"Darza!" the wizard said.

"Darza," the deeps rumbled. "Badawa balaha!"

The bird screamed in fury, spreading its stub wings as its tongue shrilled between the black shearing edges of its beak. The child bleated in wide-eyed surprise.

The Countess stopped hugging herself; her face was set. She had a notebook of waxed boards in her left hand, a bronze stylus in her right. She was as literate as most women of her class. Though not enough of a scholar to write in the cursive Old Script, modern minuscules were sufficient to jot down the earth's responses phonetically.

Balila held her notebook so that light from the oil lamp in a niche beside her fell across the waxed surface as she began to write. When she'd filled one page, she flipped it out of the way on its leather hinges and went on the next.

Dipsas coughed as she chanted, but her cracked voice and the thunderous antiphony from below continued for so long as the sulphur burned. Only when the blue flicker dimmed and finally died did the responses end.

The wizard slumped forward, her sleeve smearing the molten residue of the sulphur. If it burned her, she was too exhausted by the effort of her spell to react.

Balila tried to close her notebook. The thin maplewood boards clicked against one another; then the whole assemblage dropped to the floor. She bent to pick the notebook up, aware for the first time of the child bawling at her feet. She knelt, hugged him to silence, then put the notebook in the sleeve of her robe before walking over to the wizard.

"Dipsas?" she said. She shook the other woman's shoulder. Balila wasn't strong enough to carry the wizard back to the surface, and the child would probably need help as well. "Dipsas, get up. I have the responses. You can copy them off for the next time we come."

The wizard lifted herself with difficulty. For a moment her face was that of an ugly, frightened old woman; then she consciously reformed her features into a mask of cunning and power. "Yes, yes," she said, her voice gaining strength as she spoke. "I'll be ready in a moment."