See one coronation and you've seen them all. Sounds cynical and
probably is, especially when the principal is your best friend and his
queen's your inadvertent lover. But there's genetally a procession, with a
lot of slow musie, and uncomfortable, colorful garb, incense, speeches,
ptayers, the ringing of bells. They are tedious, generally hot, and
requiring of one an insincere attention, as at weddings, commencements,
and secret initiations.
And so Luke and Coral became the sovereigns of Kashfa, in the same
church where we'd fought almost-but, unfortunately, not quite-to the death
with my mad brother Jurt but a few hours before. As Amber's only
representative at the event-albeit of, technically, unofficial status-I
was accorded a ringside standing-place, and eyes were often drifting my
way. So I had to keep alert and mouth appropriate responses. While Random
would not permit formal status to my presence at the ceremony, I knew he'd
be irritated if he heard that my behavior was less than diplomatically
sound.
So I wound up with hurting feet, a stiff neck, and colorful garments
soaked with sweat. That. s show biz. Still, I wouldn' t have had it any
other way. Luke and I go back through some of the damnedest times, and I
couldn't help but think of them-from sword. s point to track meets, from
art galleries and into Shadow-as I stood there sweIteting and wondering
what would become of him now he wore a crown. Such an occurrence had
changed my uncle Random from a happy-go-lucky musieian, footloose and
degenetate, into a sage and responsible monarch-though I. ve only my
reIatives. teports when it comes to knowing about the first. I found
myself hoping it wouldn' t mellow Luke out all that much. Still-again-Luke
was a very different person than Random, not to mention ages younger.
Amazing what years can do, though-or is it just the nature of events? I
reaIized myself to be a lot different than I had been not so very long
ago, from all that had happened to me recently. A lot different than I'd
been yesterday, come to think of it.
During the recessionaI Coral managed to pass me a note, saying that
she had to see me, giving a time and a place, even including a small map.
It proved an apartment to the rear of the paIace. We met there that
evening and wound up spending the night She and Luke had been martied as
kids, by proxy, I learned then, part of the diplomatic artangement between
Jasra and the Begmans. It didn't work out, though-the dipIomatic part,
that is-and the rest kind of fell by the wayside. The principals had sort
of forgotten about the marriage, too, till recent events served as a
reminder. Neither had seen the other in yeats. Still, the record showed
that the prince had been married. While it was an annuIlabIe thing, she
could also be crowned with him. If there were anything in it for Kashfa.
And there was: Eregnor. A Begman queen on the Kashfan throne might
help smooth over that particular real estate grab. At least, that had been
Jasra' s thinking, Coral told me And Luke had been swayed by this,
partieularIy in the absence of the guarantees from Amber and the
now-defunct Golden Circle Treaty had held.
I held her. She was not well, despite what seemed an amazing
post-operative recovery. She wore a black patch over her right eye and was
more than a little reactive should my hand stray near it-or even if I
looked at it for too long. What might have led Dworkin to replace the
damaged eye with the Jewel of Judgment, I could not even guess. Unless he
somehow considered her proof against the forces of the Pattern and the
Logrus in their attempts to recover it. My expertise in this area, though,
was nonexistent. Having finally met the diminutive mage, I had become
convinced of his sanity-though this feeling in no way served to penetrate
those enigmatic qualities that ancient wise men tend to possess.
"How does it feel?" I asked her.
"Very strange," she replied. "Not pain exactly. More like the way a
Trump contact feels. Only it's with me all the time, and I'm not going
anywhere or talking to anyone. It's as if I'm standing in some sort of
gateway. Forces are moving about me, through me."
In an instant I was at the center that was the gray ring with its
wheel of many-spoked reddish metal. From the inside, here, it was like a
great web. A bright strand pulsed for my attention. Yes, it was a line to
a very potent force in distant Shadow, one that might be used for probing.
Carefully, I extended it toward the covered jewel she wore in her eye
socket.
