“You will not have him!” she roared, pushing the heat back at her attackers. She closed her eyes again and powered herself through the ether, until she was once more inside the column, the two devilish souls beside her.
Pao tried to grab Caitlin. His mouth was rabid, fingers clawing helplessly.
He has to know it’s useless, Caitlin thought.
But it wasn’t useless: it was a distraction, Caitlin realized.
As Pao lashed out, Rensat rose, working to draw the flames with her, directing them to the hovering cloud of smoke where there were still vestiges of the face of a small boy… all the while uttering words that were becoming too familiar.
Aytah fera-cazh grymat—
That will be the instrument of death! Caitlin realized. They would burn Jacob by the cazh. He would not be bonded to them… he would simply die, his soul ascended and alone.
Caitlin screamed, flung one arm up, and threw the woman up through the smoke. With the other arm, Caitlin quieted the rising flames.
“You cannot do this forever!” Pao said as he repeated the same process Rensat had begun.
Caitlin released Rensat and turned on Pao.
“You will not get my son,” Caitlin vowed. Yet even as she spoke, Caitlin knew that her grip on the past was growing tenuous, that she had to finish this now if she were to save Jacob. If she left, he would be defenseless.
She had to use the only weapon that remained, one that would require conviction—strength of a very different sort than she had been using. As a psychiatrist, she could not be sure how this would play out. It could backfire, join Pao more closely to Rensat. But there was no other play.
Caitlin turned to Rensat. “You cannot have my boy any more than you can have Pao,” Caitlin charged. This was the time to hit her, not with energy—but with truth. “Does he know your plan to betray him?”
Caitlin felt Rensat shudder. She also saw Pao’s expression change slightly, subtly.
Pao did not turn to his companion but asked, “What is she talking about?”
Rensat did not answer him; she could not. No words could possibly submerge the rage that was building inside of her. In that moment, Caitlin reached up with her right hand, beyond the tiles, beyond the cone, sending her fingers outward as she had done when they were still in the park, stretching, seeking a familiar sensation—
“Rensat, what is this woman saying?” Pao demanded.
“It is a lie to protect her son!” Rensat replied.
“There is no reason to lie when the truth will stop you,” Caitlin assured him. “Pao, hear me. Rensat is working with an acolyte named Enzo. They have their own plan.”
Pao was dismissive. “This is a lie.”
“It is not,” Caitlin said. “Rensat knows the truth. Enzo’s spirit survives. It has been trying to communicate with you!”
“That is not possible,” Pao said. “The ascended have no voice.”
“She has cazhed with one in my time to transcend, to try and reach you,” Caitlin said, challenging him. “As soon as you save Galderkhaan, Rensat and Enzo intend to destroy it.”
“Another lie!” Rensat shrieked, and hurled a ball of heat so intense that Caitlin felt herself nearly torn apart. Screaming from the effort, Caitlin gathered every ounce of energy left in her and focused on her son, on saving him, and allowed the burn to pass through her.
As soon as it passed, before Rensat could try again, she said, “Pao, if I were to save Galderkhaan, Rensat will gather as many souls as she could, get them to speak the cazh, and burn them all, perhaps tens of thousands of souls! She will kill them, either willingly or unwillingly, so they can all rise to the cosmic plane!”
The specificity of her allegation caused Pao to hesitate. He turned to Rensat.
“Is this so?” he asked, in shock, deep hurt, but also belief. He knew Rensat’s passion for her faith.
“There is no reason to exist without Candescence!” Rensat cried.
“But… Galderkhaan would still end, it would die with its citizens. That is not the goal we have worked toward.”
Pao seemed utterly lost but Rensat’s gaze was pure in its hate. Caitlin hoped that Rensat would continue to hate, for just a few moments longer. As long as she was directing rage at Caitlin, she could not turn it on Jacob. Caitlin’s fingers continued to roam—
And then she found it. A section of mosaics above her, the heart of the construction, a sequence of stones that carried her like a living bolt of lightning from tile to tile, from mosaic to mosaic, from chamber to chamber throughout Galderkhaan. The charge that raced through Caitlin was greater than the one she had experienced at the United Nations or in the park. Unlike the ruins in modern Antarctica, this network of olivine stones was complete in ancient Galderkhaan. Complete and powered by forces that were like nothing on this planet.
There were visions, images, whiteness so pure it hurt, pain so deep it defied description, glory so great it could not be fathomed—all of that in a moment, a moment that Caitlin could not sustain.
Harvesting power greater than her mind or body could bear, Caitlin released it with a primal, nuclear flash. But it was not a destructive force, it was a cleansing wave, like the proverbial power of prayer raised exponentially. It wiped away the anomalies in time, rid the universe of those who did not belong there. Pao and Rensat contorted into something that resembled the drawing of a young child, stiff and ungainly and out of proportion. Then something else rose from below—a flaming face, bubbling up and rising through the center of the column, a soul being ripped from its fiery shell.
Enzo, Caitlin realized.
Dimly, through the omnipotent power of the tiles, Caitlin heard the echoing screams of two transcended souls being torn from the earth. The cries grew fainter by the moment, leaving a void that quickly filled with the heat and unrest of the magma. And then she felt the souls of Pao and Rensat vanish, just as she had felt the souls of the dying of Galderkhaan vanish. As soon as they were gone she saw the flaming remains of Enzo shoot skyward, dragging another face with it, a woman, not Galderkhaani but one whom she did not recognize. The woman fell away, dissipated, as the lost soul of Enzo continued to rise, to ascend to the lowest of the realms.
All of this effort, the eternity of flame, of waiting, and she did not even transcend. The tragedy was profound and weighed on Caitlin despite all they had done.
But when Caitlin tried to go she found that she herself could not break free.
The power she had plugged into was holding her. Caitlin had released it but it had not released her. Without knowing how much time she had—it could have been a moment or it could have been eternity—Caitlin fought hard to see Jacob in the smoke. And then she saw him for a flashing instant before his face vanished.
“I love you!” she cried.
And then the tower itself was gone, along with all sight, hearing, and touch and every other sensation…
In Flora’s basement, moments after the tile fought its acoustic confinement and came fiercely to life, Ben’s eyes rolled blank and his legs failed. Though he was still breathing, he slumped down the wall to a heap on the floor. Flora and Adrienne stared at him. Adrienne rose from her stool.