But to Qala’s knowledge, the strange, powerful tiles had never done this.
Reaching the top of the ramp, followed by Loi and the eyes of those working on the hoses, Qala saw a misty glow just within the top of the column. It reminded her of the kind of halo that formed around the sun before a rainstorm—diaphanous, elusive, slightly prismatic. She came closer, looked at the tiles on the opposite side of the column. Through the haze she could see they were dull but uniformly lit.
“A reflection of fires from below?” Loi speculated.
“The illumination is too consistent,” Qala said. “Double the loading crew, Femora. I want to be away from here as soon as possible.”
“Are you afraid for the column, Standor?” Loi asked with concern. “I have lovers and children here—”
“No,” she replied with a reassuring smile. “I want to see if this is happening in other columns along the route.”
CHAPTER 12
It was a small library, unassuming as libraries went in Galderkhaan. There were a few more olivine tiles, but not so many that anyone would suspect their true nature.
These tiles, built in the Technologist complex beside the motu-varkas, were designed to control the winds that were not only generated by the magma deep below Galderkhaan: forced through tunnels constructed by the Technologists, the same winds held the magma down and back, one elemental force controlling the other. The heat of the lava actually strengthened the ferocity and power of the winds that contained it.
The Source was corrupt. The Source drew on energies that caused mountains to rumble and flame. It caused the ground to split and consume villages whole. It created great waves that smashed the coastline, killing the creatures of the sea and the citizens who lived there. Freed, it would not allow Galderkhaani to contain it.
The Council did not want to hear that. The Council was comprised of aged men and women who were eager to achieve immortality. There was evidence for an existence after this one, and they wanted to access it now. If the Technologists were wrong, then there was still time to support the approach of the Priests, the cazh. They did not understand why both methods should not be explored.
“The Candescents found merit in the fires beneath the land,” the Chief Councilor had said, reciting the decision of her fellow members. “Why should we, then, shun these forces?”
Most of the seven Councilors were Azha’s lovers. The Source hearings that preceded and followed the trial of Femora Azha lacked the objectivity of that grim matter. It was incomprehensible that the social issue of “violence” should receive a fairer, saner hearing than the potentially catastrophic matter of tapping and unleashing the flames and heat from below. Even the ice engineers, who cleared swaths of terrain for settlement, were afraid to use heat from the towers. The risen pools of magma were used solely to warm water through careful release of heat, great stone doors and vents, operated by pulleys, being employed to control the wind.
The monstrosity beyond the library? It had been expanded and enlarged without sufficient study. Models suggested this and drawings suggested that. Nothing had been proven. Technologists thought the olivine tiles would allow them to control the various mechanisms they were constructing.
That was not only dangerous, it was lunatic.
Which was why Vol had made love to a clutch of Technologists, one of whom had allowed him to come to this chamber just “to see” the refurbished motu-varkas. The Priest had no interest in the man who had given him access or the détente he said interested him.
The Priest felt extremely guilty having used love and lovemaking, and his sacred poetry, to seduce his way into the library. He felt far worse about that than he did about the necessary deaths that were liable to result from this.
Vol was consumed with just one idea, an idea that Femora Azha had gotten right. Before the networks were connected, Vol wanted to turn on the Source at its very core. He was willing to sacrifice himself and the others in the tower to prove that such containment was not possible.
He had already shut the library tiles so his actions would not be recorded; it was an easy matter to clandestinely replace his own tile for one of those crafted by the Technologists. He had simply gone to one wall, replaced a Technologist tile with one to which he had transferred his own thoughts and plans, and no one would notice that a massive trapdoor would not shut until it was too late. The magma would be agitated by the opening of other lava tubes and the motu-varkas would spit death into the immediate vicinity.
Vol did not want this to reflect badly on any fellow Priests, like his beloved Rensat, or even the moderate Pao. What happened here would look like an accident. The power to destroy Galderkhaan—by accident or, more dangerously, by power-hungry Technologists—would be eliminated. And the true course of Ascension, Transcendence, and Candescence would be pursued by the Priests.
Already, the attention of the Technologists in the library was drawn to odd stirrings from below the ground. They would check the olivine tiles inside the tower first. That would take them quite some time. They would not find his tile in the library, they would fail to remove it in time; it was outwardly benign and too well integrated into the system. If necessary, he would prevent them from doing so by releasing its latent energy.
Vol had full control of a system that, once tripped, had no other way of being shut down. Henceforth, the Night of Miracles would be remembered for much more than the folklorish creation of the Galderkhaani. By tonight, the Source and its Technologist acolytes would be a memory. And instead of being slaves of the towers, the olivine tiles would finally be turned over for study by those who wanted to release, not control, their ancient, dormant energies—the Priests of Galderkhaan.
CHAPTER 13
For Caitlin, the vision had the character of a sharp, sudden relapse.
She was medically sedated and yet she was very conscious in her dreamless state. She was floating again, as she’d been in Washington Square Park. She was rootless, drifting, no point of orientation, only darkness. The image was in her mind, not in her eyes, but Caitlin knew that she was not dreaming. She was not hallucinating from whatever drug was pulsing through her veins because there was a solid realism to what she did see.
It was a ring of light. It didn’t grow, it simply appeared, like a lightning bolt that erupted but did not fade. Yet the more she looked at it, she could see that it was not simply a ring: it was more like an ouroboros, a tail-devouring snake. Present in countless cultures, interpreted and reinterpreted in classic psychotherapy, a true human archetype.
Why is it here, in my mind?
She tried to ask it, but the serpentine form did not want to be accessed. The circle just floated in its own soupy white light, set against the blackness, unable to be addressed or touched… yet obviously willing to be seen.
Willing, Caitlin thought suddenly. She felt—she knew—that the serpent had consciousness.