The glow became brighter, splintered in a sudden mass of broken rainbows which filled the salon with swaths of drifting color, a kaleidoscopic brilliance which gave the chairs, the tables and fittings a transient and enticing magic. And as with the furnishings so those who stood bathed in the splendor now streaming from the jewel; Kemmer, suddenly no longer the gross trader he was but now a figure of dignity as the harsh and somber shape of Carl Santis the mercenary took on hints of a chivalry he had never known from a tradition he had never suspected. Mettalus, the girl standing before him, Dumarest who now wore a shattered spectrum to decorate his face and hair and clothing. But of them all Marta was the most transfigured.

She stood like a priestess of some esoteric cult, hands lifted now, the effulgence of the jewel bathing her uplifted face and robbing it of the scars and marks of time. The skin had smoothed, the mesh of lines marring the flesh at the corners of the eyes lost in flattering glows. The lips had gained fullness, the chin liberated from sagging tissue, the bones of cheeks prominent above exotic concavities. The nose had thinned, become arrogant in haughty affirmation of youthful pride, age and dissolution stripped away to show the girl she once had been. The hair, too, had changed, now displaying glints and glimmers of vibrant hues, of sheens and enticing softness.

The light gave her beauty and she drank it and returned it through the touch of her hands, the emitted nervous tensions of her body which stimulated the symbiote she held into a higher plane of existence.

Chai Teoh gasped as it began to sing. "Grish! What-"

"Be silent, girl!" Santis rasped the command. "Be still!" His tone held the snap of one accustomed to obedience, but more imperious in its demand for attention was the song of the jewel itself. It lifted, keening, undulating, a note of crystalline purity which penetrated skin and bone and muscle to impact on the nerves and brain and the raw stuff of emotion itself. A song without words and without a predictable pattern but one which held love and hope and joy and all the promise there ever could be and all the happiness ever imagined.