The River of No Return

His big hands, open on the tabletop, shook helplessly.
    There was silence around the table as Arkady wept, and Nick realized that there were tears on his own cheeks, as well, for Eréndira. She had been courageous.
    There were other emotions in the room, emotions directed at him, and Nick felt strangely immune to them all. He could feel the power of these men and women’s collective fear and grief, their sense of failure, their rage. Alice, whom he had come to admire and enjoy. Arkady, whose strange definition of friendship maddened and delighted him. And the others, even the cheese inspector. Even Penture. They were all well-intentioned people who loved the Guild and were willing to do anything to save it. They feared the Pale, but more than that they feared the end of their fraternity.
    Penture spoke into the thick atmosphere, and his voice was hushed and serious. “Now, Nick Davenant. Now that you have joined us, accepted your duty, and we have told you of the terrible things that will happen downriver, you must be told what we really want you to discover while you are in the arms of Alva Blomgren.”
    Everyone around the table went very still.
    Ah. Nick tipped his chair back onto its hind legs.
    Saatçi reached over and tapped Nick’s shoulder. “The chair!” he whispered in tortured tones.
    “Sorry.” Nick righted himself.
    Penture waited, with a frown for Saatçi, until all was quiet again. “A story has traveled up and down the river in recent weeks,” he said, “among those few who have seen the future. The rumor is this. There is something, somewhere—an object, of some description—that can save us from the disaster that is coming toward us, closer with every passing day. Something that magnifies our talent, perhaps, or something that can alter time mechanically. We do not know. Is it big or small? Is it from the future—from beyond the Pale itself? Some advanced technology? Or is it from the past? The more credulous think that it has magical powers. Others believe that it is from outer space, or that a nuclear accident has mutated something already known. Still others are sure that it is God’s work: the salvation of humankind from Armageddon.”
    “What do you think it is?”
    Penture allowed a small, pinched little smile to touch his lips. “I do not even allow myself to believe that it exists. Our talent has never relied upon objects. It is located in our emotions, in our connection to the feelings of other human beings down through time. But this much is clear. If it exists at all, the recent escalation in Ofan activity suggests that they might have it in their possession, or they know where it is and are working to retrieve it. Perhaps the object is in fact to blame for what has happened to the future. Perhaps it is something terrible, not something good. But if there is such a thing, the Guild must have it. We must not let the Ofan learn its powers. We must either find it before the Ofan do, or if they have it already, we must get it back from them.”
    “And you think Alva might have this thing, this . . .”
    “People are calling it simply ‘the Talisman.’ And if there is any Ofan up and down the river who knows what and where the Talisman is, that Ofan is Alva Blomgren.”

CHAPTER THIRTY
    T he next morning after a cup of coffee and a bite of toast, Julia curled up in a winged armchair in the library, trying to untangle a snarl of embroidery thread for Clare. Instead, she found herself blinking dreamily at the fire. She hadn’t slept after returning to bed, or at least not until she’d heard Blackdown and Count Lebedev return, soon after dawn. Then she had awoken again only an hour later, from a confused dream that fled the moment she tried to recall it. So she had risen, rung for the maid, dressed in her diurnal black gown, and taken her hussif down to the library . . . but now the armchair was so comfortable, and the fire in the big fireplace so cheerful. She nodded off into a delicious slumber.
    Delicious except for that annoying sound . . . Julia opened her eyes, just as something white flew past her chair into the fire.
    She leapt to her feet with a gasp, sending the little workbag and the thread tumbling to the floor, and spun to face the room.
    “Holy . . . !”
    It was Blackdown, and he was staring at her as if she were a ghost.
    Julia looked at his shocked face, and then at what he was wearing, and she collapsed back into her chair, laughing.
    “Oh,