“Marinus,” Holly asks in my ear, “is this technology? Or …”
I know the missing word. “If you’d cured Henry the Seventh’s TB with a course of ethambutol, or given Isaac Newton an hour’s access to the Hubble telescope, or shown an off-the-shelf 3-D printer to the regulars at the Captain Marlow in the 1980s, you would have had the M-word thrown your way, too. Some magic is merely normality that you’re not yet used to.”
“If the professor of semantics wouldn’t object,” says Ōshima, “perhaps she’d finish her seminar later?”
ELIJAH D’ARNOQ GOES first, I follow, then Holly, Arkady, Unalaq, and Sadaqat, with ten kilos of N9D in his bag, and last Ōshima as our rear guard. On the fifth or sixth stone I look back over my companions’ heads, but the Dial is already out of view. Even the Way of Stones’ irregularity is irregular. There are stretches where the steps twist upward, sharp and steep, a stairway in a spire. There are stretches where long slabs of stone form a gently climbing road. There are even places where the climber must jump across from slab to slab, like stepping stones in a river. Better to ignore thoughts of slipping. Soon I work up a sweat. Visibility is poor, akin to climbing a narrow mountain track at night, in grainy fog. The stones glow with a pale light, like that of the Candle of the Dial, but only as we approach, creating an illusion that the Way is building itself as we make our ascent. The darkness all around is oppressive, and seems to conjure up voices from my metalife. I hear my birth father, explaining in vernacular late Latin how to feed a dormouse to a kestrel. Now it’s Sholeetsa, an herbalist of the Duwamish tribe, scolding me for overboiling a root. Now the corvine cackle of Arie Grote, a warehouseman on Dejima. Their bodies were compost long ago, their souls passed to the Last Sea. We Horologists agreed not to subspeak, for fear of being overheard, but I wonder if the others also hear voices from their past lives. I don’t ask in case I distract them from where they’re putting their feet. Who falls off the Way of Stones falls into nothing.
• • •
WE ARRIVE AT the only triangular slab on the whole climb. It is concave in its center and large enough for all six of us to stand on. “Welcome to the Halfway Station,” says D’Arnoq, and I recall Immaculée Constantin naming it in the same way to Jacko on the First Mission. “I think we’ve found our lookout point for you, Sadaqat,” says Ōshima. “The line of sight looking down is as good it gets. Lie in this hollow, here in the middle, and you’ll see any visitors before they see you.” Sadaqat nods, looks at me and I nod back. “Very good, Mr. Ōshima.” With due diligence, Sadaqat sits down and takes from his backpack a heavily adapted iCube and a thin metallic cylinder. He places the iCube towards the “downhill” corner of the slab.
“Is that the firebomb?” D’Arnoq asks with professional curiosity.
“It’s a Deep Stream cloak generator,” Sadaqat flips open the cuboid’s air-screen and scrolls through options, “and a soul alarm. This noise sounds”—a wild-goose signal honks repeatedly—“when it detects an unidentified soul, such as yours, Mr. D’Arnoq …” Sadaqat’s fingers sidescroll and the air-screen throbs as D’Arnoq’s brain signature is stored. “Now it will know friend from foe.”
“A wise gadget,” says D’Arnoq, “and a clever one.”
“The generator prevents a psychosoteric from using an Act of Suasion to make me deactivate the N9D.” Sadaqat unscrews the top of the metallic cylinder. “And the detector alerts me to the fact that someone has tried — and that it is time to detonate the firebomb, which, of course, is this.” Tripod legs shoot out from the lower end of the cylinder and Sadaqat stands it up. “Ten kilos of N9D have been compressed into this tube — sufficient to turn the Way of Stones into a conduit of flame at five hundred degrees Celsius. If the goose goes ‘honk,’ ” Sadaqat looks at D’Arnoq, “psychoferno.”
“Stay alert,” says Ōshima. “We’re depending on you.”
“I have made my oaths, Mr. Ōshima. This is what I am for.”
“You have a loyal lieutenant,” D’Arnoq tells me. “Ready to make a … the ultimate sacrifice.”
“I know how lucky we are,” I say to Sadaqat.
