The White Crow got awkwardly to her feet. She heard someone kick glass as Candia, Heurodis and the Bishop came to stand beside her. The great eyes remained closed.
"Now . . ." She tapped her closed right fist against her mouth. "What do we do now?"
"What we do now is . . ." Candia stepped forward, shaking out the stained lace of his cuffs, tugging his loose shirt into order. "We play cards."
"What?"
The blond man held out a filthy hand to Heurodis. The white-haired woman felt in the pocket of her blue cotton dress and brought out a thick pack of cards. Candia grinned, boyish, and she tutted.
"Tarot cards." Elegant, faintly comic, he stripped off the binding ribbon and held the pack up one-handed, cards fanned into a circle. The White Crow gazed at images stained-glass brilliant against the white walls and the wreckage, against the million insects crawling, worshiping, on the living stone skin of The Spagyrus.
"You're out of your mind, Messire Candia," the White Crow remarked quite cheerfully. "You know that, don't you?"
He ignored her, scooping the cards into a pack again. Automatically his feet took him a few paces one way, a few paces the other; glancing up at the silent Decan as he spoke.
"Divine One, you'll remember me. My name is Candia. Reverend tutor, University of Crime. Now, my talent is the use of the tarot pack. Four suits: Swords, Grails, Sceptres, Stones. Thirty trumps. Watch."
The White Crow craned her neck to look up at the god-daemon's face. Briars and black roses tangled in the scaled and tendriled head, coiled to ring a forearm; rustling with the living garment of worshiping insects. The basalt eyes remained closed.
The blond man gave Heurodis his hand as the small woman seated herself limberly cross-legged on the flagstones. Theodoret stood behind her. Candia very carefully lowered himself to sit opposite. His long-fingered and dirty hands shuffled the pack.
Bemused, the White Crow moved to look over his shoulder.
"A reading of all eighty-six cards," he announced. His fingers quickened, the pasteboard images flashing past. "To determine the immediate and near future. My own method. Now."
The man laid out three cards swiftly, slapping them face-down on the stone floor. Another three, then five grouped in a diamond with one in the center. He paused. More sets of three, five and six.
"Hey!" She grabbed at his wrist, missing it.
The strong thin fingers dealt two more cards off the bottom of the pack as she watched. Candia glanced up through flopping hair, eyes bright. He indicated the backs of eighty-six cards with a careless gesture.
"Broadest reading, three cards in the Sign of the Archer. What have we got?"
Heurodis leaned forward, grunting, and turned over the three cards. The White Crow saw a castle struck by lightning, The House of Destruction, the knot of a shroud, Plague, and a skull with blue periwinkle flowers set into the eyes, Death.
"I think . . ." Candia's hand hovered over the cards. "Probably not."
He grinned at the White Crow, replacing the three cards face-down and then reaching out to them again. He paused, hand in mid-air, and gestured to her. "You."
She knelt cautiously and turned the three cards. The first, in bright colors, showed two children playing at noon in a garden, The Sun. The second, a man and a woman embracing, The Lovers. On the third, a hermaphrodite dancing among balanced alchemical symbols, The World.
"You can't do that!" Wide-eyed, she stared; aware of the distraction but not of when it had occurred.
Heurodis gave a long-toothed smile.
"I don't mean it won't work if you do, I mean that you can't do it!"
Candia fell to shuffling some of the lower cards, keeping The Sun, The Lovers and The World at the top of the reading. The White Crow stared intently, drew a deep breath and tried again.
"You can't sharp these cards. It isn't possible. They're constrained by the future. All the tarot's links are with what's going to happen; you can't cheat what's Fated!"
Fair hair fell across his eyes as he looked up. Practiced, he shook back the lace cuffs from his wrists; a deliberate staginess in his gestures.
"Readings influence what will come, as well as being influenced by it."
The White Crow stood, rubbing her calf muscle with her right hand. The humming of insects made her dizzy. An incredulous laugh bubbled up. She stifled it.
"You're telling me the University of Crime can sharp tarot cards?"
Heurodis said: "Not often, girlie. But when we need to we can."
