the inside of the column.
“You will do this!” Rensat cried. “You will do this or you will never leave here!”
Caitlin was no longer thinking. She cut off her vision, allowed her mind to go free, blank, and was suddenly floating outside the column, hovering in the night, a strange world below her. But there was no time to get her bearings. Pao and Rensat came out almost immediately, charged through the column, the constituent stones glowing orange from the heat that came with them. Caitlin raised her arms again and cried out her own suppressed rage—not as ancient but no less feral… and protective.