The Sea of Time

XXII The End of Many Things

The step-forward tunnel snaked through the earth, one side of it plunging down into an abyss with a pulse of fire in its depths. Rising heat made the air dance. The lichen which had provided Jame with light before now crunched to powder underfoot. Everything trembled.

Shade went first, clutching the wall. Jorin followed her, and then Jame.

The path seemed very narrow, making Jame wonder how she had trod it before, in the near dark, without falling off. Underfoot, the way sloped toward the abyss, and stones dislodged by their boots rattled over the edge.

She also worried about the Randir. Shade seemed to have pulled herself together, but her face still twitched grotesquely as memories of those whom she had slain distorted it.

Jame wondered if she could have done the same, granting such dire mercy. True, people often died around her, but she seldom killed them, even in a berserker rage. It was more as if she created a climate in which death was prone to occur. How much worse would it be if she became That-Which-Destroys? Who would be safe from her then?

The earth belched and coughed up a fiery plume. The mass of molten rock was still far down, but rising, and the surrounding walls shook with its approach. Judging by the number of calderas within calderas at Urakarn, Jame guessed that such volcanic activity happened there relatively often. This, however, seemed like something special.

With a sharp crack, the path fragmented under her feet. She threw herself forward to claw at what remained, her frantic nails finding cracks, involuntarily widening them. Jorin squawked as Shade thrust him aside. Her hands closed over Jame’s wrists. For a moment, Jame thought that all three of them would go over the edge—no, all four since Addy still clung to her neck. The serpent slithered up her arm onto Shade’s, then higher still around the Randir’s shoulders. Jame had the distinct impression that Addy didn’t care if she fell or not, but Shade hung on. The changer’s shape altered to that of a short, burly Kendar, spreading from her hands up. With a sudden jerk, she hauled Jame to safety.

“That’s the first time . . .” she gasped, collapsing back into her own form, “that I’ve been able . . . to use . . . someone else’s strength.”

“Interesting.”

Jame looked back the way they had come. The path had fallen into the abyss for more than a hundred feet. Let the Karnids try to scurry home now.

They kept going, leaving the glow below behind. The lichen regained enough of its fluorescence to light their way dimly, and there was no sign of feral trocks. How far did each step take them? A mile? Ten? A hundred? Perhaps an hour passed until at last they came to the spiral stair that led up toward the top of the Escarpment.

Light filtered down the steps. Was the lid off above? No. Here was a new hole in the wall at the level of the Undercliff. Jame peered out of it and gave a low whistle of surprise. An Overcliff tower had fallen through the roof into the Undercliff’s largest cave causing landslides, fallen stalactites, and damage to the walls due to the concussion.

Obviously, things in Kothifir had gotten a lot worse.

From somewhere came the shrill cries of children.

Jame and Shade clambered down a rubble slide to the cave’s floor. The fallen tower’s debris reached nearly from wall to wall, on top of which perched its roofed upper story incongruously intact, like a hat. They edged around it.

On the far side, water spilled across the floor, running from the back of the cavern, where some branch of the Amar had been breached, to the front, where it spilled out of the cave’s mouth. It seemed barely deep enough to wet boot leather, but Jame stopped Shade before she could step into it.

“Look.”

One couldn’t make out much due to the poor light, but in the middle of the flood a long, serrated line broke the surface, moving in a sinuous ripple that cut the flowing water. Something seemed to lurk beneath it, impossibly big for so shallow a depth.

“I’ve seen such a thing before,” said Jame. “A leviathan in a puddle. Then, it was a dead god.”

“That’s not all that’s dead.”

Shade gestured downstream. Black-robed bodies sprawled in the shallow water, or at least parts of them did. Their blood darkened the flood.

“I think this is an Old Pantheon water god,” Jame said, “probably the one that walks on baby feet. Listen.”

They heard the children’s voices again, coming from the other side of the water, echoing flatly as if within some close-set place.