There was no immediate resistance. In fact, I felt nothing as I
extended the line of power. An image came to me of a curtain of flame,
however. Pushing through the fiery veil, I felt my extension of inquiry
slowing, slowing, halted. And there I hovered, as it were, at the edge of
a void This was not the way of attunement, as I understood it, and I was
loath to invoke the Pattern, which I understood to be a part of it, when
employing other fotces. I pushed forward and felt a terrible coldness,
draining the energies I had called upon.
Still, it was not draining the energy directly from me, only from one
of the forces I commanded I pushed it farther, and I beheld a faint patch
of light like some distant nebula. It hung against a background the deep
red of port wine. Closer still, and it resolved itself into a form-a
complex, three dimensional construct, half-familiar-which must be the
pathway one takes in attuning oneself to the Jewel, from my father's
description. All right, I was inside the Jewel. Should I essay the
initiation?
"Go no further," came an unfamiliar voice, though I realized it to be
Coral w'ho was making the soiinds. She seemed to have slipped into a
trance state. "You are denied the higher initiation."
I drew back on my ptobe, not eager liir any demonstrations that might
come my way along it. My Logrus sight, which had remained with me
constantly since recent events in Amber, gave me a vision of Coral now
fully enfolded and penetrated by the higher version of the Pattern.
"Why?'. I asked it.
But I was not vouchsafed a reply. Coral gave a little jerk, shook
herself, and stared at me.
"What happened?" she asked.
"You dozed off," I replied. "No wonder. Whatever Dworkin did, plus
the day's stress..."
She yawned and collapsed back on the bed.
"Yes," she breathed, and then she was really asleep.
I pulled off my boots and discarded my heavier garments. I stretched
out beside her and drew a quilt over us. I was tired, too, and I just
wanted someone to hold.
How long I slept I do not know I was troubled by dark, swirling
dreams. Faces-human, animal, demonic, moved about me, none ofthem bearing
particularly cheerful exPressions. Forests fell and burst into flame, the
ground shook and split, the waters of the sea rose in gigantic waves and
assailed the land, the moon dripped blood and there came up a great
wailing. Something called my name.
A great wind rattled the shutters till they burst inward, flapping
and banging. In my dream, a creature entered then and came to crouch at
the foot ofthe bed, calling softly to me, over and over. The room seemed
to be shaking, and my mind went back to California. It seemed that an
earthquake was in progress. The wind rose from a shriek to a roar, and I
heard crashing sounds from without, as of trees falling, towers toppling.
"Merlin, Prince of the House ol. Sawall, Prince of Chaos, rise up,"
it seemed to say. Then it gnashed its I. angs and began again.
At the fourth or fifth repetition it struck me that I might not be
dreaming. There were screams from somewhere outside, and steady pulses of
lightning came and went against almost musical rolls of thunder
I raised a ptotective shell before I moved, before I opened my eyes.
The sounds were real, as was the broken shutter. So was the creature at
the foot of the bed.
"Metlin, Merlin. Rise up, Merlin," it said to me-it being a
long-snouted, pointed-eared individual, well-fanged and clawed,
ofagreenish-silver cast of complexion, eyes large and shining, damp
leathery wings folded against its lean sides. From its expression, I
couldn't tell whether it was smiling or in pain. "Awaken, Lord of Chaos."
"Gryll," I said, naming an old family servant from the Courts.
"Aye, Lord," it replied. "The same as taught you the bonedance game.
"
"I'll be damned."
"Business before pleasure, Lord I've followed the black thread a long
and horrid way to come calling."
"The threads didn't reach this far," I said, " without an awful lot
of push. Maybe even not then. Do they now?"
"It's easier now," he replied.
"How so?
"His Majesty Swayvill, King of Chaos, sleeps this night with the
ancestors of darkness. I was sent to fetch you back for the ceremonies."
"Now?"
"Now."
"Yeah Well, okay. Sure. Just let me get my stuff together. How'd it
happen, anyhow?"
