“And they’re still out there.

“Your armor is particularly vulnerable in the zone of lies, just within the border of the real. These are the middle lands, where the Defenders, the last rank of generators protecting the Kalpa, gradually ease their protection, and then give way to the Chaos. Crossing the middle lands must be done cautiously. Your armor must not become fully active—competing fields generate unpredictable results. I will accompany you into the zone to monitor your progress. I have not lost a marcher yet, not at that stage. But many other trainers have seen their marchers snatched prematurely, caught up in an intrusion or a twistfold.

“There are regions in the Chaos which seem to possess a constancy even across long ages. One of these is the Necropolis—the remains of the Kalpa’s nine lost bions. The Typhon has drawn up these ruins and combined them with the perverted remains of other cities. Here, the Typhon presents its warning of things to come—a cruel mockery of Earth’s greatest citadels, which once spanned the globe. Now, their remains, or their essences—their imagos—have been gathered and rearranged within sight of the tower. Some of these ruins still seem inhabited—if that is the word—by hopeless phantoms. Those who once lived, do not, yet persist and act, and that which never lived takes on unexpected life.

“Let me now describe areas of great danger and opportunity. One is a kind of road or highway across the Chaos, known as a ‘trod.’ Trods appear and disappear, forming serpentine pathways or lanes through all regions.”

“What are they?” Tiadba asked.

“The trods serve as paths of conveyance. Even in the Chaos there are hierarchies of rule or misrule, power or weakness, grandeur or pity. The highest and most powerful figures or shapes—we dare not call them knowing or intelligent—use the trods to move about. Among them are the Silent Ones that have caused so much damage to our marchers, and which even in Sangmer’s day were active and powerful.”

“What do they look like?” Nico asked.

Pahtun shook his head. “Many shapes,” he said. “Some in the tower monitor their comings and goings. Unfortunately, they tell us little down here.”

The marchers stood beside the dome shed, grimacing and stretching and still getting used to their armor.

“The old matter that makes you and fills the bulk of the Earth was once sustained by the suspension that kept the Typhon at bay—but when that pulled tight around the Kalpa and the reality generators became necessary, we had to abandon everything outside. Primordial mass in the Chaos ages unpredictably,

forming pockets of geological change and destruction, no longer limited by the simple rules of gravity, physics, nor even old space and time. The Typhon seems to relish that instability—whatever amuses the Typhon stirs the Chaos and torments old Earth.”

“You keeping talking about the Typhon as if it were alive,” Nico said. “Is it really someone bigger and more powerful than the Eidolons—whatever they are?”

“I am as ignorant as you,” Pahtun answered after a short pause. “Some humans once regarded the unknown forces of nature as magnificent enemies or implacable gods. To me, the Typhon is not part of our nature—neither magnificent nor an enemy whom one might respect. It is a scourge and a disease. But you’ll soon live it for yourselves, and whatever theory keeps you alive, that’s the one you should hold and cherish.”

Macht and Khren seemed intrigued, but this didn’t satisfy Nico, the philosopher. Perf, Shewel, and the other females looked lost or bored. Denbord and Tiadba just listened and tried not to voice their opinions.

Seeming to sense Tiadba’s quiet skepticism, Pahtun knelt beside her on the sandy floor of the channel. His head still rose over her, even as she stood tall in her armor.

“You have a question,” he said.

“We’re going where we have to go,” Tiadba said. “But who made us that way?”

“Shapers, I suppose, following the orders of an Eidolon. I’d like to meet the old twitch someday and give him my opinion.” Pahtun wriggled his fingers and then touched his nose, breed-style. “Ages ago, when I was younger, to salve my own guilt, I snubbed the laws of the City Prince and sent outposters to study the Chaos.” He stopped for a moment, his face crinkling, and Tiadba thought this was the first time she had seen such an expression on a Tall One. She didn’t know what it meant—sadness, wonder, loss?

“They will not report back. Whoever leaves the Kalpa must never return, for reasons good enough and simple.”

“But you keep sending usout there,” Tiadba said.

“Higher minds than mine made these plans, and I suppose we’re all committed, whatever the consequences. You feel your instincts, I do my duty.” He stood. “If any of my outposters are still out there, and still free, they might help—they might not. You have to exercise the same caution you would with anything else in the Chaos.”

Perf looked back at the Tiers, lost in mist beyond the edge of the camp. Macht put his hands together, murmuring a song of calming.

Pahtun’s face smoothed and took on a distant look. “I do believe this, because I must: if any of you succeed, a greatness will be accomplished, something that may make all the long sacrifices of your kind worthwhile.”

“The old pede-kicker is resting.”

Khren, stocky and quiet-footed, approached Tiadba. She turned and looked him over critically. She had been feeling miserable again. Not his fault, of course, but Khren and his friends were no substitute for her warrior, foolish as he might have been at times.

“We have a moment,” he said gently, aware of her mood. Macht and Perf joined him.

“Please read some more from the books,” Perf said. “Teach us.”

Grayne’s shake cloth and the old letterbugs could not guide her now. She had to riddle the words on her own, but she had become better at that. What she read, she tried to convey and explain to the others. She was sure this was what Grayne had intended. Strange that she could no longer remember Grayne’s face or the music of her gentle, insistent voice. Jebrassy she remembered clearly. Others gathered: Denbord, Nico, and Shewel, carrying their mats. They had come to prefer sleeping in the open, under the dark arches, rather than inside the flimsy tents, which flapped in the tweenlight breezes and worried them.

Tiadba sat and opened one of the books. The breeds’ favorite passages tended to be about Sangmer the Pilgrim and Ishanaxade, the Librarian’s daughter, but the stories were seldom the same, a peculiarity that didn’t matter much to her audience.

Of necessity, she skipped or paraphrased parts with which she had difficulty, and many of the words were still obscure, but reading them over and over again was like seeing them with more experienced eyes, and she took away more meaning each time.

Other passages, spread throughout the text like chafe-seeds in a cake, still stumped them. Some were lists of instructions, go here and dothis, thenthat—word-maps, Tiadba called them—and sometimes she read these for their calming effect just before the Tall Ones extinguished the lamps for sleep. This time she chose a more familiar text while the breeds curled at her feet, staring out into the shadows.

“‘The story I tell is simple,’” Tiadba began, and her eyes filled, remembering the times with Jebrassy, just a few wakes past.

Once, half an eternity ago, the glorious new sun—so-named, despite its having burned for ten trillion years—was almost surrounded by the Typhon Chaos. Five worlds remained, and on Earth, twelve cities, homes to those gathered from around the cosmos after a long and wretched decline. Greatest and most ancient of these cities was the Kalpa, and wisest, for this city constantly made preparations against the time when the Chaos would swallow even the new sun. Defeat was imminent, many thought.