The sleeping room was dark, that terrible dark which means the total absence of light, but Duré’s eyes adjusted, and he realized that the Möbius cube itself was glowing slightly, telltales winking.

He stumbled across the cluttered room and grabbed the cube, lifting the heavy thing with a sudden burst of adrenaline. The Consul’s summary tapes had mentioned this artifact—Masteen’s mysterious luggage during the pilgrimage—as well as the fact that it was believed to hold an erg, one of the alien forcefield creatures used to power a Templar treeship. Duré had no idea why the erg was important now, but he clutched the box to his chest as he struggled back down the corridor, outside and down the steps, deeper into the valley.

“Here!” called the Consul from the first Cave Tomb at the base of the cliff wall. “It’s better here.”

Duré staggered up the trail, almost dropping the cube in his confusion and sudden draining of energy; the Consul helped him the last thirty steps into the tomb.

It was better inside. Duré could feel the ebb and flow of time tides just beyond the cave entrance, but back in the rear of the cave, glow-globes revealing elaborate carvings in their cold light, it was almost normal. The priest collapsed next to Sol Weintraub and set the Möbius cube near the silent but staring form of Het Masteen.

“He just awakened as you approached,” whispered Sol. The baby’s eyes were very wide and very dark in the weak light.

The Consul dropped down next to the Templar. “Why do we need the cube? Masteen, why do we need it?”

Het Masteen’s gaze did not falter; he did not blink. “Our ally,” he whispered. “Our only ally against the Lord of Pain.” The syllables were etched with the distinctive dialect of the Templar world.

“How is it our ally?” demanded Sol, grabbing the man’s robe in both his fists. “How do we use it? When?”

The Templar’s gaze was set on something in the infinite distance.

“We vied for the honor,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “The True Voice of the Sequoia Sempervirens was the first to contact the Keats retrieval cybrid… but I was one honored by the light of the Muir. It was the Yggdrasill, my Yggdrasill, which was offered in atonement for our sins against the Muir.” The Templar closed his eyes. A slight smile looked incongruous on his stern-featured face.

The Consul looked at Duré and Sol. “That sounds more like Shrike Cult terminology than Templar dogma.”

“Perhaps it is both,” whispered Duré. “There have been stranger coalitions in the history of theology.”

Sol lifted his palm to the Templar’s forehead. The tall man was burning up with fever. Sol rummaged through their only medpak in search of a pain derm or feverpatch. Finding one, he hesitated. “I don’t know if Templars are within standard med norms. I don’t want some allergy to kill him.”

The Consul took the feverpatch and applied it to the Templar’s frail upper arm. “They’re within the norm.” He leaned closer. “Masteen, what happened on the windwagon?”

The Templar’s eyes opened but remained unfocused. “Windwagon?”

“I don’t understand,” whispered Father Duré.

Sol took him aside. “Masteen never told his tale on the pilgrimage out,” he whispered. “He disappeared during our first night out on the windwagon. Blood was left behind—plenty of blood—as well as his luggage and the Möbius cube. But no Masteen.”

“What happened on the windwagon?” the Consul whispered again.

He shook the Templar slightly to get his attention. “Think, True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen!”

The tall man’s face changed, his eyes coming into focus, the vaguely Asiatic features settling into familiar, stern lines. “I released the elemental from his confinement…”

“The erg,” Sol whispered to the baffled priest.

“…and bound him with the mind discipline I had learned in the High Branches. But then, without warning, the Lord of Pain came unto us.”

“The Shrike,” Sol whispered, more to himself than to the priest.

“Was it your blood spilled there?” the Consul asked the Templar.

“Blood?” Masteen drew his hood forward to hide his confusion. “No, it was not my blood. The Lord of Pain had a… celebrant… in his grasp. The man fought. Attempted to escape the atonement spikes…”

“What about the erg?” pressed the Consul. “The elemental. What did you expect it to do for you?… to protect you from the Shrike?”

The Templar frowned and raised a trembling hand to his brow. “It… was not ready. I was not ready. I returned it to its confinement. The Lord of Pain touched me on the shoulder. I was… pleased… that my atonement should be within the same hour as the sacrifice of my treeship.”

Sol leaned closer to Duré. “The treeship Yggdrasill was destroyed in orbit that same evening,” he whispered.

Het Masteen closed his eyes. “Tired,” he whispered, his voice fading.

The Consul shook him again. “How did you get here? Masteen, how did you get here from the Sea of Grass?”

“I awoke among the Tombs,” whispered the Templar without opening his eyes. “Awoke among the Tombs. Tired. Must sleep.”

“Let him rest,” said Father Duré.

The Consul nodded and lowered the robed man to a sleeping position.

“Nothing makes sense,” whispered Sol as the three men and an infant sat in the dim light and felt the time tides ebb and flow outside.

“We lose a pilgrim, we gain one,” muttered the Consul. “It’s as if some bizarre game were being played.”

An hour later, they had heard the shots echo down the valley.

Sol and the Consul crouched by the silent form of Brawne Lamia.

“We’d need a laser to cut that thing off,” said Sol. “With Kassad gone, so are our weapons.”

The Consul touched the young woman’s wrist. “Cutting it off might kill her.”

“According to the biomonitor, she’s already dead.”

The Consul shook his head. “No. Something else is going on. That thing may be tapping into the Keats cybrid persona she’s been carrying. Perhaps when it’s finished, it’ll give us Brawne back.”

Sol lifted his three-day-old daughter to his shoulder and looked out over the softly glowing valley. “What a madhouse. Nothing’s going as we thought. If only your damn ship were here… it would have cutting tools in case we have to free Brawne from this… this thing… and she and Masteen might have a chance for survival in the surgery.”

The Consul remained kneeling, staring at nothing. After a moment he said, “Wait here with her, please,” rose, and disappeared in the dark maw of the Sphinx’s entrance. Five minutes later, he was back with his own large travel bag. He removed a rolled rug from the bottom and unfurled it on the stone of the Sphinx’s top stair.

It was an ancient rug, a little less than two meters long and a bit more than a meter wide. The intricately woven cloth had faded over the centuries, but the monofilament flight threads still glowed like gold in the dim light. Thin leads ran from the carpet to a single power cell which the Consul now detached.

“Good God,” whispered Sol. He remembered the Consul’s tale of his grandmother Siri’s tragic love affair with Hegemony Shipman Merin Aspic. It had been a love affair that had raised a rebellion against the Hegemony and plunged Maui-Covenant into years of war. Merin Aspic had flown to Firstsite on a friend’s hawking mat.

The Consul nodded. “It belonged to Mike Osho, Grandfather Merin’s friend. Siri left it in her tomb for Merin to find. He gave it to me when I was a child—just before the Battle of the Archipelago, where he and the dream of freedom died.”

Sol ran his hand across the centuries-old artifact. “It’s a shame it can’t work here.”

The Consul glanced up. “Why can’t it?”

“Hyperion’s magnetic field is below the critical level for EM vehicles,” said Sol. “That’s why there are dirigibles and skimmers rather than EMVs, why the Benares was no longer a levitation barge.” He stopped, feeling foolish explaining this to a man who had been Hegemony Consul on Hyperion for eleven local years. “Or am I wrong?”