The Bone Clocks

D’Arnoq looks worn thin. “Yeah. Maybe so. Maybe that iswhat we tell ourselves.” He rubs imaginary dust from his eye. “Okay, now I’ll unseal the Umber Arch—the way in—but first a warning: The Blind Cathar should be safely in stasis, in his icon, in the north corner. You’ll sense him. He shouldn’t sense us. So—”

“ ‘Shouldn’t’?” queries Фshima. “What’s this ‘shouldn’t’?”

“Deicide has its risks,” D’Arnoq scowls, “or it wouldn’t be deicide. If you’re afraid, Фshima, go and join Sadaqat down below. But here are three don’ts to reduce the risk: Be wary of looking into the Blind Cathar’s face on the icon; don’t make any loud noises or sudden movements; don’t perform any acts of Deep Stream psychosoterica, not even subspeech. I can invoke Shaded Way acts without disturbing the Chapel, but the Cathar’ll detect psychosoterica from the far side of the Schism. Your 119A is fitted with alarms, shields, and cloaks; so is our sanctum, and if the Blind Cathar is aware of Horologists in the house before the walls come tumbling down, the day will end badly for all of us. Understood?”

“Understood,” says Arkady. “Dracula can be safely awoken only when the stake’s already in his heart.”

D’Arnoq barely hears as he evokes an Act of Reveal. A modest, trefoiled, man-high portal shimmers into being at the edge of the Summit Stone. The Umber Arch. Through it we see the Chapel, and inwardly I recoil, even as I follow Elijah D’Arnoq forwards. “In we go,” somebody says.

THE CHAPEL OF the Dusk of the Blind Cathar is the body of a living being. One senses it, immediately. Taking the Umber Arch as south, the rhombus-shaped nave of the Chapel is maybe sixty paces along its north-south axis, thirty paces from east to west, and loftier than it is long. Every plane points to, refers to, or mirrors the icon of the Blind Cathar, hanging in the narrow “northern” corner, so one must concentrate hard on not gazing at the icon. Walls, floor, and pyramidal ceiling are all crafted from same milky, flint-gray stone. The Chapel’s sole furnishings are a long oaken table placed along the north-south axis, two benches on either side, and one large picture on each wall. Immaculйe Constantin explained the gnostic paintings to Jacko last time: the Blue Apples of Eden at Noon on the Eighth Day of Creation; the Demon Asmodeus, tricked by Solomon into building the King’s Temple; the true Virgin, suckling a pair of infant Christs; and Saint Thomas standing in a rhombus-shaped chamber identical to the Chapel of the Dusk. Floating below the roof’s apex is a writhing snake wrought in chatoyant stone, in the circular act of consuming its own tail. The Chapel’s blockwork is flawless and fused and creates the illusion that the chamber was hewn from inside a mountain, or that it was crystallized into being. The air here is not fresh or stale or warm or cool, though it carries the tang of bad memories. Holokai died here, and despite what we’ve allowed Holly to hope, I have no proof that Xi Lo didn’t.

“Give me a minute,” murmurs D’Arnoq. “I need to revoke my Act of Immunity, so we can merge our psychovoltage.” He closes his eyes. I walk over to the oblique-angled west corner, where a window offers a view over one mile or a hundred miles of Dunes, up to the High Ridge and the Light of Day. Holly follows me. “See up there?” I tell her. “That’s where we’re from.”

“Then all those little pale lights,” whispers Holly, “crossing the sand, they’re souls?”

“Yes. Thousands and thousands, at any given time.” We walk over to the eastern window, where an inexact distance of Dunes rolls down through darkening twilight to the Last Sea. “And that’s where they’re bound.” We watch the little lights enter the starless extremity and go out, one by one by one.

Holly asks, “Is the Last Sea really a sea?”

“I doubt it. It’s just the name we use.”

“What happens to the souls when they get there?”

“You’ll find out, Holly. Maybe I will, one day.” Today?

We return to the center, where D’Arnoq is still inside himself. Фshima points up to the apex of the Chapel, and traces an invisible line down to the north corner where the icon appears to be watching us. I shut my eyes, open my chakra-eye, and scan the ceiling for the crack mentioned by Esther …

It takes a moment, but I find it. There, starting at the apex and curving down to the shadows in the north corner.

Yes, it’s there, but it’s a terribly thin crack on which to gamble five Atemporal metalives and one Temporal life.

“Is it me,” Holly is asking, and I close my chakra-eye and open up my physical eyes, “or does that picture … sort of … reel you in?”