“Well, it’s not. Where now?”
“This way.” Hurriedly, lights rippled on. Doors slid back. Carys saw a series of rooms opening in front of her.
“Your Maker-power,” she asked, curious. “Is it running out?”
Above her something sparked. One of the lights snapped off. “No,” the voice said tightly.
“But you don’t want to waste it, do you?” Carys looked up. “If it did all go, would you die?”
The voice laughed, mirthless. “There you go again.” For a moment she thought it sounded terrified. “I really couldn’t say. And Flain told me they’d be back; he insisted they’d be back, so that’s all right, isn’t it? Don’t you think?”
“They told us that too,” Carys said, wanting to comfort it.
“They did?” The relief was clear. “Well, there you are then.”
She walked through the rooms. “Listen. Do you know anything about a relic called Flain’s Coronet?”
“A relic.” The voice sounded annoyed. “Now there’s a term I detest. Redolent of death, something left over. Left behind. I suppose you consider me to be a relic too?”
“I suppose so.” Carys grinned, wondering what Galen would say. “But what about the Coronet?
“Flain wore it. Only when he needed to. It’s a highly sophisticated neural integrator.”
“A what?” Carys demanded.
The voice sounded superior. “Obviously it’s a waste of time my explaining. It was used for a number of operations. May I ask why you want to know?”
“We’re looking for it.”
“Ah. Because of Agramon.”
Carys stopped again. She looked around at the wavepainted walls. “You know about that?”
“I have certain viewpoints to the outside. Agramon is out of alignment. The Coronet is the only solution, if it still exists. Someone will need to put it on and enter the awen-field, but I don’t think it should be you. You don’t strike me as having the necessary—”
“Save it,” Carys snapped. “It won’t be me.”
A door slid open.
To her astonishment she saw the beach, the smooth sand with the waves beating on it. It was late afternoon, and raining torrents.
“This what you wanted?” the voice asked, smug.
“Yes,” Carys turned hastily, trying to think what else to ask. “The Sekoi. How much do you know about them?”
“Not a great deal. They keep their little secrets. Though one of them once drank too much and blurted out all about the Great Hoard.” The voice was scathing. “All that gold! It will do them no good at all. Do they really believe that Flain would . . .” It stopped.
“What?” Carys asked eagerly.
There was silence. Then the voice said testily, “It’s so crazy I’d love to tell you. But I can’t. Promised them I’d never mention it. As if there’s ever anyone to mention it to! Well, good luck then.”
“Yes,” Carys said hurriedly, “but wait . . .”
“Pity about Tasceron,” the palace muttered. “Perhaps I’d better run a full systems check.”
“Wait! I want to ask you . . .”
“Another time. Have to keep the power down.”
And the door in the rock snicked shut.
21
Flain wears the moons as a crown
And the stars for a coat.
In a dream once, I saw him frown.
He said, “You have betrayed me, poet.”
Poems of Anjar Kar
RAFFI ROLLED OVER AND YAWNED.
The fire had burned low. Galen was leaning against the observatory wall, wrapped in his dark coat, gazing up at the sky. For a while Raffi lay still watching him. The keeper looked worn, as they all did. He rarely slept enough, and the horror of the Vortex had scarred him; Raffi felt it deeply in this moment of quiet, the terrible anger, the shame of having to leave those who needed him. All the power of the Crow seemed to have rolled up small and gone away; in the shadows of the evening Galen seemed as withdrawn as when the relic explosion had devastated him, over a year ago now.
“Something’s wrong,” the keeper muttered. He didn’t look over.
Raffi sat up, alarmed. “What?”
“I don’t know.” Galen didn’t move. “They know about us. And I can feel, sometimes, something wrong. Among us. A shadow among us. Then it’s gone.” He glanced over. “Have you felt this?”
Raffi nodded, thinking uneasily of Marco.
“I thought so.” Galen looked back at the sky.
“Perhaps it’s the weather . . .”
“They know about us.” Galen stared through the gloomy plantation of firs. “Say nothing to the others. Here she is, at last.”
Behind the dark branches Agramon was rising. The moon was always the largest, a smooth featureless disc tonight, but it should have been visible an hour ago. Galen climbed stiffly to his feet.
“Let’s go up. Wake Solon.”
They had slept all afternoon, but it wasn’t enough. Solon groaned and rolled over, rubbing his stubbly chin. His pale eyes looked wan but he managed a smile. “Already?”
Raffi nodded and moved to Marco, but Galen said, “No. We don’t need him.”
He had opened the great wooden door. From inside, the smell of damp oozed out.
They climbed the stairs without a light, readying their eyes for the dark. As the tight turns made his legs ache Raffi wondered what material the Makers used that could keep this place intact after so long. The vortex had missed it, but earlier another storm had raged here. They would be lucky if the sky stayed clear.
The tower was empty. Sense-lines told him that. Animals had been here, but no people, not for years. There was a faint stir of something that might have been a Sekoi-trace, but though he groped after it with all his skill Raffi couldn’t catch it and gave up.
At the top Galen stopped, one hand on the wall, head down, silent with the pain of his leg. Far behind, Solon toiled up patiently.
The room they wanted was the first one. Pushing the door open, Galen limped in.
It was made of glass.
A glass cube in the sky, and the windows looked so thick, Raffi thought, reaching up to touch one. Instantly he jumped back.
“Carys! I saw her!”
She had been reflected, where his own shape should have been. “Reaching up, just like that!”
Solon had come through the door and was staring around. Galen frowned. “She may be thinking of us.”
“This is intriguing!” the Archkeeper said, turning. “But Galen, there are no relics here! In fact, there’s nothing here at all.”
His disappointment chilled them, and he was right. The room seemed stripped bare. In the cold moonlight it looked abandoned. Agramon shone through the glass, throwing its light on Galen’s face. He turned to look at it.
“We weren’t sent here for nothing,” he growled. He put both hands on the window.
Instantly, to their shock, it transformed. Something in the glass seemed to ripple; the image of Agramon shot closer, as if it plunged toward them.
Raffi gave a yell of terror; Galen snatched his hands back.
An enormous moon hung before them.
Then Galen laughed sourly. “I see.”
“Has it fallen?”
“No, it hasn’t, boy, and if you can’t say anything sensible don’t bother. It just looks closer. Like our tube, this glass has that property.”
Solon winked at Raffi. “That’s a relief. I wonder if I look as white as you.”
Galen touched the glass again. He was concentrating, and Raffi knew he had linked his mind with the relic and was learning its ways, the image of the moon slowly receding to a pinprick, and then looming again, growing until it filled the window and he and Solon stood transfixed in fear and wonder.
It seemed so close!
Now Galen narrowed down the focus, and they seemed to be barely above the surface, traveling over it, seeing the stark smoothness of the globe, without hills or valleys or features, dry and dazzling with reflected light.