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bazaar, tacky to the max."
    "Religion has always been a strong consumer item," the Rebbe commented. He was taking his pulse. Like Leoncaro, the Rebbe was an elder of the Caretakers, and given to ramblings about his pending retirement. In mortal form, at an advanced age, he'd been suffering the expectable hardenings of this, malfunctions of that.
    "I wasn't thinking of another career in Protestant evangelism" Leoncaro said to the tattered Shade of Skeldon.
    "That's a relief. I almost lost Pledger Lee when I stepped in ten years ago. A good mind, but shallow perceptions. And I surely did underestimate the strength of his ticker?"
    "Sometimes the best and strongest horses cannot be ridden" Raimundo observed. "There was a time when I was reading entrails for a Magyar chieftain named Trul—"
    Leoncaro looked pained and silenced the sorcerer with a raised finger. Don Raimundo was one of the younger Caretakers, and not always as focused as he needed to be.
    Ling Qi looked thoughtfully at the high ceiling of the study, where cunningly sculpted cherubs with stubby wings lolled about.
    "If I may make a suggestion, Holiness. With Mordaunt on the offensive again, could it be that we haven't kept him busy enough?"
    "Or is it possible that we are simply not all that we used to be?" the Rebbe speculated. "And Mordaunt senses it is so."
    "Historically we've had our down times," Leoncaro acknowledged. "Those periods of apocalypse and human suffering Pledger Lee anticipates for the immediate future." He nodded to the Shade of the late evangelist. "You'll pardon me if I continue to refer to you as if you remained in your temporal aspect."
    "Go right ahead," the Shade replied amiably. "After a long stretch cooped up in a human persona, I tend to forget who I am myself."
    "Tell me about it," Ling Qi said softly and a little sadly. "But the Rebbe has made an excellent point. Mordaunt could have something we've overlooked, to our detriment. A means, perhaps, of reuniting the Trickster's halves of his soul."
    "We split his black soul and it will stay split," the Shade of Pledger Lee scoffed, and then, upon reflection, "which is a good thing. Don't think it could be done again, without sacrificing the core energy of all the Caretakers. Three of us gone already, burnt out, nothing left but cinders floating derelict somewhere beyond the Lights."
    "I suspect Ling Qi and the Rebbe are right," the sorcerer Don Raimundo interrupted. "But I could only be sure of what Mordaunt is up to by settling in his neighborhood for a while."
    "We will take no unnecessary risks," Leoncaro objected. "And what can Mordaunt know that is beyond the scope of our knowledge?"
    "Not beyond our knowledge," the sorcerer persisted.
    "A growing power we perhaps have been neglectful in not bringing under our control."
    "Please explain."
    Don Raimundo spread his hands. "I'm speaking of the Avatar. The, uh, most recent incarnation."
    "Oh, come now!" the Rebbe protested. "Of course we all know her, but Eden Waring is a child."
    "More woman than child now. Don't be too quick to dismiss her" Leoncaro said. "True, she was chosen in haste by her predecessor, but that choice was partly dictated by dire circumstances. Mmm, yes. Eden Waring. She does have one impressive talent that none of the other Psi-actives possess."
    "The left-handed Art" the Brazilian sorcerer said.
    "Exactly."
    "Meaning?" Ling Qi inquired.
    "Like the late Kelane Cheng" Leoncaro said, "Eden Waring can produce her doppelganger."
    After a few moments of contemplative silence in the Prelate's study, the Rebbe said, "I don't understand how Mordaunt would find that useful."
    But the sorcerer chuckled. Leoncaro looked around at him with a nod of approval. Then he smiled indulgently at the other elder of their company.
    "I still don't—"
    "Rebbe, where do doppelgangers come from?"
    "The parallel universe that most closely resembles this one. Dpg's are, in every vital respect, the mirror images of their homebodies."
    "Yes; and