a, but her head was bent over the
cords she was weaving, and she avoided his eyes. He remembered now that
she'd called him a mandrake-man before, in a tone of pity. He looked
down at his body, sick in his mind. Vague bits of fairy tales came back
to him, suggesting horrible things about mandrake creatures--zombie-like
things, only outwardly human.

Sather Karf seemed amused as he looked at Ser Perth. Then the old man
dropped his eyes toward Dave, and there was a brief look of pity in
them. "No matter, Dave Hanson," he said. "You were human, and by the
power of your true name, you are still the same Dave Hanson. We have
given you life as precious as your other life. Pay us for that with your
service, and that new life will be truly precious. We need your
services."

"What do you want?" Dave asked. He couldn't fully believe what he'd
heard, but there had been too many strange things to let him disbelieve,
either. If they had made him a mandrake-man, then by what little he
could remember and guess, they could make him obey them.

"Look out the window--at the sky," Sather Karf ordered.

Dave looked. The sunset colors were still vivid. He stepped forward and
peered through the crystalline glass. Before him was a city, bathed in
orange and red, towering like the skyline of a dozen cities he had
seen--and yet; not like any. The buildings were huge and many-windowed.
But some were straight and tall, some were squat and fairy-colored and
others blossomed from thin stalks into impossibly bulbous, minareted
domes, like long-stemmed tulips reproduced in stone. Haroun-al-Rashid
might have accepted the city, but Mayor Wagner could never have believed
in it.

"Look at the sky," the old man suggested again, and there was no mockery
in his voice now.

Dave looked up obediently.

The sunset colors were not sunset. The sun was bright and blinding
overhead, surrounded by reddish clouds, glaring down on the fairy city.
The sky was--blotchy. It was daylight, but through the clouds bright
stars were shining. A corner of the horizon was winter blue; a whole
sweep of it was dead, featureless black. It was a nightmare sky, an
impossible sky. Dave's eyes bulged as he looked at it.

He turned back to Sather Karf. "What--what's the matter with it?"

"What indeed?" There was bitterness and fear in the old man's voice. In
the corner of the room, Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fear
and worry in her eyes before she looked back to