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her I feared to smell the grave, and smelt instead a rainstorm, the smell of wet wind, chill and lightning-purged. By the Crack, her eyes were dark and deep. I looked at the key, and gently, gently, put my finger to it.
    Though prepared, I almost cried out in my turn at the fierce charge humming and grinding within the gold. I pulled my hand back, but the briefest contact sent towering hallucinations skidding across vast polished floors in my mind. I nodded and stepped back.
    Dalissem now swayed slightly on her legs. She'd locked her knees, the way a strongman at a fair will do when he's holding a weight aloft. She pressed the key against her belly and it vanished within her substance. She put both hands to the boulder for support, and smiled at us haggardly.
    "You're just men. It will matter to you that the life of him I seek stands forefeit by the oldest laws of every land and subworld. It is Defalk of Lurkna Downs I want. He swore away his life in pledge to me, as I did mine to him. I paid my debt to death, swiftly on the promised hour. He has these seven years turned his back upon his oath, and cherished his flesh, and walked in the light of the world. You may ask any of that city for my story, and know my truth.
    "My mother is a Purgatrix, one of the chief seven of Lurkna's temple. She still lives. She swore me to the white tunic at my first blood. Because she hated me. Because I told her that I wished to know the love of men. I found Defalk, Defalk and I found ways. And we had much together.
    "Until I was followed, and we were taken at a trysting. Upon that bed, as they were breaking in the door, we swore our deaths. Their ways and hour. For we were sure not to meet again. He would be freed, with reprimand. I, who had stained the Tunic, stood liable to death at my mother's hand on the next Purgation's eve. I meant to forestall her."
    Dalissem had begun to sweat. To see the drops snake down her flanks reminded me of horrible earlier sights. She hugged the boulder now, rested her head against it, while her back registered the earth's pull with shadow-lines of strain. She grinned with an exquisite, almost savored hate.
    "But my mother did not mean I should escape her in Death. She condemned me to grow old and die in a small room that had one window too high to reach. But I . . . escaped."
    She let her legs go. Her bare knees hit the gravel with a painful sound. She still hugged the rock with arms too small by far to encompass it.
    "My guard, still raw. I killed her on her second day of duty, a Post she'd thought . . . she'd have for life. . . . Indeed, she did. That morning of my escape. The world seemed almost in my arms.
    "I got a mount. I rounded Lurkna's walls to reach Defalk. I did not keep well off. I was sighted. A patrol set on me. I rode all day. I could not circle back. They contained me though they could not close my lead. My mount was strong, but he must die at last. Near here. It was near the hour of my vow. I had time to strip, to bind my hair, to raise the knife, and cry my lover hail and farewell. The captain was so close I read his eyes. He saw his death in mine. Behind him I saw, with joy, my mother's rage. I must lie down, I cannot choose, I must lie down."
    She fell from the rock then. "Come near me, Haldar Dirkniss." She looked up at him from the gravel, and smiled at his haste. Though she lay on her back her body seemed still tensed against the earth. Her head she rested there, but the rest fought back.
    "The door to my world lies through the death of another." She spoke more easily now, glancing at me as well as Haldar. "There is a man in Lurkna sure to die soon. Arrangements would be easier, of course, if you caught and killed some alley-trash. With the spell I shall give you, you will have passage through the death of anyone at all."
    "We are not butchers," cried Haldar, pained. He needed no backward glance to know he spoke for me as well. "We relish difficulty. We'll come to you through the door