21

A full moon had risen above the jagged horizon of the trees, paling the stars, filling the glade with light. The fires burned low, for the meal was over, and out on the grass between the camp and road the little people danced in wild abandon to a violin's shrilling music.

For once the food was eaten, the Gossiper had unshipped the sheepskin bundle he carried and, unwrapping the sheepskin, had taken out a fiddle and a bow.

Now he stood, a ragged figure, with the fiddle tucked beneath his chin, the fingers of his left hand flashing on the frets, while his right arm sent the bow skittering on the strings. The moth-eaten raven still maintained a precarious perch on the Gossiper's right shoulder, hopping and skipping to keep its balance, sometimes climbing out on the upper arm, where it clung desperately, uttering dolorous squawks of protest at the insecurity of its perch. Underneath the table the little lame dog slept, replete with the meat it had been thrown by the festive feasters, its tiny paws quivering and twitching as it chased dream rabbits.

"There are such a lot of them," said Mary, meaning the little dancing people. "When we first arrived, there did not seem so many."

Jones chuckled at her. "There are more," he said. "There are all of mine and most of yours."

"You mean they have come out of hiding?"

"It was the food that did it," he said. "The food and beer. You didn't expect them, did you, to stay lurking in the bushes, watching all the others gorge themselves?"

"Then Bromeley must be out there with them. The sneaky little thing! Why doesn't he come and talk with me?"

"He's having too much fun," said Cornwall.

Coon came lumbering out of the swirl of dancers and rubbed against Hal's legs. Hal picked him up and put him on his lap. Coon settled down, wrapping his tail around his nose.

"He ate too much," said Gib.

"He always does," said Hal.

The violin wailed and whined, sang, reaching for the stars. The Gossiper's arm was busy with the bow, and the hopping raven squalled in protest.

"I don't quite understand you," Cornwall said quietly to Jones. "You said you never went beyond the Witch House. I wonder why you didn't. What are you here for, anyhow?"

Jones grinned. "It is strange that you should ask, for we have much in common. You see, Sir Scholar, I am a student, just the same as you."

"But if you are a student, then why don't you study?"

"But I do," said Jones. "And there's enough to study here. Far more than enough. When you study something, you cover one area thoroughly before you move on to the next. When the time comes, I'll move beyond the Witch House "

"Study, you say?"

"Yes. Notes, recordings, pictures. I have piles of notes, miles of tape . . ."

"Tape? Pictures? You mean paintings, drawings?"

"No," said Jones. "I use a camera."

"You talk in riddles," Cornwall said. "Words I've never heard before."

"Perhaps I do," said Jones. "Would you like to come and see? We need not disturb the others. They can stay here watching."

He rose and led the way to the tent, Cornwall following. At the entrance to the tent Jones put out a hand to halt him. "You are a man of open mind?" he asked. "As a scholar, you should be."

"I've studied for six years at Wyalusing," said Cornwall. "I try to keep an open mind. How otherwise would one learn anything?"

"Good," said Jones. "What date would you say this is?"

"It's October," said Cornwall. "I've lost track of the day. It's the year of Our Lord 1975."

"Fine," said Jones. "I just wanted to make sure. For your information, it is the seventeenth."

"What has the date got to do with it?" asked Cornwall.

"Not too much, perhaps. It may make understanding easier a little later. And it just happens you're the first one I could ask. Here in the Wasteland, no one keeps a calendar."

He lifted the flap of the tent and motioned Cornwall in. Inside, the tent seemed larger than it had from the outside dimensions of it. It was orderly, but crowded with many furnishings and much paraphernalia. A military cot stood in one corner. Next to it stood a desk and chair, with a stubby candlestick holding a rather massive candle standing in the center of the desk. The flame of the lighted candle flared in the air currents. Piled on one corner of the desk was a stack of black leather books. Open boxes stood beside the books. Strange objects sat upon the desk, leaving little room for writing. There was, Cornwall saw in a rapid glance, no quill or inkhorn, no sanding box, and that seemed passing strange.

In the opposite corner stood a large metallic cabinet and next to it, against the eastern wall, an area hung with heavy black drapes.

"My developing room," said Jones. "Where I process my film."

