air and spread apart, as if being laid out on the three-dimensional blueprint. Then wires and parts of the engine began reconstructing themselves, as if evolving into some new machine.
Where the diamond statue of Victor stood, a greenish smoke began bubbling up out of pockmarks in the snow. Fell was gathering and recombining the chlorophyll traces in the winter grass beneath the snow to make chlorine gas. I could sense Victor altering his body chemistry to compensate, shifting into a nonbreathing form.
Vanity could see Fell, illuminated by the spotlights of the truck headlamps, but Victor and the poisonous gas were invisible to her.
The petrol tank crumbled suddenly, and gasoline drenched Dr. Fell.
Fans of molecular machines spread out from Fell in each direction, reaching under the ground. I saw where nitrates, like bubbles forming in lava, were being drawn out of the soil to combine and create explosives.
I said, 'We better get farther away. Colin and Quentin…'
Colin lay on a heap, motionless, limp as a rag doll. Quentin was gone.
Gone.
The lights from the truck splashed enough illumination to show me the dimple shadows of one set of footprints, leading directly into the burial mound.
I said, 'Look to Colin! See if he is alive!'
And I ran.
2.
I do not know if Vanity was trying to disobey me, or if I was no longer leader, or if she was just scared, but she ran after me for about half the distance between me and the stone door, farther behind with every step.
The stone door loomed before me, a cold mouth, gaping. I bent double and began slithering, crawling, and duck-walking as fast as I could into the mound. To me, it was not as dark as a natural mound would have been. The original purpose of these prehistoric mounds was to bury dead kings. It was still carrying out that function; to my eyes that could see the utility of objects, it seemed to have a faint glow.
Vanity, behind me, stopped at the stone door. 'Amelia… ?' she called in a quavering voice.
I put a point of view behind her, and looked at her. She turned, and in the light of the gasoline explosions coming from the direction of the truck, she could see Colin's motionless body. Vanity went toward him.
I could see through the wall of the mound. There was a spiral crawlway, lined with massive blocks, leading to a domed chamber in the center. I could see a strand of moral force running from my heart to a silhouette lying prone. It was my moral obligation to help Quentin.
There was a tangle of other strands and lines of moral order, or disorder, strung throughout and past the chamber walls, like a spider's web, twisting and twisting.
I reached the inner door. The chamber inside was dark to my eyes. But the utility…
No. The chamber here was not useful to the long-dead kings. It was useful, very useful, to someone else.
Someone here.
One moment, she was invisible. The next, I could see her bent silhouette, her pointed hood and shapeless cloak, as a group of moral force-lines issued from the distaff she held in her hands.
She said, 'High diddle doubt, my candle's out, my lit-tie maid's not at home; saddle my hog and bridle my dog, and fetch my little maid home. Why are you so far from home, my little maid?'
The voice was so strange, I almost didn't recognize it. Perhaps what I thought was her normal voice was merely a put-on, an act. 'Is that you, Mrs. Wren?'
A dry laugh. 'There was an old woman dwelt under a hill; and if she's not gone, she dwelleth there still.'
I said, 'Not Mrs. Wren, then. You are Erichtho.'
No laughter, this time.
She said, 'You cannot take my name from me. That art you do not know. You do not name me, little girl.
You know not whence I came or whither I go.'
The darkness was silent for a moment, as if she were waiting for a response from me, some sort of verbal parry. I could think of nothing to say.
She laughed again, a noise like dry leaves crumpling. She said, 'There was an old woman tossed in a basket seventeen times as high as the moon, but where she was going no mortal could tell, for under her arm she carried a broom…'
I said, 'Undo what you've done to Quentin!'
'Or else, what, my little maid? Will you send young Colin in to chop me with a great sharp axe?'
I said, 'I didn't say that!'
I could see the strands looping and weaving back and forth in the chamber.
'No word of greeting, no kiss on the cheek, for the old nurse, the old granny, who raised you from a kitten? The hands I taught how to play pat-a-cake are raised now to strike me, is it? The feet I taught their first steps to, are raised high to kick and run away? The food I fed, the strength I gave you, now is turned against me, eh?'
As if they were fibers of wire or rope, I saw the strands loop around my arms and legs like nooses. One went into my heart. One went into my stomach. I felt nothing, but a cold sensation passed over my limbs.
She said, 'Woe is me! Oh arms, oh legs, oh strength! Hear me!'
I ran forward at her, thinking I could knock her down or stop her mouth before she spoke her spell. The silhouette I thought was her crumbled in my hands when I touched it, and something, rings or a crown or
