"That's no damn use," Harty whispered.

"You got a better idea?" Ted hissed.

Harry snapped the cigarette lighter shut. In the darkness he said,

"Yeah, I got a better idea. But you look the other way.

"What the hell for?"

"Just damn well do it," Harry said, and flicked the lighter back on to see that his instruction was being obeyed. It wasn't. Ted was staring at him with a quizzical look on his face.

"You've got some suit, haven't you?" he said, his tone more admiring than accusatory.

"Maybe.

"Jesus, Harry-"

"Listen, Ted, if you don't like it get the fuck out of here."

"What you got?" Ted said. There was a gleam in his eyes as he spoke, like an addict in the presence of his prefeffed poison. "You got a hand of glory?"

"Christ, no."

"What then?" "You're not seeing it, Ted," Harry insisted. "I told you: Look away."

Very reluctantly Ted averted his eyes and Harry brought from his pocket the prodigile suit, a minor magical device for which he'd paid Otis Voight four hundred bucks. It was a sliver of aluminum two inches long and one and a half inches wide, with a small sigil stamped at one end, and five narrow grooves radiating from the sign. Harry pressed it into the gap between the door and the frame, as close to the lock as he could get it.

Behind him he heard Ted say, "You got a prodigile. Where the fuck'd you get that?"

It was too late to tell him to look away, and no use lying. Ted knew magic's methods and implements too well to be deceived.

"It's none of your business," Harry told him. He didn't like dabbling in the craft (even the use of a prodigile, which was an extremely minor device on the thaumaturgic scale, brought with it the danger of contamination or addiction), but sometimes circumstances demanded that the enemy's weapons be used in the very labor of destroying them. Such was the sour reality of war.

He pressed his thumb against the exposed edge of the suit, and jerked it down. His flesh opened easily,, and he felt the prodigile throb as it drew blood. This, he knew, was the most likely moment for addiction; when the suit was activated. He told himself to look away, but could not. He watched, never less than amazed, as his blood hissed against the metal and was sucked along the grooves and out of sight. He heard Ted draw a sharp breath behind him. Then there was a burst of luminescence from the crack between door and jamb, and the unmistakable sound of the lock mechanism snapping open. Before the light had quite died, Harry put his shoulder to the door. It opened without resistance. He glanced round at Ted, who despite his earlier bullishness, now looked a little fearful.

"Are you ready?" Harry said, and without waiting for an answer slipped inside, leaving Ted to come or stay as he wished.

The interior smelled of stale incense and week-old sushithe odors, in short, of bad magic. It made Harry's heart hmnmer to smell those smells. How many times do I have to do this? he found himself wondering as he advanced into the murk. How many times into the maw, into the sickened body? How many times before I've done my penance?

Ted laid his hand on Hany's shoulder.

"There," he murmured, and directed Harry's gaze off to the right. Some ten yards from where they stood was a further flight of stairs, and from the bottom a wash of silvery light.

Ted's hand remained on Hariy's shoulder as they crossed to the top of the flight and began the descent. It grew colder with every step, and the smell became steadily stronger: Signs that what they sought lay somewhere at the bottom. And, if any further evidence was required, Harry's tattoos supplied it. The new one itched more furiously than ever, while the old ones (at his ankles, at his navel, in the small of his back, and down his sternum) tingled.

Three steps from the bottom, Harry turned to Ted, and in the lowest of voices murmured, "I meant it: about not being responsible for you."

Ted nodded and took his hand off Hany's shoulder. There was nothing more to be said; no further excuse to delay the descent. Harry reached into his jacket and lightly patted the gun in its holster. Then he was down the last three steps and, turning a corner was delivered into a sizable brick chamber, the far wall of which was fifty feet or more from where he stood, the vaulted ceiling twenty feet above his head. In the midst of this was what at first glance resembled a column of translucent drapes, about half as wide as the chamber itself, which was the source of the silvery light that had drawn them down the stairs. Second glance, however, showed him that it was not fabric, but some kind of ether. It resembled the melting folds of a Borealis, draped over or spun from a cat's cradle of filaments that crisscrossed the chamber like the web of a vast, ambitious spider.

And amid the folds, figures: the celebrants he'd seen coming here through the afternoon. they no longer wore their coats and hats, but wandered in the midst of the light nearly naked.

And such nakedness! Though many of them were partially concealed by the drooping light, Harry had no doubt that all he'd heard about the Zyem Carasophia was true. These were exiles; no doubt of it. Some were plainly descended from a marriage of bird and man, their eyes set in the sides of their narrow heads, their mouths beakish, their backs feathered. Others gave credence to a rumor Harry'd heard that a few of Quiddity's infants were simply dreamed into being, creatures of pure imagination. How else to explain the pair whose heads were yellowish blurs, woven with what looked like bright blue fireflies, or the creature who had shrugged off the skin of her head in tiny ribbons, which attended her raw face in a fluttering dance.

Of the unholy paraphernalia Harry had expected to see, there was no sign. No sputtering candles of human fat, no ritual blades, no gutted children. The celebrants simply moved in the cradle of light as if drifting in some collective dream. Had it not been for the smell of incense and sushi he would have doubted there was even error here.

"What's going on?" Ted murmured in Harry's ear.

Harry shook his head. He had no clue. But he knew how to find out. He shrugged off his jacket and proceeded to unbutton his shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to join them," he replied.

"They'll be on to you in a minute."

"I don't think so," Harry said, heeling off his shoes as he pulled his shirt out of his trousers. He watched the wanderers as he did so, looking for any trace of belligerence among them.. But there was none.

It was as if they were moving in a semi-mesmerized state, all aggression dulled.

There was every possibility they wouldn't even notice if he went among them clothed, he suspected. But some instinct told him he would be safer in this throng if he were as vulnerable as they. "Stay here," he said to Ted.

"You're out of your mind, you know that?" Ted replied.

"I'll be fine," Harry said, glancing down at his nearnaked body and patted his belly. "Maybe I need to lose a pound or two...... Then he turned from Ted and walked towards the cradle.

He hadn't realized until now that either the light or the filaments was making a low, fluctuating whine, which grew louder as he approached. It throbbed in his skull, like the beginning of a headache, but uncomfortable as it was it could not persuade him to turn round. His skin was gooseflesh now, from head to foot, the tattoos tingling furiously.

He raised his left arm in front of him and pulled the dressing off his fresh ink. The tattoo looked livid in the silvery light, as though it had been pricked into his flesh moments before: a ruby parabola that suddenly seemed an utter redundancy. Norma had been right, he thought. What defense was a mere mark in a world so full of power?