Hekate slept all the rest of the day, ate heartily of a meal Dionysos brought in from a cookshop, and then slept all night with Kabeiros pressed against her in the bed. She woke early, refreshed, almost happy, and slipped out of the house to visit an old shrine of the Mother. She felt no special greeting, but was comfortably aware of the swirling above her of the high power and the thin threads of earth-blood below. Byblos was not rich in earth-blood. Was that why Perses had turned to blood magic? No, she wouldn't excuse him. He used blood magic because he enjoyed the suffering of his victims.
Kabeiros and Dionysos were breaking their fasts when she returned and she joined them.
"What do we need to take?" Dionysos asked.
"Some food for a noon meal along the way. There are some farms, I suppose, but I prefer not to involve any other people in this. Perses might just be able to detect my aura and punish the folk for helping me."
So that was how they went, carrying nothing but the makings of a good meal and a flask of wine and another of water. They kept a good pace, but not a hurried one. At midday they stopped and ate. Hekate described her father's house as it had been when she had left it, hesitating as she realized for the first time how many years had passed. But she was sure there would be few changes in the workroom . . . except for the way in, which seemed to have changed each time she was forced to use it. So she warned her companions of the way Perses could change the passage.
"It was straight when I Saw it," Dionysos reminded her.
She looked at him in surprise. "How can you remember so long ago?"
"I never really forget a Vision," Dionysos said, his eyes shadowed with old sadness. "After I know what they mean, I don't think about them anymore. But if I need to See one again, I only need to—" he shrugged "—call it up from inside me. It's always there."
"If I took you to the entrance to the passage," Hekate said, "could you remember the way you went?"
"I think so," he said, "but I can't be sure. Why is it important?"
"Because if he senses our coming, which I expect he will, he might turn that passage into a maze. If I know which walls are false, I can try to break the spells on them. I don't want to waste the time or the power trying to dissolve real walls."
*I can help with that,* Kabeiros said. *Real walls will smell of wood or stone; wards and illusions will smell of magic.*
"Will you have power enough for breaking the illusions and dealing with him?" Dionysos sounded grim, as if he had suddenly realized what they would face.
"Yes. There's little earth-blood, if any, in his workroom, but the higher power should be there."
She didn't say any more just in case her father's scrying had become cleverer and less heavy-handed than it used to be, but she thought to herself that the draining spell didn't take much power. Once initiated it supplied far more power than the mage expended in maintaining it.
Thoughtful but silent, Dionysos gathered up the remains of their meal. He looked at the chunks of bread and cheese, the slices of meat and his expression grew grim and very determined. Then he rewrapped the leftovers and put them back in the pack. Plainly Dionysos had decided they would need the supplies for the return journey. Hekate prayed he was right as she watched him carefully stopper the wine and water, tie the flasks together, and sling them over his shoulder. Kabeiros got up and shook himself.
They set out on the road again. The day was hot but not unbearable and there was shade by the side of the road, but no one suggested resting in it. All were now determined to reach their goal as quickly as was consonant with their strength and readiness. Dionysos was grim. Kabeiros was silent and withdrawn. Hekate, after so many, many years of denial, of excuses, of shameful fear, was very nearly merry although she didn't impose her mood on the others. Better for them to be anxious and wary.
About three candlemarks after noon, they drew close enough to glimpse Ur-Kabos on its plateau and Hekate began to worry about recognizing the right lane. So many years had passed . . . fifty? seventy? The problem didn't materialize; on their own her feet turned into the path that, shockingly, seemed as familar to her now as it ever had been. She did think as she turned in that the hedge bordering the garden looked a trifle unkempt, but she passed through the opening only to stop dead and stare.
The garden itself was the real shock. Gone was its ordered perfection. What was not overgrown with drought-tolerant weeds was brown and withered with lack of care. Hekate hurried up the path, Dionysos hard on her heels, Kabeiros a man-length to the fore. They mounted the three broad steps. Kabeiros was waiting at the closed door.
Hekate expected the door to be locked and as she climbed the steps was thinking about whether it would be better to try to manipulate the lock by magic or blast the door open. Both would warn Perses that an enemy had arrived, but the blast might direct his attention to the wrong enemy. She warned Kabeiros and Dionysos to stand away from the door, turned to face it to begin the spell . . . and the door opened.
Within it was a doorkeeper, what looked like an old man chained by the neck. Hekate's lips parted to invoke stasis on him, but the spell remained unuttered. This wasn't the creature she remembered. There was recognition in the eyes of the old man.
"Hekate," he mumbled. "You used to give me sugared dates."
"Mahound," she whispered as she made out the remnants of the features of one of the little page boys who had run errands while she lived in the house. "What happened?"
"We tried to run away. Farran was lucky. He died."
"I'll set you free—"
But his eyes had gone blank and he shook his head. "If you are summoned, you know where to go."
