Someone—not him—had sketched suggestions of detail inside the curves, thin lines and blocks of shadow. A narrow tower or mast rose from the central and most prominent of the three shapes. Definitely architecture, not ships.

He pushed aside the first sheet—it made a rippling hiss—and examined the second with pursed lips. This one he did not like at all. Rising behind a smaller scale rendering of the three objects, touched with crayon, pastel, pencil, and watercolor, an oblate orb stretched across almost the entire page. The orb was rimmed with deep red fire but its center was a waxy crayon black, heavily layered. When he held the drawing at the right inclination, such that it reflected no light, the center of the orb became an eclipsed eye with tiny darting flames instead of lids and lashes. And all around the orb, what could be seen of a sky

gave the startling impression of rotten, ripped fabric—a fantasia of dark colors and textures highlighted with multicolored squiggles.

He could easily imagine the squiggles glowing like neon signs.

No way his roommate had done these. Burke had absolutely no talent in that department—or any other, except being a sous chef, which was talent enough to earn a real living, unlike busking. Jack tried to look away from the pages, but they held him with a stomach-churning fascination. He had seen these things before; he knew what they were. So…

What were they?

He closed the folio with a broken laugh, tied it, and restored it to its place behind the trunk. Then he shoved the trunk against the wall, hard.

“Who else lives in this room, besides me?” he asked.

CHAPTER 21

The Green Warehouse

Ginny tossed on the cot, winding the blankets and sheets. Like a coward, with nowhere else to go, she had returned to the warehouse. She doubted anyone other than Minimus had even noticed she was gone.

“I almostknow his name,” she whispered, then took a deep breath, let it out slowly, puffed her worries in a cloud that rose to the roof and wisped through the cracks to spread in the high night air. Her eyes stared up at the old skylight, not seeing the pale moon through the clouds. As she twisted, making small, tight whimpers, the moon cast her face in a ghostly glow; she was far away, pupils dilated, pulse rapid; far away and frightened.

She was not asleep. She was not awake.

This time Ginny had not pushed her host from the body’s perch, but shared it. Tiadba had only the vaguest notion that somebody watched through the same eyes and listened through the same ears. There was too much else happening for this to be important.

Gradually, Ginny—not in control, unable to direct the shared eyes—pieced together that Tiadba was in a broad gray place, walls, if any, far away or behind, and at her feet, a shallow sea of dust sparkled and groaned beneath her bare feet as she walked.

Tiadba was lost in gloom. The adventure meant nothing—all their training, their plans, nothing now. The group had joined several Tall Ones. A deep, musical voice spoke on Tiadba’s right.

“There’s little time. You’ll pass through the gate when you’re fully prepared. Nobody leaves without proper training and tools.”

Tiadba looked up at the speaker, wrapping his long, strange face in her own fear and frustration. She wore a silvery mask to protect against the dust that rose in low puffs from their feet. She was part of a group of thirteen, nine of them ancient breeds. Their escorts or guards: four Tall Ones who would accompany them as far as the border of the real, and then deliver them to the Chaos. The nine and their escorts hiked beneath a high, dark gray roof—while the walls behind receded to a thin line. The effect was disconcerting—a huge flat space, dimness above, and nothing all around but the boundless, dusty plain.

How long would it take to get to where they were going? And where was that?

The oldest Tall One produced a trill that Tiadba interpreted as humor. “Breathe through the masks,” he advised. “There’s nothing poisonous, it’s just old, precious dust—older than you, older than any of us!”

He was at least twice as tall as Tiadba, with long, graceful arms and legs, a short, broad, pearl-colored face finely lined, and large brown eyes, spaced on each side of a broad, flat nose without apparent nostrils. (Ginny tried to remember if the Tall Ones were human—Tiadba seemed to think they were, though distantly and nonspecifically related.) He wore a tight black suit covered with close-spaced reddish piping that seemed to rearrange itself every few seconds—disconcerting. Their own clothes—except for the masks—were what they had arrived in: dun-colored pajamas. Tiadba (and Ginny, in turn) was beginning to realize just how naive they all had been. Who’s deceiving whom here? Did Grayne know, before she handed us over—before she died?

And Ginny could sense that Tiadba was still recovering from a nasty scare, accompanied by sorrow—the grief still burned. Something had happened back in the Tiers, something outside of Tiadba’s experience.

A bit of Tiadba’s backmind became acutely aware of Ginny’s presence. You! Go away. Or keep still and be quiet!

Ginny’s eyes fluttered, and for a few instants she again saw the warehouse, the skylight—again felt the presence of boxes and crates stacked out to the walls. The cot’s brown blankets bound her like a shroud; she stared up like a wild thing, neck corded.

Elsewhere, time was flowing—she was neither here nor there. She could only vaguely remember where she had been, and who—a lost name, three notes of a much longer tune she could not recall. Then, her eyelids fluttered and drooped. Her breath became shallow and quick. Her body settled.

She was away again…

They had crossed the plain of sparkling dust. Ahead, a silvery cluster of rounded buildings, like soap bubbles made of moonlight, rose from a pedestal surrounded by rivulets of that same dust, blown into low dunes and meanders across a depthless black floor.

“Nothing here is real,” said a young male trudging close to Tiadba. His name was Nico. They were all more than weary; they no longer had the full brightness of the ceil over the Tiers to guide them. Their world had expanded immensely—and most of it was ugly, barren, strange. Tiadba looked around at the nine, her nine.

You—inside me. This could be a dangerous time. We’re a broken team. I don’t know what we’re going to do.

Ginny still did not have the wherewithal to respond. She felt loosely attached; what Tiadba saw seemed to wobble and tunnel away, like an image at the end of a long pipe. Ginny was little more than a poorly connected rider, jostled by her host’s thoughts, even by the pounding of her heart. She could not speak, could barely even watch.

The sheets grew tighter, she was falling off something somewhere…

The group climbed a ramp to the pedestal and kicked off what they could of the dust on their feet and calves. Tiadba knew their names, tried to repeat them under her breath, as if introducing them to her guest.

She was thankful she was not the one doing the straying now; like Ginny—whose name she could not speak or make sense of—her memory of the lapses was minimal. You’re not going to push me aside, are you? That would be awkward for both of us. We could die.

The group entered the closest of the silvery bubbles. Inside, arranged on transparent racks, suits of armor twinkled and flashed at their joints with false fire. Split helmets draped the shoulders. They were like wet suits but segmented, thick and tightly ribbed—