The shrieks stopped. We waited for the crowd to thin, as I wanted a look at Prospero. People began to drift off, and Peters inquired of another which one was the prince.

Prospero was pointed out to us—a tall, handsome man, standing among his ministers and courtiers, chuckling with them as the boy was untied. He said something then to the man who had administered the beating—what, I'll never know, as my gaze drifted past him.

She was standing in a doorway to the building off to my left, hand raised to her mouth, eyes wide with horror and quickly narrowing to dam tears. Annie. She turned away without having seen me and retreated within. In an instant I was after her.

This building—to the west—connected the monastic quarters to the castellated citadel where Prospero and his entourage had their residence and revels. There was a main corridor on every level, sided by rooms larger than the cells though lacking the magnificence of those to the north or even the spaciousness of those to the east.

I sought with my gaze in both directions when I reached the corridor. I caught sight of her fleeing form turning—northward, to my right—where I knew a stair to be located.

"Annie!" I called, but she was already out of sight.

I rushed after, and when I reached the stair I mounted it two steps at a time.

North again, this time to my left, not so far ahead now, still hurrying.

"Annie!"

She slowed, looked back, halted, studied me in the light from the clerestories as I approached. Her brow unknitted itself and then she was smiling.

"Eddie!"

She looked just as I remembered her from the visions—hair a light chestnut, ghost-gray eyes—and then she was in my arms and weeping.

"I'm sorry," she said, "so sorry. I didn't mean it."

After a time, I asked, "What are you talking about?"

"This. All of it," she explained, gesturing. "Poe's sufferings. Yours. Mine. I'm sorry."

I shook my head.

"I still don't understand what you're saying."

"All my life," she told me, "I've tried to bring the three of us together—in one solid, real world. Not just my kingdom, by the sea. That's why we're here. Templeton was able to take my efforts and twist them some way. I still don't know how—"

"I do," I said. "That way is closed to him now. On the other hand, he apparently could use you directly—with drugs and mesmerism—as he did in Toledo."

"Toledo?"

"The pit, the pendulum. Ligeia said he used you to warp my senses—possibly even reality itself. I still don't know how much of what happened in that prison was real, how much hallucination."

"The pit and the pendulum!" she exclaimed. "You really lived through it? I thought it just a nightmare I'd had. I—"

"It's all right. It's over. It's done with now. You were tricked."

I wondered as I held her: I had never considered that our uncanny tripartite relationship might be based on unnatural efforts on her part. In truth, I had always seen Poe and myself somewhat as rivals for her affection. It had been a long time now, though, since I had borne my poor double anything but a species of fondness; I thought of him rather as my brother, and felt a fierce wish to help him defend himself against our common enemies. But that Annie might be the source of everything—

"He is forgetting us, you know," Annie told me, drawing away, producing a handkerchief from her sleeve, drying her eyes. "Not me so much, not yet at least. But already he has more than half forgotten you. And he doubts the existence of any other world than the one he's being forced to live in. He doesn't realize that he is now condemned to live in the wrong world."

"I've already seen evidence of this," I said, "and I'm sorry for him. But there seems little I can do about it at present. Whereas now I've finally found you, I can get you out of this madhouse, take you someplace peaceful. Perhaps then we can work out a way to help him."

"Not that simple," she said. "Not that simple. But tell me, who is this Ligeia you mentioned?"

I felt my face grow warm.

"Why, she works for Seabright Ellison," I said, "the man who set me on this trail. She seems a powerful mesmerist, possibly something more. Why do you ask?"

"Ligeia was my mother's name," she replied, "and it's such an uncommon name that it startled me, hearing it."

"Was she tall, dark-haired, more than a little attractive?" I asked.

"I don't really know," she said. "I was raised an orphan, like you, like Poe. I'd been left with relatives while my parents traveled abroad. When the relatives died in an accident I was taken in and raised by friends of theirs. They moved about. My parents never came for me. My step-parents told me my mother's name, but they had no likeness of her that I might see."

"What was your father's name?"

"I'm not sure."

"Was it Valdemar?"

"I—I don't know... . It could be. Yes, it might."

I caught hold of her hand.

"Come on," I said. "We can sort these things out later. Let's get out of this place, this country, this world if we have to. I've a secret means of leaving the abbey."

She walked with me, down the stairs, back along the lower corridor, out into the courtyard, where I found Peters and introduced them. Peters was no longer alone. He had with him now a dainty, dark-eyed midget girl he had just met, another of the entertainers. He introduced her to us as Trippetta. She was a dancer, and he explained that she was a Ree Indian from a village on the upper Missouri very near where he himself had been born, and possibly even distantly related.

I was loath to discuss our business before the diminutive lady no matter what her degree of consanguinity with my friend. Fortunately she was on her way to a rehearsal and bade us adieu moments later, though not before she and Peters had arranged to meet again later in the day.

"I don't know that you should have made that date," I said, after she had left. "I'm trying to persuade Annie to leave with us today."

We strolled through the courtyard as we spoke. The atmosphere was a bit more subdued than usual, and the sky had grown gray overhead.

"We cannot," Annie stated. "I hadn't a chance to explain earlier. But you see, it appears that Prince Prospero cannot match the offer Templeton and Goodfellow have made to Von Kempelen for his transmutation secret."

"You want to know something, Annie?" I said. "I don't really give a tinker's damn who finally amasses the most gold in the world. My only reason for making this journey was to get you out of here—and then to give Poe a hand, if we can. I am grateful to Seabright Ellison for his part in this, but he isn't going to starve to death if gold should suddenly be worth, say, half its present value. This morning's incident shows me just what a willful and capricious man Prospero is. I conclude that it is unsafe to be around him. And outside these walls the plague is doing its dance of death throughout the realm. The smartest thing we can do is to get out of this place right now and keep going till we're out of the kingdom."

She laid a hand on my arm.

"Perry, dear Perry," she said, "if only it were so easy. I care nothing about the gold either. Did you not know that gold is but the least part of alchemy? It is a game played for spiritual stakes as well. If Von Kempelen makes the deal with Templeton and Goodfellow, we will not be able to help Poe. Their involvement will result in his exile becoming permanent."

"I do not understand."

"It has to do with probabilities, and with key connections among individuals. Believe me, this is how it would turn out."

"You failed to mention Griswold," I said. "What of him?"

"He's gone back to America, I believe."

"What for?"

"I do not know."

We paced in silence for a time. Then, "Ligeia told me that Griswold may be something more than an alchemist or a mesmerist," I said. "She suggested he might be some sort of sorcerer."