The Bone Clocks

“It’s not you,” replies Elijah D’Arnoq, who is now back with us. We look at the icon. The hermit wears a white cloak, his hood draped about his shoulders to expose his head and a face with blanks instead of eyes. “But don’t stare at him,” D’Arnoq reminds us. On the Way of Stones, sound was muffled so you had to speak twice as loudly. Here in the Chapel, whispers, footsteps, and even the swish of our clothing sound amplified, as if collected by hidden microphones. “Look a way, Ms. Sykes. He may be dreaming at present, but he’s a light sleeper.”

Holly forces herself to look to one side. “It’s those empty eye sockets. They drag your eyeballs into them.”

“This place has a sick mind,” remarks Arkady.

“Then let us put it out of our misery,” says D’Arnoq. “The Act of Anesthesia is done. As per the plan, then: Marinus and Unalaq, you hiatus the icon to ensure he won’t wake while Arkady, Фshima, and I psychoflame the icon with every volt we’ve got.”

We approach the northern corner, where the eyeless figure gleams pale as a shark’s underbelly. “So all you have to do to bring down this place,” Holly asks me, “is trash that painting?”

“Only now, at this point in the cycle,” D’Arnoq answers on my behalf, “while the Blind Cathar’s soul is housed inside the icon. At other times he resides in the fabric of the chapel, and then he would have sensed our intent and melted us like plastic figurines in the flame of a blowtorch. Marinus: Begin.”

If Elijah D’Arnoq is betraying us, he’s keeping up a convincing act until the last minute. “You take the left,” I tell Unalaq, “I’ll take the right.” We stand in front of the Blind Cathar and shut our eyes. Our hands intone in synchronicity. Xi Lo taught Klara Marinus Koskov the Act of Hiatus in Saint Petersburg, and as my Indian self, I taught Unalaq. To strengthen and deepen the act, our lips recite it, silently, from memory, like a pianist’s eye navigating a complex but familiar musical score. I sense the Blind Cathar’s consciousness rise to the icon’s surface, like a swarm of bees. We push it back. We succeed. Partly. I think. “Quickly,” I tell Elijah D’Arnoq. “It’s more a local anesthetic than a deep coma.”

Unalaq and I step aside. D’Arnoq stands before his ex-master, or his current master, I do not know, and holds out his hands at his sides, palms up. To his left and his right, Arkady and Фshima press their palm-chakras against D’Arnoq’s. “Don’t even thinkabout getting off on this,” mumbles Фshima.

Pallid and sweaty, D’Arnoq shuts his eyes, opens his chakra-eye, and channels the ember-red light of the Shaded Way at the throat of the Holy of Holies.

The Blind Cathar is no longer dreaming. He knows he’s being attacked. Like a drugged giant, like my house in Kleinburg in the grip of an Arctic gale, the Chapel strains and struggles. I stagger, I think I blink, and the Blind Cathar’s mouth is twisted into aggression. His chakra begins to dilate, a black spot appearing on his forehead, growing like an ink stain. If it opens fully, we’re in severe trouble. An earthquake is trapped in the Chapel walls, and Elijah D’Arnoq is making a high, inhuman sound. Channeling so much psychovoltage is killing him. His defection must be genuine; this will kill him. I think I blink again and the icon is firelit and smoking and the depicted monk is roaring with agony, as two-dimensional flames burn him alive, his chakra-eye flickering here and not-here, here and not-here, here and …

GONE. SILENCE. THE Blind Cathar’s icon is a charcoal square and Elijah D’Arnoq is heaving, bent over double. “We’ve done it,” he gasps. “We’ve bloody well done it.”

Wordlessly, we Horologists consult with one another …

… and Unalaq confirms it. “He’s still there.” Her words are our death sentence. The Blind Cathar has merely left the icon and fled to the floors, walls, and ceiling. We have been participants in a charade to allow the Anchorites time to stream up the Way of Stones. Their arrival is imminent. D’Arnoq’s defection was indeed a trap, and the Second Mission has become a kamikaze attack. I’d subsend an apology to Inez and Aoife if I could, but their world is out of range. “Holly? Stand behind us, please.”

“Did it work? Is—is—is Jacko going to … appear?”

I’d like to hiatus her now so she won’t die hating me. The Script has failed us. At Blithewood Cemetery I should have turned around, called Wendy Hanger, explained there’d been a mix-up, and gone back to Poughkeepsie station. “I don’t know,” I tell Holly the mother, sister, daughter, widow, writer, friend. “But stand behind us.”

Message from Esther, subreports Фshima. She’s started the Last Act. She’ll need up to a quarter hour.

“We had to try,” Unalaq says. “While there was hope.”