“We’ve got to cross,” said Jame. “No, not you, Jorin. Stay. Shade, you’d better go first. This is likely to rile it.”

Shade gave her a sharp, sidelong look, then took a deep breath and backed up. The stream was about twenty feet wide, split down the middle by that shifting spine. She took a running start and jumped. Her foot came down on the monster’s back between notches. She launched herself off of it and made the far shore.

WHOMP.

The creature’s head jerked up in a spray of water, toothy jaws agape, baby hands flailing. Jame leaped to its back. Slimy scales shifted under her feet, nearly throwing her off, but she managed to lurch to the far side where Shade caught her.

THOMP.

It settled back into the water grumbling, only its nostrils above the surface, its tail atwitch.

The voices echoed out of the entrance to a maze of side caves. More luck than skill led them down the right branch into a cavern shaped like an amphitheater. Fang’s urchins scuttled around its upper galleries, pelting a black-robed figure below with rocks. He in turn swung a long sword wildly, trying to bat the missiles away. Fang herself stood guard at the narrow mouth of a side cave. The man rushed at her. She ducked back as he swung his sword. It hit the stone lintel and almost jumped out of his hands with the shock. Before he could recover, Fang stepped in and knifed him under the ribs. He fell. The children cheered. Fang wiped her blade on his robe, then saw the newcomers.

“About time you showed up,” she said to Jame. “This is the third we’ve killed in the Undercliff so far, not counting the ones that the Guardian of the Ford has claimed.”

Jame prodded the fallen man, who was obviously a Karnid.

“What are they after?”

“Come and see.”

She stepped back into the side cave. It was fairly comfortable as such things go, lit by glowing chunks of diamantine, its floor covered with rugs and furs. The former Lord Merchandy lay on a pallet by the far wall, unconscious, breathing with a harsh rattle. Dani, formerly Lady Professionate, sat beside him, holding his hand. She looked up, her eyes wide with fear.

“Are we safe?”

“For the moment,” said Fang, sheathing her knife. “It would be better if we shifted you farther back into the caves, though.”

“He can’t be moved. I think he’s dying. Oh, why did Mother Vedia have to go Overcliff?”

Then she saw Jame. “At last!”

Jame wondered why everyone was so glad to see her. What did they expect her to do? For that matter, what was going on?

“I told you,” said Shade, reading her expression. “The city is infested with Karnids and has been for months. Come the rising, which I guess is tonight, their mission is to kill every former guild lord and grandmaster who doesn’t support Prince Ton.”

“Why would they do that for a Kothifiran?”

“Ton is a Karnid sympathizer, or so he tells them. If the Karnids can make him king, their prophet hopes to gain indirect control of the Southern Host.”

Jame stared at her. “Now you tell me?”

Shade shrugged. “When has there been time?”

“But surely this means that King Krothen is in danger too, more so than anyone else.”

“We hear,” said Fang, “that Prince Ton is holding him prisoner at the top of his Rose Tower. All of his Kencyr guards are outside the city walls on the clifftop plain. Gemma has finally sent an army against us.”

Jame remembered how raiders from that rival city had plagued Kothifir even before the Change had weakened it. Just the same . . .

“Why now?” she asked, helplessly.

Fang shrugged. “The rumor in the city is that Ton has promised Gemma the treasure towers if it attacks at the same time as his palace coup. More likely, though, that’s a lie, and it’s his mother Princess Amantine who’s behind all this maneuvering.”

Jame stood for a moment, fitting all of this together in her mind, deciding what to do next.

“I have business Overcliff,” she said. “Will you be all right here?”

Fang grinned, her filed teeth flashing. “We’ll manage.”

Without the need for immediate action, Shade had sagged against a wall, hands over her face. Between her fingers, her features twitched and changed. “I’m no good to you like this,” she said in a distorted voice. “Go on without me.”

“Walk wary,” Fang called after Jame. “All the Old Gods except for the Guardian went up into the city last night to protect it from the Karnids. You may meet some of them coming back.”

