"I'm sorry, Dionysos, but I must ask you to tell me what the creature looked like. If it was summoned to put a spell on me—"
"It was." Dionysos swallowed hard. "I Saw that later. I know I must tell you so you will know what to watch for. And if I don't say what I Saw aloud, I'll See it again and again." He sighed. "But it sounds so . . . so . . . nothing! And I . . . it terrified me!"
Hekate reached out with her free hand and touched the boy's cheek. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in fearing otherplanar creatures. I have been terrified by some I could not see at all. Their touch on the soul is foul."
Dionysos nodded eagerly. "Yes. Yes. The whole room was full of filth although the thing itself was little, about the size of a large cat. It looked more like a rat, only the naked tail was short and thick, except for the very end, which was like a stinger, only curved, and the face was flatter, without whiskers. It was all gray and its private parts were huge. I could see them clearly because when it had lapped up all the blood, it stood on two legs, like a man."
Hekate became aware that the Nymphae had come closer. "Very bad," one said, not the one who had spoken before, Hekate thought, but the voice was identical. "Guhrt. Fifth or sixth plane. All hunters there."
"Hunters," Hekate repeated, her voice flat. Then she looked at Dionysos again. "Was that the end of the Vision?"
"Nearly." Dionysos looked relieved, and his grip on her hand loosened. "Then the man picked up a long staff and made the end of it start to glow. Even that was disgusting, like yellow-green snot. He reached over the edge of the pentagram and touched the thing. It screamed and tried to seize the staff but failed, and the end of the staff stopped glowing."
The third Nymph spoke. "It has the spell now. The guhrt hunt by sight and scent and are relentless. They do not need to sleep and with a bowl of blood in it, it can go without food and water for a long time."
"I don't think it will go into the deep black place," Dionysos said. "That was the end of my Seeing in that place. After the man's staff touched the . . . the thing, the grass plait pulled me swiftly into the mountains. I Saw you go in to the dark place and I felt the fear come out. The fear was so great that the grass rope let me go, but I didn't See the creature follow you in."
"But that was the end of the Vision, wasn't it?"
"When you went into the black place and the fear came out, yes."
"Dionysos, this is very important. Do you have any idea when the man gave the spell to the guhrt?"
He frowned. "There's no time in my Seeing. It could have been hours or days or weeks between when I heard him complain about the spell and when I saw him summon the guhrt. And more weeks before you went into the dark place."
"No, that's not what I meant. I know the summoning of the guhrt must be within three days. What I need to know is whether the summoning was done after I left the house today or whether it will be done in the morning tomorrow or even the next day. If it's here already and has traced me . . ."
Dionysos shook his head. "The chamber where the man worked was deep underground and lit with mage lights. I couldn't tell whether it was day or night or even whether days and nights passed while he did the summoning. I'm sorry. This Seeing is the most useless Gift! Oh, wait. When I was drawn out of the man's chamber, the rising sun near blinded me. Is that a help?"
"I—" Hekate began and then took a deep breath. "Yes. Yes, it is! Perses set a watcher on me when I left the house this morning, but it was no hunter and was not material. So if you saw the rising sun after the summoning, then the creature cannot set out to hunt me until tomorrow morning. I need not run this moment. The caves of the dead are no more than two or three candlemarks' walk. From here to Perses' house is at least four."
"They are swift," a Nymph said; Hekate thought it was the first one who had spoken, "but it is not in this world yet. We will warn you."
"However it will follow you here," the second remarked.
"I'm so sorry," Hekate cried. "Is there some way I can hide my trace?"
"Do not fear for us," the third of the Nymphae said, baring her pointed teeth. "We cannot attack it; we are forbidden. But we can defend ourselves. However, the child should not be here."
"Can I take him to the caves of the dead with me?" Hekate asked.
"I can't go there now," Dionysos said. "I must meet you there some other time."
"Was that part of the Seeing?"