Cornwall said stiffly, "I do not understand."

"Take a look," said Jones. He strode to the desk and lifted a handful of thin squares from one of the open boxes, spread them on the desk top. "There," he said. "Those are the photos I was telling you about. Not paintings—photographs. Go ahead. Pick them up and look."

Cornwall bent above the desk, not touching the so-called photos. Colored paintings stared back at him—paintings of brownies, goblins, trolls, fairies dancing on a magic green, a grinning, vicious horror that had to be a Hellhound, a two-story house standing on a knoll, with a stone bridge in the foreground. Tentatively Cornwall reached out and picked up the painting of the house, held it close for a better look.

"The Witch House," said Jones.

"But these are paintings," Cornwall exploded in impatience. "Miniatures. At the court many artisans turn out paintings of this sort for hour books and other purposes. Although they put borders around the paintings, filled with flowers and birds and insects and many different conceits, which to my mind makes them more interesting. They work long hours at it and most meticulously, sparing no pains to make a perfect picture."

"Look again," said Jones. "Do you see any brush strokes?"

"It proves nothing," Cornwall said stubbornly. "In the miniatures there are no brush strokes. The artisans work so carefully and so well that you can see no brush strokes. And yet, truth to tell, there is a difference here."

"You're damn right there is a difference. I use this machine," he said, patting with his hand a strange black object that lay on the table, "and others like it to achieve these photos. I point the machine and click a button that opens a shutter so that specially treated film can see what the camera's pointed at, and I have pictures exactly as the camera sees it. Better, more truthfully than the eye can see it."

"Magic," Cornwall said.

"Here we go again," said Jones. "I tell you it's no more magic than the trail bike is. It's science. It's technology. It's a way of doing things."

"Science is philosophy," said Cornwall. "No more than philosophy. Putting the universe into order. Trying to make some sense out of it. You cannot do these things you are doing with philosophy. It must be done with magic."

"Where is that open mind you said you had?" asked Jones.

Cornwall dropped the photo, drew himself up, stiffening in outrage. "You brought me here to mock me," he said, half wrathfully, half sorrowfully. "You would humble me with your greater magic, while trying to make it seem it is not magic. Why do you try to make me small and stupid?"

"Not that," said Jones. "Assuredly not that. I seek your understanding. When I first came here, I tried to explain to the little people. Even to the Gossiper, disreputable and benighted as he may be. I tried to tell them that there is no magic in all of this, that I am not a wizard, but they insisted that I was, they refused to understand. And after their refusal, I found there was some benefit to being thought a wizard, so I tried no longer. But for some reason I do not quite understand I do need to have someone who at least will listen. I thought that, as a scholar, you might be that person. I suppose, basically, that I need to make at least an honest effort to explain myself. I have, underneath it all, a certain contempt for myself parading as something I am not."

"What are you, then?" asked Cornwall. "If you are no wizard, then what are you?"

"I am a man," said Jones, "no whit different from you. I happen to live in another world than yours."

"You prate of this world and of your world," said Cornwall, "and there are no more worlds than one. This is the only world we have, you and I. Unless you speak of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is another world, and I find it difficult to believe that you came from there."

"Oh, hell," said Jones, "what is the use of this? I should have known. You are as stubborn and bone-headed as the rest of them."

"Then explain yourself," said Cornwall. "You keep telling me what you're not. Now tell me what you are."

"Then, listen. Once there was, as you say, only one world. I do not know how long ago that was. Ten thousand years ago, a hundred thousand years ago—there is no way of knowing. Then one day something happened. I don't know what it was; we may never know exactly what it was or how it came about. But on that day one man did a certain thing—it would have to have been one man, for this thing he did was so unique that there was no chance of more than one man doing it. But, anyhow, he did it, or he spoke it, or he thought it, whatever it might be, and from that day forward there were two worlds, not one—or at least the possibility of two worlds, not one. The distinction, to start with, would have been shadowy, the two worlds perhaps not too far apart, shading into one another so that you might have thought they were still one world, but becoming solider and drawing further apart until there could be no doubt that there were two worlds. To start with, they would not have been greatly different, but as time went on, the differences hardened and the worlds diverged. They had to diverge because they were irreconcilable. They, or the people in them, were following different paths. One world to begin with, then splitting into two worlds. Don't ask me how it happened or what physical or metaphysical laws were responsible for the splitting, for I don't know, nor is there anyone who knows. In my world there are no more than a handful of people who know even that it happened. All the rest of them, all the other millions of them, do not admit it happened, will not admit it happened, may never have heard the rumor that it happened."

