The Sound of Seas

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.

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

Caitlin awoke in a gently swaying hammock. There was distant, muted noise and someone sleeping at her side. The room was dark and the physical atmosphere was highly charged.

Her head throbbed as if she had a hangover; it wasn’t the drugs from the hospital, it was something else. It came with a floral scent, something other than jasmine, that clung to the insides of her nose.

Caitlin was aware of all that in a moment. It took her a few seconds longer to realize she was back in Bayarma’s body, in a hammock onboard Standor Qala’s airship, that people were very active just a few feet away… and that the figure beside her was that of little Vilu. She released a single, breath-stopping sob when she realized she had made it back.

Even in the dim light behind drawn, heavy curtains, she could tell that he was asleep or unconscious; his normal, audible breathing suggested the former. She prayed that Jacob was no longer here, that he was at home in their apartment with his grandparents.

Caitlin eased from the hammock, gripping the mesh as she steadied herself on wobbly feet on a floor that was swaying too. Vials rattled on a shelf behind her, all of them knocking to the left; the airship was twisting in a wide circle.

Bayarma’s body was perspiring and Caitlin pulled down the hem of her robe before she made her way through the heavy hide curtains suspended from the low ceiling. Walking proved difficult, and not just because of the motion of the airship: she felt pressure, almost as if she were ascending in a high-speed elevator. It was pushing her down, toward the woven flooring, causing the pitch that sealed it to crinkle audibly. She had to move slowly with an awkwardly wide stance to keep from dropping to her knees.

There was more than just the clear sunlight outside the cabin. She squinted as she saw the yellowish glow that suffused the area just below the rail. She noticed that a section of that rail had been broken, that taut bands of hemp had been pulled across the narrow opening.

Crew members were moving swiftly but without panic along the ropes. It reminded her of the crew of a windjammer bracing for a storm, adjusting the sails, preparing for heavy winds.

Standor Qala was forward. The glow was more intense in that direction, girdling the pointed prow of the ship with a nimbus. Caitlin began to approach the officer only to find herself stumbling forward, dropping facedown on the deck, her arms forward, fingers pointing.

Helping hands gathered round her while voices called for assistance. The Standor turned and rushed toward them.

“Bayarma, what are you doing?” Qala asked.

“It’s Caitlin,” she replied in Galderkhaani. “And you must get away from here.”

The Standor indicated for two crew members to carry her back to the sleeping cabin. She followed the woman in then sent the two men away. Caitlin curled protectively around Vilu, spooning, cradling his head while Qala approached. Supporting herself on one of the ropes from which the hammock was suspended, the Standor leaned over the boy and the woman. Her face was drawn, her eyes pained.

“What is it?” Caitlin asked.

“The galdani was using a mineral he discovered—he fell to his death.” With a motion of her forehead she indicated the broken rail.

“Was it a stone? One of the tower tiles?”

Qala nodded. “He said that you two felt it first. What is this? What’s happening? How are you back?”

“I used one of the tiles… in my time,” Caitlin told her. “Standor, you must listen to me. You appear to be heading inland.”

“I am.”

“I beg you to reverse your course, head out to sea.”

“That isn’t possible,” the Standor said as she rose. “I must find out what’s happening to the columns. I have been looking inside the simu-varkas. Something is causing it to burn from within. Apparently others as well.”

“It’s the Source,” Caitlin assured her. She didn’t want to say more unless she had to, lest Qala attempt to stop Vol.

“The expansion of the Source is not yet complete and the conduits to the new tunnels remain closed,” Qala replied.

“It’s the Source,” Caitlin repeated.

“How do you know this? Because you are from the future?”

“That’s all I can tell you. The Source is going to release a great deal of energy and it’s best that your airship—all airships, if you can signal them—go to sea. Boats as well.”

Qala shook her head. “Only the Great Council in Aankhaan can authorize a flotilla. They are prohibited by the Theories of Conflict.”

“Then take that responsibility yourself,” she said. “You will save many lives.”

Qala’s expression darkened. “You are not telling me all you know.”

“I cannot,” she said. “There is too much at risk.”

The Standor turned her back and stood silently facing the wall. Caitlin held tighter to Vilu. Once again, she didn’t know how much time she had here. Her primary goal could not be Qala or the airship. She had to wake the boy and find out if Jacob was still present.

She kissed the boy’s temple once, then again. He stirred.

“Hey there, Captain Nemo,” she said deep into his ear. Even when Jacob couldn’t hear her, he felt the vibrations of her voice.

Vilu rolled his shoulders, reached back to touch the woman.

“Boy of mine,” Caitlin went on. “It’s time to rise and do something wonderful!”

Jacob opened his eyes and then smiled in recognition. “Mother?”

The boy turned and threw his arms around her so hard he nearly choked her. She let him.

Qala had turned and was watching them.

“You are both here, now?” the Standor asked.

Caitlin nodded.

“And you will leave… by the tiles?”

