A last shape came in through the door at the cavern’s end, himself carrying something in his hands that Rhiow couldn’t make out, something small and dark and hard to make out against his clothes. Slowly he came, like the person in whose honor the first part of the procession had been staged. He too was wearing a robe, but it was dead black, without any arcana embroidered on it. Elwin Dagenham’s pale hands and his white face, in this dark place, seemed almost to float along by themselves, bodiless, a most peculiar effect.
He took up the one position in the circle that had been left open for him, and stood there a moment, looking around in the torchlit dimness with an expression of supreme satisfaction. Rhiow was astonished again at the difference in Dagenham, for he was now completely unlike the diffident little figure from the party; he was holding himself more erect, looking more prideful, far more in control. Robes or no robes, Dagenham looked like he had a purpose in which he believed implicitly and which made him far greater than he allowed others in the daylight world to believe.
“Friends,” he said, “tonight is the night.” And that pallid little voice that Rhiow had only before heard cajoling, pleading, flattering, now was also completely changed. It filled the place, even in that space where the raw earth of the walls should have deadened sound. “We’ve drunk the cup and welcomed our new member to the society of the friends of the Great Old One.” He nodded in the direction of one small robed figure.
Rhiow looked at her pale face and recognized a woman who she’d last seen being walked out of the upstairs toilet in Dagenham’s: Dorothy, who nodded to all the others, wearing a smile that Rhiow suspected was just this side of going small and scared. Beside her, a taller figure, that handsome face showing above the robes: the man who had been kissing her. Rhiow looked down and thought she saw brown wingtips.
“And now we get down to business,” Dagenham said. “The other friends of the Great Old One, the Strong Ones, have done us many favors in past months. Careers have been rescued, personal harms have been avenged, wealth and influence have been showered on us. And the Strong Ones ask so little of us in return! This month they ask for more than usual… but this week they will give us far more than usual, more than we’ve ever dared to dream. Let’s honor them!”
Everyone in the circle bowed, but it was Dagenham they bowed to. He stood there, his head high, receiving their homage as if he was actually entitled to it. There was something so histrionic, so theatrical, about the gesture, that Rhiow suddenly suspected she understood him as fully as she needed to. The Lone One’s little friends, or sa’Rraah herself, had offered him the one thing that would be sweetest to him: to be a leader, for a change, instead of the one who was forced to follow the rich and powerful and beautiful, arranging their contacts with the news media and picking up what crumbs of gratitude they dropped. Here, among these people, he was more: still a facilitator and a conduit, but one who now stood on the brink of power unimaginable to the people he’d been forced until now to serve.
“This is the night of nights,” Dagenham said. “Now at last the final piece of the puzzle falls into place, and we come into our own…” Under what he was saying, the dark buzzing had fallen into step with the rhythm of his words, reinforcing them, pulsing in time with them, so that the group circled around the stones seemed to start to sway a little in time with the buzzing.
He’s sold, body and soul, Rhiow thought, caught between pity and disgust. Sa’Rraah has him under her paw. Worse: Tepeyollotl the Eater has him. Dagenham already sees himself as King of the World. Yet he hasn’t thought it through. He really must not understand that the position won’t last him past the time when the sky tears open and the darkness floods in. Or he’s convinced himself otherwise. He’s too used to a world where every contract can be renegotiated if your lawyer’s just good enough…
“The Great Old One is with us now,” Dagenham said, his eyes catching the light of the torches as he turned, “here in His strong place: the one who’s lived forever in the old darkness under the hills and behind time. And His friends the Strong Ones are with us, all around us. Can’t you hear them, singing the song of power as they have before? But this time, they sing it differently – this time, more strongly than ever before. Because after what we’ve done for them in these last weeks, and these last few days in particular, they’re finally about to start coming into their own. Because of how we’ve helped them, they will rule the world. We, their friends, we will soon be princes of the Earth, and all the people who’ve been running things forever, telling us what to do forever, will soon find that the old order has changed. We are the new order. The old night has come to put an end to the new day we were promised, the day that hasn’t turned out to be worth having! The great and the powerful have spent four years and endless lives squabbling over something that at the end of the day just doesn’t matter. Now it’s time to turn to other powers, older powers. And one that has the power to truly change the world – “
You have no idea! Rhiow thought. But now we get to the meat of it –
“And now they send their servant – “
From the darkness out at the edge of the shadows came a dark form. Not robed, but all cloaked in a shadow that moved heavily as if she wore one, the Dark Lady came. She was as tall and beautiful and cold as she’d been in Arhu’s revisioning. Her face was half obscured by the darkness around her as if by a veil, strangely recalling the veil she’d worn as the Silent Man and his friends had seen her on that rainy night.
