WITH MY OWN EYES I beheld the white curve of her beneath the black and baleful eye of her dead star. Never before had I seen such an undead sun. Stillborn, a pitiful brown dwarf glowing less than the meanest ember, vaster than the vastest world. The planet itself was almost as dark, illumined only by the ghastly white lights of what I took for cities. Many times I have read of sailors lost out airlocks or through fractured hulls, their bodies burst by vacuum, faces drawn and pale as the faces of men drowned at sea. In the tales, these ghouls cry out to torment their living crewmates. I have seen many such faces myself, and heard their silent song. The planet cried out to me the same.

Dim Vorgossos.

We were not permitted to land, nor to pilot our vessel ourselves. At first, I believed that a pilot would come aboard to take us out of the Enigma of Hours. Nothing of the kind happened. Our systems gave no sign of interference, but without warning we unclamped from our berth in the Sojourner, drifted out into the naked center of the massive starship’s main hold, joining a slow procession of ships leaving the Enigma’s drum.

Around me, all was chaos as Corvo and her people attempted to ascertain what was happening. Clearly some power had seized control of our systems and was piloting her and the other ships in grim parade.

We came in time out beneath the stars, and then it was I first beheld that whited sepulcher of a world beneath her black-dead star. The surface of that dark world drifted mere dozens of degrees above absolute zero, and whatever atmosphere there might have been was choked to frost. Words were said, but I do not now remember them, recalling only the vision of the strand ahead of us. The hightower.

A single spar of adamant, black as hell, reached up from that pale and shadowed planet like a pillar of smoke, like an accusing finger aimed at heaven. Impossibly thin it was, hanging like a thread of evil gossamer between the planet and the stars, rising mile upon thousandth mile into the Dark. It was toward this tower we sailed, each ship silently guided into its berth about a station platform which sat atop the lift column the way an insect sits atop an antenna. We did not see the Enigma of Hours vanish behind us, disappearing with the telltale glimmer of warp before it vanished into the superluminal. We had a mind for nothing but the sound of docking clamps seizing the hull.

We had arrived.

Pallino was first through the doors when they opened, body shield shimmering about him. Crim went after, one hand resting casually against his sidearm in its holster.

There was no one to greet us. No customs officer, no police. There weren’t even other merchants in all that bare and echoing hall. Stars shone through massive windows, and the smoldering wheal of the brown dwarf smote above and near at hand, larger than any true star I’d ever seen. It filled half the sky above and beneath us. And beneath it? Forty thousand miles below our feet? The lone and level snows stretched far away.

“I get cold just looking at it,” Ilex said from behind me.

“This feels wrong,” Pallino said, as if in answer. Around us, dark metal scrolled like vines and distended human statues buttressed the arching ceiling, great chunks and stripes chewed out of their time-eaten surfaces. I wondered how old they were, and for how long this ancient elevator had stood high above the surface of this planet. “There’s no one here.”

Crim—ever bravest—hurried on ahead, soft boots padding on the marble tiles. “Hello?” he called, raising his clear, richly accented voice. “Hello?”

Nothing.

Switch pressed out of the airlock behind and around Valka and myself. “Had, you and Doctor Onderra stay here, we’ll look round.”

“Rot that,” I said, throwing out a hand to bar his way. “We’ll go together. Everyone, shields.” Those who had not activated body shields did so then.

“Why wouldn’t there be anyone to greet us?” Pallino asked. “This place is for business, isn’t it?”

“They don’t need anyone,” Valka said coolly. “We’re being watched.”

I’d felt it, too. Raised as I was in a castle, I’d known what it’s like to be observed. One could feel the pressure of the cameras in the way our ancientmost ancestors sensed wolves watching in the forests by night.

The entry hall opened without ceremony or corporate distraction onto a high, domed place. There were no holographs, no advertisements, no booths. No vendors selling food or religious icons.

Nothing.

A battery of several dozen lift carriages stood waiting beneath fluted pillars and the protective arms of giant statues. Three of them, with arms longer than those of any man and faces blank and pitiless as the dead sun seen through the glassy dome. We were the first to enter—or else the last—for no others appeared by the other doors, and many a lift carriage was absent, having descended through the floor and out an airlock.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said, looking down at the floor. White stars, five-pointed, studded a ring which encircled that mighty hall, fringed with brass inlay in marble so black it was almost blue. Why was that familiar? I cursed myself for never becoming the scholiast I wanted to be. A scholiast would have remembered and trembled. I trembled all the same, and murmured one of Gibson’s aphorisms to quiet my nerves.

“We should head back,” Switch agreed. “Get a decade together. We should have done in the first place.” As if in answer and proving Valka’s suspicion and mine, the door back to the loading dock irised shut. Switch whirled, roaring, “Black Earth and damnation!”

“Steady, boy!” Pallino said. “Steady on.”

I pressed a finger to the comms patch behind my ear. “Captain Corvo, this is Marlowe. We’ve been locked in. Repeat: We’ve been locked in. Do you copy?”

Nothing.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I imagined there were no signals getting in or out of a place like this.

“I guess we’re left with no choice then,” Ilex said, sounding completely unafraid. The dryad checked her weapon calmly and, satisfied, awaited instruction.

Shaking my head, I said, “We never had a choice. We’ve come this far already.” I pushed past companions and lingered a moment, looking up at the three faceless statues that stood above the lift carriages. Almost they seemed women to me, so slight were their forms. Almost the figures of Furies, so horrible were they. What hand had wrought them? And in what age? To what purpose? Like Cielcin they seemed, so tall and frail-seeming . . . and like the Exalted, crafted all of jointed, flowing steel. They made me think of Jari and his prophecies, and of one prophecy older still, words in a wordless voice whispered in the dark.

This must be.

I steeled myself, squaring my shoulders. I drew Olorin’s sword, held the handle quiet at my side and ready.

“I am not afraid.”