Niobe was silent. If what the girl said was true, she had more talent than anyone had judged.

  Luna paused and stepped back. "There," she said. She had painted a huge seashell partly enclosing the figure. "Nude Grandmother on the half-shell."

  "For pity's sake!" Niobe exclaimed with mock annoyance, and Orb giggled.

  Then the picture moved in the air. It tilted, developed a frame, and moved into the cabinet. The glass doors closed.

  "I think your picture has been accepted," Niobe said. "You have earned the brush."

  "Oh, goody!" Luna exclaimed. "Thank you, Mountain King! I'll use it always! It's the best brush I ever dreamed of!"

  Now it was Orb's turn. She opened the cabinet and lifted out the golden harp. It was small, but exquisitely crafted, surely the finest instrument of its kind. She seated herself cross-legged on the floor, set the base of the harp within the circle of her legs so she could hold it steady, and touched the strings with her fingers. A fine chord sounded. "Ooo, it's truly magic!" she exclaimed. "I can really play this!"

  Orb paused a moment, mentally selecting a song. Then she began singing, accompanying herself on the harp.

  "I want to waltz in the wetlands..."

  Niobe was astonished. She hadn't known that Orb knew that song; she must have learned it at school. She was doing it very well, and the magic harp amplified both the sound and the natural magic she had, so that the background orchestra sounded loud and clear and stereophonic.

  Twelve years old! How well would Orb sing and play and project when she achieved her full proficiency? Probably well enough to turn professional, if she chose.

  "Yes I—will cry—I'll cry when the wetlands are dry," Orb finished and bowed her head. There were tears on her cheeks, and on Luna's and Niobe's too; it had been truly beautiful.

  Then the song sounded again—but Orb wasn't singing or playing. The cabinet was doing it. The song had been recorded, magic orchestra and all!

  The replay ended, and the cabinet doors closed. This, too, had been accepted. Orb had won her harp.

  "It's done," Niobe said, relieved. "Now we can go home."

  They started back. The bat cave had been turned off, and was now apparent as a concavely curving floor eighteen inches below the swinging bridge; the bat was a transparent light projection. The wand Luna had dropped lay on the stone; its long fall had been illusion. There had, indeed, been no danger.

  "To think I crawled on hands and knees!" Luna said ruefully.

  "As a challenge, it was valid," Niobe said, picking up the wand to replace it in the wand-holder. "Even illusions can hurt, as when we were blinded. Life is like that too; the unreal can be as important as the real, and sometimes it becomes real." She was consciously lecturing the girls, knowing that all too soon they would enter the arena of social and sexual awareness, where the pitfalls were indeed of perception.

  They crossed, not bothering to use the bridge, and took the tunnel to the next chamber. This was unchanged; there really was a river and a barrier.

  "That's a relief," Luna said. "I'd hate to think I went naked to swim through water that didn't exist!"

  "But now it's just water," Orb said, scooping up a handful and sipping it. "And no blubber monster."

  They waded in, the girls holding their instruments clear of the water as long as they could. There was a momentary flicker of light. Then Orb dived under the barrier and came up on the other side. She took a breath as she broke the surface—and screamed.

  Niobe halted at the barrier. "What is it, dear?" she called, alarmed.

  "I can't see!" Orb cried. "I'm blind! I'm blind!" She flailed about, dropping the harp, which sank to the bottom.

  "Wait, dear!" Niobe cried. "Relax! It can't be—"

  "Where am I?" Orb cried, still flailing. "How did I get here? Why can't I see?"

  Niobe exchanged glances with Luna, whose mouth opened in an appalled O. "The Lethe!" the girl whispered. "It's on again!"

  "And this time it's real!" Niobe exclaimed. "Something's wrong!"

  The lethal monster appeared, moving slowly toward Orb.

  "Get back out of the water!" Niobe cried to Luna. "I'll rescue her!" She took a breath, closed her eyes, and dived under the barrier. She was able to spot Orb by the noise of her splashing. She took hold of the girl and used the life-saving technique to haul her along. Niobe had to trust that her sense of direction was true and that she was swimming for the opposite bank. She did not dare open her eyes, or try to speak to her daughter; some water would be sure to splash in. She had no notion how close the monster was; she just had to keep them moving.

