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She walked for perhaps an hour or more, trying to re-member the twists and turns of the labyrinth. It had been years since she had trodden these paths, and the network was deliberately disorienting.

Dreams-of-War had argued with Lunae of the wisdom of attempting to rescue the kappa in the face of everything else that was going on. It would, the Martian argued, be simpler to leave the nurse to her fate, rather than risk capture. The kappa herself would not expect them to place themselves in danger on her behalf. Dreams-of-War thought that she had con-vinced the girl, for Lunae had fallen silent and contempla-tive at last.

"Moreover, remember what the Grandmothers told you," Dreams-of-War said, pressing home the message.

"The Grandmothers are dead," Lunae murmured. "But yes, I remember."

Satisfied, Dreams-of-War had gone to the ship's inter-face to inspect the monitoring relays. When she returned, Lunae had gone.

Heart pounding, Dreams-of-War made sure that the girl was nowhere on the ship, then raced outside.

Lunae was halfway down the canyon, walking quickly

"Where are you going?" Dreams-of-War cried. Lunae looked at her, quite calm.

"To rescue my nurse," she said, as if none of the previous conversation had taken place. Recognizing defeat, Dreams-of-War had marched Lunae back to the ship and gone in her stead. But the incident had finally made her realize some-thing. In the span of time over which they had been apart, Lunae had become an adult, however willful. If the situation had not been so desperate, Dreams-of-War would have stood back and given in. She could control a child. She would not control a woman who, to all appearances, was not even so very far from her own age. And that thought, too, was disturbing: When would Lunae stop aging?

Another long hour, and she stood beneath the founda-tions of the Matriarchy, before the iron doors that led into the cellar chambers. Here, the walls radiated an icy chill and the stone felt damp to the touch, rimed with the rem-nants of cobwebs. Dreams-of-War doubted that even spi-ders lived down here these days. The doors were tightly shut, the ancient locking mechanism blackened with soot and age. Last time these doors had been opened, to the best of her knowledge, had been when she herself had forced them from the other side. It was easy to believe that they had not been opened since. She could feel the Tower rising above her, sense the weight of it. The holding cham-bers were deep underground, banded by weir-wards gen-erated by the Tower's blacklight matrix. If the kappa still lived, which Dreams-of-War doubted, she would be kept down here.

"Armor," she said. The fingers of Embar Khair's battle-dress snaked out, spreading into hand-tools.

Dreams-of-War tried to stifle the sense of relief that being back in the armor had granted her, and failed.

She had managed with-out it, she told herself. She had fought change-tigers and excissieres, had survived the Earthbones and the Crater Plain. But resuming the armor had felt like coming home.
Never mind
Lunae's own aging
, Dreams-of-War thought.
I myself have grown old. Old and soft
.

The doors slid open. Ahead lay the sparkle of weir-wards, and beyond that, the holding cells.

Mars

Yskatarina stood with the Matriarch at the summit of the Memnos Tower.

"Your aunt Elaki is here. All the way from Nightshade, to oversee the army," the Matriarch murmured. "The en-gine is being prepared."

Two excissieres now walked with Yskatarina wherever she went, and did not let her out of their sight.

Failure gnawed at her. She had not found Lunae, did not know why the girl was so important to Elaki, although the Matriarch had now explained to her what Elaki planned to do. She did not know where the Animus was being kept. On the previ-ous night, she had tried to creep from her chamber and search, but the doors were firmly bolted. After some minutes of fruitless scratching at the locks, the door had opened to reveal one of the scissor-women: arms folded, holographic wounds chasing across flesh, and a dreadful eagerness in her eyes. Yskatarina had stepped quickly back into the room.

Even now, the excissieres were making the final ad-justments to the haunt-engine in the basement of the Memnos Tower. When all was ready, the Matriarch would give the word and the engine would be switched on. Al-ready, the blacklight matrix was linked up to the broad-casting facilities of the Tower, connecting with dormant nanomemories across the Crater Plain and the Olympian slopes, sending ancient signals out to the ghosts that lay latent in the Martian soil and that would be summoned to feed the haunt-engine.

