those hairless things, but not a drop of humor in it. Too late then even if everyone else had agreed with me and been willing to turn back. We didn’t know it but we had passed into some other place.
“We reached our destination that day. It was a great curving span near the end of a spiral. The span and the whole spiral as far as we could see in either direction was gray and dead. Not a soul in view save where we anchored, and then they were like our hosts, cold and somber. Pale as skulls. The span itself was in worse shape even than Ningle, as if neglected for centuries. The Dragon Bowl of it had broken apart, and the beam and one little curved slice of that bowl just hung there in the air.
“They hauled the cases up for us, onto the surface of the span, and save for a coterie of staff, there was nobody about, just hundreds of statues in various positions, many of them crumbling, old like the buildings. His palace though was low and long and gleaming, and it ran half the length of the span. More dour, pale people greeted us, led us to our rooms, left us.
“By then even Bardsham admitted this was a mistake and not worth the money. What foolishness. He proposed we give our performance, collect our treasure, and leave as soon as possible. We still didn’t know who our benefactor was, or what he was. We were still hoping he was just a demented recluse. But in order to pretend that, you had to deny that the world looked and smelled wrong, you had to pretend not to see that the birds flying past were not a kind of bird you knew, and most of all you had to overlook that the creatures waiting on you weren’t terrified out of their wits.
“We set up the booth in a great hall of the palace. That night Bardsham performed Chilingana’s tales, and the Fatal Bride, and finally ‘How Meersh Lost His Toes.’ The lord was delighted by the stories. He sat across the hall from us, in an enormous carved throne with an odd drapery hanging before it that kept him in the shadows. When he emerged, one of his attendants always stood before him, bearing a pole on the end of which was a huge mask—of hammered gold, and bigger and broader than a human face, with a serene expression. So we never saw his true face, even as he proclaimed the first performances captivating. His fingers, though, were so long and slender that they looked like they had extra joints, and his hands were the same color and substance of that jewel the Agents had carried with them, as if it had been cut from him. He insisted on having his own personal musician play along with Tahman. It was an old blind man who sawed with a bow upon some wretched stringed instrument with a long neck and one peg in it. He was in fact quite good, provided you liked the one song he knew. He played while your mother danced between the tales, over and over and over, the same tune, slow, fast, whatever was called for, but always the same. I’ve only heard that tune once since then: the first time Diverus played for me. You remember that? That was why I raged at him. It was the most vile thing I could have heard. How could I think it was an accident? I thought Tophet must have sent him after me. I know that’s not true—I know it now.
“Anyways, we played for this hidden madman. The world is full of eccentric kings, lords, and emperors. It’s where all your stories come from, isn’t it? We decided he was just a little bit more demented than most. His span all but a ruin, a city of ghosts. Who wouldn’t be mad living there? Then one of his staff, who was helping us, let it slip that he was called Lord Tophet. That jewel was named after him. Grumelpyn, who heard it first and told the rest of us, said, ‘He thinks himself to be the god of Chaos.’ Well, so long as he paid, we weren’t going to care. We kept reminding ourselves that another performance or two and we were off back to Colemaigne and much richer for it, and he could think whatever he liked. But it was about to