And at the same moment, Rhiow heard one word Whispered in her ear. She took the hint.
She fixed all her attention on the Dark Lady, all her intention. Laurel! Rhiow said to her, silently, as forcefully as she could.
All around them the shadows suddenly buzzed and roiled. The ehhif were still bowing, still listening to more of Dagenham’s promises of what the Dark Lady was about to do for them. But she herself stood still, and nothing about her moved but those eyes. They went wide in the dimness, and flickered toward Rhiow: then, hurriedly, away again.
Cousin, said the mind behind the look. Help me!!
The thought was almost a scream, and it was choked off immediately thereafter. The eyes went veiled again. But now Rhiow knew what she needed to know– what she wouldn’t otherwise have dared to think. She’s not as soulsplit as we thought, Rhiow said to the others in shock. The split was why we didn’t read her as a wizard when Arhu revisioned her. But she is one, and she’s trying to come back! Trying to reforge the broken bond, to take her proper being back! Who knew, after all, what desperation in her life had made her try to sever the connection to it in the first place? Who knew what the Lone One had inflicted on her in the attempt to turn her into a weapon? And so very nearly It had succeeded.
But the claw slices both ways, Rhiow thought. The split wasn’t clean! Though the body was gone – suicide, murder, who knew which? – there was still some scrap of willingness to have a body tangled in the estranged souclass="underline" enough to allow enacture. So one of sa’Rraah’s little friends whispered in Dagenham’s ear and told him how to find her and use her: the kind of tool you couldn’t make out a whole wizard, alive or dead. She’s what Dagenham’s been using to do Tepeyollotl’s work, with the coaching of his dark Mistress’s pets.
Yet the soul itself hasn’t given up its connection! It’s been trying to come back, to heal the wound, to remake the agreement with the Powers broken after it gave up life and forsook its Oath.
Yet the claw really did slice both ways, and not necessarily in their favor. Until she fully remakes the bond to the Powers, she’s still the Lone One’s claw, not Iau’s. And it came to Rhiow in that moment that seeing this wizard remade, even if she should die in the next moment, was more important than the errand that they originally thought they’d come on.
People, at all costs, we have to keep her from enacting that spell! Rhiow said. She may have a trigger for that wizardry stored in her mind, but it won’t be one she built or put there. Dagenham, or one of these others – they’re the key. The Dark Lady’s just –
A cat’s paw? Helen said. It was a joke, but her mind’s voice was grim.
It’s in one of their minds, Rhiow said. But it needs to be jostled loose. We have one who can See – She caught Arhu’s eyes across the circle, where they glinted ever so faintly in the torchlight – and one who can Hear —
I understand you, Hwaith said.
Let’s see how this unfolds for a few moments more, Rhiow said, watching Dagenham. As soon as they make any move that looks like the activation of this spell –
I think we can find a way to disrupt them a little, Helen said.
“And now comes the time of gifts,” Dagenham was saying to his circle. “As we give to the Strong Ones, and through them to the Great Old One, so He gives to us. Now, at this final moment, commitment means most, and will be most rewarded. Who will give himself to the Great Old One so that the world can be changed?”
And suddenly everyone in the circle was looking at Dolores.
“Or herself,” Dagenham said.
“…Give?” Dolores said, looking around her in confusion. “What do you mean? I mean, I promised to let them into my life, you showed me the words to say – “ She looked over at Ray.
“Yes, I did,” Ray said. “And here’s your chance to achieve greatness of a kind you’d never have had a chance to achieve in your career, which frankly wouldn’t have had that long to run anyway… considering what’s going to happen tonight.”
Her mouth dropped open: she glanced around her, now, like someone realizing for the first time that she had been led into a trap, and by someone she’d made the mistake of trusting. “Ray, what do you mean, I thought that you and I – “
“Yes, you did,” Ray said. His voice was astonishingly casual. “I tried to explain to you earlier that plans had changed and that we were discussing an entirely different kind of immortality now. Something much better than just the silver screen… something a whole lot more permanent. Anyone who gives herself to the Great Old One now will live forever in ways that no one alive can understand. You’ll be worshipped, and adored… through Him… by whatever beings remain alive after tonight.”
Dolores’s eyes went wide. “You do it yourself then, if you’re so hot on the idea!” she cried, and whirled to run for the door. But before she could move, the two robed figures on either side of her had her by the arms and were restraining her where she was.
Her screams fell with surprisingly little effect into the dead weight of the air, as if something was pressing down on the space, smothering them. Here we go… Rhiow thought. Sif? Hold yourself ready – I’m going to have to construct something on the fly.
Say the word.
From across the circle, Helen said, It’s all right, Aufwi, let me down —
I’d nearly forgotten you were up there. Where have you been keeping your mass?
It’s no big deal, I’ll show you later. Give us the high sign when you’re ready, Rhi —
“No! Ray, no, why are you, what are you doing, why are you just standing there, help me, I don’t want to do this!” She was screaming now. Most of the people standing around the circle simply looked at her. And Dagenham moved the thing he was holding two-handed into one of his hands, and reached into his robe with another, and came out with something that was just as black, but glinted in the torchlight.
It was a short sharp slice of obsidian, razory-keen. He passed it to the robed figure standing next to him: and the figure reached out a shapely hand to take it from Dagenham, and turned toward Dolores, and laughed… that tinkly little laugh.
Rhiow fluffed up in rage and horror as Anya Harte advanced slowly on Dolores. All sharp edges, that voice had been at the restaurant and the party, always looking for someplace to put the knife in. And now she had a place. It’s as we thought: she was behind what happened to Dolores at the party. And what she realized she hadn’t finished there, now she’ll finish here, as a sideshow to the main event… and a sop to her jealousy. Well, we’ll see about that —
“How blind did you have to be,” Anya said as she came closer and closer to the struggling Dolores, “not to see that Ray and I weren’t going to stop being an item just because some fan magazine said we were? You really shouldn’t believe everything you read. You have to know that the studiocame down on him after some rumors got around about here…” She laughed again. “But Ray’s too much his own man to toe the line. Of course he was going to pretend to be doing it at a party full of industry types. But off the record…. nothing has changed.”
She was almost within arm’s length now, and the torchlight glinted redly off the hair-thin edge of the obsidian knife. “And if you think a dim little piece like you is going to distract Ray from me for a minute, even if the world is about to end or whatever tomorrow, then you… think…wrong.”
She lifted the knife. Dolores, gasping in shock, watched its upward arc as Anya lifted it with a dreadful smile on her face. Rhiow glanced over at Sif, caught the answering glint of fire in her eyes, reached back into her mind for the shieldspell she’d been readying to lay the groundwork for what would follow —
And from the darkness came a sound that brought all heads around, even Dagenham’s. It was a low, moaning, rumbling sound that scaled slowly up into a roar, and then past that into a long, furious, bubbling scream. And out of the darkness, into the horrified silence that fell, into the torchlight, came slowly stepping something earth-colored, four-legged, long and low, with slowly twitching tail and eyes that unnaturally concentrated the torches’ light. Every ehhif in the circle stared, frozen in shock, as the biggest California mountain lion they had ever seen – a massive dun shape with dark muzzle and paws — stalked out of the darkness and into the ring of stones, and stood there, just shy of the spell circle, with eyes of green fire locked on Anya Harte.