"Magic," said Cornwall firmly. "That is how it happened."

"Goddamn it. There you go again. Come up against something you can't understand and out pops that word again. You are an educated man. You've spent years at your studies. . ."

"Six," said Cornwall. "Six back-breaking, poverty-ridden years."

"Then you should know that magic—"

"I know more of magic, sir, than you do. I have studied magic. At Wyalusing you have to study magic. The subject is required."

"But the Church . . ."

"The Church has no quarrel with magic. Only magic wrongly used."

Jones sat down limply on the bed. "I guess there's no way," he said, "for you and me to talk with one another. I tell you about technology and you say it's magic. The trail bike is a dragon; the camera is an evil eye. Jones, why don't you just give up?"

"I don't know," said Cornwall, "what you're talking about."

"No," said Jones, "I don't suppose you do."

"You say that the world divided," said Cornwall. "That there was one world and it split apart and then there were two worlds."

Jones nodded. "That's the way of it. It has to be that way. Here is your world. It has no technology, no machines. Oh, I know you say machines—your siege engines and your water mills, and I suppose they are machines, but not what my world thinks of as machines. But in the last five hundred years, for more than five hundred years, for almost a thousand, you've not advanced technologically. You don't even know the word. There have been certain common happenings, of course. The rise of Christianity, for example. How this could come about, I have no idea. But the crux of the whole thing is that there has been no Renaissance, no Reformation, no Industrial Revolution . . ."

"You use terms I do not understand."

"I'm sorry," said Jones. "I got carried away. I beg your pardon. None of the events I mentioned have happened here, none of the great turning points of history. And something else as well. Here you have retained your magic and the people of the old folklore— the actual living creatures that in our time are no more than folklore. In my world we have lost the magic, and there are none of these creatures, and it seems to me that we are the poorer for it."

Cornwall sat down on the bed beside him.

"You seek some insight into the splitting of the world," he said. "Not for a moment do I accept this mad tale you tell me, although I must admit I am puzzled by the strange machines you use. . . ."

"Let's not argue about them further," said Jones. "Let us simply agree we are two honest men who differ in certain philosophic matters. And, yes, I would welcome an insight into the divergence of our worlds, although I have not come here to seek it. I doubt it still exists. I think the evidence is gone."

"It might exist," said Cornwall. "There is just a chance it could. Mad as it may sound . . ."

"What are you talking about?" asked Jones.

"You say we are two honest men who differ. We are something else as well. The both of us are scholars. . ."

"That is right. What are you getting at?"

"In this land of mine," said Cornwall, "scholars are members of an unspoken guild, a spectral brotherhood . . ."

Jones shook his head. "With some notable exceptions, I suppose the same is true of my world. Scholars, as a rule, are honorable."

"Then, perhaps," said Cornwall, "I can tell you something that is not really mine to tell. . . ."

"We are from different cultures," said Jones. "Our viewpoints may differ. I would be uncomfortable if you were to tell me secrets that should be kept from me. I have no wish to cause you embarrassment, either now or later."

"Yet," said Cornwall, "we both are scholars. We share a common ethic."

"All right," said Jones, "what is this thing you wish to tell me?"

"There is a university," said Cornwall, "somewhere in this Wasteland. I had heard of it and thought of it as legend, but now I find it is not a legend, but that it actually exists. There are old writings there. . . ."

Outside the music stopped, and the sudden silence was almost like a sound. Jones froze, and Cornwall took a step toward the tent flap, then halted, listening. A new sound came, far off, but there was no mistaking what it was—a screaming, an abandoned, hopeless screaming.

"Oh, my God," Jones whispered, "it's not over yet. They have not let him go."

Cornwall moved quickly through the tent flap, Jones close upon his heels. The band of dancers had drawn back from the road and stood in a huddled mass about the table. They were looking up the road. None of them spoke; they seemed to hold their breaths. The cooking fires still streamed columns of wispy smoke into the moonlit sky.

