Luck in the Shadows

combination. Shaking his head, he said, "It's good to have you back—sort of."
    "Sort of good or sort of back?" Seregil countered, managing a semblance of his familiar lopsided grin in spite of the beard.
    "Sort of both," said Alec.
    "And I sort of thank you, all of you, for your good work tonight on my behalf," Seregil said, clasping hands with them. "Things were beginning to look a bit grim in that cell. Between the four of us, we should be able to sort things out soon enough."
    A crushing weariness settled over Seregil as he went back downstairs. Collapsing gratefully on Thero's clean, narrow bed, he hadn't the strength left to pull off his shoes.
    It's the magic , he thought, drifting off to sleep. Damn stuff always wears me out.
    Exhausted as he was, the night was not a peaceful one. Tossing restlessly, he fought his way through a
    parade of uneasy dreams. At first they were only fragmented glimpses of the past few days-a distorted event, repetitious snippets of conversation, faces of no consequence looming again and again. Gradually, however, the images began to coalesce.
    He was still in Thero's body, riding on horseback through the city. It was dark and he was lost. The street markers were gone, the lamps unlit on their hooks. Frustrated and a little frightened,he pushed on at a gallop.
    His horse had no head; the reins passed over a smooth, glossy hump and disappeared somewhereunderneath the animal's chest.
    I can't stop it anyway, he thought. Letting go of the reins, he clung to the saddlebow.
    Flecked with sweat, the strange creature thundered for hours, carrying him down one unfamiliar street after another until an owl flew up beneath its feet. Startled, the horse reared and threw him,then disappeared into the surrounding darkness.
    Looking up, he found himself at the gate of Red Tower Prison.
    Enough! I'm getting my own body back right now! he thought angrily, floating up from the groundand soaring to the roof of the prison.
    It felt wonderful to fly, and he circled the Tower a few times, savoring it. The ships in the harborwere all on fire, however, and this disturbed him greatly. Diving like a swallow, he darted in through a hole in the prison roof.
    It was dark here, too. Stumbling through the blackness, he spied a glimmer of light ahead. It came through the grille of a cell door. The door was locked but the wood turned to red butterflies at his touch. Passing through their gentle resistance, he stepped into a fiery brightness and threw his arm up to shield his eyes.
    His true body stood in the center of the room, naked except for the crawling mass of tiny,spider-shaped flames that encased it from the neck down.
    They should be gone! he thought, repulsed by the sight.
    His body raised a hand to its chest, saying with Thero's voice, "They're coming from here."
    "I'll stop them."
    Approaching cautiously, Seregil brushed at the flame creatures on the chest. They fell away at histouch, revealing a bright blue eye glaring hatefully from a bloody hole in the chest just over the breastbone. Recoiling, Seregil watched in mounting horror as the skin around the eye began to twitch and stretch. The flame creatures crumpled and fell away and he could see the writhing motions beneath the skin of his body's chest and belly, as if something hideous was clawing its way out from inside.
    Tears of blood streamed down from the unnatural eye but his face—Thero's now—smiled calmly.Still smiling, Thero leapt at him, arms outstretched as if to embrace him. With a strangled cry, Seregil fell backward through the red butterflies—
    He sat up with a gasp. Pulling free of the tangled sheets, he went to the hearth and poked up a fire bright enough to light the room. His clothes were soaked through with cold, sour sweat. Stripping them off, he looked down at the pale, angular body he inhabited. Little wonder he was dreaming of his own!
    The details of the nightmare were already skittering away, but he recalled the image of the eye with a shudder.
    Tossing a few more logs on the fire, he climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up to his nose.
    As he drifted back to sleep it occurred to him that this was the first time in weeks that he'd dreamed at all.
    Late-morning light was streaming in at the open window when he opened his eyes again. Lying quietly for a moment, he discovered that he'd forgotten most of the nightmare. His second sleep had been filled with dreams of a lascivious nature quite unlike his usual fare and