"Later." Dionysos took her arm and hurried her through the doorkeeper's chamber. "When you are done, you can come back and free him."
For a heartbeat, Hekate resisted, then went forward into the courtyard. If she lost the battle, she thought, the doorkeeper would be recaught and punished or killed; if she won, she would have time enough to try to restore him.
The courtyard was another shock. The stone paving was broken and unswept. The flowers were gone, their containers filled with cracked, dusty soil; the bushes that had been so luxuriant were dried skeletons of bare twigs. Opposite the open arch that led to the reception chamber was what looked like a solid garden wall. Hekate approached that, running her fingers lightly along the surface. Dionysos and Kabeiros waited, silent. At about the two-thirds point, Hekate paused, pushed, prodded, and a narrow door, plastered and painted to match the surrounding stones, clicked open. Kabeiros slipped through, then stood waiting.
A very short passage terminated in a second passage, like the leg and head of a T. To the right was a closed door and a stone wall. To the left, the door was open. Hekate cast her mind back and remembered that the way through the right-hand door was much longer than the way from the left.
"That's right," Dionysos said, looking toward the door on the left. "I only came out this way, but I know the left-hand door is the way in."
It was. As soon as they passed through the door, they were at the head of the stairs Hekate remembered all too well. Below was only darkness. Hekate said the word she had heard her father use so often and wondered what would happen. Would the mage lights be as decayed as everything else? No. They came up bright and clear, illuminating the steep, dangerous stair that had been hacked out along the curving wall of a natural sinkhole. Naturally, Hekate thought, starting down. Perses uses this stair. Naturally he would keep it well lit.
Dionysos followed, pausing only once to pick up a pebble and cast it down. At first nothing came up except the faint indeterminable noise that Hekate had never been able to decide was moving water or echoes. Eventually there was a ping of stone against stone and finally a very faint splash. Hekate could hear the black dog panting. She was aware suddenly that dogs didn't manage steep downward stairs well.
*Be careful, Kabeiros,* she whispered.
*Don't worry,* Dionysos said, for once using mental speech. *That's why I went ahead. If he slips, he'll run into me and I'll grab him.*
Both Kabeiros and Hekate thanked Dionysos, but Hekate was more frightened rather than less. Dionysos was no weakling, but she had her doubts about his ability to hold Kabeiros' weight on the curved, narrow stair. If they went down together . . . Frantically she sought a spell that could catch them. She had little confidence any spell could do so, but she had to do something . . . and trying to increase the power of the spell filled her mind so that she was unaware of the descent and was suddenly at the end of the stair.
The mage light showed only the black maw of the corridor, nothing within it. Recalling how often she had bumped painfully into walls and corners and that Dionysos had Seen the corridor as straight, Hekate prepared a spell of dissolution of magic, called for a mage light, and stepped forward . . . into a short straight corridor closed with a plain wooden door.
She put her hand out but could not grasp the doorlatch for a moment. Her breath stopped and she could not draw it in. Magic? No, she told herself, cowardice . . . panic. She forced her hand forward, lifted the latch, shoved the door open—and breathed. And stopped breathing!
She had intended to rush forward and seize Perses in her arms before his surprise at her arrival permitted him to act in any way, but shock froze her in place for an instant. The workroom had not changed. The creatures in agonized stasis still hung from walls and ceilings. The alembics, the jars with their strange contents, the little skeletons, all the apparatus were on the tables and the shelves that lined the walls. But Perses had changed. He was old, old as the crone. A few strands of yellow-white hair straggled over his scalp, his mouth was sunken so that his nose almost touched his chin. His back was bent, his hands crooked and mottled. Open-mouthed, Hekate stared.
The sunken lips stretched into a travesty of a toothless smile. "Come in, Hekate," Perses said. "I've been expecting you."
With the words, his will lashed out at her. That wasn't old. It was as strong as it had ever been. Change flooded over her, and it was the crone that hobbled forward helplessly in response to his imperious demand.
Seeing the change, Dionysos believed Perses had sucked most of the life out of Hekate. His pain and fury knew no bounds, and he flung at Perses the full power of his Gift, willing him to panic and madness.
That was not the first time one of Perses' victims had fought back. He was shielded, armored against magical attacks, but he had never been touched by any as powerful as Dionysos'. Terror racked him; confusion caused chaos in his mind. But he was even prepared for that. Almost lost to himself, a mindless, prepared response took over. Words, now without meaning to him, began to pour from his mouth.
Dionysos gasped and staggered back under a violent blow. His mouth opened as if to cry out, but no sound emerged. He was mute. Instinctively, he tried to move forward but ran into . . . nothing, as hard as a rock wall. Checked, his blue eyes bulged as if they would leap from his head at his enemy. Perses uttered two more words and his right hand began to rise to trace in the air the symbols that would complete a second spell . . . and a huge black dog leapt up, seized the arm, and began to close its jaws.
