The reason probably wasn’t Vilu or Bayarma. The tower was warming up before they arrived. But they might be part of whatever phenomenon was causing this.
The physician grabbed the covers from behind him and threw it on the tile. The glow was dampened but only briefly. The hide began to crackle as the underside was dried, baked.
Zell rose and quickly jumped over it, scooping Vilu in his arms. He pushed through the curtain and out the door, setting the boy on the gondola.
“Remain here,” Zell said.
Vilu began to extend his fingers back toward the tile.
“No!” Zell shouted, slapping his arm down. “Do not point!”
The incident drew the attention of Standor Qala, who was standing forward of the cabin as the airship gained lift over the sea and turned to pass above the simu-varkas.
“Zell, what happened?” Qala asked, rushing forward.
Instead of answering, the physician ran back into the cabin and pushed through the vine curtain. The area around the hammock was filled with a nearly transparent white luminescence, not blinding but hot and causing Bayarma to gasp for breath as she slept. Zell reached her and bundled her to his chest, turning his back to the tile to protect her from its heat.
Qala met him at the door, where Zell pushed the woman into her arms.
“The tiles, something is affecting them!” Zell said before jumping back inside. “These two must have felt it first!”
While Qala processed that information—ignoring the obvious fact that the physician had disobeyed her orders—Zell tore at the curtain, ripping it from its woven hangers. He dropped it on the bundle of covers that was already atop the tile. Then he swept all of them, including the olivine tile, into his arms.
He shrieked like the wind from the mountains as invisible fire ripped through his eye sockets into his brain. Zell managed to turn and fling himself at the door, moving past Qala with such ferocious determination that the Standor wasn’t able to stop him. Along with several crew members who had run over to care for Vilu and Bayarma, Qala watched with horror as the physician hit the rail with such force that it cracked and spilled him over the side. Qala bolted after him, too late to do more than watch as Zell, the hides, and the tile tumbled through the crisp morning sky toward the distant waters.
The stone tile was burning fiercely. It did not melt, it simply flamed. And as it fell something inexplicable occurred: while Galdani Zell plunged beneath the waves, the olivine tile changed direction and was pulled on a course parallel to the ground, toward the tower. It hit near the bottom with force that created a thunderclap that could be heard on the airship.
Qala knelt beside Vilu and Bayarma, who were unconscious. Then she turned to Usa-Femora Inai, who had dropped from the rigging directly above.
“Tell Femora Loi to disregard previous instructions,” the Standor said. “I want height, as much as he can give me without leaving this spot.”
“At once, Standor.”
Qala rose and called over two crew members to bring their guests to the sleeping cabin. Then she strode forward to look at the tower. The glow was more pronounced now, as was the heat.
Zell had not been prone to random ideas and indiscriminate theory. He had pinned the blame for this, his dying words, on the tiles.
The elusive storm Qala had been sensing was here. And the only ones who could possibly explain it were two souls inhabiting bodies that were not their own.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 21
Interstate 95 is a wide, sterile highway that slashes through Connecticut like a scar. The treeless, industrial commercial expanse made Caitlin long for the humanity of Galderkhaan. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that in the brief time she was there she felt a kind of comfort and camaraderie she had rarely felt in New York, Phuket, Haiti, or anywhere else she’d been—at least, not since her student days with Ben, when the world was fresh with new ideas, when the only responsibility was to learn and engage, when it was still theoretically possible to be and do whatever they could imagine.
Falkhaan had been a campus, with possibilities for intellectual, spiritual, and interactive growth in every direction—including up.
Caitlin and Ben rode in the rental car mostly in silence. Ben had picked up the Prius while Caitlin checked herself out of the hospital. Except for Nancy O’Hara’s protests, leaving the hospital was easy enough. Dr. Yang voiced strong disapproval but had no power to compel her to stay. Her mother was angry and insisted she go back to her room; Caitlin was calm but insisted she would be in better hands somewhere else. She didn’t say where that somewhere was or whose hands were out there. Her refusal to answer those questions added to Nancy’s frustration. When Ben pulled up, Caitlin put her mother in a cab and that was that.
Along the way, Ben tried several times to ignite a conversation.
“What do you think happened at the mansion?… What are you going to ask Madame Langlois?… How much do we confide in these Technologists?”
Caitlin had no answers and didn’t offer any. Barbara had put a dent in her confidence and she was trying to hammer that back into shape.
Galderkhaan is real. Jacob is in danger. I have to get back there.
Several times during the sixty-minute drive Caitlin closed her eyes and allowed her fingers to seek the stone. Nearly a dozen times she caught an energetic whiff of it, the sensations of power and spiritual expansion rising with an almost sexual fervor before dropping again.
The man who had the stone was also on the move, most likely heading to the same place they were.
Ben turned off at Exit 15 and drove toward the Long Island Sound. A series of increasingly narrow streets took them to a gated private road. A guard admitted them and they drove to the curved driveway that fronted the Victorian mansion. It was painted the color of whiskey with white shutters and trim. It appeared to be about a century old, though to Caitlin it felt much, much older.
A van from the New York City Department of Sanitation was out front, along with the SUV that had brought Madame Langlois and Enok from the city. Several other vehicles were parked under a long lattice canopy off to the side.
The gentle lapping of the Long Island Sound could be heard across an indeterminate expanse of flat, rocky coast to the south. Caitlin was drawn to the water as she had been drawn to the harbor on her rooftop. It wasn’t hypnotic; it was cellular in a way she couldn’t explain.
“They’re obviously not concerned that the stone will cause this place to come down around them,” Ben remarked as they got out of the car.
Caitlin looked toward the mansion. “Whatever the tile was responding to earlier, it’s stopped,” she said. “From the South Pole, I’d say. I’m not feeling anything from that direction.”
They walked toward the front door. Caitlin walked far enough from Ben so that he wouldn’t attempt to take her hand. It was nothing personal; she wanted her fingers free to rove, to sense. It was colder here than in the city and, being past sunset, she really felt the chill. She hadn’t been dressed for this colder weather and she suddenly felt self-conscious in clothes that were still ripe with the dirt and water of the previous night. She realized suddenly how much cleaner Bayarma’s clothes and body had been in Galderkhaan… except for her fingers, but they were dirty with clean, rich earth.