Yskatarina was biding her time. The Animus would, she knew, be working to free himself and come to her. She had to have faith. She had gambled and, for the moment, failed. One question was, however, besetting her. Did Elaki know of her earlier modification? Was her aunt aware that Yskatarina was no longer bound by that morti-fying love? The previous Matriarch had been instructed to keep no records, just in case, and Yskatarina could not be-lieve that she had discussed it with her reanimated succes-sor.

If the current Matriarch did not have knowledge of Yskatarina's changed state, then it might be possible to de-ceive Elaki.

It was one of the few cards remaining to Yskatarina, and she intended to use it.

Mars

Within the confines of the ship, Lunae soon became bored. The ship itself was willing to talk to her, but for most of the time its speech was such a mad jumble that Lunae at last asked it to be silent. She prowled restlessly about the deck, trying to access the databanks, but much of them were written in an alphabet that she did not un-derstand. At last she activated the screens and sat gazing out across the floor of the canyon.

After a few minutes, movement captured her atten-tion. Something was walking along the canyon.

Frowning, Lunae peered at the screen. For a startled moment, she thought it was Essa. There was something familiar about the movement, about the gliding walk, but then she saw that this being was different, and not alone.

They were rising up out of the ground. There were many of them, perhaps fifty or so: red-legged gaezelles, women with speckled skin and tails. They came to cluster around the sides of the ship, staring at it in wonder from great golden eyes.

"Ship?" Lunae asked with some alarm. "What do they want?"

"We do not know," the ship said after a pause.

The creatures made no attempt to touch the ship. Their hands remained by their sides, or held up in front of them in the manner of paws. They milled around for a few minutes, whispering to one another.

Lunae could hear them over the monitor, but their speech made no sense, and perhaps it was not even words. Then they turned and began to ran, moving swiftly away down the canyon, as if summoned.

Lunae watched them until they had disap-peared. None of them looked back.

"More are rising," the ship said. It was by now quite dark. The ship lay at the bottom of the canyon, as if it had fallen down a well.

"More?" Lunae said. She peered into the blackness. "I can't see anything."

"We will not put on the lights," the ship said. "It will draw them forth like moths. They like the light.

There is little enough of it in the Eldritch Realms."

"But aren't they ghosts?" Lunae said. "Phantoms?"

"These are animated ghosts," the ship said. "These are solid."

As if to punctuate its words, something heavy slammed against the side of the vessel, causing it to rock. Lunae leaped up.

"What was that?"

"I do not know."

"Put the lights on! They're already here—I want to see what that was."

A moment's pause, and then the canyon was flooded with light.

The things were everywhere: massive armored shapes, moving with heavy purpose. They were a world away from the delicate gaezelles. Beneath the armored helms, their faces were stripped down to gaunt bone, and in the next moment, Lunae saw that they were not covered in armor at all, but thick hide.

She had seen them before, overrun-ning Fragrant Harbor.

"What are they?"

"They are the Sown," the ship said. "Who once were known as Dragon's Teeth. Armies seeded into the earth, to lie dormant until needed."

The creatures were swarming around the ship. She could hear their tread above her. The ship swayed.

"They're attacking us! Can they get in?"

Through the viewscreen, she saw the scorpion-tail of the craft spin across and strike. A swath was cut through the Sown. They fell without a sound, severed limbs tum-bling to the earth. They oozed black fluid, like mud. Lu-nae breathed again, but the ghosts were once more rising, gestated by the soil itself. A rhythmic thundering assailed the sides of the ship.

"They're trying to break in," Lunae said.

"There are too many of them," the ship said-

"Then take off."

The ship shifted, engines powering. A moment later, it rose, lurching into the Martian sky. The Sown-fell from its sides like leaves. Lunae ran to the viewscreen and watched as they drifted down toward the mouth of the canyon. A needle shape appeared on the ship's monitor, moving fast and closing in.

"Memnos has found us," said the ship.

