Under the pale-streaked sky of false dawn, Hekate set out for the caves of the dead. She was well fed, although the Nymphae's cuisine was strange—all made up of nuts, dried berries and mushrooms, bulbs, and roots that Hekate, no mean botanist, had never seen before. Still, it was all delicious, covered with delicate sauces of honey and spices, sweet and sour, hot and tangy. She was well rested also, for the Nymphae had showed her to a sweet-smelling couch of boughs and grasses and told her it was safe to sleep. But it was still dark when one of them came and touched her.
"The other planes are troubled. You must go."
A second said, "Hekate, will your protections go with you or fade with time now that the child will leave us?"
"No," Hekate said. She made a mage light and smiled at them. "The illusions are linked into the power of the earth. Only if there is a shaking so bad that the roots of the spell are shifted from the power source will the illusion fade. As long as the land lies still—as long as the bond between the spell and the boiling below is unbroken—the spells will protect this place."
"Then you have overpaid us for our care of the child," the third said. "Especially since he has given us great pleasure. He is attuned, as no other human child we have known, to growing things."
And then all spoke together. "If he needs more protections than Lady Io can furnish, he will have them."
That promise eased a tight band that had circled Hekate's heart ever since the Mother reminded her of her binding to Dionysos. In truth, although she never failed to visit him, that had been less because of the binding than for a reason to escape Perses' house and eyes and to some extent for the pleasure of watching him grow. Now she was still conscious of a light tether to the boy, but nothing that would impede her.
She washed in the warm pool behind the house of the Nymphae, dressed in the garments she had shed the night before, and ate the strange but satisfying morning meal that appeared at the side of the pool. When she was ready she took up her staff and stood for a moment looking around, but the Nymphae did not appear and Hekate knew enough not to seek them. They had given their promise; they had said all they had to say.
Dionysos did not appear either, for which Hekate was actually grateful. Now that she was leaving him, she discovered that she was more fond of the child than she had realized. A final parting would be unnecessarily painful; there was no more they had to say to each other. Still, Hekate fashioned a tiny spell that would be triggered by Dionysos' presence. "Farewell," it would say in her voice. "Be safe. Take joy in living."
Beyond the pool was a garden and where the garden ended, a gate guarded by a tall figure shrouded in vines. Hekate stopped before it for a moment. Here was hard scrutiny, and although a shield covered the dwelling of the Nymphae, there was none of the warmth and welcome she enjoyed in the forest shrine. Still, Hekate knew she was seen and recognized.
"Am I free to go?" she asked.
The binding around her heart twitched, tightening for one moment and then relaxing again. I am free, but I carry the binding with me, she thought, and bowed slightly, and passed the gate.
Hekate had made her way back to Ur-Kabos and about halfway around it; in fact she was just about to step onto the road that began at the east gate of the city and went across the mountains to Kadesh when a sense of unease, of unsteadiness, of hot, foul windless buffeting passed over, around, and through her. Although not a leaf stirred on any tree nor was the smallest puff of dust raised on the road, Hekate almost fell and needed to put out a hand to the nearest tree to steady herself. This was more than a troubling of the other planes. She had no doubt what she felt was a violent rending of the immaterial walls between this world and others.
The Nymphae had said the hunter was swift. Hekate took a deep breath and began to run down the road toward the footpath that angled north to the caves of the dead. She would not allow terror to close her throat because she needed to breathe in order to run. Nor would she allow herself to be pushed into running at top speed; that would only exhaust her too soon. Over and over she told herself it was not far now, no more than a half candlemark at the pace of a procession. Surely, surely she would reach her haven before Perses had completed his instruction and transferred the spell.
For a while the panic receded. Hekate did recognize a few landmarks; Perses had insisted she travel this path a few times in her life when he forced her to witness the sacrifice of a Gifted. It was an object lesson that she must only ever appear to use magic as a learned tool, not draw it from within her. Still the path was clear and without branches. She was making good progress when suddenly she felt as if a cold and filthy hand were groping for her.
Blackness! Nothingness! I am nothing and no one, she thought. But it was very hard to keep the blankness in her mind and at the same time watch the path under her feet. She ran doggedly, her strength renewed momentarily when another blind groping passed over her. That gave her hope that the hunter hadn't yet found her and, indeed, the seeking seemed to come from another quarter. If the thing had diverted, following her trail to the dwelling of the Nymphae, it would give her a little longer.
