The Bone Clocks

“No,” says Фshima. “It’s my word for what happens if the bomb made of N9D—the famous Israeli-made nano-explosive—currently in Mr. Dastaani’s backpack goes off inside the Way of Stones.”

“It’s insurance against an attack from the rear,” I say, “while we’re taking apart the Chapel.”

“A smart precaution,” says Elijah D’Arnoq, looking impressed. “Though I pray to God you don’t have to use it.”

“How do you feel?” Фshima asks D’Arnoq. “Defection’s a big step.”

The 128-year-old Carnivore regards the eight-centuries-old Фshima with defiance. “I’ve been party to decades of indiscriminate evil, Mr. Фshima. But today I’ll also be party to stopping it.”

“But without your Black Wine,” Фshima reminds him, “you’ll age, you’ll fade away, you’ll die in a care home.”

“Not if Pfenninger or Constantin stop us before we’ve smashed the Chapel of the Dusk, I won’t. And so. With no further ado?”

ONE BY ONE, we slip through the dark Aperture onto the round floor of rock ten paces across. The unflickering, paper-white Candle of the Dial stands as tall as a child. I’d forgotten the dual claustrophobia and agoraphobia, the smell of locked spaces, and the thin air. Residual color and light from the gallery filters in through the Aperture, held open like a drape by D’Arnoq now for Holly, now for Sadaqat, with his explosive backpack. Sadaqat’s face is a study of nervous awe, while Фshima, the last to enter, is a study of sulky nonchalance. “This isn’t the Chapel, is it?” Holly mutters. “And why’s my voice so quiet?”

“This is the Dial of the Way of Stones,” I reply. “The first of the many steps that climb up to the Chapel. The edges of the Dial absorb light and sound, so raise your voice a little to compensate.”

“There’s no color,” observes Holly. “Or is it me?”

“The Candle’s monochrome,” I answer. “It’s been burning for eight centuries.” Behind us, Elijah D’Arnoq is sealing the Aperture. I catch a brief glimpse of Bronzino’s Venus, lightly holding her golden apple, before our way back is gone. No dungeon was ever so secure. Only Esther or a follower of the Shaded Way can unseal the Aperture and get us home. I suffer a jabbing flashback to my last time on the Dial, incorporeally, my and Esther’s souls unraveling, Joseph Rhоmes hard on her heels and gaining. Esther, nestled and hidden in Фshima’s head, is no doubt remembering too.

“There are letters cut into the stone,” Holly remarks.

“The Cathar alphabet,” I tell her. “No one can read it now, not even heresiologists. The alphabet is descended from Oc, a language older even than Basque.”

“Pfenninger told me,” says D’Arnoq, “the letters are a prayer to God, requesting His help to rebuild Jacob’s Ladder. That’s what the Blind Cathar believed he was building, apparently. Don’t touch the walls. Whatever it’s made of, it and atomic matter”—he produces a coin from his pocket—“do not get on.” He tosses the coin out of the Dial’s perimeter. It vanishes in a blink of phosphorescence. “Don’t lose your footing on the Way of Stones.”

“Which is where?” asks Фshima.

“It’s cloaked,” D’Arnoq shuts his eyes and opens his chakra-eye, “and moving, to keep out the riffraff. One moment.” He takes short, slow steps to the edge of the Dial, symboling in the staccato manner of the Shaded Way and mumbling an Act of Reveal. Keeping his back to the Candle, he shuffles sideways around the perimeter. “Got it.” Off the edge of the Dial and about one foot higher, a stone slab appears, as long and wide as a table. A second slab leads up from the first, and a third, and a fourth, higher into the blackness.

“Marinus,” Holly asks in my ear, “is this technology? Or …”

I know the missing word. “If you’d cured Henry the Seventh’s TB with a course of ethambutol, or given Isaac Newton an hour’s access to the Hubble telescope, or shown an off-the-shelf 3-D printer to the regulars at the Captain Marlow in the 1980s, you would have had the M-word thrown your way, too. Some magic is merely normality that you’re not yet used to.”

“ Ifthe professor of semantics wouldn’t object,” says Фshima, “perhaps she’d finish her seminar later?”