As she came undone, she said, ++NOW IT INSULTS US.++ She rose higher into the air and began to unravel, particle by particle.
Mastering her horror, Mara said, "I have lived alongside you." And because she was afraid for Kelda, she asked, "Do you intend violence?"Īt once, the Techeuns collapsed to the ground like marionettes from severed strings-all but Kelda Wadj, whose augment blazed with coruscating light. The other Techeuns were transfixed thusly in a geometric array around the Dreaming City-each one inert, suspended, bleeding. She emerged in a small coastal observatory-then nothing more than a grand dormitory-and found Kelda Wadj, the Allteacher, hovering four feet off the ground. Mara lengthened her stride, taking the steps three at a time so that she could duck into a little-used transport gate. That one-voice came again, as clear and strong as the birth of the universe, booming with dispassionate curiosity, ++IT THINKS ITSELF WISE! HOW DID SOMETHING LIKE IT ATTAIN SUCH REVELATION?++ You are the idea that gives fate its shape." She turned at once and left the Queenswalk so that Riven would not be inspired.
The answer came at once, ++WRONG! IT IS THE EKPYROSIC. There came a morning when the Techeuns spoke in unison, though none were near each other, and they said, ++WHO ARE YOU WHO BUILDS A HIDDEN CITY HERE IN OUR THOUGHTS?++Īnd Mara, alone in the Queenswalk of the Dreaming City, heard their voices ring out as if each Witch stood beside her, and she said to the empty air, "I am Mara Sov. Mara ran her hand along the sleek surface of the primary well's control mechanism, then turned and walked alone toward the fresh, foggy air that blew in from the coast. "Do we wish to trust the Guardians?" Illyn filled in dryly. "Yes, yes, I know." They all knew that the gate required a continuous multi-week charge of paracausal energies, and that almost nothing in this solar system could produce such energies at the scale required by the gateway. "The key is so heavy as to be unliftable," Kalli ventured, since they were speaking metaphorically. "Egg," Mara corrected absently, chewing on her thumbnail. When it came time to connect the Well to the unreality that lay beyond the gateway, Sedia asked, "Would it not be wiser to leave this door without a key?" Riven, now an immense antlered serpent with broad tiger paws, tightened around the perimeter of the room like a noose. They named it Eleusinia, and it was in those Ascendant halls that Mara finally carved a statue for Sjur. Mara and Riven shaped her third throne together, and the artistry of their work was a testament to the hungry joy they felt in that partnership. Open-eyed, she walked between planes and sorted the threads of reality on a vast metaphysical loom, weaving some closer, some more distant. Illyn made tincture after tincture of queensfoil until her clothes stank and her hands were stained reddish-black. There, Lissyl and Sedia augured the first borehole with the help of Riven, who had taken the shape of a needle-nosed basilisk, while Kalli and Shuro Chi constructed the gate itself, deep below, in a hall they named " The Confluence." Satisfied that their methods were sound, they then went to a grand cathedral to dig the well.
They made their first test with a small rift generator on the eastern shore. And as the coven contemplated the possibilities laid wide before this god-king's far-flung sword, it was decreed that they would build a throne world beneath an energy well as blind as the ferryman Charon. In this way, the Awoken were the first to know of the Great Navigator: his philosophies, his strategies, his weaknesses. Because she spoke well, it was agreed that aid would be traded for intelligence and a long-term alliance. Eris Morn returned to the Vestian Outpost.