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"Then go."

Embar Khair strode across to the ship and touched her fingers to its side. A hatch hissed open, responding to the engrams within her armor. The carrying chair, bearing Yri and Yra, glided up into the depths of the ship, which twitched like a startled scorpion as the hatch opened. Em-bar Khair followed.

Moments later, the ship spiraled up-ward, skimming over the Crater Plain and leaving the Memnos Tower far below. Embar Khair kept her gaze fixed on the growing maw of the Chain, and never once looked back.

Dreams-of-War stared openmouthed at her armor.

"You challenged Nightshade?"

"Yri and Yra, the Grandmothers, fled to Memnos from Nightshade, seeking sanctuary. They had fallen out with the rest of their clan, because they despised the Kami. But Nightshades wish eventually prevailed upon Mars. Night-shade disapproved of most of the Changed—Mars had bred them long ago for amusement and sport, not ultimate per-fection, and the Changed were seen as lesser beings, genetic tinkering, nothing more. Essa was forced to—disappear. The Matriarch was imprisoned some time later in a Memnos coup and Nightshade equipped her replacement with the means to control the scissor-women. I returned to Mars to seek out Essa, and that was when I died."

"But what did the Grandmothers come here to do?"

"The intention of the project was to grow a child, one who would have the ability to challenge Nightshade."

Dreams-of-War felt a sudden glow of accomplish-ment. Here it was, at last.

"The
hito-bashira
. What
is
she?"

"I do not know," Embar Khair said. "I was only the bodyguard."

Dreams-of-War stepped back in disappointment.

"You don't know?"

"I know only that the undertaking was immensely dif-ficult, requiring years of study and preparation.

Yri and Yra were geneticists of great renown. That is all I know."

"And what of these new ghosts of the ancient past? Do you remember the gaezelles?" She thought of the ghost herd, their electric demon gaze.

"I remember," the armor said.

"There have been further reports. I have been keeping in touch with Memnos, but I would not have needed to. It is in all the news-views. Over the last months, since we first saw the gaezelles, the sightings of such ghosts have in-creased. Horned women striding the passages and under-ways of Winterstrike.

Flayed warriors in armor made of thorns, manifesting in teahouses in Caud. Women from the Epoch of Cold, whose flesh seems made of amber and ice."

They wake
, the oreagraph said suddenly.

"Close the matrix down," Dreams-of-War said. Black-light flickered and died. Embar Khair's spirit screamed as it fled, leaving only the usual residue behind. And now the armor was starting to lose shape, the fierce half-face melt-ing into a gleam of green metal. Dreams-of-War reached out a hand. "Return to me." The armor did so, enclosing her with hard comfort. Dreams-of-War stood on metal feet and, protected once more, strode from the chamber.

The encounter had given her information, and more than that, strength: this reminder that she was not alone, that the former inhabitants of the ancient armor were all still with her. "Lonely," however, was another emotion that Dreams-of-War despised.

Mars

"No one," the Matriarch said, "has been inside this room for a hundred years." They were standing before a metal wall opposite the Tower room, Yskatarina enveloped in soot-colored furs, the Matriarch in ceremonial red-and-black, from which she peered like a toad out of a hole. Behind the Matriarch stood two of the excissieres: the scissor-fighters of Memnos. Both were tall, angular, with harsh, bony faces. Yskatarina found it impossible to tell one from another; they must be from the same growing-bag.

Both wore armor: a faded metallic black, pitted with strikes and gouges. Scissor-images flickered over exposed flesh, holo-tattoo wounds that faded into instant scars and then were gone, only to appear again.

She was not sure whether it was art, reminder, or penance.

Yskatarina raised an eyebrow. "It's been sealed for all this time?"

"Someone was imprisoned here. Walled in."

"Why?" Yskatarina was beginning to enjoy needling the Matriarch, watching the woman's face grow yet more pinched.

"I am not at liberty to say. Enough that you know that she was one of the Changed, a descendant of the creatures of the Age of Children, and committed a crime against us. For that, she was placed in this room, at the summit of the Tower of Memnos, and the door was welded shut. I do not know how long she lived after that. It is irrelevant."

