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Midworld, somewhere between the Underground that was Rabishu’s realm and the Great Above, the domain of humans.
    On the seventh night of her fast, she saw a hellish vision.
    Far down the mountain, a humanlike figure moved across the deep snow. He didn’t trudge through it, he floated above it. The figure was bathed in fire, flames licking several feet over his head. He was surrounded by a swirling ball of heat that distorted everything within. The wind stilled, and outside his glowing sphere, the darkness was unnaturally powerful. The stars blinked out of existence. Snow melted in a wide swath around him as he advanced. Rivers of water coursed down the hill in his wake, and the exposed ground, long buried in snow, was scorched under his feet. Susannah, jerked to a standing position and unable to flee, felt as though her feet were mired in the rock underneath her, and from there, to the center of the Earth.
    Susannah’s eyes were pinned on the progress of the figure toward her. Her heart pounded, her lungs drew in hot, fetid air despite the frigid mountaintop cold. It was the air of corruption of body and soul.
    Adrenaline flooded her body, making her muscles scream in agony against the force that made her unable to move. Her mind retreated to the time that she was burning, surrounded by flames at the stake, her flesh catching fire. Rational thought fled, though her body could not.
    The figure relentlessly approached. Steam rose from the snow melt that rushed down the mountain and the tundra blackened in a widening area.
    He stopped far enough away that the shimmering heat around him just touched Susannah’s body. She sank rapidly into the snow as it turned into water.
    Slave, why do you call me?
    The thought sliced into her head with the force of an axe blade, dispelling her rambling thoughts.
    Susannah had felt no pull into the Midworld. Another wave of terror swept through her at the thought that Rabishu could enter her world. It was one constant she had been able to count on through the centuries: Rabishu in his place, she in hers.
    “Am I still in the Great Above?”
    Yes.
    His clipped answer did not offer an explanation, as she was hoping. Instead a surge of heat flowed toward her, making his annoyance unmistakable.
    “How can this be?”
    You called me. You invited me into the World Above and I can remain for a short time. The rules of Anu permit it.
    “I’ve never seen you like this before.”
    Ignorant slave! Your perceptions are easy to fool. I can appear as I desire. I ask again, why did you call me?
    Faced with Rabishu’s anger and the heart-stopping image of him in her own world, her resolve had retreated. She dug down deeply for it.
    “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
    Rabishu probed her mind, prowling through her experiences, laying open her desires.
    So you want to die.
    Before Susannah could answer, the melted water at her feet sprang up in front of her and formed a smooth surface. It was in such a surface that she’d first seen her contract so many years ago. This one, though, was filled with a uniform reddish glow, lit from within by Rabishu’s fiery presence, and it was reflective. She could see herself in the mirror.
    Her face and body were as they had been for centuries. Then her youthful vigor began to drain away, her faultless skin became etched with wrinkles that were fine at first, but deepened and spread as she 19 z 138
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    watched. Her hair went from thick and black to gray, then patches fell out and the remainder hung in lifeless, wiry hanks from her scalp. In the reflection, her clothes dropped away so that she could see her body stooped over with the weight of the accumulated years. Her limbs became bony, her ribs protruded, and fissures opened in her skin, letting loose a thick liquid of decay.
    As she watched, her reflected body slumped to the ground, writhed with its last weak life force, and fell quiet.
    Susannah was shaken, but when she thought about it, the