beneath these probes, reaching for Gabriel's flaming sword, which lay on the ground beside the angel's skeletal feet. He rose with the weapon and sliced upward through the wires, severing them. Instantly, they began to grow back.
Bitterwood ran away, down the lengths of the temple steps. He didn't know the range of the wires, but it couldn't be infinite. Or perhaps it could. They might seek out the homunculus wherever it went. Bitterwood stopped, having put several yards between himself and the wires. He laid the silver orb upon the polished steps of the temple. Then, he placed the flaming sword upon it. He stepped back, hoping that the wires would melt away before they could reach the orb. Instead, the homunculus suddenly popped like a kernel of corn, violently enough to throw the sword into the air. Tiny fragments of shrapnel tinked against the stone. A steel splinter buried itself deeply in Bitterwood's cheek, barely an inch below his left eye. He dug the sliver out with his ragged nails, then wiped the wound with the back of his hand. He allowed himself a deep, calming breath, though it sent needles of pain through his bruised ribcage.
He retrieved the flaming sword from where it had landed. It had burned a circle around it in the grass, though the ground and vegetation were too moist to allow the flames to spread far. He carried it at arm's length, unable to even look directly at the white-hot weapon. He hoped that placing it back in Gabriel's scabbard would squelch the weapon. Yet, as he wished that the weapon wasn't so hot, the weapon responded. The white searing flame faded to the intensity of a torch. Bitterwood no longer felt as if his shirt sleeve were on the verge of catching fire. He stared at the now manageable flame and wondered if it could grow dimmer still. It did, lowering its intensity until only the barest halo of faint orange flame danced around it, and Bitterwood could no longer feel its heat on his face. With a thought, he willed it to brighten again.
He allowed himself a rare grin as the sword obeyed his unspoken command. He went to Gabriel's paralyzed form and placed the sword back into it scabbard, then fastened the scabbard to his own belt.
He cast a glance back to Blasphet's severed tongue. At least he now knew how he was going to cook it.
Bitterwood left the flaming temple. For an hour, he'd shouted in the place, calling the goddess down. He'd burned her statue and set fire to the walls to no avail. She hadn't come for him.
Very well. His true purpose in returning, he reminded himself, wasn't to kill angels and goddesses, but to rescue Zeeky. He walked away from the conflagration of the once sacred place. With the angel slain and the temple on fire, Bitterwood saw no further need for subtlety. 'Zeeky!' he shouted. 'Zeeky, where are you?'
He listened to the night jungle, to the chirping of frogs and the buzzing of insects, to the agitated cries of birds and monkeys as they chattered about the scorched earth Bitterwood had left in his wake. For all he knew, Zeeky could be crying out for him and he couldn't hear her beneath this cacophony.
Jandra let the prime number that locked her helmet run through her mind once more. She and Hex were in the Thread Room, looking at the rainbow gate. They had already sent Adam and Trisky through, and the other long- wyrm riders had returned through the gates they had entered.
The situation at the Nest wasn't good, but there was little more she could do. The matriarch had recovered from the anesthetic smoke and taken command once more. She'd ordered Graxen and Nadala taken away in chains, and Jandra didn't feel she had enough of an understanding of the situation to protest this decision.
Jandra had spent much of the night healing injured valkyries. She'd also been waiting for news of Blasphet-the valkyries who searched the tunnels hadn't yet found his body. But, Jandra couldn't believe he wasn't dead. She'd seen his severed tongue, after all, and for all of Bitterwood's flaws he wasn't a liar. If he said he'd killed Blasphet, he had. Could he possibly have done something so awful to the body it could never be found? It was best not to think about it.
Besides, she had other things to focus on. She suspected that Jazz would know almost instantly that her helmet was locked once they were together. The genies communicated at radio frequencies-with Jazz a hundred miles away and a mile beneath the earth, and Jandra in a room beneath the surface of a lake, she was reasonably confident that Jazz couldn't listen in to her conversation with Hex right now.
'You know, this isn't your fight,' she said. 'You've never even met Zeeky. I have a score to settle with Jazz, but you don't need to get yourself killed on my account.'
