The Obelisk Gate

“No, it has to be done all at once.” Tonkee stops and glowers at her. “That’s not rusting negotiable.” She sees you then and stops, her eyes going immediately to the bandage around your arm.

  Ykka turns and her eyes widen, too. “Damn.”

  You shake your head wearily. “I agreed it was worth a shot. And now we know they can’t be reasoned with.”

  Then you sit down, and the people on the Flat Top fall silent as you impart what intelligence you were able to glean from your trip topside. An army of surplus people occupying the houses, a general named Danel, at least one Guardian. Adding this to what you already know—stone eaters on their side, a whole city more of them somewhere in the Equatorials—paints a bleak picture. But it is the unknowns that are most alarming.

  “How did they know about the meat shortage?” No one seems to be holding the gray stone eater’s revelation against Ykka, or at least they aren’t doing it right now, even though they now know she was keeping the information from them. Headwomen are supposed to make choices like that. “How are they finding the rusting vents?”

  “With enough people, it’s not hard to search,” you start to suggest, but she cuts you off.

  “It is. We’ve been using this geode in one way or another for fifty years. We know the land—and it took us years to find those vents. One’s in a damned peat bog further along the river, which stinks to the heavens and occasionally catches fire.” She sits forward, propping her elbows on her knees and sighing. “How did they even know we were here? Even our trading partners have only ever seen Castrima-over.”

  “Maybe they have orogenes working with them, too,” Lerna says. After so many weeks of hearing mostly rogga, his polite orogene sounds strained and artificial to your ears. “They could—”

  “No,” says Ykka. She looks at you then. “Castrima’s huge. When you came into the area, did you notice a giant hole in the ground?” You blink in surprise. She nods before you can answer, since your face has said it all. “Yeah, you should have, but something about this place sort of… I don’t know. Shunts away orogeny. Once you’re in it, it’s the opposite, of course; the geode feeds on us to power itself. But next time you’re topside, and not being almost killed I mean, try sessing this place. You’ll see what I’m talking about.” She shakes her head. “Even if they’ve got pet roggas, they shouldn’t have known we were here.”

  Hjarka sighs and rolls onto her back, muttering under her breath. Tonkee bares her teeth, probably a habit she’s picking up from Hjarka. “That’s not relevant,” Tonkee snaps.

  “Because you don’t want to hear it, babe,” Hjarka says. “Doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You like things neat. Life’s not neat.”

  “You like things messy.”

  “Ykka likes things explained,” Ykka says pointedly.

  Tonkee hesitates, and Hjarka sighs and says, “It’s not the first time I’ve thought there might be a spy in the comm.”

  Oh, rust. There’s an immediate murmur and shuffle among the people listening. Lerna stares at her. “That makes no sense,” he says. “None of us has any reason to betray Castrima. Anyone taken into this comm had nowhere else to go.”

  “That isn’t true.” Hjarka rolls to sit upright, grinning and flashing her sharp teeth. “I could have gone to my mom’s birthcomm. She was Leadership there before she left to go to my birthcomm—too much competition, and she wanted to be a headwoman. I left my comm because I didn’t want to be headwoman after her. Comm full of assholes. But I definitely wasn’t planning to live out my useless years in a hole in the ground.” She looks at Ykka.

  Ykka sighs in a long-suffering way. “I can’t believe you’re still mad I didn’t ash you. I told you, I needed the help.”

  “Right. But just saying: I wouldn’t have stayed if you’d asked me at the time.”

  “You’d rather have some overcrowded Equatorial comm with delusions of being Old Sanze reborn?” Lerna frowns.

  “I wouldn’t.” Hjarka shrugs. “I like it here now. But I’m saying that somebody else might prefer Rennanis. Enough to sell us out for a place in it.”

  “We need to find this spy!” shouts someone from over near the rope bridge.

  “No,” you say then, sharply. It’s your teacher voice, and everyone jumps and looks at you. “Danel said she hoped to make Castrima tear itself apart. We’re not starting any rogga-hunts, here.” This has two meanings, but you’re not trying to be clever. You know full well that your teacher voice isn’t the only reason everyone’s staring at you in palpable unease. The spinel still floats behind you, having followed you down from the surface.