I pulled on my boots, donned the rest of my garments, buckled on my
blade.
"I am not privy to any details. Of course, it is common knowledge
that his health was poor."
"I want to leave a note," I said.
He nodded.
"A brief one, I trust."
"Yes."
I scrawled on a piece ofparchment from the writing table, Coral,
Called away on family business I'll be in touch. and I laid it beside her
hand
"All right," I said. "How do we do this?"
"I will bear you upon my back, Prinee Merlin, as I did long ago. I
nodded as a flood of childhood memories returned to me. Gryll was
immensely strong, as are most demons. But I recalled our games, at Pit.
s-edge and out over the darkness, in burial chambers, caves, still-smoking
battlefields, ruined temples, chambers of dead sorcerers, private hells. I
always seemed to have more fun playing with demons than with my mother. s
relatives by blood or marriage. I even based my main Chaos form upon one
of their kind.
He absorbed a chair from the room's corner for extra mass, changing
shape to accommodate my adult size. As I climbed upon his elongated torso,
catching a firm hold, he exelaimed, "Ah, Merlinl What magics do you bear
these days?"
"I've theireontrol, but not full knowledge oftheiressence," I
answered. "They. re a very recent acquisition. What is it that you feel?.'
"Heat, cold, strange music," he replied. "Ftom all directions. You
have changed."
"Everyone changes," I said as he moved toward the window. "That's
life."
A dark thread lay upon the wide sill. He reached out and touched it
as he launched himself.
There came a great rushing of wind as we fell downward, moved
forward, rose. Towers flashed past, wavering. The stars were bright, a
quarter moon just risen, illuminating the bellies of a low line of clouds.
We soared, the castle and the town dwindling in an eyeblink. The stars
danced, became streaks of light. A band of sheer, rippling blackness
spread about us, widening. The Black Road, I suddenly thought. It is like
a temporary version of the Black Road, in the sky. I glanced back.
...gassy smell tif city rose up about us. A few pedestrians glanced
upward, barely seeming to note our passage.
Even as we flashed across a river, cresting the housetops ol
suburbia, the prospect wavered and we passed over a primordial landscape
of rock, lava, avalanche, and shuddering ground, two active volcanoes-one
near, one far-spewing smoke against a blue-green sky.
"This, I take it, is a shortcut?" I said.
"lt is the shortest cut," Gryll replied.
We entered a long night, and at some point it seemed that our way
took us beneath deep waters, bright sea creatures hovering and darting
both near at hand and in the middle distance. Dry and uncrushed, the black
way protected us.
"It is as major an upheaval as the death of Oberon," Gryll
volunteered.
"Its effects are rippling across Shadow..."
"But Oberon's death coincided with the re-ereation of the Pattern,..
I said. "There was more to it than the death of a monarch of one of the
extremes. "
"True," Gtyll replied, "but now is a time of imbalance among the
forces. This adds to it. It will be even more severe."
We plunged into an opening in a dark mass of stone. Lines of light
streaked past us. Irregularities w.ere limned in a pale blue. Later-how
long. I do not know-we were in a purple sky, with no transition that I can
recall from the dark sea bottom. A single star gleamed far ahead. We sped
toward it.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the Pattern has grown stronger than the Logrus," he replied.
"How did that happen?"
"Prince Corwin drew a second Pattern at the time ofthe confrontation
between the Courts and Amber."
"Yes, he told me about it. I've even seen it. He feared Oberon might
not be able to repair the original."
"But he did, and so now there are two."
"Yes?.."
"Your father. s Pattern is also an artifact of order. It served to
tip the ancient balance in the favor of Amber."
"How is it you are aware of this, Gryll. when no one back in Amber
seems to know it or saw fit to tell me?"
"Your brother Prince Mandor and the Princess Fiona suspected this and
sought evidence. They presented their findings to your uncle. Lord Suhuy.
