The Last Page

She undid her belt.

The ledge beyond the room was wide and deep and draped in cool blue. Diamonds of gold sparkled on the tower’s skin as the sunlight crept east, dragging over rough stones, catching every chink and mortar line. The colors were bizarre. Too saturated. Too bright.

Below the castle wall, architecture snarled and stirred as part of some remote world seen through veils of dream. Her pants unsnapped on either leg and crumpled to the floor in leather folds. Thin metallic sounds and indistinct voices curled out of the Hold. Her mind bucked again at the realization that she was not seeing anything. What if I fall?

She climbed out onto the ledge, clothed only from the waist up and the knees down. She set her boots several feet apart and leaned back on her palms. Like one of the grotesques on Hullmallow Cathedral, she perched at the brink of disaster.

The cool air felt delicious; it mouthed her vulva and sent a tingle through her. She relaxed and allowed herself to foul the sky. Her boots grated. She moved backward on her palms, withdrawing into the room. She resnapped her pants, found the basin, washed and sat down.

She was dizzy. She thought about taking the shylock off but reconsidered. Although she wanted to try her new eyes on the Csrym T, she would have to wait. Other sisters had warned to keep the shylock on for several days. She laid back across the bed, dreaming that the ceiling moved with impossible colors.

I can’t sleep.

She got up and left the room.

General Yrisl passed her in the hall. He looked at her, assumed she couldn’t see him and raised an eyebrow in what must have been a hint of scorn. He was in a hurry, still buttoning his shirt. Sena’s brain saw everything: his torso, muscular but slightly flabby at the same time, white with the telltale sag of middle age. She dreamt past his shirt, through the fibers, caught a glimpse of something dark and twisted at the center of his belly. A twirl of ink. A shadow, small and indistinct, nested behind a thick patch of hair.

Only then did she recognize his faded resemblance to the tall gaunt forms of Mr. Naylor and his friends. His glassy eyes contained a redoubling significance, suddenly odious.

“General?”

He turned, surprised. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Nothing. I just wondered if it was you.”

“Yes, ma’am. I have to hurry. The Byun-Ghala is leaving.”

“Where is it going?”

“I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere. “I’m afraid it’s classified.”

She let him go, terrified of the sudden symbology associated with him. But was it real? Was it true? She dreamed where he was going and picked a route that would let her watch him unobserved.

She avoided the main corridors, not wanting to be seen. Some crazy girl walking with a blindfold. She felt ridiculous.

She skirted through rooms and hallways, picking her way toward parts of the castle that did not see regular use. Finally she came to an oriel that overlooked the zeppelin deck. From here she could sense Caliph’s luxurious airship ballooning over the huge expanse of concrete and old stone, casting pincushion shadows from its outspread spines.

Yrisl was marching across the field of masonry toward a body of knights whose huge ornate carapaces glittered with colors like emeralds and rust.

At the center of the knights she sensed Caliph leaning against a stack of chiseled gun-stones.

As the Blue General approached, Caliph seemed to levitate slowly like oil smoke in the frosty air. The knights shuffled. Some conversation took place. Then the whole party headed for the docking tower.

Sena still couldn’t make sense of it. Had she imagined the mark on Yrisl? It confused her enormously. He had been less than six feet from the Csrym T on many occasions. It had rested in the high tower in plain sight. If he was from the Cabal, why had he not seized the book?

Her thoughts went back to the night it had disappeared from the desk in Caliph’s bedroom only to reappear in the same place.

She sensed the party of knights had come out onto the tower roof, into thin sunlight. They were followed by Caliph and Yrisl. They boarded the Byun-Ghala while men in dark leather made adjustments to several new-looking weapons that jutted from the airship’s belly.

Silvery gadgets with smooth, organic-looking segments, hoses and ornate gears hung from refitted turrets. Sena recognized the craftsmanship from other sources she had seen around the city as being (possibly) of Pplarian design.

Almost as soon as the bridge lifted away, the zeppelin’s engines gave a slurred whine. Heavy fan blades poured air across the fins, dislodging the ship like an enormous bumblebee from some gruesome flower. It hovered, clumsy at first, moving in imperceptible increments, inches at a time.

It turned. It raised. Its turrets spun. Spines bristled. Guns shone. The blue pennant of the High King uncoiled, a silken lioncel, a serpent of cloth unwinding in the zeppelin’s wake. Then the airship found itself between the castle’s piled spears of stone. It no longer moved in inches or feet but sprang, bloated with sluggish violence, a bullfrog leaping out between towers, hauling its girth west.

Sena felt it go. A strange sensation of abandonment distilled within her. He hadn’t even said good-bye. The image of him lounging against the cannonballs seemed frozen in her mind.

She made her way from the oriel to their bedroom, took a bath, brushed her teeth, drank a cup of coffee Gadriel had left by the door and brushed her teeth again.

She read the Iscan Herald with the shylock on, the only copy in the castle. She sensed her lukewarm bathwater funnel down the drain. It ebbed from the tub’s enameled roses like rain. I must be seeing, she thought. What else can this be if it isn’t sight?

But the bathtub seemed to breathe, the pages of the paper modulated in her hand. She felt the water in the pipes slipping down the drain. She followed it for a while.

There must be something wrong with the furnace. The pipes were cold. She used the Herald to start a fire. She left the room, fetched the Csrym T, brought it back to bed. She got out her notebook and scribbled a page of notes: all with the shylock on.

Am able to see better than I thought. Will attempt to decipher part of a glyph with the shylock still on.

Yllo’tharnah seem to be following the book. I don’t know how, but a corporeal manifestation nearly killed us at Nathan’s mansion: a ²⁵Why? Are there Lnshin’thn too? Are there limits to Their hierarchy?

I assumed the One I bound at the Porch of Sth was alone.

Am having nightmares. Shapeless things. I see insuperable slithering masses in the dark. I feel giddy all the time. Something is happening.

This glyph. This jellyfish glyph. I have no other name for it. It terrifies me for reasons I cannot describe. Ref: page 847 of C.T.

Cataclysm. Creation. Things I can’t explain. Can’t explain. Yella byn! It’s like I’ve become a child again, without vocabulary to describe a thing!

One thing is certain. Nathan Howl was brilliant. I think his house is a transdimensional fortress. Something I can use. Not now. Not even in a month from now. But soon. Soon.

Find it funny how They (the Yllo’tharnah) are trying to get in. I’m trying to get out and They’re trying to get in. Each of us pressing against our respective side of the membrane. A