Candia turned over a Ten of Grails, Three of Scepters and The House of Destruction in the position of the Sign of the Wilderness. He lifted his gaze to meet the White Crow's, one brow raised; and when she glanced down it was to see the Ten of Grails, Ace of Scepters and Fidelity.
"Damn you, you just might exercise some influence. Here. You just might. Are you a good cheat, Messire Candia?"
"The best."
A breath reached her: saline, musky. Black basalt eyes opened, twenty-five feet above her head. The great lips moved apart, and she stared up at a cockroach picking its way across the living basalt of the Decan's skin.
"Bait for a healer . . . which of my ten million souls here in the heart of the world, think you, is fated now truly to die? Can you tell, little magus? I tell you: they are already grievous sick. "
Insects buzzed. The White Crow gazed up at empty vaulting over the Decan's head.
"I don't think to outwit omnipotency, Divine One. That would be stupid."
"My sister of the Ten Degrees of High Summer gave you a certain hour. You have not used it well."
She grinned up at the Decan: a rictus of pain, fear and defiance. She held up her left hand. The wound in its palm gaped, raw but not bleeding. Her fingers, red and swollen, bore pin-prick marks from the briars of black roses.
"All the same, aren't you? All Thirty-Six. The hour isn't over yet."
"WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME . . . !".
Echoes shuddered. Quietly, beside her, the Bishop of the Trees said: "He's sick. His Sign is occluded."
He reached down to his side, more firmly knotting the sleeves of the buff-and-scarlet doublet around his hips. He wore the makeshift covering with an old man's slow dignity. A faint green light began to gather about his fingers.
"No. I agree. But even so . . ." The White Crow shook her head warningly. "This is the crucial hour. Plague outside, sickness in the Fane; and somewhere, somewhere . . ."
Great lips breathed carrion on the air.
"They are far from here, and sick, and soon to die. Both the death of the body, and the death of a soul. "
The White Crow cocked a jaundiced eye at the insect- ridden slopes of flank and shoulder rising, mountainous, before her.
"Yes? And will they die of the . . . same . . . sickness . . . ?"
She stopped. Her left hand burned, the pain connecting her to the substance of the Fane and the magia acted within it; and slowly, aloud, she followed the connection.
"You're the heart and center of it," the White Crow said. "The truly dead, the plague, the death of souls, and the magia of necromancy. All of it begins here. Tell me, I know! I feel your power through the stone, I've spilled my blood here, I've healed a man with pain and your power channeled through me, and I know!"
She stopped to draw breath, grinning through tears that poured without volition down her face.
"One plague. Here and outside. One plague. Black alchemy . . . Oh, they will die of the same sickness, won't they! It doesn't have to be a human death, or the death of a Rat-Lord. Why didn't I think of it! What death would really uncreate the world? One of the Thirty- Six!"
Crowned with roses, worshiped by carrion-flies, his Sign occluded by his power still immanent in the Fane about her, the Decan of Noon and Midnight smiles.
"The most ancient question," Theodoret murmured at her ear. "Can the omnipotent gods unmake themselves?"
She ignored him. Theodoret stepped back to where Candia and the white-haired woman bent over the spread of cards, their intensity of concentration aware but not admitting influence of even the Lord of Noon and Midnight.
"I will let them play, little magus, until my Sign is past its occlusion. I will even let your bait keep his life, for as long as is left to him."
Insect-clouds swarmed as the great body shifted, one hind claw rasping at his basalt ribs. The great eyelids slid down, up; darkness glimmering in the depths of the eyes. The voice dropped to quietness.
"We are not all of us alike: the Thirty-Six. We should not all hold equal powers. 1 give you a secret, little magus. When the Great Circle flies in pieces, then one of us will re-create it. And there will be not Thirty-Six but One alone. "
Carrion-breath stung her eyes. The rose-light smoldering in the masonry flared: all the debris and pillars and stones white as skin with blood beating a swift pulse under it.
"I give you that secret, little Valentine. Tell whom you will. And what can you do, now that you know?"
The White Crow looked down at one whole and one injured hand.
"If you're not afraid, Divine One, why stop me?"
"Child of flesh, you speak of fear?"
