“Not at all,” Polybiblios said. “Between Eidolons, all things have a purpose, sometimes more than one. My greater self knew the lineaments of change the Chaos would undergo over time—its gradual reduction. The beacon now points us to where we need to be. It is finally correct. Sit here.” He patted the ground with his gloved hand.
Jebrassy looked between the epitome and Ghentun, his fury undiminished—but controlled. Did this mean all the previous marchers had never had a chance? That they had been sacrificed to distract, provide cover, and prepare for a future time when only a select few would succeed?
With a supreme effort, Jebrassy sat and stared down at the black dust and sharp, ancient stones.
“The path we are taking fits the best version I’ve pulled from all the stories,” Polybiblios said. “Draw from your emerging qualities—think of Ishanaxade, making this same journey. Think of her long sacrifice, that things will come right again.”
“You had us search for the stories, then take them with us. You wanted us to find the real story by testing them all. Because you had lost the truth. You were careless.”
“I don’t deny carelessness,” Polybiblios said. “But putting the past—even could it have been perfectly recorded and stored for tens of trillions of years—packing all that into a microcosm, would have taken far more time and energy than creating and searching a Babel, practically speaking. And had we made that choice, preserving one history—or an ambiguous few—would not be enough to quicken a new cosmos. Not enough to seduce and distract Mnemosyne and awaken the Sleeper.”
“Sleeper?” Ghentun sat across from the epitome and the breed. “That’s an ancient idea. The Sleeper is supposed to have died at the end of the first creation.”
“The Father of Muses,” Polybiblios said. “Brahma, some called him very long ago. Not dead. But bored—and so, sleeping.”
“That sounds like nonsense,” Jebrassy said, fighting his own growing comprehension. He did not want to knowanything that would blunt his anger.
Tiadba was out there. They might never find her—
But Polybiblios was still overflowing, and this time they were brushed by the emotion of a Great Eidolon. Ishanaxade.
Jebrassy and Ghentun looked at each other and felt a kind of sadness they had never known before—not the sadness a breed or a Mender could ever feel, but loss and betrayal that could only spread and age and mellow and sharpen all at once, among thousands of millions of epitomes and angelins, through the heights and inner recesses of the Broken Tower…across half a million years.
“The City Princes. They reset the beacon. They betrayed you,” Ghentun said.
“They betrayed my daughter,” Polybiblios said, looking away from them, as if he could not bear any kind of mirror. “We may have all betrayed her. What she must feel, after all this time—hiding out there, waiting. Or worse—captured.”
“If you know all the stories, then you know all the endings,” Jebrassy said. “Which one is true?”
“There are far more endings to a story than there are beginnings,” Polybiblios said. “The best stories start in the middle, then return to the beginning, then come to a conclusion that nobody can foresee. Sometimes, when you return to the middle, the story will change again. At least, they did when I was young.”
His voice seemed to hypnotize them. They saw a whirling lattice of fates surrounding a tiny and indistinct shape, barely remembered after so many ages.
“The City Princes,” the Keeper said, making it a kind of curse.
“They agreed to send Ishanaxade on a secret journey, without your knowing,” Jebrassy said. “But why?”
Ghentun placed his hands together as if in prayer. “Ishanaxade offered herself up to save the Librarian. She carried away the key to the most complete Babel the Librarian had created in the Broken Tower.”
“That much seems true,” Polybiblios said. “Whatever our disagreements, the Astyanax and all the other City Princes knew—”
“That a complete Babel, with all its parts brought together, would dissolve what remained of the old cosmos,” Ghentun said—and then saw that this knowledge did not come from Polybiblios. This was part of the image the Astyanax had placed inside his mind. “The muses, what little was left of them, would revive to examine the greatest wealth of stories—all possible stories, and all possible nonsense.”
“Both nonsense and story necessary for any creation, though, as always, there is a vastly greater proportion of nonsense,” the epitome said, and got to his feet. “My daughter sacrificed herself, when others wished only to see my project come to an end, incomplete.”
Ghentun said, “The Great Eidolons wanted to live whatever sort of life was left to them, trapped in the Kalpa, repeating their amusements, lost in decadent boredom but also extraordinary comfort—they wanted this to go on forever.” He stood, fists in the air. “ Youwanted to jumpstart creation. That would have been the end of us all.”
Polybiblios looked between them, guileless as a child—an exceedingly old child. “That was my expectation.”
“The Eidolons allowed Ishanaxade to cross the Chaos,” Jebrassy murmured. “But they knew Nataraja was already dead.”
“The City Princes made a deal with the Typhon,” Polybiblios concluded. “We were all betrayed. But that does not mean we failed. Far from it.”
The air in this part of the Chaos was growing stuffy and unpleasant. Together, as if in silent agreement that there must be a pause in this conversation, they sealed up their helmets and prepared to move on. Jebrassy asked after they had resumed walking, “What is the Typhon, that it can make bargains?”
“Not to be known, young breed,” Polybiblios said. “But the Kalpa should have fallen long ago. It has not.”
“You knew this—yet you allowed me to send out marchers…” Ghentun was greenish-black with anger. He could no longer express himself in words.
Polybiblios looked around the changing landscape. “My daughter carried crucial parts of my creations, took them to Nataraja…Away from the reality generators. There was never any choice. But before she left, she asked both of us—Astyanax and Librarian—to join together and remake the oldest form of human being we could conceive of, in primordial matter. She asked that we assign their upkeep and education to the Menders. Of me alone, she asked that sum-runners be made and entrained—the most sublime of Shen technologies, more subtle even than the reality generators or this armor. And of me alone she asked that I place my fragmented Babels within the sum-runners, as a contingent plan—sending them back to course forward from the beginning of time, whispering to each other, and connecting all who touched them. Ishanaxade was mother to the ancient breeds. And she is mother to all who dream.”
“It isthe greatest story of all,” Ghentun admitted. “She left her city, she left Sangmer—everything and everyone she loved. And she thought she served even as she betrayed.”
“What about Sangmer?” Jebrassy asked. “How could he possibly understand? Did he ever find her?
What happened to him?”
“We live that story, young breed. We echo its flesh and bones, that we may tempt it out of hiding. And then, when it is finished, we move on—or come to our own abrupt conclusion.”
CHAPTER 97
Ginny felt something go out of her as she passed under the frozen gaze of the inner ring of giants. Her bubble of protection seemed to thin and breathing became difficult. The stone no longer tugged in a specific direction, but instead pulled her one way, then back, then another, its insistence growing weaker, until finally she stood as still as one of the statues, within sight of the defile where she had entered the valley.
There was only one conclusion she could draw from the stone’s reluctance to offer guidance. Either she had moved too far or traveled too fast…entering a place where one stone by itself could not protect her. Why lead her on at all, then?