3

"Wisely, God hides future outcomes in a mist of night,' " Liane read from Celondre's Odes. 

There was a metallic hiss from the tomb behind them where Tenoctris worked alone. The sound was very faint. Liane paused a half-beat, then resumed, " 'God laughs at mortal hopes and fears. Remember to accept whatever comes with a calm mind!' "

The slim volume was the one unnecessary item Garric had brought with him from Barca's Hamlet. He'd had to leave most of his past behind. Celondre remained to anchor him in simpler times, when all Garric or-Reise needed to worry about was what the sheep were doing and whether his father would shout at him for being slow starting his chores in the stables.

Celondre's Odes had remained the same for a thousand years, and they would be the same for thousands of years more: outlasting bronze, as Celondre himself had rightly said. That vantage point put all present problems into perspective, even those problems of life and death.

If Tenoctris was right, the danger threatening the cosmos would sweep away even the Odes this time. Garric believed the old woman, but at an emotional level Celondre's civilized truths seemed eternal.

A chime climbed a full octave by half-steps within the tomb. Liane listened, tension evident in her controlled face. She and Garric had waited all day on the bench in front of the tomb. The ivy-grown fence surrounding them formed a sort of arbor that would have been pleasant under other conditions.

The last note faded. Liane set the book down and gave Garric a trembling smile.

"I'm afraid," she said simply. "I don't want anybody else to be hurt because of me. You and Tenoctris are my only friends now."

Her smile failed. "And I keep thinking about what happened to my father," she said.

"Tenoctris isn't like your father," Garric said. "She does everything one step at a time. And she said this wasn't going to be dangerous."

He couldn't imagine Liane as someone who was afraid. She'd always gone straight ahead with whatever was required: calm, quick, and decisive, despite the fact that she'd watched a demon appear out of thin air to disembowel her father.

"I used to play here when I was a little girl," she said with a smile. "It was always fenced off from the rest of the grounds, though the inner gate wasn't locked then. I didn't think about it being a tomb, of course, but it wouldn't have mattered. I didn't think about death at all until my mother died."

Being afraid didn't change anything about her. If another demon stepped through the doorway in place of Tenoctris, Liane would be stabbing for its eyes with her writing stylus for want of a better weapon.

He nodded. Traffic on the boulevard a few hundred feet away was a constant sound though not an obtrusive one. Only very rarely had anybody come down the alley past them: a group of female servants from another mansion; a coachman driving his empty vehicle to the stables; a delivery boy whistling and running a stick along the rods of the fence. The boy had screamed when he saw Garric and Liane looking at him through the ivy.

"I hadn't thought it would take this long," Garric said. They'd eaten at the inn near the harbor before they left in the morning, but he had a young man's appetite and the midday meal was usually the main one of the day. It was verging toward evening and Tenoctris hadn't come out of the tomb with a report.

The door squeaked. Garric leaped to his feet. He reached first for the door handle, then for his sword hilt, and in fact touched neither of them for fear of making the wrong decision.

Tenoctris stepped into the sunlight, looking more tired than Garric had ever seen her before. Smoke oozed from the doorway with an oily odor: she must have burned a score of the wax candles she'd taken into the windowless tomb with her.

She smiled at her younger companions. Neither of them was willing to ask what had happened inside.

"I found where the gold came from," she said. Both of them helped her as she settled herself onto the pavement, first kneeling and then crossing her legs beneath her. "It wasn't difficult, exactly, but there were more steps than I'd expected."

Tenoctris had used a tendril of ivy as an athame. She still held it, though the curled tip had begun to droop in the hours since she plucked it.

"I should have known better," she said. She looked at Liane and then Garric as they hovered to either side of her. "It took a long time because it's on a plane separate from this plane. I should have known that it would be. The Hooded One couldn't have survived in our time, my time, if he'd stayed as the sea rushed in."

"What do we do next?" Liane asked calmly. A candle still burned on the floor of the tomb, its light a yellowish contrast to the waning sun.

"I think," Tenoctris said, "that someone should go to the plane and see what is there. I wish I could go myself, but I'll have to hold the gate open here."

"I'll go," Liane said.

"No," said Garric. He stood up, feeling more comfortable than he had since facing down Captain Aran and his crew. He had somedo. "I will. Will it be like the other place, Strasedon's place?"

"I don't know," Tenoctris said. "I need you to describe the location to me. Then I can plan the next step."

She grinned with half her face. "For that you have to return, Garric," she said. "There's nothing you can do that's as important as coming back. If there's any danger, turn and run. The gateway will be waiting for you."

"No!" Liane said, standing also. "It's not right that he goes! Benlo was my father, so the risk should be mine!"

"If it were only your father I wouldn't be doing any of this," Tenoctris said from her seated position. "I'm sorry, Liane, but this is a matter for the whole cosmos. Garric is the better choice. I'll need your help with the responses."

She looked at Garric with affection and something more, a kind of sad respect. "Garric is perhaps the best choice of anyone alive, which is another of those things that shakes my faith in the random nature of the cosmos. It's a terrible thing to have my beliefs dashed at my advanced age."

Garric laughed with the exultant shadow of King Carus. They'd be together, he and Carus, wherever it was they were going.

He bent down and lifted Tenoctris to her feet. "Now?" he asked. "Or do you need to rest, mistress?"

"Now would be best," she said. "Half the work has been done, you see."

She put her hand on Liane's forearm. The girl was trembling with anger and frustration.

"There's plenty of risk to go around, Liane," Tenoctris said. "For you and the cosmos as well."