As she slowly came closer, in utter silence, Rhiow and everyone else in her team could immediately feel the spell circle pulse once, awakening, the way a persona-keyed wizardry will pulse in confirmation as the one who designed it comes near. Outside the outermost ring of stones, she stopped, and simply stood there still as a statue.
“Here she is,” Dagenham was saying in a great voice, “the Great Old One’s messenger to us, she who taught us the Rite of the Eater and showed us what to do to make him our friend. She is the one who will open the way for him now, and rest in His darkness forever after! All do her honor, for she is the one who will free Him, and us, and give us the world!”
All the robed figures bowed, and from one of them came a delighted laugh: a little tinkly voice that brought Rhiow’s ears right around, for she knew it all too well. It instantly brought back to her the feeling of being helpless and upside down, clutched against a bosom all doused in a mixture of cheap perfumes. She was tempted to hiss. But she was distracted from that as she caught a movement in the darkness: a glint of light, the slightest movement. Eyes, eyes under the veil, narrowing at the sound of the laugh. Just a flash of anger, of terror.
And at the same moment, Rhiow heard one word Whispered in her ear. She took the hint.
She fixed all her attention on the Dark Lady, all her intention. Laurel! Rhiow said to her, silently, as forcefully as she could.
All around them the shadows suddenly buzzed and roiled. The ehhif were still bowing, still listening to more of Dagenham’s promises of what the Dark Lady was about to do for them. But she herself stood still, and nothing about her moved but those eyes. They went wide in the dimness, and flickered toward Rhiow: then, hurriedly, away again.
Cousin, said the mind behind the look. Help me!!
The thought was almost a scream, and it was choked off immediately thereafter. The eyes went veiled again. But now Rhiow knew what she needed to know – what she wouldn’t otherwise have dared to think. She’s not as soulsplit as we thought, Rhiow said to the others in shock. The split was why we didn’t read her as a wizard when Arhu revisioned her. But she is one, and she’s trying to come back! Trying to reforge the broken bond, to take her proper being back! Who knew, after all, what desperation in her life had made her try to sever the connection to it in the first place? Who knew what the Lone One had inflicted on her in the attempt to turn her into a weapon? And so very nearly It had succeeded.
But the claw slices both ways, Rhiow thought. The split wasn’t clean!
Though the body was gone – suicide, murder, who knew which? – there was still some scrap of willingness to have a body tangled in the estranged soul: enough to allow enacture. So one of sa’Rraah’s little friends whispered in Dagenham’s ear and told him how to find her and use her: the kind of tool you couldn’t make out a whole wizard, alive or dead. She’s what Dagenham’s been using to do Tepeyollotl’s work, with the coaching of his dark Mistress’s pets.
Yet the soul itself hasn’t given up its connection! It’s been trying to come back, to heal the wound, to remake the agreement with the Powers broken after it gave up life and forsook its Oath.
Yet the claw really did slice both ways, and not necessarily in their favor. Until she fully remakes the bond to the Powers, she’s still the Lone One’s claw, not Iau’s. And it came to Rhiow in that moment that seeing this wizard remade, even if she should die in the next moment, was more important than the errand that they originally thought they’d come on.
People, at all costs, we have to keep her from enacting that spell! Rhiow said. She may have a trigger for that wizardry stored in her mind, but it won’t be one she built or put there. Dagenham, or one of these others – they’re the key. The Dark Lady’s just –
A cat’s paw? Helen said. It was a joke, but her mind’s voice was grim.