Jame found Jorin on the near side of the stream, anxiously waiting for her with pricked ears and wide, moon-opal eyes. He had apparently crossed by jumping from Karnid body to dismembered body, as she probably should have done herself rather than risk the Guardian’s maw. They returned by this route to the west bank and climbed up the regular stair that debouched on a back street, the same shaft down which Hangnail had pushed Jame so long ago. Luckily its lid was still off, maybe permanently so in order to accommodate those who depended on this route to the Undercliff.

By the time they reached the Overcliff, the eastern sky was faintly aglow with the harbinger of dawn and the moon had set.

To the right, Jame could see the gaping hole through which the tower had fallen, surrounded by leaning buildings. Some swayed, creaking, and dropped stones into the pit. Others settled, crunching, on their broken foundations. The sooner Kothifir got back its god-king, the better.

They made their way toward the former site of the Kencyr temple. The towers Jame passed were dark and quiet, their windows shuttered. Threatened both by the army outside its gates and by the enemy within, the citizens were hiding. From somewhere in the distance, though, came shouts and an occasional crash. The Karnids wouldn’t be so noisy, nor probably the Old Pantheon gods. Who else was abroad tonight?

Here was the place where she had last met Dorin, son of Denek, son of Dinnit Dun-eyed, next to the broken foundation of the tower that had contained the Kencyr temple. Rubble still loomed dark in the predawn light. However long she had been gone, no one had yet done anything about it.

Jorin pressed against her leg, growling. Three dark figures had emerged from the shadows and were silently approaching. Karnids, for certain. Jame might have run, but she had unfinished business here. She slid into fighting stance. Then someone stepped between her and the advancing men.

“Don’t look,” said the Earth Wife’s red-haired Favorite to Jame over his shoulder. Then he spread wide his coat.

A blinding flood of light emerged, fiercer than it had been for his predecessor when he had appeared as the sun at the summer solstice. It painted the inside of Jame’s eyelids crimson as she turned her face away and shielded it. She heard the Karnids cry out and smelled something burning. They stumbled away, their faces seared, their eyes, burst, streaming down into their beards.

The Favorite closed his coat and buckled it, although light still shone through the seams. He turned back to Jame. “What are you doing here?”

“I have something to return.”

She drew the miniature temple out of her pocket, where its sharp edges had been bruising her hip all night, and carefully placed it on the road near the entrance to the step-forward tunnel. Tiny, outraged voices piped up inside it. It pulsed and grew, making Jame and the Favorite hastily retreat, but stopped when it was only three feet high. One side opened like a door and a crumpled figure forced its way out. The high priest straightened up and shook out his robes.

“Well?” he demanded, blind eyes fiercely aglare. “Are you quite done shaking us around like dice in a box? Answer me, whoever you are!”

“Will the temple keep growing?”

“In its own good time. I know your voice. You’re that wretched girl who calls herself the Talisman. Where is my grandson Dorin?”

How best to answer that?

“I’m afraid,” said Jame carefully, “that he died trying to save you from the Karnids.”

“What, here? Oh, never mind. Somehow, you’re to blame. Ishtier warned us that you were trouble, and he was right.”

He reached out to grab her, but she dodged away. His clawlike hands flexed, trying to pull in the power with which to strike her, but the temple was still too small.

“Later,” he panted. “Now, go away!”

“What an unpleasant old man,” remarked the Favorite as they left, not quite at a run.

“You understood him?” The priest had been speaking in Kens.

“No, but ill will translates itself.”

“What’s going on in the city?”

“We are hunting, as you see.”

They paused to let a swarm of frogs hop past in formation: “GEEP, geep, geep . . .”

“But there are fewer Karnids than we expected. Meanwhile, Master Needham and his followers are storming the treasure towers, but I think they will hold. Then there are Prince Ton’s bully boys, defending the Rose Tower against the Armorers’ Guild.”

“King Krothen is still there?”

