I saw the strands shift and sway.
I said, 'I will forgive you for kidnapping me, if you will release me from any obligations of fealty, thanks, or gratitude. I am no longer your child, or anyone's. Say it.'
She said, 'I release you. You are free and independent. I accept your forgiveness. In addition, I will give you this gift…'
I saw the strands twitch and begin to weave together…
'No!' I said. 'You are most kind, but I fear I cannot accept.'
The strands parted. The web that had snared us fell away and was gone. The witch's power over the two of us had failed. I felt joy, don't doubt it; but when the strands faded, I also lost the only guide that allowed me to 'see' in this utter blackness. The usefulness of this burial mound to Erichtho had also faded. The place was dark to all my senses.
Romus said, 'I go now into the dreamless sleep of Elysium, where a fair white table had been spread for me. This last gift I grant. Witch: I give to you your life. Aunt Phaethusa: I grant you that you shall never be in darkness, wherever you go. Man of the Graeae: I grant you that your wand will come to your hand upon your call. Its dead spirit I breathe now back to life. It will inhabit any stalk or wand or spear or stick you shall hold in your hand, and it shall never be taken from you again, until the world ends. Anubis.
Go into the stick.'
I saw the shadow move, and the utility-light, the usefulness to Quentin, of the distaff Mrs. Wren was carrying brightened a hundredfold. She screamed and threw down her staff, as if it had burned her.
Quentin reached down in the dark and picked it up.
I saw the shadow vanish.
I said, 'Well, this seems pretty dark to me right now.
Quentin, is she in the boat you were in? She can't cast spells without her wand?'
'I think so.'
'Mrs. Wren? How about a truce, long enough to get us all out of this burial mound… ?'
No answer. I heard motion.
Quentin tapped his staff on the ground. A pearly radiance issued from the top, where a hank of yarn was wound round and round it. There were shallow shelves to either side, where bones and dust gathered mold. Gold rings lay on the floor.
The place seemed much, much smaller in the light. The door was mouse-hole-shaped, and hardly had room to crawl into.
Quentin said, 'She's making a break for it.'
'Let's crawl. How fast can she go?'
So we both crawled.
When we came out into the snow again, there were columns of fire burning near the truck, which was scattered all across the slope behind. A complex-looking machine, blocky and square, made of engine parts, lenses, wires, lay on its side in a puddle of flickering gasoline. It had a big tube issuing from one end like a gun barrel, but I think that was only from the muffler.
There were craters pockmarking the snow here and there, and fantastic, bubbles of oily-colored ice, like half- buried skulls, protruding from the snow.
Victor was standing on bare earth. He was wearing the chain-mail jerkin.
There was a wide ring of steaming snow all around him, but no snow where his feet were. His third eye was open, and there was light coming from it. That, and the light from billowing columns of fire to his left and right, illuminated the scene.
We saw Mrs. Wren. She had her back to us and was facing Victor. Her shoulders hunched up as if in shock and surprise. She raised her crooked hands. 'I call upon the spirits of earth and below earth!
Wood! Water! Welkin! Fire and Iron! I call…'
Victor looked impatient. As clearly as if he had spoken it aloud, his expression said,
A blue-gold spark left his head and touched her. She slid and sat down in the snow, giggled, and slumped over.
He turned his head. There was Colin lying not far away. Vanity sat in the snow with Colin's head in her lap. Victor played the beam from his third eye back and forth across Colin's body once and twice. Colin blinked and sat up. 'Jesus! It's cold!' He looked around. 'What the hell happened here?'
Vanity said, 'Everybody did stuff but me.'
I said, 'Fell?'
Victor closed his third eye and pointed off to the left. Fell lay like a broken doll, arms and legs spread out at odd angles.
Quentin said, 'I hope you didn't kill him.'
Colin said, 'And I hope you did! Do you know what that horse's ass gave me on my last dom rag?'
Quentin said, 'If we commit a murder, it will go very, very badly for us. The influences friendly to us will turn.'
Victor said, 'Don't worry. He's just stunned.'
Victor explained in a few curt sentences that he had used a catalyst to precipitate out of the atmosphere the