“Hopefully,” she said. “We will return the bodies of Vilu and Bayarma to them.”

“Mom, how did you find me?” Jacob asked.

“Dream magic,” she said. “Like in The Wizard of Oz.”

“I believe you,” he replied, releasing her so he could gesture. “I can hear, now. That’s magic.” The motions came naturally to him and were a beautiful thing to see.

She kissed his forehead. “You know we have to go,” she said.

“Home,” he offered. “Yes, I know. I miss Arfa. And I’m missing school. A lot of it.”

“I’ll tell your teachers I took you on a trip, which is kinda true,” she said.

As they spoke, Caitlin felt the pull of the tower beneath them. It was causing the hammock to sway, to sag. She threw her arms around her son and looked up at Standor Qala.

“I’m sorry about the galdani,” she said.

Qala smiled graciously. “The winds are unusually restive. I must see to the course.” She started toward the curtain.

“Thank you for all you’ve done,” Caitlin said. “If this doesn’t work, if the boy and I are separated—”

Qala stopped and looked back. “Whoever is here, I will look after him,” she said.

The Standor left the cabin and Caitlin broke the embrace with her son. “Jacob, I want you to do exactly as I tell you. All right?”

“I heard everything you just said,” he said, grinning.

“That’s fine, just make sure you do it,” she replied. “I’m going to hold your left hand and point to the ground like this.” She demonstrated how to extend two fingers out and down. “I want you to do the same with your right hand. Got it?”

He nodded.

“We’re both going to feel kind of tingly, but that’s how we’re going to wake from this dream.”

“Like Dorothy Gale did.”

“That’s right,” Caitlin said, smiling.

“That’s better than being attacked by a giant squid like Captain Nemo did,” Jacob said.

“I would think they both present problems,” Caitlin replied. She took his hand and pointed. “Just hold your hand like this, no matter what you feel. And don’t get itchy like you do before you talk in front of class, because you can’t say, ‘Hold everything!’ and scratch.”

“I won’t,” he said. “This isn’t my body. Maybe it won’t even happen.”

“True enough,” Caitlin said, letting go and scooching closer on the hammock. This time she took his hand for real, holding tight to his precious life itself.

As she did, she heard yelling outside, on deck.

“Something is wrong!” someone was crying. “Steam is covering Falkhaan!”

“Stay here!” Caitlin told Jacob as she flung herself from the hammock.

“What about going home?”

“I have to see what’s happening, baby,” she replied. “Promise me you won’t move!”

He crossed his heart. But as Caitlin made her way through the cabin she already knew what was wrong: the tiles were losing power, which meant that something had breached the tower. Pumped outward by the overzealous Source, magma must have broken through under the shallow shoreline and boiled the sea.

Stepping onto the deck she saw Standor Qala aft, ordering maximum speed from the flipperlike wings as, beyond, the water surged onto the shore and around the tower. It wasn’t a tsunami: water was bubbling hotly, violently around a red maelstrom just off the coast, sending waves slamming into every vessel and structure on that side of the harbor. The simu-varkas was cracking from bottom to top and literally sinking into the ground below. The topmost section broke as the tower sank, sending workers to their deaths, destroying the ancestral road beyond, kicking up clouds of sand where structural stones struck the beach. The glowing tiles within fell in arclike pieces, like a shattered ring; they were quickly submerged beneath a wave of silt and water, magma and stone, as well as homes and shops to which people were desperately clinging as they swirled out to sea.

The Standor turned and hurried forward.

“All speed to Aankhaan!” she shouted to a crew member on an open platform outside the control room.

“All speed!” a femora-sita shouted back.

His eyes settled briefly on Caitlin. “We have to warn them about the Source!”

CHAPTER 23

Mikel Jasso got back in the cab of the dead truck. Sunlight scintillated brightly but evanescently on the liquefying surface of the ice sheet. It sparked, then died, flashed somewhere else, then vanished. Thousands and thousands of beads of light appeared as the thin coating of water spread.

“What is going on?” Dr. Cummins asked thickly. “Is it still that portal you opened?”

Mikel watched through the windshield. “Possibly,” he admitted. “The ice should have muted it.”

Dr. Cummins looked out at the nearest column of light. “Maybe this is what it looks like muted. These tiles—is that what’s causing this?”

“I assume they are, but—”

“But what?” Dr. Cummins hugged herself as she waited for his answer. Without power, the car was cooling very quickly.

Mikel did not seem to notice. “You’re right, I think,” he told her.

“God, if only that warmed me! What am I right about?”

“The intensity of the light is the same in all the locations, and the other tiles are still buried,” Mikel said. “This is what the muted light looks like. The question is, will it stay muted for long? The surface of the ice is melting.”

“So the tiles are burning through?” Dr. Cummins asked.

“Perhaps.”

Dr. Cummins made a sour face behind her muffler. “‘Possibly,’ ‘Perhaps,’” she said. “Is there anything we can pin down?”

“If you’ll allow me one more qualified answer, Dr. Cummins, I believe this is true: we are being held here in order to witness this.”

