Time moves differently across the Line, I mused as we walked. The last time we were across it, we’d all had different perceptions of how long we’d been there. However, Droit’s pocketwatch suggested that we’d walked about forty minutes before we saw the dark shape on the horizon.
The tolling of the bell grew louder and more frequent as we neared it, until the sound resonated through us like a slow heartbeat. As we drew closer, the shape grew larger, until I recognized it as an immensely tall, angular, and crooked cathedral. It floated in the bale, mirror-imaged, with steeples and flying buttresses rising both “up” and “down,” although those directions had no meaning except in relation to the road Far had created for us. The entire stone structure was covered in some kind of enveloping, prickly, strangling mass.
“It’s changed since we were here last,” Droit observed. “I’ll bet that vine comes from Yzyrchye. Probably trying to keep the cardinal captive. Yzyrchye can be a bastard that way.”
“Far! Wait!” I tried to limp faster, shouting over the bell. Far stopped. “Why did you bring us here?”
The young sentinels were also gathering around us, not looking nearly as formidable in their balearmor now that they stood against the looming vastness of the cathedral.
“What is it, Far?”
“Is that where the cardinal is?”
“Are we supposed to go in there?”
“Why’s the bell ringing?”
“Hush!” Milka looked around at the older children. “Let him talk.”
We fell silent, though the bell kept tolling. The sound vibrated through my chest.
“Kyrchye desire man in building will go to Cislunar,” Far said, his voice an eerie echo of the deep tones of the bell. “She say I must bring help. You is Far help.”
Droit and I glanced at each other. The Reverence depicted Kyrchye, like Yzyrchye, as male. But Far used the female pronoun for both of them. I immediately wanted to ask why.
“Those vines are Yzyrchye’s, right?” Caro asked, glancing at Droit. He nodded.
“Yzyrchye does not desire man he will go to Cislunar,” Far declared.
“Why not?”
“He is …” Far turned to me, groping for the word. “He is mark protect by Kyrchye. Yzyrchye is no want Kyrchye mark man go to Cislunar.”
“He’s Kyrchye’s Hound,” Droit suggested, flippantly.
“He’s Kyrchye’s communicant,” I said, before Far could adopt the irreverent term. “He’s a holy man.”
“So, where is Yzyrchye?” Droit asked, looking around.
“She is not come close to Kyrchye.”
“Is Kyrchye here?” I asked, my skin prickling. The bell tolled again.
“Kyrchye is here.” Far’s tone brooked no doubt.
“In there?” Milka asked, pointing to the cathedral.
“Kyrchye is there.”
“Lovely,” Droit said. He took another look at the thorn-blanketed building. “Next time I choose where we go on our date, Axton.”
The children giggled and made low “ooooh” noises.
“Why doesn’t Kyrchye untangle the cathedral and save Cardinal Croix himself?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t blushing again. “He’s more powerful than Yzyrchye, isn’t he?”
Far stood silent a moment, his coat flapping. The movement wasn’t quite synchronized with the hot and rancid balewind that blew around us.
“Kyrchye cannot defeat Yzyrchye. Yzyrchye cannot defeat Kyrchye. I cannot defeat Kyrchye. I cannot defeat Yzyrchye. We is … We are …” He stopped, his vocabulary failing him again.
“You’re evenly matched,” I suggested. “You’re in a state of equilibrium.” Far had said something similar the last time we were over the Line. It wasn’t exactly what the Reverence taught about the god of justice and the lord of Perdition, but I expected that Far’s interpretation might be more accurate.
“In state of equilibrium,” he repeated, cautiously.
“So humans are your wild cards.” I rubbed my leg as I gazed at the floating cathedral. “We’re the ones who can break the stalemate between the gods.”
“Then let’s go,” Finn urged, scuttling back and forth on multiple legs.
“Let’s go!” Caro agreed. The five transients surged forward, toward the wall of balethorns. I took an instinctive step to join them and Droit grabbed my shoulder.
“Hold on. Are you sure you want to do this? The Reverence excommunicated you. You don’t owe it a thing.”
“I’ve applied to have my excommunication lifted,” I said, looking up at him. “Besides, this isn’t about the Reverence; it’s about Kyrchye and Cardinal Croix.”
