“Forgive me, Master,” I said, “but you seem to be doing very well on your own, and to have your tomes to write, your poems, your songs. What do you need me for?”

“To look on me,” he said softly, his eyebrows rising. “To look on me and forgive.”

Silence once more. He turned to the fire. They all did. I put my head back against the hardwood carving, and gazed off thinking of all this, and remembering other ghosts I’d known, and a dark fear gripped me, a fear of being dead and earthbound, and then it seemed not unlikely that all intelligent beings of the whole world were locked in some sort of dance with the physical. Maybe those who rose into the Light simply died, and the universe beyond this world was silent. I could drive myself mad contemplating a great nothingness filled with a billion pinpoints of light and millions of drifting planets generating their myriad biological kingdoms of insect, animal, sentient witness.

“This is the point,” said Gremt. “Memnoch waits and watches and he might not make his move again for a hundred years. But don’t forget ever that he is there. And don’t forget Rhoshamandes. Best do away with Rhoshamandes.”

“No,” said Teskhamen as if he couldn’t stop himself.

“Well, why not?” asked Gremt. He looked at me again. “And don’t underestimate the rebels out there who want to topple you for the sheer sake of doing it. And don’t, don’t ever underestimate Amel!”

A low moan came from Magnus.

“How at times like this do I wish I were a musician, because music is the only fit vehicle for the emotions I feel. I died the night I made you, and what a fool I was to do it, to die in that fire of my own making, and not to have had the courage to embrace you, love you, travel the Devil’s Road with you, my ancient body the eager pupil to your lordly newborn strength! Ah, the things we do. What are we that we can make such great blunders without the slightest realization of what we are doing? What is man that he is so mindful of himself and knows so little of the consequences of what he does!”

He rose to his feet and drew near to me, and in a flash I again felt as surely as I saw it that he ceased to be the blond-haired male of perfect proportions and became the very image of the monster I had known.

It took all my resolve not to get up and move away from him. He came close to me, the vivid embodiment of the gaunt, wraithlike being he’d been on the night of my making, except for his clothes which were dark and ragged and shapeless, with leggings like bandages and his eyes fiercely black, black as his hair.