That caused her to pause. “Held here by whom?”

“What I witnessed in the pit was brilliance to smoke, luminescence to death,” Mikel said. “What we’re seeing on the surface is the reverse—smoke to light.”

“Which is scientifically impossible,” she said.

“As far as we know.”

“No,” Dr. Cummins insisted. “Smoke does not unburn. There has to be another explanation. I’m guessing that wasn’t smoke.”

Mikel considered the possibility. “You may be right. It could be that we’re thinking too small, too local.”

“You lost me,” Dr. Cummins said as she tried the engine again.

“It will start later, I’m sure of it,” he said.

“Glad you’re so confident. But we only have about twenty minutes until we start to lose fingers and toes.”

Mikel opened the door.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Cummins yelled.

He hopped down, splattering the truck with water. “There’s warmth out here,” he said. “Actually, it’s more than that—the air is soothing, almost comforting.”

The glaciologist eased from the truck more gingerly than her companion and turned around. “Holy crap. You’re right. Dr. Jasso, what is this?”

“If I had to guess? Rebirth,” he said.

“Of what? Of Galderkhaan? Of its people?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” His eyes slowly followed the column of light into the fair blue sky. “I think it’s a lot bigger than that.”

Mikel began walking forward.

“Dr. Jasso, I wouldn’t!” Dr. Cummins said.

Mikel half turned and smiled. “It’s what I do,” he replied. “I have to know what’s there.” As he moved closer he said, “I have a connection with something on the other side. Something I have felt before.”

Less than a minute later he was inside the dome of light, invisible to Dr. Cummins, with nothing but static on the radio.

CHAPTER 24

Impulsively, Standor Qala put her arm around Caitlin to steady her as the airship surged forward. Her embrace also had the effect of comforting her at a time when she suddenly felt more helpless and afraid than at any time in her life.

“You will need the tiles of the motu-varkas to return home, yes?” the officer asked.

“If they still exist,” Caitlin said. The wind felt good on her face, though it bore a frightening hint of eternity: the abyss in which they would find themselves when they reached Aankhaan. Either they would likely perish in the blast or be stranded in a dead world.

“What caused this to happen?” the Standor asked.

“Deceit, mistrust, arrogance,” she said. “I cannot tell you more.”

“Because you’re afraid I’ll interfere,” Qala said.

“It’s too late for that,” she said. “The process has already begun. I felt it before. I feel it now.”

“How is that possible? To have felt it before.”

She regarded the officer. Qala looked proud, tall, majestic in her uniform, in her command. “Where I come from, I am like a physician,” she said. “Galderkhaani tried to burn and cazh with souls in my time in order to transcend. To stop them, I had to come here… in spirit.”

“Using the tiles?”

“I believe so,” Caitlin said. She smiled. “The motu-varkas seems to like me. To want me.”

“The tiles are wise indeed,” Qala replied.

Caitlin felt a surprising response to that—a longing, a stirring, a closeness she had not felt in years.

Qala tightened her grip around Caitlin’s shoulder. “What would we find if we turned out to sea?”

“Eventually you’ll reach land, a great deal of it,” Caitlin replied. “Most of it warm, hospitable, green, with rivers and lakes filled with freshwater. Soil where you can grow things, instead of in the clouds.” She looked up. “I believe this airship could make the trip, Standor. In my time, others have.”

“You will not be there,” she said.

“I pray not,” Caitlin replied. She studied Qala. “That—that wasn’t directed at you,” she added quickly. “You’re a wonderful soul.”

Qala bent and kissed Caitlin. Caitlin kissed her back, hard. She was surprised but also grateful: until now, she hadn’t known whether the act was part of Galderkhaani life. The kiss endured long after it ended; it had not only felt natural, it felt right.

Though it isn’t my body, Caitlin reminded herself. Maybe this body is different. Except that her brain liked it too. Maybe even more.

As the airship plowed swiftly toward Aankhaan, the air became more turbulent, the skies less inviting. There was a taste of ash in the wind. While Qala went to the forward command post, Caitlin retired to the sleeping cabin to be with Jacob, who was still firmly present in Vilu’s body.

There was nothing Caitlin could do, nothing she and Jacob needed to talk about. They did what they often did, just enjoyed each other’s company. She felt a surprising calm, aware that with maybe only a short time left to them she had to enjoy it. Seated in the hammock, they made up a silly game that involved naming the vials they had seen in the physician’s rack. They ranged from Violetamins to Silversand, after which they created backstories for each substance. Ruby Pebs used to be Queen Ruby Pebbles, ruler of the Quarry Folk who was ousted by the abrasive Green Salters. Pink Wood grew in the Pink Sea that took its color from the setting sun. Caitlin savored every moment, every laugh, as though it would be the last they would ever share.

Engaged with commanding the ship, Standor Qala did not appear until the skies blackened with bloody omen. A dusty, rusty smell accompanied her entry into the cabin. Already, Caitlin could feel the pull of the tiles in the main tower as well as those in the smaller columns that were built in a line to the sea.