"No. It's something I just know. And I know that you will go away and I won't see you for a long time." His voice shook a little, but then he smiled suddenly. "But there will be lambs and kids and—and a vine, a vine I must carry with me when I, too, go. East and south."
"His mother's sister, the Lady Io has returned to her homeplace from Thebes." The sighing voice of the first of the Nymphae followed as Dionysos' faded on his final words. "The Lady Io, like the Lady Semele, quarrelled with her father. We learned that she made inquiry about her sister and arranged for her to be told the tale of Dionysos' birth and Semele's sacrifice. The Lady Io then communicated to us her desire to nuture her sister's son, she being childless."
"But will he be safe?" Hekate asked anxiously. "I am bound to protect him."
"You will do that best by going away," the second Nymph said.
And the third added, "Dionysos can protect himself from any ordinary magic and Lady Io has good defenses."
"Are you willing to go to your aunt, Dionysos?" Hekate asked.
He blinked his huge eyes slowly and shrugged. "Since I know I do go, I must be willing." Then he smiled. "Yes. There will be people to talk to. The Nymphae are very good to me, but . . ." He shrugged. "I have been lonely, and I will be more lonely when you no longer come. And it is time to see to the planting of my vines."
CHAPTER 3
Under the pale-streaked sky of false dawn, Hekate set out for the caves of the dead. She was well fed, although the Nymphae's cuisine was strange—all made up of nuts, dried berries and mushrooms, bulbs, and roots that Hekate, no mean botanist, had never seen before. Still, it was all delicious, covered with delicate sauces of honey and spices, sweet and sour, hot and tangy. She was well rested also, for the Nymphae had showed her to a sweet-smelling couch of boughs and grasses and told her it was safe to sleep. But it was still dark when one of them came and touched her.
"The other planes are troubled. You must go."
A second said, "Hekate, will your protections go with you or fade with time now that the child will leave us?"
"No," Hekate said. She made a mage light and smiled at them. "The illusions are linked into the power of the earth. Only if there is a shaking so bad that the roots of the spell are shifted from the power source will the illusion fade. As long as the land lies still—as long as the bond between the spell and the boiling below is unbroken—the spells will protect this place."
"Then you have overpaid us for our care of the child," the third said. "Especially since he has given us great pleasure. He is attuned, as no other human child we have known, to growing things."
And then all spoke together. "If he needs more protections than Lady Io can furnish, he will have them."
That promise eased a tight band that had circled Hekate's heart ever since the Mother reminded her of her binding to Dionysos. In truth, although she never failed to visit him, that had been less because of the binding than for a reason to escape Perses' house and eyes and to some extent for the pleasure of watching him grow. Now she was still conscious of a light tether to the boy, but nothing that would impede her.
She washed in the warm pool behind the house of the Nymphae, dressed in the garments she had shed the night before, and ate the strange but satisfying morning meal that appeared at the side of the pool. When she was ready she took up her staff and stood for a moment looking around, but the Nymphae did not appear and Hekate knew enough not to seek them. They had given their promise; they had said all they had to say.
Dionysos did not appear either, for which Hekate was actually grateful. Now that she w
as leaving him, she discovered that she was more fond of the child than she had realized. A final parting would be unnecessarily painful; there was no more they had to say to each other. Still, Hekate fashioned a tiny spell that would be triggered by Dionysos' presence. "Farewell," it would say in her voice. "Be safe. Take joy in living."
Beyond the pool was a garden and where the garden ended, a gate guarded by a tall figure shrouded in vines. Hekate stopped before it for a moment. Here was hard scrutiny, and although a shield covered the dwelling of the Nymphae, there was none of the warmth and welcome she enjoyed in the forest shrine. Still, Hekate knew she was seen and recognized.
"Am I free to go?" she asked.
The binding around her heart twitched, tightening for one moment and then relaxing again. I am free, but I carry the binding with me, she thought, and bowed slightly, and passed the gate.
