“Jill succeeded in locating two other divines not snared by the Scapula’s web who were willing to join her in a raid on his headquarters. She and her soldier-priests and certain forces of these other two have just completed their assault.”
“The midtown estate where I was held captive earlier?” Shaa asked.
“Yes,” said Gashanatantra. “The property was not demolished in the fighting, they are still searching for secret passages and rooms, but aside from the human legions from his time preceding his Exaltation none of your brother’s forces were found. No Transcendent equipment, no pertinent records, no -”
“No lurking confederate? Nothing of use, then - not that we expected anything more.”
“Just so,” Gashanatantra confirmed. “But it has been clear for some time that his whole strategy is hinged on never looking back.”
“Maybe we can still trip him from the rear,” Shaa murmured. “As you say, going nose-to-nose is scarcely a plan for survival where my brother is concerned. Or for victory, of course.”
“I’d tear his throat out with my teeth from any side you choose,” croaked Jardin. “I’m feeling much stronger already; I don’t mind trying a frontal attack.”
“Hopefully suicide will not be necessary,” said Gashanatantra. He looked off down the field, past the assembling ranks of the Corpus, the pageantry of their processions now all but complete, to the spire of the Emperor’s tower at the other end.
Shaa followed his gaze. “You’re not considering heading down there and joining Phlinn Arol, are you?”
“Certainly not. You did hear me say just now suicide should not be necessary? Phlinn Arol is likely to be the center of seriously difficult events quite soon now. The stroke of midnight approaches; all is in its appropriate order. Yes, I think we will know very shortly just exactly what your brother has in mind.”
“I’m not too sure anymore this is such a good idea,” said Eden Shaa.
“Why, what would make you say that?” The voice of the Crawfish came to her from somewhere in front, to the right, and apparently overhead, and also - if the unreliable testimony of her ears could be credited - from several miles off down an echoing canyon. Her eyes had nothing to contribute on the subject, since all illumination - both the lanterns they had brought with them and the inherent ambient lighting of this place - had suddenly and completely vanished into the palpable black of an ink bath just a moment before. Before the lights had gone out, Lemon had been within arm’s reach; now - well, all she could say for sure was that he wasn’t.
“I thought you said you knew how to do this!”
“Well, sure,” he shouted back. “At least in theory. But it has been awhile since I’ve been through here on my own.”
Oh, great. For this she’d left her estate? If -
“I think I’ve got it,” Lemon hollered. “Take two steps forward, then one to your right, good, now you’re going to want to jump ahead high enough so you’d miss, say, a three-foot obstacle, and come down upside-down on your hands. Got it?”
“No problem.” At least she hadn’t gone the puffball route trapped on the plantation; as a warm-up routine this stuff wouldn’t even raise a sweat. Eden sprang forward, flipped, reached for the landing -
- and then she was back in the light as though she’d pierced through a blackout curtain, but somewhere along the way gravity appeared to have flipped too (although it was undoubtedly just another one of the Archives’ harebrained tricks of perception) and instead of coming down on her outstretched hands with her feet in the air the situation was quite exactly the opposite. Floating off below them suspended from a glowing pink doorframe in empty space was, well, a door.
“See?” said the Crawfish. “Nothing to it. I told you the place would recognize me.”
“Plus you do have your sister’s ring.”
“Probably doesn’t hurt. Still, a bit of fun, rather.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I think we’ll come out through the dungeon.” How had she ever let her brother talk her into this?
Lemon sighed. “All these years I thought you were a genuine Shaa, but clearly I was mistaken. Where is that reckless abandon, that stylistically baroque flouting of facts, that -”
“Any more of that,” she warned, “and I’m leaving you down here entombed in the rock.”
“Dad,” said Tildamire Mont, “if you don’t stop that I’ll drop you in a well.”
“But this is all a waste of my time!” bellowed the former Lion of the Oolvaan Plain. “I didn’t come halfway across the continent on the back of a smelly, bad-tempered bird to -”
“What did you come here for, anyway?” said the Great Karlini, unwisely inserting himself again into the line of fire. “Only to make all our lives miserable, or was there some deeper consideration than that?”
“Aarrh!” the Lion said, at maximum volume. Another window cracked in the building behind them and went tinkling into the street. He went back to carving off strips from a length of wood he had found sitting around holding up the lintel-piece of a townhouse they’d passed along the way.
There wasn’t much else to do, frankly. Here they were, once again on the burned-out site of their former lodging and workplace, watching while absolutely nothing calamitous happened whatever. Cobblestones lay scattered about, the sole reminder of the extraordinary manifestations of the afternoon. Since nothing was obviously mutating, though, or shooting off sparks or threatening to run amok, Karlini had persisted in his brooding and the Lion in his frustrated exuberance. The few passersby who had entered the block with the apparent aim of strolling down it to eye the devastation had changed their minds on witnessing the Lion’s casual twirling of his sword and his eager scrutiny on spying them. Tildamire couldn’t blame them. Her father’s examination made Tildamire think of a herder looking over his cows with an eye toward imminent dinner. But in any case there had been no pedestrians - whether genuine or abortive - in some time; word appeared to be getting around.
“Faugh!” declared the Lion, springing to his feet. “Enough of this sitting in place!” He turned his back and stalked off down the block.
“Be as well to let him go,” said Karlini. “I sure don’t want to jump on him and try to tie him down.”
“Can’t you zap him and put him to sleep or something?”
“You want to deal with him if it didn’t work? Anyway, you need a brain of a certain size to hit with a soporific and I’m not sure he qualifies. No offense, I hope.”
“He’s been my father for a long time,” said Tildamire. “We can go bail him out later.” She joined Karlini in gazing back across the street at the skeletal beams of their building, and the wisps of steam and smoke still rising as the rubble continued to cool. “I, ah, I, ah...”
“Yes?”
“I was wondering why we never found a trace of, ah, of Roni’s body. I mean, I was there, and I didn’t actually see her consumed or blown to bits or anything like that. Couldn’t she have been thrown back by that fireball blast and knocked clear out of the building through the back wall? Or something.”