“We are within sight of Aankhaan,” the Standor said. “The motu-varkas is churning smoke from its mouth and from the columns that serve as vents.”

“I know,” Caitlin said. She did not have to see it. The image was still fresh in her mind from her spiritual visit. “What are your intentions?”

“Clearly, we cannot moor to any of the columns,” the Standor said.

“Nor should you try,” Caitlin said somberly.

Standor Qala approached with her hands open, imploring. “Cayta-laahn,” she said with obvious effort and respect, “the citizens below are anxious. They gather in groups and many are leaving the city by cart or foot. A few are trying to get to boats, though the seas are rough. Many wave to us. The colored banners for the Night of Miracles are blowing unattended in the courtyards and from parapets. I see Priests and Technologists conferring—”

“They’re too late,” Caitlin said. “Too late.”

“I thought—if you could tell me what I can do to help,” Qala said. “We can lower ladders, ropes, but I fear a panic, that people will fall, or that the weight of so many will pull us down.”

Caitlin left the hammock and stood in front of Qala. She looked up into the woman’s golden eyes. They glowed hauntingly in the preternatural darkness. “Standor, I say again, I implore you—take your crew and head to sea,” Caitlin told her, gesturing powerfully in emphasis. “Do this before—”

An explosion from below rocked the airship hard.

Caitlin knew immediately what it was. She had heard it before. “Go to sea now!” she screamed as she pushed past Qala, left the cabin, and braced herself against an unbroken section of railing. She was forced to grip it tightly as the ship shuddered from a second and third shockwave. The sound was loud and ugly, like a clutch of thunderclaps layered one over the other.

Below, Caitlin saw the caldera of a volcano on the outskirts of the capital. It looked more like a sinkhole that had opened up in the foothills of a mountain range. There were low white structures around it—no doubt the control center for the Source, the place where Vol had gone and was still present. These stone buildings were burning and crumbling, falling along the sides of the small volcano like pilgrims before an enraged god.

Red fury rose from that circular mouth, knocking down the first of the long line of tall, glowing columns that led from the volcano to the sea. Some distance away, on the opposite side, the motu-varkas had been spared.

Caitlin was looking down at the masses of people, at the terrified groups beginning to cazh, at the ritual that brought her here what seemed like ages ago. Houses were burning and collapsing, flaming banners fluttered through the sky and died like exotic birds. Then, slowly, knowingly, Caitlin’s eyes were drawn toward the dark heavens, for she knew—and feared—what she would find there.

Qala came up behind her, shouting back for the boy to remain in the doorway.

“No, come here!” Caitlin called over to him, wriggling her fingers toward her son. He dashed forward, awkward on the rocking deck, and clutched her hand to his chest. Caitlin pulled him close as her eyes sought the Standor. “He must stay with me.”

“But it’s not safe!” Qala said as, suddenly, her own sparkling eyes followed Caitlin’s and were drawn to a glow in the heavens almost directly in front of them. The Standor simply stared for a long moment before uttering, “It is not… possible!”

Caitlin had to suppress a scream as she tried to process what she was witnessing. There, before them, her back to the airship, hovered the spirit Caitlin O’Hara. She was extending her arms, throwing power toward the ground, disrupting the deadly ceremony. The body of Bayarma reacted strongly to the spirit’s appearance, lurching forward as though they were harnessed. Qala had to grab Caitlin tightly around the waist to prevent her from going over the side. The boy dug the heels of his sandals into the deck to keep her close.

“Turn the ship away!” the Standor cried to the usa-femora. “Head to sea!”

As the young woman acknowledged the officer’s command, Caitlin felt herself leaving the grip of the Standor, leaving the ship, leaving her body…

Magma, boiling water, and ascending souls rose furiously from below, mingling in a holocaust of physical death and spiritual anguish. Caitlin relived the pain. She saw it through familiar eyes, the eyes through which she had seen it at the United Nations… when, with the help of Ben Moss, she saved Maanik from an unwanted cazh, prevented her from transcending with the dying of Galderkhaan.

She saw her spirit fall away and fade into the churning smoke of a dying civilization. But then the tableau changed. The destruction grew vaporous and unclear. The souls vanished. The fires went from red to orange to gold. There was nothing around Caitlin but light.

I am gone… yet I am here, she thought as the glow coalesced around her. And she was certain she was not alone but she was too rapt to try and penetrate the glow. She let it talk to her.

The light was now a small, brightly gleaming band, a circle that resembled the olivine tiles but had neither substance nor size—it could be a wedding band or a galaxy. Lights glittered within; but they were not anonymous pinpoints, they were pulsing threads. They were visible but immaterial, undulating and entwining, and growing. Soon she saw other serpentine lights within the outer layer… and more within those.

In her mind, Caitlin wanted to panic. But it was only a thought; she didn’t seem able to act on it. She tried to look around for Jacob but she had no body to move and there was nothing to see, save the light and the seemingly infinite gleaming parts that comprised it.

