P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

The boy pouted. “To the palace gate, anyway. Anyone could do that.”

“Ean?”

“That far and no farther.”

“Accepted. Then you both need to get to the harbor and take ship there. When we left, Gorbel was negotiating for a boat. The whole city may be destroyed before dawn.”

“You would do that?” Ean looked aghast. “These are good people, for the most part. They don’t deserve such a fate!”

“Why does everyone always blame me? Now go, and you, Byrne, lead on.”

The boy escorted them up the hill past more terraced dwellings toward the palace. True enough, guards paced back and forth before its western gate, more than Jame had expected.

“That’s the new tower just within the walls, the tallest in the city,” Byrne said, whispering conspiratorially although no enemy was close enough to hear. “King Lainoscopes is afraid that the desert tribesmen will storm it to regain their precious black rock.”

“Led by their prophet?”

“Oh, he died a long time ago. They’ve waited for his return ever since.”

Jame considered the situation. There were too many guards to fight without raising the alarm. Somehow, the Talisman would have found a way in. Was the Knorth Lordan so much less talented?

The nearest guard stopped, yawned hugely with cracking jaws, and leaned on his spear. The next moment, he had toppled over, sound asleep. Others started toward him, stumbled, and also fell until all were down, snoring.

Damson shrugged. “Would you rather that I gave them terminal diarrhea?”

Brier looked down at her, frowning. “If you ever try that with me, brat, I’ll kill you.”

They entered the gate. The new tower rose out of a small courtyard, marble-faced, three stories high. There seemed to be no way into the first level, but an external stair led them up to the second.

Jame cautiously opened the door into what appeared to be a wide, square, low-ceilinged hall. Thick columns around the edges supported the floor above. Once away from the circling walk of white marble, nothing else broke that sable expanse except for rectangles of moonlight streaming in through open windows.

Could this be the top of the black rock? If so, it was embedded in the tower as well as buried under it, neither of which seemed particularly safe. Against her better judgment, Jame stepped out onto it. She had never encountered an inactive temple before. It was like setting foot on the back of an inert monster disguised as a black dance floor.

“Even now,” Timmon had said, “Jamethiel Dream-weaver may be dancing out the souls of the Kencyr Host.”

She remembered that dark pavement shot with veins of luminous green in the great hall of the Master’s House. A delicate, bare foot touched it, and the veins began to throb. Glide, dip, turn, star-spangled gown aswirl and power swirled with it. She danced to her own hummed tune, smiling, and the watchers swayed forward entranced, seduced. Such beauty, such power, such innocence servant to such evil . . .

Strong arms grabbed Jame and flung her off the black rock into the wall. Marble shuddered against her back as the tower swayed, grinding against the temple’s sullen, immobile flanks.

“The Fall is happening, even now,” she said, blinked, and focused on Brier’s face above her. “Sorry.”

The Kendar let her go. “Sometimes,” she said, “you frighten me.”

“Do as I say,” Jame snapped at Damson, who was watching her with raised eyebrows. “Not as I do.”

“No chance of that, Ten,” said the cadet. “You teach me my limits.”

Some of the columns had cracked and fallen. Most, however, still stood, supporting the upper floor.

But the rock didn’t move, thought Jame.

It was like a square peg rammed into this world’s living flesh. It also felt solid, unlike other temples she had encountered. How would the priests control it when they arrived if they couldn’t enter it? Were they even meant to? Nascent power was already stirring in it, and Langadine writhed. Were all temples like this, capable of shaking their hosts to pieces? Did the Builders, those small, gray, innocent folk, know what destruction their work could produce? Rather, she blamed the Kencyrath’s Three-Faced God, who used the materials at hand so ruthlessly in its seemingly endless battle against Perimal Darkling.

The three Kencyr retreated to the outside stair and mounted it gingerly. Everything tilted, as if only the black rock below prevented the entire structure from falling over. There was no outer guardrail. One felt as if at any minute one might tip off into space.

Guards sprawled at the third-story entrance, asleep. One of them might have been dead. Damson shrugged. Accidents happen.

Jame knocked on the door. It opened a crack, then slammed shut, but the lock failed to catch. They entered.

“Hello?”

No one answered.

Within, the floor was strewn with damask pillows and shards of porcelain vases jolted off high shelves. Murals covered the freshly cracked lower walls, depicting meadowlands and forests in jewel colors. Silken veils separated interior spaces. Some were ripped. All wavering in an errant breeze. Everything spoke of a comfortable, sheltered life, rudely disrupted. A woman crouched in the far corner, clutching a bright-eyed, five-year-old child.

“Crash!” he said, with evident glee, reminding Jame of the younger Byrne. “Do it again!”

“Lady Kalan?” Jame advanced slowly so as not to frighten the woman more. Glass crunched under her boots. The marbles of some board game rolled.

The seeker looked much as she remembered, if older, her blond hair tarnished to silver gray, and thinner, with flesh beginning to sag on the bone. She blinked at Jame in surprised recognition.

“Lordan? What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. Why didn’t you come back?”

“Back?” Kalan rose, still shaken. For her, after all, it had happened more than a decade ago. She spread her hands.

“Behold my cage, the latest of many. Before, I lived in the palace, first with Laurintine to nurse after that terrible storm. Then, when she died, the old king demanded that I stay, marry one of his cousins, and start a new line of Langadine seekers.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be. I loved my husband, but I bore him only sons, five in all. This is Lanek, the youngest, a late blessing.”

“Hello!” The boy waved.

“Hello,” Jame replied gravely.

She remembered how desperately Kalan had wanted a family. After losing her first in Kothifir, here, it seemed, she had found another. “Where is your husband?”

“Dead these eight months, killed on the same fatal hunt that claimed the old king’s life. Now Lainoscopes has built me this new prison. He wants me to remarry and try again for a daughter, but I am too old. Besides, two husbands are enough.”

“You already have an infant girl, left behind in Kothifir.”

Kalan wrung her hands. “I have thought about her every day, these past fifteen years. She was so ill when I left, and my first husband so recently dead. I always hoped that I would go back to her in the end, please the gods, to find her alive, still a baby, still waiting for me.”

“You can do that now, and rescue your Kencyr escort on the way.”

The seeker looked bewildered. “What, they didn’t return to Kothifir? I thought they would, after they had waited long enough. Surely their scouts could have led them there from the oasis.”

“From the oasis in the future, yes, but something did go wrong, as you and Laurintine foresaw. After the caravan left, the wind swept the rest of us back into the past too, although we arrived long after you did.”

“This is making my head ache,” Damson said to Brier. “Besides, aren’t we in a hurry?”