"I have to wait until they cross the wards." A pause, then she broke into a smile. "It's her!"
"Who?" Iliana said. "I thought nobody was supposed to know we were here."
Good thinking. Logical, Keller thought. "This is someone I called. Someone who came all the way fromNevada and has been waiting to see you." She went to the door.
It took a few minutes for the people in the car to get out-they moved slowly. Keller could hear the crunch of footsteps and the sound of a cane. She opened the door.
There was no light outside; the figures approaching were in shadow until they actually reached the threshold.
The woman who stepped in was old. So old that anyone's first thought on first seeing her was How can she still be alive? Her skin was creased into what seemed like hundreds of translucent folds. Her hair was pure white and almost as fine as Diana's, but there wasn't much of it. Her already tiny figure was stooped almost double. She walked with a cane in one hand and the other tucked into the arm of a nondescript young man.
But the eyes that met Keller's were anything but senile. They were bright and almost steely, gray with just the faintest touch of lavender.
"The Goddess's bright blessings on you all," she said, and smiled around the room.
It was Winnie who answered. "We're honored by your presence-Grandma Harman."
In the background, Diana demanded plaintively for the third time, "Who?"
"She's your great-great-aunt," Winnie said, her voice quiet with awe. "And the oldest of the Harmans. She's the Crone of all the Witches."
Diana muttered something that might have been, "She looks like it."
Keller stepped in before Winnie could attack her. She introduced everyone. Grandma Harman's keen eyes flickered when Galen's turn came, but she merely nodded.
"This is my apprentice and driver, Toby," she told them. "He goes everywhere with me, so you can speak freely in front of him."
Toby helped her to the couch, and everyone else sat, too-except Diana, who stubbornly stayed in her corner.
"How much have you told her?" Grandma Harman asked.
"Almost everything," Keller said.
"And?"
"She-isn't quite certain."
"I am certain," Diana piped up. "I want to go home."
Grandma Harman extended a knobby hand toward her. "Come here, child. I want to take a look at my great-great-niece."
Tm not your great-great-niece," Diana said. But with those steely-but-soft eyes fixed on her, she took one step forward.
"Of course you are; you just don't know it. Do you realize, you're the image of my mother when she was your age? And I'll bet your great-grandmother looked like her, too." Grandma Harman patted the couch beside her. "Come here. I'm not going to hurt you. My name is Edgith, and your great-grandmother was my little sister, Elspeth."
Diana blinked slowly. "Great-grandmother Elspeth?"
"It was almost ninety years ago that I last saw her. It was just before the First World War. She and our baby brother, Emmeth, were separated from the rest of the family. We all thought they were dead, but they were being raised inEngland . They grew up and had children there, and eventually some of those children came toAmerica . Without ever suspecting their real heritage, of course. It's taken us a long time to track down their descendants."
Iliana had taken another involuntary step. She seemed fascinated by what the old woman was saying. "Mom always talked about Great-grandmother Elspeth. She was supposed to be so beautiful that a prince fell in love with her."
"Beauty has always run in our family," Grandma Harman said carelessly. "Beauty beyond comparison, ever since the days of Hellewise Hearth-Woman, our foremother. But that isn't the important thing about being a Harman."
'It isn't?" Iliana said doubtfully.
"No." The old woman banged her cane. "The important thing, child, is the art Witchcraft. You are a itch, Iliana; it's in your blood. It always will be. And you're the gift of the Harmans in this last fight Now, listen carefully." Staring at the far wall, she recited slowly and deliberately:
"One from the land of kings long forgotten; One from the hearth which still holds the spark; One from the Day World where two eyes are watching; One from the twilight to be one with the dark."
Even when she had finished, the words seemed to hang in the air of the room. No one spoke.
Diana's eyes had changed. She seemed to be looking inside herself, at something only she could see. It was as if deeply buried memories were stirring.
"That's right," Grandma Harman said softly. "You can feel the truth of what I'm telling you. It's all there, the instinct, the art, if you just let it come out. Even the courage is there."
Suddenly, the old woman's voice was ringing. "You're the spark in the poem, Iliana. The hope of the witches. Now, what do you say? Are you going to help us beat the darkness or not?"
Chapter 5
Everything hung in the balance, and for a moment Keller thought that they had won. Diana's face looked different, older and more clearly defined. For all her flower-petal prettiness, she had a strong little chin. But she didn't say anything, and her eyes were still hazy.
"Toby," Grandma Harman said abruptly. "Put in the video."
Her apprentice went to the VCR. Keller stared at the tape in his hand, her heart picking up speed. A video. Could that be what she thought it was?
"What you're about to see is-well, let's just say it's very secret," Grandma Harman said to Iliana as the apprentice fiddled with the controls. "So secret that there's only one tape of it, and that stays locked up in Circle Daybreak headquarters at all times. I'm the only person I trust to carry it around. All right, Toby, play it."
Iliana looked at the TV apprehensively. "What is it?"
The old woman smiled at her. "Something the enemy would really like to see. It's a record of the other Wild Powers-in action."
The first scene on the tape was live news coverage of a fire. A little girl was trapped in a second-story apartment, and the flames were getting closer and closer. Suddenly, the tape went into slow motion, and a blue flash lit the screen. When the flash died away, the fire was out.
"The blue fire," Grandma Harman said. "The first Wild Power we found did that, smothered those ordinary flames with a single thought. That's just one example of what it can do."