“ ‘I’m sure,’ said Arion with faint disgust. ‘And that’s made you happy.’

“ ‘Supremely happy. I drank my fill from the last one, and that was the finest part of it. No. I take that back. The fight was the finest part of it, killing them before they could draw their weapons and make a nasty hole in my body! It was divinely exciting. It made me think I should fight more often, that it’s not enough to kill.’

“Arion shook his head wearily. ‘You should talk more elegantly for your fledgling. Tell him a few rules.’

“ ‘What rules?’ she inquired. She continued to stride back and forth, almost to the windows and then again to the murals, her eyes sweeping the room around her and then seeming to drift over the stars.

“ ‘Oh, all right. Rules,’ she said. ‘You never disclose to any mortal what you are or what we are. How’s that for a rule? You never kill one of our kind. Is that enough for you, Arion? I don’t know that I remember anything else.’

“ ‘You know you do,’ he said. He too was looking at the chessboard. He made a move with his queen.

“ ‘You cover up the kill as to bring no notice to yourself,’ she said with a flair, ‘and always, always!’ she stopped and stared at me, pointing her finger in a declarative manner. ‘Always, you respect your Maker as your Master, and to strike out at your Maker, your Master, is to merit destruction at his or her hands. How’s that?’

“ ‘That’s all very good,’ said the Old Man in his deep bass with his jowls trembling. He squeezed my shoulder and smiled at me with his big loose mouth. ‘Now give him the warnings. He needs warnings.’

“ ‘Such as what!’ said Petronia disgustedly. ‘Don’t be scared of your own shadow!’ she said pointedly. ‘Don’t act like you’re old when you’re immortal! What else?’

“ ‘The Talamasca, tell him about the Talamasca,’ said the Old Man, nodding at me, mouth turned up in the manner of a fish. ‘They know about us, they do!’ he said with an emphatic nod. ‘And you mustn’t ever fall for their blandishments. Do you know that word, my son? They flatter you with their curiosity, which is what they do to everyone! Flattery is their calling card. But you must never yield to them. They’re a secret order of psychics and magicians, and they want us! They want to lock us up in their castles here in Europe and study us in their laboratories as though we were rats!’

“I was speechless. I tried to wipe my mind clean of all thought of Stirling. But the Old Man was peering at me in a probing fashion.