Knight of Shadows

Chapter 1

Her name was Julia, and I’d been damn certain she was dead back on April 30 when it all began. My finding her grisly remains and destroying the doglike creature which I’d thought had killed her were pretty much the way it started. And we had been lovers, which I suppose was how things had really commenced. Long before.

Perhaps I could have trusted her more. Perhaps I should never have taken hex on that shadow — walls which led to denials that took her away from me, down dark ways and into the studio of Victor Melman, a nasty occultist I later had to kill — the same Victor Melman who was himself the dupe of Luke and Jasra. But now, perhaps — just barely — I might have been in a position to forgive myself for what I’d thought I’d done, for it seemed that I hadn’t really done it after all. Almost.

That is to say, I learned that I hadn’t been responsible for it while I was in the act of doing it. It was when I drove my knife into the side of the mysterious sorcerer Mask, who had been on my case for some time, that I discovered that Mask was really Julia. My half brother Jurt, who’s been trying to kill me longer than anyone else in the business, snatched her away, and they vanished then, immediately following his transformation into a kind of living Trump.

As I fled the burning, crumbling Keep there at the Citadel of the Four Worlds, a falling timber caused me to dodge to my right, trapping me in a cul-de-sac of crashed masonry and burning beams. A dark metal ball flashed past me then, seeming to grow as it moved. It struck the wall and passed through it, leaving a hole one could dive through — a hint I was not slow in taking. Outside I jumped the moat, using my Logrus extensions to knock aside a section of fence and a score of troops, before I turned back and shouted, “Mandor!”

“Right here,” came his soft voice from behind my left shoulder.

I turned in time to see him catch a metal ball, which bounced once before us and dropped into his extended hand.

He brushed ashes from his black vest and ran a hand through his hair. Then he smiled and turned back toward the burning Keep.

“You’ve kept your promise to the Queen,” he remarked, “and I don’t believe there’s anything more for you here. Shall we go now?”

“Jasra’s still inside,” I answered, “having it out with Sharu.”

“I thought you were done with her.”

I shook my head.

“She still knows a lot of things I don’t. Things I’ll be needing.”

A tower of flame began to rear itself above the Keep, halted and hovered a moment, heaved itself higher.

“I didn’t realize,” he said. “She does seem to want control of that fountain fairly badly. If we were to snatch her away now, that fellow Sharu will claim it. Does that matter?”

“If we don’t snatch her away, he may kill her.” Mandor shrugged.

“I’ve a feeling she’ll take him. Would you care to place a small wager?”

“Could be you’re right,” I said, watching the fountain continue its climb skyward, following another pause. I gestured toward it. “Thing looks like an oil gusher. I hope the winner knows how to cap it — if there is a winner. Neither one of them may last much longer, the way the place is coming apart.”

He chuckled.

“You underestimate the forces they’ve generated to protect themselves,” he said. And you know it isn’t all that easy for one sorcerer to do in another by sorcerous means. However, you’ve a point there when it comes to the inertia of the mundane. With your permission…?”

I nodded.

With a quick underhand toss he cast the metal ball across the ditch toward the burning building. It struck the ground and with each bounce thereafter it seemed to increase in size. It produced a cymballike crash each time it hit, entirely out of proportion with its apparent mass and velocity, and this sound increased in volume on each successive bounce. It passed then into the burning, tottering ruin that was the near end of the Keep and for several moments was gone from sight.

I was about to ask him what was going on when I saw the shadow of a large ball pass before the opening through which I had fled. The flames — save for the central tower from the broken Fount — began to subside, and a deep rumbling sound came from within. Moments later an even larger circular shadow passed, and I began to feel the rumbling through the soles of my boots.

A wall tumbled. Shortly thereafter part of another wall fell. I could see inside fairly clearly through the dust and smoke the image of the giant ball passed again. The flames were snuffed. My Logrus vision still granted me glimpses of the shifting lines of power which flowed between Jasra and Sharu.