Although the illusion that kept curious humans from the valley of the Nymphae would not affect the otherplanar creature, she didn't fear for the plant maidens. First, the ghurt was not hunting them and second, they had thirty poisoned thorn-talons and an untold number of near-sentient root-fibers that could bind or strangle to oppose the ghurt's one stinger. For a brief moment of bright hope, Hekate thought that they could destroy the creature if it would only attack them, but she didn't slow her pace and the hope didn't last long.
She could feel the brief burst of rage when the guhrt understood that she was not to be found in the Nymphae's valley and two questions jostled together in her mind. Was it by the Mother's favor that the creature had not scented or sensed her exit at the Nymphae's gate? How could her father have been so careless as to allow the guhrt's aura to spread abroad without hindrance? Again she had a very brief spurt of hope that Perses had been too drained by the summoning to work a spell of concealment, but again the hope didn't last long.
Hekate would have shaken her head if she hadn't been running and feared it would unbalance her. Two other, much stronger, possibilities existed than Perses' exhaustion. The likeliest was that he didn't know she could sense the guhrt's aura; she doubted he knew that she was aware of the watchers he set on her. Another likely explanation was that he wanted her to sense the creature to increase her terror.
She found it was no use to tell herself she would not yield and give him the satisfaction. She was terrified, more and more terrified as the foulness that was part of the guhrt grew stronger and stronger. Despite knowing that the creature could leap upon her from any side, even from ahead of her on the path, she was constantly tempted to look behind her. She could no longer control her breath, which came shorter than it should, nor could she keep her pace to what she could sustain.
Gasping and sobbing, with a spear of pain lancing through her side and her lungs burning, Hekate drove her failing body forward. She burst out of the trees into a clearing. Ahead was a huge arch of utter blackness, from which protruded an ugly tongue of gravel and raw, red earth that was bare of any growth, any softening touch of living green. To go into that blackness . . . But it was here! Hekate flung herself over that raw, red tongue and fell sprawling.
At first she could do nothing except breathe. Behind her the clearing was full of foulness, but the guhrt hadn't followed her into the cave. Hekate felt its aura pulse forward as if it were about to do so, and she struggled upright, desperately creating a spell of warding. But the pulse of evil retreated more swiftly than it had come forward, as if something in the cave repelled it. Still it pulsed forward again. Hekate rose to her feet, murmuring another protective spell and gripping her staff like a club, but the aura withdrew again even more suddenly.
Safe! The idea had barely formed, however, when Hekate became aware of a thread of the immaterial filth of the guhrt sliding along the ground toward the entrance of the cave right along the wall. There was a thin space where the grass of the clearing edged the earth and gravel apron at the cave's mouth and grew almost into the dark. Like the slimy track of a snail, the evil crept into the cave. A second thread stole around the other side, and both squirmed forward toward Hekate.
Hardly realizing what she was doing, she backed away. Inside the cave the threads engorged, grew finger thick, took on a slimy sheen. Hekate stepped back again, and again . . . and one foot found nothing. With a small shriek, she fell backward, but she was not swallowed by a deep abyss; she had only tripped into the trough that collected the blood of the sacrificial animals.
Disgusted, brushing frantically at her clothing, Hekate got to her feet on the far side of the trough only to be struck by such an overwhelming sensation of fear and despair that she barely remained upright by clinging to her staff. Wave after wave of the emotions poured into her. She choked on sobs. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Never had she felt such terror, not even when she ran before the guhrt; never had she been so utterly bereft, so despairing, not even in the worst moments of her father's domination when she was a child and had no defenses.
Hekate turned and prepared to leap back over the trough, but the questing ribbons of the guhrt's evil had run together so that there was no way to avoid them. They did not carry the full force of her father's spell, she was sure; the guhrt had to touch her physically to transfer that. However, she was equally sure that the creature had some power of its own, some way of entrapping its prey. If she stepped over the blood trough, she would be little more than dead meat for her father's consuming.
Unable to endure the panic and horror eroding her soul, Hekate gathered them into a tight spear, added the hatred that was now nearly consuming her and flung them out of the cave mouth at the creature that was pursuing her. In the "no place" between the planes, usually lit to Hekate's mind's eye with a soft gray luminescence there was now a dull red aura. When the spear she had cast struck, the red exploded into writhing convulsions followed by a wash of utter blackness; from outside the cave came the squall of a creature surprised by pain. And then the aura of the guhrt was gone.
