Sancia nearly fell over with shock. She stared around herself, and confirmed they were alone in the lift.
<Clef?> she asked. <What the hell was that, what the hell was that!>
<You heard it too?> he said. He sounded just as shocked as she was. <The voice?>
<Yeah! Has…Has that ever happened befo—>
<Words…Words, I hear,> boomed the old man’s voice. <A Presence is found…and located. A lift. Escalation?>
<Uh-oh,> said Clef.
The doors of the lift opened. Sancia walked out onto the fifteenth floor, which appeared to be more industrial than residential. Everything here was blank gray stone and iron doors and pipes. A sign above read SCRIVING BAY 13.
Sancia barely had any mind for this, though. Someone was talking, to her and to Clef. Someone could apparently overhear them, like two people gossiping at a taverna. The idea was simply mad.
<Destination?> asked the old man’s voice. He spoke in clipped, harsh tones, like a parrot that had learned to imitate speech. <Purpose? Why are you within my boundaries?>
<How is this possible, Clef?> she asked.
<I don’t know,> said Clef. <Usually I have to touch scrived devices to hear them speak…>
<And is that what you think this is? A scrived device?>
<Well, I—>
<You are…not Tribuno Candiano,> said the old man’s voice. <Words he could not put into me directly. Spoken only…yes. Not like this.>
<Shit,> she said. <Shit!> She turned a corner and followed a group of scrivers toward yet another lift. She glanced inside and saw this one only went down. She kept walking.
<But Presence carries Tribuno’s mark,> said the old man’s voice. <His signal. How is this?>
She walked down a long hallway, opened a door—it unlocked instantly for her—and found herself moving through what seemed to be some kind of party, with scrivers quaffing bubble rum out of glass tankards while a band of women—most scantily dressed—played flutes and brass instruments.
<Confirmation,> said the old man’s voice. <A secondary presence located in chambers of Tribuno Candiano. Who is other Presence?>
The scrivers ignored Sancia, who was dressed as a functionary. She passed through and walked out the door on the other side, desperately searching for another lift.
She was in a short hallway, with an open door at the end.
<No,> boomed the old man’s voice. The door at the end slammed shut. She stared at it, then turned and tried the one she’d just walked through, only to find it was locked.
<Must provide identity,> demanded the old man’s voice. <And nature.> And then, though the voice’s previous statements had a queer, crude syntax to them, his next question sounded strangely genuine. Even passionate. He whispered, <Are…are you one of them?>
<Use me on the door at the end,> said Clef. <Now!>
She ran to the closed door and touched Clef to the knob—since the door, like so many in the Mountain, had no need of the lock.
<It’s…weird,> said Clef. <I don’t need to break any bindings, because the door can’t really resist you. It thinks you’re Tribuno, it’s just been put on a delay. Wait ten seconds, then try the knob.>
She did so. The door opened for her, and beyond was a set of stairs up. She sprinted up them, taking three steps at a time.
<Curious,> said the old man’s voice. <Anomalous.>
She kept running up the stairs.
<I have never held a Presence such as this,> said the voice. <Two minds in one? How is this?>
<Clef?> said Sancia.
<Yeah?>
<Am I insane, or is this voice the goddamn Mountain?>
Clef sighed as she came to the top of the stairs. <Yeah. Yeah, I think it is.>
* * *
Sancia looked around for her next move. <What do we do?>
<I don’t know. But I think it’s a lot, lot more than a building,> said Clef.
<Can it hurt me?>
<I’m not sure. I don’t think so. But I’m also not sure it would want to.>
<What is Presence’s nature?> asked the voice—the Mountain, she supposed. <No one has ever spoken to me directly…Is Presence a…a hierophant? Must provide verity.>
<Hierophant?> thought Sancia. <What the hell is going on?>
Sancia picked a corridor at random and started walking. Berenice and Orso had said that the Mountain might sniff her out before long, but she didn’t think it would be this fast.
<At least provide destination,> said the Mountain, somewhat resigned.
<We want to go up,> said Clef.
<Clef!> she said, shocked.