  She made it. She found the bank and hauled Orb out. She cleared her eyes, then shook the girl by the shoulders to get her attention. "Be still. Orb! You've been dosed with the water of Lethe, so you can't see or remember, but the effect is temporary. Soon you will see and remember. Just relax. Relax!"

  Slowly the girl calmed. "Oh, Mother," she cried, and hugged Niobe. "I'm so scared!"

  So she remembered the basic relationship. Probably it was only the most recent events that were gone.

  "It will pass," Niobe reassured her. "You're not hurt, just inconvenienced for a few minutes. Just sit here and don't move." Then she looked across the river. Luna was standing on the far side. "Are you all right, Luna?"

  "I'm all right," the girl called. "Should I cross?"

  Niobe considered momentarily. "No. Go to the other cave and see whether it too has been reactivated. Don't try to cross it, though!"

  "I wouldn't dare!" Luna said seriously. She disappeared into the tunnel.

  Orb's tears seemed to help clear the spell from her eyes.

  "Mother! I can see a little!"

  "Yes, of course, dear," Niobe said, expressing more confidence than she had felt. "Just have patience, and you will soon be back to normal."

  After a while that seemed longer than it was, Luna returned. "It's back," she reported. "I knelt at the edge and reached down, and I couldn't feel the floor at all. Then the bat came, and I ran."

  How did the illusion of a chasm become real, Niobe wondered. An eighteen-inch fall could not duplicate the effect of a hundred-foot fall. But she was sure that chasm was now there. The Mountain King's magic was no illusion!

  "You'd better come across, then," Niobe decided. "It's easier for you than it would be for Orb, and I think we can handle the mine-chamber better."

  "What happened?" Orb asked as Luna crossed. Evidently her memory had not caught up to the last few minutes.

  "We were crossing the river—and the magic came on," Niobe said. "I don't know why. It's as if we were suddenly considered thieves instead of worthy winners."

  "But we're not thieves!" Orb protested.

  "Of course we're not!" Then something occurred to her. "But maybe there is a thief, somewhere in here, and he activated the magic—and we got caught."

  "But we saw no one else!"

  "True." Niobe sighed; it had been such a good explanation. Then she thought of an answer. "One could have tried the first challenge, and set off more than one mine, and not retreated. That might account for it."

  Luna emerged from the water. "I got it!" she exclaimed, brandishing the harp. "I felt for it on the bottom, and there it was!"

  "Oh, thank you, Moth!" Orb exclaimed.

  "That's okay, Eyeball," Luna replied, smiling as she handed it to her.

  Niobe was startled in a minor way; she had not heard these particular nicknames before. She wondered how much of children's activities inattentive adults missed.

  They dressed and proceeded cautiously to the mine cave, half expecting to encounter the thief, but there was none. The cave was empty. They tested it by tossing a stone into the center and hiding their eyes.

  The explosion was horrendous. It shook the whole cave, and several more rocks dropped from the ceiling. The hazard was certainly back—and now the mines were truly destructive.

  Niobe looked at the one motorcycle on this side, the one they had ridden across on. Her mouth went dry. She had crossed this cave three times, once while blind—but she was supremely reluctant to do so again. This time the hazard was real. She and the girls could be blown up! The very knowledge of that could cause her to waver on the cycle and go astray. Already her hands were shaking.

  "Where's the thief?" Luna asked.

  Where, indeed! If the thief had done this by pushing on regardless, he should be here—either alive or dead. The motorcycle he had used should be visible, either whole or wrecked. But there was none—and all the other cycles were still parked in their places. There seemed to be no thief.

  Well, maybe the Mountain King was cheating. He might have had no intention of giving away his precious magical instruments, so he arranged to balk the girls' escape as if by accident.

  That angered Niobe. "Two can play at that!" she muttered. She picked up another fallen rock. "Watch yourselves!" she warned, and heaved it.

