Noah looked up at the thing that had knelt to him, and gave it an order.
"Introduce yourself to me."
HUUM!
The hands moved. The band of small gray palms laced across the titan's eyes unlaced itself finger from finger, slow and deliberate, and where it parted a gray light began to leak, thin at first and then steady, spilling down the ruined gardens like water finding its level.
Behind him, Ryaenara made no sound. When Noah caught her face at the edge of his vision the humor had gone out of it, and under the stillness sat something he would have called fear on anyone else. At the foot of the obelisk, Anaximander had stopped working. Theron Adranos stood beside him, and both men had gone gray in the face.
The light reached Noah, and everything stopped.
