Lake tried to drop the knife, but the Raven’s hand covered his and, turning into a fist, forced his own hand into a fist that guided the knife down into the coffin, making Lake stoop as it turned toward Bender’s throat. The Stork held Bender’s head straight, caressing the doomed man’s temples with an odd gentleness. The Owl stood aloof, watching as an owl will the passion play beneath its perch. Lake grunted, struggling against the Raven’s inexorable downward pressure. Just when it seemed he must succumb, he went limp. The knife descended at a hopeless angle, aided by Bender’s mighty flinch. The blade did only half the job—laying open a flap of skin to the left of the jugular. Blood welled up truculently.

As if the stroke had been a signal, the Raven and the Stork stood back, breathing heavily. Bender made a choking gurgle; he sounded as if he might suffocate in his own blood.

Lake rocked back and forth on his knees.

The Owl said to his companions, “You lost your heads. Do you want his blood on our hands?”

Lake stared at the knife and at Voss Bender’s incompetently cut throat, and back at the knife.

Blood had obscured all but the “Hoeg” in “Hoegbotton.” Blood had speckled his left hand. It looked nothing like paint: it was too bright. It itched where it had begun to dry.

He closed his eyes and felt the walls of the study rush away from him until he stood at the edge of an infinite darkness. From a great distance, the Owl said, “He will die now. But slowly. Very slowly. Weaker and weaker until, having suffered considerable pain, he will succumb some hours or days hence. And we will not lift a feather or finger to help him. We will just watch. Your choice remains the same—finish him and live; don’t and die with him.”

Lake looked up at the Owl. “Why me?”

“How do you know you are the first? How do you know you were chosen?”

“That is your answer?”

“That is the only answer I shall ever give you.”

“What could he have done to you for you to be so merciless?”

The Owl looked to the Raven, the Raven to the Stork, and in the sudden quaver, the slight shiver, that passed between them, Lake thought he knew the answer. He had seen the same look pass between artists in the cafés along Albumuth Boulevard as they verbally dissected some new young genius.

Lake laughed bitterly. “You’re afraid of him, aren’t you? You’re envious and you want his power, but most of all, you fear him. You’re too afraid to kill him yourself.”

The Owl said, “Make your choice.”

“And the hilarious thing,” Lake said. “The hilarious thing is, you see, that once he’s dead, you’ll have made him immortal.” Was he weeping? His face was wet under the mask. Lake watched, in the silence, the blood seeping from the wound in Bender’s throat. He watched Bender’s hands trembling as if with palsy.