'He has spoken somewhat of it.'

'Has he? That surprises me. What great good did he say would come of restoring an immense predator that regards the entire world as its hunting ground? A predator that respects no boundary, concedes no ownership, and regards humanity as, at best, useful and more often as a food source? Tell me. Do you relish the idea of your people becoming cattle for great scaled beasts?'

'Not particularly.' It was the only possible answer to such a question, but again I felt traitorous. Her careful words were sending streamers of uncertainty unfurling through me.

She laughed, delighted with my response, and settled herself more closely to me. 'Of course not. None of us do. I may be a White, but my parents were human.'

I struggled a little. 'But you set the Outislanders on my people, to raid us in their Red Ships. They burned and despoiled and Forged my people. That was not a good.'

'And you think I incited them to that? Oh, what a twisted view. I held them back, dear friend. I restrained them, and did not allow them to claim the lands they had conquered. You have seen Kebal Rawbread. Does he look like a man who carried out his dreams of conquest and plunder? Of course not. Who put him where he is? I did. How can you look at that and think I am the enemy of your people?'

I did not have an answer to that. I turned from her to stare at

the brazier. 1 felt again the tickle of my Skill-magic, and heard, or thought I heard, Thick's distant music. I told myself I imagined it for the Skill was dead in me. I felt the touch of her cool hand on my cheek and she turned me back to meet her eyes. I considered the white column of her throat. How soft it would be beneath my touch.

She held my eyes, speaking. 'Your Fool did not lie to you when he said the White Prophets come to divert history from its set course. I've done my best. I could not completely change the course of events, but I tried. The Red Ships raided your coast, but they did not claim your lands.' She spoke simply and reasonably. I felt her words close around me like a net. 'When traitors within your own land sold Kebal's merchants books of your magic, I could not prevent him from learning it and attempting to turn it against your folk. But some of the blame for that must fall on your own people. They sold the Skill-scrolls, did they not? And why? Because a younger son, of undeniably royal lines, desired more power for himself. 1 know you did not like Regal. He did not care for you. Some part of him recognized how unlikely a creature you were, how rare the occurrence of your birth in all the braided lines of time that might be. Almost instinctively, he tried to do away with you, so that time might flow in its allotted channel. Think of this. Regal traded secretly with the Outislanders. Had he come to power, that trade would have been more open. The Outislanders would have been welcomed to your shores, in trade, not war, for the mutual enrichment of all. Would that have been so terrible? It might have come to be, were it not for the machinations of your Fool. I will be honest with you. Such peace and prosperity would have demanded that your life-spark wink out early. But can you honestly say that the price would have been too high? Time and time again, you have been willing to lay down your life for your family. Was not Regal your family, as much a Farseer as you? If you had died but once, swiftly and mercifully, for him, would not that have been an honourable sacrifice?'

She had taken my view of the world and my family and the Six Duchies and twisted it into an unrecognizable form. The silky thread of her telling wrapped around me inexorably, becoming a new truth

that bound me. I groped after all I had known but a moment before, and found a flaw in her logic. 'If I had not been born, my father would have reigned.'

She laughed lightly, but her smile was gentle. 'Oh, you quibble, and you know it. Your father would have died, childless, in a hunting accident while he was still a young man. Over and over, I have seen it happen in my visions. Verity would never have wed, and would have perished from a fever the next winter. If you bad died, at the right moment, then in time the throne would have passed smoothly to Regal. He would have had his father's favour and guidance, and he would have become a great ruler. Yes, the line would have ended with him, but it would have ended splendidly, in peace and plenty, for the Six Duchies as well as the Out Islands. I have no reason to lie to you about any of this. It is far too late for that future to be, so what could motivate me to lie to you?'

I did not know, and yet I did. My Skill again fluttered at the edges of my awareness. It was a flighty, untrustworthy magic. I knew that; I had always known that. I felt her assure me of it. Pay no mind to it. 'You're deliberately confusing me. You contradict yourself, and twist my knowledge of truth. You're mocking me.'

She laughed, throaty and delighted. 'Of course I am. Just as your beloved Fool does. And you love it when he dances his words all around you, offering you a hundred ways to see the world. And so shall I delight you, now that you are mine. For I am taking you. I must- We must work together to put the world back in its true course. Not by your death this time, but by the life I shall give you. You will be my Catalyst now, a Catalyst a thousand times more powerful than Kebal Rawbread. And I shall delight you a thousand times more than your pitiful Fool did. For we are, at last, the perfect fit for one another. We shall be not just Prophet and Catalyst, but male and female, making the whole that turns the world. I will be to you everything that he secretly longed to be to you and could not. Except that I will be perfect, as be was flawed. You will come to see that you are not betraying him, but being true to the world and all that was meant to be. Taste the sweetness of the world as it was meant to be. Taste.' Her face had come ever closer to mine as she spoke, and then her mouth touched mine. Her lips were all

softness, her tongue a teasing coolness that bade my lips part. And she spoke true. A giddy sweetness, wilder than anything I had ever known, spread through me at her cool touch. I shivered as I put my hands on her shoulders, holding her mouth against mine.

Lust flooded me and the Tightness, the inevitability of the moment pushed aside all other thoughts. 1 cared not that her guards and maids watched us from outside the circle of candlelight; I cared for nothing except the gleaming white perfection of her body. Only one thing was still lacking in the future she offered me. I let my thoughts stray to it.

'Our child will be beautiful,' she assured me as she released me and stood up. 'You will delight in our son. I promise you this.1

I could feel the truth of her words and they went thrilling through me, like ice and silver in my blood. A child, she would give me a child whom 1 could hold and cherish. A child who would never be taken from me. She knew all that I most desired and offered it all to me. She created in my thoughts the future that I had always most longed for, tailored to my every need. How, why could I resist that?

She stood and lifted her robe over her head and let it drop to the floor beside the couch. The silken shift followed it. She stood before me, letting the yellow light of the brazier play over her body. Golden light touched her whiteness, gilding the curves of her body and face. Her white breasts were round and heavy. She lifted them to show me, weighing them in her hands, inviting me to taste them. Slowly she sank down beside me, and then leaned back, opening her arms and her thighs to me. 'Come to me. I know everything that you have ever wanted, and I will give it all to you.' She lolled her head back against the arm of the couch. Her colourless eyes looked through me and beyond me.