* * *
Hekate had made her way back to Ur-Kabos and about halfway around it; in fact she was just about to step onto the road that began at the east gate of the city and went across the mountains to Kadesh when a sense of unease, of unsteadiness, of hot, foul windless buffeting passed over, around, and through her. Although not a leaf stirred on any tree nor was the smallest puff of dust raised on the road, Hekate almost fell and needed to put out a hand to the nearest tree to steady herself. This was more than a troubling of the other planes. She had no doubt what she felt was a violent rending of the immaterial walls between this world and others.
The Nymphae had said the hunter was swift. Hekate took a deep breath and began to run down the road toward the footpath that angled north to the caves of the dead. She would not allow terror to close her throat because she needed to breathe in order to run. Nor would she allow herself to be pushed into running at top speed; that would only exhaust her too soon. Over and over she told herself it was not far now, no more than a half candlemark at the pace of a procession. Surely, surely she would reach her haven before Perses had completed his instruction and transferred the spell.
For a while the panic receded. Hekate did recognize a few landmarks; Perses had insisted she travel this path a few times in her life when he forced her to witness the sacrifice of a Gifted. It was an object lesson that she must only ever appear to use magic as a learned tool, not draw it from within her. Still the path was clear and without branches. She was making good progress when suddenly she felt as if a cold and filthy hand were groping for her.
Blackness! Nothingness! I am nothing and no one, she thought. But it was very hard to keep the blankness in her mind and at the same time watch the path under her feet. She ran doggedly, her strength renewed momentarily when another blind groping passed over her. That gave her hope that the hunter hadn't yet found her and, indeed, the seeking seemed to come from another quarter. If the thing had diverted, following her trail to the dwelling of the Nymphae, it would give her a little longer.
Although the illusion that kept curious humans from the valley of the Nymphae would not affect the otherplanar creature, she didn't fear for the plant maidens. First, the ghurt was not hunting them and second, they had thirty poisoned thorn-talons and an untold number of near-sentient root-fibers that could bind or strangle to oppose the ghurt's one stinger. For a brief moment of bright hope, Hekate thought that they could destroy the creature if it would only attack them, but she didn't slow her pace and the hope didn't last long.
She could feel the brief burst of rage when the guhrt understood that she was not to be found in the Nymphae's valley and two questions jostled together in her mind. Was it by the Mother's favor that the creature had not scented or sensed her exit at the Nymphae's gate? How could her father have been so careless as to allow the guhrt's aura to spread abroad without hindrance? Again she had a very brief spurt of hope that Perses had been too drained by the summoning to work a spell of concealment, but again the hope didn't last long.
Hekate would have shaken her head if she hadn't been running and feared it would unbalance her. Two other, much stronger, possibilities existed than Perses' exhaustion. The likeliest was that he didn't know she could sense the guhrt's aura; she doubted he knew that she was aware of the watchers he set on her. Another likely explanation was that he wanted her to sense the creature to increase her terror.
She found it was no use to tell herself she would not yield and give him the satisfaction. She was terrified, more and more terrified as the foulness that was part of the guhrt grew stronger and stronger. Despite knowing that the creature could leap upon her from any side, even from ahead of her on the path, she was constantly tempted to look behind her. She could no longer control her breath, which came shorter than it should, nor could she keep her pace to what she could sustain.
Gasping and sobbing, with a spear of pain lancing through her side and her lungs burning, Hekate drove her failing body forward. She burst out of the trees into a clearing. Ahead was a huge arch of utter blackness, from which protruded an ugly tongue of gravel and raw, red earth that was bare of any growth, any softening touch of living green. To go into that blackness . . . But it was here! Hekate flung herself over that raw, red tongue and fell sprawling.