“At the top, with Prince Ton and Princess Amantine. Ton wants his uncle to abdicate. He’s afraid, if he commits regicide, that the white won’t come to him. They’ve been at Krothen all night. The king must be tougher than he looks.”

He paused and gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m right, aren’t I? You were once a Favorite.”

“How d’you know that?”

“Odd thoughts come to me, since I won the red. So tell me: how did you manage all of those women? They line up outside my door every night. I hardly get any sleep at all.”

Afterward, trotting through the streets with Jorin at her side, Jame decided that the Favorite hadn’t really believed her tale of the Four as worshipped by the Merikit. He seemed to think she had some as yet undisclosed secret that would make his own life more bearable. In that, she was sorry to disappoint him. It occurred to her that she had been lucky in her own experiences. That in turn made her wonder, yet again, how her growing family in the hills was doing.

She also thought about what the Favorite had said regarding the Karnids in Kothifir, that there were fewer of them than he had expected. When she had left Urakarn—Trinity, had that only been a few hours ago?—it had seemed to be deserted. If its residents hadn’t used the step-forward tunnel to flood Kothifir, where were they?

To the northeast, firelight bloomed out of the streets accompanied by distant shouts. Master Needham was trying to breach the treasure towers with flame. Jame had seen them. They had no lower windows, iron doors, and granite walls. All in all, they hardly required guards. Needham’s chances of sacking the treasuries without inside help didn’t look good.

She stopped on the edge of the central plaza. There was the Rose Tower, twisting up into the sky like an inverted tornado. Its outer spiral stair swarmed. A handful of Prince Ton’s militia held the top of the steps. Jame recognized the bully whose head she had set on fire before Paper Crown’s tower. Half the Armorers’ Guild assaulted from below, led by Gaudaric and Ruso. The militia had made a barrier of furniture at the level of Krothen’s apartment that functioned like a cork. Despite superior arms, armor, and numbers, Krothen’s would-be rescuers were making little progress.

Black-clad figures slipped out of the mouths of surrounding streets, intent on taking the attackers from behind. As Jame drew breath to shout a warning, however, a gray form materialized in front of the foremost Karnid. Smoke issued from its hooded cloak. It spread wide its arms and enveloped the oncoming man. The cloak momentarily bulged with its thrashing prey and then dissolved into a sooty cloud. A second later it rose again behind another Karnid who, in swerving to avoid the greasy spot on the paving where his mate had disappeared, ran full into its arms.

Poof, poof, poof . . .

Then it reared up before Jame.

There was no face within the hood, only churning ash, and it stank of charred flesh.

“Burnt Man . . .” she gasped.

But guilt and grief choked her. Never mind that she seldom killed; how many had died because of her? Faces swirled in the ashen flakes: Dally, Theocandi, Vant, Bane . . .

“Father!”

Child of Darkness, where is my sword? Where are my . . .

He had meant to say “my fingers,” for they had broken off when she had pried Kin-Slayer out of them, and she had carried away one of them with his signet ring still on it—all for Tori, who hadn’t known what to do with either.

Accept my judgment. That was the voice of the blind Arrin-ken who called himself the Dark Judge, whose precinct was the Riverland. You know your guilt.

. . . yes . . .

“No.”

A hand grabbed her by the collar and jerked her back. Jame landed on her butt, shocked to feel real pain.

Brier Iron-thorn stood between her and the hooded figure who might or might not be the Burnt Man. It coughed in her face. The image swirled on its breath of a stern-faced woman who looked much like Brier herself.

. . . my daughter . . .

“No,” said Brier. “I was a child when you died, not to blame for your death, nor would you want me to feel that I was. Go away.”

The gray form writhed within its cloak as if trying to strike out, but the Kendar faced it down, glowering. With a groan, it melted into the pavement.

Brier turned to Jame.

“I had a feeling that you were back,” she said gruffly. “D’you know that you’ve been gone twenty days?”