<What? He can hear us, and he can track you. He’ll figure it out eventually!>
<If location is up,> said the Mountain, <proceed to third right. This will take Presence up.>
Sancia walked to the third right, then looked down its long hallway and saw it ended in a lift.
<Proceed,> said the Mountain.
<How do I know you won’t trap me in there?> asked Sancia.
<I cannot,> said the Mountain. <You carry Tribuno Candiano’s signal. This engages many rules constricting behavior. Cannot alert anyone to Tribuno’s location. And I am required to protect Candiano at all costs. These were his commands, when I was formed.>
Sancia started walking toward the lift. <Tribuno made you? Made your…your mind?>
<Made, no. Initiated, yes.>
The lift opened for her. She didn’t even get the chance to tell it which floor she wanted before it started up.
<Is your nature one of the Old Ones?> whispered the Mountain. <You must tell me. You must…It is one of my rules. Location of such is my Purpose.>
They ignored him as they continued up.
<Isn’t fair,> said the Mountain softly. <Not fair that I keep nearing fulfillment of Purpose. Yet it eludes me…>
The doors of the lift opened—but not on a hallway or a room or a balcony. Before Sancia was a wide, sandy plain, with a black sky above dotted with tiny white stars. Standing in the center of this plain was a tall black stone obelisk, covered with strange engravings.
“What the hell?” whispered Sancia.
<It’s not real,> said Clef. <It’s like a stage background. It’s a black-painted ceiling with scrived lights set in it, really small ones. I suspect the sand is imported too. Like a garden.>
<True,> said the Mountain. <But Obelisk is real. Taken from the Gothian deserts, where the Old Ones once remade the world.>
Sancia anxiously looked around the sandy plain, then started off, the sigh of her footprints intensely loud in the empty room.
<There’s a door at the far end,> whispered Clef. <I’ll help you find it.>
<He used to reside here,> said the Mountain. <Long ago. Was Presence aware?>
She shook her head, bewildered, as they crossed the weird sandy plain. She was getting the impression that the Mountain was not really hostile to them at all. Rather, it was like the thing was lonely, hungry for someone to talk to, and she suspected it’d brought her to this strange, fake place for a reason. Much like a party host might show a guest a painting, the Mountain had wanted to discuss this.
<Tribuno?> she asked. <He came here?>
<Yes. Made this place. He would come and be situated before Obelisk, to…reflect,> said the Mountain. <Think. And speak. I listened. I listened to all he said. And learned to mimic his words.>
<Why did Tribuno Candiano make you?> asked Sancia.
<To attract a hierophant,> said the Mountain.
<What!> said Clef. <That’s insane! The hierophants are all dead!>
<Untrue,> said the Mountain. <Death cannot be the state of hierophants. This was determined, per Tribuno’s research. Look upon Obelisk. Do so.>
She did as the Mountain asked. Nothing about the obelisk looked familiar at first, but…
On one side was a carven visage. An old man’s face, stern and high-cheekboned, and below it, a single hand, grasping a short shaft—a wand, perhaps. Below that was a familiar symbol to Sancia—the butterfly, or the moth. She’d seen it on Clef’s head, and in the engraving of the hierophants in Orso’s workshop.
“Crasedes the Great,” said Sancia.
<Yes,> said the Mountain. <Changed himself. Altered by his practices to become deathless. The Magnus cannot die. He and his kin cannot enter into a death state. They persist in some other fashion, wandering the world. Tribuno built me to attract them, like a moth to flame…>
She found the door and opened it. She started to walk out—but then screamed and fell back.
The door opened on a short, railed balcony, almost at the top of the huge hollow space she’d originally seen—she was hundreds of feet above the ground. If she’d run forward, she could have stumbled over the railing and fallen to her death.
“You could have told me that was there!” she said aloud.
<I would not have permitted death,> said the Mountain, somewhat apologetically.
She returned to the balcony, and saw there was a short walkway that clung to the curving wall around the top of the giant hollow hall. A door was at the far end, and she started to walk to it.
<God,> she said. <This place is huge.>
<Yes,> said the Mountain. <I am vast. He built me to be such. I needed to be, to achieve my Purpose.>