W-what are you?"

Selena looked down at her rival. "What you should have been and never were. The Queen of the Witches.

For the first time, they were seeing the dream beneath the flesh.

Karla stared at the pointed ears that had come from the Dea al Mon, the hands with sheathed claws that had come from the Tigre, the hooves peeking out from beneath the black gown that could have come from the centaurs or the horses or the unicorns. Most of all, she stared at the tiny spiral horn.

The living myth. Dreams made flesh. But, oh, had any of them really thought about who the dreamers had been?

No wonder the kindred love her. No wonder we've all loved her.

Karla quietly cleared her throat to ask the question she suddenly hoped wouldn't be answered. "Who is going to war with Terreille?"

"I am," Witch said.

She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.

The music as always had a dark sweet luster, but it was more than ever like an endless beginning-a theme ever building to a climax which would never come.

To be human, that's what most of us long for. It is the human which has become myth to us.

A real devil among devils.