'On the contrary,' said Hex. 'I feel that confronting this Jazz is required if my beliefs mean anything to me at all. I've spent much of my life developing my philosophy. I believe that all law is ultimately a shackle, and that all kings are ultimately tyrants. If I don't trust power to a king, how can I rest knowing that Jazz wields even greater power? I told you earlier that I don't believe we must be the puppets of fate. This would-be goddess imagines herself as a puppet master. It's my duty as a warrior-philosopher to cut her strings.'
'Warrior-philosopher? Is that what you are?'
'My last official title was assistant librarian,' Hex said. 'Confronting a god as an assistant librarian is a risky undertaking; a warrior-philosopher, however, is suited for the task.'
Jandra smiled. She appreciated Hex's dry humor. She handed Hex a silver ring that she'd created from the dust in her pouch. It was scaled to fit his talons; on her, it would have been a bracelet.
'Wear this,' she said. 'It might come in handy.'
'What does it do?' Hex asked.
'You've seen me turn invisible. I do it with the aid of the silver dust. It fills the air and configures itself into a billion tiny mirrors that carefully guide the light around me. I've taken that dust and shaped it into this ring with a preprogrammed command to form an invisibility sphere around you. Unfortunately, I can't make the sphere big enough to cover you if your wings are fully outstretched. The illusion falls apart once you get much past a twenty- foot diameter. Too many gaps in the integrated mirrors. So, it won't work if you're flying, or fighting all out. But it might help you hide, or ambush someone as long as you stay compact. Keep your wings and tail tucked in, don't stretch your neck too far, and no one will be able to see you.'
'How do I activate it?'
'I'm keeping it simple,' she said. 'All it needs is a good jolt of kinetic energy. Just hit it against something hard and part of the ring will flake off and form the field. There's only enough dust in the ring to work a half dozen times, so use it wisely.'
'Thank you,' said Hex, sliding the ring on. 'Though, I confess, stealth and invisibility aren't my style.'
'Not your warrior style,' said Jandra. 'But it may come in handy for a moment of philosophy. Jazz can probably see straight through the illusion, but maybe not. Here's what I do know about her: despite all her seeming power, she's only human. She's no doubt enhanced herself physically; she can probably heal from grievous wounds almost instantly. Mentally, she seems to think she has the right to do anything she wants because the world owes her. She claims to have saved the world from environmental catastrophe.'
'Do you think she did?'
'No. I think like most people she wants to believe her presence makes the world a better place. She pushed a bunch of her memories into my head that I think are supposed to make me sympathize with her. For instance, I have this memory of her when she was only a teenager; she's crouching on a beach covered with oil, cradling a dying seagull. I can feel her sorrow, her genuine longing to keep this from ever happening again. Two years later, she was the mastermind behind the bombing of an oil refinery. She killed nine people and triggered economic turmoil that ruined the lives of millions. She's given me this as one of her good memories, one of the things she's most proud of. She wants me to see that while her methods may be harsh and violent, she's always striving for the greater good.'
'Just as my father justified war in the name of peace, and oppression in the name of order,' said Hex. 'If there's one thing I've learned about life, it's that those with the most passionate convictions can justify the most savage cruelties.'
'I don't know that I agree with you,' said Jandra. 'You're passionate about your beliefs, but it hasn't left you bloodthirsty and ruthless like Jazz. Or like Bitterwood, now that I think about it. You're a living contradiction to your own assertion.'
'If there's a second thing I've learned about life, it's that any truth I can sum up in a single sentence is almost certainly going to snap once I place the weight of reality upon it.'
'One thing I've learned from these new memories is not to be intimidated by Jazz any more. She may be powerful and smart, but she's not omnipotent or omniscient. She's just a woman with a human brain in a human skull. Not to be gruesome, but I've seen what you can do to a human skull. We stand a chance if we get close enough. I believe we can beat her.'
'Well then,' said Hex, moving toward the gate. 'The time has come to once more test a belief against reality.'
