She slipped out of bed and crept to her dressing table. Her hands shaking, she struck a match, but her candle blossomed into golden light before the match even caught. She whirled, examining her bedroom by its friendly glow. The room, lit by the single candle flame, seemed full of shadow and menacing beyond words.

“You told me to get out of your room,” noted Marak’s voice behind her. “Look in the other room, the one you see in your mirror.”

Kate turned to face the tall mirror on her dressing table. What she saw could not possibly be. She put a hand on her bedpost to steady herself. The reflection reached out a hand and clutched its bedpost, too. A hand with six fingers. Marak stood facing her in the old tarnished mirror. Kate’s own image was gone.

What Marak was, Kate didn’t know, but he couldn’t be a human, not with that big, bony head and tough, wiry body. The slightly bowed legs and large, knotted hands conveyed the idea of strength without grace. He was wearing a black shirt, breeches, and boots, but he had left the riding cloak at home, and his high, twisted shoulder showed to advantage. His face and hands were a ghastly pale gray, and his lips and fingernails were dark tan—the colors, Kate thought, shuddering, of a corpse pulled out of the water. His dull, straight hair fell, all one length, to his twisted shoulders. Most of it was a very light beige, but over one eye a coal-black patch grew back from the forehead, the long black wisps overlaying the pale hair like a spider’s legs. His ears rose to a sharp point that flopped over and stuck out through that rough hair like the ears of a terrier dog.