  Ykka rubs her eyes. “You gotta stop threatening people, Essie. I mean, I know you grew up in the Fulcrum and don’t really know any better, but… it’s not good community behavior.”

  You blink, a little thrown and a lot insulted. But… she’s right. Comms survive through a careful balance of trust and fear. Your impatience is tilting the balance too far out of true.

  “Fine,” you say. Everyone relaxes a little, relieved that Ykka can talk you down, and there are even a few nervous chuckles. “But I still don’t think it’s relevant to discuss whether there’s a spy right now. If there is, Rennanis knows what they know. All we can do is try to come up with a plan they won’t anticipate.”

  Tonkee points at you and glares at Hjarka with a wordless See?

  Hjarka sits forward, planting a hand on one knee and glaring at all of you. She doesn’t usually argue much—that was Cutter’s role—but you see stubbornness in the set of her jaw now. “It rusting matters if the spy is still here, though. Good luck keeping them from anticipating if—”

  The commotion begins at Scenic Overlook. It’s hard to see from Flat Top, but someone’s shouting for Ykka. She’s on her feet at once, heading in that direction, but a small figure—one of the comm’s children working as a runner—comes darting along the pathways to meet her before she’s even crossed the main bridge from Flat Top. “Message from the topside tunnels!” the boy calls even before he halts. “Says the Rennies are sledgehammering in!”

  Ykka looks at Tonkee. Tonkee nods briskly. “Morat said the charges were set.”

  “Wait, what?” you ask.

  Ykka ignores you. To the child, she says, “Tell them to fall back and follow the plan. Go.” The boy turns and runs off, though only to a point where he’s got a clear sight line to Scenic; he holds up a hand, clenches a fist, and then releases it in a splay of fingers. There’s a series of whistles throughout the comm as this signal gets relayed, and a lot of bustling as clusters of people gather and head off into the tunnels. You recognize some of them: Strongbacks and Innovators. You have no idea what’s going on.

  Ykka seems remarkably calm as she turns back to face you. “Going to need your help,” she says softly. “If they’re using sledgehammers, then that’s good; they don’t have any roggas. But collapsing the tunnels will only hold them for a short time, if they’re really determined to come down here. And I don’t much like the idea of being trapped. Will you help me build an escape tunnel?”

  You draw back a little, stunned. Collapsing the tunnels? But of course it is the only strategy that makes sense. Castrima cannot fight off an army that outnumbers them, out-weapons them, and out-allies them in stone eaters and Guardians. “What are we supposed to do, flee?”

  Ykka shrugs. You understand now why she looks so tired—not just dealing with the comm almost turning on its roggas, but fear for the future. “It’s a contingency. I’ve had people carrying critical stores into side caverns for days now. We can’t carry it all, of course, or even most of it. But if we leave and go hide somewhere—we’ve got a place, before you ask, storage cavern a few miles away—then even if the Rennies break in, they’ll find a comm that’s dark and worthless and that will suffocate them if they stay too long. They’ll take what they can and go, and maybe we can come back when they’re done.”

  And this is why she’s the headwoman: While you’ve been caught up in your own dramas, Yk
ka’s been doing all this. Still… “If they have even one rogga with them, the geode will function. It’ll be theirs. We’ll be commless.”

  “Yeah. As a contingency plan, it blows, you’re right.” Ykka sighs. “Which is why I want to try Tonkee’s plan.”

  Hjarka looks furious. “I rusting told you I don’t want to be a headwoman, Yeek.”

  Ykka rolls her eyes. “You’d rather be commless? Suck it up.”

  You turn from her to Tonkee and back, feeling completely lost.

  Tonkee sighs in frustration, but forces herself to explain. “Controlled orogeny,” she says. “Sustained bursts of slow cooling at the surface, in a ring around the area but closing inward, centered on the comm. This will excite the boilbugs into a swarm state. The other Innovators have been studying their behavior for weeks.” She flicks her fingers a little, perhaps unconsciously dismissing that sort of research as lesser. “It should work. But it has to be done fast, by someone who has the necessary precision and endurance. The bugs just dig in and go into hibernation otherwise.”