Mandor extended a hand. A minute or so later a small metal ball came bouncing our way, and he caught it. “Let’s head back,” he said. “It would be a shame to miss the end.”

We passed through one of the many gaps in the fence, and sufficient rubble filled the ditch at one point for us to walk across on it. I spent a barrier spell then, to keep the re-forming troops of the premises and out of our way for a time.

Entering through the broken wall, I saw that Jasra stood with her back to the tower of fire, her arms upraised. Streaks of sweat lined her face zebra through a mask of soot, and I could feel the pulsing of the forces which passed through her body. About ten feet above her, face purple and head twisted to one side as if his neck were broken, Sharu hung in the middle of the air. To the untutored he might have seemed magically levitated. My Logrus sight gave me view of the line of force from which he hung suspended, however, victim of what might, I suppose, be termed a magical lynching.

“Bravo,” Mandor stated, clapping his hands slowly and softly together. “You see, Merlin? I’d have won that bet.”

“You always were a better judge of talent than I was,” I acknowledged.

“…and swear to serve me,” I overheard Jasra saying. Sharu’s lips moved.

“And swear to serve you,” he gasped.

She lowered her arms slowly, and the line of force which held him began to lengthen. As he descended toward the Keep’s cracked floor; her left hand executed a gesture similar to one I had once seen an orchestra conductor employ in encouraging the woodwinds, and a great gout of fire came loose from the Fountain, fell upon him, washed over him, and passed on down into the ground. Flashy, though I didn’t quite see the point…

His slow descent continued, as if someone in the sky were trolling for crocodiles. I discovered myself holding my breath as his feet neared the ground, in sympathetic anticipation of the eased pressure on his neck. This, however, did not come to pass. When his feet reached the ground, they passed on into it, and his descent continued, as if he were an occulted hologram. He sank past his ankles and up to his knees and kept going. I could no longer tell whether he was breathing. A soft litany of commands rolled from Jasra’s lips, and sheets of flame periodically separated themselves from the Fountain and splashed over him. He sank past his waist and up to his shoulders and slightly beyond. When only his head remained visible, eyes open but unfocused, she executed another hand move went, and his journey into the earth was halted.

“You are now the guardian of the Fount,” she stated, “answerable only to me. Do you acknowledge this?”

The darkened lips writhed.

“Yes,” came a whispered reply.

“Go now and bank the fires,” she ordered. “Commence your tenure.”

The head seemed to nod at the same time it began sinking again. After a moment only a cottony tuft of hair remained, and an instant later the ground swallowed this, too. The line of force vanished.

I cleared my throat. At the sound Jasra let her arms fall and turned toward me. She was smiling faintly.

“Is he alive or dead?” I asked, and then added, “Academic curiosity.”

“I’m not really certain,” she responded. “But a little of both, I think. Like the rest of us.”

“‘Guardian of the Fount,’” I reflected. “Interesting existence.”

“Beats being a coatrack,” she observed. “I daresay.”

“I suppose you feel I owe you some gratitude now, for — my restoration,” she stated.

I shrugged.

“To tell you the truth, I’ve other things to think about,” I said.

“You wanted an end to the feud,” she said, “and I wanted this place back. I still have no kind thoughts toward Amber, but I am willing to say we’re even.”

“I’ll settle for that,” I told her. “And there is a small loyalty I may share with you.”

She studied me through narrowed eyes for a moment, then smiled.

“Don’t worry about Luke,” she said.

“But I must. That son of a bitch Dalt — ”

She continued to smile.

“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked.

“Many things,” she replied.

“Anything you’d care to share?”

“Knowledge is a marketable commodity,” she observed, as the ground shook slightly and the fiery tower swayed.

“I’m offering to help your son and you’re offering to sell me the information on how to go about it?” I inquired.

She laughed.