Then the light went out. Simultaneously, in its place was a universe. Space, familiar in its parts but unfamiliar in its crisp definition—or composition. There were red stars within twisting galaxies, nebulae paler than she had ever seen yet no vast distances between them. They were like a drawing Jacob might have made, all the pieces densely arranged, arranged like graceful, overlapping lengths of string that had neither beginning nor end.

String, she thought. Superstring.

Caitlin did not know much about superstring theory, only that some physicists believed that strings were both the smallest and largest structures in existence, and that the small might well be one and the same with the large in some curved concept of time-space.

As she looked out, Caitlin wasn’t convinced this mightn’t be some form of temporary lunacy, or perhaps a delirium transpiring as she died in Galderkhaan. Not her life passing before her eyes but all life, everywhere, that ever was.

There were sounds created by the moving strings. Notes. They rose and fell, had depth and inflection, changed in time with the movement of the strings. It was almost like the Galderkhaani superlatives, arms moving to support speech. Caitlin did not understand, possibly because there was nothing to understand, only to experience.

Slowly—or swiftly, she couldn’t be sure of time—the strings tightened into a ball that compressed into a spot of light so brilliant that it almost seemed to balance the crushing darkness around it. That light that never quite surrendered its autonomy before erupting again in a flash of hot light.

A new universe is born, she thought as the strings enlarged and expanded outward and there were once again infinite lights within. And then the lights merged and glowed and burst and caused more small lights as well as dark clouds of early nebulae. The lights—the protostars—writhed around and among the gaseous expanses, burning and dying, exploding and being reborn…

Forming worlds. They moved around the stars so swiftly that they seemed to be circles, snakes chasing their own tails. Stars glowed and grew and turned red and exploded, consuming their worlds.

Over and over the process repeated itself, Caitlin’s point of view changing from the large to the small as her spirit journeyed through the organized chaos, to a point and time in space, to a world that was newly formed, a planet where the strands of light rose from one end like a microbe with many tails.

The world phased from hot and flaming to cooler and inviting. Caitlin plunged toward it, toward the region ripe with the cosmic strings, to a point where they penetrated the surface. She was suddenly below the crust, where the golden light took on a green patina as it threaded through minerals and rested from its billion-year journey.

The “microbe” she had seen from space was replicated around the core, copied over and over, heated by magma, driven up to the light, the crust, to the new continent, to—

A new home, Caitlin realized.

The microbes did not have thought but they had a collective sentience, and that mind was revealed to her. An unfathomable number of ancient essences… souls… had bonded to survive the destruction of their universe, a previous universe. They had formed a collective to survive a big crunch, a snap back from the ultimate extension of matter as gravity reversed their own ancient Big Bang.

Caitlin thought improbably about Jacob playing with a Slinky. One end of the souls had leaped through time to escape the destruction of the cosmos and dragged the other end with it.

Yet was the thought improbable? she wondered. In the spectacle she had just witnessed, even galaxies didn’t carry much weight. The countless lives within them were insignificant, if scale were the only judge. But it couldn’t be, could it? Every part of every string was a piece of something enormous. Without each part, the structure was incomplete. Incomplete, it was not the perfect structure required to make the leap through time and space. Incomplete, every part of the superstring would have failed.

Either everything matters or nothing does, Caitlin thought. Including a boy with his toy.

The microbes moved beneath a world of muted light, of sunlight seen through water and ice. Then they moved on land. Then they moved on legs. Then they moved the arms they possessed and communicated and bonded and reproduced and cleared the ice and built dwellings and spoke.

They found tiles in which the olivine light, the souls of beings—perhaps an assortment of beings—from the previous universe still resided.

The Candescents.

I am Candescent, Caitlin understood with humbling, then terrifying clarity.

The Caitlin on the airship had been powered by the motu-varkas. Through the powerful tiles she had bonded with herself when that other incarnation appeared to control the energies of ascending and transcending souls. She was possessed by the kind of force that countless cultures spoke about, mythologized about when they spoke of gods and demigods, messiahs and prophets, angels and demons.

With that understanding, Caitlin suddenly realized she had control of what she was witnessing. Euphoria filled her soul. In her mind, she raised her arms and pointed her fingers and moved through the world and time. She watched, for a third time, the fall of Galderkhaan. She saw ice cover its remains. She moved her hands and was back in her own life, her own eyes, at NYU, in Phuket, giving birth to her son—

And then she came to a very hard, absolute stop.

CHAPTER 25

The cry had all but died in Caitlin’s throat when she became aware of Ben hovering beside her on one side, Eilifir on the other.

“Jacob,” she said. “Where is he?”

The others looked puzzled. She turned around, past her shadow, at the tile gleaming softly inside the box. Her eyes went to Antoa and then to Casey Skett. They were standing with looks that ranged from puzzlement to concern. She glanced at Madame Langlois, who sat smoking contentedly. Even Enok appeared relaxed.

