without looking up: 'I am not one or the other. I go where the True Science leads me. I doubt either neopagan or Christian would admit this, but the two traditions are the same, one growing from the other.
The myth of Christ is the same as the fable of Adonis, except that the Christian tales have the stern moral flavor and intellectual depth that the Neoplatonists, Stoics, and the late Roman writers added to them. All tales are one grand tale.'
He straightened up from where he had been hunched over the ring. 'Let me attempt a demonstration.
Amelia, if you will shut off the lights… ? No one talk; the spirits and aery humors released by your breath, not to mention the ambient charge on any names, words, or symbols you might express, will disturb the pattern of influences I am trying to establish. If Amelia starts to talk, somebody kiss her.'
'I am on it!' said Colin, beginning to get up.
'Never you mind,' said Victor.
I had walked in the front door with the rest of them, and had not yet taken a seat. As it chanced, I was standing near where Victor sat at his ease.
I stood there, blinking, caught between hope and wonder, doubting my ears. What had Victor just said?
Victor reached up from where he sat and, without asking, without even the slightest qualm, took me by the hand and steered me over in front of him. He put both his hands on my hips and pulled me down to sit on his knee.
I think Victor said something like, 'Carry on,' or maybe Colin made a wry comment, but I could not hear anything clearly. My heart was pounding in my ears, and I was afraid to turn around, as if maybe Victor would vanish if I turned to look at him, or it would all fade into a dream. Or, worse, he'd look at me as if I were his sister.
But he kept his hands on my hips. Firm, strong hands. I could feel how warm they were.
I sat there feeling pleased and foolish, wondering if I should lean back against him, if I dared. I missed what happened next, because I wasn't paying attention.
There was a noise like the chime of a bell, and I was not sure where it came from. Vanity waved her hand at Quentin and slapped herself on the neck. Bugs. Something was listening.
I had the impression that Quentin had just asked a question. Something or someone in the room answered him, because a shy, unearthly voice murmured very softly: 'I am the hate of the voiceless wound; I am the blood which is not allayed; I am the silence of the broken word; I am the trust betrayed.
Erichtho laid her curse on Echidna's son, and took the ghost of his leg away; all other wounds of his knew how to close; the knowledge was lost; what was marred was to be marred for forever and a day.'
Vanity slapped herself on the neck again, looking worried.
I looked into the higher dimensions and saw bundles of moral energy issuing to and from the ring. At right angles to all other right angles was a figure surrounded by the laws of nature of the dream continuum. It seemed to be a corpse, taller than a human being, clad all in bronze armor, and resting in a strange coffin, which was shaped in the form of a hollow brass horse.
Quentin said, '
The figure in the armor turned and looked at me, as if he could see my eyes, despite that I was looking from another dimension; he started to raise a gauntlet toward me, as if to speak, but at that same moment, the hollow brass horse came to life, and galloped away, with the corpse rattling and banging back and forth in the hollow vessel of its chest. It sounds perhaps comical to think of a man rattling around in a horse's hollow chest, but there was something so horrible, and so helpless, and so sad about it all, that I turned my higher eyes away before I could see more.
Quentin said, 'Demonstration over. You guys can talk again.'
I was aware only of a sinking sensation. I had missed my opportunity.
Why hadn't I started to talk out of turn?
2.
There was a brief discussion. I described the spirit I saw, and Quentin gave the opinion that this was the ghost of the original owner of the ring. Who or what it was, he could not guess.
Vanity confirmed that the ghost had been the only thing looking at or aware of us—except when he said the name Echidna. Vanity said, 'At the moment that name was spoken, something very old and very powerful turned and looked at us. It is coming now.'
Even as she said those words, fat drops of rain began to spatter against the portholes of our cabin. In the distance, a swollen red sun, balanced between low clouds and the dark western horizon of the sea, was being blotted up by thunderheads.
Quentin looked worried, and ashamed. 'Maybe there were more precautions I should have taken. Is this officially an emergency? I'd like Victor to be in charge.'
There were four votes for aye. Colin had not raised his hand.
I said to him sharply, 'Is there some other candidate you'd like to propose?' My tone, I suppose, was less polite than it should have been, because I thought he was angling for the position of leader himself.
Colin, slouched like a panther at rest over the arm of the divan, regarded me with a lazy, mocking stare:
'I just thought the Dark Mistress had done such a fine job before——-Are you canvassing for a vote for Vic, Amelia?
What are you offering? I'll make it unanimous, if I get to have the blonde in my lap next time around…
No? Fine. Who am I to break with tradition, though… ?' He raised his hand anyway.
Quentin said, 'Leader, I'd like to do a reading on the influences from the middle air and the upper aether.
Unfortunately, I already know from Vanity that there are actually spirits of some sort, princes of the air and
