watched, a vase wobbled and struck a wall with a crash. A table bunched against a rug and slid slowly. A mirror swung off its hook and shattered in a thousand jeweled shards on polished oak flooring. When Candlemas tried to walk, he slid uncontrollably. Braced in the doorframe, Sunbright caught him.
'You can't go uphill!' the barbarian shouted, 'We'll have to skid down and go around! Where are we going?'
They yelled because sliding, grinding furniture destroyed itself, and throughout the mansion people screamed, called questions, hollered for help.
'A white mansion on the grounds, downhill and…'
Directions failed Candlemas, so he just pointed. Shrugging out of Sunbright's iron grip, he swung onto the floor and slid on his bottom until he banged a corner already crowded with tumbled furniture. Skidding treacherously in his moosehide boots, Sunbright slid after. Knucklebones crowded so close to the barbarian that her feet rapped his kidneys when they struck a wall. They tried to use their hands as brakes, but broken glass and splinters cut their skin, even the ironlike soles of Knucklebones's bare feet.
In a main hall, the mess was worse. Tables, chairs, benches, statuary, and one dead body, a maid who'd struck her head. Skittering crabwise, they found the wreckage didn't lie still, but kept moving, for in addition to the tilt, the enclave was rotating again so debris inched around corners and cascaded anew.
Finally, inching and grabbing and gasping, they got to a wide pair of outside doors. Candlemas grabbed the doorframe and almost had his fingers smashed as the door swung back with a smash. Sunbright had to climb over the mage and muscle the door open. They fell more than jumped out the door.
Outside, they could at least get a grip on gravel walks and flower beds and grass, as if they negotiated a hill. Sunbright paused to check that his weapons were still strapped tight. Knucklebones ripped a splinter long as a pencil from her bleeding foot. 'Where are we going?'
But Candlemas only stared. Nowhere was the landscape flat, and that betrayal was terrifying. In the city below, a tall, black tower, the Shadow Consortium, waggled like a nagging finger, then broke in the middle and plunged down like the arrow of Targus, God of War. Scores of people inhabited that building, he'd heard, and now it snapped like a twig and crashed onto scores more structures below. He'd just witnessed the death of hundreds of people. With more to come, for other buildings wobbled just as disastrously. Distant screams came from below and behind. Servants and nobles alike ran onto lawns to shout and cry.
Candlemas recalled his mission and shouted, 'Come on!'
Sunbright and Knucklebones jogged as Candlemas crossed a grassy sward and bulled through a forsythia hedge. Knucklebones was hurled back by thick branches, so Sunbright had to grab her and lob her over, then crash through on his own. Catching up as Candlemas trotted along crushed clamshells, he yelled, 'Karsus is causing this? Making the city tip and fall?'
'Yes!' Candlemas gulped, his lungs afire. He was no runner. 'He's out to make himself a god! But I think he's siphoning all the magic in the enclave! If the mythallars can't keep up the city will plummet! Nothing can save it!'
'But you can get us back to our own time?'
'If there's enough magic! If it's gone, if the star's power is used up, we'll be stranded, and die with the city!'
Trotting right behind, Knucklebones demanded, 'What's this about returning to your own time?'
'Candlemas can get us back!' Sunbright vaulted the trunk of a fallen tree as he said, 'To where we belong!'
'Where you belong!' the thief corrected. 'I'm Karsus enclave born and bred!'
Sunbright cast her a sidelong glance. Her ratty hair bobbed about her head, tickled her pointed ears. Despite running hard, she was not winded, and stared boldly with her one green eye. 'You'll die with the city if you don't get out!'
'Instead, I should go with you?' she asked. The boldness in her voice turned hard.
'Yes! I–I want you… to go with me!' Sunbright found himself fumbling for words.
A statue of a man ahorse had toppled, smashing amidst a thick stand of cedars, blocking their way. Candlemas yelled a word, flicked his fingers, and the water in the trees exploded with a bang. Green specks floated around them as he rammed through denuded branches.
Yet Sunbright paused to catch Knucklebones's thin hand. 'Will you go with me? Please?'
'Why should I?' she asked. Her stance was wide-legged, her hips cocked, her chin tipped to stare with a green eye. 'What am I to you?'
Women picked the damnedest times to argue, Sunbright thought. Greenwillow had been the same way. It had been during such a crisis, besieged in a burning hell, that they had first bespoken their love. And as if Greenwillow's ghost breathed the words in his ear, Sunbright found himself saying, 'I need you. I love you.'
The boldness was wiped away with one stroke, and a mistiness possessed Knucklebones's eye. Softly, she told him, 'Good. Because I love you too.'
They had time for a quick kiss. Her lips were soft and firm, cool and wet. His, strong and hard. Then they were running after Candlemas as branches whipped in a wind that was not a wind.
But the mage stopped on a path at the brow of a hill. Arms outflung, he called, 'Sita! I was so worried!'
The plump noblewoman flew into his arms, slamming his chest so hard he grunted, then hugged him tight, smearing her fine blue-green robe with his blood. 'Me, too, dear Candy! I love you so! Don't leave me!'
'No, no! Never again! I love you, Sita!' For the first time in his life, the pudgy mage hugged a woman and breathed the words, and many more endearments.
Still holding hands, Sunbright and Knucklebones caught up. Their eyes were shining, but their faces were worried. The ground lurched, and from behind rolled a giant ball of marble. They had to dash aside to avoid it, and it rumbled past and smashed flat a wooden gazebo.
'Oh, our empire…' breathed Aquesita.
The others turned to look. This brow afforded an all-encompassing view.
The enclave of Karsus was dying. Many buildings had collapsed. Fires blossomed like yellow-red flowers, spinning off spirals of smoke. Water from splintered fountains and pipes sometimes met flame and burst into steam, but in other places flooded folks off their feet. Near the tumbled walls that surrounded Castle Karsus, hordes of people, from the poorest to the noblest, dashed into the grounds to seek high ground. Too, their anger swelled as their homes and families were destroyed, and instinctively they knew Karsus was responsible. The mutter of this mob became a growl, then a roar.
But Aquesita mewed, and pointed at the sky. 'Lady of Mystery!'
From tilted horizon to slanted mountains, the sky was knitting, piling up gray clouds, coalescing into a solid mass. But amongst the clouds, stretched so wide the eye couldn't see all, there began to form a face, and hair, and wide, outspread arms spanning the horizon, encompassing the empire.
A woman, a goddess, blotted out the sun.
'It's the final prophecy!' whispered Aquesita. 'The last true sign of the End of the End! The end of the empire!'
Candlemas tore his eyes away, grabbed his ladylove's hand. 'It's nothing! A storm, an illusion!' He didn't believe it himself, so barked louder, 'Let's go! We need to find your cousin before the mob does!'
No one argued, but they had to tear Aquesita from staring at the sky, at the death knell of her beloved empire. Stumbling, running uphill, they fought the bucking earth and crashing debris to get to Karsus and his star chamber.
The quartet found paths that were clear, dodged fallen cornices and fences and statues and trees, and managed to scramble up polished stone steps by clinging to handholds and helping one another. The rioters were far behind, but still coming. The city tilted ever steeper. If it continued to turn at this rate, they'd be crawling on all fours.
But the worst problem came because Karsus had outsmarted himself again.
Their first inkling of trouble was a maid and butler screaming past them, bloody from scratches and slashes on heads and arms. Taking the lead, clinging to a wall, Sunbright slung Knucklebones behind to drag Harvester from its sheath, ready to battle whatever terrified the servants.
What erupted around a paneled corner was a female apprentice no higher than Sunbright's breastbone. The
