My own voice is ragged from the blasphemy. I’m not on speaking terms with Taurin, but I won’t hesitate to use his prayers to get Flutter back.
A knot of cloaks scatter as I approach. I halt them with, “Where’s Cloud?”
They stare at me, unblinking, and I sigh. My names for them are not the same as their own. They identify each other by smell.
Well, I don’t have as good of a nose. I peer at all the faces, skipping over Screech, who’s twitching alarmingly. Taurin knows she’s likely to fall apart at a single glance from me.
“Cloud,” I beckon, and the cloak slowly drifts forward. “Did you find her?”
She looks at me as if she has no idea what I’m talking about. I try not to grind my teeth. Talking to Cloud is like speaking to quicksand—you can pour all your words in but nothing comes out.
I wonder how Sera—lightning-quick, lightning-bright Sera—put up with it.
And then I block the thought, as if slamming a door upon it.
Sera’s dead. Flutter might not be. And I need Flutter, or else I’m going to either abandon these Highwind creatures or strangle them one by one.
Finally, Cloud speaks. “She Who Remembers.” She stops.
I wait.
“Can’t find her.” Cloud starts to float away.
“Hold! Do you mean she’s dead?”
Cloud looks at me as if I were the dim-witted one. “I can’t reach her. She’s spread too far.”
I watch her and the other cloaks leave, and gnaw my bottom lip. The Highwind creatures are nocturnal, but I’ve been making them take day shifts. We all sleep the heat of the afternoon away, but our nights are full of rustling and movement.
Finally I call to Gash at the gates. “Close ’em now.”
A moment later gates on both sides of the fort grind across stone and crash shut.
The chorus dies away, and I don’t say anything. Eerie men and cobble crunchers form groups all over the courtyard, squishing metal cans and snarfing down their contents. They’re loud, they eat messily, behave boorishly, push and shove each other, and make what are obviously low jokes in accents I can barely understand.
In the dark, it’s easy to forget that eerie men are blue-blooded and silver-pierced, and cobble crunchers rat-faced and about as tall as my knee.
They sound like every other army I’ve ever known. A strange homesickness stirs within me. A longing to sit at a camp fire with my men.
No, these aren’t my men. I don’t know what I am now—not Kato the Chosen, but not Kato the Forsaken either. Someone in between those two.
Instead I stay by the gates and soon the nightly noises start up again.
A pinpricking along the edge of my hearing. Tiny sounds that tap dance across my nerves.
Scritch scratch… scuttle…
They’re back.
Once again, like I have for the past five nights, I set a watch for our nocturnal visitors. Anything that’s eluded cloaks and eerie men so thoroughly is not something I want running around the fort.
Could those things be after it?
It’s no use sitting and stewing. I have to go into the chamber and check.
I walk soft-footed through tiled corridors, lit only by dim starlight creeping through empty square windows. My ears strain for sounds that I’m being followed.
Nothing.
I enter an empty room and head toward a narrow recess. The scent of countless dry decades rises around me as I press a carved flower, one of many that dot the stone.
Part of the wall swings open without a sound, revealing narrow steps curving down into darkness. The silence where there should be some noise, some grinding of machinery, is like an itch I cannot reach.
Get moving, Kato.
I tread carefully down the spiral, running my hand over the rough-textured wall. A cold blue glow emanates from small squares set at intervals along the stairs. It barely lights my way, and I’m aware of a great column of space above my head. Small creatures rustle in the darkness, but the noise is comforting.
I won’t be comfortable for long.
A few moments later, a thought sneaks into my mind. This is a waste of time. There’s nothing here. My footsteps slow, my body strains toward the way back.
I force myself downward. My limbs are heavy, my feet leaden. There’s a fog in my head.
Most people never make it this far.
One step at a time, Kato.
My skin prickles. My right arm twitches, the sensitive skin at the stump of my wrist itches madly. A mad-hornet buzzing fills my ears.
I grit my teeth. Crap. Even my teeth hurt.
I push through, always moving, but never getting anywhere, straining against that invisible barrier. Whip-lashes of pain score my cheeks and arms and chest.
And then they’re gone. The resistance, the pain, the stairs. I pitch and stagger, catch my footing.
My skin is clammy with sweat, and the hairs on the back of my neck are rising.
The chamber is vast and bubble-like, with walls of creamy opalescence providing just enough light to see the pedestal rising from the floor in the center.
Suspended above the pedestal is the angel key.
A vast shadowy silence hangs above everything, a silence that I can only describe as holy. A silence that may have preceded the battle-songs of a host of angels, a silence that waits for the command of Taurin himself.
I force myself toward the pedestal. It feels like a mile away, though my eyes measure the distance as barely ten paces. There are shapes in the cool dimness; I catch glimpses of a curve of cheek, a glint of eyes, a sharp edge, a mass of darkness caught in mid-writhe. Statues and scenes of wars between angels and demons from when the world was raw and young, and men just insects caught in battles we had no business witnessing. This was from even before the Shivering and the Dark Masters.
The demons in this tableau make the Dark Masters look like village bullies.
The key is both fluid and crystalline, and effortlessly complex. I have no