Jame got gingerly to her feet. “I thought as much, if not worse. For me, it was yesterday.”

“Huh.”

“Anyway, why aren’t you with the Host outside the walls?”

“No cadet is.” The Kendar glanced to the west. The growing glow of the eastern dawn tinged her red hair with smoldering accents. “Only so many could take the lifts Overcliff in time for the general engagement, which happened last night. As far as I can make out, the Gemmans arrived at dusk yesterday and settled into camp for a dawn offensive. They didn’t reckon with our ability to see in the dark, which it wasn’t anyway with a nearly full moon. The rest of us stayed in camp to defend it, don’t ask me against what. The last I heard, the Host was still sweeping the last of the Gemmans back.”

So much, then, for one foreign threat.

Jame looked across the plaza to the struggling figures on the stair, who had so conveniently been left to strive on their own, without Kencyr intervention.

“Krothen is in trouble,” she said. “We need to help him.”

“How?”

Jame paused to think. “Everyone is focused on the outer stair, but there must be a way up through the interior.”

They circled the tower. At its foot stood a gleaming mechanical dog the size of a small pony. Ruso had been busy. Two apprentices were struggling to wind up the metallic beast with a thin iron rod thrust through the bow of a key set between its shoulder blades. With each jerk, its head rose a notch and flanges twitched lips back from iron teeth.

Beyond that, they found a side portal that opened into the servant quarters. These were deserted, everyone either apparently having run away or been driven out. There was indeed an internal stair, spiraling up the center of the tower’s shaft. They climbed, all the time hearing the muffled shouts of battle outside the walls. Past guard rooms, kitchens, offices, the chambers of royal ladies. . . .

Here was Krothen’s apartment, once so elegant, now ransacked to provide material for the barrier raised on the landing outside its door where Ton’s militia swarmed. The inner stair went no further.

Someone was sobbing. Jame circled the ruins of a massive bed and found Lady Cella crouched on the floor in the crimson pool of her skirts, cradling the body of her handsome boy toy. His head lolled over her arm, a swathe of golden hair hanging over his eyes. Someone had broken his neck.

“He tried to defend my cousin Krothen,” she wailed. Tears had soaked her veil so that it clung unflatteringly to her nearly chinless, middle-aged face. “Oh, I should have taken him away before Prince Ton’s bullies burst in! Ton never understood about us and, when he was dead, Princess Amantine only laughed. Gods damn her!”

“I’m sorry,” said Jame. What else could one say? “How do I get to the top?”

Cella gulped, trying to compose herself. “Krothen’s dais rises and falls. Right now, it’s stuck in the throne room.”

Outside, someone shouted a warning. Jame heard the scrabble of steel claws on the stair, circling the tower. Rotating, she followed the silver body as it surged up the steps. Gaudaric’s men hastily made way for it. The mechanical hound slammed into the barricade raised by Ton’s followers and shattered it. Debris hurtled into the room and out over the balustrade, likewise most of the militia. Cella screamed. Then someone caught the dog in midstride, off balance, and tipped it sideways. It hit the railing and bumped along it from baluster to baluster, legs churning, until stone gave way. The metal dog flew out into space and down, to a cry of protest from Ruso.

“No,” said Brier, as if echoing him, but her attention was fixed on the one who had destroyed his creation. “Amberley.”

She stepped out onto the stair to confront her former lover.

“Why?” she asked.

Amberley tossed back honey-gold hair and smiled at her. “Sweet, sweet Brier Rose. You always have to be right, don’t you?”

“Have I said that?”

“Not in so many words, but I watch rather than listen.”

She began to circle the other Kendar, who stood rigid on the landing. Her fingers slid under Brier’s hair to caress the nape of her neck. Auburn hair rippled at her touch. Brier shivered.

“Was it your fault, though? The Knorth tempted you, and you fell, like your mother before you.”

“Rose Iron-thorn never swore to the Knorth.”

