"When will we kill him?" The boy's dark eyes were not those of an adolescent. The rest of him looked naive and young and innocent, but his eyes were those of a predator.

She slapped him. "Don't say that! Don't even think it this close to him." She laughed. "Not soon. After he succeeds. If he succeeds." Though not as loud her laughter was as wicked as that racketing around the globular cavity. "Who wants to inherit a disaster?"

The boy shivered. It was cold there, and gloomy, and something in the air reminded him of graveyards before dawn. "Why did he summon us?"

"Probably because he needs to proclaim his genius, and Lupo Provik doesn't feed his ego because Lupo refuses to be impressed." She palmed a bright plate on the corridor wall. "Father! We're here."

The show doubled in intensity. Lightning arrows thumped the wall near the corridor's end. Hologramatic monsters slithered the air, snapping and clawing, breathing fire and spitting venom. A black gondola manned by a skeletal gondolier approached imperturbed through the fury. Backlighting betrayed the hologram. The thing was a grav-sled and humanoid robot tricked up by the imagination of Simon Tregesser.

The sled nudged the wall. The woman stepped aboard. The youth hesitated, followed. The wing of fear cast one brief shadow upon his face.

His features hardened into naive inscrutability. He was learning.

One learned if one intended to survive amongst House Tregesser's ruling family.

The sled glided toward the heart of the cavity. A closed, transparent bell filled with dark smoke hung from the machinery there, which supported the thing inside and made of its will realities. The sled stopped ten meters away. Search probes tickled its passengers.