Glaeken didn't want her to start screaming, so he rose and left her.

"And if you see Glen, tell him his Magda loves him and knows he won't let the Enemy get away with this."

The words stung, setting their barbs into the flesh of his neck and shoulders and trailing him down the hall toward the living room.

The living room…it looked like a wake. The five silent occupants were separated by a few feet of space, but were miles apart, each closed off, locked behind the walls of their own thoughts. And fears.

Even here.

Ba sat cross-legged against the far wall, eyes closed, silent. Jack and Sylvia stood at opposite ends of the long room, each staring out at the eternal blackness. Even Bill and Carol were apart, sitting silent and separate on the couch.

And here am I, he thought, separated from them and from my wife, as cut off from the rest of humanity as I've ever been.

Rasalom had won outside, and he was beginning to win in here.

And then Glaeken saw Jeffy. The boy was on his knees before the coffee table, his hands gripping the hilt where it lay on the table top, his cheek pressed down against it, as if some part of him knew that what he was missing was locked within the cold reaches of the metal.

All their sacrifices…all their faith in him…Rasalom eternally victorious…

Anger erupted within Glaeken like one of the long dormant volcanoes in the Pacific, exploding in his chest, engulfing him in its fiery heart.

Rasalom winning…having the last laugh…

It comes down to that, doesn't it? Me against him. That's what it's always been.

And suddenly Glaeken knew he couldn't allow Rasalom to win. If there was one chance, no matter how slim, he had to take it.

He found himself moving, crossing the room toward Jeffy, lifting him gently away from the hilt.

"Sylvia," he said, keeping his voice calm. "Take him and stand back."

Sylvia rushed over and pulled Jeffy away.

"Why? What's happened?"

"Nothing yet. And perhaps nothing at all will happen. But just in case…"

Glaeken stared down at the hilt, hesitating.

This is what you want, isn't it? he thought, speaking silently to the power he had served for millennia, wondering if it could hear him. You want me back. You let me go and now you want me back. Will no one else do?

The hilt was silent, gleaming coldly in the flickering light of the silent room. Wondering which he hated more, Rasalom or the power to which he had allied himself ages ago, Glaeken reached down and wrapped his gnarled fingers around the hilt.

Memories surged though him at the metal's touch. Yes, the hilt was alive. The entity that had been the Dat-tay-vao welcomed him back. The smallfolk had done their job well.

And as much as he hated to admit it, the hilt felt as if it belonged in his hands.

He turned toward the blade.

"Everybody back."

What is that?

Rasalom is disturbed by another ripple through the enveloping chaos above. Bigger. A wavelet this time.

He spreads his consciousness. It's that instrument again. And this time Glaeken himself is holding it. It's the reunion of the man and the living metal that is disturbing. No matter. A minor disturbance, and short lived.

"Too late, Glaeken!" he shouts into the subterranean dark. "Too late!"

"Don't look," Glaeken said.

But Carol had to look. As soon as Glaeken had touched the hilt the air of the living room became charged.

She'd risen and followed Bill to the far side of the sofa where they now stood with their arms wrapped around each other and watched as Glaeken poised the hilt over the butt spike.

Something was going to happen. How could she turn away?

She watched the old man set his feet, take a deep breath, then ram the hilt downward.

! ! ! ! ! ! LIGHT ! ! ! ! ! !

Light such as she had never seen or imagined, light like the hearts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Bikinis and all the Yucca Flats bombs rolled into one, light like the Big Bang itself exploded from the hilt, engulfing Glaeken and searing the room. Hot light, cold light, new light, ancient light, it blasted through the room in a wave.

In that initial flash Carol saw Glaeken's bones silhouetted through his flesh and clothes, saw the springs and inner supports of the sofa before her, then the light was upon her and her retinae screamed and her irises spasmed and her lids clamped down tight to shut out the light but it was no use because the light would not be denied and it poured through her, suffusing each cell of each tissue in a perceptible wave of warmth as it passed.

She heard cries of wonder and astonishment from the others in the room and was startled by a deafening crash as the glass in the picture windows blew out. Gusts of night air stormed through the room as Carol fought to open her eyes against the glare.

The light was still there, more diffuse now, and splotched with purple from the afterburns on her retinae. It had stopped expanding and had begun to contract, rushing back from the edges of the room to concentrate again at the center, coalescing into a column with Glaeken at its heart. Carol had to raise a protecting arm across her face and half turn away as it consolidated and amplified its power into a narrower beam, shooting upward, burning through the ceiling, through the roof, into the blackness above. And faintly through the brilliance she could still make out the figure of a man standing in the heart of the light.

She turned to Bill. "The roof! We've got to go up on the roof!"

He blinked at her, half-dazed. "Why?"

She didn't know why exactly. A deep part of her was responding to the light, almost as if she recognized it. Whatever the reason, she felt compelled to be up there on the roof to watch this beam of light challenge the darkness.

"Never mind why." She grabbed his hand. "Let's go!" She turned to the others in the room. "Everybody—the roof! The roof!"

Rasalom writhes in his chrysalis.

What is happening? A sudden squall of light in the upper reaches of Glaeken's building.

The instrument! He's activated it!

Rasalom remains calm. The light being shed is a discomfort, a painful irritant. No more.

This is not a setback. Glaeken may be able to cause some trouble with this, but he can be no more than an inconvenience. The Change is too far along. It cannot be reversed.

Carol led the way to the roof, throwing her shoulder against the door at the top of the stairs and bursting out into the cold night air. She was vaguely aware of the hungry buzz and flutter of the night things swooping through the darkness beyond the edges of the building; she barely heard the rooftop gravel crunch under her feet, or noticed the others crowding out behind her. She was locked on the bright beam spearing into the heavens—straight and true, unwavering, a narrow tower of light shooting upward, ever upward until it pierced the sky.

And then it faded.

"It's gone," Bill said close behind her.

"No!" She pointed up. "Look. There's still a bright spot up there. Like a star."

The only star in the sky.

"Never mind the star," Jack said. "Check out the roof."

Carol wished he'd be less mundane at times but looked at the roof anyway. A smoldering hole was left where the light had burst through. She approached it cautiously and looked down through it into the living room below, afraid of what she might see there, afraid that Glaeken had been harmed somehow by the blaze of light.