“She might as well have, after what happened at Urakarn and in the Wastes.” Amberley flicked Brier’s hair and stepped away. “Lord Caineron never forgave her for that, or you, by extension. It was clear enough that he meant to break you to his service. That’s why I didn’t want you to go to Restormir to become a cadet. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

“About Lord Caineron, yes.”

“So you came back to me, until the Knorth lordling whistled you away. Well, what if I told you that there was a stronger lord than Torisen? And no, I don’t mean Caldane. I met him, the Master of us all. He came to me in the mountains when I was on patrol. My horse spooked at his shadow and threw me among the rocks. When I looked up, there he was, and there was no gainsaying his power.”

“You mean Gerridon,” said Brier evenly.

Jame was surprised. Few Kencyr thought about the Master of Knorth anymore, as if he were lost in the mists that confused history and legend. That was one of his strengths.

“Who else?” Amberley’s white teeth flashed again in her sun-darkened face. “The Karnids may call him their prophet, but we know who he is, and what he will become.”

“And what is that?”

“Why, our Master again, as he was always meant to be.”

“Have you encountered Torisen since he became Highlord?”

“No. Why?”

“Then you don’t know his true strength.”

Amberley’s smile became a grimace. “As I said, you always have to be right, and now you are bound to that freak whom he has named his lordan. Oh, Brier, Brier.”

The Southron took a step forward and Amberley, despite herself, took a step back. Her foot struck the first step of the final flight.

“What do you know of so ancient a bloodline and of its last descendents? It was you who told the Karnids the lordan would be on wide patrol the day she was nearly kidnapped, wasn’t it? And I suppose you arranged for that note to be slipped under her door in the first place.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Will you stand aside?”

“What do you think?”

They drew back into fighting position, Amberley mounting the stair to gain the higher ground. Gaudaric’s forces watched from below. Ton’s above were too scattered and shaken to care.

Jame shook her attention away from the members of the militia lying groaning on the apartment floor. She crossed to the opposite eastern side of the tower, dodging through wreckage, and leaned out a window. Above her was the ring of stone thorns from which the Gemman raiders had hung. She jumped and caught one. It began to give way. Hastily, she swung a leg up over it and scrambled onto the walk that circled the marble rose petals of the dome. Voices rose within.

“Abdicate,” Prince Ton was pleading. He sounded exhausted and near tears, his adolescent voice cracking. “Even now, physicians may save you!”

Princess Amantine’s deep voice answered him with a scornful snort: “Pull yourself together, boy. You know that there can be only one god-king.”

Krothen laughed, choked, and laughed again. “That may not be you, cousin . . . whatever happens to me . . . especially if it be . . . at your hands.” He paused, wheezing. “Only you and I . . . are left . . . among the male heirs of our house. Who comes next? Your mother?”

Jame slipped between the stone petals, emerging behind Krothen’s massive bulk as it slumped on the dais. Bending to peer under his arm, she saw Amantine draw herself up to her full if negligible height, her court gown rising to reveal shoes with improbably high heels. Ton hovered at her elbow like an overstuffed bolster, in sweat-stained, premature white with bedraggled pink trim.

“Would it be such a disaster if I came to rule?” demanded the princess. “I have more courage and skill than either you or my son.”

“Mother . . .”

“Face the truth, boy. Where would you be without me? Even if the white should truly come to you, you need my guidance.”

“Your Magnificence,” Jame whispered to Krothen under cover of the growing familial ruckus. “How can I help?”

He laughed again, ending with a wet, racking cough. “You see Life on my right hand . . . Death on my left.”

In the filtered, predawn light, Jame made out Mother Vedia’s plump form wreathed with restless snakes to one side of Krothen and the crone with a box to the other. The box was open. The crone raised a skinny finger to chapped lips.

“Only the god-touched can see us,” whispered Mother Vedia.

Jame could hear the muffled sound of Brier and Amberley battling on the stair. At a guess, they were moving upward. She wondered briefly which form of combat, Kencyr or Kothifiran, they were using. Did one favor unequal ground over the other?

