her smiled widened. "I am back, John. Aren't you glad to see me again, after all these years?"

"You abandoned me," I said.

She shrugged easily. "It was necessary. I knew you'd survive. You're my son."

"Where have you been all this time?"

"Walking up and down in the Nightside, wearing many faces, learning the shape and condition of the current Nightside. It has changed so very much. It was never meant to be as dark as this. Or as tacky."

"Did you ever love me?" I didn't know I was going to say that, so bluntly, until I said it. The words forced themselves out of me.

"Of course. That's why I left you with your father. So you could be human, and innocent, for a while."

"Who are you?" I said.

And she said; "I am Lilith. Adam's first wife, thrown out of Eden for refusing to bow down to Adam's authority. Though, of course, you must understand, that's just a parable. A simple fiction to help you comprehend a far more complicated reality. You don't think I really look like this, do you? I am far greater, and more powerful. This is just another mask, put on for old times' sake. This is the face and body I wore to be your mother, John."

"Fennella Davis," I said. Even as I was still thinking, Lilith? My mother is a biblical myth?

"Exactly."

Madman peeked at her, past my shoulder, his voice shocked almost normal. "Lilith is just a projection into our limited reality of something much bigger. This female human body is just something Lilith wears to walk around in, like a glorified glove puppet. She's really..." He stopped, hesitating. "She is really ..." But he didn't have the words. Perhaps there were no words, in our simple rational language. Whatever his mathematics had enabled him to See of her, in his brief glimpse of the Reality behind reality, he still couldn't describe it to us. He started to shake and tremble, then to cry, and the bar and all the things and people in it began to shake along with him. It was as though an earthquake had hit the place. Tables and chairs danced and clattered on the juddering floor. The walls bowed in and out, the solid stone flexing unnaturally. Strange colours came and went, and sounds that made no sense. Distance became uncertain and unreliable, and things were both close and far away at the same time. Directions changed without warning. Madman's hold on reality was weakening again, and reality around him weakened as well. Merlin's great oak tree slammed back into the bar again, taking up the middle of the room; and then it was a tower built of stained and discoloured bones; and then it was gone again. Cracks crawled jaggedly across the floor, opening wide to show vast watching eyes. I could hear things scuttling across the outer walls of our perception. Things that wanted in.

"That's enough of that," Lilith said sharply.

And just like that, everything was still and normal again. Madman's projected unreality was immediately suppressed, the bar snapping back into sharp focus as Lilith's super-presence stabilised the world, and him. He stopped shaking and crying, and a little colour actually seeped back into his cheeks. Lilith looked at him thoughtfully.

"You Saw what mortal man was never supposed to See. Was not designed to cope with. Let me take the knowledge away from you, so that you can be ignorant and happy again."

"No," Madman said firmly, surprising us all. "Even a bitter truth is better than a comfortable lie."

"But the truth is killing you," said Lilith.

"No," said Madman. "I'm adapting."

Somehow, that thought was even more worrying. I cleared my throat loudly, to get everyone's attention.

"So," I said to my mother, trying really hard to keep my voice calm and casual. "You're Lilith. I know some of your story. Pew told me, a long time ago, when he was still my teacher."

"Blind Pew?" said Alex. "The rogue vicar? The Christian terrorist? Is he still around?"

"Yes," I said. "And if you interrupt me again, Alex, I'll have my mother turn you into a tea cosy."

"That's it," said Alex, snatching my empty glass off the bar top. "You're cut off. You get nasty when you've been drinking, John."

I ignored him, concentrating on Lilith. "According to the stories, after you were expelled from Eden you went down into Hell, where you coupled with demons and gave birth to all the monsters that have plagued the world."

"I was young," said Lilith. "You know how it