The Far Dawn (12 page)

For a moment there is only silence.

And then the entire cavern begins to rumble. The turbines spin up, glowing electric blue. The gears of the Paintbrush begin to whir, to churn, and the crystal cage lights up in blinding white.

The entire cylinder of the Paintbrush, a giant weapon now aimed at the magma blood flow of the planet, hums and vibrates. Sparks begin to fly from its joints.

And the energy is traveling through Lük, Rana, and Kael, overwhelming them with warmth and light and stars and eternity, and it feels like the most horrible pain and the sweetest delight and maybe like dying or living forever in a day or something, so much something. Lük is crying and screaming and silent and time seems to lose meaning.

“Behold!” Master Solan shouts over the wind that whips through the cavern.

Lük opens his eyes and through the white heat that he has become, he sees an enormous beam of energy erupt from the Paintbrush, firing into the magma, causing plumes of fire and lighting the molten rock to a blinding white. The energy of life, of the earth, of the stars and the universe . . .

Lük barely hears the first scream, but he can hear the second. He and Rana and Kael are wrapped in folds of white energy but Lük is able to turn his head, and beyond the light he sees Master Solan, his face wide with ecstasy or terror. He is screaming. . . .

And then bursts into flames, his robe on fire and white light shooting from his eyes and mouth. In a moment his body has become a charred silhouette, crumbling to ash.

It happens next to a nearby soldier. Then another. The masters start to flee for the tunnel, but few of them will make it. Their bodies begin to burn and burst before they can reach safety.

Lük thinks to run, somehow hears Rana thinking to run and Kael, too, as if their minds are connected by the energy, but then a voice speaks to them, the voice that only I have known:

Stay with me, children, in the safety of my light.

The Terra has spoken and when he hears this voice, Lük feels that he has never truly known the world, or what it means to be alive, until this moment.

What is happening?
Rana asks.

No vessel can contain that which cannot be held,
says the Terra
. Qi and An. The quest to become gods has unleashed horrors. Using my energy in this way will ravage the earth. There was nothing you could have done.

More screaming. Chunks of the cavern walls begin to break away. Masters are crushed beneath toppling boulders. One by one, the turbines explode in glorious plumes of lightning.

Lük feels the shrapnel and rock, the flares of magma, all passing near him and maybe through him, but he is safe in the embrace of the Terra's light, a horror he has helped to unleash.

Everything shakes and blinds.

But then for a moment there is silence.

Go. Now, my children
, says the Terra.
And remember me
.

Lük tries again and this time his hand comes free. He staggers back, leaving the light, stumbling over chunks of rock. He reaches out and finds Rana's arm, blinking as his eyes adjust. He turns to see the devastation. Wreckage and rock everywhere. Most of the plateau in either direction is gone. The magma crashes in terrifying waves against the cavern walls. Each impact peels away columns of rock.

“Rana!”

Lük and the others look over to spy Alara, singed and bloodied, waving from the exit tunnel.

Hurry, children!

Lük hears a strange whine and looks up to see all the light sucking back into the Paintbrush, and its very matter seems to be rattling, becoming molten, and Lük feels certain that it is going to explode.

“Go!” Kael calls, thinking the same thing.

Lük runs, taking Rana's hand. They vault across the wreckage, around the charred impressions that were once soldiers and masters and . . .

His feet splash in water between two twisted pieces of copper. The ice coffins—

“They were already dead,” says Rana, her voice shredded. “Say it.”

“They . . . ,” Lük manages, but that is all. It's Rana's turn to pull him along. She's right, he knows, but the image of Maris returned will haunt him. Had there been another way? Could he somehow still have his brother back? The guilt will stay with him forever.

They reach the tunnel and duck inside, and Lük takes a last glimpse at the mighty Paintbrush of the Gods as it hums and vibrates and seems to be drawn in molten light.

And then there is a deep, sizzling sound, and they are thrown to the ground and shield their heads as a blast of energy sears past them.

