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one on the left was plainly meant for Gelert, at least half its great floor a single silken cushion, with heaps
more silks lying here and there for warmth, and a door leading into a massive bath walled and floored in
some dark sparkling stone that was warm to the touch. On Lee's side the bedroom was hung with darkly
rich draperies and tapestries, floored with a beautiful old woven rug in designs the like of which Lee had
never seen before. The bed had an ornately carved, curved headboard nearly two meters high, arching
up and over the head of the bed into an outreaching canopy, as if the de-signer had been afraid it might
start raining inside. The whole effect was lavish, but layered, an effect entirely dif-ferent from the polished
perfection of the hotel room in Ys. This place looked like people had lived in it.
My problem, Gelert said, is that it looks like people have died in it. He was examining some marks on
the furniture in the common sitting area. I'd swear that's a sword cut. Lee, does that look like a sword
cut to you?
She wandered idly past the chair in question, glanced at it. No.
I wish I could be so sure. Either way, no one's even pol-ished it out. The maintenance around here
leaves something to be desired.
Maybe it's something historic.
If it is, that just makes me more nervous.
Lee went back out into the central hall that led to the bal-cony, strolled down to its door, or where its
door should have been, and stood gazing out. "Why can't I feel the wind from outside?" she said, and
walked out onto the balcony. The few steps answered her question: the sensation as of a spiderweb
brushing across her skin told her there was some kind of forcefield between the window and the room.
For a few moments she leaned there on the parapet, look-ing across the valley to the palace built into the
cliff. After a little while Gelert came up behind her, got up on his hind legs, with his paws on the parapet,
and looked over.
"I've never slept in a theme park before," Lee said, glancing up at the nearby towers, spired in silver and
orichalc, clustered like candles in a stony candelabrum. "I feel like there should be somebody down in the
bushes, wishing they were a glove upon my hand, like something out of Shakespeare."
Gelert sat down again and said nothing for a few mo-ments. Finally, silently, he said, You feel it too,
don't you.
Lee didn't nod, but inwardly she said, There's a lot more here than shows at first glance.
Or scent, Gelert said, first or second. He breathed the late-afternoon air, looking toward the mountains,
closing his eyes to scent better. Lee followed his gaze. There was a claustrophobic quality to those
mountains, a feeling as if they were not entirely a natural barrier, not an accident of geology, but a wall in
truth, erected on purpose to keep something out ... or in.
Something there that's not showing, Gelert said. Can you feel it?
Yes, Lee said. Come on.
The two of them stood there for ten minutes, twenty min-utes, more. After that Lee stopped wondering
how long, and simply stood, bending her Sight against those mountains, willing them with all her might to
show her what they had to show. But they stood there, still as stone, mute as stone, and would not reveal
anything at all. They were rock, just rock; nothing else. They had stood there for more than a mil-lion
years, and had seen nothing worth seeing, and meant nothing in particular to anyone. The only secret they
held in them was gold, clenched there inside them as if in a fist; but even that secret was an open one, no
news to anybody.
Lee opened her eyes, let out a long breath of frustration. Anything? She said to Gelert.
Nothing at all. Which, as we both know, is wildly unlikely.
A glamour?
If it is one, as we understand it, I've never felt one so strong. It can't even be felt as such. Which
means it's pow-erful enough to override our perception of reality—
Or our perception of reality is being interfered with.
Always a possibility. Lee thought again of the roses, of how a power like theirs might theoretically be
enough, in some other universe, to subvert even the operation of a cardinal Virtue, of Justice herself.
If it is, Gelert said, we're screwed. The whole reason for us coming has been derailed; we've
effectively been neu-tralized.
The other possibility, Lee said, is that it's not a glamour as we understand it, but something else,
some other kind of power being bent against us. That our judgment of what we're Seeing or
Scenting is correct ... and we need to keep on doing just what we're doing now.
Gelert sighed. We're going to have to play it that way for the time being, he said. But I smell trouble
on the air that I can't pin down any more specifically than that. Something here is wrong. The air
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