a rare eccentricity.
“What’s his name?” said Fern.
“Neb Goathless.” It was Ragginbone who answered. “He’s a dwarf—one of the true dwarves, not just a short human. There were many in the old days, but they were fond of war, and now they are all but extinct. He controls the processing and sale of the crystals, but the number of his customers must have fallen to almost nothing through the twentieth century. The witchkind have become so few. I can’t think of anyone who has been in contact with him recently. He may indeed be dead.”
“Where do the crystals come from?” Fern inquired. “Are they man-made, or—?”
“They come from the mines,” Ragginbone explained. “The mines of Gol. It’s a place in the otherworld, deeper than Hades: there used to be many entrances from the real world, in caverns and subterranean tunnels, but they have been sealed off. There is only one way in now, and it’s guarded by afreets. I went there once—just once. Visitors are not allowed in the mines: they are dark and perilous.”
“I’d imagine they are,” sighed Fern. “I suppose I shall have to go and see this Neb Goathless one day. Do you know the way?”
“Maybe,” said Ragginbone; and: “He used to deliver,” volunteered Moonspittle. “To special customers. He knew I didn’t go out.”
“Anyway,” Ragginbone concluded, “you have enough supplies for now. It would be hazardous to attempt further magic at the moment; elementals like Cthorn and Oedaphor are still around, and they would almost certainly be drawn to it. Now we need more mundane research.” As he spoke, his thought strayed to the newspaper stuffed in his jacket pocket. Perhaps that was why he missed the unnatural blankness of Fern’s assent.
“Of course,” she said. “I’d better get going. Thanks for the—the tea.”
As she left the room, she noticed Mogwit had polished off the salmon and was now curled in a chair, looking, with his patchy fur and smug expression, the picture of feline raffishness. He ignored his benefactress completely.
That evening, she drew the curtains in her flat well before dark. She had canceled a visit to the cinema with friends, pleading PMS, and although she hovered on the verge of calling Gaynor, even lifting the receiver and starting to dial, after a moment she replaced it in the cradle, aborting the call before it was made. She was learning the value of backup in a dangerous situation, though it went against her instincts; that night she had many reasons for wanting to act alone. With Ragginbone’s warning in mind she spent a long time in preparation, screening the room with spells of concealment and protection, a web of magics that would allow only the most insubstantial elementals to pass. She blocked the chimney and placed a handful of fire crystals in the grate, igniting them at a word. A few drops from one of the phials damped down the bluish flames, producing instead a thick pale smoke that coiled out into the room, thinning to a mist that blurred vision and stung the eyes. She spoke the incantation she had learned in the Cave of Roots beneath the Eternal Tree, in the days when she was Morgus’s apprentice, her spirit stolen from her body and held captive at the witch’s whim. The smoke drew together, condensing into a swirl opaque as porridge, which spun around an epicenter and darkened to the color of storms. The picture developed slowly, dark on dark. A glimmer of light grew between writhing pillars: a cave, with stalagmites springing to support the roof, and the red gleam of torches, and the creak of a huge wheel revolving ponderously in the background. Dimly she made out the human figure spread-eagled against the spokes, a giant of a man all muscle and bone, the ribs straining at his torso, the knotted sinews in his arms almost bursting the skin. Here and there she could see the spikes that held him in place thrusting through his flesh, and the dark blood that drizzled down his limbs. The wheel turned; his mouth opened in a scream that she could not hear; sometimes sound was late in coming to the spell. The picture focused on his face, upside down: the throbbing bulge of his throat, the ridged lines of jaw and cheekbone, the white half-moons of his eyes, upturned in his head. Fern wanted to look away but she could not. Sound arrived as a shriek, earsplitting, agonized, abruptly cut off. Everything went black.
Other images followed, some