At first she could do nothing except breathe. Behind her the clearing was full of foulness, but the guhrt hadn't followed her into the cave. Hekate felt its aura pulse forward as if it were about to do so, and she struggled upright, desperately creating a spell of warding. But the pulse of evil retreated more swiftly than it had come forward, as if something in the cave repelled it. Still it pulsed forward again. Hekate rose to her feet, murmuring another protective spell and gripping her staff like a club, but the aura withdrew again even more suddenly.
Safe! The idea had barely formed, however, when Hekate became aware of a thread of the immaterial filth of the guhrt sliding along the ground toward the entrance of the cave right along the wall. There was a thin space where the grass of the clearing edged the earth and gravel apron at the cave's mouth and grew almost into the dark. Like the slimy track of a snail, the evil crept into the cave. A second thread stole around the other side, and both squirmed forward toward Hekate.
Hardly realizing what she was doing, she backed away. Inside the cave the threads engorged, grew finger thick, took on a slimy sheen. Hekate stepped back again, and again . . . and one foot found nothing. With a small shriek, she fell backward, but she was not swallowed by a deep abyss; she had only tripped into the trough that collected the blood of the sacrificial animals.
Disgusted, brushing frantically at her clothing, Hekate got to her feet on the far side of the trough only to be struck by such an overwhelming sensation of fear and despair that she barely remained upright by clinging to her staff. Wave after wave of the emotions poured into her. She choked on sobs. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Never had she felt such terror, not even when she ran before the guhrt; never had she been so utterly bereft, so despairing, not even in the worst moments of her father's domination when she was a child and had no defenses.
Hekate turned and prepared to leap back over the trough, but the questing ribbons of the guhrt's evil had run together so that there was no way to avoid them. They did not carry the full force of her father's spell, she was sure; the guhrt had to touch her physically to transfer that. However, she was equally sure that the creature had some power of its own, some way of entrapping its prey. If she stepped over the blood trough, she would be little more than dead meat for her father's consuming.
Unable to endure the panic and horror eroding her soul, Hekate gathered them into a tight spear, added the hatred that was now nearly consuming her and flung them out of the cave mouth at the creature that was pursuing her. In the "no place" between the planes, usually lit to Hekate's mind's eye with a soft gray luminescence there was now a dull red aura. When the spear she had cast struck, the red exploded into writhing convulsions followed by a wash of utter blackness; from outside the cave came the squall of a creature surprised by pain. And then the aura of the guhrt was gone.
The sense
of slimy ribbons laid out to entrap her was also gone as was the mental stench of the guhrt. Hekate stepped across the trough into the outer section of the cave. The burden of fear and despair that had oppressed her lifted at once. She could still sense the emotions, but they hung in the dark behind her as a threat or a warning now rather than being an active torment. Hekate shivered. She could not remain in the caves of the dead with that sense of coming doom surrounding her.
Perhaps she would not have to do so. Turning her inner sight inward and outward at once, she looked cautiously into the "no place." It was still black and empty. So far so good. She knew she had hurt the guhrt when she rid herself of the building terrors of the caves of the dead. Perhaps she had really harmed it. Killed it or driven it away?
Cautiously, Hekate approached the cave opening. Nothing was in sight to her mortal eyes, but very faintly she sensed the guhrt. It had withdrawn beyond the clearing and well back into the surrounding forest, drawn its power back into itself, too, she thought, but it was still there. She tried to gather her fear and hatred and launch them again, but the emotions were dissipating, unraveling like a weakening spell.
A weakening spell. Hekate turned sharply and looked into the blackness of the cave. If it was a spell, she thought . . . but before the idea could form fully the sense of the guhrt grew stronger. Hekate spun on her heel to face the woods beyond the clearing and sent a blast of hatred at the creature. It came no closer, but it did not squall or retreat. The hatred that was her own was not enough; she needed the terror and despair that came from the caves of the dead to drive it back. And even so, she realized, she could not drive it away. It would wait. And sooner or later she must sleep. As soon as she did, it would send out its slimy excresences. Once they touched her, she would be lost.
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