"So her corpse is still in there?" Yskatarina looked toward the metal wall. She could see what might have been a faint outline in the iron, perhaps a seam, perhaps no more than a trick of the light.

"If it is not," the Matriarch said, with the first flash of anything approaching humor that Yskatarina had yet seen in her, "I shall be very surprised." She gestured toward the wall. "Open it."

The excissieres stepped forward, scissors clattering. Yskatarina frowned, imagining what it would be like to be hunted by these women. Now, however, the razor-edged weapons remained on their metal chains, secured to the bodices of the armor. The women carried flame-flowers, which they placed on either side of the seam. Each touched the iron-hard stems, causing the leaves to rattle. Blue-white acid spat forth from the stamens, melting the welded door. Yskatarina stepped back, choking on smoke and the musty smell of old fungus, released as the door fell clear.

"I shall go first," the Matriarch said. She stepped through the door, Yskatarina close on her heels.

The thing that crouched in the corner of the room was much larger than a human being. Its head was sunk into its breast. Pincer-hands rested limply on the floor before it, and around them were curled the spiny remnants of a tail, disintegrated into individual vertebrae. The flesh had darkened to a blue-red, the color of ancient meat, or per-haps, Yskatarina thought, this had been the original shade of the thing. It reminded her of some of the beings that lived in the catacombs beneath the wastes of Nightshade, the creatures she had occasionally glimpsed bolting into the shelter of the frozen rocks. She wondered what the be-ing's crime had been. It seemed to her that Memnos knew few enough limits.

The Matriarch was eyeing the remains with distaste. "I did not think there would be so much left," she muttered.

"A sealed room, dry air… It has simply desiccated," Yskatarina replied. She found the mummified remains both pathetic and repulsive.

"It is vile," the Matriarch stated baldly. "Now, such a creature would never be allowed to remain here."

"Standards must have been lower in those days."

"It is in part because of the crimes of this thing that the Changed are kept away from Memnos. Shall we get on with it?" Yskatarina nodded. The Matriarch gestured to the excissieres. "Take it down to the matrix."

The scissor-women stepped forward and picked up the desiccated form.

"Careful!" the Matriarch said. "It is fragile."

Yskatarina followed them down the stairs to the chamber that contained the blacklight matrix. A doctor was waiting, face grim beneath the medical hat. The ex-cissieres set the corpse down on the couch beneath the matrix.

"You realize there is no guarantee of success, with something so old?" the doctor said.

"Do as I told you," the Matriarch replied. The doctor gave a shrug and began to manipulate the slender black tubes that were the generating device of the matrix.

Sound welled up, shivering the air and causing the hair to rise on the back of Yskatarinas neck. She gave a small smile of satisfaction: This, and the creeping chill that cast itself over her skin, was a sure sign that the device was beginning to work. Then she remembered the last time she had been in this room, and had to force herself not to turn away.

"You play it like an instrument," the Matriarch re-marked to the doctor, with an evident and unwilling fasci-nation. "No matter how many times I see this, it still causes wonderment."

"It is an instrument, in part. It uses sound to conjure the particulates of spirit, to summon them through from the Eldritch Realm and reassemble them. Watch."

The device was singing to itself, a quick, thin song. The air sparked with blacklight. Slowly, as if seen through heat haze or mist, an essence began to form around the dry thing that crouched on the floor.

Pincers clacked together and made no sound. A lipless face raised its gaze to the ceiling, mouth gaping.

The image overlay the mummified form, a ghost, indeed.

The Matriarch stepped forward. "I have questions! I—"

"Wait," the doctor said. "Give it time to assemble."

The phantom head swung round to look at the Matri-arch. She found herself gazing into two great dark eyes, lensed like the eyes of the Animus. The similarity made her queasy. They were flat and blank, with no light behind them. The mouth moved. Moments later, a dry whispering emerged.

"I am dead," the thing said in wonder.

"Yes," Yskatarina answered. "You died here a century ago." She glanced at the Matriarch for confirmation. The Matriarch gave a sour nod. "This woman has questions for you," she added.

"First, I wish to ask
you
something," the Matriarch said to Yskatarina. Then she turned to the doctor.

"Go." The doctor did so, without demur.

