‘We must go!’ Pon-lor shouted, still deafened by the roaring.
Hanu nodded ponderously, and picked up his sister. In passing, he also snatched up a cloak from one dead Thaumaturg and draped it over her.
Light filled the chamber, blinding Pon-lor’s one good eye once again. It came pouring in through the narrow entrance like water from a bucket — an absolute solid gushing radiance that then snapped away just as instantly.
‘Something has come,’ Pon-lor panted into the silence that followed. He motioned to the entrance.
They emerged into the temple grounds and all seemed normal and mundane. It was still light. The Visitor still hung low in the west. But now a slim dark cloud rose into the sky over the top of the intervening halls and squat towers of the temple complex. It was churning, impossibly narrow. It seemed to stretch as it reached for the heights, and was as black as soot. It climbed enormously tall then its top swelled out into a great suspended circular crown of night.
A strong wind blew out of the west and stirred the surrounding treetops. Torn leaves and branches soared overhead. An avalanche-like roaring reached Pon-lor’s punished ears. ‘Take cover!’ he yelled to Hanu then dived behind a wall. Hanu knelt over Saeng.
Something struck the walls, towers and colonnaded walks of the temple complex. A great swatting hand came out of the west. Pon-lor could not close his odd eye. It stared skyward and there it witnessed entire giant trees come tumbling overhead; boulders and stones, sections of stone arches, the top of a well, an animal flailing its limbs, and black clouds of a near-infinite amount of dirt and sand and dust.
In that lashing storm Pon-lor found himself in the odd position of the helpless bystander as the broken fragments of his mind finally drifted out of touch with one another. Slowly, as the storm lashed him without, he could only watch while an inner storm drove the disparate fragments of his consciousness, one by one, out of his awareness. His memories, his reasoning, his very identity, became not only incoherent and unrecognizable, but utterly blank: empty gaps — entire parts of him gone, missing and irretrievable.
As the black dust and ash settled over his body, a similar darkness settled over his mind until it smothered his identity and consciousness into complete nothingness and he wandered lost and unremembering within his own skull.
* * *
For all Shimmer could tell it was perhaps four days later, or the next day, when she was with Lor, walking the grounds near their collection of huts. She was thinking that they had wasted enough time awaiting Ardata’s indulgence and should just go. There was nothing for them here. It had been a mistake. Skinner would not show — the goddess and he were not on good terms. It was also in fact very dangerous for K’azz; Skinner might decide to eliminate him.
Lor, walking with her, suddenly snapped up her head, her long ash-blond hair whipping, and stopped. Shimmer followed her gaze to see Ardata herself sitting on the lowest step of a nearby stone stupa. She was attended by the young woman they had met their first day, wrapped in her folds of pure white silks.
She and Lor backed away towards camp.
As she went, she thought she saw the young woman studying her, and her gaze widening in a strange sort of shock.
Shimmer in return sensed something about her, but couldn’t quite identify it at the moment. She turned away to head for camp. There, everyone was standing, eyeing the distant stupa and the woman in white robes with the cascading black hair. K’azz nodded to Shimmer. ‘It would appear to be time for my audience,’ he murmured to her, wryly.
‘You shouldn’t go alone.’
‘You are right, of course. I shouldn’t. But I will. Keep watch.’
‘Of course.’
He headed off. Walking away in his torn shirt and trousers, so thin and wiry, he seemed achingly fragile; like some starving beggar or wretched vagabond. Shimmer motioned Gwynn to her. ‘Anyone else around?’
The man rubbed his forehead, grimacing his pain. ‘Impossible to tell. Ardata’s presence saturates everything. But if we are blind, then so are they.’
She grunted her acknowledgement, her eyes on the two as they spoke. Ardata motioned and the young woman left them. Shimmer noted her limp.
The two spoke alone for some time. Neither raised their voice or gesticulated. K’azz then gestured aside, inviting, and they walked away into the woods. Shimmer watched until they passed out of sight.
‘Should I follow?’ Gwynn asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. Allow them their privacy. There’s nothing we can do to stop her from pulling something anyway. No. We will wait.’ She eased herself down with her back to a tree, fanned herself to keep the bugs away. Cole and Amatt returned to preparing the palm leaves to be woven into the roof of another hut. Turgal sat at their main hut and helped himself to a drink from the pot they kept topped with sweetwater. Gwynn and Lor were arguing about something while squinting off to the west.
Shimmer peered in that direction: the light did seem strange through the trees to the west. A new glow seemed to be diminishing the baleful emerald presence of the Visitor.
Lor and Gwynn sensed it first. They both jerked to their feet as if at a loud noise. Shimmer was quick to follow. She scanned the surroundings and what she discovered there made her shoulders fall. They were encircled by a ring of faces every one of which she knew. The full complement of the Disavowed. Skinner had brought everyone.
They drove Turgal ahead of them as they closed. The man himself came forward, his arms out, as if to say: Fancy meeting you lot here.
Gwynn, Shimmer noted, had squared off against Mara, while Lor eyed Petal. Shimmer turned her full attention to Skinner and was startled to see that the man was not armed. If I could slay him all this would be over. Her hand went to the grip of her whipsword. He and I.
She edged forward, knees bent, while Skinner merely watched, a strange grin playing about his mouth.
A flash blinded Shimmer then — coming out of the west. She blinked, quite dazzled, and rubbed at her eyes. Everyone round her was cursing the light. Then Lor screamed. Shimmer groped for her. She blinked away tears as she searched for her through dark spots floating before her eyes. She found her writhing on the ground, her hands at her face. Fresh blood smeared her eyes, mouth and nose. She was whimpering as if beyond agony.
‘What is it?’ Shimmer demanded, yelling.
‘The Warrens,’ Lor gurgled through a mouthful of blood. ‘Struck!’
She straightened. What is this? Some sort of censure from Ardata? She saw Skinner leaning over a prostrate Mara. He turned his head to her and she returned her hand to her weapon. Do it now, woman — end it!
‘Hold!’ The voice cut across the grounds, unstrained, yet utterly commanding. Shimmer slipped her hand from her weapon. Skinner merely grinned, as if having read her mind.
The Disavowed parted and Ardata, accompanied by K’azz, entered.
‘She’ll kill you,’ Shimmer whispered to Skinner.
He straightened and pushed back his dirty-blond hair. Leaning to her, he answered as if confiding a secret: ‘She cannot kill me — no one can.’ He tapped the black scales of his armour.
A surly ‘Don’t count on it’ was the best she could manage.
Shimmer knelt again at Lor’s side. The woman was unconscious, as were most of the rest of the mages: Gwynn, Mara, Petal and Red. Unconscious or weakly struggling, utterly incapacitated. She stood and peered about to catch the gaze of all the nearby Disavowed. None would meet her eye.
‘What has happened here?’ Skinner demanded of Ardata.
She was peering to the west and Shimmer was quite startled to see unguarded wonder, even amazement, upon her face. ‘A surprise. A great surprise. Something very strange and … unexpected.’ She seemed unable to wrest her gaze from that horizon.