Flesh tore, bone cracked. The dog whined between set teeth as a guarding spell flowed over, burning him. Perses howled with pain, the spell he was about to cast aborted. He howled again, as the gathered power was released and lashed back at him. In the far corner of the room, beneath a frozen form, part serpent and part horse, contorted in agony, a bundle of rags stirred. No one noticed. The hobbling crone reached Perses and threw her arms around his neck.
Hekate had been overpowered for a moment, but only for a moment. Then she yielded willingly, knowingly, to the will demanding that she come within Perses' reach. How to come near enough to touch him had actually been a problem she had not solved. She had hoped to bypass it by an initial rush that would carry her to him before he could ward her away, but she had lost that opportunity. So when his will pulled her toward him, she had not raised shields to lock out the will; she had yielded to it.
Kabeiros' violent pull on Perses' right arm nearly broke Hekate's grip. Perses screamed again as the black dog's teeth tore more deeply into the flesh. His left hand scrabbled at his waist for the knife in his belt as another spell poured from his mouth. Tears ran from the black dog's eyes but his jaws only locked tighter and he wrenched his head from side to side. Perses' right hand was already hanging loose, one edge of the broken bone showing, blood pouring down to stain the hound's jaws and add to the stains on the floor.
The knife Perses had drawn struck wildly at the dog, but the blow had missed the throat and only a thin line of blood showed on the shoulder. A high whine shrilled from the hound, but it came from between the set teeth; the jaws didn't loosen and the big head twisted savagely. More flesh tore. Perses shrieked and the knife fell from his hand.
Panic pounded in Perses' mind. Madness denied him his spells. Escape was his only hope. He twisted violently, trying to turn and run. The bundle of rags had come upright. The rags heaved and shifted and a glint of a knife honed nearly to a thread showed in the mage light.
Hekate was shoved brutally away from the body-to-body contact she had been seeking, but she would not let go completely. The crone's skinny arms clung like tough, dried vines around Perses' neck. Another frenzied shove pushed her sideways, but her grip still held and she ended up clinging to Perses' back.
She had a vivid memory of what Eurydice said Baltaseros was doing when she drained him. Face to face wasn't necessary. Hekate tightened her grip, took a breath, and began the draining spell. A trickle of power began to flow into her and she had to fight against gagging and being unable to complete the spell. Her mind was flooded with the stench of blood and fear and a hot tingling of the sorcerer's excitement that had somehow got caught up and worked into the power. If she hadn't failed so often while she was trying the spell against the figurine, she would have lost the words, and the symbols in her mind would have been distorted and buried under horror and disgust.
As it was the spell poured out of her automatically. She even paused for breath at the right time and place. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement, a sort of flutter as of an edge or a strip of cloth. She dared not shout a warning to Dionysos. To interrupt the spell she was speaking would be fatal, and Kabeiros, who might otherwise have been aware, was tearing at the last tough tendons that held Perses' arm together. The dog's eyes were closed against the desperate pounding and clawing Perses' left hand was inflicting on his head. Dionysos had fallen to his knees, his chest heaving as he fought for breath against Perses' spell, but his eyes were still wide and staring, still fixed on the screaming, writhing sorcerer.
The second part of the spell was welling into Hekate's mind and she began to speak and to build the symbols in her head. More power flowed into her, more grief and agony, more fear and sick relishing of the misery. Tears poured down Hekate's face; her body shook so hard her knees banged into the back of Perses' leg. He began to sag sideways. Hekate braced herself against his weight, gasping for breath . . . in just the right place for the second pause before the third part of the spell.
Blind instinct wrung the last words out of her, painted the figures she was supposed to see behind her closed eyes. The river of power flowing out of Perses turned into a flood. Hekate was drowning in a sea of pain, wrenched by one torment after another, sunk in unrelenting terror, repeatedly scalded by the hot, disgusting, near sexual delight of the original power-drinker in the power and the pain.
Kabeiros gave one last great pull on Perses' arm. His weight added to that of Perses overwhelmed the support the frail crone was able to give. Perses fell, the crone going down with him. The screaming, thrashing weight knocked the breath out of Hekate. She gasped for air, knowing she must begin the second casting of the spell because without it, Perses would not be bound into unending powerlessness.
Crushed under Perses' weight, she began. The first words released such a torrent of power—not only from Perses himself but from all the artifacts and all the tortured creatures in stasis in which he had stored it—that Hekate knew she would never be able to absorb it. She could feel the lines and organ of power within her begin to swell and then to burn. Because to stop would be instant death from the backlash of such enormous energy, she went on with the spell, knowing she had won . . . and lost. Before Perses was drained, she would be a witless idiot or literally burned, and dead.