Yskatarina suppressed a sigh. "Let me guess. You once more wish for reassurance that this is no trick? You want again to query how it will be that we can attest to the ac-curacy of the information that this being provides?"

"That is easily enough ascertained, or so you have as-sured me," the Matriarch said tartly. "The extraction of particular information, known to none other than this be-ing and myself, will be sufficient.

No, the question I have is different. I want to know how, having raised this thing, we may contain it."

"Its essence will disintegrate once the device is pow-ered down," Yskatarina said.

The Matriarchs moon-face seemed to swell, as if it were being pumped up. "But ghosts are even now roaming the Crater Plain, infesting the city streets of Winterstrike. I do not want this thing to crawl down the walls of the Tower and start babbling critical information to all and sundry"

The spirit turned its head slowly from side to side. Yskatarina wondered how much it really understood.

"This is a pure form, not infected by nanotech, as far as I am aware. Its conjuration will, therefore, not be sus-tained. It is energy, rather than partial matter."

"And you are sure of this?" the Matriarch asked.

"I am certain." Yskatarina looked the Matriarch in the eye. She saw the flicker of doubt and tried not to hold her breath, for she lied to the Matriarch. She intended to keep this old being around for as long as possible. It, and the information that it might still carry.
First steps
, Yskatarina told herself. Animate the thing, and then apply the means of controlling it.

"Then let us begin," the current Matriarch said. "I must ask you to leave. This thing can provide information that must remain confidential to Memnos. You may return when I have completed my inquiries."

"Of course. I understand," Yskatarina said. She bowed her head, and let the excissieres lead her from the room. The matrix would, she knew, record the session in its en-tirety, and transmit it to Nightshade. It was not necessary for her to be present.

Later that evening, Yskatarina and the Animus slipped from the ship to stand in the shadows.

"Where is it?" the Animus asked.

"There. That fourth window. You can glimpse the blacklight within."

"They will have weir-wards on the windows."

Yskatarina smiled. "There are advantages to being the purveyor of a technology. I have deactivation runes. Just get me up there."

She slid her arms around the Animus's torso and clung to him. The Animus sailed upward, to hover like a bat outside the window of the blacklight chamber. Yskata-rina risked a glance below. There was no one to be seen. A monstrous face swam out of the darkness, hissing. Neon flickered across its jaws.

"Hush," Yskatarina whispered. She leaned forward until her face was close to the visage, and murmured the deactiva-tion sequence. The face, with a comical grimace of dismay, vanished. The window lay before them, unprotected. The Animus drew closer. Yskatarina once more murmured an in-cantation, this time to the haunt-lock. The window opened without a sound. She climbed from the Animus's back onto the sill.

The body lay within, beneath the cold filaments of the matrix. It was still strapped to the couch. It raised its head and looked at Yskatarina as she entered.

"You were here before," it said.

"Yes. I've come to help you."

"I do not believe you. You are of Nightshade," the thing said. "I remember Nightshade."

Yskatarina flexed the sensors within her legs and squatted down beside the ancient thing. "You were the Matriarch, were you not, a hundred years ago? Do you re-member two sisters? Yri and Yra?"

"Yes. They sought sanctuary with us. We sent them to Earth."

"Do you know where they went? And what happened to the ship they traveled in?"

"I will not tell you," the old Matriarch said. Feebly it raised itself up, hissing. Yskatarina acted quickly There were excissieres just beyond the door and she did not want them to hear. She touched a sleep-pen to the crea-ture's neck and it slumped back onto the high couch. Then she switched on the matrix and whispered Elaki's se-quence into it.

She had never seen this particular function of the ma-trix before. It was different. The familiar sparks darkened above the prone figure, forming spirals and coils of black-light. Then, as the sequence took hold, the world opened up and Yskatarina found herself staring down into the hellish abyss that she had glimpsed during her own modi-fication. She fell back, hand over her mouth, trying not to cry out. There was a dreadful sense of familiarity, recogni-tion, that sent her soul cowering within her.

Something rushed upward. She saw a mouth agape in a silent shriek. Then it was gone, evaporating into the fig-ure on the couch. The gap closed. The blacklight disap-peared, with a burst that hurt the eyes. Yskatarina stepped forward and released the bonds. The thing on the cOuch sat up.