A slab of the ceiling shattered just to the left of Jack’s head. He lurched to the right and rolled onto his back, his pain drowned out by adrenaline. Dannie scrambled up. Ruth dived toward them, dodging another shower of stones, and slammed her shoulder into Dannie’s stomach, knocking her to the ground. A cluster of rocks cracked the floor where Dannie had stood less than a second before.
Jack, horizontal, was beginning to tilt. The cracks had spread from the walls to the floor, splintering the sacrificial drains into thousands of tiny chutes.
“Can we get back in the coffins?” Dannie shouted over the rumbling.
She was answered almost instantly as a column, severed at its base, crashed down to demolish the three sarcophagi.
Lying on his back, Jack cried out. He could see a stalactite, shifting among a spray of dust, directly above them. He made to hurl himself and the others away, but it was too late—the rock tumbled. He flinched, his nails digging into his palms.
Light burst from the Shard at Ruth’s throat, momentarily blinding Jack. There was no bone-crunching impact but instead the noise of a small explosion as the falling rock was singed into pebbles. A dome of amber energy had formed around the three of them, ethereal hieroglyphs swimming in and out of focus on its surface.
Icarus’s cackles rose above the rumbling.
Jack felt another surge of anger, but he couldn’t see the Cultist for the torrent of boulders all around them.
“We can’t stay here,” Dannie bellowed. “We’ll be buried alive!”
“Icarus will be buried with us,” Jack roared. “He’s mad.”
“Only just worked that one out, did you?” she retorted. “I’m not worried about him; I’m worried about us!”
The ground beneath them cracked completely. They were swaying, their ankles suddenly caught in a river of rubble. All points of reference had vanished—the ceiling had become the walls, the walls the floor, the floor swiftly vanishing into the earth.
Jack felt a hand grasp his shoulder, and a bolt of tingling energy shot through him. The dome of light was expanding, rounding itself off to form a sphere that encased the three of them. His feet left the ground, and he was hovering in the midst of a hieroglyphic zephyr.
“We’re going up,” Ruth shouted, tightening her grip on Jack and Dannie. There was a lurch similar to a car stalling, and the sphere blasted upward. They were puncturing through layers of falling rock like a meteor, smashing an inverse crater through the chamber ceiling. Sparks tapered off as they gathered speed, plunging into an abyss of churning pebbles and darkness.
Jack was not, as he’d assumed he would be, hammered back against the sphere’s base but instead found himself floating around its center. It was a strange feeling, as if he were watching the scenery shoot by from the quiet of a train carriage. He flinched every time a boulder hurtled toward them out of the gloom, but as before, it was sent ricocheting in a burst of sparks.
Ruth’s gaze was set, the Fourth Shard gleaming.
They broke the surface, sand cascading off the sphere as it soared upward. They were floating, bobbing along as if caught inside a luminous balloon, a second moon.
The sun was not yet up, but the sky was pale blue and brushed with tinges of pink. The desert spread out around them, the shadows draped from the dunes becoming more distinct even as they watched. All was eerily peaceful after the rumbling of the collapsing temple.
The ruins below had been obscured by a sandstorm, the abandoned structures buckling and crumbling into the earth. Something glinted on the ground to the east.
“What’s that?” Jack said, pointing to it. He felt oddly like an astronaut, hovering and waving his arms, apparently without any influence from gravity.
At Ruth’s mental command, the sphere began to drop, carrying them beyond the city walls. It was still quite hard to make out objects in this light, to the extent that Jack thought he must have been mistaken with what he was seeing. But as they drew closer and he was able to glimpse the faces of the people below, his heart shuddered in gladness.
The sphere touched the ground and evaporated. The three of them were sent flailing out onto the sand, as if dropped from parachutes. Spitting out grains, Jack looked up into the face of Bál.
He couldn’t seem to find words as the dwarf clasped his forearm and hauled him to his feet. Dannie was being helped up by Adâ, and Ruth by Vince. Also crowded around were Hakim, Charles, several other Apollonians, and an elf he vaguely recognized.
Finally, with another layer of sand siphoned off his tongue, he managed to speak. “How on earth did you get here?”
Bál nudged a thumb over his shoulder to a cluster of stationary dimension ships, as if this were what Jack had been asking.
“Yeah, I get that bit, but how? I mean after what happened in the woods, with the Cult and that machine . . .” It was then that he realized who the vaguely familiar elf was. Though no longer frozen in alchemical ice, those were unmistakably the features of Nimue’s mysterious hostage.
“It’s a long story, but . . .” Bál trailed off, looking past Jack. An expression of incomprehension and rage crossed his face, and Jack knew even before he turned what Bál had seen.
A wall of sand was still churned high above the city, blocking their sight, but a solitary figure strode toward them. Dust billowing around him as if repulsed from his body, apparently without a scratch on him, Icarus came to a halt a few feet before them.
“A welcome party, eh?” he said, dusting off his hands.
The air was suddenly full of light, the different colors jostling against one another. Ethereal figures towered over Icarus—a ruby ram, a sapphire whale, an emerald falcon, an amber jackal, and an ivory fox. Bál, Cire, Dannie, Ruth, and Jack stood in a line, Shards burning brilliantly around their necks.
The sun broke over the desert, blasting its rays across the dunes. The spirits blazed with alchemical energy.
Hakim’s words were quite calm. “Give it up. You’re done.”