“Don’t look so grim, Doctor!” Sadaqat stands and shakes hands with us all. “We’ll see each other soon, my friends. I am sure it is Scripted.” When he reaches me he slaps his heart. “Here!”
WE KEEP CLIMBING, stone after stone after stone, but it’s difficult to track how high or how far we’ve come since the Dial of the Way, or how many minutes have gone by since we left Sadaqat on sentry duty at the Halfway Station. We left our devices and watches at 119A. Time exists here but it isn’t easily measured, even in an Horologist’s mind. My resolve to count the steps has been sidelined by the voices of the long-dead. So I just follow Elijah D’Arnoq’s back, staying as alert as I can until at last we come to a second circular slab of stone, identical in most features to the Dial at the base of the climb. “The Summit, we call this one,” says D’Arnoq, visibly nervous. “We’re here.”
“Isn’t this where we came in?” asks Holly. “The candle, the circle, the stone circle, the engravings …”
“The stone inscription differs,” I say. “Mr. D’Arnoq?”
“Never studied it,” admits the defector. “Pfenninger is big into philology, and Joseph Rhîmes used to be as well, but for most of us, the Chapel’s a … sentient machine that we have a deal with.”
“ ‘Don’t blame me, I’m only the little guy’?” says Arkady.
D’Arnoq looks worn thin. “Yeah. Maybe so. Maybe that is what we tell ourselves.” He rubs imaginary dust from his eye. “Okay, now I’ll unseal the Umber Arch — the way in — but first a warning: The Blind Cathar should be safely in stasis, in his icon, in the north corner. You’ll sense him. He shouldn’t sense us. So—”
“ ‘Shouldn’t’?” queries Ōshima. “What’s this ‘shouldn’t’?”
“Deicide has its risks,” D’Arnoq scowls, “or it wouldn’t be deicide. If you’re afraid, Ōshima, go and join Sadaqat down below. But here are three don’ts to reduce the risk: Be wary of looking into the Blind Cathar’s face on the icon; don’t make any loud noises or sudden movements; don’t perform any acts of Deep Stream psychosoterica, not even subspeech. I can invoke Shaded Way acts without disturbing the Chapel, but the Cathar’ll detect psychosoterica from the far side of the Schism. Your 119A is fitted with alarms, shields, and cloaks; so is our sanctum, and if the Blind Cathar is aware of Horologists in the house before the walls come tumbling down, the day will end badly for all of us. Understood?”
“Understood,” says Arkady. “Dracula can be safely awoken only when the stake’s already in his heart.”
D’Arnoq barely hears as he evokes an Act of Reveal. A modest, trefoiled, man-high portal shimmers into being at the edge of the Summit Stone. The Umber Arch. Through it we see the Chapel, and inwardly I recoil, even as I follow Elijah D’Arnoq forwards. “In we go,” somebody says.
THE CHAPEL OF the Dusk of the Blind Cathar is the body of a living being. One senses it, immediately. Taking the Umber Arch as south, the rhombus-shaped nave of the Chapel is maybe sixty paces along its north-south axis, thirty paces from east to west, and loftier than it is long. Every plane points to, refers to, or mirrors the icon of the Blind Cathar, hanging in the narrow “northern” corner, so one must concentrate hard on not gazing at the icon. Walls, floor, and pyramidal ceiling are all crafted from same milky, flint-gray stone. The Chapel’s sole furnishings are a long oaken table placed along the north-south axis, two benches on either side, and one large picture on each wall. Immaculée Constantin explained the gnostic paintings to Jacko last time: the Blue Apples of Eden at Noon on the Eighth Day of Creation; the Demon Asmodeus, tricked by Solomon into building the King’s Temple; the true Virgin, suckling a pair of infant Christs; and Saint Thomas standing in a rhombus-shaped chamber identical to the Chapel of the Dusk. Floating below the roof’s apex is a writhing snake wrought in chatoyant stone, in the circular act of consuming its own tail. The Chapel’s blockwork is flawless and fused and creates the illusion that the chamber was hewn from inside a mountain, or that it was crystallized into being. The air here is not fresh or stale or warm or cool, though it carries the tang of bad memories. Holokai died here, and despite what we’ve allowed Holly to hope, I have no proof that Xi Lo didn’t.