Another part of the broken chain—as usual, out of sequence.

Or something worse. Perhaps the wall of Alpha, come to squeeze them against Omega. If that was the way of it, then they had not failed. There had never been any way to succeed. Dark thoughts indeed. Ellen sat and stared at the dim orange glow within the stove’s isinglass window.

“Perhaps you should have gone with them,” Bidewell said. “The women, I mean.”

“I thought Ginny would want company,” she said.

Bidewell made a sound at once dubious and sympathetic and sat across from her.

“Are we done? I mean, there’s nothing more we can do?”

“Not at all,” Bidewell said. “Assuming there is still a move to be made in this endgame, we are making such a move now.”

“Care to explain that to me?”

“Of course. The Chalk Princess will come to collect a former servant, now a turncoat. That desire for vengeance might delay her in the pursuit of our young shepherds.”

Ellen peered at him, beyond fear—almost beyond curiosity. “What would it be like, to be collected?”

She looked deep into the isinglass. “What is the Queen in White?”

“An awful force. A multidimensioned storm of pain and fear, carrying a retrograde wave of hatred.”

“What is it that hates us so much?”

Bidewell shook his head.

“Satan?”

“Ah.”

“What’s that mean?”

“How often have we asked ourselves that question?” Bidewell said.

“Is there an answer?”

“Worse than Satan, is my guess. Worse than anything we’ve ever imagined. A malign embryo that will never be born, much less achieve any sort of maturity. A failed god.”

“And this female…is she that failed god?”

“No. She serves, but I believe her servitude is forced. Sometimes I almost recognize her…I’ve dreamed and guessed and thought about it for long centuries now. Perhaps when she arrives, I’ll know what questions to ask.”

“Something’s coming,” Ellen said. A new intensity of darkness and cold was closing in, and something else was in the air—something that made her want to weep. A loss far beyond the loss of a world—the loss of all history.

“Do you have your book?” Bidewell asked, getting to his feet.

“I thought the books were spent.”

“Not these. They still tell our stories.”

“What do we do—read them aloud?” Ellen removed her book from the bag. Something moved through the fallen, frozen crates and boxes—not a cloud, not a figure—swirling around corners that did not exist, turning in directions no eye could follow, radiating a dark spectrum of emotions.

Bidewell gestured—a quick jerk of his fingers—and they opened the books, pushed them to their breasts, leaning toward each other, heads and hands touching.

A sound came in soft gusts, like a cry out of deep caverns—Rachel, weeping throughout eternity for her lost children.

“She’s blind,” Ellen said. “She’s blinded by grief.”

“Do not feel sorrow for her, not yet,” Bidewell said. “Everything about her is obverse. Grief is joy, and even her blindness is a kind of seeing.”

“Is that her?” Ellen asked as the shadows fell and the room seemed suspended over an abyss. Bidewell opened his mouth but could not take a breath. There was no need for an answer. The Queen in White was upon them, and in her way, tried to love them as they deserved.

CHAPTER 85

Ginny

Ginny settled into a hollow in the crusted ground and pulled up the hood of her parka, then drew the strings tight, hiding most of her face. That weird sun was in the sky again. When it burned overhead, she could feel her small bubble of protection shrink, could almost feel it wither—just as when the deathly gray beam passed over. No doubt about it—this sky and what lay beneath did not like her. The stone in her pocket had turned cold, but she didn’t dare let go. It protected her, of that she was certain, and it didn’t matter how it did so—not yet.

Then she had a thought: What if leaving the warehouse had put Bidewell and the others in deeper danger? There wasn’t anything she could do about that now. She had made her choice, half hoping someone would follow her, argue with her; and then, reasoning it through, she understood that it would have to be someone carrying his own stone, Jack or Daniel, perhaps both—but would they bring Glaucous, too? That seemed bitterly incongruous—a strange team indeed. After a few minutes of rest—at least, it felt like a few minutes—she peered over the edge of the hollow and experienced another connection to Tiadba, this time while awake. They were closer. She had known that for some time now but could not understand what it meant; closerin what way? Their worlds had merged. She had guessed that much—doubted it, but could find no other explanation. Not that it was any sort of explanation.

Despite all her foolishness and “bad” decisions, she had always primly asserted her rationality—and now pondered for the ten thousandth time the reasons none of this could possibly happen. Her doubt was like tonguing a jagged, painful tooth. All the rules had been broken. What remained? Magic? Strength of will?

Some effect of whatever science or knowledge had created the sum-runners?

Ultimately, she knew there could be no explanation, only survival and completion. Results. In most ways, she had lived her short life—perhaps shorter than she was happy to consider—in clueless ignorance, wrapped in the baby blankets of culture and surrounded by the poor theories of fellow travelers—all of that amounting to another kind of protective atmosphere, off which the smaller, plunging impossibilities bounced or burned away before reaching her. Consensus reality.

Another kind of bubble, equally inexplicable.

Well, out here that was gone, too. She was alone.

She ducked back into the hole. Something huge swung past nearby—a glimpse of sparking shadow accompanied by a thin, strident howling or weeping, penetrating the bubble and hurting her ears. Ginny slowly gathered enough courage to look out again and saw that the shallow dip in the land lay beside a kind of road, colorless, neither bright nor dark—like something half seen by moonlight. The road stretched to a sawtooth horizon.

“Stay away from the trods,” she murmured. “Whatever rides them might be strong enough to break your little bubble. Or seeyou—and collect you.”

She understood that inner voice. Tiadba again. So close!

Despite this warning, Ginny walked alongside the trod, a dozen paces away—such as her paces were, difficult to judge—and descended a grade onto a broad, grayish-tan plain. The mountainous walls to either side were lined with a dim audience of monuments, strange, seemingly dead and still. Twice she had to hide behind rocks or in dips as huge, flat, elevated shapes glided past on the trod. These made no sound and gave no warning. She did not want to know what they were—her glimpses, from a distance, might have shown heads big as buses, twitching, sweeping eyes pointed down, searching. But they did not see her.

Ginny realized that she needed to think less and act more. Going mad out here would be less than pointless—like lighting a match inside a supernova.

She kept walking. The wrinkled, purple-black sky, devoid of stars, did not bother her so long as she did not look up. Strange, that feeling of silent resentment, like a fly flicked from the hindquarters of a sleeping horse. Whether or not she made any real impression, this place tried to repel her and negate every assumption she brought with her.

Still, she could not ignore a deep curiosity about the nature of the valley. Wherever she looked, the horizon was always curved. Perhaps light behaved differently here.

“I don’t know what that means. Stop thinking.”

The plain between the mountains…the monuments or statues—part of her had seen it all before. Tiadba had been here, was here now.