He made several journeys into Shadow and became persuaded that this is the
ease. He was preparing his findings for presentation to the king when
Swayvill suffered his final illness. I know these things because it was
Suhuy who sent me for you, and he charged me to tell them to you".
"I just assumed it was my mother who'd sent for me..."
"Suhuy was certain she would-which is why he wanted to reach you
first. What I have told you concerning your father. s Pattern is not yet
common knowledge."
"What am I supposed to do about it?"
"He did not entrust me with that information."
The star grew brighter. The sky was filled with splashes oforange and
pink. Shortly, lines of green light joined them. and they swirled like
streamers about us.
We raced on, and the configurations came to dominate the sky fully,
like a psychedelic parasol rotating slowly. The landscape became a total
blur. I felt as if a part of me dozed, though I am certain I did not lose
consciousness. Time seemed to be playing games with my metabolism. I grew
enormously hungry and my eyes ached.
The star brightened. Gryll's wings took on a prismatic shimmer. We
seemed to be moving at an incredible pace now.
Our strand curved upward at its outer edges. The process continued as
we advanc.ed until it seemed we were moving in a trough. Then they met
overhead, and it was as if we sped down a gun barrel, aimed at the
blue-white star.
"Anything else you're supposed to tell me?"
"Not so far as I know."
I rubbed my left wrist, feeling as if something should have been
pulsing there. Oh, yes, Frakir. Where was Frakir, anyway? Then I recalled
leaving her behind in Brand's apartment. Why had I done that? I - my mind
felt cloudy, the memory dreamlike.
This was the first time since the event that I had examined that
memory. Had I looked earlier I would have known sooner what it meant. It
was the clouding effect of glamor. I had walked into a spell back in
Brand's apartment. I'd no way of knowing whether it had been specifie to
me or merely something I'd activated in poking about. It could, I
supposed, even have been something more general, enlivened by the
disasterpossibly even an unintentional side effect of something that had
been disturbed. Somehow I doubted the latter, however.
For that matter, I doubted any generality about the business. It was
just too right to have been a booby-trap Brand had left lying about. It
had confounded a trained sorcerer, me. Perhaps it was only my present
distancing from the vicinity of its occurrence that had helped to clear my
mind. As I reviewed my actions from the time of exposure I could see that
I had been moving in something ofa haze since then. And the more I
reviewed the more I felt the spell to have been speeifically tailored to
enfold me. Not understanding it, I could not consider myself free of it
with this knowledge either.
Whatever it was, it had caused me to abandon Frakir without thinking
twice about it, and it had caused me to feel-well-strange. I could not
tell exactly how it might have influenced, might still be influeneing, my
thoughts and my feelings, the usual problem when one is caught up inside a
spell. But I didn't see how it could possibly have been the late Brand
himselfwho had set the thing up against such an unpredictable occurrence
as my having rooms next to his old ones years after his death, from which
I would be prompted to enter his quarters in the disastrous aftermath of
an improbable confrontation between the Logrus and the Pattern in an upper
hall of Amber Castle. No, it seemed that someone else had to be behind it.
Jurt? Julia? It didn't seem too likely that they'd be able to operate
undetected in the heart of Amber Castle. Who then? And could it have had
anything to do with that episode in the Hall of Mirrors? drew blanks. Were
I back there now I might be able to come up with a spell of my own to
ferret out the one responsible. But I wasn't, and any investigation at
that end of things would have to wait.
The light ahead flashed more brightly now, winking from heavenly blue
to baleful red.
"Gryll," I said. "Do you detect a spell upon me?"
"Aye, m'lord," he replied.
"Why didn't you mention it?"
"I thought it one of your own-for defense, perhaps."
"Can you lift it? I'm at a disadvantage, here on the inside."
" 'Tis too tangled in your person. I wouldn't know where to begin."
"Can you tell me anything about it?"
"Only that it's there, m'lord. Does seem rather heavy about the head,
though."
"Could be coloring my thoughts a certain way, then?"