“You know,” Caitlin said to the woman.

“I know they are satisfied,” the Haitian replied. “I know the snake is pleased.”

Caitlin turned back to Ben. “Call my home now, please! I want to know if my son is there.”

“His—his—”

“His soul, yes. Is Jacob in his body?”

Ben fumbled for his cell phone and made the call. While he did, the Technologist leader approached Caitlin.

“What happened?” Antoa asked.

“I’m still connected to it,” Caitlin answered, pointing at the tile.

“Where is the tile connected?” Antoa asked.

Caitlin regarded him. “Everywhere.”

“Forgive me, but that is a very general term—”

“Everywhere!” she repeated. “With living access to every time that has ever been.” She shook her head. “I am taking it with me.”

“Hello, Mr. O’Hara? It’s Ben,” Caitlin heard her friend say. “Is Jacob awake?”

Caitlin watched Ben carefully as she adjusted to being back in a body after the Candescent limbo, back in her body after being in Galderkhaan. Oddly, she could still feel the kiss of Standor Qala on her lips.

“He is,” Ben said, smiling. “Organizing the drawings into a comic book.”

Caitlin exhaled and stifled a choke of sheer joy. They had both returned. She faced Antoa now. He had moved. He was standing beside Casey Skett, who had retrieved and closed the box. Both men had positioned themselves between Caitlin and the foyer.

“The tile,” Caitlin said.

“It remains with us,” Antoa informed her. “Then, after you tell us what you witnessed, you and the others may go.”

Caitlin walked toward the men. “The tile belongs to another,” she said. “I will hold it for him.”

“Eilifir?” said Antoa.

The man removed a .38 from the pocket of his leather jacket. He leveled it at Caitlin.

“Jesus!” Ben cried. “Eilifir—what are you doing?”

“Stay where you are,” Eilifir warned him without taking his eyes off Caitlin.

“I posed a question and I require an answer,” Antoa said. “What did you see when you screamed?”

“It was not what I saw but what I was unable to hold on to,” she said. “I think I know how Lucifer felt after the fall. I know I feel like Lucifer now. My higher angels—they’re not present at the moment.” She held out her hand. “The box, Antoa.”

He shook his head.

Caitlin extended two fingers of each hand as she approached. The box shook at once, light pushing thinly from beneath the lid and slashing through the room.

“I came back with a message,” Caitlin said. “Listen to me. It is not through a tile that Candescence will be achieved. You Technologists fought the Priests instead of joining them. Together, you could have achieved Candescence. Not just words, not just the tiles, but a combination of both. Instead, you carved out your fiefdoms and because of that Galderkhaan died. There will be no more death. The tile, Antoa.”

“This stone was crafted by my ancestors, not yours,” he said. “It remains with me.”

In her mind, Caitlin saw those ancestors and had to focus to bring her mind back to the present. “The tile will go to the owner to be returned to its home. That is what they wish.”

“They? Who?” Antoa asked.

Caitlin replied, “The Candescents.”

“And how do you know their wishes?”

“They revealed their journey to me,” Caitlin said. “They are ready to leave this vessel and return to the cosmos.”

“Why would they share that with you?” Antoa asked.

Caitlin grinned. “I was there. Now I suggest you surrender the box and let us go because the Candescents are going to be leaving.”

Antoa stood his ground and indicated for Skett and Eilifir to do the same. It was the last command he gave. The box opened with a flash that dropped Skett and the Technologist leader to their knees. The box fell, the glow punched through the room, and as Eilifir fell Caitlin threw herself at Ben and pushed him toward the exit.

“Get the Langloises out!” Caitlin cried. “There has to be a back door!”

Even as she spoke, the Technologist and his associates burned and screamed and died, their brains pouring forth, the floor beneath them trembling. Enok was already at his mother’s side, not helping her up but scooping her up and running off with Ben and Caitlin.

“That way!” Ben yelled, pointing toward the kitchen. Enok hesitated before rushing in that direction, taking a moment to pull his cradled mother closer to his chest. Caitlin followed them, her arms in front of her as she tried desperately not to be pulled back into the cataclysm.

The four emerged in a pool area dimly lit by patio lights. They ran wide around the quaking waters as the pool itself cracked along the sides and bottom, dumping water into the earth. They did not look behind them as they ran toward a stone wall that stood between the grounds and the Long Island Sound. Like Lot and his family, they continued forward as the unfettered power of the Candescents burst skyward, illuminating the trees and stony beach as it tore the house from its foundation. A rolling cloud of dust overtook them and they continued to run along the beach until the air was clearer and the ground solid.

Only then did Caitlin and the others look back.

The estate was a pile of debris less than a story high. Nothing recognizable remained: the wood was a mass of splinters among stone that had been crushed to pebbles. The light was gone and so too was the energy that had been pulling at Caitlin.

Breathing heavily, Enok set his mother on a large boulder. Ben assisted him. The Haitian youth thanked him.