“If I thought Rinaldo needed help,” she said, “I’d be at his side this moment. I suppose it makes it easier to hate me if you feel I lack even maternal virtues.”

“Hey, I thought we were calling things even,” I said.

“That doesn’t preclude hating each other,” she replied.

“Come on, lady! Outside of the fact that you tried to kill me year after year, I’ve got nothing against you. You happen to be the mother of someone I like and respect. If he’s in trouble, I want to help him, and I’d as soon be on good terms with you.”

Mandor cleared his throat as the flames dropped ten feet, shuddered, dropped again.

“I’ve some fine culinary spells,” he remarked, “should recent exertions have roused some appetites.”

Jasra smiled almost coquettishly, and I’d swear she batted her eyelashes at him. While he makes a striking appearance with that shock of white hair, I don’t know that you’d exactly call Mandor handsome. I’ve never understood why women are as attracted to him as they usually seem to be. I’ve even checked him out for spells on that particular count, but he doesn’t wear one. It must be some different order of magic entirely.

“A fine idea,” she responded. “I’ll provide the setting if you’ll take care of the rest.”

Mandor bowed; the flames collapsed the rest of the way to the ground and were damped therein. Jasra shouted an order to Sharu, the Invisible Guardian, telling him to keep them that way then she turned and led us toward the downward stair.

“Underground passage,” she explained, “to more civilized shores.”

“It occurs to me,” I remarked, “that anyone we encounter will probably be loyal to Julia.”

Jasra laughed.

“As they were to me before her and to Sharu before me,” she replied. “They are professionals. They come with the place. They are paid to defend the winners, not to avenge the losers. I will put in as appearance and make a proclamation after dinner, and I will enjoy their unanimous and heartfelt loyalty until the next usurpation. Mind that third step. There’s a loose flagstone.”

So she led us on, through a section of fake wall and into a dark tunnel, heading in what I believed to be a northwesterly direction toward the area of the Citadel which I had investigated somewhat on my previous journey this way. That was the day I had rescued her from Mask/Julia and taken her back to Amber to be a coatrack in our citadel for a while. The tunnel we entered was totally dark, but she conjured a darting dot, bright in its will-o’-the-wispiness, which preceded us through the gloom and the damp. The air was stale and the walls were cobwebby. The floor was of bare earth, save for an irregular patch of flagstones down its middle; there were occasional fetid puddles at either hand; and small dark creatures flashed past us — both on the ground and in the air — every now and then.

Actually, I did not need the light. Probably none of us did. I held to the Sign of the Logrus, which provided a magical way of seeing, granting a silvery, directionless illumination. I maintained it because it would also give me a warning against magical effects — which might include booby trap spells about the premises or, for that matter, a bit of treachery on Jasra’s part. One effect of this seeing was to note that the Sign also hovered before Mandor, who, to my knowledge, has never been much into trust either. Something cloudy and vaguely Pattern-like also occupied a similar position vis-a-vis Jasra, completing the circle of wariness. And the light danced on before us.

We emerged from behind a stack of barrels into what appeared to be a very well-stocked wine cellar. Mandor paused after six paces and carefully removed a dusty bottle from the rack to our left. He drew a corner of his cloak across its label.

“Oh, my!” he observed.

“What is it?” Jasra inquired.

“If this is still good, I can build an unforgettable meal around it.”

“Really? Better bring several to be sure then,” she said. “These go back before my time — perhaps before Sharu’s time even.”

“Merlin, you bring these two,” he said, passing me a pair. “Carefully, now.”

He studied the rest of the rack before selecting two more, which he carried himself.

“I can see why this place is often under siege,” he remarked to Jasra. “I’d have been inclined to have a go at it myself had I known about this part.”

She reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

“There are easier ways to get what you want,” she said, smiling.

“I’ll remember that,” he replied. “I hope you’ll hold me to it.”

I cleared my throat.

