“But then Variant Melusine began to appear—and to trigger one unexpected Cliometric crisis after another, attempting to introduce a new vector into my plans for the last period of history before our masters, the Hyades, arrive.

“So I ordered your Tomb here, the viral source, found and dug up. You see, even until today, even until a few moments ago, I thought you had simply suffered an accident. You hate viral warfare more than anyone I know. Pest and spore and pox are swearwords to you. Yet here you were using it. And you would not let me dig up your precious clients—never, not ever!

“A few moments ago, I realized that these were not, were they? None of them were clients of yours, not one. They are prisoners cast into hibernation by the Giants: Scipio and Ctesibius. Or Witches who attacked the Tombs to kill dead Bishops and were cast into hibernation as a punishment. Or Locusts who attacked the Tombs to kill dead Locusts. Or spies like Clover, whom you know as Oenoe, who entered the Tombs to discover your secrets, but you turned her. Or spies like Asvid, who is the creature of my creature Reyes y Pastor. Or saboteurs like Linder Keir, the Gray Man. Or my collaborators, like Rada Lwa Chwal Montrose, whose loyalty I find unutterably delicious to have won—his reasons for turning against you, First Ancestor, are nearly identical to your reasons for turning against me, did you know that? Him I allowed you to capture and place in hibernation, should I ever have need to speak with you securely, as I do now.

“So, Cowhand, you don’t give a damn whether these revenants live or die, because this is not a Tomb. Not a real Tomb.

“This is your prison yard.

“And here you gulled me into breaking in, sneaking in most surreptitiously, imprisoning your prisoners in my prison camp, because I knew you would never on your honor allow anyone under your protection to act as bait. Ah! But what of your enemies? You don’t care a penny for their lives! What of trespassers into the Tombs? Persons who secretly dabbled in the Dark Sciences of Savantry and Emulation, like your Warlock friend? Or is he your friend? Did you include him in your confidence?—He did not, did he, Mictlanagualzin?”

The Warlock said, “Call me Mickey. It’s shorter.”

The dull and benumbed face did not change, but there was a note of anger and astonishment in the voice then: “So! He did give you a nickname, eh? And now you are ready to defy me and die for him. Why? You find his hillbilly hospitality, American swell-headedness, and Yankee crudeness so charming?”

Menelaus muttered, “Hey! Texan. Ain’t no damn Yankee.”

The cold voice from the pale face said to Mickey, “The tiny changes you have made to your cellular and neural constitution to allow you to control Moreaus; or turn fat cells instantly to muscle mass, when you need strength, or nutriment, when you are fasting, and turn them back to totipotent fat cells again—it is a clever system for an amateur! You have so much flesh to spare that you can even let a dog bite your blubbery arse, and turn the fat in its mouth into rabies-bearing toxins, and turn other fat cells immediately to the wound to replace the lost mass, and the next day, no one will even see a scar. And you smile as men mock you for your obesity, because what they think is overindulgence is actually your arsenal. But such tricks are child’s play compared to what I offer. I am willing to give you power, secret and hermetic knowledge, power over life and death. Why do you turn to him over me?”

Mickey said, “You can give me power, Great and August and Darkest Master of the World, for the world is yours to give. But the Judge of Ages can give me hope, for hope rests in the future ages yet to be, and the future is his to give.”

“Bah! Clover—what say you? Each man who has served me, I have granted a thousand years, to work his will as he will. Return to my service, and I will grant you twice and more that I grant any man.”

Oenoe shook her head and lowered her lashes, but did not part her lips, and would not look at Rada Lwa, nor speak to Exarchel.

And since the talking boxes translated this, Mickey the Witch said, “Great and August and Darkest Master of the World! You are a superior form of being to me, posthuman and beyond life and death, a pure spirit in a machine! You are like a god of the upper world who eats ambrosia and drinks nectar and does not die. But men who live in the middle earth above the netherworld and below the heavens, we men who eat bread and drink wine and die, at times it is given us to know what you cannot.

“Such a time is now. I know this: The Swan Princess Rania fled your embrace and cleaves to the Judge of Ages because of the beautiful unreason of hope that burns in him. You seek safety in servitude, and therefore have the soul of a slave, because you have no hope.”

2. Second Versus Second

No change touched the white and masklike face, but now the voice grew cool and still. It was not trembling and raging with anger, no, but the anger was so great that, like the spoke of a wheel spinning so fast that it turns invisible, the hints of all emotion left the voice, and the stillness of a vast and inhuman wrath filled that absence.

“On to our final business! Since you have rendered me unable to continue our duel, Montrose, due to, well, call it hysterical blindness, therefore I call my Second to stand in my place. I assume you are objecting on some legal technicality that there is a battle going on between dogs and Witches only a few yards away? But I cannot hear your words, so we can disregard these niceties. I am not as honor-bound as my flesh and blood half. I merely want you killed.

“But the proceedings will not be interrupted! I have established an effect which will work through the nerve cluster gates the foolish Blue Men have so thoughtfully installed in everyone’s nervous system, so that this part of the chamber will be a blind spot to everyone fighting and dying yonder. Naturally, I prepared something more subtle than merely radio waves to trigger it, and not so easily blocked. No one standing off this dais can see or hear anyone on it. It is based on a similar principle to the trick you played on me—I trust you see the humor. Behold: here is my champion.”

The ventilation hummed, and the clouds of poison parted. Up the corridor of clear air strode Alpha Yuen, still wearing a bandage over one eye, and still with the named weapon Arroglint writhing and shimmering in his hand.

The cool, mesmeric voice of Exarchel drawled, “Ah, of course, let me not overlook to mention. In addition to the prisoners and spies and saboteurs against the Tombs you gathered here, there are also those of this category: Chimerae and others who are angered that the Judge of Ages saw fit to destroy their civilization, and who have vowed to find and slay you.”

Yuen, almost casually, flexed his whip. “Ah, race enemies!” he said, his one eye hot and unwinking with steadfast hate. “A Witch who tried to strangle us in our cradle, and a Nymph who did poison us in our dotage. Yours is no part of this, under-creatures.”

Yuen twisted his wrist. The whip elongated suddenly, at one blow striking Mickey painfully in the face, cutting him, and Oenoe in the buttocks and upper legs. Both were thrown by the force of the blow to the ground, and their limbs jerked and trembled as if with a potent electric shock. Oenoe lay draped in soft curves on the floor, Mickey as a heap of sagging bulk: both were breathing but unable to rise.

Menelaus looked at the young, strong, deadly half-animal man, and then looked down at his own maimed and bleeding feet and burned legs. He had lost his pistols and his cloak of tent material.

Menelaus said in Chimerical, “Alpha Yuen. Um. Good to see you again. Listen, I do not have my rock, and I am feeling a little under the weather right now, so maybe was can postpone this until—how does Sunday after next sound?”