Madame Langlois still had her lit cigar.

“They gone,” she said around a puff of smoke. She waved a hand at the wreckage and winked at Caitlin. “Yet not.”

CHAPTER 26

As one, the towers gave up their light.

The glowing columns and the brilliant domes from which they had arisen did not simply snap off; they drifted like mist, leaving only a memory that was difficult to recall, exactly.

The warmth left too. Standing near the pit, Mikel immediately felt the cold. But he didn’t hurry to return to the truck. The surface of the ice was still watery and slick and the vision of the light had changed the way he saw the world around him.

Because there wasn’t just light. There were images, views that were cosmic in scale, unthinkably small, and then—somehow—both. There was age and wisdom and power but also the warmth he had felt on the outside—expanded exponentially. He had felt enfolded, nurtured through a journey that crossed eternity and back.

“Dr. Jasso!” Dr. Cummins yelled to him. She had been standing next to the Toyota and was now skate-walking toward him. “Are you all right?”

“Define ‘all right,’” he said, as if surprised by more than his own voice but by his very capacity to speak.

“As all right as the truck?” she said. “It just came back on. We can go.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said.

She regarded him closely as she walked him back to the truck. The archaeologist was clearly distracted, not paying attention to where he walked, or how.

“Dr. Jasso, what did you see in there?”

He looked at her and smiled. “Death. Birth. Death again. An apotheosis.”

“Of Galderkhaan?”

He shook his head.

“Who rose from the dead?” Dr. Cummins asked. “You? Did you—do you think you died in there?”

Mikel glanced back at the pit. Clouds of ice were already blowing across the frozen surface as they had for millennia.

“No,” he said. “I did not die. But I was reborn.”

Dr. Cummins stopped by the passenger’s side of the truck and helped him up. The radio and phone were alive with voices and the beeps of text messages.

“You’re not making a lot of sense, Dr. Jasso, but then so little of this has,” she said. “Maybe Bundy and his people can help us figure out what happened.”

Mikel laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But I know someone who can.”

“Who?”

“I was the beneficiary of someone else who came into the light,” he replied. “Someone who was connected to the tile I found from the bottom of the sea.”

The glaciologist went around the truck and got behind the wheel. The heat was on and it felt wonderful.

“Who can explain this?” Dr. Cummins asked as she texted Bundy, letting him know they were fine and headed back.

“My grandmother,” he said.

“Dr. Jasso, for a man who was so loquacious for the last few hours you are annoyingly elusive.”

“Sorry,” he said distractedly. “I’m processing. It’s… it’s in a line she used to quote from Second John.”

“Which was?” she asked.

Mikel replied with quiet awe, “This can be explained by ‘the lady chosen by God…’”

CHAPTER 27

The phone call was not unexpected.

It came three days after Caitlin had returned from Connecticut. Her parents had gone home, the Langloises had boarded a plane to Haiti, Ben and Anita had gone back to work, Jacob had gone back to school, and Caitlin had accepted a leave of absence that was “recommended” to her by her supervisor at Roosevelt Hospital. Police and the FBI from Norwalk had come by to interview her the day after she returned, but she told them she could not shed any light on what caused the explosion—or implosion, as they were calling it, since the mansion seemed to have been pulled in, just like the Group mansion on Fifth Avenue.

“I assure you, I am not the common denominator,” she half lied. “Ben Moss and I went up there to collect our house guests from Haiti.”

“And at Washington Square Park?” Field Agent Arthur Richardson had asked. “You were seen coming from that mansion too.”

“I was in the neighborhood, checking on a patient there,” Caitlin said. “Adrienne Dowman. Has the bureau found her or Flora Davies yet?”

“We have not, nor the people who lived in the house in Norwalk,” Agent Richardson replied crossly.

Caitlin couldn’t tell them anything more. They wouldn’t have believed her. Going forward, she realized she had to be careful what she said, and to whom. This was no longer something she could share with Barbara. Certainly Ben, possibly Anita. Jacob, of course. He was his old self again; content to be back in his body with his hearing aids, but signing with a facility that surpassed what he had been able to do before. He remembered everything that had happened in Galderkhaan, and though the language had been forgotten the superlative use of his hands had not.

And there was one other person she could confide in, draw on, learn from. The man she had walked a few blocks to meet outside the American Museum of Natural History.

“There’s nothing here of that ancient world to interest you,” she said when he approached her at the large front steps beside the statue of Teddy Roosevelt.

“How did you know it was me?” he asked.

Caitlin smiled as they shook hands under the warming sun. “You walk like you’re still treading on ice.” She looked at his arm. “Plus you have a busted wing in a sling that I could swear was made of thyodularasi skin.”

“It’s a hortatur mask I found in Galderkhaan,” he said. “Remarkable relic. It allowed me to breathe underground… and it’s helping me heal. I want to be there if it does anything else.”

Caitlin smiled. “There is no one alive who would understand that better than me.”

“I know that,” he laughed. “Do you want to go inside?”

