Declare

pocket, took hold of it, and tugged it out into the air; and he was dizzily startled at how heavy it had become—and it was heavy sideways —it was tugging horizontally northeast, away from the mountain peak.
    I should certainly hang on to it, he thought—if it’s so magnetically repelled by the proximity of djinn, probably they will be repelled by it, as the Khan said.
    But I don’t want to repel the djinn, he told himself, trying to concentrate in the gusty, rocking jeep bed. And even if I should want to, soon, that will be—would be—a mistake . I need to make contact with the creatures that live on this mountain—to destroy them, but first to see them! Even if I could keep this stone hidden and some-how damped, the fact of having it in my pocket might be an over-powering temptation to use it, if this operation becomes too robust.
    The stone was tugging away more strongly now—he had to use both hands to hold on to it, bracing himself with his feet—and he told himself that it would soon be repelled with such force that even if he wedged it against the floor it would drag the jeep to a wheel-spinning halt.
    I have to let it go, he thought with cautious satisfaction—nobody can blame me. I do thank you for the kind intention, Siamand Barakat Khan! but—
    He moved his head well to the side and then let go of the stone, and it went silently cannonballing away into the night behind them.
    Hale brushed his palms on his vest and hiked himself forward again. He was committed to this now, like Ulysses tied to the mast, like Cortés after burning the ships on the Mexican shore.
    And he realized that these five men were committed too. He glanced back, but of course the stone was lost in the darkness— perhaps it would tumble all the long way back to Wabar.
    Suddenly McNally yelled something that sounded like, “Bloody horses?”
    The jeep in front had slewed to a stop in front of a jagged white mound of snow that blocked the way, and when Hale heard McNally stamp on the brake pedal he grabbed the back of the passenger seat to keep from falling forward as his jeep halted.
    And Hale’s chest went cold in sudden fright when a man’s voice rang out of the darkness ahead, speaking loudly in Turkish over the rumble of the idling engines—Hale didn’t understand the words, but he thought he recognized the skewed vowels of a French accent; and at the same moment he saw the horses McNally had referred to: two four-legged silhouettes standing off to the right, dimly visible against the gray of the snow.
    McNally had leaned sideways below the dashboard to unsling his rifle, and Hale knew that the four other SAS men must have done the same, and must be aiming their weapons toward the voice.
    “Qui etes vous?” shouted Hale desperately. Who are you?
    He could just make out the muzzle of his Sten gun in front of him, wobbling as the jeep engine chugged on in neutral.
    The voice from the darkness was strained as it spoke again, in fluent French now: “Drop your weapons. Do you have shovels? Our companions are buried under this avalanche.”
    “Don’t shoot,” called Hale in English to the SAS men; then he took a deep breath and yelled, in French, “Is Elena with you?”—for clearly this must be the SDECE team from Dogubayezit, and he needed to know right away that Elena was not one of the people who were under the snow and certainly dead.
    And sweat of relief sprang out on his forehead when he heard Elena’s well-remembered voice cry, “Don’t shoot them! Andrew Hale, is it you?”
    “They’re SDECE,” Hale shouted in English, “French—allies. Elena! Yes!”
    “Bloody hell,” growled one of the men in the other jeep.
    McNally had straightened up, and now he switched off the engine and began climbing out of the vehicle with his rifle still in his hands. “We hike now,” he told Hale quietly, “a bit farther than we planned. Even those horses would be no use from here on up. Now you’ve got a webbing to put on, with your— medical supplies in it.”
    The other engine had been turned off too now, and in the sudden echoing silence Hale could hear the rippling clatter of a waterfall somewhere in the darkness far ahead. The air was cold and thin in his nostrils, but seemed resonant as if with some subsonic tone, and he was humiliated to find that he had to force himself to let go of the familiar seat-back and climb down out of the jeep to the slushy alien ground, slinging his rifle. He could feel his