"Take it from me," Candy said, "I'm not an angel. Very far from it. And what's a Skizmut?"

"My people are Skizmut. Or they were, generations ago. The bloodline's been diluted, over the years. You have to go back to my great-grandfather for a pure Skizmut."

She looked melancholy; an expression which suited the form of her face better than any other.

"Why so sad?"

"I just wish I could go back into the deeps and make my home there, away from all this…"

Izarith cast her sad eyes toward the window, which was without frames or panes. The crowd outside moved like a relentless parade. Candy could see how hard it would be to exist in this tiny hovel, with the twilight throng moving up and down the street outside, all the hours that God sent.

"When you say the deeps," Candy replied, "do you mean the sea?"

"Yes. Mama Izabella. The Skizmut had cities down there. Deep in the ocean. Beautiful cities, made of white stone."

"Have you ever seen them?"

"No, of course not. After two generations, you lose the way of the fish. I would drown, like you."

"So what can you do?"

"Live on a boat, as close as we can to the deeps. Live with the rhythm of Mother Izabella beneath us."

"Well, perhaps the dollars will help you and Ruthus buy a boat," Candy said.

Candy handed Izarith a ten and one single, keeping six for herself.

Izarith laughed out loud, the music in her laughter so infectious that her daughter, Maiza, started laughing too.

"Eleven dollars? Eleven . It would buy two boats! Three boats! It's like eleven paterzem! More, I think!" She looked up, suddenly anxious. "And this is really for me?" she said, as though she was afraid the gift would be reclaimed.

"It's all yours," Candy said, feeling a little" odd about sounding too magnanimous. After all, it was only eleven bucks.

"I'm going to spend a little piece of this one," Izarith said, selecting a single, and pocketing the rest. "I'm going to buy some food. The children haven't eaten this day. I think you haven't either." Her eyes were shining; their joy increased by the silvery luster that was the gift of her Skizmut breeding. "Will you stay with them, while I go out?" she said.

"Of course," Candy said. She suddenly realized she was starving.

"And Maiza?"

"Yes, Muma?"

"Will you be kind to the lady from the Hereafter, while I fetch bread and milk?"

"Grish fritters!" said Maiza.

"Is that what you want? Grish fritters with noga seeds?"

"Grish fritter with noga seeds! Grish fritter with noga seeds!"

"I won't be long," Izarith said.

"We'll be fine," Candy said, sitting down beside the child in front of the fire. "Won't we, Maiza?"

The child smiled again, her tiny teeth semitranslucent, carrying a hint of blue. "Grish fritters with noga seeds!" she said. "All for me!"

O ver his many years of service to Christopher Carrion, Mendelson Shape had come to know the geography of the Twelfth Tower on the island of Gorgossium very well. He knew his way around the kitchens and the scrying rooms, he knew his way down through the vaults and the Black Chapel and through the Rooms of Tears.

But today when he returned to the Tower with the news that he had lost everything (the Key, Mischief and his accomplice in his theft, the girl called Candy), Shape was told by Carrion's lumpen-headed servant Naw that he was to report to a chamber he had never visited before: the Great Library close to the top of the Tower.

Dutifully he did so. It was the largest room he had ever entered in his life: a vast, round, windowless chamber, with stacks of books rising perhaps forty feet into the air.

Waiting there for his master to arrive, Mendelson was not a happy man. He was dressed in a long shabby coat that was lined with werewolf baby wool, but it didn't keep the cold from his marrow. His teeth wanted to chatter, but he kept them from doing so. It would not be good to show fear, he knew. Carrion would only be inspired to cruelty if he sensed that the creature he was talking to was afraid.

Mendelson had witnessed Carrion's cruelties many times. Sometimes he'd come to this Tower and it seemed there'd been somebody weeping or screaming or begging for mercy behind every door: all Carrion's handiwork. Even today, climbing the stairs to the Great Library, he'd heard somebody behind the stones, sealed in forever in some dark narrow space in the walls, calling out to him, sobbing for light, a piece of bread, mercy.

