If it is dead, then there will be no “me” to go back to, she thought with deep horror.
And if the spirit of Bayarma began to push, tried to reclaim her body, where could the spirit of Caitlin O’Hara go? Would she be like Azha, ascended, stuck in limbo?
No, she told herself. Azha was cazhed with Dovit. She had transcended. A single soul would merely ascend—alone, witnessing without experiencing, moving through eternity with mute awareness.
Would I have to wait millennia to see myself, and Jacob, alive? Could I go wherever I want? Or are the ascended locked in one time, one place?
There wasn’t a thought that didn’t chill her, didn’t make her want to scream. And now she had the added burden of being with someone who, at best, wasn’t sure she could believe Caitlin; at worst, might think she was crazed.
The familiar sea and sky around her made the strangeness of the situation even worse. There were differences, but nothing alien. She had looked up at the blue sky and clouds from Central Park, had looked out at the Atlantic Ocean, with Jacob, from Coney Island. They had appeared more or less like this. Caitlin felt that she should be able to close her eyes, open them, and be in one of those places. But as much as she pointed her fingers down while she walked, the energy was gone, or at least depleted. Her spirit was inert.
Her curiosity about Galderkhaan was even less than that. She did not know how these people came to be, who they really were, how long the civilization had thrived. She should be asking questions, making careful observations in case she did get back. Ben—she actually chuckled a little maniacally inside when she thought of this—would probably be watching every gesture, noting every word, looking at every marking, satisfied just knowing more than he did.
But he doesn’t have a child. He doesn’t have other children who depend on him. He has ambassadors, most of whom he doesn’t even like.
What touched her, maybe even helped to anchor her a little, was the realization that Ben would swap places with her even knowing he might be booted out of this body and cast into limbo. He wasn’t a loving soul, but she knew he loved her.
Caitlin forced her brain to stop thinking. She was here because she wanted to help others, and she had succeeded. That was her job. Whatever has happened, you earned this, the gold star of collateral damage, she thought.
The walk to the tower was brief… or at least it seemed so, as Caitlin contemplated other things. When she had been at the motu-varkas it was dark, she was being assaulted by Pao and Rensat, and she was unable to appreciate the construction of the tower. Though smaller by about one-third than that largest of the columns, it was nonetheless an imposing structure. Constructed of blocks that resembled granite but were possibly volcanic basalt—and lined, she knew, with olivine tiles—the tower tapered slightly as it rose, with two inverted V-shaped structures on either side of the mouth: these were the moorings for the larger airships, of which there was only one at the moment. The vessel was about three hundred feet in length, with a long, open gondola suspended beneath the dark gray balloon. A large platform similar to but wider and longer than a window washer’s scaffold was suspended from ropes that hung from a long, pointed prow.
A prow with a dragonlike carving on the front. It was similar to the one Caitlin had drawn while doodling on the airplane while returning home from Haiti.
That was too much to add to the mix, so she didn’t. How could she possibly have anticipated seeing this? Unless she was remembering from the past…?
Good God, don’t try and make sense of this now, she told herself. Stay in the moment.
A second scaffold was suspended from the rear of the airship. Hoists lowered bags that she assumed were filled with waste or casks that needed refilling. It was a clean, efficient operation powered by weights like elevators in some of the older buildings in New York.
The trio was quickly under the shadow of the airship. Caitlin felt a chill going from bright sun to gray shadow; it had nothing to do with a change in temperature but a sense that recess was over. Unprepared as she was, events were about to become far more challenging. And though her instincts told her she could trust this woman, Caitlin still had no idea what Standor Qala meant to do with her. Perhaps Qala would lock her up in the airship. Still, Caitlin allowed herself to go forward.
The scaffolding that was lowered from the front of the airship was for personnel. She was correct about crew having time on the beach to stretch their legs and wet their feet. From what she overheard, with its fish-spotting duties done, the airship would be making cargo runs to other locations in Galderkhaan on its way to Aankhaan. The plan seemed to be to arrive while the celebration was just beginning, adding even more majesty to the night.
They boarded the lift at the base of the tower. There were hip-high metal rails around the sides and Caitlin held one with both hands in anticipation of the platform being jerked aloft. To her surprise, the ascent was quite smooth. As they rose, the splendor of Falkhaan, of ancient Antarctica, revealed itself in epic pieces. Ahead and below was the village itself, a collection of some two dozen wheel homes and courtyards and a roused populace going about their day. To her right, which was north, was the sea—windswept with choppy breakers in the horseshoe, smooth without. Neither wave nor wind posed a peril to the small crafts on it. In the distance, large fish leaped from the seas in unison, smaller fish among them who were seeking safety from albatross-like seabirds. There was a great deal of hunting and pecking from the birds’ large beaks as they tried to nab the smaller prey. Some succeeded, some failed, but even failure left some fish wounded. These fell back and were easily carried off from the surface.
The small airships above were silent, save for the flapping of the finlike projections that obviously controlled their rise and descent, others that managed forward and backward motion. Nets maneuvered into position to catch the leaping fish. To her left, beyond Standor Qala and Vilu, was a very distant vista: a plain of ice and distant peaks. She had no idea whether settlements like Falkhaan were created by channeling magma from the Source and melting the ice or they were simply oases in the ice sheet. As they neared the top of the column she saw another village some two miles distant with what appeared to be another cemetery road connecting it to Falkhaan. The village looked to be a cluster of farms growing something that resembled cotton, definitely a fiber of some kind. Carts laden with cloth were moving along the cemetery road that stretched beyond it into a hazy valley.
The wind was louder up here, not quite thundering in her ears but making it very difficult to hear anything else. The slight smell of something sulfurous also became more pronounced as they neared the top. She likewise felt an increase in the heat, the little that drifted down instead of rising.
That must be the magma of the Source located in the belly of this tower.
It caused the vista of the harbor city to ripple gently.
Soon to be leveled… all of it, Caitlin thought with a fresh sense of horror. She did not want to be a part of this. She did not want the responsibility. I’m going to wake, I have to wake—