“They dwell far out beyond the Rim,” he replied, “and may be the closest of all creatures to the primal Chaos. I do not believe they even possess true bodies of the material sort. They have little to do with other demons, let alone anyone else.”
“Ever know any of them-uh-personally?”
“I have encountered a few-now and then,” he replied.
We rose higher. The castle had been doing the same. A fall of meteors burned its way, brightly, silently, behind it.
“They can inhabit a human body, take it over.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“I know of one who has done this thing, several times. But an unusual problem has come up. It apparently took control of one on the human’s deathbed. The passing of the human seemed to lock the ty’iga in place. It cannot vacate the body now. Do you know of any way it might escape?”
Gryll chuckled.
“Jump off a cliff, I suppose. Or fall on a sword.”
“But what if it’s tied to its host so closely now that this doesn’t free it?”
He chuckled again.
“That’s the breaks of the game, in the body-stealing business.”
“I owe this one something,” I said. “I’d like to help her-it.”
He was silent for a time, then replied, “An older, wiser ty’iga might know something about these matters. And you know where they are.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry I can’t be more help. They’re an old breed, ty’iga.”
And now we bore down upon that tower. Our roadway under the shifting
kaleidoscope that was the sky dwindled before us to but the tiniest of streaks. Gryll beat his way toward the light in the window and I peered past him.
I glanced downward. The prospect was dizzying. From some distant place a growling sound came up, as if portions of the earth itself were moving slowly against each other-a common enough occurrence in this vicinity. The winds beat at my garments. A strand of tangerine clouds beaded the sky to my left. I could make out detail work in the castle walls. I caught sight of a figure within the room of the light.
Then we were very near, and then through the window and inside. A large, stooped, gray and red demonic form, horned and half-scaled, regarded me with elliptically pupiled yellow eyes. Its fangs were bared in a smile.
“Uncle!” I cried as I dismounted. “Greetings!”
Gryll stretched and shook himself as Suhuy rushed forward and embraced me-carefully.
“Merlin,” he said at last, “welcome home. I regret the occasion but rejoice in your presence. Gryll has told you…?”
“Of the passing of His Highness? Yes. I’m sorry.”
He released me and stepped back a pace.
“It is not as if it were unanticipated,” he said. “Just the opposite. Too much so, in fact. Yet there is no proper time for such an event.”
“True,” I replied, massaging a certain stiffness out of my left shoulder and groping in my hip pocket after a comb.
“And he had been ailing for so long that I had grown used to it,” I said. “It was almost as if he’d come to terms with the weakness.”
Suhuy nodded. Then, “Are you going to transform?” he asked.
“It’s been a rough day,” I told him. “I’d as soon save my energy, unless there’s some demand of protocol.”
“None at all, just now,” he replied. “Have you eaten?”
“Not recently.”
“Come then,” he said. “Let’s find you some nourishment.”
He turned and walked toward the far wall. I followed him. There were no doors in the room, and he had to know all the local Shadow stress points, the Courts being opposite to Amber in this regard. While it’s awfully hard to pass through Shadow in Amber, the shadows are like frayed curtains in the Courts-often, you can look right through into another reality without even trying. And, sometimes, something in the other reality may be looking at you. Care must be taken, too, not to step through into a place where you will find yourself in the middle of the air, underwater, or in the path of a raging torrent. The Courts were never big on tourism.
Fortunately, the stuff of Shadow is so docile at this end of reality that it can be easily manipulated by a shadowmaster-who can stitch together their fabrics to create a way. Shadowmasters are technicians of locally potent skill, whose ability derives from the Logrus, though they need not be initiates. Very few are, although all initiates are automatically members of the Shadowmaster Guild. They’re like plumbers or electricians about the Courts, and their skills vary as much as their counterparts on the Shadow Earth-a combination of aptitude and experience. While I’m a guild member I’d much rather follow someone who knows the ways than feel them out for myself. I suppose I should say more about this matter. Maybe I will sometime.