The larger cnidarian-shaped machines could have picked up an aircraft carrier with ease. The smaller cnidarians might have been designed by the same hands that made the aeroscaphes of the Sylphs. (And for the first time Menelaus realized the Giants who designed the airskiffs of the Sylphs used elements taken from engineering schematics written in the Monument, some unguessed or unexamined section neither Menelaus nor Rania had ever deciphered.)

The roof and upper levels of the Tombs were being hauled upward by a larger machine, and four of its serpentines were the white-hot cutting implements which had pierced the roof. Menelaus saw debris, and then a coffin, lit to show a person was inside, dripping off the side of the broken Tomb layers. He watched helplessly as one of his clients fell; but the smaller machines, darting with supersonic speed, neatly caught that falling coffin.

Machines even smaller—he now saw cnidarian flying machines the size of a lady’s parasol, or the size of a child’s hand, or the size of a dragonfly—were catching the falling struts, rocks, stones, and pebbles.

Nothing fell to the ground.

Even the stormwinds, rain gusts, and lightning could not distract the cnidarians or make them miss their grip. Even the falling particles of dust were gathered up.

Menelaus saw what seemed like heat vibrations over the mantle or upper back of each of the cnidarian flying machines, and realized they could only fly in an atmosphere within the shadow of the Bell. The Bell was emitting a radiation that interacted with the metal. The metal was buoyant while in the field. He wondered if the vibration were something as commonplace as a partial vacuum created by a field, or if the Bell were merely raising and lowering the machines by magnetic monopoles, or if something more exotic, like antigravity, were possible.

2. The Dark-Palmed Hand

Then it happened. The side of the dark tower nearest was aflame. He realized these were maneuvering jets. Thousands and tens of thousands of pinpoints of light flickered into existence across the vast acreage of the dark hull. The light was brighter than acetylene. In the same way that skyscrapers in the days before Menelaus was born would turn on and off colored lights in all their windows, so as to make hundred-story-high billboards, but much bigger here, the acres and acres of white fire painted the outline of a symbol.

There must have been a maneuvering jet every few square yards, a caltrop of rocket vents larger than any Saturn V main cone, hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. The amount of fuel being ignited just to paint this sign in light was immense: as if twelve hundred Capes Canaveral, and all their rockets, had lit up at once, merely for one majestic, awe-inspiring moment of pyrotechnic skywriting.

So vast was the bottomless tower that the noise was like a distant jet fighter’s wake, passing overhead at thousands of feet high; but so many were the jets, and so gigantic each nozzle cone, that the noise came clearly over the world, like the mutter of a waterfall of fire.

But what was the symbol? The storm clouds and their escort of sheets and bolts of lightning blocked part of the image, but then some unseen force from the Bell (perhaps an air displacement simply vented from a lower to a higher altitude within the Bell, and spilled out as a million Niagara Falls made of denser air pouring down, a man-made cold front) made a gap appear in the cloud banks, and widen and disperse the blanket of storm gathered at the lower knees of the vast Bell, till all was plain.

The sign hung under heaven and over all the land, large in view as a constellation sprung to life. There were four vast rivers of light, broad as the Nile, rushing up the side of the towering vastness. A fifth rose at a different angle, and was shorter. The five rivers of fire entered into a lake of light, but a round island filled the lake with a core of darkness.

Laughter and rage and exaltation roared from his heart and rose to his lips. Menelaus’ ears were still ringing, but he was shouting and shouting.

“Damn you! Damn you, bastard! COME DOWN HERE! Come down right now, or I’ll come up there…” And then he started in on his favorite swearwords and blasphemies, of which he had no small supply.

Because what the image of the dots of rocket exhaust painted, of course, was the image of a pale white duelist’s gauntlet, its palm the black circle showing the enemy was ready to exchange fire.

His protracted wait was over.

3. Ximen the Black

One of the cnidarians, larger than a longboat, departed from the streaming aerial river of machines, and swooped softly and swiftly downward, and hung over the clifftop surrounding the open dig.

Atop it, legs spread like one who stands on a swaying raft, a hooded figure in dark sable silk was standing, white cloak flying in the wind, hands clasped behind his back, outlined for a blinding moment in the glare of the lightning bolts that decorated the knees of his flying tower. It was a starfarer in the shipsuit of the Hermetic Order, and beneath the lowering hood, skull-like, was seen the outline of goggles and mask.

Del Azarchel threw back his hood and doffed his mask, and he smiled, a shock of white teeth in his black beard, and his eyes glittered like agates.

4. Figures in the Earth

One of the serpentines, issuing from the edge of the cnidarian on which Del Azarchel stood, elongated and reached down and writhed a loop around Montrose.

Then Montrose was hanging in the winter air, wearing nothing heavier than Scipio’s spare red robe, maimed in both feet, burnt over twenty percent of his body, one arm broken, and various pains in his head, throat, chest, spine, bowels, and a burning sensation in his eyes … that he only slowly realized were tears. For weapons, he had one of the dog pistols that Rada Lwa had loaded, and it had a single shot. Scipio had been kind enough to lend it to him.

Montrose was lifted aloft to a point above the cnidarian as rapidly as a flag being hoisted.

Blackie del Azarchel, hovering in midair above the cliffside overlooking the deep and broken Tombs, was now below him; the mantle of the cnidarian on which Blackie stood was like a magic carpet of metallic silver, levitating, edges flapping and floating.

Now Montrose raised the pistol and took aim at Del Azarchel, who merely looked amused when he saw the threat. He raised his black gloved hand and made a dismissive gesture, as if brushing a fly away.

Montrose pulled the trigger. The hammer fell, driving the flint against the striker. The sparks ignited the primer, but the powder did not ignite. Menelaus felt his implants screaming so loudly that his back teeth ached in their sockets. He realized that the logic crystal pistol ball was issuing a radiation that broke down the chemical bonds of the nitrates in the gunpowder, rendering it inert. It was a clever trick, and he wished he had used it during the fight in the burial chamber.

The realization was like bile. Had Montrose been as imaginative as Del Azarchel, Daae would still have been alive.

The serpentine bent and lowered Montrose to the metallic surface of the upper mantle. Montrose impatiently threw the loops of snakelike metal off him, which was a mistake, for the grinding of the bone ends in his broken arm struck him with dizziness like the blow from a club of chaos and darkness; he shut off the pain center of his brain, and the scene around him seemed to become remote and dim, but clear, as if he were watching the whole thing through the wrong end of a telescope.

The substance underfoot was not metal, but foil, for it had a slight give where his bitterly cold naked feet touched, leaving bloodstains. Through his implants, he could tell the buoyancy was magnetic in nature, a set of fields balanced against some immense field generated from the top and bottom of the skyhook and surrounding it like a cocoon.