“How will we know when it is time to begin?” Graymalk asked me.
“When we can talk with the people.”
“Of course.”
“How’s your back?”
“It’s all right now. You look fit.”
“I’m fine.”
We watched the fire for a time. Another log was added, and more packets. The smells became a sweetly seductive bouquet. The flames leaped higher now, changing colors regularly, flickering in the wind. Sharp, tinkling musical sounds came sporadically from their midst, and the sounds of voices rose into and out of audibility. Looking away from it, my gaze was attracted by a new light source. The inscription was beginning to glow. Overhead, the moon had reached midheaven.
“Jack, can you hear me?” I called.
“Loud and clear, Snuff. Well-met by moonlight. What’s on your mind?”
“Just checking the time,” I said.
Suddenly Nightwind was talking to Morris and MacCab, Tekela to the vicar.
“I guess it’s time,” Graymalk said, “to take our places.”
“It is,” I replied.
She went off to collect Jill, who was tossing a final packet into the fire. The air was distorted above its colored flames now, as if it were burning in more than one place simultaneously, and in the shimmering area just about it one could catch glimpses of some of those other places. From somewhere to the north, I heard the howl of a wolf.
The vicar went and stood at the spot he had indicated. Morris and MacCab moved to take up their positions to his right; Nightwind stood atop a rock between them. Then Jill moved to stand beside MacCab, Graymalk next to her but three cat-paces forward. I went and stood near her, Jack to my right. The line was bowed, out away from the big stone, with Jack and the vicar across from each other. Lynette dozed on the altar about ten feet in front of me.
From somewhere within his cloak, the vicar removed the pentacle bowl, which he placed on the ground before him. Then he withdrew the Alhazred Icon, which he propped against a rock to his left, facing the glowing stone. Nightwind moved to a new position, back behind the pentacle. The openers always begin things, as the closers’ work is purely reactive.
Jack’s satchel, to his right, was already open, from the removal of various ingredients for the banefire, but he leaned and spread its mouth fully, for easy access.
MacCab knelt and spread a piece of white cloth upon the ground before him. As it was windy, he weighted its corners with small stones. Then, from an ornate sheath which hung from his belt beneath his jacket, he drew a long, thin blade which looked to me like a sacrificial knife, and he placed this upon the cloth, point toward the altar.
Then the moon went out. We all looked upward as a dark shape covered it, descending, rushing toward us. Morris shrieked shrilly as it fell, changing shape as if dark veils swam about it. And then the moon shone again, and the piece of midnight sky which had fallen came to earth beside Jack, and I saw that vision-twisting transformation of which Graymalk had spoken, here, there, a twist, a swirl, a dark bending, and the Count stood at Jack’s side, smiling a totally evil smile. He laid his left hand, the dark ring visible upon it, upon Jack’s right shoulder.
“I stand with him,” he said, “to close you out.”
Vicar Roberts stared at him and licked his lips.
“I would think one of your sort more inclined to our view in this matter,” the vicar stated.
“I like the world just the way it is,” said the Count. “Pray, let us begin.”
The vicar nodded.
“We shall,” he said, “to its proper conclusion, with the Gate thrown wide.”
The Count tossed a twig and a small parcel into the flames. The fire moved in its colorful dance, crackling and chiming, burning a hole in the night, through which the voices, now chanting, emerged. Shadows constantly moved past us, over the altar, and across the face of the stone. I heard the howl again, much nearer.
I looked at the vicar and saw him flinch. But he straightened and performed an opening gesture. He spoke a word of power, deeply, slowly. It hung in the air and resonated afterwards.