“To avoid all heresies, to betray all necromancers to the Courts of College, and to obey the High Masters of my Lodge from now forth till my death—” Mutter, mutter. Some seemed to be repeating the long passage, some not; Ganil, confused, muttered a word or two and then stood silent. “And I swear never to teach the Mysteries of Machinery to any gentile. I swear this beneath the Sun.” A grating rumble almost drowned their voices. Slowly, crankily, a section of the roof was swinging back to reveal the yellow-grey, cloud-covered sky of summer. “Behold the Light of Common Day!” the old man in white cried out, triumphant, and Ganil stared up at it. The machinery apparently stuck before the skylight was fully open; there was a loud clanking of gears, then silence. The old man came forward, kissed Ganil on both cheeks, and said, “Welcome, Master Ganil, to the Inner Rite of the Mystery of the Machine.” The initiation was over. Ganil was a Master of his Lodge.

“Mean burn you got there,” the bald fellow said as they all walked back down the hall. Ganil put up his hand and found that his left cheek and temple were raw and sore. “Lucky it missed your eye.”

“Just missed being blinded by the light of Reason, eh?” said a soft voice. Glancing round Ganil saw a fair man, with brown hair and blue eyes, actually blue, like those of an albino cat or a blind horse. He looked away from the deformity at once, but the fair man went on in his soft voice, the voice that had whispered “Don’t swear” during the taking of the Oath, “I’m Mede Fairman. I’ll be your Co-Master in Lee’s shop. Feel like getting a beer when we’re out of here?”

The dank beer-dreggy warmth of the tavern was a queer change from all the terror and ceremony of the day. Ganil felt dizzy. Mede Fairman drank off half a tankard, wiped foam pleasurably off his mouth, and inquired, “What d’you think of the initiation?”

“It was—it was—”

“Humbling?”

“Yes,” Ganil agreed. “Really humbling.”

“Humiliating, even,” the blue-eyed man suggested.