Eilifir was standing on the small patio, tucked behind a column. Ben didn’t notice him until they were climbing the short, white wooden steps. The man nodded at Ben but smiled at Caitlin.
“This is an honor,” the man said, extending his hand to Caitlin. “I’m Eilifir Benediktsson.”
Caitlin shook his hand and they all went inside. The foyer and the salon were dark, the shades drawn. The carpets and wallpaper smelled of an aging beach house.
“If you wouldn’t mind waiting here,” he said, indicating the salon.
Caitlin looked toward a closed door on the opposite side of the room. “I came to see the tile,” she said. “It’s here.”
Eilifir moved between Caitlin and the door. “How do you know that?”
She raised the two fingers of her right hand. They were vibrating rapidly, beyond spontaneous muscular fasciculation.
“I cannot help this,” she said, her voice a blend of anger and desperation. “Let me see the tile, please.”
“Do step aside, Eilifir,” a voice rolled through the salon as the door opened. “I wish to see our guests.”
A man dressed in a long white robe entered the room. He stood about five feet tall and had the same gold eyes, ruddy complexion, and short, dark hair as Yokane. Beside him stood a taller, grizzled man holding a plain mahogany box; the tile was inside. It was buzzing in her fingertips.
Ben looked like he did when Caitlin first met him in a master class on the theory and practice of terminology. He stood silent but alert, missing nothing. Caitlin was trying to stay balanced—open to the tile but guarded to the Technologist.
“I am Antoa,” the man said.
“Ramat, Antoa.”
“Greetings to you as well,” he said, smiling. “Mr. Skett you know?”
Caitlin glanced at the other man and shook her head. There was a foulness about Skett, and she turned back to the leader. Antoa seemed an amiable man, less guarded than Yokane, less suspicious than Flora. Perhaps because he no longer had the one and possibly the other to concern him.
“We have just been discussing how much you have achieved in just a few weeks,” Antoa said. “More than many of us have in a lifetime.”
“It’s easy when you can borrow the lives of others,” Caitlin said. “I would like to try and establish a deeper connection with the stone.”
“That won’t be possible,” Antoa said. “Not because I don’t wish it, but because it has been disconnected from the others. The power inside is once again dormant.”
“That power,” Caitlin said, moving toward him. “What is it? Where does it come from?”
“The Candescents, we believe,” the man said.
“What is your evidence?” Ben asked. He added quickly, “I’m Ben Moss, Caitlin’s friend and linguistic consultant.”
Antoa regarded him politely. “The evidence is that there is no other explanation,” he replied. “That is why we are excited to have this artifact to study. It is a tile, we believe, from the motu-varkas, the most powerful set of tiles in Galderkhaan.”
“It is powerful,” Caitlin observed. “I have seen it. I was there with the transcended souls of two Priests.”
Antoa’s expression was as respectful as it was curious. “I wish to hear everything about your experience,” he said.
“I’ll be happy to oblige, after I go back and save my son. I believe he is trapped there on the eve of the destruction of Galderkhaan.”
Just mentioning that catastrophe caused Antoa’s smile to waver.
“I help you go,” a throaty voice said from the other room.
Caitlin took a few steps around Antoa and Casey Skett. Behind them, Caitlin could see Madame Langlois and Enok in what looked like a library. The woman was seated in a deep armchair and had an unlit cigar in her mouth. Her son was standing several paces in front of her and to the side, between the door and his mother. Behind them, a fire glowed in a large stone fireplace.
“I am happy to see you again,” Caitlin said in earnest. She continued to approach. “You knew something was happening.”
“I listen to noise, I see the light, they do not lie,” she said.
“What is the truth they tell?” Caitlin asked.
“Yes, they, they,” the madame replied. “You understand. They ask for you. First I thought, ‘They take you,’ but no, you are here. Now I understand.”
“Tell me,” Caitlin said. She held her hand as she passed the tile to keep it from trembling. “Who are ‘they?’”
“The dead.”
“Cai, do I even have to say ‘be careful?’” Ben said, walking several steps behind her.
Caitlin hushed him with her hand. “Do you mean the dead of Galderkhaan?”
Madame Langlois shook her head. “The dead of the snake.”
“The snake. You mean the one I saw in Haiti?”
“The snake I saw in Haiti before I leave,” Madame Langlois responded.
“Let me talk to them, the dead,” Caitlin said.
Ben caught up to Caitlin and stopped her at the door. Her eyes were unblinking, intense. “Cai, please. I don’t think you’re all here right now. Just come back and sit down, get some input from the others—”
Eilifir had walked up behind Ben and gently but firmly held him back. “Don’t interfere.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Ben said to him.
“What explorer does? Let this play out.”
Before Ben could figure out what to do next—as, clearly, the only rational man in the room—Madame Langlois waved her son over. She handed him her cigar and indicated for him to light it from the fireplace. The young man did so, puffing it to life and handing it back to her.
“They see you. They hear. Perhaps they speak.” Tucking the cigar in her mouth, Madame Langlois blew three quick puffs at the cherrywood floor. The gray clouds vanished quickly.
The shadows cast by the fireplace rippled on the floor behind each person in the room. Standing beside Caitlin, Ben felt a deep chill and was the first to notice that her shadow had changed. It had the general shape of Caitlin O’Hara but there was a diaphanous shade around it—the contours of a robe.
“Look,” Eilifir said to Antoa.
“Casey, the portal is not quite closed,” the Technologist said. “Open the box and set it down.”
Skett did as he was told and then backed away. The tile glowed faintly and the shadow began to writhe toward it with a pronounced snakelike undulation.
“Is this how it began before?” Antoa asked him.
Skett shook his head. “There was no visible element.”
“But the curvilinear shape was present,” Antoa replied. He held his open hands toward the shadow as if to caress it, to savor its presence. “They were present as lines of power, bent around the earth. It is everywhere in Galderkhaan.”
“Why this woman and why now?” Eilifir asked.
Ben wanted to say, Because I involved her in this. She helped stop a war and save our world yet destroyed another. The question is where does she go from here?
But he just watched as the shadow moved around the box, covered the tile, created a dark scrim over the golden light.
“Madame Langlois,” Antoa said. “Are you causing any of this?”
“I just point,” she said. “They move.”
“The African migration,” Antoa said. “Our pieces are everywhere—”
That was the last thing Ben heard before Caitlin screamed.
CHAPTER 22