Coming down the road was a naked man. He stumbled as he walked and it was he who screamed, a senseless, endless screaming that rose and fell, but never broke, his head thrown back as he screamed against the sky. Pacing behind him and to either side of him was a pack of Hellhounds, black and evil in the night, some going on four feet, others shambling erect, with their bodies thrust forward, stooping, not as a man would walk, and their long arms swinging loosely. Their short, bushy tails twitched back and forth in excitement and anticipation, and their terrible fangs gleamed white against the blackness of their snouts.

Oliver broke from the crowd around the table and scurried up to Cornwall. "It's Beckett," he screamed. "It's Beckett that they have."

The man and the pack of Hellhounds came steadily down the road, the screaming never ending. And now they were closer, there was another sound, heard as a sort of bass accompaniment to the terrible screaming—the snuffling of the Hellhounds.

Cornwall strode forward to take his place beside Gib and Hal, who were standing at the edge of the huddled crowd. Cornwall tried to speak, but found he couldn't. A cold trembling had seized him, and he had to clamp his mouth tight shut to keep his teeth from chattering. Oliver was pulling at him. "That's Beckett," he was saying. "That's Beckett. I'd know him anywhere. I have often seen him."

As Beckett came opposite the camp he suddenly ceased his screaming and, stumbling as he turned, shuffled around to face the crowd. He threw out his arms in an attitude of pleading.

"Kill me, please," he babbled. "For the love of Mary, kill me. If there be a man among you, kill me, for the love of God."

Hal, bringing up his bow, reached quickly for an arrow. Sniveley flung himself at the bow and dragged it down. "Are you mad?" he shouted. "Even make a motion and they'll be on us, too. Before you have an arrow nocked, they'll be at your throat."

Cornwall strode forward, his hand reaching for the sword. Jones moved quickly to block him.

"Out of my way," growled Cornwall.

Jones said nothing. His arm, starting back and low, came up. The fist caught Cornwall on the chin, and at the impact he fell like a cut-down tree, crashing to the ground.

Out in the road the Hellhounds closed in on Beckett with a rush, not knocking him down, allowing him to stand, but leaping at him with slashing teeth, then falling back. Half his face was gone and blood streamed down across his cheek. His teeth showed through where the cheek had been sheared away. His tongue moved in agony, and the scream bubbled in his throat. Teeth flashed again and his genitals were torn away. Almost as if by reflex action, he bent forward to clutch at the area where they had been. Snapping fangs tore off half a buttock and he straightened, his arms going up in a flailing motion, and all the time the scream gurgled in his throat. Then he was down, writhing and twisting in the dust, gurgling and whimpering. The Hellhounds drew back and sat in a circle, regarding him with benevolent interest. Slowly the moaning ceased, slowly he drew his knees beneath him and wobbled to his feet. He seemed whole again. His face was whole, the buttock was unmarred, the genitals in place. The Hellhounds rose leisurely. One of them butted him, almost affectionately, with its nose, and Beckett went on down the road, resuming his senseless screaming.

Cornwall rose to a sitting position, shaking his head, his hand groping for the sword.

He gazed up at Jones, saying to him out of the fog that filled his brain, "You hit me. You hit me with your fist. A peasant way of fighting."

"Keep your hand off that toad-stabber of yours," said Jones, "or I'll cream you once again. All I did, my friend, was save your precious life."

22

When Cornwall knocked, the witch opened the door. "Ai," she said to Mary, "so you came back again. I always knew you would. Since the day I took you down that road, I knew you'd come back to us. I took you down the road into the Borderland, and I patted you on your little fanny and told you to go on. And you went on, without ever looking back, but you didn't fool me none. I knew you would be back once you'd growed a little, for there was something fey about you, and you would not fit into the world of humans. You could never fool Old Granny. . . ."

"I was only three years old," said Mary, "maybe less than that. And you are not my granny. You never were my granny. I never till right now laid my eyes upon you."

"You were too young to know," said the witch, "or knowing, to remember. I would have kept you here, but the times were parlous and unsettled, and it seemed best to take you from enchanted ground. Although it wrenched my heart to do so, for I loved you, child."

