She laughed again. "Hardly," she answered, and she moved in such afashion as to distract me entirely, causing the entire chain of events tobegin again on my part.

"Unfair," I said, staring into those sea-deep eyes, stroking that palebrow. There was something terribly familiar there, but I could notunderstand it.

"Think," she said, "for I wish to be remembered."

"I...Rhanda?" I asked.

"Your first love, as you were mine," she said smiling, "there in themausoleum. Children at play, really. But it was sweet, was it not?"

"It still is," I replied, stroking her hair. "No, I never forgot you.Never thought to see you again, though, after finding that note saying yourparents no longer permitted you to play with me...thinking me a vampire."

"It seemed so, my Prince of Chaos and of Amber. Your strange strengthsand your magics...."

I looked at her mouth, at her unsheathed fangs. "Odd thing for a familyof vampires to forbid," I stated.

"Vampires? We're not vampires," she said. "We are among the last of theshroudlings. There are only five families of us left in all the secretimages of all the shadows from here to Amber--and farther, on into thatplace and into Chaos."

I held her more tightly and a long lifetime of strange lore passedthrough my head. Later I said, "Sorry, but I have no idea of what ashroudling is."

Later still she responded, "I would be very surprised if you did, forwe have always been a secret race." She opened her mouth to me, and I saw byspirit-light a slow retraction of her fangs into normal-seeming dentition."They emerge in times of passion other than feasting," she remarked.

"So you do use them as a vampire would," I said.

"Or a ghoul," she said. "Their flesh is even richer than their blood."

"'Their'?" I said.