  Suddenly you understand. It’s monstrous. It could also save Castrima. And yet—you look at Ykka. Ykka shrugs, but you think you read tension in her shoulders.

  You have never understood how Ykka does the things she does with orogeny. She’s a feral. In theory she’s capable of doing anything you can; a dedicated self-teacher could conceivably master the basics and then refine them from there. Most self-taught roggas just… don’t. But you’ve sessed Ykka when she’s working, and it’s obvious that in the Fulcrum she’d be ringed, though only two or three rings. She can shift a boulder, not a pebble.

  And yet. She can somehow lure every rogga in a hundred-mile radius to Castrima. And yet, there’s whatever she did to Cutter. And yet there is a solidity to her, a stability and implication of strength even though you’ve seen nothing to explain it, which makes you doubt your Fulcrum-ish assessment of her. A two- or three-ringer doesn’t sess like that.

  And yet. Orogeny is orogeny; sessapinae are sessapinae. Flesh has limits.

  “That army fills both Castrima-over and the forest basin,” you say. “You’ll pass out before you can ice half of a circle that big.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Definitely!”

  Ykka rolls her eyes. “I know what I’m rusting doing because I’ve done it before. There’s a way I know. You sort of—” She falters. You decide, if you manage to live through this, that the roggas of Castrima should start trying to come up with words for the things they do. Ykka sighs in frustration herself, as if hearing your thought. “Maybe this is a Fulcrum thing? When you run with another rogga, keep everybody at the same pace, train yourself to the capabilities of the least but use the endurance of the greatest…?”

  You blink… and then a chill passes through you. “Earthfires and rustbuckets. You know how to—” Alabaster did it to you twice, long ago, once to seal a hot spot and once to save himself from poisoning. “Parallel scale?”

  “Is that what you call it? Anyway, when you form a whole group working in parallel, in a… a mesh, I could do it with Cutter and Temell before… Anyway, I can do that now. Use the other roggas. Even the kids can help.” She sighs. You’ve guessed already. “Thing is, the person who holds the others together…” The yoke, you think, remembering a long-ago angry conversation with Alabaster. “That’s the one that burns out first. Has to, to take on the… the friction of it. Or everybody in the mesh will just cancel each other out. Nothing happens.”

  Burns out. Dies. “Ykka.” You’re a hundred times more skilled, more precise, than her. You can use the obelisks.

  She shakes her head, bemused. “You ever, uh, ‘meshed’ with anyone before? I told you, it takes practice. And you’ve got another job to do.” Her gaze is intent. “I hear your friend finally kicked off, in the infirmary. He teach you what you needed to know, before?”

  You look away, bitterness in your mouth, because the proof of your mastery of individual obelisks is the fact that you killed him with one. But you’re no closer to understanding how to open the Gate. You don’t know how to use many obelisks together.

  First a network, then the Gate. Don’t rust it up, Essun.

  Oh, Earth. Oh, you amazing ass, you think. It’s self-directed as well as a thought thrown toward Alabaster.

  “Teach me how to build a… mesh, with you,” you blurt at Ykka. “A network. Let’s call it a network.”

  She frowns at you. “I just told you—”

  “That’s what he wanted me to do! Flaking, fucking rust.” You turn and start pacing, simultaneously excited and horrified and furious. Everyone’s staring at you. “Not networking orogeny, networking—” All those times he made you study the threads of magic in his body, in your own body, getting a feel for how they connect and flow. “And of course he couldn’t just rusting tell me, why would he ever do anything that sensible?”

  “Essun.” Tonkee’s eying you sidelong, a worried look on her face. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

  You laugh at her, even though you didn’t think you’d be able to laugh ever again after what you did to ’Baster. “Alabaster,” you say. “The man in the infirmary. My friend. He was a ten-ring orogene. He’s also the man who broke the continent, up north.”

  Lots of murmurs at this. Tlino the baker says, “A Fulcrum rogga? He was from the Fulcrum and he did this?”

  You ignore him. “He had reasons.” Vengeance, and the chance to make a world that Coru could have lived in, even if Coru was no longer alive. Do they need to know about the Moon? No, there’s no time, and it would just confuse everyone as much as the whole mess confuses you. “I didn’t understand how he did it until now. ‘First a network, then the Gate.’ I need to learn how to do what you’re about to do, Ykka. You can’t die till you teach me.”

