I rode up over the crest of Kolvir and dismounted when I came to my tomb. I went inside and opened the casket. It was empty. Good. I was beginning to wonder. I had half expected to see myself laid out before me, evidence that despite signs and intuitions I had somehow wandered into the wrong Shadow.

I went back outside and rubbed Star’s nose. The sun was shining and the breeze was chill. I had a sudden desire to go to sea. I seated myself on the bench instead and fumbled with my pipe.

We had talked. Seated with her legs beneath her on the brown sofa, Dara had smiled and repeated the story of her descent from Benedict and Lintra, the hellmaid, growing up in and about the Courts of Chaos, a grossly non Euclidean realm where time itself presented strange distribution problems.

“The things you told me when we met were lies,” I said. “Why should I believe you now?”

She had smiled and regarded her fingernails.

“I had to lie to you then,” she explained, “to get what I wanted from you.”

“That being…?”

“Knowledge, of the family, the Pattern, the Trumps, of Amber. To gain your trust. To have your child.”

“The truth would not have served as well?”

“Hardly. I come from the enemy. My reasons for wanting these things were not the sort of which you would approve.”

“Your swordplay…? You told me then that Benedict had trained you.”

She smiled again and her eyes glowed dark fires.

“I learned from the great Duke Borel himself, a High Lord of Chaos.”

“… and your appearance,” I said. “It was altered on a number of occasions when I saw you walk the Pattern. How? Also, why?”

“All whose origins involve Chaos are shapeshifters,” she replied.

I thought of Dworkin’s performance the night he had impersonated me. Benedict nodded.