"Aye, a pale blue."
"I wasn't referring to your manner of petceiving it. Only to the pos-
sibility that it could be influencing my thinking."
His wings flashed blue, then red. Our tunnel expanded suddenly and
the sky grew bright with the crazy colors ofChaos. The star we followed
now took on the proportions of a small light-magically enhaneed, of
course-within a high tower of a sepulchral castle, all gray and olive,
atop a mountain the bottom and middle ofwhich had been removed. The island
ofstone floated above a petrified forest. The trees burned with opal
fires-orange purple green.
"I'd imagine it could be disentangled," Gryll observed. "But its
unraveling be a bafflement to this poor demon."
I grunted. I watched the streaking scenery for a few moments. Then,
"Speaking of demons..." I said.
"Yes?"
"What can you tell me about the sort known as a ty'iga?" I asked.
"They dwell far out beyond the Rim," he replied, " and may be the
closest of all creatures to the primal Chaos. I do not believe they even
possess true bodies of the material sort. They have little to do with
other demons, let alone anyone else...
"Ever know any of them-uh-personally?"
"I have encountered a few-now and then," he replied.
We rose higher. The castle had been doing the same. A fall ofmeteors
burned its way, brightly, silently, behind it.
"They can inhabit a human body, take it over."
"That doesn't surprise me."
"I know of one who has done this thing, several times. But an unusual
problem has come up. It apparently took control of one on the human. s
deathbed. The passing of the human seemed to lock the ty'tga in plaee. It
cannot vacate the body now. Do you know of any way it might eseape?..
Gryll chuckled.
"Jump off a cliff, I suppose. Or fall on a sword."
"But what if it. s tied to its host so closely now that this doesn't
free it?"
He chuckled again.
"That's the breaks of the game, in the body-stealing business."
"I owe this one something," I said "I'd like to help her-it."
He was silent for a time, then replied, "An older, wiser ty.iga might
know something about these matters. And you know where they are."
"Yeah."
"Sorry I can't be more help. They. re an old breed, ty'iga."
And now we bore down upon that tower. Out roadway under the shifting
kaleidoscope that was the sky dwindled before us to but the tiniest
ofstreaks. Gryll beat his way toward the light in the window and I peered
past him.
I glanced downward. The prospect was dizzying. From some distant
place a growling sound came up, as if portions of the earth itself were
moving slowly against each other-a common enough occurrence in this
vicinity. The winds beat at my garments. A strand of tangerine clouds
beaded the sky to my left. I could make out detail work in the castle
walls. I caught sight of a figure within the room of the light.
Then we were very near, and then through the window and inside. A
large, stooped, gray and red demonic form. horned and half-scaled,
regarded me with elliptically pupiled yellow eyes. Its fangs were bared in
a smile.
"Uncle!" I cried as I dismounted "Greetings!"
Gryll stretched and shook himself as Suhuy rushed forward and
embraced me-carefully.
"Merlin," he said at last, " welcome home. I regret the occasion but
tejoice in your presence. Gryll has told you...?"
"O the passing of His Highness? Yes. I'm sorry "
He released me and stepped back a pace.
"It is not as if it were unanticipated," he said. "Just the opposite.
Too much so, in fact. Yet there is no proper time for such an event."
"True,"I replied, massaging a certain stiffness out of my left
shoulder and groping in my hip pocket after a comb.
"And he had been ailing for so long that I had grown used to it," I
said. "It was almost as if he'd come to terms with the weakness."
Suhuy nodded. Then, "Are you going to transform?" he asked.
"It's been a rough day," I told him. "I'd as soon save my energy,
unless there's some demand of protocol."
"None at all, just now," he repIied. "Have you eaten?"
"Not recently."
"Come then," he said. "Let's find you some nourishment."