The sense of slimy ribbons laid out to entrap her was also gone as was the mental stench of the guhrt. Hekate stepped across the trough into the outer section of the cave. The burden of fear and despair that had oppressed her lifted at once. She could still sense the emotions, but they hung in the dark behind her as a threat or a warning now rather than being an active torment. Hekate shivered. She could not remain in the caves of the dead with that sense of coming doom surrounding her.
Perhaps she would not have to do so. Turning her inner sight inward and outward at once, she looked cautiously into the "no place." It was still black and empty. So far so good. She knew she had hurt the guhrt when she rid herself of the building terrors of the caves of the dead. Perhaps she had really harmed it. Killed it or driven it away?
Cautiously, Hekate approached the cave opening. Nothing was in sight to her mortal eyes, but very faintly she sensed the guhrt. It had withdrawn beyond the clearing and well back into the surrounding forest, drawn its power back into itself, too, she thought, but it was still there. She tried to gather her fear and hatred and launch them again, but the emotions were dissipating, unraveling like a weakening spell.
A weakening spell. Hekate turned sharply and looked into the blackness of the cave. If it was a spell, she thought . . . but before the idea could form fully the sense of the guhrt grew stronger. Hekate spun on her heel to face the woods beyond the clearing and sent a blast of hatred at the creature. It came no closer, but it did not squall or retreat. The hatred that was her own was not enough; she needed the terror and despair that came from the caves of the dead to drive it back. And even so, she realized, she could not drive it away. It would wait. And sooner or later she must sleep. As soon as she did, it would send out its slimy excresences. Once they touched her, she would be lost.
She saw again those loathesome ribbons, saw how they crept toward her but stopped at the edge of the blood trough. So she could not find shelter in the outer section of the cave. The only place she would be safe from the guhrt was on the other side of the trough—but could she survive the agony of terror and hopelessness induced by intruding into the domain of the king of the dead?
The guhrt was moving again. Hekate again cast out a shaft of hatred mixed with her own fear and terror, but she did not even know if it struck the creature for she was now close to exhaustion. She retreated inside the cave, creating a mage light; since her father already knew where she was, the small magic could not betray her and it took very little power.
She stood teetering on the edge of the trough. She could feel the looming threat of unbearable anguish, but extending her senses did not find an overall aura like that in the secret shrine in the forest. What she felt was more like a thin curtain rising above a knotted cord of magic. But that was a trigger spell she knew—a spell designed and set by a human mage. No trigger spell surrounded the clearing in the forest where the Mother dwelt. And Hekate could not imagine the Mother hoarding Her power and releasing Her aura only when it was needed.
Would the equally powerful king of the dead need to hoard power? For that matter, could a mortal seize feelings generated by the king of the dead and use them as a weapon, as she had done? The thought of trying to mold and wield the Mother's power turned her cold inside.
Curiosity woke in Hekate. If it was a spell and not a protection placed by the king of the dead, could she follow the spell to the spell-caster? Could she induce or force that spell-caster to stop using the spell or to give her protection against it?
For one moment she gave all her attention to that fascinating thought, letting her awareness of the guhrt ebb. The creature reacted at once, coming as close to the cave entrance as it could. Through it, Perses launched a powerful psychic assault. The blow struck at her should have rendered her unconscious, but the wards she had built and put in place as a protection against the guhrt held. Even so, Hekate's mage light flickered out and she staggered forward, stumbling across the blood trough and several steps on into the depth of the cave.
Again the spell of fear and despair fell on her, but the weight that descended upon her was not enough to crush out a rising tide of rage that beat against the oppression. The cruelty and unfairness of an assault from every side when she had done nothing to deserve such treatment now aroused in Hekate such a fury that it lifted the burden of terror, replacing it with a rage so great she felt she would burst. And it was all Perses' fault! All!
"Perses, I will destroy you!" she screamed into the hollow void and then turned to face outward. "I swear I will somehow make you more helpless than the many who have died as your victims." Tears poured down her face. "Witness my oath, Mother!" She spun back to look into the blackness of the inner cave. "Witness my oath, king of the dead, in whose realm I now stand."
"DONE!"
The wordless, soundless acknowledgement echoed through Hekate's being, shaking her to her core. The staff, to which she had been clinging to keep herself upright, came loose from the ground as she started in surprise. She felt the binding take hold of her, and the realization of what she had done sapped away what little strength remained in her. Misery, dread, and desperation fastened on her. She slipped to the ground, feeling her body shrink into the fragile, bent form of extreme age. A last pang of fear that her father had somehow managed to touch her with his will sent her over the edge into the emptiness of unconsciousness.