A sudden glow of light came through the stone petals behind her and began to climb Krothen’s back. Sunrise. To the north of the chamber, it slanted in through the gap where a petal had broken off during the earthquake when Jame had last been here.

Krothen groaned.

Jame circled him. The princess was trying to shake the much heavier prince, only succeeding in shaking herself, but Jame ignored them both. Krothen exhaled with a rattle, and his eyes rolled up in their sockets. Then he was still.

The crone closed her box and faded away.

From outside at a distance came the crash of falling towers. Jame wondered if the treasuries had been taken, but the sound came from the wrong direction.

“That’s your temple,” said Mother Vedia. “It’s coming to life again, knocking over its neighbors. Where did you place it, anyway?”

Jame thought that she could feel the return of power, when she extended her sixth sense. She certainly felt the high priest’s rage; somehow, he had learned of his grandson’s fate, if not necessarily of its circumstances.

“Quick now!” hissed Mother Vedia. “Help him!”

“Who?” Jame stared, helpless, at the edifice of inert flesh before her. “How?”

Krothen sat there with mouth agape and blank eyes. His exposed flesh had taken on the waxy translucence of marble. When she touched the folds of his robe, they were hard, and cold, and she could see the shadow of her fingers through them.

The chamber’s doors burst open. Amberley skidded into the room, propelled backward by Brier’s attack. Ton and Amantine scuttled out of the way, clinging to each other. Brier followed her lover’s retreat.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said.

Amberley laughed breathlessly and drew a hand across her mouth, smearing blood from a split lip. “I always said that you were good. Would I have settled for anything less?”

Gaudaric and Ruso appeared in the doorway. The latter’s red hair and beard, which had hung limp during the Change, now bristled with energy and sparked at the tips. “I can’t believe it,” he was saying, excitedly waving his once-too-heavy axe as if it were made of balsa, making Gaudaric duck. “I’m Lord Artifice again!”

Amberley backed toward the gap in the stone petals, into the slanting stream of morning light. Her hair glowed like a golden crown. Bloody face notwithstanding, she looked magnificent.

“You have the advantage here,” she said. “I see that. Another time, then.”

“Amb—”

“No.” She stepped over the broken marble stub onto the outer walk. “Where I am going, death cannot follow, nor can you. Good-bye, sweet Brier Rose.”

With that, she took another step out into space and was gone.

Brier had taken a hasty stride after her but now halted, staring at the vacant slice of sky beyond the dome. Then she turned to Jame with a blank face and stricken eyes.

“What did she mean?”

“About death? The Karnids claim to have conquered it. From what I’ve seen, though, I doubt it.”

She also wondered if Amberley had counted on landing some twenty feet below on the spiral stair, not realizing that on the north side of the Rose Tower, due to the twist in its construction, the drop was sheer.

“Brier.” She tugged on the Kendar’s sleeve, trying to reclaim her dazed attention. “I need your help. Gaudaric, M’lord Artifice, yours as well.”

The latter two approached Krothen’s motionless hulk.

“Is he dead?” asked Ruso, staring.

Gaudaric touched the marmoreal vestments and jerked his hand back, as if cold could burn.

A faint sound escaped from between those parted, rosebud lips:

“. . . help . . .”

“Kroaky!” said Jame. “He’s still inside! Mother Vedia, how do we save him?”

Gaudaric started, having apparently just seen the Old Pantheon goddess standing in Krothen’s shadow. So his god-given status as guild master had also returned.

“I don’t know!” wailed Vedia, wringing her hands in agitation while her snakes tried to wring each other’s necks. “Just get him out!”

“This looks like a job for a mason,” said Gaudaric. “What we need is a chisel and a mallet.”

“No time for that.” Jame looked around frantically for something to use. How much air did Kroaky have? “We’ve got to smash our way in.”

Princess Amantine pushed past her to stand in the way. “Sacrilege!” she boomed. “This is my nephew’s sepulcher. I forbid you to desecrate it!”

