carried. Will carry. Potentially. Every twist, every turn, every ascent, descent, or jump.
While I did so, I used a knack from my days at the Mechanists’ Guild to make my hands automatically pull from the etherium around me a series of thin wires, bending, twisting, and occasionally breaking each as I worked them into precise three-dimensional representations-models-of every path I saw myselves take. My long, long experience with precision ensured that these models would depict each path exactly. I had no need to model the Labyrinth itself; the paths were all that mattered.
I had built around myself a pair of rings, constructed so that the lower served as a base in the sand, while the upper could rotate freely along it. At twelve precise intervals around the movable ring, I had affixed a tall cross of etherium wire. The crux of each one marked the entryway of one of the great halls of the Labyrinth. The cross piece marked ground level. Each pin became the anchor for a worked-wire chart of all possible pathways branching from that entrance. By rotating the ring, I could bring any given hall before me without having to shift my own position.
For a maze, that would have sufficed; a three-dimensional solution for a three-dimensional problem. This, however, was a four-dimensional problem.
At least.
Because, after all, it only looked like a maze. It was a Labyrinth. It became a maze-a deadly one-for any who entered unprepared. I would not be one of these.
Preparation is my specialty.
As I worked, I discovered paths that could join two or more others that had seemed to lead to dead ends. Using a slightly thinner, shinier wire to connect magical transit points-where a path might leap from the top of one hall to the bottom of another-I began to join every hall to every other in multiply iterated pathways, nearly identical… but each and every one unique…
The space around me was almost half full of the etherium web work when I discovered the pattern.
I could see it: a mathematical purity that words cannot describe, an elegance that transcended language… I could predict, now, the shape and length of the next wire, and what points it would join. More than predict. See.
Know.
Soon I could see two wires ahead, then five, then a dozen…
Then all of it.
I saw what my model would become. This wasn’t Renn’s power. It had nothing to do with time; this was form and function, stripped to the deep structure of matter itself. I saw the future not with prescience, but with experience. I knew where each strand must be placed and what each wire must connect, for the model to make sense.
“To make sense” is actually an expression for how I experience natural law.
That is: truth.
This experience-this knowing-flowed out from me, directing my hands to assemble the half-dreamed vision in my heart. The impossibly perfect structure of the etherium matrix enfolded me, enwrapped me, joined around and above me like the vault of a cathedral.
I had trained my entire life simply to see this. To do this. To make this.
To be this.
My hands stopped. My eyes froze open. I could not dream of moving. Could not dream of breathing. Could not imagine being anywhere but here.
Ever.
I saw without sight, heard without sound, smelled without scent, felt without touch. Kneeling within this heartbreakingly perfect sanctum that was the only possible answer to the question of my existence, I thought: What do you say without saying? And discovered the answer was obvious.
The joining of mechanics and time… is a clock.
Crucius…
The interpenetrating structure I had built around myself-the etherium model of the relational matrix of the twelve Halls around me-was perfect. Was inevitable. Was impossible.
Was context.
What makes a clock work is the engineering of its mechanics. What makes it beautiful is the elegance of its construction. What makes it perfect is the precision of its heart.
There is no heart more precise than mine. I had no need to find the center of the Crystal Labyrinth. I was the center.
I had become the hands of the clock.
What I said without saying was I am here.
And I was.
Forever.
TEZZERET
My first clue that forever might not be actually permanent came in the mournful contrabasso chords of a very, very old sphinx. “Greetings, Tezzeret. Welcome back, my old friend.”
I found myself naked (predictably; I had come to take the loss of my clothing as a routine feature of my postdeath journey) and entirely lacking the rest of my equipment, not to mention resources. There was no sign of my etherium model, nor of the Labyrinth, nor of the telemin halo and Renn’s head. I was, in fact, kneeling on a strangely colorless grassy sward among a stand of similarly colorless tropical trees, and was staring up into the melancholy, etheriumcrusted face of Kemuel the Ancient. The Hidden One.
Though I had never seen even a depiction of him, I knew he was Kemuel. Knew it. As if I’d known him since the day I was born.
Since the day he was born.
I’d made it.
I really had.
The sensation was remarkably similar to how I’d felt after beating Renn.
Eventually, I registered what Kemuel had said. I got up, trying to swallow a bolus of apprehension that had suddenly decided to claw its way up my throat. “What in the hells do you mean, welcome back?”
Creases appeared on his immense face like erosion scars on a granite cliff. “The Seeker’s Path has brought you here several times, my friend. The question is: What will take you the rest of the way?”
“The rest of what way?” An incalculable weight of exhaustion gathered upon my shoulders, threatening to crush me altogether. I still wasn’t done? “Several times?” I said weakly. “Please tell me you’re not saying what I’m afraid you’re saying.”
The creases continued to deepen around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes, and I realized he was slowly-incrementally, glacially-working himself toward a smile. The old sphinx wore so much etherium, he was practically made of metal. “I can answer any question that won’t help you, Tezzeret. ‘The rest of the way’ means beyond where we are. The several times… well, you reach the Riddle Gate two or three times out of each ten thousand lives. On average.”
I rubbed my face. Ten thousand lives? Reincarnation? The thought of having to live out my current life was nearly more than I could bear. Ten thousand? And then I registered he’d told me that was an average…
Two or three times out of each ten thousand lives.
I was so tired that I wanted to die. But something in my brain heedlessly refuses to stop working, no matter the circumstance, and at that moment it offered a tiny spark of hope. “Wait,” I said. “Not sequential lives. Parallel lives. Different time lines.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him. He was utterly alien but at the same time as familiar as my father’s hovel. “You’re a
