Wings of Omen

I think it's working....

Harran got to his knees, felt around with shaking hands until he found the knife which he had dropped, and then took the skeletal hand out of his pocket. He put it down exactly at the diagram's center-point, palm-up; the outstretched index and middle fingers pointing northward, the others curled in toward the palm, the thumb 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 being watched. At first, though he could see nothing, the sensation was as if just one set of eyes dwelt on him-curious eyes, faintly angry, faintly hungry, willing to wait for something. But the number of eyes grew. Harran's words seemed loud as thunder, and his hurrying breath louder than any wind; and the eyes grew more and more numerous. It was not as if he could see them. He could not. But he could feel them, a hungry crowd, a hostile multitude, growing greater by the second, waiting, watching him. And when the silence became so total that he could no longer stand it, then came the sound; a faint rustling, a jostling and creaking and gibbering at the edge of hearing-a sound like the wings and cries of 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 it told him who they were. The spell was working indeed. The shades of the nameless dead were about him, those who had been dead so long that they of all things made were most truly lost. All they remembered of life was what an unthinking, newbom child remembers- heat, warmth, pulsebeats, blood. Harran began to sweat as he picked up the wine-flask and made his way around to the edge of the circle. At the pattern's northern point he took Mriga's favorite knife and cut the heel of his left hand with it, wide but not deep, for the best bleeding. The horror of cutting himself left him weak and shaking. But there was no time to waste. On the northern point, and on all the others, he shed his blood in a fat dollop on the grain, and poured wine over it all, then retreated to the center of the circle and said the word that would let the shades past the fringes of the pattern, though no further.

They came flocking in, crowding to the blood, eyes that he could not see squeezed shut in pleasure, tiny cries withering the silence. They drank their fill, slowly-tiny bat-sips were all they could manage through those parched soul-mouths. And then, satisfied, they milled about gibbering for a little while, forgot why they had come, and faded away. Harran felt slightly sorry for them-the poor strengthless dead, reduced to a shadowy eternity of wistful hunger-but he wasn't sorry to see them go. They would not trouble the spell again; 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 the book-roll aside, took the mandrake out of his pocket, and started undoing its bindings. When they were off he laid the mandrake carefully in the palm of the skeleton hand, "head" up toward the fingers, and then paused again; the next maneuver was tricky, and he briefly wished for three hands. There was a way to manage it, though. He squatted down, pi

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

It was getting warm. Harran hazarded a glance, as he read, down at the light growing at his feet. The mandrake was burning such a hue as no one ever saw save while dreaming or dead. To call the color "red" would have been to exalt red far past its station, and insult the original. There was heat in the color, but of a sort that had nothing to do with flame. This was the original shade of heart's passion, of blood burning in a living being possessed by rage or desire. It was dark; yet there was nothing intrinsically evil about it, and it blinded. In that light 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 image it stirred in his mind. His heart's desire, whose very name he had denied himself for so many years now-and now within his grasp, the longed-for, the much-loved, wise and fierce and fair-

"... By all these signs and bindings, and most of all by Thy own name, 0 Lady Siveni, do I adjure and command Thee! Present Thyself here before me-" -in comely form and such as will do me no harm, said the spell, but Harran would not have dreamed of saying that: as if Siveni could ever be uncomely, or would harm her priest? And then the triple invocation, while he gasped, and everything reeled, 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 Harran flying in one direction and the knife and book in two others-a hurtless shock that 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 once and 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 his head against the singing in it.

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

He rolled to his knees and looked up.

She was there. Harran staggered; his heart did too, missing beats. The eyes those 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 to the reality. Eyes like lightning-clear, pitilessly illuminating, keen as a spear in the heart-those were Siveni's. They didn't glow; they didn't need to. None of her needed to. She was simply there, so there that everything physical seemed vague beside her. A great chill of fear went through Harran then at the thought that perhaps there were good reasons why the gods didn't usually walk the realms of men.

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