"This is all untrue," Mary said to Cornwall. "I have no memory of her. She was not my granny. She was not. . ."

"But," said the witch, "I did take you down the road into the Borderland. I took your trusting little hand in mine and as I hobbled down the road, being much crippled with arthritis at the time, you skipped along beside me and you chattered all the way."

"I could not have chattered," Mary said. "I never was a chatterer."

The house was as Mary had described it, an old and rambling house set upon its knoll, and below the knoll, a brook that rambled laughing down the valley, with a stone bridge that spanned its gleaming water. A clump of birch grew at one corner of the house, and down the hill was a lilac hedge, an interrupted hedge that started and ended with no apparent purpose, a hedge that hedged in nothing. Beyond the lilacs a clump of boulders lay and in the land across the creek was a marshy pool.

The rest of the party waited by the stone bridge, looking up the hill toward the porch, where Mary and Cornwall stood before the open door.

"You always were a perverse child," said the witch. "Always in the way of playing nasty tricks, although that was just a childish way that many children have, and no flaw in character. You pestered the poor ogre almost unendurably, popping sticks and stones and clods down into his burrow so that the poor thing got scarcely any sleep. You may be surprised to know that he remembers you rather more kindly than you have the right to deserve. When he heard you were on your way, he expressed the hope of seeing you. Although, being an ogre with great dignity, he cannot bring himself to come calling on you; if you want to see him, you must wait upon him."

"I remember the ogre," said Mary, "and how we threw stuff down into his den. I don't think I ever saw him, although I may have. I've often thought about him and at times have wondered if there really were an ogre. People said there was, but I never saw him, so I couldn't know."

"Indeed, there is an ogre," said the witch, "and most agreeable. But I forget myself. I was so overcome with seeing you again, my dear, that I fear I have been impolite. I have left you standing here when I should have invited you in to tea. And I have not addressed one word of welcome to this handsome gallant who serves as your escort. Although," she said, addressing Cornwall, "I do not know who you are, there have been marvelous tales about you and the members of your company. And you as well," she said to Mary. "I see you no longer have the horn of the unicorn. Don't tell me you lost it."

"No, I have not lost it," said Mary. "But it was an awkward thing to carry. It seemed so much like bragging to carry it all the time. I left it with the others who are waiting at the bridge."

"Ah, well," said the witch, "I'll see it later on. Once I'd heard of it, I had counted so much on the sight of it. You'll show it to me, won't you?"

"Of course I will," said Mary.

The old crone tittered. "I have never seen the horn of a unicorn," she said, "and strange as it may seem, I have never seen a unicorn. The beasts are very rare, even in this land. But let us now go in and sit us down to tea. Just the three of us, I think. It'll be so much cozier with just the three of us. I'll send a basket of cakes down to those waiting at the bridge. The kind of cakes, my dear, that you always liked—the ones with seeds in them."

She opened the door wider and made a motion with her hand, signaling them to come in. The entry hall was dark, and there was a dankness in it.

Mary halted. "It doesn't feel the same," she said. "Not the way I remember it. This house once was bright and full of light and laughter."

"It's your imagination," the witch said sharply. "You always were the one with imagination. You were the one who dreamed up the games you played with that silly troll who lived underneath the bridge and that daffy Fiddlefingers." She cackled with remembering. "You could talk them into anything. They hated mud-pie making, but they made mud pies for you. And they were scared striped of the ogre, but when you threw stones down into his burrow, they went along and threw their share of stones. You say that I'm a witch, with my humped back and my arthritic hobble and my long and crooked nose, but you are a witch as well, my darling, and a better one than I am."

"Hold there," said Cornwall, his hand going to the sword hilt. "Milady's not a witch."

The old crone reached out a bony hand and laid it gently on his arm. "It's a compliment I pay her, noble sir. There is nothing better said of any woman than that she's a witch."

Grumbling, Cornwall let his arm drop. "Watch your tongue," he said.

