In preparation for _The Paths of the Dead_, I've been re-reading _The Phoenix Guards_ and _Five Hundred Years After_. I noticed an interesting passage in _Guards_ (it occurs on page 178 of my hardcover copy): "...the Furnace, which one can always feel but never see, was nearly visible, in that there was a direction, nearly straight ahead of them, in which one could not look without one's eyes watering and wishing to shut on their own, and giving one the strange, unaccountable desire to sneeze, which each of them did several times." This is a reference to "photic sneeze reflex", which can cause some people to sneeze when they see bright lights. There's a good web page about it at: <http://loin.free.fr/john/photic_sneezing.html> The interesting thing about this passage is that it seems to suggest that *all* Dragaerans have photic sneezing. Estimates of its prevalence in the general population of our world vary, but even the highest is only about 35%, so it would be quite unusual to choose five people at random and have them all be photic sneezers. I can think of three explanations: 1) Steven Brust is a photic sneezer and doesn't realize (or hadn't realized) that not everyone is. (Not unusual; it was years and years before I realized that myself, for instance.) 2) Paarfi is a photic sneezer and doesn't realize that not everyone is. (This seems a trifle unlikely if Brust himself isn't a photic sneezer, but you never know.) 3) For some reason all Dragaerans are in fact photic sneezers. This could give Easterners an advantage in battle against them -- they could conjure up a bright light with witchcraft and then attack while all the Dragaerans are busy sneezing. Of course, it would only work once, as after that sunglasses would become a standard part of military kit. I'd be quite interested to know which of the above is actually the case. -- David Goldfarb <*>|"In the fifties, people responded well to goldfarb at ocf.berkeley.edu | authoritative disembodied voices." goldfarb at csua.berkeley.edu | -- MST3K