She gave me a small frown, then turned away. We followed her out a low doorway and up a creaking flight of wooden stairs. We emerged in a large pantry and passed through it into an immense, deserted kitchen.

“Never a servant around when you need one,” she remarked, casting her gaze about the room.

“We won’t be needing one,” Mandor said. “Find me a congenial dining area and I’ll manage.”

“Very well,” she replied. “This way then.”

She led us through the kitchen; then we passed through a series of rooms till we came to a stairway, which we mounted.

“Ice fields?” she asked. “Lava fields? Mountains? Or a storm-tossed sea?”

“If you are referring to a choice of views,” Mandor responded, “give me the mountains.”

He glanced at me, and I nodded.

She conducted us to a long, narrow room, where we unfastened a series of shutters to behold a dappled range of round-topped peaks, The room was cool and a bit dusty with shelves running the length of the near wall. These held books, writing implements, crystals, magnifying glasses, small pots of paint, a few simple magical instruments, a microscope, and a telescope. There was a trestle table at the room’s middle, a bench on either side of it.

“How long will it take to prepare this?” Jasra asked.

“A minute or two,” Mandor said.

“In that case,” she said, “I would like to repair myself somewhat first. Perhaps you would also.”

“Good idea,” I said.

“Indeed,” Mandor acknowledged.

She led us to what must have been guest quarters, not too far away, and left us with soap, towels, and water. We agreed to meet back in the narrow room in half as hour.

“Think she’s planning something nasty?” I asked as I drew off my shirt.

“No,” Mandor replied. “I like to flatter myself in thinking that she would not want to miss this meal. Nor, do I feel, would she want us to miss seeing her at her best, having so far seen her at something less than that. And a possibility of gossip, confidences…” He shook his head. “You may never have been able to trust her before and may never again. But this meal will be a Time-out if I’m any judge.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” I said as I splashed and lathered.

Mandor gave me a crooked smile, then conjured a corkscrew and opened the bottles — “to let them breathe a little” — before he tended to himself. I trusted his judgment, but I hung on to the Sign of the Logrus in case I had to duel with a demon or avoid a falling wall.

No demons sprang; no masonry toppled. I entered the dining room behind Mandor and watched him transform it with a few words and gestures. The trestle table and the benches were replaced by a round table and comfortable-looking chairs — the chairs so situated as to provide a good view of the mountains from each. Jasra had not yet arrived, and I was carrying the two wine bottles whose respiration Mandor found most appealing. Before I could even set them down, Mandor conjured an embroidered tablecloth and napkins; delicate china, which looked as if it had been hand decorated by Ming; finely wrought silverware. He studied the tableau a moment, banished the silverware, summoned a set with a different pattern. He hummed as he paced and regarded the layout from various angles. Just as I moved forward to place the bottles on the table, he summoned a crystal bowl filled with floating flowers as a centerpiece. I took a step backward then as crystal goblets appeared.

I made a small growling noise, and he seemed to notice me for the first time in a while.

“Oh, set them there. Set them there, Merlin,” he said, and an ebony tray appeared on the table to my left. “We’d better check to see how the wine is holding up, before the lady arrives,” he said then, pouring some of the ruby fluid into two of the goblets.

We sampled these, and he nodded. It was better than Bayle’s. By far.

“Nothing wrong there,” I said.

He rounded the table, went to the window, and looked out. I followed. Somewhere up in those mountains, I supposed, was Dave in his cave.

“I feel almost guilty,” I said, “taking a break like this. There are so many things I should be tending to —”

“Possibly even more than you suspect,” he said. “Look upon this less as a break than a retrenchment. And you may learn something from the lady.”

“True,” I replied. “I wonder what, though.”

He swirled his wine in his glass, took another small sip, and shrugged.

“She knows a lot. She may let something slip, or she may feel expansive at the attention and grow generous. Take things as they’re dealt.”

