Delay, decadence, conspiracies beyond counting or comprehension—the inevitable sapping of the city’s vitality in the face of millions of years of warding off the unthinkable—had brought the end closer than even he had imagined.

Upon arrival, Ghentun had circled the chamber to look down through the high windows at the Kalpa’s three remaining bions. The intrusion had severely damaged the lowest levels of the first bion, whose foundations enveloped the Tiers and from whose rounded crown rose the Broken Tower. It also wreaked tremendous destruction on the southern and the tertian bions. Both sent up dismal, spiraling plumes of silvery smoke to the limits of the inner pressure barrier. Outside the border of the real, the monstrosities drew closer, as if warming themselves on the Kalpa’s fires of destruction. The Witness’s eternally spinning beam had accelerated, and its huge mountain of solidified flesh—once human, now ageless and beyond pity—pushed in toward the Defenders, anticipating another sacrifice.

The Tiers had always attracted the strongest, most destructive intrusions. Now Ghentun wondered if one reason for this attention was floating beside him. He comprehended that since the creation of the Tiers, the Typhon had been probing the city as if with special knowledge—if such a thing could know or make plans.

He looked to the east, away from the Witness, for the last party of marchers, hoping they might leave before the final collapse, before the Typhon’s triumph.

The Librarian had dallied for millions of years. Mind beyond measure—how could Ghentun criticize or

even understand? But there had never been a plan that he could discern—certainly not one that could be explained to a Mender or a breed. He was really no better than his charges, no better than this brash, crèche-born youngster, who had persisted despite all the deceptions and intellectual barricades set in his path.

Like Menders—like Ghentun—breeds understood shame, as if their primordial stuff preserved a heritage of that ancient emotion lost to the Great Eidolons.

An angelin approached, appearing at first as a tiny speck silvering outward from the center of the chamber, then suddenly nearby—a few feet away. As before, it was female in form, pale blue, and no taller than Ghentun’s knee—but this time it seemed to prefer the appearance of walking rather than drifting about or flying.

It might be the same angelin he had spoken with before—and it might not. Identity was of little importance to this class of servants.

Ghentun nudged the breed. Jebrassy raised his head and blinked, looked around, but remained curled, as if savoring a few last moments of warmth and sanity.

“All honor to the Librarian,” the angelin sang, its voice like trickling water. “Is the experiment concluded?”

“Yes,” Ghentun replied.

“You’ve brought the requested specimen from the Tiers?”

“I have. Does the Librarian request my presence?” Ghentun asked doubtfully.

“You will accompany the young breed.”

Jebrassy pushed out his legs and slowly dropped to the bottom of the cloak, where he stood on his own, beneath the gaze of the Tall One. He turned to stare in awe at the blue form a few feet beyond, radiating deep cold despite the cloak’s protection.

Jebrassy had moved well beyond confusion or fear. Anything could happen. He almost hoped it would—all of it, just to get it over with.

Then he thought of Tiadba. He shuddered at the realization that he had just emerged from a dark sleep. But for how long? Where was she? Had she been sucked into the intrusion? Was she even alive?

Jebrassy growled and shoved his hands against the shimmer.

A small voice spoke in his ear like the high chirrup of a letterbug. “Don’t do that. It’s cold out here, and the Librarian wishes you comfort and health. Both of you will follow this silly blue form. It is my pleasure to escort you to the most wonderful place in all the Kalpa. Possibly the most wonderful place left to humans in all the cosmos.”

Jebrassy looked up at the Tall One, then back to the small blue figure, puzzled—they thought they were allhumans, despite appearances, was that the secret? He began to move his feet in a shuffle and discovered that the shimmer followed him—and so walked at a normal pace, keeping up with the naked blue image. Ghentun stayed beside him.

Not even the sweep of a knife-edged beam of gray light across the smooth roof of the chamber—like a threat of instant blindness—slowed their progress, though it made Jebrassy cringe. When they came to the center—a walk of what seemed only minutes—he looked back and studied the far curved rank of high windows and suddenly understood where they were—remembering the stories in the books.

“We’re in Malregard, aren’t we?” he asked Ghentun.

“Some once called it that,” Ghentun said. “We’re both of us far above our neighborhoods and rank, young breed. In the region of the Great Eidolons. They neither think nor act as we do.”

“But we’re allhumans,” Jebrassy said.

The Keeper touched his nose with amusement—a breed gesture.

“Watch your step,” the angelin warned. “You should close your eyes. We’re vectoring to the top of the tower—what’s left of it, of course.”

“What broke the tower?” Jebrassy asked.

Ghentun made a small, ambiguous sound. “You needn’t concern yourself with the past. There’s far too much of it. You should only look ahead. For once, the future is scaled to fit you.”

Jebrassy did not know whether to be insulted.

Silvery curves danced around them, as if they were moving, yet he saw no change. And then—they stood beneath a terrible sky, filled with hoops of flame and spinning worlds. Something looked down upon them, impossible to actually see or measure—and Jebrassy thrust his clenched fists to his eyes. He thought he was falling—that he was back with Tiadba flying over the Tiers, and the warden had let him go—

Voices sounded all around, saying nothing he could understand, and a deep booming buffeted his body. Jebrassy could not stand the thought of falling without seeing where he was going to hit. He had to know. He lowered his arms, but for a moment his eyes refused to open. He had seen too much already—something bright and multicolored, and from it great sweeps of silver rising high into an arched grayness, grasping and moving brilliant red shapes, like farmers using tongs to swing bales of chafe…

Above—below—he couldn’t tell which—thousands of white figures were arrayed in positions of restful waiting, hands clasped behind their backs. Each had two arms, two legs, and a round white head. They had no faces, no features, nothing but smooth whiteness.

He wasn’t falling. He was floating—upside down, it seemed—over an immense tangle of causeways, along which the many white figures stood in rows or moved about in astonishingly different ways. Some of the figures walked, many drifted close to the roads, a few zipped up and over the whole expanse with dizzying speed, swooping soundlessly and shedding more of those beautiful silvery curves. Still others simply vanished, and the rest, tens of thousands—in long rows that stretched off into obscurity—awaited instructions, like an enormous army of blanks.

The angelin came into view and gave Jebrassy a nudge. Even through the shimmer its touch nearly iced his toes, but he came right again with a slow rotation to face the rainbow brilliance and the tongs that reached up and out, grasping flame-colored luminosities and pulling them down.

“The Keeper has delivered a breed,” the angelin announced, its voice so sweet it made Jebrassy’s ears hurt. And then, another message—not from the Tall One nor from the blue form, and not so much a voice as a beam of words half seen in the shimmer that protected him. Let the primordial find a place where he can heal. We will meet when he is whole again and calmer. I would not wish to dismay him. He is, after all, the most important citizen in the Kalpa.Jebrassy looked up at the Tall One who stood by his side.