22

The air of the tomb was hot and dry. The black candle's flame wavered slowly as Tenoctris moved, always keeping her boxwood twig before her. The candlelight was clear and smokeless, though the dull, dark stone drank it in without reflection.

Tenoctris crossed her legs and sat down. She looked with distaste at Benlo's corpse. The drover lay on his back; he'd been opened from pelvis almost to his throat. His face was set in a rictus of fear. The trauma of death had stiffened Benlo's body instantaneously into rigor mortis. Garric had seen that happen once before, when an ox leaping from a horsefly's bite had gored Zaki or-Mesli as terribly as this.

Benlo's arms were spread wide. His right hand still held the athame.

"Can we do anything?" Garric asked. He'd remained motionless on the bottom step while the old woman surveyed the vault.

"Possibly," Tenoctris said as she turned her face toward him. "But anything we attempt will be very dangerous. You'll have to make the decision."

"Then we'll act," Garric said without moving.

"Let me explain," Tenoctris said sharply. "This happened because Benlo opened the wrong door by accident. A demon, invulnerable on this plane, came through the opening Benlo made and killed him; then the demon returned, taking Liane to its own plane."

Garric met the old woman's eyes without speaking. She felt she needed to explain, so he'd listen to the explanation. Perhaps he'd have to understand what was going on before he took the action Tenoctris would set out for him; in any case, interrupting would only delay a resolution further.

But if the decision was Garric's to make, then nothing Tenoctris could say would change his mind.

"Because I know who the demon is," she continued, "I should be able to reach its plane. Benlo used brute force to open the gate; I don't have the strength to do that, but I can reopen a way if I act promptly."

Her twig waggled toward the pool of blood which was still spreading sluggishly. The word Strasedon had blurred away within seconds of the time they'd entered the vault, but he knew what she was referring to. Garric didn't repeat the word aloud for fear of summoning the thing named.

"All right," Garric said with a shrug. "You said he was invulnerable?"

He put his hands together because they were beginning to tremble with anticipation. He knew he ought to be afraid but all he felt was an urge to move, to act, to finish this—even if it meant his own finish.

"Here it was invulnerable. Strasedon can be killed on its own plane," Tenoctris said, showing that it was all right to speak the name. The corner of her lip lifted in almost a smile. "But a tiger can be killed in its own jungle too, Garric. This is a difficult and dangerous business, and there'll be dangers besides Strasedon."

Garric shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Not because it's Liane, mistress. I'd say the same thing if it was Benlo himself. I'm not going to walk away and leave a human being in the hands of something that does—"

He bobbed his chin toward the corpse.

"—that."

Tenoctris nodded. "Good," she said, "but I had to tell you first."

She took the athame from Benlo's hand. She had to work it back and forth several times to break the fingers' convulsive grip. "Get him out of the way, please," she ordered crisply. "If we survive, then we can see to some proper disposal of the remains."

Garric dragged the corpse to the back of the vault. Tenoctris dabbed the butt of the athame into the congealing blood and began to draw on the floor with it, partially covering the drover's own words of power.

"It's a good thing you can read the Old Script," she said as she wrote. "For this conjuration two voices are necessary. I suppose that's why Benlo brought Liane with him. Of course, if he'd really known what he was doing . . ."

Her voice trailed off without finishing the observation—or needing to.

Garric wondered whether Tenoctris used the blood for some special power or simply because it was the handiest material with which to mark the stone. The old woman had a streak of ruthless pragmatism that a youth raised in a rural hamlet could fully appreciate.

Tenoctris wiped up more blood. "Benlo must have made this athame himself," she muttered. "Amazing, though iron's the ideal element if you have the power to bind it as he did. But what he bound was a skein of varied forces that even I couldn't untangle. No wonder it took him to the wrong plane!"

"You can't use it, then?" Garric said. While he watched the words she drew on the basalt he deliberately kept his jaws clenched to keep from accidentally subvocalizing them with untold result.

"Oh, I'll use my twig," Tenoctris said absently. "A neutral athame is much safer. With the forces surging about this nexus, only a madman or a reckless ignoramus would use a tool designed to multiply their effect."

She leaned back, having drawn two concentric circles of words in the Old Script on the floor between her and where Garric stood. She gestured toward them with the point of Benlo's athame and said, "You can read these?"

Garric nodded. "Yes, mistress," he said.

"All right," Tenoctris said. She rose to her feet, cautious of her creaking joints. "I'll speak the words in the outer circle myself. When I come to the inner circle you'll speak the words with me. Follow the rhythm I set in the outer circle. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mistress," Garric said. He felt poised and slightly outside himself, as if he were about to dive from a high cliff.

"When the portal opens we'll step through together," the old woman said. "We must be prompt. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mistress," Garric said. She was leaving nothing to chance. That was as it should be.

"Then," said Tenoctris with a wan smile, "I'll proceed."

Dipping the boxwood twig toward the writing at each syllable, she said, "Anoch ai akrammachamari . . ."

Her voice was clear and had the relentless quality of a good sawyer stroking through wood.

"Lampsouer lameer lamhore . . ."

The last of the outer circle. Taking up the rhythm from the twig and the previous words of power, Garric and the old woman cried together, "Iao barbathiaoth ablanathanalba!"

A pane of light as red and dull as iron after the smith's first stroke hung in the air beside them. Tenoctris reached across and took Garric's right hand in her left.

"Garric . . ." Liane's voice wailed from a distance greater than worlds.

Hand in hand, Garric and the old woman stepped into the fire.