Caitlin shook her head. “If you don’t mind, I want to stand right here. I want to watch the cars and road, the people, the arteries of a living city. I haven’t really been able to do that for a while.” She looked at him. “That is, if you don’t mind the cold.”

“This, cold?” he laughed. “No, I don’t mind.”

Caitlin grinned when she remembered where he had just been. “I’m sorry about Flora Davies,” she told him. “I didn’t exactly get along with her—”

“No one did.”

“But I would have liked the opportunity to get to know her better,” Caitlin went on.

“Maybe you will,” Mikel said. “She left countless notes, recordings. If you’re interested.”

“One day, I’m sure,” Caitlin replied. “I need time.”

The archaeologist understood that as well.

“Are you going to stay in the city?” Caitlin asked.

“I am,” he said. “Some of the international figures behind the Group are coming. I want to continue the work we were doing. But obviously with a very different endgame. Not something for Priests or Technologists.”

“For everyone,” she said.

“That’s what ‘they’ wanted,” Mikel said.

Caitlin knew whom he meant. The same beings that Madame Langlois had meant each time she used the word.

“When you phoned, you said you saw me with the Candescents,” Caitlin said. “I couldn’t see anything but light.”

“I didn’t actually see you,” he told her. “What I saw was a force that I knew was someone who had earned the right to be there. You are the only one who had come as far as I did. I entered the dome of light and I was drawn to you, suspended ahead, shimmering and very much a balance to me.”

“How a balance?”

“I think either of us, alone, might have been consumed by the light. Together, we were strong enough to remain anchored.”

“Together,” she said. “The Candescents survived by joining. The Galderkhaani transcended by joining. So that’s the takeaway. Hold hands, teach the world to sing.”

“The biggest, oldest ideas are often that simple,” Mikel said.

“But us,” she said thoughtfully, “there at the same time. Are you suggesting we were meant to be there together?”

“I believe that from the very start, everything was designed to bring us there.”

“From the start of what?” Caitlin asked. “Was all this set in motion two weeks ago by stones waking up under the ice? That seems a little arbitrary, don’t you think?”

“I do,” Mikel replied. He glanced at the mask around his arm. “Which is why I believe the sequence of events is older, far older than that.”

Caitlin shook her head. “I’m not sure I’m ready to believe that. I have an okay ego, but not big enough to imagine that all of history was orchestrated so that we could have a chat with the Candescents.”

“‘Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?’” Mikel said. “Exodus 3:11. My grandmother was a devotee.”

“I am not a prophet.”

“Yet,” Mikel said. “You already know the message and you have your patients and your platforms. Give it time. That’s what I intend to do.” He looked at the sky. “They are out there now, no longer in stones. We may all be changed. We already are.”

Caitlin thought of Jacob, who bristled with newfound confidence. She could not dismiss the idea, but she remained cautious. She tapped her shoe on the steps. “The Candescents are down there as well.” She pointed with two fingers to the south, toward the harbor. “And out there too.”

Mikel nodded. “True. I have to learn to think in many directions. Different dimensions.”

“What I mean is, the change may be slow in coming,” Caitlin replied. “Assuming we were ‘chosen,’ they picked a psychiatrist, someone who works with young minds. They selected an archaeologist who understands archetypes in civilization, is familiar with the many ideas of monotheism, pantheism, atheism.” The sun warmed her and she tugged open her scarf. “What I’m saying is—baby steps. We shouldn’t range too far, try too much.”

“No, you’re right,” he said. He touched the hortatur mask. “I could probably spend an entire lifetime just studying this.” He laughed. “I probably will.”

Caitlin smiled. “And the vision will fade,” she said with a touch of longing. “It will seem dreamlike as time passes. Life will not push out the mission but it will intrude on its urgency.”

“Maybe that’s why the Candescents brought us there in a pair,” Mikel suggested. “So we can keep reminding each other.”

Caitlin could not, did not, dispute that.

They fell silent as they enjoyed the residual connection they had felt. Finally, Caitlin looked from the park to the museum. “I can’t decide whether I should just walk through the park or stroll through the anthropology wing of the museum.”

“You should probably take your own advice,” Mikel said. “Baby steps. You go in that building, you’re going to work.”

“If I go to the park, I’m going to think of the last walk I took, through the streets of Falkhaan,” Caitlin said. She grinned. “We’re stuck, aren’t we?”

Mikel nodded. “There is no turning back.”

Caitlin’s grin became a smile and she hugged her companion, careful not to crush his wrist. She could have sworn she felt something as she leaned against the sling—a comforting familiarity, a sense of being home… a kiss.

They parted without another word; Mikel to the curb to catch a cab headed downtown, Caitlin remaining where she was. She continued to watch the traffic and the people, the bikes and the pretzel cart, the nearly barren trees and the sky with clouds—

Clouds that once provided sustenance for a civilization.

No, she told herself with a gentle mental push and a final willingness to surrender. There was no escaping Galderkhaan.