"What are you two talking about?" asked Sela.
"The Gift of Folding," said Silverdun. "It's what powers the locks to travel between worlds. It allows objects and energy to pass through the folded spaces."
"But the Gift is extraordinarily rare," said Ironfoot. "Almost no one has it, and those that do are immediately snapped up by the Masters of the Gates."
"And look here," said Ironfoot, pointing again. "These figures specify the target for a translation." He paused. "I think."
Ironfoot separated a few more of the thin leaves from the device. At the center was a tiny mesh of silver, of threads so narrow that they were barely visible.
"And what is that?" asked Silverdun.
Ironfoot channeled Insight into the mesh. He couldn't believe what he saw there. It was the same sensation he'd gotten when Lin Vo had responded to Timha's attack. The same impossible, unchanneled essence. The music without pitch. Division by zero.
"Well?" said Silverdun.
"It's undifferentiated essence," said Ironfoot.
"The Thirteenth Gift," said Silverdun.
"It's not a Gift," said Ironfoot. "It's beyond Gifts. It makes the Gifts obsolete."
"So?" said Sela. "What does it mean?"
"I have an idea," said Ironfoot. He'd never been more excited in his life. What Lin Vo had said to him in the Arami camp was beginning to make sense. You're all going to have to learn how to think things anew.
"Give me a little time," he said. "I think I understand. Everything."
A little time turned out to be almost a full day. Ironfoot worked without stopping, writing notes and equations, muttering to himself, shouting, sometimes hurling things. He was so close! Everything was coming together: the map, Hy Pezho's falsified plans, the cynosure. He now understood how Hy Pezho had sent the Unseelie thaumaturges in circles. He'd simply removed all reference to the Thirteenth Gift, knowing that none of them would ever suspect its use. How could they? Almost nobody had ever heard of it, and those who had didn't believe that it existed.
A few times, Silverdun or Sela or Paet would approach, questioning looks in their eyes, and Ironfoot would wave them away, sometimes gruffly, sometimes angrily. He needed to be alone. It would take as long as it took.
Finally he had it. He checked and rechecked his figures. Translated the etchings on the gold and silver plates twice, three times. Reread every word of Prae Benesile's Chthonic history. Now that he knew what the hell Benesile was talking about, the book was practically a reference guide. Benesile's problem had not been that he was a lunatic; quite the contrary. He'd been so brilliant that he'd assumed too much from his readership, hadn't bothered explaining what to him had seemed obvious. There were no equations in the book because Benesile had believed them to be implied.
It was as though a great weight had been removed from his shoulders. The tension of this one problem had been pressing down on him for the better part of a year, coloring everything he'd done and thought and said ever since he'd returned to Queensbridge from Selafae. It had hung like a vulture over his head the entire time he'd been a Shadow, watching him, waiting for him, until he thought he might go insane.
And now it was over.
He called Silverdun, Sela, and Paet into the mission room.
"Do you have some news for us?" asked Silverdun. "Or have you called us in to let us know that you have indeed gone stark, raving mad?"
"I know where Hy Pezho is getting the power for the Einswrath," he said. "The problem I could never understand is how he was able to condense so much re into such a small space. There's no way of doing it, and no way of binding it once it's done. And Hy Pezho must have sent the Unseelie thaumaturges who came after him into even worse fits than mine because he included every bit of instruction on how to create the Einswrath except for the one small bit of information that is the entire secret of his creation."
Ironfoot held up the ceramic casing of the cynosure. "This relic is old. How old, I don't know. A thousand years? Two thousand? Ten? There's no way of knowing, and I'm not a history buff, but I think it's safe to say that this thing I'm holding in my hand has been in constant use for millennia."
"Doing what?" asked Silverdun.
"Taking in the re of Chthonic worshippers. Their spiritual devotion is focused onto this during their most private holiday services, those for believers only. In Benesile's book he describes the intensity of these rituals. On the outside, the Chthonics may seem like a fairly lackluster bunch, but these ceremonies are grueling affairs, lasting hours. There's a set of incantations that's said, some herbs that are burned, and it has the effect of drawing out the essence from everyone in the room and focusing it on the cynosure."
"And then what?" asked Silverdun.
"And then it takes that essence, undifferentiates it, and sends it through a fold."
"To where?" asked Paet. "And why?"
"I can tell you where," said Ironfoot. "The directional mapping is there, though it'll take me a little while longer to pinpoint it.
"As to why? I haven't a clue. Perhaps the ancient Chthonics simply wanted a way to store up massive amounts of re to do the very thing with it that Hy Pezho did. I can't imagine what you might do with that much energy."
"What did Hy Pezho do with it?" asked Sela.
"Well, it turns out that the Einswrath, for all of its apparent complexity, is really quite simple. All it does is reverse the process. It creates a fold, draws that very same undifferentiated re out, and releases it. The difference is that this stored re is highly concentrated, and as soon as it's unfolded ..."
"Boom," said Sela.
"Exactly."
"So, knowing this," said Pact, "can you build one of your own? Can you create a means of defending against them?"
"Not in the next four days," said Ironfoot. "I don't know exactly how Hy Pezho pulled it off. But it doesn't matter. I think I may be able to do something just as good, if not better."
"What's that?" asked Pact.
"I can take us to wherever all that re is stored," said Ironfoot, "and channel it all off into the ether." He paused. "There's just one problem."
"Which is?" asked Silverdun.
"In order to get there, we need someone who is able to work this undifferentiated re. Someone who has the Thirteenth Gift. And the only Fae I've ever met that can do it is an old Arami woman out somewhere in the Unseelie, on the other side of a massive army."
"Actually," said Silverdun. "I may know of one other. A girl I once met."
Silverdun looked at Sela, who blanched and turned away.
"Where is this girl?" asked Pact.
"In Estacana, last time I checked."
Pact sighed. "Go get her. Now."
He looked at Ironfoot. "And while we're waiting for him to return, I've got a job for you."
The renewal of an old acquaintance is a gift both given and received.
-Fae proverb
"Brenin Molmutius!" said Wenathn warmly, when Ironfoot was admitted into the office. Ironfoot was known in Annwn as Brenin Dunwallo Molmutius, the chieftain of one of the Mag Mell Isles. It required an elaborate glamour to pass as a Mag Mellian, but so far the disguise had worked just fine.
"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice," said Ironfoot.
"Please, sit," said Wenathn. "What can I do for you?"
"That's an excellent question," said Ironfoot. "Quite a lot, really."
Ironfoot took an envelope from the hidden compartment in his satchel, closed with the seal of Lord Everess. "Read this," he said.
Wenathn broke the seal and read the letter inside.