Then it is dark.

Lük gets to his feet. He helps Rana up. They peer back into the cavern. The magma lights it in ominous reds. The plateau is dark but not totally. Lük sees that the Paintbrush of the Gods is still glowing like a hot burner, steam rising from it. Only a faint white light remains from the crystal cage.

“We have to go back for her,” he says.

But a new tremor shakes the ground, and everywhere there is the sound of crumbling rock. The ceiling begins to fall in great slabs.

“We can't,” says Alara. “We have to get out.”

“The Terra—” says Lük.

“Is lost,” says Alara.

Run
, the Terra says to them.
What is lost shall be found
.

And so they do. They escape the tunnel and arrive in the entrance cavern. It is all coming down. Fallen ceiling has already grounded the transport ship. The masters' craft, here now, too, has smaller ships tied to its sides. The Three and Master Alara pile into one of these small craft, and Lük flies them out, dodging the debris, and then back to Atlante, where the first seismic shocks and tremors are arriving, the sea roiling, the ice and rock cracking. The Paintbrush of the Gods is gone, but its work has been unleashed, and the world is convulsing, changing . . .
all by our hand.

The Three will fail
, I hear the Terra's voice. This is not a message for Lük, it is for me.

And now I am leaving, pulling back away from Lük's mind, but as I am, I see in a blur what is to come:

They will evacuate, journey north, the masters gone, society and the world collapsing. They will race the ash clouds to Greenland, to the last stronghold city of Polara. Alara's disciples will prepare the skulls, prepare the temples to hide them in, while the three prepare themselves to be sacrificed, to preserve their memories and knowledge forever, to help save future life from this same tragedy.

The millions dead, the dead raised only to die again. . . .

Over and over the cycle repeats.

They will kneel on pillows under an ash-filled sky as the world plunges back into ice. They will wear white and try to be strong and look at one another with tragic, knowing eyes because this must be done. Alara and the surviving clergy will offer words to the Terra, but she will not hear because she is trapped in a cage and buried, and the earth will not know her song, the coming civilizations will not know her music, because it is lost, and for ten thousand years, they will make the same mistakes, on larger and larger scales, rising and falling, because they cannot see another way, they have never known the music. . . .

And Lük will take his last breath and then squeeze his throat tight as the blade meets it.

There will be a searing white pain.

A sense of leaving.

The last thought he will think is of Rana's beautiful face, her beautiful hair and high cheeks and wide hollow eyes . . .

Black eyes . . .

Dead eyes . . .

But all does not end after that.

12

FIRST A DULL BURNING. THE COLLAPSING ATLANTEAN world still a blur . . . then my eyes opened to a warm orange light, the soothing relief of a setting sun, in stripes across arches of stone.

I blinked and recognized the shape of a high ceiling, a large room, and beside me, a huge window of crystal panes like an eye, looking out on a sky of imperial blues, a sliver moon already cresting overhead.

I had to sort out my sense of time. It felt like years had passed, or minutes or millennia, but no matter which measurement, each was infinite and infinitesimal at once.

Owen. You must hurry. They are coming for me.

I tried to move, but couldn't.

The sun faded from the ceiling arches.

The world went black again.

 

Later, I felt pain distantly, like sticks rubbing together. Broken bones.

Eyes open.

The sun had set.

Stars infinite in the sky, a brushstroke of cold Milky Way. The ceiling arches in shadows.

I felt the tingle of my arms and legs, the beating of my heart, pressure of stone against my back, the systems coming back online, technicians throwing switches.

“Did you see . . .”

I pulled my head from the cold stone and found her sitting in her throne.

The Sentinel. Sword by her side. In the giant chair, she looked small. I'd assumed she was old, but without her shroud of fury she looked more my age. She glimmered in ghost light, but I could see more now: her black hair flowing around her threadbare white dress. Her bare feet. Her mouth pursed and small in her thin, smooth face.

Her eyes still vacant holes of black.