It’s in one of their minds, Rhiow said. But it needs to be jostled loose. We have one who can See – She caught Arhu’s eyes across the circle, where they glinted ever so faintly in the torchlight – and one who can Hear —
I understand you, Hwaith said.
Let’s see how this unfolds for a few moments more, Rhiow said, watching Dagenham. As soon as they make any move that looks like the activation of this spell –
I think we can find a way to disrupt them a little, Helen said.
“And now comes the time of gifts,” Dagenham was saying to his circle. “As we give to the Strong Ones, and through them to the Great Old One, so He gives to us. Now, at this final moment, commitment means most, and will be most rewarded. Who will give himself to the Great Old One so that the world can be changed?”
And suddenly everyone in the circle was looking at Dolores.
“Or herself,” Dagenham said.
“…Give?” Dolores said, looking around her in confusion. “What do you mean? I mean, I promised to let them into my life, you showed me the words to say – “ She looked over at Ray.
“Yes, I did,” Ray said. “And here’s your chance to achieve greatness of a kind you’d never have had a chance to achieve in your career, which frankly wouldn’t have had that long to run anyway… considering what’s going to happen tonight.”
Her mouth dropped open: she glanced around her, now, like someone realizing for the first time that she had been led into a trap, and by someone she’d made the mistake of trusting. “Ray, what do you mean, I thought that you and I – “
“Yes, you did,” Ray said. His voice was astonishingly casual. “I tried to explain to you earlier that plans had changed and that we were discussing an entirely different kind of immortality now. Something much better than just the silver screen… something a whole lot more permanent. Anyone who gives herself to the Great Old One now will live forever in ways that no one alive can understand. You’ll be worshipped, and adored… through Him… by whatever beings remain alive after tonight.”
Dolores’s eyes went wide. “You do it yourself then, if you’re so hot on the idea!” she cried, and whirled to run for the door. But before she could move, the two robed figures on either side of her had her by the arms and were restraining her where she was.
Her screams fell with surprisingly little effect into the dead weight of the air, as if something was pressing down on the space, smothering them. Here we go… Rhiow thought. Sif? Hold yourself ready – I’m going to have to construct something on the fly.
Say the word.
From across the circle, Helen said, It’s all right, Aufwi, let me down —
I’d nearly forgotten you were up there. Where have you been keeping your mass?
It’s no big deal, I’ll show you later. Give us the high sign when you’re ready, Rhi —
“No! Ray, no, why are you, what are you doing, why are you just standing there, help me, I don’t want to do this!” She was screaming now. Most of the people standing around the circle simply looked at her. And Dagenham moved the thing he was holding two-handed into one of his hands, and reached into his robe with another, and came out with something that was just as black, but glinted in the torchlight.
It was a short sharp slice of obsidian, razory-keen. He passed it to the robed figure standing next to him: and the figure reached out a shapely hand to take it from Dagenham, and turned toward Dolores, and laughed… that tinkly little laugh.
Rhiow fluffed up in rage and horror as Anya Harte advanced slowly on Dolores. All sharp edges, that voice had been at the restaurant and the party, always looking for someplace to put the knife in. And now she had a place. It’s as we thought: she was behind what happened to Dolores at the party. And what she realized she hadn’t finished there, now she’ll finish here, as a sideshow to the main event… and a sop to her jealousy. Well, we’ll see about that —
“How blind did you have to be,” Anya said as she came closer and closer to the struggling Dolores, “not to see that Ray and I weren’t going to stop being an item just because some fan magazine said we were? You really shouldn’t believe everything you read. You have to know that the studio came down on him after some rumors got around about here…” She laughed again. “But Ray’s too much his own man to toe the line. Of course he was going to pretend to be doing it at a party full of industry types. But off the record…. nothing has changed.”
She was almost within arm’s length now, and the torchlight glinted redly off the hair-thin edge of the obsidian knife. “And if you think a dim little piece like you is going to distract Ray from me for a minute, even if the world is about to end or whatever tomorrow, then you… think…wrong.”