The White Crow laughed, water running from the corners of her eyes. She reached up with her right hand as if she would touch the Decan of Noon and Midnight.
"Give me my chance, then," she challenged. "What can it matter to you, you who know all, see all, are all? Give me the strength to search, and see if I find you out!"
Candia scratched at his overgrown blond beard and muttered: "Shit!"
"Oh, I know." The White Crow spoke to him without turning away from the Decan. "The most unwise thing, to challenge God-"
Pain stabbed her fingers.
She brought her hands up in front of her face, trying to clench them against the fire burning under the skin. Her white nails shoneshone and lengthened, splitting. Whiteness ran back over her hands and wrists and forearms.
"Wh- whaa-?"
Faint down feathered the backs of her hands. She raised them closer to her face, knocking them against some obstruction. Her head twisting, she seemed to knock her nose against her hands: a nose that lengthened, darkened, pulled up her teeth into its growth as her mouth shrank . . .
The Spagyrus' laughter shook dust from the high vaulting of the Fane.
Stepping back, stumbling, she fell. As she fell, her body collapsed into itself, folding impossibly. Her feet still flat on the stone, she seemed to be crouching only a few inches above the floor.
She threw out her arms for balance. The Fane wheeled.
"Whaaack!"
Briefly, far below, she caught sight of human faces turned up to hers in fear and awe. Air pushed up under her arms, sleeked down her body. Pain threaded her arteries with hot wires. Double images blurred her vision.
"Crrr-aaark!"
She swooped at the floor and a black shadow rose to meet her. Wide-winged, the tail fanning to catch the air; no mistaking that blunt beak and body. She skimmed the stone, wheeling to rise again on wide-fingered pinions.
Divine laughter beat against her, abrasive as sand and splinters of glass.
"Search, if you will! If you can!"
The albino carrion crow wheels and flees into the heart of the Fane.
Anger shining in his lidless black eyes, the head of the Night Council spoke.
"I fail to thee what exthactly is tho amuthing."
Zar-bettu-zekigal buried her face in her sister's lace ruffle, little whimpering noises escaping her. An open palm hit her sharply across the ear.
"Behave! Zar'!"
She swung round, clasping her hands behind her back, kicking her heels in the bone beach. Her black ankle- boots crunched on fragile skulls no larger than walnuts. Fog touched her spine coldly. She gazed up at the thrones of the Serpent-headed, eyes bright.
"I didn't say anything!"
Dry heat radiated back from the endless cliffs, from the brown bedrock granite and the thrones of the foundation of the world. Twelve of the Serpent-headed seated themselves on their thrones; the last remained standing. Flaring torchlight gleamed on oiled human limbs, on naked hip and breast and muscular shoulders. On necks glittering with scales, serpent heads; blunt muzzles and the black lidless eyes of viper, coral snake, cobra.
"The, ah-" Plessiez coughed into his fist. Zar-bettu-zekigal tried to catch his gaze; he avoided her. "The reason for this summons, messires?"
The head of the Council's sharp cobra jaw dipped, regarding the small group below. A black-bootlace tongue licked across his lipless mouth.
"We with to regithster a thtrong complaint. Grave thins have been committed againtht uth by the world above."
"Excuthexcuse me." Zar-bettu-zekigal rubbed her bare fog-dampened arms, digging in her short nails. By virtue of that she concentrated enough to call up across the intervening yards: "Who are you, messires?"
The cobra head moved, lidless eyes fixing on her.
"Your thithster the thaman thould be able to tell you that. We are the Night Counthil. The mostht ancient godth of the world."
Zari turned rapidly away, hugging herself; bumped against Plessiez and looked up as the black Rat glanced down. Their eyes met.
" 'Thithster.' "
Zar-bettu-zekigal spluttered.
" 'Thaman?' "
She caught one glimpse of Charnay's puzzled face and elbowed the Cardinal-General in the ribs. Plessiez looked, drew himself up, snout quivering, observed, "Messires, I apoloapologize for my companion," stuttered a few more broken syllables and threw his arm across Zari's shoulders and guffawed, head down, weak, snorting with laughter.