I took a drink, and I could be nasty and say my thumbs began to prickle. But it was actually the Logrus field that warned me of Jasra’s approach along the hall outside. I did not remark upon it to Mandor, since I was certain he felt it, too. I simply turned toward the door, and he matched my movement.

She had on a low over-one-shoulder (the left) white dress, fastened at the shoulder with a diamond pin, and she wore a tiara, also of diamonds, which seemed almost to be radiating in the infrared range amidst her bright hair. She was smiling, and she smelled good, too. Involuntarily I felt myself standing straighter, and I glanced at my fingernails to be certain they were clean.

Mandor’s bow was more courtly than mine, as usual. And I felt obliged to say something pleasant. So, “You’re looking quite… elegant,” I observed, letting my eyes wander to emphasize the point.

“It is seldom that I dine with two princes,” she remarked.

“I’m Duke of the Western Marches,” I said, “not a prince.”

“I was referring to the House of Sawall,” she replied.

“You’ve been doing homework,” Mandor noted, “recently.”

“I’d hate to commit a breach of protocol,” she said.

“I seldom use my Chaos title at this end of things,” I explained.

“A pity,” she told me. “I find it more than a little… elegant. Aren’t you about thirtieth in the line of succession?”

I laughed.

“Even that great a distance is an exaggeration,” I said.

“No, Merle, she’s about right,” Mandor told me. “Give or take the usual few.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “The last time I looked —”

He poured a goblet of wine and offered it to Jasra. She accepted it with a smile.

“You haven’t looked recently,” Mandor said. “There have been more deaths.”

“Really? So many?”

“To Chaos,” Jasra said, raising her goblet. “Long may she wave.”

“To Chaos,” Mandor replied, raising his.

“Chaos,” I echoed, and we touched the goblets together and drank.

A number of delightful aromas came to me suddenly. Turning, I saw that the table now bore serving dishes. Jasra had turned at the same moment, and Mandor stepped forward and gestured, causing the chairs to slide back to accommodate us.

“Be seated, please, and let me serve you,” he said.

We did, and it was more than good. Several minutes passed, and apart from compliments on the soup nothing was said. I did not want to be the first with a conversational gambit, though it had occurred to me that the others might feel the same way.

Finally, Jasra cleared her throat, and we both looked at her. I was surprised that she suddenly seemed slightly nervous.

“So, how are things in Chaos?” she asked.

“At the moment, chaotic,” Mandor replied, “not to be facetious.” He thought a moment, then sighed and added, “Politics.”

She nodded slowly, as if considering asking him for the details he did not seem to care to divulge, then deciding against it. She turned toward me.

“Unfortunately, I’d no opportunity to sight-see while I was in Amber,” she said. “From what you told me, though, life seems a bit chaotic there also.”

I nodded.

“It’s good that Dalt’s gone,” I said, “if that’s what you mean. But he was never a real threat, just a nuisance. Speaking of whom —”

“Let’s not,” she interrupted, smiling sweetly. “What I really had in mind was anything else.”

I smiled back.

“I forgot. You’re not a fan of his,” I said.

“It’s not that,” she responded. “The man has his uses. It’s just — she sighed — ‘politics’,” she finished.

Mandor laughed, and we joined him. Too bad I hadn’t thought to use that line about Amber. Too late now.

“I bought a painting awhile back,” I said, “by a lady named Polly Jackson. It’s of a red ’57 Chevy, I like it a lot. It’s in storage in San Francisco right now. Rinaldo liked it, too.”

She nodded, stared out the window.

“You two were always stopping in some gallery of other,” she said. “Yes, he dragged me to a lot of them, too. I always thought he had good taste. No talent, but good taste.”

“What do you mean, ‘no talent’?”

“He’s a very good draftsman, but his own paintings were never that interesting.”

I had raised the subject for a very special reason, and this wasn’t it. But I was fascinated by a side of Luke I’d never known, and I decided to pursue the matter.

“Paintings? I never knew he painted.”

“He’s tried any number of times, but he never shows them to anyone because they’re not good enough.”