She smiled at them with snaggled teeth and led the way down the dark, damp, and musty hall into a small room carpeted with an old and faded rug. Against one wall stood a tiny fireplace blackened by the smoke of many fires. Sunlight poured through wide windows to illuminate the shabbiness of the place. A row of beaten-up house-plants stood on a narrow shelf below the windowsill. In the center of the room stood a magnificently carved table covered by a scarf, and on the scarf was a silver tea service.

She motioned them to chairs, then sat down behind the steaming teapot.

Reaching for a cup, she said, "Now we may talk of many things, of the olden days and how times have changed and what you might be doing here."

"What I want to talk about," said Mary, "are my parents. I know nothing of them. I want to know who they were and why they were here and what happened to them."

"They were good people," said the witch, "but very, very strange. Not like other humans. They did not look down their noses at the people of the Wasteland. They had no evil in them, but a great depth of understanding. They would talk with everyone they met. And the questions they could ask—oh, land sake, the questions they could ask. I often wondered why they might be here, for they seemed to have no business. A vacation, they told me, but it is ridiculous to think that sophisticated people such as they should come to a place like this for their vacation. If it was a vacation, it was a very long one; they were here almost a year. Doing nothing all that time but walking around the countryside and being nice to everyone they met. I can remember the day they came walking down the road and across the bridge, the two of them, my dear, with you between them, toddling along, with each of them holding one of your hands, as if you might need their help, although you never needed any help, then or any other time. Imagine the nerve of them and the innocence of them, two humans walking calmly down a Wasteland road, with their baby toddling between them, walking as if they were out for a stroll of an April afternoon. If there were anyone here in all this land who might have done them any harm, they would have been so shook up by the innocent, trusting arrogance of them that they would have stayed their hand. I can remember them coming up to this house and knocking on the door, asking if they might stay with me and I, of course, good-hearted creature that I am, who finds it hard to say no to anyone . . ."

"You know," said Mary to the witch, "I think that you are lying. I don't believe this is your house. I can't think my parents were ever guests of yours. But I suppose the truth's not in you, and there is no use in trying."

"But, my darling," said the witch, "it all is solemn truth. Why should I lie to you?"

"Let us not fall into argument," said Cornwall. "Truth or not, let's get on with it. What finally happened to them?"

"They went into the Blasted Plain," said the witch. "I don't know why they did this. They never told me anything. They were pleasant enough, of course, but they never told me anything at all. They left this child of theirs with me and went into the Blasted Plain and they've not been heard of since."

"That was when you took Mary, if it was you who took her, into the Borderland?"

"There were ugly rumors. I was afraid to have her stay."

"What kind of rumors?"

"I can't recall them now."

"You see," said Mary, "she is lying."

"Of course she is," said Cornwall, "but we don't know how much. A little or a lot, all of it, or only some of it."

"I take it sadly," said the witch, dabbing at her eyes, "to sit at my own tea table, serving tea to guests who doubt my honest word."

"Did they leave any papers?" Mary asked. "Any letters? Anything at all?"

"Now, that is strange," said the witch, "that you should ask. There was another one who asked, another human. A man who goes by the name of Jones. I told him that I knew of none. Not that I would have looked; I am not a snoop. No matter what else I may be called, I am not a snoop. I told him there might be some on the second floor. That I wouldn't know. Crippled as I am, I cannot climb the stairs. Oh, I know that you think a witch need but use her broomstick to go anywhere she wishes. But you humans do not comprehend. There are certain rules. . ."

"Did Jones look upstairs?"

"Yes, indeed he did. He told me he found nothing, although he has shifty eyes, and one can never know if he told the truth. I remember asking him and . . ."

The front door burst open, and feet came pounding down the hall. Gib skidded to a stop when he burst into the room.

"Mark," he said to Cornwall, "we've got trouble. Beckett has showed up."

Cornwall sprang to his feet. "Beckett! What about the Hellhounds?"

"He escaped from them," said Gib.

"That's impossible," said Cornwall. "How could he escape from them? Where is he now?"

"He's down by the bridge," said Gib. "He came running up to us, naked as a jaybird. Bromeley got a towel for him—"

The door banged, and feet pattered rapidly down the hallway. It was Sniveley, panting with his running.