He turned and walked toward the far wall. I followed him. There were
no doors in the room, and he had to know all the local Shadow stress
points, the Courts being opposite to Amber in this regard. While it. s
awfully hard to pass through Shadow in Amber, the shadows are like frayed
curtains in the Courts-often, you can look right through into another
reality without even trying. And, sometimes, something in the other
reality may be looking at you. Care must be taken, too, not to step
through into a place where you will find yourself in the middle of the
air, underwater, or in the path ofa raging torrent. The Courts w'ere never
big on tourism.
Fortunately, the stuff of Shadow is so docile at this end of reality
that it can be easily manipulated by a shadowmaster-who can stitch
together their fabrics to create a way. Shadowmasters are technieians of
Iocally potent skill, whose ability derives from the Logrus, though they
need not be initiates. Very few are, although all initiates are
automatically members of the Shadowmaster Guild. They. re like plumbers or
electricians about the Courts, and their skills vary as much as their
counterparts on the Shadow Earth-a combination of aptitude and experience.
While I. m a guild member I'd much rather follow someone who knows the
ways than feel them out for myself. I suppose I should say more about this
matter Maybe I will sometime.
When we reaehed the wall, of course, it wasn't there. It just sort of
grew misty and faded away; and we passed through the space where it had
been-or, rather, a different analogous space-and we were passing down a
green stairway. Well, it wasn't exactIy a stairway. It was a series of
unconnected green dises, descending in spiral fashion, proper riser and
ttead distance apart, sort of floating there in the night air. They passed
about the exterior ofthe castle, finally stopping before a blank walI.
Before we reached that wall we passed through several moments of bright
daylight, a briefflurry ofbIue snow, and the apse ofsomething like a
cathedral without an altar, skeIetons occupying pews at either hand. When
we finalIy came to the wall we passed through it, emerging in a large
kitchen. Suhuy led me to the larder and indicated I should help myself. I
found some cold meat and bread and made myself a sandwieh, washing it down
with tepid beer. He nibbled at a piece of bread himself and sipped at a
flagon of the same brew. A bird appeared overhead in full flight, cawing
raucously, vanishing again before it had passed the entire length of the
room.
"When are the serviees?" I asked.
"Redsky next, almost a whole turning off," he repIied "So you've a
chance to sleep and collect yourself before then-perhaps."
"What do you mean, 'perhaps'?"
"As one of the three, you're under black watch. That's why I summoned
you here, to one of my places of solitude. ,, He turned and walked through
the wall. I followed him, still beating my flagon, and we seated ourselves
beside a still, green pool beneath a rocky overhang, umber sky above. His
castle eontained places from all over Chaos and Shadow, stitched together
into a crazy-quilt pattern of ways within ways. "And since you wear the
spikard you. ve added resources for safety," he observed.
He reached out and touched the many-spoked wheel of my ring. A faint
tingling followed in my finger, hand, and arm.
"U e, you were often given to cryptie utterances when you wete my
teacher," I said. "But I. ve graduated now, and I guess that gives me the
right to say I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
He chuekled and sipped his beer.
"On refleetion, it always became clear," he said.
"Reflection ." I said, and I looked into the pool
Images swam amid the black ribbons beneath its surfaee-Swa~iII lying
in state, yellow and black robes muffling his shrunken form, my mother, my
father, demonic forms, all passing and fading, Jurt, myself, Jasra and
Julia, Random and Fiona, Mandot and Dworkin, Bill Roth and many faces I
did not know
I shook my head.
"Reflection does not clari~," I said.
"It is not the function of an instant," he replied.
So I retutned my attention to the chaos offaces and forms. Jurt
returned and remained for a long time. He was dressing himself, in very
good taste, and he appeared to be telativeIy intact. When he finalI~ faded
there teturned one of the half-famiIiar faces I had seen eatIier, I knew
he was a noble ofthe Courts, and I searched my memory. Ofeourse. It had
been a long while, but now I recognized him. It was Tmer, of the House of
Jesby, eIdest son of the late Prince Rolovians, and now lord himself of
the Ways of Jesby-spade beard, hea~ brow, stutdily built, not unhandsome,
in a rugged sort of wayl by all report a brave and possibly even sensitive
f~llow.