“You don’t want to get personally involved with the gods, Ax. They’ll make your life hell.”
“I’m used to hell.”
His hand didn’t move.
“Really,” I insisted. “I want to do this.”
“All right,” Droit said, sounding resigned as he released me at last. “Every man to his own damnation. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The five young sentinels had already vanished into the wall. I shivered, looking at the rents in the tangle that marked their passage. Everywhere one of the vines had been broken, it bled dark red.
“That isn’t a plant.”
“No.” Droit drew his hound-hilted sword. “It’s probably a transient Yzyrchye shaped to serve it. It likes to be creative.”
I reached out and touched one of the bleeding edges. The liquid was warm, as warm as I’d expect from a human body. I started to taste it and Droit grabbed my wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s no such thing as poisonous blood.”
“There are poisonous plants!”
I tugged and he reluctantly let me go, scowling. I put my finger to my lips. Yes, it tasted like blood. I touched the pale vines. They were flesh-warm and smooth.
“This used to be human,” I said, feeling an old sense of wonder return.
“It’s a transient.” Droit paused, frowning. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes. And it used to be human.” I studied the strange, hairless vines with fascination. “Jon and I hypothesized that transients are humans who were lost over the Line and reshaped by the bale … or, given what I know now, by Yzrychye and Kyrchye. That’s why the Vigilance … and the Reverence … wanted us silenced. The Vigilance didn’t need to give the Reverence another reason to condemn adjuration, and the Reverence considered our argument heresy.”
“There was a transient with my freedom mark on it, back in Yzyrchye’s palace,” Droit said, thoughtfully. “I remember thinking that Yzyrchye must have turned one of my captives into a transient, but I thought he was an exception. Just something done to piss me off.”
“It was trying to turn the children into transients, too,” I said, nodding to myself. “That’s why they’re so comfortable with bale. They have a transient’s mind, at least in part.”
“Do you think Yzyrchye nabs every sentinel who’s lost across the Line and turns them?”
“Possibly. And perhaps every sacrifice it receives, as well. The small transients might be made out of small animals, and the bigger ones out of larger animals and humans.”
Droit turned to Far.
“Don’t let that girl out of your sight.”
“I’ll be all right,” Milka said with the blithe confidence of a twelve-year-old. Far didn’t answer, simply watching and waiting. I wondered if he did anything with the dead pigeons and alley cats that so many children had sacrificed on his hopscotch board. Yzyrchye usually took his sacrifices alive, which made sense, if it were going to change them into transients. What did Far do with dead flesh? Or did he do anything at all with it?
“We’d better make sure the others are safe, too,” I said, dismissing my line of questioning as I realized I couldn’t see the other children anymore.
Droit began to hack at the vines, sending blood spraying. We pushed our way into the thorny tangle, but as soon as we were out of Far’s protective influence the vines snapped forward, lashing around us.
“Look out!” The vines slid around my arms and legs and wrapped around my waist. They were as strong as human arms and as sharp as rose bushes. Droit swore, hacking at the vines that tried to grab him.
“If this thing used to be human, where’s its heart?” he shouted, stomping on one of the vines and slashing it in half. The cathedral bell tolled again as I twisted, clawing and biting. I slipped away from one of the vines and squirmed out of my waistcoat, buttons flying as I tore myself free. Blood streaked my arms, my hands, my face and mouth. The wound in my leg pounded.
“Probably in the roots,” I said, then yelped. “Droit, look out!”
He turned, swinging, and the vine that had been slipping toward his neck was sliced in half, showering him in blood. Then he turned back and pointed his crimson-stained sword at me.
“Tegeus,” he snapped, glowering. A vine wrapped around my ankle and yanked me off my feet. Droit grabbed my wrist and pulled me back, his blade flashing. The vine released me and I scrambled to all fours. Droit yanked a dagger from his boot and handed it to me, then swung his sword as another vine probed toward us.
“Where do you suppose it hides its roots?” he asked. I stabbed a vine that came too close, relieved to be armed again.
“By the walls?”
He nodded and we started moving forward again, slipping on bloody vines as our clothes were snagged and torn by thorns.
“Do you think the children are all right?” I asked, wishing we’d all gone in together.
“They’ve got armor.”