"Thief!" The voice creaked rustily as if long unused.
Hekate blinked up at a young man, who stood over her, his mouth tight with disapproval. Except for his pallid complexion and his severe expression, he would have been a pleasant sight. He was somewhat fairer than the ordinary Ka'ananite, with long, light brown hair, large eyes of a brown so pale as to be nearly golden, a straight nose, and a mouth that was meant to be generous but was pinched back in displeasure.
She put an arm behind her to lever herself to a sitting position, realizing as she did so that she must have been lying on the ground for some time. She was terribly cold.
"I am not a thief," Hekate said indignantly. "You must see that my hands are empty. You may take my cloak and examine it, and I will show you that my gown conceals nothing."
The young man looked contemptuous. "Don't take me for a fool. I realize that the protection over this cave felled you before you could seize any of the treasures left for the king of the dead. That doesn't make you any less a thief for you intended to take what you could."
"I intended no such thing!" she exclaimed. "I fled here for protection."
"A liar as well as a thief, then. No one comes to the caves of the dead for protection. That offered by the king of the dead is not the kind a sane person seeks, especially those of your ripe years, who seem to cling all the tighter to life."
"It depends on what one is fleeing from," Hekate said, fighting to make sense against the terror and hopelessness that filled her. "I have heard that the king of the dead is a merciful god and does not torment the innocent."
The young man began to look uncertain. "You were threatened with torture?" he asked. "For what?"
Hekate suddenly realized that she could see him because there were several mage lights, but of a slightly more golden hue than her own, which was a pale silvery blue, hovering around them. Hers must have gone out when she . . . fainted. With that memory came another, of the oath she had sworn to render her father powerless. She uttered a small gasp, and put her hand to her mouth. The young man's mouth twisted with pity.
"Nothing," she cried, angry all over again. "I had done nothing to deserve such treatment."
The lips firmed again into displeasure. "Of course. No one ever does anything to deserve punishment."
All the while the terror and remorse, the despair, permeated Hekate's soul. She turned her head to look out over the blood trough. No ribbons of entrapment stained the floor, but she knew the guhrt was not gone. It had withdrawn again, perhaps even farther into the forest, but it was waiting. This time, likely, it would let her get well away from the caves of the dead, too far for her to seek shelter again, before it revealed itself and seized on her.
"I was threatened with worse than torment of the body," she snarled. "I was threatened with a binding of the spirit that would reduce me to an automaton, and that automaton would be used for terrible purposes . . . for murder and entrapment. The binding would be forever, for the whole length of my life, and worse yet, even death wouldn't release me. What more awful could happen to me here?"
"Who could set such a binding on you?" Doubt showed again in the small creases around the golden eyes. "That is no small spell."
"My father," Hekate replied bitterly, forgetting she wore the guise of the crone.
Doubt vanished. The young man burst out laughing. "He'd be a mighty sorcerer indeed to still be living and be your father." And then he said more gently, "I think you're a little mad, old woman, and that you did come here to steal. I'll have pity on you, though, and ignore your lies since you haven't stolen anything yet. Go home. You'll find nothing in these caves that could make worthwhile what you'll suffer in seeking for it."
The laughter nearly stunned Hekate. She could feel sweat cold on her body and she was shuddering continually, whereas he could laugh. She could fight the pain inflicted on her, but to laugh . . . No, he must be protected against the torment she was suffering.
"I can't go," she cried. "I tell you there's something terrible waiting outside for me. I can't even go across the blood trough. The creature is called a guhrt and it carries the coercion spell. If it touches me, I'm lost. I cannot and will not leave the cave, not even if I die of this agony."
As she spoke, Hekate righted her staff, set it firmly in the ground, and pulled herself upright with its help. The young man opened his mouth to answer her, but his gaze, which had flicked over the staff, fixed on it.
"Where did you get that staff?" he asked sharply.
His urgency drove the lesson she had just learned from Hekate's mind. "My father threw it at me when I couldn't obey him. I had fallen and I couldn't get up."
But this time the young man did not laugh. His eyes still fixed on the staff, he asked, "How old is your father?"
"I have no idea," Hekate answered slowly, remembering now that she looked very ancient herself. "But he doesn't look as old as I."
She was not paying terribly much attention to what they were saying. If the young man questioning her had protection against the spell designed to drive invaders out of the caves of the dead, perhaps she could also build such a spell. The wards would need to be inside, rather than outide.