But this was the wrong place to look for mercy, Mendelson knew. The vaulted ceilings of the Twelfth Tower, which were painted with scenes designed to terrify, had looked down on many a dreadful scene, and none had ended—Mendelson was certain—with the granting of mercy.

His footless leg was aching, but he did not dare sit down, in case Carrion entered and caught him lounging. Instead, to pass the time, he went to one of the many tables in the Library, stacked with books that had presumably been brought down from the shelves because they had caught Carrion's eye.

One, set on a little lectern for easy reading, was a book Shape remembered from his childhood: P incoffin's Rhymes and Nonsenses . The book had been a favorite of his, containing many a rhyme and lullaby he still knew by heart, including the one he'd sung to the girl from the Hereafter. It was open to a grim little nursery song he had forgotten. But now, reading it, he was enchanted anew.

His lips moved as he scanned the words and it brought back a distant memory of his mother, Miasma Shape, sitting with her three boys—Nizz, Naught and Mendelson—reading aloud from Pincoffin's opus. Oh, how he'd idolized his mother! He read on.

"A song that the Devil sings ." That was a phrase that had lingered in his head over the years, though he had forgotten, until now, its source. He had many times wondered if he could ever hope to make such a song.

He let a sound escape his throat now. A low, menacing growl that was magnified by the circular chamber. Oh yes, that sounded like something to put fear into the hearts of his enemies. That was the noise, he thought to himself, that he would make when he found that wretched girl again: a sound so horrible, her wits would crumble.

He made a louder noise still, and from the top of the stacks of books, disturbed by the din, there swooped two winged creatures that descended to a point about three feet over his head and there hovered. They were the size of vultures and they had ashen, bloated faces, like monstrous cherubs.

"What do you want?" he said, staring up at them.

Their tiny whiteless eyes fixed on him for a moment, then they seemed to decide that he was nothing of importance and returned to their roosts, climbing in wide spirals to the top of the stacks. Mendelson returned to the final verse of the poem.

"Shape?"

The one-footed man turned.

The voice had come out of the shadows, across the room. No door had opened to let the speaker in. He'd been here all the time, watching Mendelson. Listening to him practice his growls.

Mendelson didn't move. He simply studied the shadows, waiting for the appearance of the person who had addressed him. He knew of course, who that somebody was. It was the Lord of Midnight himself: Christopher Carrion.

"Sit," the voice said. "Please, Shape, sit. Are you fond of books?"

The voice was deep and—even in the simplest of questions— was somehow tinged with despair. It was the voice of someone who had walked in the abyss.

Mendelson could see him now, faintly. He was an imposing figure, six foot six or more, his long robes black, which was why he had blended so well with the shadows.

He walked toward Shape, and the candles on the table illuminated him a little.

He had the most piercing eyes of any man Mendelson had met. They glistened in his bald, pale head. As always, he wore a collar of translucent material that resembled glass, which had been devised to cover the lower half of his head. It was filled with a blue fluid, which was now suddenly lit up by the presence of several snaking forms. They flickered in their fluid—some white as summer lightning, some yellow as sliced fat—weaving bright patterns around the Lord of Midnight's head. Plainly he took pleasure in their proximity, perhaps even a kind of comfort. When one of them brushed against his skin, he smiled, and that smile was so ghastly it made Mendelson want to run from the room.

He knew from what Naw had told him why Carrion smiled that smile, and what those bright shapes were. Carrion had found a way to channel every nightmarish thought and image out of the coils of his brain and bring them into this semiphysical form. He breathed the fluid, the flickering forms ran in and out of his mouth and nostrils, soaking his soul in his own nightmares.

His voice, reverberating through this soup of dark visions, was tinged with the power of those nightmares; their terror touched every syllable he spoke.

"The books, Shape…"