“Then how do you know about them?”

“I’d check out his apartment periodically.”

“When he wasn’t around?”

“Of course. A mother’s privilege.”

I shuddered. I thought again of the burning woman down the Rabbit Hole. But I didn’t want to say what I felt and spoil the flow now that I had her talking. I decided to return to my original trail.

“Was it in connection with any of this that he met Victor Melman?” I asked.

She studied me for a moment through narrowed eyes, then nodded and finished her soup.

“Yes,” she said then, laying her spoon aside. “He took a few lessons from the man. He’d liked some of his paintings and looked him up. Perhaps he bought something of his, too. I don’t know. But at some point he mentioned his own work and Victor asked to see it. He told Rinaldo he liked it and said he thought he could teach him a few things that might be of help.”

She raised her goblet and sniffed it, sipped her wine, and stared at the mountains.

I was about to prompt her, hoping she’d go on, when she began to laugh. I waited it out.

“A real asshole,” she said then. “But talented. Give him that.”

“Uh, what do you mean?” I asked.

“After a time he began speaking of the development of personal power, using all those circumlocutions the half-enlightened love to play with. He wanted Rinaldo to know he was an occultist with something pretty strong going for him. Then he began to hint that he might be willing to pass it along to the right person.”

She began laughing again. I chuckled myself, at the thought of that trained seal addressing the genuine article in such a fashion.

“It was because he realized Rinaldo was rich, of course,” she continued. “Victor was, as usual, broke himself at the time. Rinaldo showed no interest, though, and simply stopped taking painting lessons from him shortly after that — as he felt he’d learned all he could from him. When he told me about it later, however, I realized that the man could be made into a perfect cat’s-paw. I was certain such a person would do anything for a taste of real power.”

I nodded.

“Then you and Rinaldo began the visitation business? You took turns clouding his mind and teaching him a few real things?”

“Real enough,” she said, “though I handled most of his training. Rinaldo was usually too busy studying for exams. His point average was generally a little higher than yours, wasn’t it?”

“He usually had pretty good grades,” I conceded. “When you talk of empowering Melman and turning him into a tool, I can’t help thinking about the reason; you were priming him to kill me, in a particularly colorful fashion.”

She smiled.

“Yes,” she said, “though probably not as you think. He knew of you, and he had been trained to play a part in your sacrifice. But he acted on his own the day he tried it, the day you killed him. He had been warned against such a solo action, and he paid the price. He was anxious to possess all of the powers he thought would come of it, rather than share them with another. As I said — an asshole.”

I wanted to appear nonchalant, to keep her going. Continuing my meal seemed the best measure to indicate such poise. Then I glanced down, however, I discovered that my soup bowl had vanished. I picked up a roll, broke it, was about to butter it when I saw that my hand was shaking. A moment later I realized that this was because I wanted to strangle her.

So I took a deep breath and let it go, had another drink of wine. An appetizer plate appeared before me, and a faint aroma of garlic and various tantalizing herbs told me to be calm. I nodded thanks to Mandor, and Jasra did the same. A moment later I buttered the roll.

Several mouthfuls after that, I said, “I confess that I do not understand. You say that Melman was to play a part in my ritual slaying — but only a part?”

She continued eating for a half minute or so, then found another smile.

“It was too appropriate an opportunity to pass up,” she told me then, “when you broke up with Julia and she grew interested in the occult. I saw that I would have to get her together with Victor, to have him train her, to teach her a few simple effects, to capitalize on her unhappiness at your parting, to turn it into a full-blown hatred so intense that she would be willing to cut your throat when the time came for the sacrifice.”

I choked on something which otherwise tasted wonderful.

A frosty crystal goblet of water appeared beside my right hand. I raised it and washed everything down. I took another sip.

“Ah, that reaction is worth something, anyhow,” Jasra remarked. “You must admit that having someone you once loved as executioner adds spice to vengeance.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Mandor was nodding. And I, also, had to agree that she was right.