Mars

Dreams-of-War set the armor to maximum protection and stepped into the passage that led to the holding cells. She held out a hand. The blacklight matrix sizzled, send-ing sparks cascading across the surface of the armor. Even through the protective casing, the workings of the matrix stung her skin, passing through metal and bone alike into the Eldritch Realm. But if she held her hand there for long enough, the armor would be able to create a feedback loop within the matrix. Hopefully, without attracting too much attention from the excissieres…

Bone and blood, a sensation of binding tightness, as though her nerves were a screw, linking her with the El-dritch Realm. And then the blacklight matrix hissed once and fell silent. She could feel energy elsewhere, some-where at the back of her head, but the way before her was silent. She strode forward toward the holding cells.

The first cell was empty of all but a few chewed bones.

She could not tell what they might have been. The second cell, too, was bare, and the third, and the fourth. The kappa was nowhere to be found. Dreams-of-War ground her teeth in frustration. It seemed increasingly probable that the nurse had met her end, after all. Lunae would be disappointed, but this was the nature of things. Dreams-of-War herself was merely aggrieved at the realization of a wasted journey.

Then, as she came to the last cell of all, something flung itself at the encasing field.

"Kappa?" Dreams-of-War cried. She stepped forward, the lights of the armor sparkling off a shadowed shape. But it was not the kappa. It was Yskatarina's creature.

Dreams-of-War sprang back.

"What are you doing here?"

"They have imprisoned me," the thing hissed. "My mistress is betrayed. Nightshade comes."

"What do you mean, Nightshade comes?" Dreams-of-War asked. She spared little thought for Yskatarina.
Be-trayed
sounded good enough to her.

"The Elder Elaki is here, to oversee the final phase. Her ship orbits. Excissieres are installing the engine."

"Final phase? You mean, the Kami?"

"Memnos raises ancient armies from the Martian soil. Elaki will summon the flood of future souls, to inhabit the bodies of the Sown. Once they have subdued Mars, they will move on to Earth, and other bodies. Set me free," the thing pleaded. "Let me go to my mistress."

"An excellent idea," Dreams-of-War spoke coldly. "To bring succor to she who stole my armor and sold me to the arena. Further help to her surely features large in my plans. And how did they come to cage you? Did you not fight?"

"They threatened Yskatarina," the creature said. "I would have fought my way to her, but it was not politic. She needs Memnos. She wanted to negotiate. Now, I do not know what is happening. But you should know that my mistress has no love for her aunt. What the Elder Elaki intends, my mistress will try to prevent."

"You're lying."

"I can help you." The thing rustled and rattled against the walls of the holding cell. "Excissieres are on their way. Listen."

Dreams-of-War realized that it spoke the truth. The sound of metal-shod feet was approaching.

Activating the armor, she cut a hole in the shield of the holding cell. The creature surged out like an uncaged bat. Three ex-cissieres charged around the corner, scissors snicking. Dreams-of-War threw the gutting knife and caught one in the throat. The woman sprawled to the floor. The creature shot forward, a sheet of ire-palm gushing from its throat. There was a sticky hiss, the smell of melting flesh. The ex-cissieres dissolved before Dreams-of-War's eyes.

"The Grandmothers," she said. "It was you."

"Yskatarina wanted them gone," the thing said. It crouched over the remains of the excissieres, eyes glowing. It spoke, Dreams-of-War thought, with a strange innocence, as if it did not know that it was a wicked thing. And perhaps it did not. It seemed to care about nothing except Yskatarina, its world.

Dreams-of-War had lost any hope of finding the kappa. It struck her that the removal of the Matriarch might be a good next step. She was loath to rely on the help of Yskatarina's companion, but then again…

"Let's go," Dreams-of-War said.

Mars

More needles danced across the screen, moving in fast. '

"Can you evade them?" Lunae asked. She did not like being at the mercy of the ship, and the vessel was once again starting to talk to itself: a swift and rapid mumble, only half-intelligible. An image appeared before her, hang-ing in the air and connected by a sequence of lines: the at-tacking ships, in three-dimensional representation. The central vessel was amber-black, a blacklight matrix flicker-ing across its sides. It bore a needle-pointed star on its side.

"What's that?"

"That is the craft of the Elder Elaki," the ship said. It twisted, shooting downward and arrowing along a canyon.