Ruso picked her up and put her, sputtering, aside. Prince Ton attacked him with a flurry of plump fists.

“How dare you lay hands on my mother!”

“Not now, sonny. King Krothen is dead, but the white hasn’t come to you, has it? So stand aside.”

He turned back to the petrified former monarch.

“A sculptor once told me that marble is softer when first quarried than later,” he said, and tapped the figure’s distended belly with his axe. The translucent marble robe covering it shattered like thin ice over a pond. Beneath was dimpled, marble skin apparently drawn over billows of former flesh.

“Go on,” said Gaudaric, leaning in to watch.

Another harder blow near the deep navel cracked the surface. It gave way. They stared at the next layer, which resembled tightly packed pebbles.

“I think this was fat,” said Jame, and poked it with a finger.

Her touch broke the surface tension. They jumped back as a landslide of stones crashed down to rattle and bounce on the floor. More and more fell, hundreds of pounds’ worth. Was the entire abdomen emptying? No. As the dust cleared, inside they could see the petrified organs: loops of frozen intestines, an enlarged liver, but most of all the stomach, which filled most of the enormous cavity. From within this last came a faint scratching.

Ruso scrambled back through the sliding, shifting pile of pebbles. He took careful aim, but as he swung his axe, stones rolled under his feet and he nearly fell.

“Again, again!” said Mother Vedia, clasping her hands in an ecstasy of agitation.

Ruso grunted and regained his stance. This time he used the butt end of his weapon to rap on the distended organ, lightly at first, then harder and harder. Cracks laced its surface. Then it disintegrated and a body spilled out.

“Kroaky!” said Jame, and rushed to help.

Krothen’s younger, thinner self sprawled on the pile of rocks, gasping for breath. He was coated with dust but otherwise naked. Also, he appeared to be choking.

Mother Vedia waded to his side and gave him a firm slap on the back. He exhaled a cloud of dust, then began to breathe more naturally. His eyes opened.

“Well,” he said, gasping, “here I am . . . again.”

Gaudaric regarded him dubiously. “So we see. And yes, I remember you from some fifteen years back. Where have you been?”

Kroaky laughed and drew a shaky hand across his face. Dirt and dust smeared. “Most recently, being introspective. Before that, having fun.”

He looked back at the former shell of himself and sighed. “I suppose those days are over now. No more frolicking anonymously in the Undercliff. Well, I’ve had a good run.”

Amantine and Ton had been edging closer, eyes round.

“I don’t believe it,” said the princess. “You can’t be he. This is a trick to deprive my son of his rights.”

“On the contrary,” said Kroaky, not unkindly, “I hereby name him my heir apparent, unless I should have children of my own. What do you think?” he appealed to Jame. “Will Fang marry me?”

“Queen Fang.” Jame tasted the words. “I like it.”

“Well, I don’t.” Princess Amantine drew herself up, ruffled as a disturbed partridge. “I will fight this. No one will believe it anyway. Ton, come!”

She trotted to the door in her high heels, only noticing when she reached it that her son had not followed.

The prince looked at Kroaky askance, sheepishly. “Er . . . peace?”

“Ton-ton!” bellowed his mother.

“Mother, I’m sorry, but this has gone much too far already. Besides, I’m tired of fighting.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. Her eyes were bulging. “You . . . you little ingrate!”

With that, she turned and stormed down the stairs. They heard her startled exclamation when she reached the level of Krothen’s apartment, then a scream, suddenly cut short. Gaudaric went to investigate.

“Lady Cella was waiting for her below,” he reported back. “She tackled Princess Amantine and they both fell through the broken rail, off the tower.”

Ton uttered an indistinct cry and plunged toward the door. There he got stuck before turning to edge through sideways. They heard him thunder down the steps.

“For what it’s worth,” said Jame, “the tower overhangs the stair at that point. Still, it’s a significant drop.”