Concupiscentia halted, before Quaisoir could take up her account afresh, and began to murmur a little prayer of her own.

"Are we here?" Quaisoir asked.

The creature broke the rhythm of her entreaty to tell her mistress that they were. There was nothing remarkable about the door in front of them, or the staircases that wound out of sight to either side of it. All were monumental, and therefore commonplace. They'd passed through dozens of portals like this as they'd made their way through the place's cooling belly. But Concupiscentia was plainly in terror of it, or rather of what lay on the other side.

"Are we near the Pivot?" Jude said.

"The tower's directly above us," Quaisoir replied.

"That's not where we're going?"

"No. The Pivot would probably kill us both. But there's a chamber below the tower, where the messages the Pivot collects drain away. I've spied there often, though he never knew it."

Jude let go of Quaisoir's arm and went to the door, keeping to herself the irritation she felt at being denied the tower itself. She wanted to see this power, which had reputedly been shaped and planted by God Himself. Quaisoir had talked of it as lethal, and perhaps it was, but how was anyone to know until they'd tested themselves against it? Perhaps its reputation was the Autarch's invention, his way of keeping its gifts for himself. Under its aegis, he'd prospered, no doubt of that. What might others do, if they had its blessing conferred upon them? Turn night to day?

She turned the handle and pushed open the door. Sour and chilly air issued from the darkened space beyond. Jude summoned Concupiscentia to her side, took the lamp from the creature, and held it high. Ahead lay a small inclined corridor, its walls almost burnished.

"Do I wait here, lady?" Concupiscentia asked.

"Give me whatever you brought to eat," Quaisoir replied, "and stay outside the door. If you hear or see anybody, I want you to come and find us. I know you don't like to go in there, but you must be brave. Understand me, dearling?"

"I understand, lady," Concupiscentia replied, handing to her mistress the bundle and the bottle she'd carried with her.

Thus laden, Quaisoir took Jude's arm and they stepped into the passage. One part of the fortress's machine was still operational, it seemed, because as soon as they closed the door after them a circuit, broken as long as the door stood wide, was completed, and the air began to vibrate against their skin: vibrate and whisper.

"Here they are," Quaisoir said. "The intimations."

That was too civilized a word for this sound, Jude thought. The passageway was filled with a quiet commotion, like snatches from a thousand radio stations, all incomprehensible, coming and going as the dial was flipped, and flipped again. Jude raised the lamp to see how much farther they had to travel. The passageway ended ten yards ahead, but with every yard they covered the din increased—not in volume but in complexity—as new stations were added to the number the walls were already tuned into. None of it was music. There were multitudes of voices raised as a single sound, and there were solitary howls; there were sobs, and shouts, and words spoken like a recitation.

"What is this noise?" Jude asked.

"The Pivot hears every piece of magic in the Dominions. Every invocation, every confession, every dying oath. This is the Unbeheld's way of knowing what Gods are being worshiped besides Him. And what Goddesses, too."

"He spies on deathbeds?" Jude said, more than faintly disgusted by the thought.

"On every place where a mortal thing speaks to the divine, whether the divinity exists or not, whether the prayer's answered or not, He's there."

"Here too?" Jude said.

"Not unless you start praying," Quaisoir said.

"I won't."

They were at the end of the passage, and the air was busier than ever; colder, too. The lamp's light illuminated a room shaped like a colander, maybe twenty feet across, its curved walls as polished as those of the passage. In the floor was a grille, like a gutter beneath a butcher's table, through which the detritus of prayers, ripped from the hearts of those in grief or washed up in tears of joy, ran off into the mountain upon which Yzordderrex was built. It was difficult for Jude to grasp the notion of prayer as a solid thing—a kind of matter to be gathered, analyzed, and sluiced away—but she knew her incomprehension was a consequence of living in a world out of love with transformation. There was nothing so solid that it couldn't be abstracted, nothing so ethereal that it couldn't find a place in the material world. Prayer might be substance after a time, and thought (which she'd believed skull—bound until the dream of the blue stone) fly like a bright-eyed bird, seeing the world remote from its sender; a flea might unravel flesh if wise to its code; and flesh in its turn move between worlds as a picture drawn in the mind of passage. All these mysteries were, she knew, part of a single system if she could only grasp it: one form becoming another, and another, and another, in a glorious tapestry of transformations, the sum of which was Being itself.

It was no accident that she embraced that possibility here. Though the sounds that filled the room were incomprehensible as yet, their purpose was known to her, and it raised the ambition of her thoughts. She let go of Quaisoir's arm and walked into the middle of the room, setting the lamp down beside the grille in the floor. They'd come here for a specific reason, and she knew she had to hold fast to that; otherwise her thoughts would be carried away on the swell of sound.

"How do we make sense of it?" she said to Quaisoir.

"It takes time," her sister replied. "Even for me. But I marked the compass points on the walls. Do you see?"

She did. Crude marks, scratched in the surface sheen.

"The Erasure is north-northwest of here. We can narrow the possibilities a little by turning in that direction." She extended her arms, like a haunting spirit. "Will you lead me to the middle?" she said.

Jude obliged, and they both turned in the direction of the Erasure. As far as Jude was concerned, doing so did little good. The din continued in all its complexity. But Quaisoir dropped her hands and listened intently, moving her head slightly from side to side as she did so. Several minutes passed, Jude keeping her silence for fear an inquiry would break her sister's concentration, and was rewarded for her diligence, finally, with some murmured words.

"They're praying to the Madonna," Quaisoir said.

"Who are?"

"Dearthers. Out at the Erasure. They're giving thanks for their deliverance and asking for the souls of the dead to be received into paradise."

She fell silent again for a time, and now, with some clue as to what she had to listen for, Jude attempted to sort through the intimations that filled her head. But although she was refining her focus, and could now snatch words and phrases out of the cpnfusion, she couldn't hold that focus long enough to make any sense of what she heard. After a time Quaisoir's body relaxed, and she shrugged.

"There's just glimpses now," she said. "I think they're finding bodies. I hear little sobs of prayers and little oaths."

"Do you know what happened?"

"This was some time ago," Quaisoir said. "The Pivot's had these prayers for several hours. But it was something calamitous, that's certain," she said. "I think there are a lot of casualties."

"It's as if what happened in, Yzordderrex is spreading," Jude said.

"Maybe it is," Quaisoir said. "Do you want to sit down and eat?"

"In here?"

"Why not? I find it very soothing." Reaching for Jude to help her, Quaisoir squatted down. "You get used to it after a time. Maybe a little addicted. Speaking of which... where's the food?" Jude put the bundle into Quaisoir's outstretched hands. "I hope the child packed kreauchee."