  Something shakes the ambient. It’s small, relative to the power of a shake, and localized. You and Ykka and any other roggas on Flat Top immediately turn and look up, orienting on it. An explosion. Someone’s set off small shaped charges and brought down one of the tunnels that leads out of Castrima. A few moments later there are shouts from Scenic Overlook. You squint in that direction and see a party of Strongbacks—the ones who were guarding the main tunnel into the comm when you went up to speak with Danel and the Rennanis people—trotting to a halt, breathless and anxious-looking… and dusty. They blew the tunnel as they fled.

  Ykka shakes her head and says, “Then let’s work together on the escape tunnel. Hopefully we won’t kill each other in the process.”

  She beckons, and you follow, and together you half walk, half trot toward the opposite side of the geode. This happens by unspoken agreement; both of you instinctively know exactly where the best additional point to breach the geode lies. Around two platforms, across two bridges, and then the far wall of the geode is there, buried in stubby crystals too short to house any apartments. Good.

  Ykka raises her hands and makes a rectangular shape, which confuses you until you sess the sudden sharp force of her orogeny, which pierces the geode wall at four points. It’s fascinating. You’ve observed her before when she does orogeny, but this is the first time she’s tried to be precise about something. And—it’s completely not what you expected. She can’t shift a pebble, but she can slice out corners and lines so neatly that the end result looks machine-carved. It’s better than you could have done, and suddenly you realize: Maybe she couldn’t shift a pebble because who the rust needs to shift pebbles? That’s the Fulcrum’s way of testing precision. Ykka’s way is to simply be precise, where it is practical to do so. Maybe she failed your tests because they were the wrong tests.

  Now she pauses and you sess her “hand” being extended to you. You’re standing on a platform around a crystal shaft too narrow for apartments, which instead harbors storerooms and a small tool shop. It’s recently made, so the railing is made of wood, and you don’t much like entrusting your life to it. But you grip the railing and close your eyes anyway, and oroge
nically reach for the connection that she offers.

  She seizes you. If you hadn’t been used to this from Alabaster, you would have panicked, but it’s the same as what happened back then: Ykka’s orogeny sort of melds with and consumes yours. You relax and let her take control, because instantly you realize you are stronger than her and could, should, take control yourself—but you are the learner here, and she is the teacher. So you hold back, to learn.

  It is a dance, of sorts. Her orogeny is like… a river with eddies, curling and flowing in patterns and at a pace. Yours is faster, deeper, more straightforward, more forceful, but she modulates you so efficiently that the two flows come together. You flow slower and more loosely. She flows faster, using your depth to boost her force. For an instant you open your eyes, see her leaning against the crystal column and sliding down to crouch at its base so that she doesn’t have to pay attention to her body while she concentrates… and then you are within the geode’s crystal substrate, through its shell and burrowing into the rock that surrounds it, flowing around the warps and wends of ancient cold stone. Flowing with Ykka, so easily that you are surprised. Alabaster was rougher than this, but maybe he wasn’t used to doing it when he first tried it with you. Ykka has done this with others, and she is as fine a teacher as any you have ever had.

  But—

  But. Oh! You see it so easily now.

  Magic. There are threads of it interwoven with Ykka’s flow. Supporting and catalyzing her drive where it is weaker than yours, soothing the layer of contact between you. Where’s all this coming from? She drags it out of the rock itself, which is another wonder, because you have not realized until now that there is any magic in the rock. But there it is, flitting between the infinitesimal particles of silicon and calcite as easily as it did between the particles of Alabaster’s stone substance. Wait. No. Between the calcite and the calcite, specifically, though it touches the silicon. It is being generated by the calcite, which exists in limestone inclusions within the stone. At some point millions or billions of years ago, you suspect, this whole area was at the bottom of an ocean, or perhaps an inland sea. Generations of sea life were born and lived and died here, then settled to that ocean’s floor, forming layers and compacting. Are those glacier scrapings that you see? Hard to tell. You’re not a geomest.