He glanced at Lulah and heard the sounds in the distance. More of them! He nodded down at her sword. “You took some?”

“One. And only because it seemed to be wounded, or old. Slow. More than one of those things comes at me, I don't think I'll get away.” She looked at her ruined left hand, then raised her eyebrows as if to ask the same of him.

“Those words work on them,” he said. He looked back at the looming building, eyeing the large steps and the way its top seemed to flatten out. “They sound a long way off. Help me find a door, maybe we can get in before—”

“I won't end up like that,” Lulah said.

“Like what?”

“Turned to stone. I'll die fighting.”

Ramus could not decide whether that was suspicion in her eye or fear. “I'd never hurt you like that.”

She nodded once, unconvinced.

They went together to the base of the building, always keeping one ear on the sounds of those creatures approaching from the north and west. Ramus had suspected there would be no entrance at ground level, and he was right. As he looked up at what seemed this close to be sheer walls, he began to fear that there would be no entrance anywhere. Why should there be? If the Gods had put this here, would they leave an easy route inside?

“We need to climb,” he said.

“I thought we'd had enough of that.” Lulah sheathed her sword and reached up to the lip of the first step. She touched the stone gingerly, paused, then pulled herself up. Squatting a man's height above him, she reached down.

“I'll do it myself,” he said. Something was happening. Something was wrong. His was not the only consciousness in his mind, and his were not the only thoughts. It was similar to the feeling he'd had by those steam vents, but there the invaders into his mind had been memories from elsewhere. Here, they had the immediacy of thought.

“What is it?” Lulah asked.

“Nothing . . .”

“We're trapping ourselves here, you know.” She stood above him and looked down, a warrior viewing things from aspects he had not even considered. He thought about going onward, and she looked back at their flanks. “If those things come close enough, we'll never get down. And if they choose to climb as well . . . we could hold them off, for a while. But they don't seem inclined to give up.”

“There's an entrance up there,” Ramus said.

“You're sure?”

“Something tells me it's there.” He looked past Lulah, up the side of the incredible building, carvings and steps silhouetted against the sky and casting their shadows across his face. And that something is drawing me in, he thought. It has been for a long time. Guiding me. Resting in my mind until the time's close, and then . . .

And then, he did not know.