True. And they could pass through the Line if they were in trouble, I reassured myself. As long as they didn’t cross the Line over the ocean or in mid-air, they’d be fine.
We forced our way forward another foot and reached an open space. I teetered and grabbed one of the vines, thorns ripping my palms, to keep my balance. The tangle stopped ten feet from the wall and opened into balespace.
I looked up and down. There was no visible communication between the walls of the cathedral and Yzyrchye’s living barrier. Wherever the transient’s roots were, they weren’t here.
“Do we jump?” I asked with trepidation. It wasn’t too wide a leap, but the cathedral was huge, and the drop below us looked endless. Malformed gargoyles jutted out from the cathedral walls here and there in no pattern I could discern.
Droit hacked at a vine that tried to wind around one of his legs and leaned out next to me.
“Caro! Kate!” he shouted.
“Jack! Holly! Finn!” I joined in. We shouted for nearly a minute, but nobody answered, and then Droit had to stop to carve up more of the attacking vines. He was scratched and bloody, but he seemed to be in a good mood as he kicked a chunk of vine out into the gap and watched it fall.
“If we were sentinels, we could create a balewall bridge,” he said.
“Why aren’t they answering?”
“Oh, stop worrying about them. They’re more likely to survive this than we are.” He looked up. “The door’s about fifteen feet up.”
I followed his gaze. The great, arched cathedral doors towered twenty feet up and down in a narrow, pointed oval. Smaller, inset doors provided a human-sized entrance.
“There are plenty of handholds on the walls themselves,” I observed, trying to keep my voice steady. “As long as we can reach the walls, we should be able to climb up.”
“It’ll be a long fall if we miss.”
“Could we braid these vines into a rope, or a ladder?”
Droit laughed.
“You need to stop reading bad novels, Ax. It’d take us hours to do something like that, and this thing isn’t going to give us that much time.”
I steeled myself.
“Then I guess we jump.”
“Whoa, easy there.” He grabbed me, as if he were afraid I’d throw myself off the edge at once. I thought that was nice. “Stab the vine behind you.”
I turned and slashed. Thorns cut my cheek but the tendril recoiled, bleeding where the blade had sliced it. I was more used to using scalpels than daggers, but the theory was the same.
“How good are you at climbing?” he continued, scrutinizing me.
“Better than most.” I’d climbed walls as a child, and I’d scrambled up and down the jakes when I was in prison on cleaning duty. It had been a tight, filthy job, but I’d learned where to put my fingers and toes to keep from falling into the sewers below.
“Can your leg take it?”
“I don’t think I have any choice,” I said. “I can’t stay out here.”
“All right. Listen. It’s not far. Get as much of a running start as you can with that leg, and jump. You’re going to fall down at an angle, so you’ll lose five, ten feet, maybe, but you’ll hit the wall. As you said, it looks like there are plenty of carvings to grab onto. As soon as you’re out of the way, I’ll follow.” He chopped another vine that whipped out toward him.
I’d already thought through everything he’d just said, but I supposed it was good to know that a man used to commanding armies around a battlefield agreed. I returned his knife, then crouched and pulled off my shoes and socks, reminded of the time we’d played hopscotch in Cislunar’s Hall of Records. I rolled up the rags of my sleeves and wiped my hands on my pants to clean off the blood.
“I’m ready.” My heart was pounding. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but I didn’t like the idea of an endless fall into balemadness. Sweat stung the cuts on my hands.
“There’s no reason why you can’t do this,” Droit said, evenly. “The eaves of the roof jut out, down there at the bottom, so even if you don’t get a grip at once, you’ll still hit them about forty, fifty feet down, and they’ll stop your fall.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice tight. The cathedral was fixed bale. As long as I could cling to it, my mind would have something to lock onto. I just had to be sure I didn’t miss.
“Hold on.” He turned and started hewing at the thorny tendrils, cutting them back, forcing them to recoil. Blood soaked us both, but I knew what he was doing —buying us room and a minute or two free from attack. My bare feet slid on blood-slicked flesh-turned-vine. My wounded leg hurt, but I knew I couldn’t favor it, not for this. I mentally apologized to Dr. Hawkins and my future self.
“Go,” he snapped.
Strangling on a prayer, I sprinted forward and hurled myself off the edge of the vines toward the cathedral wall. The cathedral bell tolled.