“Neither,” she said. “For I, too, am an admirer of grace-and a good jest.”

“Mother,” I said, “just what's going on?”

“Whatever do you mean, Merlin?” she replied.

“I left this place a long time ago. You sent a demon to find me and take care of me. Presumably, it could detect someone of the blood of Amber. So there was some confusion between myself and Luke. So it settled by taking care of both of us-until Luke began his periodic attempts to kill me. Then it protected me from Luke and tried to determine which of us was the proper party. It even Lived with Luke for a time, and later pursued me. I should have guessed at something of this because it was so eager to learn my mother's name. Apparently, Luke was just as closemouthed about his parentage.”

She laughed.

“It makes a beautiful picture,” she began. “Little Jasra and the Prince of Darkness—”

“Don't try to change the subject. Think how embarrassing that is for a grown man-his mother sending demons to look after him.”

“1'he singular. It was just one demon, dear.”

“Who cares? The principle's the same. Where do you get off with this protective business? I resent—”

“The ty'iga probably saved your life on more than one occasion, Merlin.”

“Well, yes. But—”

“You'd rather be dead than protected? Just because it was coming from me?”

“That's not the point!”

“Then what is the point?”

“It seems you just assumed I couldn't take care of myself, and—”

“Well, you couldn't.”

“But you had no way of knowing that. I resented your starting with the assumption that I needed chaperoning in Shadow, that I was naive, gullible, careless—”

“I suppose it would hurt your flings if I said that you were, going to a place as different from the Courts as that Shadow is.”

“Yes, I can take care of myself!”

“You weren't doing that great a job of it. But you are making a number of unwarranted assumptions yourself. What makes you think that the reasons you gave are the only possible ones for my taking such an action?”

“Okay. Tell me that you knew that Luke was going to try to kill me every April thirtieth. And if the answer is yes, why didn't you just tell me?”

“I did not know that Luke was going to try to kill you every April thirtieth.”

I turned away. I clenched my fists and relaxed them. “So you just did it for the hell of it?”

“Merlin, why do you find it so difficult to admit that other people might sometimes know things you don't?” “Start with their . unwillingness to tell me these things.”

She was silent a long moment. Then, “I'm afraid there is something to what you say,” she replied. “But there were strong reasons for not talking of such matters.”

“Then start with the inability to tell me. Tell me now why you didn't trust me then.”

“It wasn't a matter of trust.”

“Is it okay to tell me now what it was?” Another, longer silence followed.

“No,” she finally said “Not yet.”

I turned toward her, keeping my features composed and my voice level.

“Then nothing has changed,” I said, “nor ever shall. You still do not trust me.”

“That is not true,” she answered, glancing at Suhuy. “It is just that this is not the proper time or the proper place to go into these matters.”

“Might I fetch you a drink or something to eat, Dara?” Suhuy said immediately.

“Thank you no,” she replied. “I cannot stay much longer.”

“Mother, tell me, then, something about the ty'iga.” “What do you wish to know?”

“You conjured it from someplace beyond the Rim.” “That is cornect.”

“Such beings are bodiless themselves, but capable of taking over a living host for their own purposes.”

“Yes.”

“Supposing such a being took over the body of a person at or near the moment of death, making it the sole animating spirit and controlling intelligence?”

“Interesting. Is this a hypothetical question?”

“No. It's really happened with the one you sent after me. It doesn't seem able to quit that body now. Why not?”

“I am not really certain,” she said.

“It is trapped now,” Suhuy offered. “It can only come and go by reacting with a resident intelligence.”

“The body, with the ty' iga in control, recovered from the illness that killed its consciousness,” I said. “You mean it's stuck there now for life?”

“Yes. So far as I know.”

“Then tell me this: Will it be released when that body dies, or will it die with it?”

“It could go either way,” he replied. “But the longer it remains in the body, the more likely it is that it will perish along with it.”

I looked back at my mother.

“There you have the end of its story,” I stated. She shrugged.

“I've done with this one and released it,” she said, “and one can always conjure another should the need arise.”

“Don't do it,” I told her.

“I shan't,” she said. “There is no need to, now.” “But if you thought there were, you would?”

“A mother tends to value her son's safety, whether the son likes it or not.”

I raised my left hand, extending the forefinger in an angry gesture, when I noticed that I was wearing a bright bracelet-it seemed an almost-hologramatic representation of a woven cord. I lowered my hand, bit back my first response, and said, “You know my feelings now.”

“I knew them a long time ago,” she said. “Let us dine at the Ways of Sawall, half a turning hence, purplesky. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Till then. Good turning, Suhuy.” “Good turning, Dara.”

She took three paces and was gone, as etiquette prescribed, out the same way by which she had entered.

I turned and strode to the pool's edge, stared into its depths, felt the muscles in my shoulders slowly unknot. Jasra and Julia were down there now, back in the citadel of the Keep, doing something arcane in the lab. And then the strands were flowing over them, some cruel truth beyond all order and beauty, beginning to form themselves into a mask of fascinating, frightening proportion.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Family,” Suhuy said, “intrigues and maddens. You are feeling the tyranny of affection at the moment, are you not?”

I nodded.

“Something Mark Twain said about being able to choose your friends but not your relatives,” I answered. “I do not know what they are up to, though I have

my suspicions,” he said. “There is nothing to do now but rest and wait. I would like to hear more of your story.”

“Thanks, Uncle. Yeah,” I said. “Why not?”

So I gave him all the rest of my tale. Partway through it, we adjourned to the kitchen for further sustenance, then took another way to a floating balcony above a lime-colored ocean breaking upon pink rocks and beaches under a twilit or otherwise indigo sky without stars. There, I finished my telling.

“This is more than a little interesting,” he said, at last.

“Oh? Do you see something in it all that I don't?” I asked.

“You've given me too much to consider for me to give you a hasty judgment,” he said. “Let us leave it at that for now.”

“Very well.”

I leaned on the rail, looked down at the waters.

“You need rest,” he said after a time.

“I guess I do.”

“Come, I'll show you to your room.”

He extended a hand and I took hold of it. Together, we sank through the floor.

And so I slept, surrounded by tapestries and heavy drapes, in a doorless chamber in the Ways of Suhuy. It might have been in a tower, as I could hear the winds passing beyond the walls. Sleeping, I dreamt...

I was back in the castle Amber, walking the sparkling length of the Corridor of Mirrors. Tapers flickered in tall holders. My footsteps made no sound. The mirrors came in all manner of shapes. They covered the walls at either hand, big ones, little ones. I passed myself within their depths, reflected, distorted, sometimes re-reflected...