Then there was Prince TubbIe of the Ways ofChanicut, phasing back
...and forth between human and swirling demonic forms Placid, heavy,
subtle; centuries old and very shrewd he wore a fringed beard, had wide,
innocent, pale eyes, was master of many games.
I waited, and Tmer followed Jurt followed Tubble into vanishment amid
the coiling ribbons. I waited longer, and nothing new occurred.
"End of reflection," I announced at last. "But I still don't know
what it means."
"What did you see?"
"My brother Jurt," I replied, " and Prince Tmer of Jesby. And Tubble
of Chanicut, among other attractions
"Most appropriate," he responded. "Entirely appropriate."
'.And so?"
"Like you, Tmer and Tubble are both under black watch. l understand
Tmer is atJesby, though I believeJurt has gone to earth somewhere other
than Dalgarry. ,.
"Jurt's come back?"
He nodded.
..He could be at my mother's Fortress Gantu," I mused "Or, Sawall did
have a second stead-the Ways of Anch, at the very Rim."
Suhuy shrugged.
"I do not know," he said.
"But why the black watch-for any of us?"
"You went off into Shadow to a fine university," he said, " and you
have dwelled in the Court of Amber, which I would deem highly educational.
Therefore, I bid you take thought. Surely, a mind so well honed-"
"I realize the black watch means we face some sort of danger..."
"Of course."
"...But its nature eludes me. Unless..."
"Yes."
"It has to do with Swayvill' s death. So it must involve some sort of
political settlement. But I' ve been away. I don' t know what matters are
hot just now."
He showed me row upon row of worn but still nasty fangs.
"Try the matter of the succession," he said.
"Okay. Say the Ways of Sawall are supporting one possible successor,
Jesby the other, Chanicut the other. Say we're at each other's throats
over the matter. Say l've come back into the middle of a vendetta. So
whoever's giving the orders right now has declared us under watch as a
matter of keeping things from getting messy. I appreciate it."
"Close," he said, "...but it's already gone further than that."
I shook my head.
"I give up," I said.
From somewhere there came up a wailing sound
"Think about it," he replied, "while I welcome a guest."
He rose and stepped into the pool, vanishing immediately.
I finished my beer.
...possess true bodies of the material sort. They have little to do
with other demons, let alone anyone else...
''Ever know any of them-uh-personally?.''
"I have encountered a few-now and then," he replied.
We rose higher. The castle had been doing the same. A fall ofmeteors
burned its way, brightly, silently, behind it.
"They can inhabit a human body, take it over."
"That doesn't surprise me.'.
"I know of one who has done this thing, several times. But an unusual
problem has come up. It apparently took control of one on the human. s
deathbed. The passing of the human seemed to lock the ty'tga in plaee. It
cannot vacate the body now. Do you know of any way it might eseape?..
Gryll chuckled.
.'Jump off a cliff, I suppose. Or fall on a sword."
"But what if it. s tied to its host so closely now that this doesn't
free it?"
He chuckled again.
"That' s the breaks of the game, in the body-stealing business."
"I owe this one something," I said "I'd like to help her-it."
He was silent for a time, then replied, "An older, wiser ty.iga might
know something about these matters. And you know where they are..'
"Yeah."
'.Sorry I can't be more help. They. re an old breed, ty'iga..'
And now we bore down upon that tower. Out roadway under the shifting
kaleidoscope that was the sky dwindled before us to but the tiniest
ofstreaks. Gryll beat his way toward the light in the window and I peered
past him.
I glanced downward. The prospect was dizzying. From some distant
place a growling sound came up, as if portions of the earth itself were
moving slowly against each other-a common enough occurrence in this
vicinity. The winds beat at my garments. A strand of tangerine clouds
beaded the sky to my left. I could make out detail work in the castle
walls. I caught sight of a figure within the room of the light.