"Feel under the handgrip of the staff. Is there a hard knot protruding from the wood? Push it upward."
Concentrating more on the spell she was trying to form, than on the young man, Hekate simply did what she was told. She was amazed and nearly lost the thread of her spell when the grip parted from the body of the staff. Hurriedly she initiated the spell, before it could fall apart and lash back at her, but it was not really complete. Still it sealed off some of the anguish, enough for her to focus on the grip of the staff, which was loose in her hand. Instinctively, she pulled on it, and a long, thin knife came out of the shaft. She stood looking at it and then at the man who continued to stare at what she held.
"Then it is my staff," he muttered.
"You want proof I am no thief?" Hekate thrust both pieces of the staff at him. "Here, take it back."
He shook his head. "I didn't say you stole the staff. A long, long time ago I dropped it in a back street of Ur-Kabos. I never knew what became of it."
"It couldn't be so very long ago," Hekate said. "You are a young man—" She stopped abruptly and then continued, "That is, you look to be a young man. Sorcerers are long lived."
For perhaps a dozen heartbeats he didn't answer and then he said, "It takes one to know one, I suppose."
Hekate nodded. She saw no point in lying about that. As soon as he began to think about what she had said about the guhrt and the spell of coercion instead of concentrating on driving her out, he would realize she must know magic. And she needed the spell of protection he had. He would be more likely to give it to a fellow sorcerer, she hoped.
"Is that how you are able to withstand the punishment of the king of the dead for entering his realm?" he continued.
Hekate slammed the thin knife back into the shaft of the staff and the parts joined invisibly. Then she snorted lightly. "You mean how am I able to withstand the spell you use to frighten people away from the cave?"
As she said it, Hekate realized that that was the answer. The young man had no protection. It was his spell, so of course it did not affect him. His slight wince told her she had hit her mark and she continued, "What you inflict on invaders of the caves of the dead has nothing to do with the king of the dead. I know what the aura of a god is, and it is not turned on by a trip spell. Oh, no, I know you. We are of the same kind, you and I, and it is more likely that you are a thief and one of long standing than that I am." She shrugged. "As to how I am able to withstand it, I am accustomed to pain. I endure."
He raised a hand, defensively or apologetically, then sighed and whispered, "Thialuo trouos, panikos, phobos."
The weight of fear and despair was gone as suddenly as it had fallen upon her when she crossed the blood trough. Hekate sagged against the support of the staff, no longer needing to stiffen herself against screaming and beating her breast or writhing helplessly on the ground.
"Since you know the truth, and I can't drive you out, I suppose there's no need to make you suffer needlessly," he said. Oddly, there was a kind of eagerness in his voice and stance, but then he seemed to recognize what he had exposed. His body stiffened, and he added, "But don't think I believe you and trust you. I'll watch you to make sure you steal nothing."
Hekate laughed aloud in the euphoria of relief. "What is there here to steal? I haven't seen—"
She stopped abruptly as one of the mage lights whisked away toward the wall. Immediately glitterings of silver and gold answered to the light. Hekate saw that there were urns and cups and bowls, goblets and gold-inlaid boxes, and other things standing on shelves.
She shrugged, still smiling. "So there are treasures. Well, watch all you like. I'll take none of those. However, I fled with nothing, only what I am wearing. If offerings of food and drink are made, I will take those. If you call that stealing, then I will be a thief, but I can't leave and I don't intend to die of thirst and starvation. I'll settle my score with the king of the dead when he demands payment from me."
Free of agony and able to be aware of subtleties, Hekate noticed a relaxation in the young man. She had seen him make himself rigid, but now understood it was not to resist pain but to hold back from something he desired. Her? An ancient crone? Nonsense. But he was now smiling at her.
"I can't argue with that. I take the offerings of prepared food and drink myself, but not the dried grain, fruit, or meat or the sealed flasks of date wine or preserved cheeses. Those are stored separately and someone or something gathers them up on the equinoxes and takes them away with the treasure. The food and open pitchers of beer or wine I use."
Feeling as light and silly as a thistledown now that she had a sanctuary—and possibly even a companion—Hekate said, "Aha, then you are, as I said, a thief of long standing. Do you take the food to feed your hungry wife and children? Would you not be better off doing some work instead of taking the offerings to the king of the dead?"
"I have no wife and children," the young man said, his voice suddenly flat, his face expressionless. "I can never leave the caves. I am bound here."