She lifted the knife. Dolores, gasping in shock, watched its upward arc as Anya lifted it with a dreadful smile on her face. Rhiow glanced over at Sif, caught the answering glint of fire in her eyes, reached back into her mind for the shieldspell she’d been readying to lay the groundwork for what would follow —
And from the darkness came a sound that brought all heads around, even Dagenham’s. It was a low, moaning, rumbling sound that scaled slowly up into a roar, and then past that into a long, furious, bubbling scream. And out of the darkness, into the horrified silence that fell, into the torchlight, came slowly stepping something earth-colored, four-legged, long and low, with slowly twitching tail and eyes that unnaturally concentrated the torches’ light. Every ehhif in the circle stared, frozen in shock, as the biggest California mountain lion they had ever seen – a massive dun shape with dark muzzle and paws — stalked out of the darkness and into the ring of stones, and stood there, just shy of the spell circle, with eyes of green fire locked on Anya Harte.
The lion screamed again. The sound was matched by more ehhif screams, male and female, as the huge tan-and-dark shape leapt clear over the spell-circle and came down hard on the far side, between the rings of stones.
Rhiow stared in wonder, caught a flicker of those eyes. Rhi, their owner said, laughing grimly, what’s the matter? Don’t you recognize me when I’m not wearing Elie Saab? And Helen Walks Softly pushed herself up from her landing crouch and made for Anya Harte and Dolores.
The circle broke, ehhif fleeing into the dark in all directions, one torch falling over. One of the ehhif holding Dolores let go of her and fled. The other pulled her out of the circle a short distance, followed by Anya Harte in a flurry of swirling robes, a brief, violent tangle. Arhu, Hwaith, Rhiow cried silently, look for the word, listen for it — !
All the minds around her were in turmoil, ready for rummaging. Rhiow looked around for Dagenham. When things started to happen, he’d stepped back hastily into the darkness:
now she spotted him heading for the door —
There already, Urruah said from the shadows down that way. One of the robed figures who’d made it to the door ahead of the others was yanking on it fruitlessly, unable to budge it: Urruah had spoken to the door and its frame and convinced them to be one piece for the moment.
The lion-scream behind them broke up the brief struggle between Anya, Dolores and the acolyte who’d been holding Dolores still. Anya and the other robed figure now fled into the darkness in two different directions: Dolores fell. Helen leapt past her, after Anya, batted at her with one huge paw, missed –
Hwaith! Rhiow called. Arhu! What have you got, there has to be something–
Nothing, Rhiow! It’s not a word –
Can’t See anything, Arhu said, sounding distressed. Wait, Rhiow, look out, Dagenham — !
Helen skidded, turned, leapt toward him, but not quite fast enough. Dagenham was running back toward the circle, with that small dark object in his hand. He threw it —
The dark thing flew across the circle and came down on the last spot, the one still-empty receptor site, drawn there as certainly and immediately as steel to the magnet. It looked like it had been a heart once. Now it was a stone. It hit the spell diagram and the stone cracked open lke an egg. Sluggish black blood gushed out —
Rhi. The strings — !
As quickly as if a switch had been thrown, the hyperstrings all around them were bending inward, writhing toward the stones as they’d seemed to have been writhing away from them before. This is it! Hwaith said. This is when the one from outside’s supposed to come through –
He flung himself at the strings. Not on my watch! Aufwi!
Aufwi threw himself into the tangle of strings on the opposite side of the circle, and, like Hwaith, began grabbing clawfuls of every nearby string and pulling them out of their present configurations. The purpose wasn’t so much manipulation toward a specific effect as wholesale disruption, the kind meant to result in a gatecrash. Rhiow watched them with astonishment and fear, for what they were doing was beyond dangerous, as they tried to force the kind of result that a worldgate technician normally went to all possible lengths to avoid. But these two were the ones best suited to attempt a gate shutdown under circumstances like these: both expert in the LA area gates and the local conditions, though they might be looking at the problem from six decades apart.