Hettie didn't give a damn. Except to laugh loudly when something really horrible happened.
Polly and I moved gingerly between stacks of magic boxes, enchanted dancing-shoes, and nasty old magazines, careful not to touch anything. There was fabulous and seriously valuable stuff to be found, if a person was not too fussy over little things like provenance, or guarantees. Savage Hettie was a fence as well as a dealer, and didn't care who knew it.
We passed by glass jars labelled Manticore musk, Vampire's teeth (which clattered and ground against the glass if you got too close), and a wine bottle covered in cobwebs marked simply Drink Me You Bastard. I was briefly distracted by a pile of old magazines that I couldn't resist leafing through (once I'd put some gloves on). The private schoolgirls' issue of Oz, International Times with a naked Paul and Linda on the front cover, and a battered copy of Playbeing, with something utterly revolting on the front cover. Polly, though, was not one for distractions. She stalked up and down the narrow aisles, seemingly following her nose, until finally she stopped abruptly before a sealed glass jam-jar. I joined her, and peered over her shoulder. In the jar was a small, withered thing, with half the hair fallen out, the stiff fingers made into candles with delicate little wicks. The stump was blackened, from where it had been sealed shut with a naked flame. I reached for the jar, and the fingers stirred slowly, like spider's legs. I snatched my hand back instinctively. Polly snorted dismissively and picked up the jar without hesitating in the least.
We took it back to Savage Hettie, who shocked me rigid by refusing to take any payment. She reared back in her chair rather than touch the jam-jar, and leered at Polly, the tip of her tongue poking provocatively through the gap in her teeth.
"I know your kind, missie, ho yes I do. Don't want no dealings with you and yours, and I ain't going to risk being beholden to you. Take the nasty thing. Glad to be rid of it." She sniffed loudly, then looked at me. "Surprised to see an Oblivion boy with one of her lot, but I suppose you knows what you're doing. Blinded by a pretty face and bemused by the smell of pussy. Just like your dad."
Polly and I walked quickly away.
"Do you know what she was talking about?" she said, after a while.
"Haven't a clue," I said determinedly.
"Probably just as well," said Polly.
The last two items were easy. Deconsecrated host soaked in virgin's urine and a fine powder made from the crushed wings of wee flower faeries. Women use the strangest things as cosmetics. We found both items at the Mammon Emporium, the Nightside's premiere mall, and Polly made me shoplift them from their shelves while she kept a lookout. We then stalked imperiously out of the mall, and no-one challenged us. I think I was less scared in the mummy's burial chamber.
"You know," I said afterwards, "we could have paid for these."
"Where's the fun in that?" said Polly, and I was honestly lost for an answer.
Not entirely to my surprise, we ended up back on the Street of the Gods, standing before a quiet little church in the Street's equivalent of a backwater. A simple stone structure, with no fancy trimmings and no obvious name. People passed it by without looking, but it must have had something, or some other church or Being would have taken over its location long ago. The door was closed, the windows were dark, and there was no sign of life anywhere.
"Not very inviting," I said, after a while, because you have to say something.
"It isn't here for people," said Polly. Her face was full of an emotion I couldn't read, her eyes blazing.
"Does it have a name?" I said.
"It's old," said Polly. "Names come and go, but the church remains. It is a place of power, and it has been here for a very long time. So long that people have forgotten who it was originally created to venerate and preserve."
"The Lady of the Lake?" I said. "She's here?"
"Help me open the dimensional gate, and you'll see," said Polly.
There were no guards, no protections to get past. The door wasn't even locked, opening easily at Polly's touch. There wasn't actually a sign over the door saying Enter at Your Own Risk, but there might as well have been. I could feel all the hackles rising on the back of my neck as I followed Polly in.
The interior was no bigger or smaller than it should have been, an open, empty space surrounded by four stone walls, heavy with shadows, only the barest light seeping in through a narrow-slit window at the far end. No pews, no altar, just the open space. The air was still and uncomfortably warm, as though some great furnace were still operating down below. There was no sign anyone had been here in ages, but no dust either, or any sign of neglect.
Whatever might have been worshipped here in the past, it hadn't been a good or a wholesome thing. I could feel it, in my bones and in my water. Bad things had happened here. The horror of them still vibrated on the air, like the echoes of a scream that never ended. I looked at Polly, but she seemed entirely unaffected by the atmosphere. She trotted happily down the length of the empty church, with me stumbling along in the gloom behind her, trying to look in all directions at once. She dropped suddenly to one knee, and her fingers scrabbled against the floor for a moment before finally closing around the metal ring of a large trap-door I would have sworn wasn't there a moment before. The trap-door itself was solid metal and must have weighed half a ton, but she pulled it open easily with one hand before letting it fall back onto the stone floor. It landed hard, but even so, the echoes were strangely muted, as though the grim atmosphere was soaking up the sound. I looked at Polly, only a pale gleam in the gloom. There was no way a woman of her size could have handled that much weight so easily. I'd suspected she was keeping things from me, and now it seemed I was about to find out what.
Beneath the hole in the floor was a set of bare stone steps, leading down and down into darkness. Polly produced her Looking Glass and started down them without even looking to see if I was following. She knew I wouldn't hang back, not now I'd come so far.
I followed Polly and her light down into the dark, and wasn't at all surprised when the trap-door slammed shut again, over our heads.
The steps were rough and unmarked. The bare stone walls to either side were close enough to touch, hot enough to burn the fingers. The air was hot enough to bring a sheen of sweat to my face. I had to wonder exactly how far down we were going. My legs were aching from the strain of continuous descent when the stairway finally came to an end, and Polly stopped abruptly. She held up the Looking Glass, but its light couldn't penetrate more than a few inches into the dark. She laughed lightly, made the Glass disappear, and snapped her fingers imperiously. A harsh light sprang up, illuminating a huge cavern dug out of the bedrock far beneath the Street of the Gods. It wasn't any normal light; long streams of electrical fire crackled up and down the stone walls and crawled across the ceiling like living lightning. The fierce light hurt my eyes, but didn't seem to bother Polly at all. She looked back at me, and smiled.
"What are you waiting for, sweetie? This is it. This is what you came here for. Come on down, Larry Oblivion, and claim your prize."
She bestowed her most winning smile on me and batted her eye-lashes, but it looked grotesque now, clearly artificial, and practised. All of the attraction I once felt for her was gone, perhaps because I was seeing her clearly for the first time. But I went down to join her anyway. Because I'd come this far, and I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what treasure had been buried here if it wasn't the Lady of the Lake. Polly took me by the hand, and my flesh actually crawled at her touch. I went with her, deep into the cavern, until finally she stopped, let go my hand, and indicated with a warm smile what she'd brought me all this way to see.