“See?” I croaked. The images from the journey seemed both like memories and like dreams, things I knew but couldn't trust. Collaging, fragments in an already fragmented head.

“Did you see . . .”

I sat up and was distracted by a scream of pain. I looked down at my ruined right wrist. The skin around the contorted joint was swollen and purple. Just looking at it made it hurt more.

“Did—”

“I heard you,” I snapped. My jaw ached. My head pounded. “Did I see. See what?”

The Sentinel just stared at me. I had a weird sensation, like she was familiar.

“You are not of the Three.”

“Yeah, I know. And you stabbed me in the chest.” Except I looked down and realized that whatever her blade had done, my chest seemed to be fine and moving in a normal living, breathing way.

“The Terra asked me to help,” she said. Her voice was low and flat, but still slightly girlish. “To send the one who was not of the Three.”

“Yeah, well, you sure did that.”

“Did you see . . .”

“I don't remember what I saw! Let me think.” I turned away from the Sentinel's dead gaze, and looked out on the silhouetted mountains and the stars, trying to piece it all together.

The Terra wanted me to see why the Three would fail. Back in Atlantis, it was because the masters used the power of the Terra to resurrect loved ones. They'd discovered that the concentrated power of the Terra could restore life. But what did that have to do with now?

“Did you see . . . L—” The Sentinel sounded like she was searching for a word.

The masters had built a trap into the Paintbrush and the Three had failed. Master Solan had been as twisted as Paul. Not only did he want to succeed in his goals, he also wanted to break the spirits of those who opposed him. He didn't have to design the Paintbrush to specifically use the Three. He'd done that because he'd wanted to be
artful
.

I wondered what it was about power that made someone like that: it wasn't enough just to achieve your goal, you also had to relish in the suffering of the people who opposed you. To flaunt your power.

Yet the power of the Terra had been too great, and the force unleashed by the Paintbrush threw the earth into chaos.

But what had I seen? Why would the Three also be destined to fail this time? Unlike the masters, Paul would have no idea about that power of the Terra. He'd have no way of knowing it— Wait. Unless . . .

I turned back to the Sentinel.

“What are you asking me?”

“Did you see . . . Lü—”

And suddenly I saw her. Right there in front of me. “Did I see . . . Lük?”

Though her face was mostly light, and her eyes absent, I saw some ripple of relief wash over her.

“Lük.”

“You're Rana,” I said.

“Rana,” she repeated, as if she was remembering it.

“But you died: you had your throat cut and you went into the skull.”

She nodded. “We died, only to discover that we could not. Though our knowledge was transferred to the skulls, along with a piece of our souls, though the blood drained from our bodies onto the stones, we . . . lingered. We linger still.”

I felt the pieces coming together. “This is because the Terra's energy flowed through you, isn't it? In the Paintbrush?”

“Paintbrush . . . I had forgotten its name. Lük,” she said, like she was glad to have the word back. “The exposure to the Heart of the Terra made us immortal in a way. But we're incomplete. Never to die but never to be fully alive.”

“How did you end up here?” I asked.

Rana sighed. It was a frail sound, like wind through a crack in a door. “Once we saw what we had become, we chose to be watchers. The skulls could be left dormant until we activated a signal, along the magnetic beams of the planet, which would cause them to reach out for the lost Atlantean code.

“At first we thought we could remain among the living, but eventually, as the knowledge of the ancients was lost to the new world, we became feared, monsters. And we could not fully explain who we were or why we existed because this would expose the secret of the Three.

“And so after thousands of years, I grew tired of hiding, of trying and failing to connect. I found this place, with its shreds of our culture. It felt like home. And so I have lingered on. I do not know what became of the others, Lük and . . .” Her mouth moved like it was trying to reshape a word.

“Kael.”

“Yes. I lost them, in the centuries when we were hunted and feared.”

“I know that at least one of you did a similar thing. I'm not sure who, but Paul found one of you in Greenland—sorry, Polara.”