  There was another detonation. Again the cave shook, and more rocks dropped. As soon as the cave was quiet, Niobe picked up another rock and heaved it.

  "What are you doing. Mother?" Orb asked after the third explosion.

  "I am clearing a path through this trap!" Niobe said grimly. "A mine can't explode when it has already been exploded." She heaved again.

  "Oh!" Orb exclaimed, smiling. "How smart of you, Mother! Can I do it too?"

  Why not? "Yes you may—but shield your eyes."

  The girl picked up a rock and heaved, then turned away. She clapped her hands with delight as the mine went off. Children of either sex seemed to have a certain muted passion for violence, Niobe reflected.

  Before long they had cleared a broad channel across the cave. They tossed in a few more rocks, just to be sure there were no live mines left. Then Niobe ferried them across as before. She wasn't sure what would happen if they simply walked across and didn't trust it; the motorcycle was easy enough to use, now. Safely across, she parked it, and the three of them turned to the entrance/exit passage.

  But as they approached, a man came through it from the other direction. He was huge and hairy and ferocious, he carried a giant sledgehammer, and his eyes fairly sparked so that they threatened to set fire to his beard. "Thieves!" he roared. "You would rob the museum of the Vanir? I will destroy you!" He lifted the sledgehammer.

  "The Mountain King!" Luna squeaked, falling back. Something akin to a berserker rage flooded through Niobe. She stepped forward, sidestepped the swinging sledge, and slapped the man resoundingly on his hairy cheek. "Leave that girl alone!" she snapped. "She's no thief! You are!"

  The man could hardly have been hurt by the slap, but he paused, astonished, as he stared at her. "Clotho!"

  "Not anymore!" Niobe said curtly. Then she, too, paused. "How did you know me?"

  He set his sledgehammer down and leaned on the handle. "How could any man forget the face of the loveliest creature to grace the pagan realm? What do ye here, O divine one?"

  Niobe stifled a flush of pleasure. "Um, how long have you been asleep this time?"

  The Mountain King ticked off numbers on his fingers. "Twenty-five years or so. Why?"

  That explained it. He had been asleep all the time she had been mortal. "I returned to ordinary life thirteen years ago," Niobe said. "I'm here with my daughter and granddaughter. We did not come here to steal from you."

  The man glanced at the instruments the girls held. "If you speak for these, Clotho, I'll not challenge them. Indeed, me thought in my dream I heard the music of my harp, played in a manner it was Crafted to be." Then he did a double take. "A granddaughter—in thirteen years? Your body would madden any man's mind, but—"

  "By my prior mortality," Niobe said quickly. She gestured to Luna. "Your cabinet accepted the picture she painted, so—"

  "True. Then why the alarm?"

  "That's what I want to know! We were halfway out when—"

  "Tis not of my doing," the giant said. "I will have the truth of this. Follow me, Clotho." He strode into the cave, and his footprints glowed in his wake. He was angry.

  They followed, not bothering with the motorcycle this time; the glowing prints were their guarantee of safety.

  When the Mountain King came to the middle cave, he stepped into the water—and it evaporated instantly, leaving the floor dry. When he reached the barrier, a gate in it swung open to let him pass without pause. There was no doubt he was the master of this place. They continued to follow, awed.

  The chasm was there in the third cave, and the vampire bat alert. The King strode into it, and the illusion or reality vanished, leaving the cave empty. The tremulous light pattern that was all that remained of the vampire bat fled.

  They came into the display room. There was a demon with its finger in the harp-cabinet. Evidently that evil influence was what was triggering the thief-alarm; as long as that demon remained, no one could pass.

  "Ho! Loki's work!" the Mountain King exclaimed, and hurled his massive sledge as if it were a toy.

  The hammer struck the demon. The creature puffed into smoke. The cabinet exploded.

  The Mountain King retrieved his sledgehammer. The far-flung fragments of the cabinet imploded, re-forming their original shape, with a hint of the music Orb had made.

  "Go in peace, Clotho," the giant rumbled. "You and yours. My apology for this nuisance."

  "Quite all right, sir," Niobe said, somewhat taken aback. She hustled the girls out again. This time there was no problem in any of the caves.

