He dashed the tears out of his eyes, put the lantern down, flung his cloak downon the dusty marble, and picked up his box. One more circle he would need inwhich to work the sorcery itself. If his back still hurt him, Harran didn'tnotice it now. Round the vacant pediment he went with the bitumen, not countingpaces this time, rather fighting down his bitter anger enough to remember thewords that needed to be thought again and again to confine within this innercircle the forces that would soon break loose. It was not easy work, fightingdown both his anger and the growing, restless power of the circle-spell; so thatas Harran tied the second circle closed he was gasping like a man who'd run arace, and had to stand for some moments bowed over like a spent runner, hands onthighs.

He straightened up as quickly as he could, for there was worse to come. Simplethis spell might be, but that wouldn't keep it from being strenuous; and firsthe needed the rite. Breaking and resealing the circle according to procedure, hewent to get it.

Normally the location of the safe-crypt was not information that would have beenentrusted to a junior priest, but in the haste surrounding the exile of Siveni'spriesthood, quite a few secrets had slipped out. Harran had been one of thoseconscripted to help old Irik hide away the less important documents, old medicaland engineering texts and spells. "We may yet find a use for these, in a betterhour," Irik had said to Harran. Just then he had had his arms full ofparchments, his nose full of dust, and his mind full of fear; the words hadmeant nothing. But now Harran blessed Irik as he went around to behind where thestatue had been, stepped on the proper pieces of flooring in the proper order,and saw the single block by the rear wall fall slowly away into darkness.

The stair was narrow and steep, with no banister. Harran held up the lantern atthe bottom of it and went rummaging, sneezing a lot as he did. Parchments, bookrolls, and wax tablets were piled and scattered every which way. It was therolls he went for. Again and again Harran undid linen cords, spread a roll outin a cloud of dust and sneezes, to find nothing but a spare copy of the temple'sbookkeeping for the third month of such and such a year, or some tired oldphilosophical treatise, or a cure for the ague (ox-fat rubbed together withmustard and ground red-beetle casings, the same applied to the chest three timesa day). This went on till his eyes began to water, rebelling against the poorlight, and Harran's mind stopped seeing what he read and kept wandering away toworry about the time. Night was leaning toward morning; this was the time to dothe spell, if ever-before dawn, herald of new beginnings-and if he didn't findit soon-

He blinked and read the words again. It wasn't hard; they were beautifullywritten in an Old Ilsig hieratic script. "... of the Lost, that is to say, aninfallible spell for finding the lost and strayed and stolen. The spell needethfirst the hand of a brave and living man, the same to be offered up inthe spell's working by the celebrant; and it needeth also a mandrake root,called by some peristupe, dug of a night without moon or star, and treatedaccording to the disciplines, also to be so offered; and needeth as well somesmall deal of salt and wheat and wine, and a knife for blood to propitiatethe Ones Below; and lastly those instruments by which the boundary for thespell shall be made.

"First dig your mandrake..."

Harran scrambled to his feet in the dust and the dark, sneezing wildly and notcaring. Up the stairs, back into the circle-cutting the knot to let himself in,sealing it shut again behind him. He sat down on the vacant pediment amid therubble and began to read. It was all here, much as he remembered it, with thelittle thumbnail sketch of the diagram to be drawn inside the circle, and therite itself. Part in a very old Ilsig indeed, part in the vernacular. Simplewords, but oh, the power in them. Harran's heart began to hammer.

Something moaned, and Harran started-then realized it was only the wind,building now to such a crescendo that he could hear it even inside the temple'sthick stone. Good, he thought, picking up the piece of bitumen again and risingto his feet, let it storm. Let them think that something's about to happen. Forit is!

He set to work. The diagram was complex, seemingly a picture of some kind ofgeometrical solid, though one in which the number of sides seemed to change eachtime one counted them. The finished diagram made an uneasy flickering in themind, a feeling that got worse as Harran started setting the necessary runes andwords into the pattern's angles. Then came the salt, cast to the cardinal pointswith the usual purifacatory rhyme; and the wheat-two grains at the primarypoint, four at the next, eight at the one after that, and so on around theseven. Harran chuckled a little, light-headed with excitement. That particularsymbol of plenitude had always been a joke among the student priests; a sixty-four point pattern would have emptied every granary in the world. Nothingleft now but the wine, the knife, the mandrake, the hand....

The wind was whining through the pillars outside like a dog that wanted in.Harran shivered. It's the cold, he thought, and then swallowed again andsilently took it back; to lie during a spell could be fatal. He went to thediagram's heart, feeling as he went the small uncomfortable jolts of power thatcame of passing over it. Forces besides his were moving tonight, lending what hedid abnormal power. Just as well, he thought. Harran opened the wine-flask andset it beside the center-point, then put the hand in one of his pockets and themandrake in the other. In his left hand he held the book-roll, open to the rightspot. With the right he drew his knife.

It was his best, Mriga's favorite. He had set her at it that afternoon, and notstopped her for a long while. Now its edge caught the dim lantern-light with aflicker as live as an eye's. He held it up in salute to the four directions andtheir Guardians above and below, faced northward, and began to pronounce thespell's first passage.

Resistance began immediately; it became an effort to push the words out of histhroat. His tongue went leaden. Still Harran spoke the words, though more andmore slowly; stopping in mid-spell could be as fatal as lying. The windoutside rose to a malevolent scream, drowning him out. He was reduced tostruggling one word out, drawing several rasping breaths, then startinganother. Harran had never thought that just fifty words, a few sentences, wouldseem long. They did now. Ten words remained, every one of them looking as longas a whole codex and as heavy as stone. At the fifth one he stammered, andoutside the screaming wind scaled up into an insane yell of triumph. In a burstof fear he choked out two words very fast, one after another. Then the second-to-last, more slowly, with a wrenching effort like passing a stone. And thelast, that went out of him like life leaving and smote him down to thefloor.

With his falling came the light, blazing in through the temple's high narrowwindows like the sky splitting; and the thundercrack, one deafening bolt thatreverberated over the roofs of Sanctuary-breaking what glass remained unbrokenin the temple's windows, and jolting loose what was already shattered, rainingit all down on the marble floor in a storm of razory chimings. Then stillnessagain. Harran lay on his face, tasting marble and bitumen against his tongue andblood in his mouth, smelling ozone, hearing the last few drops of the glassrain.