<What the hell? Someone…Someone successfully built something hierophantic in Tevanne?>
<True. I was brought into this place. At the time I was constrained, and was unable to access it.> She turned to look at Sancia, her eyes like pinpricks of yellow light in her vast face. <You were there as well.>
Sancia slowly realized what she meant—or rather where she meant. <Ah, shit.>
<Do not need the entire structure. Or even the lexicon. Just a piece of it, a component. You can then apply it to the little one you had in your…library? Business? Shop? What term?>
<Whatever,> said Sancia miserably.
<Once this is done, I can assist you directly. But most important,> said Valeria, <just as I know that the Maker will have need of this…>
<He’ll know that you need it too.>
<Yes. And he will prepare accordingly. And as you have learned…he is not to be underestimated.>
<No shit.>
<I can impress upon you the nature and image of this component,> said Valeria. She turned to face her, shifting her massive bulk in the sands. <If you so wish.> She reached out to Sancia’s face, her index finger extended. The digit was about the size of an adult’s arm.
But Sancia stepped back.
<Problem? What is?> asked Valeria.
<Crasedes said you were deceiving me.>
<Concerning?>
<He said he was here to stop you. That you were the true threat.>
She kept looking at Sancia, her bright eyes studying her. <The Maker,> she said finally, <is a thing of untruths. This is known.>
<A liar?>
<True. Do you think me a thing of untruths?>
<I think you’ve told me lies before. And you gave me protections and defenses without my damned knowing it. Which I don’t scrumming appreciate.>
<This I did for you to survive,> said Valeria, <for you to be freed. For you to be ready for the Maker, who I knew was growing close. He cannot affect you, nor can he perceive you—along with any tool or weapon you bear upon your person. Everything about you is veiled to him.>
<You still could have goddamned asked me!>
<At times, one has only difficult options, branching out in all directions, taking one to undesirable paths. I surveyed you and judged that you were not ready to hear of my truths, and those of the Maker. I gave you half-truths that would lead you to fuller ones. Do you think I was in the right, at that time?>
Sancia was silent.
<I will say this,> said Valeria. <The Maker is a dreadfully clever thing. He has destroyed cities just by whispering a few words to those who would listen. I wished to prepare you against him, and his lies. And between myself and the Maker, only one of us has killed innocents to return. Is this of no significance to you?>
Sancia hesitated. Then there was a pulse in the air, and the walls of the bubble shivered. She felt a queer pressure on her body, like she was being pulled up by invisible strings.
<You will wake soon,> said Valeria. She thrust her index finger out again. <I must show you this component. Only then, once you have it, can I protect you from the Maker.>
Still, Sancia was reluctant. She had permitted Valeria access to her mind once before. And at that time, Valeria had apparently done a lot more work in there than they’d initially agreed upon.
<Without my protections,> said Valeria, <you will be defenseless. You will be as soft sands before the waves of the Maker. You must do this. Then we can formulate a method of destroying him.>
<If you screw with me, Valeria,> Sancia said, staring up into the vast face of her golden figure, <I swear to God, I’m going to grab Clef and march right to the Dandolo campo and hand him over to your Maker. You understand? I am not your rig. I am not your tool. And I won’t be treated as such. Got it?>
Valeria surveyed her for a second. Then the walls of the bubble shook again, and Sancia felt her body tremble.
<Understood,> Valeria said.
<And I want more than just protections,> said Sancia.
<Sancia…>
<I have two people I’ve been trying to fix for the past three years, and I want your help—Gregor, and Clef. You know how to fix them, yeah?>
The walls of the bubble shook once more. <I…they are both creations of the Maker. Like myself.>
<So?>
<So…it is difficult. But…possible.>
The walls quaked again, and the queer pressure in Sancia’s chest tripled. <Promise me.>
<We have no time.>
<Then you had better goddamn promise me fast.>
Valeria studied her with her cold yellow eyes. <I…promise I will try.>
Sancia gritted her teeth. <Then do it, goddamn it!>
Valeria reached out with her massive index finger and gently, gently tapped Sancia’s forehead…
Images and concepts flooded into Sancia’s mind, one after another, like someone injecting blood into the center of her skull.
She saw a dark room, a vast chamber, and a huge rig within—a lexicon—and nestled in its cradle was a tiny, golden metal cone…
<This. Must have this.>
She screamed in pain, unable to bear it any longer.
And then she saw…something.
Or perhaps someone.
* * *
—
There was a man, wrapped in strips of black cloth, and he was kneeling on the ground, and he was weeping.
Sancia stared at him in surprise. She wasn’t sure what was happening, or what she was seeing. Yet somehow she knew that this moment had been transferred to her mind when Valeria had touched her—though she quickly suspected that this had not been intended.
She studied the man. His wrappings were similar to those that Crasedes wore, concealing his hands and face, but his were dusty and frayed, like he’d worn them while walking through a forest fire. He was sobbing as if overwhelmed with grief, a man totally broken by sorrow, and as she watched him the rest of the scene came into focus.
The man was kneeling in a cave. She could see a glimmer of daylight at the cave’s mouth, but it was obscured by thick, curling clouds of black smoke. The cave had evidently been an improvised living space for some time—the man was weeping in front of a bed, but there was also a washing bucket, and a crude stove, and a chest Sancia found distinctly familiar: huge and thick, with a complicated, golden lock…