I think it's working....

Harran got to his knees, felt around with shaking hands until he found the knifewhich he had dropped, and then took the skeletal hand out of his pocket. He putit down exactly at the diagram's center-point, palm-up; the outstretched indexand middle fingers pointing northward, the others curled in toward the palm, thethumb angled toward the east. Then Harran began the second passage of the spell.

As he read-slowly, being careful of the pronunciation-he became aware of beingwatched. At first, though he could see nothing, the sensation was as if just oneset of eyes dwelt on him-curious eyes, faintly angry, faintly hungry, willing towait for something. But the number of eyes grew. Harran's words seemed loud asthunder, and his hurrying breath louder than any wind; and the eyes grew moreand more numerous. It was not as if he could see them. He could not. But hecould feel them, a hungry crowd, a hostile multitude, growing greater by thesecond, waiting, watching him. And when the silence became so total that hecould no longer stand it, then came the sound; a faint rustling, a jostling andcreaking and gibbering at the edge of hearing-a sound like the wings and criesof bats in their thousands, their millions, a benighted flock hanging, waiting,hungry for blood.

The sound, rather than frightening Harran worse, reassured him somewhat; for ittold him who they were. The spell was working indeed. The shades of the namelessdead were about him, those who had been dead so long that they of all thingsmade were most truly lost. All they remembered of life was what an unthinking,newbom child remembers- heat, warmth, pulsebeats, blood. Harran began to sweatas he picked up the wine-flask and made his way around to the edge of thecircle. At the pattern's northern point he took Mriga's favorite knife and cutthe heel of his left hand with it, wide but not deep, for the best bleeding. Thehorror of cutting himself left him weak and shaking. But there was no time towaste. On the northern point, and on all the others, he shed his blood in a fatdollop on the grain, and poured wine over it all, then retreated to the centerof the circle and said the word that would let the shades past the fringes ofthe pattern, though no further.

They came flocking in, crowding to the blood, eyes that he could not seesqueezed shut in pleasure, tiny cries withering the silence. They drank theirfill, slowly-tiny bat-sips were all they could manage through those parchedsoul-mouths. And then, satisfied, they milled about gibbering for a littlewhile, forgot why they had come, and faded away. Harran felt slightly sorry forthem-the poor strengthless dead, reduced to a shadowy eternity of wistfulhunger-but he wasn't sorry to see them go. They would not trouble the spellagain; he could get on with the real business now.

He paused just long enough to wipe the cold sweat out of his eyes, then put thebook-roll aside, took the mandrake out of his pocket, and started undoing itsbindings. When they were off he laid the mandrake carefully in the palm of theskeleton hand, "head" up toward the fingers, and then paused again; the nextmaneuver was tricky, and he briefly wished for three hands. There was a way tomanage it, though. He squatted down, pinned both hand and mandrake securely inplace on the floor with the toe of one boot. Then with one hand he plucked thesilvered pin out of the mandrake's torso; with the other he squeezed his bloodout onto the root's pinprick wound.

Instantly the root began to glow... faintly at first; but it would not be faintfor long. Harran scrambled to his feet, rolled the book along to the last partof the spell, and began to read. It was in the vernacular, the easiest part ofthe spell; but his heart beat harder than ever. "By my blood here spilt, and bythese names invoked; by the dread signs of deep night inclining toward themorning, and the potent figures here drawn; by the souls of the dead and theyet unborn..."

It was getting warm. Harran hazarded a glance, as he read, down at the lightgrowing at his feet. The mandrake was burning such a hue as no one ever saw savewhile dreaming or dead. To call the color "red" would have been to exalt red farpast its station, and insult the original. There was heat in the color, but of asort that had nothing to do with flame. This was the original shade of heart'spassion, of blood burning in a living being possessed by rage or desire. It wasdark; yet there was nothing intrinsically evil about it, and it blinded. In thatlight Harran could barely see the book he read from, the stone walls around him;they seemed ephemeral as things dreamed. Only that light was real, and the imageit stirred in his mind. His heart's desire, whose very name he had deniedhimself for so many years now-and now within his grasp, the longed-for, themuch-loved, wise and fierce and fair-

"... By all these signs and bindings, and most of all by Thy own name, 0 LadySiveni, do I adjure and command Thee! Present Thyself here before me-" -incomely form and such as will do me no harm, said the spell, but Harran would nothave dreamed of saying that: as if Siveni could ever be uncomely, or would harmher priest? And then the triple invocation, while he gasped, and everythingreeled, and his heart raced in his chest as if he labored in the act of love:"Come Thou, Lady of the Battles, who smites and binds up again. Builder,Defender, Avenger; come Thou, come Thou, 0 come!"

No lightning this time, no thunder. Nothing but a shock that knocked Harranflying in one direction and the knife and book in two others-a hurtless shockthat was nevertheless as final and terrible as dreaming of falling out of bed.Harran lay still for quite some while, afraid to move- then groaned softly onceand sat himself up on the stone, wondering what had gone wrong.

"Nothing," someone said to him.

The voice made the walls of the temple vibrate. Harran trembled and held hishead against the singing in it.

"Well, don't sit there, Harran," said the voice. "Get on with it. We've businessto attend to."

He rolled to his knees and looked up.

She was there. Harran staggered; his heart did too, missing beats. The eyesthose were what struck him first: literally struck him, with physical force.Afterward, he realized this should have been no surprise. "Flashing-Eyed,"was after all her chief epithet. His best imaginations proved insufficient tothe reality. Eyes like lightning-clear, pitilessly illuminating, keen as a spearin the heart-those were Siveni's. They didn't glow; they didn't need to. Noneof her needed to. She was simply there, so there that everything physicalseemed vague beside her. A great chill of fear went through Harran then at thethought that perhaps there were good reasons why the gods didn't usually walkthe realms of men.

But not even fear could live long, fixed by that silvery regard, that ferociousbeauty. For she was beautiful, and again Harran's old imaginations fell down inthe face of the truth. It was a spare, severe, unselfconscious beauty, too busywith other things to notice itself... definitely the face of the patroness ofthe arts and sciences. There was wildness in that face, as well as wisdom;thoughtlessness as well as handsomeness in those rich robes-for the blazingunder-tunic was tucked casually and hurriedly up above the knee, and the greatloose overtunic was a man's, probably Ils's, borrowed for the greater freedom ofmotion it allowed. The hand that held the great spear she leaned on was gracefulas a lady's; but the slender arm still spoke of shattering strength. Siveni asshe now appeared was not much taller than mortal womankind. But as he looked ather, and she bent those cool, terrible, considering eyes on him, Harran feltvery small indeed. She pushed her high-crested helm back a bit from that coollybeautiful face and said impatiently, "Do get up, man. Finish what you're doingso we can get to business." Siveni lifted the raven that perched on her lefthand, moving it to her shoulder.