She shrugged. "A castle," she said. "Built of stone, with towers... what does

a

castle look like?" She shook her head. "I am not a student of ancient

architecture."

"Would you recognize it if you saw it again?" Makepeace said.

"I think so."

'Then first thing in the morning we'll go to the library and see if we can

find

a picture of this castle of yours. And in the meantime we can ask around and

see

if anyone knows of a town house with a garden of black roses."

"Bit of a long shot, isn't it?" said Kira.

"At the moment I can't think of anything else to do," said Makepeace. "Why,

have

you any other suggestions?"

"Well, not really," she said. "We don't have anything else to go on but these

dream messages that we've been getting. But how do we know they're coming

from

Modred?"

"That's been bothering me all along," said Wyrdrune. "If he can send us these

dreams, why hasn't he tried to contact us directly? For all we know, these

dream

visions we've been getting could be meant to lure us into a trap or to

misdirect

us."

"I see your point," said Makepeace, "but I repeat my question: "What else

have

we got to go on?"

"We may not be going about this the right way," said Kira. "All four of us

don't

need to follow up on what Jacqueline saw in her dream." She glanced from

Wyrdrune to Makepeace. "There might be another trail we could follow. Magic

always exacts a price, right? Only necromancers like to make sure that

somebody

else pays it for them. It allows them to accumulate life-force energy to

increase their power. If we started looking for a pattern of—"

Wyrdrune smacked himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand, "Yes! Of

course! The paper!"

"Paper?" said Makepeace. "What paper?"

He smashed his fist down on the table. "Damn! I left it back at the hotel!

Wait

a minute...."

He quickly mumbled a teleportation spell under his breath and disappeared.

"Where has he gone?" Jacqueline said, frowning.

Kira shook her head. "Something in the newspaper? He picked up a copy of the