Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley

statistician, would ever attend.
    But it was just right for dinner at Shadow’s Gate.
    A quick sponge bath, a splash of the lavender cologne she favored, and Truth was ready to dress. She pulled the dress on over her head, cursing the long zipper up the back—why weren’t women’s clothes designed so that women could dress themselves? she wondered for the hundredth time—and regarded herself in the cheval glass.
    A stranger stared back, a mocking light of challenge in her dark eyes. Did she, in fact, resemble her mother
that much? Was this what Katherine Jourdemayne had looked like? Truth wondered, though the question probed the psychic sore spot where all Truth’s unanswered questions about the mother she had never known had festered. Truth stared at the reflection curiously, willing it to give up the secrets of another woman’s past. Katherine Jourdemayne? It was easy enough for Irene Avalon to say so, but Irene hadn’t seen Katherine since they were both young women; it would be easy to be carried away by the emotion of the moment.
    But Irene Avalon had not been only Katherine’s friend. She had been the friend of both Truth’s parents, and Truth at last surrendered to the need to know about them—about her mother, and, yes, even about her father. If she did not ask her questions soon, the people she could ask would have passed from the world and left her questions forever unanswered.
    She would not let that happen.
    Truth inclined her head graciously to the stranger in the mirror, and then slipped her feet into her black pumps. A few quick primpings with her hair and makeup, and she was ready.
    Or almost. As it was now, the dress looked almost formidably severe. She needed some jewelry to bring the outfit to life, but Truth didn’t have much in the way of trendy, expensive, and frivolous fashion accessories. Other than a few pair of “good” earrings and a short gold chain, Truth owned no jewelry at all.
    In her earlier search for something to wear she had nearly emptied her suitcase. All that was left in it now was her bathrobe and the item it was wrapped around— Venus Afflicted. Now she turned to the traveling case she had also brought—that squarish boxy article that had once held a lady’s elaborate toilette—and in the modern day, proved so useful for the transport of the small yet fragile articles that a woman still traveled with.
    She opened it and lifted out the top tray. There, inside,
tucked into a jewelry roll, were the necklace and ring that Aunt Caroline had given her: Thorne Blackburn’s necklace and ring. Perhaps … ?
    The ring was obviously impossible; it slid off every finger she tried it on, and even if she had been able to make it fit, it would have weighted down her hand as much as if she were carrying a dumbbell. Not the thing for a dinner party. She dropped it back into the little satin pouch and picked up the necklace.
    Even such an amateur of gemology as Truth could tell that the amber beads were of a much finer quality than those in Irene’s necklace. The necklace rested on her palms, light as a soap bubble. The ancient Greeks had called this substance electrum , and said it was no less than fossilized lightning, dropped from heaven by Zeus’s careless thunderbolts. The Greeks had called it so because true amber, Truth knew, would hold an electrical charge; properly magnetized, the beads would draw threads and pieces of paper to stick to them, and even give off a weird bluish glow in the dark. As Truth ran the beads through her hands they seemed almost to glow without electricity, gathering all the light in the room to radiate it with an intense citrine radiance.
    She dropped the necklace over her head: The ornate enameled golden pendant swung free, then dropped into place below her heart with the soft heavy force of a love-pat. Against the dark fabric, the stones that had once been the life blood of a tree