  The instruments were wonderful, and both girls continued to prosper in their talents. By the time they completed school, each was as skilled as any Niobe knew. She was sure both would prosper in life, if Fate permitted. But there was the matter of the tangled skein that had not yet materialized.

  After Blenda died, the Magician Kaftan moved to America with Luna, apparently unable to face the old country in her absence. Niobe was saddened more by Luna's departure than by her son's, for she had actually been closer to her granddaughter. But she could not protest. Luna was a fine, levelheaded young woman, and she would take good care of her father.

  Then, after twenty-two years of their marriage, Pacian died. He was seventy-four, by no means young, but it came as a shock; somehow she had always thought of him as eleven years younger than herself, and she was only forty-six, physically. She had lived twenty-three years in her first mortality, and the same number in her second. It was as if she had finally completed the term set for her original love of Cedric. She still loved Pacian, but the intensity of it had eased over the years. Now she had raised her family, and was satisfied to meet the necessary severance of threads. She had seen Pace ailing, and had done what she could for him, never thinking he could actually die. Satan seemed to have no hand in this; the cause had been natural.

  After the funeral, she tended to retreat from participation in worldly matters. Orb went away on tour as a singer; indeed, she had been traveling about the world from the time she turned eighteen. There just wasn't much left for Niobe in the mortal realm.

  Then she received news that her son, the Magician, had also died. This was entirely unexpected; he was only sixty-three. Luna wrote to report that she now lived alone in the Magician's house, carrying on his business, and that she was dating the new Thanatos, exactly as the prophecy had foretold. Niobe had no stomach for that business. She kept her letters polite and left the girl alone. What, after all, had she expected of mortality—perpetual youth, bliss, and innocence? She was in as good a position as any woman to know better.

  She was chronologically eighty-six years old; she had outlived her time. Her comfortable, placid world had been replaced by modern high-tech, high-magic world. She was prepared to depart it with a minimum of fuss.

  But the following year, things changed.

  Chapter 10 - LACHESIS

  The spider descended before her on a thread of silk, then transformed into a comely young woman with hair so light it was almost white. "We must talk with you," the woman said. "Do not utter the name of him who must not know." She had an accent, but was intelligible.

  "Clotho!" Niobe said, suddenly remembering that moment a quarter-century before when she had drawn a refugee girl from a line in Budapest. "Lisa!"

  The woman smiled. "You have changed; I have not." Then she patted her hair. "Except cosmetically. I am eternally grateful for what you did, rescuing me from that city. It gave me a new existence, and I was able to help my troubled friends. They never knew I had—changed."

  "I understand," Niobe said. "It is nice of you to let me know."

  "But this is not a social call," Lisa said quickly. "We— have something very important to ask of you."

  Niobe smiled. Privately she was dismayed by the contrast between them. When she had selected Lisa to be her replacement, Niobe herself had been a slender beauty, while Lisa had been attractive but less stunning. Now, a quarter-century later, Niobe knew herself to be lined and dumpy; she hadn't seen any reason to maintain herself, the last two years especially. Lisa had remained exactly as she had been. What a terrible scourge mortal aging was!

  "If your question is whether the—unnamed one—has been interfering in my life since I turned mortal, I'm not sure. I can think of only one instance, when I took my girls to—"

  "No, no," Lisa said quickly. "Not a question. I—I have been selected to ask you this, because I am the only one of us who has met you. Lachesis and Atropos have changed—"

  "Terms are getting shorter these days!" Niobe remarked. "I was an Aspect for thirty-eight years!"

  "Yes, you were one of the great ones, and you dealt well with—the anonymous. I—we—had a difficult time. He twisted the threads without license, he confused us—"

  "He does that," Niobe agreed. "If I was proof against him later, it was because I had some hard lessons early! I'm sure I was no better than—"

  "Yes, you have had much experience. More than any other mortal. That is why we must ask this thing of you."

  This sounded serious! "Exactly what is this thing?"

  "You must come back."

  "What?"

  "To be an Aspect of Fate. We need you again."