He led her to a curtain, which he drew aside. The key was in the lock of the door. He turned it, and pushed the door open. The air that rose from below was dry and stale, the stairway before her steep; but she was not afraid. The call she felt from below coaxed her down, whispering its encouragement. This was no grave they were entering. Or if it was, the dead had more than rot on their minds.

3.

Her glimpse of the maze beneath the church hadn't prepared her for how far below ground level it actually lay. The light from the baptistery rapidly faded as the staircase wound its way down. After two dozen steps she could not see her guide at all.

'How much further?' she said.

At that moment, he struck a match and set it to a candle-wick. The flame was reluctant in the feeble air, but by its uncertain light she saw the priest's fretful face turned towards her. Beyond him were the corridors she'd first viewed from above, lined with niches.

There's nothing here,' he said, with some sadness. 'Not any longer.'

'Show me anyway.'

He nodded weakly, as though he'd lost entirely the strength to resist her, and led her down one of the passageways, carrying the candle before him. The niches, she now saw, were all occupied: caskets piled from floor to ceiling. It was a pleasant enough way to decay, she supposed, cheek by jowl with your peers. The very civility of the sight lent greater force to the scene that awaited her when, at the end of the passageway, he opened a door, and - ushering her before him - said:

This is what you came to see, isn't it?'

She stepped inside; he followed. Such was the size of the room they'd entered that the meagre candle-flame was not equal to illuminating it. But there were no caskets here, that much was apparent. There were only bones - and those there were in their thousands, covering every inch of the walls and ceiling.

The priest crossed the room and put the candle to a dozen wicks set in candelabra of femur and skull pan. As the flames brightened the full ambition of the bone-arranger's skills became apparent. The mortal remains of hundreds of human beings had been used to create vast symmetrical designs: baroque configurations of shin and rib, with clusters of skulls as their centre pieces; exquisite mosaics of foot and finger bones, set off with teeth and nails. It was all the more ghastly because it was so meticulously rendered, the work of some morbid genius.

'What is this place?' she asked.

He frowned at her, perplexed.

'You know what it is. The Shrine.'

' .. . shrine?'

He moved towards her.

'You didn't know?'

'No.'

Rage and fear suddenly ignited his face. 'You lied to me!' he said, his voice setting the candles fluttering. 'You said you knew - ' He snatched hold of her arm. 'Get out of here,' he demanded, dragging her back towards the door. 'You're trespassing -'

His grip hurt her. It was all she could do to stop the menstruum retaliating. As it was, there was no need, for the priest's gaze suddenly left her, and strayed to the candles. The flames had grown brighter, their jittering manic. His hand dropped from her arm, and he began to back away towards the door of the Shrine, as the flickering fires became incandescent. His short-cropped hair was literally standing on end; his tongue lolled in his open mouth, robbed of exclamation.

She didn't share his terror. Whatever was happening in the chamber, it felt good to her; she bathed in the energies that were loose in the air around her head. The priest had reached the door, and now fled down the passageway towards the stairs. As he did so the caskets began to rattle in their brick niches, as if their contents wanted to be up to meet the day that was dawning in the Shrine. Their drumming lent fervour to the spectacle before her. In the centre of the chamber a form was beginning to appear, drawing its substance from the dust-filled air, and the bone-shards that lay on the floor. Suzanna could feel it plucking flecks from her face and arms, to add to its sum. It was not one shape, she now saw, but three; the central figure towering over her. Common sense might have counselled retreat, but unlikely as it seemed, given that death surrounded her on all sides, she'd seldom felt safer.

That sense of ease didn't falter. The dust moved in front of her in a slow dance, more soothing than distressing, the two flanking shapes forsaking their creation before they became coherent and running into the central figure to lend it new solidity. Even then it was only a dust-ghost, barely able to hold itself together. But in the features that were taking shape before her Suzanna could see traces of Immacolata.

What more perfect place for the Incantatrix to keep her Shrine? Death had always been her passion.

The priest was scrabbling for a prayer in the passageway outside, but the grey, glittering smudge that hung in the air in front of Suzanna was unmoved. Its features had elements of not one but all three sisters. The Hag's senility; the Magdalene's sensuality; the exquisite symmetry of Immacolata. Unlikely as it seemed, the synthesis worked; the marriage of contradictions rendered both more tenuous and more pliant by the delicacy of its construction. It seemed to Suzanna that if she breathed too hard she'd undo it.

And then the voice. That, at least, was recognizably Immacolata's, but there was a softness in it now that it had previously lacked. Perhaps, even, a delicate humour?

'We're glad you came,' she said. 'Will you request the Adamatical to leave? We have business to do, you and I.'

'What sort of business?'

'It's not for his ears,' the mote ghost said. 'Please. Help him to his feet, will you? And tell him there's no harm done. They're so superstitious, these men . ..'

She did as Immacolata asked: went down the drumming corridor to where the man was cowering, and drew him to his feet.

'I think maybe you should leave,' she said. The Lady wants it.'

The priest gave her a sickened look.

'All this time - ' he said. 'I never really believed.'

'It's all right,' she said. 'There's no damage done.'

'Are you coming too?'

'No.'

'I can't come back for you,' he warned her, tears spilling down his cheeks.

'I understand,' she said. 'You go on. I'm safe.'

He needed no further urging, but was off up the stairs like a jack rabbit. She returned down the passageway - the caskets still rattling - to face the woman.

'I thought you were dead,' she said.

'What's dead?' Immacolata replied. 'A word the Cuckoos use when the flesh fails. It's nothing, Suzanna; you know that.'

'Why are you here, then?'

'I've come to pay a debt to you. In the Temple, you kept me from falling, or have you forgotten?'

'No.'

'Nor I. Such kindnesses are not negligible. I understand that now. I understand many things. You see how I'm reunited with my sisters? Together we're as we could never be apart. A single mind, three-in-one. I am we; and we see our malice, and regret it.'