Up ahead, near the shattered tip of the arch, Glaeken saw that Rasalom's only remaining hold on it was the two surviving fingers on his damaged hand. He crawled quickly forward and slashed at the nearest with the weapon, severing it with another flash of light. The talon of the last digit scraped along the surface of the arch, scratching a deep furrow as it slipped slowly toward eternity. Then it caught in a small pit near the edge.

"Glaeken!" came the muffled, agonized voice from below. "You can't! This can't be happening! Don't!"

Glaeken was about to raise the weapon and sever that last digit but thought better of it. Instead he rolled over and swiveled his body around; he flexed his good leg all the way to his abdomen.

His foot shot out and knocked the talon over the edge.

No final farewell to Rasalom, no verbal send off. Nothing more than a contemptuous kick.

Rasalom's scream was loud, almost painfully so. It echoed up from the glowing depths long after his tumbling, mutilated form had been swallowed by the mists.

But Glaeken did not wait and watch and listen as he dearly would have loved. Instead, as soon as the arch slowed its bobbing from the release of Rasalom's enormous weight, he began crawling back toward the cavern rim as fast as his limbs would allow

Rasalom was falling into eternity. When he passed the point where his presence no longer influenced this sphere, the old laws would begin to reassert themselves. Nature would awaken from the coma Rasalom had induced and begin its recovery, regain its control.

And this cavern had no place in nature.

As he reached the end of the arch, the walls began to shake. The rubble choking the side tunnel began to tumble free, revealing the opening. If he could reach that granite passage, he might survive.

He was almost there when the roof caved in.

The crowd quieted as a new sound overwhelmed their chants and songs. Carol's voice had given out a while ago, so she was already quiet.

They'd spilled across the street and into the illuminated sections of the Park, and were swelling further. But the sound had frozen them all in their tracks; and now they stood half crouched, looking up, looking around, looking at each other. Carol hushed those near her.

A basso drone, a thunderous buzz, a monstrous flapping in the air all around the widening cone of light, growing louder, vibrating the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings.

"It's the bugs!" someone cried. "They're coming back! Coming to get us!"

"No!" Carol cried, her voice a ragged blare above the growing fearful murmur of those about her. "Don't be afraid. They hate the light. As long as we stay in the light they won't come near us."

She, too, was afraid, but she hid it. What was happening? She glanced at Bill and he shrugged and held her close.

Then she saw them. Bugs. An immense horde of them, thickening the air and swarming along the ground around the cone of light. Some of them were forced to dip into the light by the crowding but their wings and bodies began to smoke where the light touched them and they darted back out.

No concerted attack, no suicidal kamikaze bug rush to wipe them out. Rather, a mad, blind, panicked dash toward the hole. The cone of light had reached the edge of the bottomless opening and she could see the countless horrors diving into the depths beyond the light, the winged ones spiraling down, the crawlers leaping from the edge.

"They're going back!" Carol said, as much to herself as to Bill. "They're going back into the hole!"

As a cheer roared from the crowd and she pressed forward for a better look, the earth began to shake—violently. Cheers turned to screams as people were knocked from their feet and thrown to the ground. Carol's hoarse shout of alarm rose with the others as she was hurled to the pavement with Bill atop her.

From the blown-out windows of the top floor, Sylvia watched the pandemonium below with growing alarm. Jeffy had soiled himself and so she and Ba had brought him upstairs for a change of clothes. Now she held onto the sill with one hand and Jeffy with the other as the building shook and creaked and groaned around them.

An earthquake! she thought. She'd never been in one, but this had to be how it felt.

And there, down on the near edge of the Sheep Meadow. The earth was cracking open.

Another hole!

This was it, then. The growing light, the sense of impending victory, the return of the bugs en masse to the original hole—it was all a false hope, an empty promise. A new hole, unafraid of the light, was opening closer to the building. And what new horror was going to issue from that?

The sudden changes could mean only one thing: Glaeken had failed.

The tremors worsened as a deep rumble issued from the first hole in the center of the Sheep Meadow. Clouds of what looked like dust or smoke were spewing from the opening. Sylvia reached for the field glasses and focused on the hole. The edges looked ragged—they seemed to be crumbling, breaking away, sliding into the opening, choking it.

Yes! It was closing! And below—she shifted the glasses—what was happening with the new hole?

But it wasn't a hole yet. Maybe it never would be. More like a depression, a cave-in of some sort.

The tremors stopped.

Then silence. Sylvia lowered the field glasses and paused, listening. Silence like no silence she could ever recall. Not a bird, not an insect, not a breeze was stirring. She could hear the rush of her own blood through her arteries, but nothing else. All the world, all of nature paused, frozen, stunned, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.

It lasted one prolonged agonized moment. And then, for the second time tonight, the light began to fade.

The silence was shattered by a burst of cries of renewed terror from below, then the chant began again. She heard Ba begin to repeat the words behind her. Sylvia joined him, whispering the litany as she raised the glasses and scanned the roiling crowd for Carol or Bill or Jack—anyone she knew.

The chant was failing this time. Despite thousands of throats shouting the words at the tops of their lungs, the light continued to fade.

We've lost!

Somehow in the dying light she managed to pick out Carol's familiar figure at the edge of the new hole, or depression, or wherever it was. She wanted to shout down to her to get away from there. That was where the new threat would arise. But Carol was right on the edge, pointing down at the bottom of the depression. She was jumping up and down, hugging Bill, hugging everyone within reach. What—?

Sylvia refocused on the bottom of the pit. Something moving there, struggling in the loose dirt. She strained to see in the last of the light.

A man. A man with red hair.

Glaeken? Alive? But he couldn't be. If he survived down there it could only mean—

Suddenly Ba was at her side, pointing across the Park toward the east side.

"Look, Missus! Look!"

In all their years together, she had never heard such naked excitement in his voice. She looked.

The crowd below couldn't see it yet, but from this elevation there could be no doubt. Sylvia didn't need the field glasses. Straight ahead, down at the far end of one of the concrete canyons, a bright orange glow was firing the sky over the East River.

"The sun, Missus! The sun is rising!"