Effortlessly, the pillar looped about his waist, a noose of stone. Blood's stick shattered at the third blow.
In the floor, Scylla opened stony lips; irresistibly the tentacle carried him toward her gaping mouth, and as he hung struggling above the dark orifice, dropped him into it.
The initial fall was not great; but it was onto carpeted steps, and he tumbled down them, rolling in wild confusion until he sprawled at last on a floor twenty- or thirty cubits below the shrine, with sore knees and elbows and a bruised cheek.
'Oh, you gods!'
The sound of his voice brought light; there were large, comfortable-looking armchairs here, upholstered in brown and burnt orange, and a sizable table; but Silk gave them small attention, gripping his injured ankle in one hand while the other lashed the carpet with Crane's wrapping.
As though by a miracle, the circular panel of deep blue that was the farther end of the room irised wide, revealing a towering talus; its ogre's face was of black metal, and the slender black barrels of buzz guns flanked its gleaming fangs. 'You again!' it roared.
The memory of Blood's blade-crowned wall returned-the still and sweltering night, the gate of thick-set bars, and this shouting giant of brass and steel. Silk shook his head as he replaced the wrapping; though it required an effort to keep his voice steady, he said loudly, 'I've never been here before.'
'I knew you!' Swiftly, the talus's left arm lengthened, reaching for him.
He scrambled up the carpeted stair. 'I didn't want to come here! I wasn't trying to get in.' 'I know you!'
A metal hand as large as a shovel closed on Silk's right forearm, clamping the injuries inflicted by the white-headed one; Silk screamed.
'Does this hurt you!'
'Yes,' he gasped. 'It hurts. Terribly. Please let me go. I'll do whatever you say.'
The steel hand shook him. 'You don't care!'
Silk screamed again, writhing in the grasp of fingers as thick as pipes.
'Musk punished me! Humiliated me!'
The shaking stopped. The enormous mechanical arm lifted Silk, and, as he dangled puppylike in midair, contracted. Through chattering teeth, he gasped, 'You're Blood's talus. You stopped me at his gate.'
The steel hand opened, and he fell heavily to the floor. 'I was right!'
The azoth he had carried from the city to the lake was no longer in his waistband. Striving to keep his voice from breaking, he said, 'May I stand up?' hoping to feel it slip down his trouser leg.
'Musk sent me away!' the talus roared; grotesquely, its vertical upper body angled forward as it addressed him.
Silk stood, but the azoth was gone; it had been in place when he had admired the lake from the shrine, certainly; so it had presumably been lost in his fall, and might still be near the top of the stair.
He risked a cautious step backward. 'I'm terribly sorry-really, I am. I don't have any influence with Musk, who dislikes me much more than he could ever dislike you. But I may have some small amount with Blood, and I'll do whatever I can to get you reinstated.'
'No! You won't!'
'I will.' Silk essayed another small backward step. 'I will, I assure you.'
'You soft things!' Noiselessly, and apparently without effort, the talus glided over the carpet on twin dark belts, the crest of its brazen helmet almost scraping the ceiling.
'You look the same because you are the same! Easy to break! No repair! Full of filth!'
Still edging backward, Silk asked, 'Were you in the shrine? Up there?'
'Yes! My processor by interface!'
Both the talus's steel hands reached for him this time, extended so swiftly that he escaped them by no more than the width of a finger. He stumbled backward, desperately pushed a heavy armchair into the path of one hand, and dove beneath the table. It was lifted, rotated in the air, and slammed down flat to kill him as a man swats a fly; he rolled frantically to one side and felt the edge of its massive top brush the wide sleeve of his robe, the sudden gust as it crashed down.
Something lay on the floor, not a cubit from his face, a green crystal in a silver setting. He snatched it up as the talus snatched him up, holding him this time by the back of his robe, so that he dangled from its hand like a black moth caught by its sooty wings.
'Musk hurt me!' the talus roared. 'Hurt me and made me go! I returned to Potto! He was not pleased!'
'I had nothing to do with that.' Silk's voice was as soothing as he could make it. 'I'll help you if I can-I swear it.'
'You got inside! I was on guard!' It shook him. 'In the tunnel the red water won't matter!'
It was backing through the irised wall with him, moving slowly but steadily, its arms retracting to bring him ever closer to its fearsome face.
'I don't want to hurt you,' Silk told it. 'It's evil-that means very wrong-to destroy chems, as wrong as it is to destroy bios, and you're very nearly a chem.'
That halted it momentarily. 'Chems are junk!'
'Chems are wonderful constructions, a race that we bios created long ago, our own image in metal and synthetics.' 'Bios are fish guts!' The backward glide resumed.
Silk held the azoth firmly in his left hand, his thumb on the demon. 'Please say that you won't kill me.'
'No!'
'Let me return to the surface.'
'No!'
'I'll do you no more harm, I swear; and I'll help you if I can.'
'I will drop you and crush you!' the talus roared. 'One blow .''The wall irised closed behind them, leaving them in a long, dim passageway, a little more than twice the talus's width, bored through the solid stone of the cliff.
'Don't you fear the immortal gods, my son?' Silk asked in desperation. 'I'm the servant of one god and the friend of another.'
'I serve Scylla!'
'As an augur, I receive the protection of all the gods, including hers.'
The steel fingers shook him more violently than before, then released his robe; he fell, nearly losing his grip on the azoth as he struck the dark and dirty stone floor. Sprawling, half-blind with pain, he looked up into that ogre's mask of a metal face and glimpsed the steel fist lifted higher than its owner's head.
The wings of Hierax roared in his ears; without time to think, reason, threaten, or equivocate, he pressed the demon.
Stabbing out from the hilt, the azoth blade of universal discontinuity caught the talus below the right eye; jagged scraps of incandescent slag burst from the point it struck. The steel fist smashed down but appeared to lose direction as it descended, hammering the stone floor to his left.
Black smoke and crackling orange flames erupted from the mass of wreckage that had been the talus's head, and with them a deafening roar of rage and anguish. The great steel fists swung wildly, pounding flying chips as sharp as flints from the stone sides of the passageway. Eyeless and ablaze, the talus lurched toward him.
A single slash from the azoth severed both the wide dark belts on which it had moved; they lashed the floor, the walls, and the dying talus itself like whips, then fell limp. There was a muffled explosion; flames shot up from the wagonlike body behind the vertical torso.
Scrambling away from the heat and smoke, Silk released the demon, stood, thrust the azoth back into his waistband, dusted off his black robe, and got out his beads. Swinging their voided cross toward the burning talus, he traced the sign of addition again and again. 'I convey to you, my son, the forgiveness of all the gods.'
His chant was flat and almost mechanical at first, but as the wonder and magnanimity of divine amnesty filled his mind, his voice grew louder and shook with fervor. 'Recall now the words of Pas, who said, 'Do my will, live in peace, multiply, and do not disturb my seal. Thus you shall escape my wrath. Go willingly, and any wrong that you have ever done shall be forgiven you. . . .' '
Incus returned Hyacinth's letter to Gulo with a smirk. Its new seal, similar though not identical to the original