“I must acknowledge it as a well-conceived bit of revenge,” I said. “Was Rinaldo in on this part?”

“No, you two had grown too chummy by then. I was afraid he’d warn you.”

I thought about it for another minute or so, then, “What went wrong?” I asked.

“The one thing I’d never have guessed,” she said. “Julia really had talent. A few lessons from Victor, and she was better than he was at anything he could do — except painting. Hell! Maybe she paints, too. I don’t know. I’d dealt myself a wild card, and it played itself.”

I shuddered. I thought of my conversation with the ty’iga at Arbor Horse, back when it was possessing Vinta Bayle. “Did Julia develop the abilities she sought?” it had asked me. I’d told it that I didn’t know. I’d said that she’d never shown any signs… And shortly thereafter I’d remembered our meeting in the supermarket parking lot and the dog she told to sit that may never have moved again… I’d recalled this, but —

“And you never noticed any indication of her talent?” Jasra ventured.

“I wouldn’t say that,” I replied as I began to realize why things were as they were. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

… Like that time at Baskin-Robbins when she caused a change of flavors ’twixt cone and lip. Or the storm she’d stayed dry in without an umbrella…

She frowned a puzzled frown and narrowed her eyes as she stared. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If you knew, you could have trained her yourself: She was in love with you. You would have been a formidable team.”

I writhed internally She was right, and I had suspected, had probably even known, but I’d been suppressing it. I’d possibly even triggered its onset myself, with that shadow walk, with my body energies…

“It’s tricky,” I said, “and very personal.”

“Oh. Matters of the heart are either very simple or totally inscrutable to me,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.”

“Let’s stipulate simple,” I told her. “We were already breaking up when I noticed the signs, and I’d no desire to call up the power in an ex-lover who might one day want to practice on me.”

“Understandable,” Jasra said. “Very. And ironic in the extreme.”

“Indeed,” Mandor observed, and with a gesture he caused more steaming dishes to appear before us. “Before you get carried away with a narrative of intrigue and the underside of the psyche, I’d like you to try a little breast of quail drowned in Mouton Rothschild, with a bit of wild rice and a few amusing asparagus tips.”

I had driven her to her studies by showing her another layer of reality, I realized. And I had driven her away from me because I had not really trusted her enough to tell her the truth about myself. I suppose this said something about my capacity for love as well as trust. But I had felt this all along. There was something else. There was more…

“This is delicious,” Jasra announced.

“Thank you.” He rose, rounded the table, and refilled her glass manually rather than use a levitation trick. As he did, I noticed that the fingers of his left hand lightly brushed her bare shoulder. He sloshed a little into my glass as an afterthought then and went back and sat down.

“Yes, excellent,” I observed as I continued my quick introspect through the dark glass suddenly cleared.

I had felt something, had suspected something from the beginning, I knew now. Our shadow walk was only the most spectacular of a series of small, off the cuff tests I had occasionally thrown her way, hoping to catch her off guard, hoping to expose her as — what? Well, a potential sorceress. So?

I set my utensils aside and rubbed my eyes. It was near, though I’d been hiding it from myself for a long while…

“Is something the matter, Merlin?” I heard Jasra asking.

“No. Just realized I was a little tired,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

A sorceress. Not just a potential sorceress. There had been the buried fear, I now understood, that she was behind the April 30 attempts on my life — and I had suppressed this and kept on caring for her. Why? Because I knew and did not care? Because she was my Nimue? Because I had cherished my possible destroyer and hidden evidence from myself? Because I’d not only loved unwisely but had had one big death wish following me around, grinning, and any time now I might cooperate with it to the utmost?

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “It’s really nothing.”

Did it mean that I was, as they say, my own worst enemy? I hoped not. I didn’t really have time to go through therapy, not when my life depended on so many external things as well.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Jasra said sweetly.