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her."
    She whistled a long stanza, harmonizing with herself. It was in hex rather than binary and faster than anything a webgoblin could do. I felt the spell reach out and tie itself around my mouth and voice. I wasn't able to make out a tenth of what she put into it, but I didn't need to. I was familiar with Cassandra's story. Apollo had given her the gift of true prophecy, with the caveat that no one would believe a word she said about her visions. While Atropos would never give me the gift of prophecy, binding my words so they wouldn't be believed when I spoke against her was completely in character. I bowed in acknowledgment of her cleverness.
    "Very nice. You've closed my mouth most effectively, Madame." As I spoke I felt a sensation in my lips like the tingling of a limb that has been asleep.
    Her smile broadened. "My goodness," she said. "I know what I've done, and yet when you say it, even I have a hard time believing it. How marvelous."
    "Isn't it?" I replied. "I applaud your inventiveness." The tingling came again, but worse than that was the sarcasm I heard in my own voice. It was so thick that I didn't believe me. Atropos had just put a sharp kink in the strand of my life.
    "Good-bye, nephew mine. I'll see you soon, I trust." She waved her hand dismissively, and I felt myself fading into nothingness.

Chapter Four
    I woke covered in sweat. When I tried to sit up the blinding pain in my knee reminded me of where I was. It also reminded me that my circumstances were worse than any nightmare. My meeting with my great-aunt had been entirely real. Likewise, my attempt to sneak into her demesne and steal the Puppeteer crystal and all that followed.
    The Cassandra curse was one of the nastiest spells I'd ever encountered. Even Melchior hadn't believed me at first. I'd been forced to go into his command line and program him to believe me on the topic. And I hadn't been sure that would work before I actually did it. Every other kind of writing I'd tried had proven ineffective at circumventing the spell. The problem was that it focused on belief. I could tell anyone anything I wanted to, in any way I could imagine, and I'd tried quite a few of them, but I was simply unbelievable in every possible form of communication. I couldn't break it either. Only the caster could do that. I was well and truly in the soup.
    I also had a bladder that felt about ready to explode. That at least I could do something about. Leaning over, I conveyed my distress to Melchior, who went to find our hostess.
    When he opened the door, dim yellow light flooded the room. It was low and domed like the inside of a yurt, the walls and ceiling lined with pictures cut from magazines. They were of all shapes and sizes, arranged without thought of straight lines. Color dominated rather than subject, dark reds and oranges for an effect something like brickwork laid by an insane mason. Yet it was somehow soothing. My futon was covered by a variety of patchwork quilts that smelled of a long stay in a dusty cedar chest. The floor was thick with rag rugs. Both bedding and rugs were of the same warm-brick colors as the walls.
    The troll couldn't have been far away, because she arrived within a minute or two of Mel's departure. She wasn't much more than three feet tall, but she was nearly that wide. Her skin was the brown of a peeled apple left too long on the counter. Her wrinkled features had something of that same shrunken apple about them. Her forehead was low, her black eyes small, her cheeks round and lumpy. A heavy jaw dominated her face, with broad upthrusting tusks that came to wicked points on either side of her wide nose.
    In short, she bore an uncomfortable resemblance to my great-aunt's familiar. But Melchior had assured me of her goodwill, and there was a strange nurturing quality about her. Someone from a gentler family than mine might even have called her grandmotherly. I found myself trusting her.
    She smiled graciously at me, exposing a row of