"It's a trick!" he yelled. "We can't let him stay here. The Hellhounds let him escape. Now they'll say we're sheltering him, and they'll come swarming in here—"

"Pouf," said the witch. "These pitiful little puppy dogs. Let me get my broom. There ain't no Hellhounds getting gay with me. They may act vicious, but give them a whack or two . . ."

"We can't turn him back to them," said Cornwall. "Not after what we saw last night. He has a right to ask protection of us. After all, he's a Christian, although a very shabby one."

Cornwall hastened down the hall, the others trailing after him.

Outside, coming up the hill toward the house, was a motley procession. Beckett, with a towel wrapped about his middle, was in front. He was not proceeding by himself. Hal walked behind him, and Hal's bowstring was looped about his neck. Hal held the bow and, twisting it, drew the cord close about his captive's throat. Behind the two came Oliver and a bunched-up group of trolls, brownies, gnomes, and fairies.

Hal made a thumb over his shoulder. "We got company," he said, speaking to Cornwall, but not taking his eyes off Beckett.

Cornwall looked in the direction of the thumb. On the top of the barren hill across the brook sat a row of Hellhounds, not doing anything, with the look of not being about to do anything—just sitting there and watching, waiting for whatever was about to happen.

Coming down the hillside, heading for the bridge, was a giant, although a very sloppy giant. From where Cornwall stood on the gallery that ran before the house, he seemed to be all of twelve feet tall, but large as his body was, his head was small. It was no larger, Cornwall thought, than the head of an ordinary man, perhaps smaller than that of an ordinary man. And large as the body was, it was not muscular. It was a flabby body, a soft body, with no character to it. The pin-headed giant wore a short kilt and a half shirt that had a strap across one shoulder. He moved slowly, his great splay feet plopping squashily on the ground. His long and flabby arms dangled down, not moving back and forth the way a man's arms usually do when he is walking, but just hanging and joggling with every step he took.

Cornwall came down the steps and started walking down the hill.

"You stay here with Beckett," he told Hal. "I will handle this."

The giant halted short of the bridge. He planted his feet solidly beneath him, and his voice boomed out so that all could hear him.

"I am the messenger of the Hellhounds," he roared. "I speak to all who have no right to be here. I bring you measured warning. Turn back, go back to where you came from. But first you must give up the one who fled."

He stopped and waited for the answer.

Cornwall heard a commotion behind him and swung hastily around. Beckett had broken loose from Hal and was running up the slope to one side of the house, toward a pile of boulders. The bow was still looped around his neck. Hal was racing after him, with others of the crew whooping along behind. Suddenly Beckett swerved and appeared to dive headlong into the earth. He disappeared; the earth appeared to have swallowed him.

The witch, hobbling painfully along, let out a screech. "Now," she screamed, "there'll be sheeted hell to pay. He dived down the ogre's hole."

"Answer me," yelled the giant. "Give me now your answer." Cornwall swung back to face him. "We are simple pilgrims," he shouted. "We came to carry out a sacred trust. We have no wish to cause any trouble. We only seek the Old Ones."

The messenger guffawed. "The Old Ones," he roared, "if you find them, they will put you to the knife. You must be daft to seek them. And no one goes into the Blasted Plain. It is forbidden country. Thus far you have come; no farther will you go. Give up the prisoner and turn back. If you do, we will not harm you. You have safe passage to the Borderland. On that you have our solemn promise."

"We won't go back," yelled Cornwall. "We haven't come this far to turn tail and run. And we'll not give up the prisoner. He has answered sufficiently to you; now it is us he must answer to."

"So be it," bellowed the giant. "Your own blood is now on your hands and not on ours."

"There need be no blood at all," yelled Cornwall. "No blood on any hands. Simply let us through. Once we find the Old Ones, we'll return to our own lands."

"What about the prisoner? He has many miles to run. Much more screaming he must do. The end of agony is not yet for him. He defiled our sacred soil with a marching army. Once, Sir Scholar, that would have meant war to the very hilt. But these days we grow soft and mellow. Be glad we do, and give us back our plaything."

"If you would kill him quickly. Horribly, perhaps, but quickly."

"Why should we do that? In these boring times there is slight amusement, and we must grasp it when we can. Surely you do not begrudge us that."

"If you do not kill him, then I shall."

"Do that," screamed the giant, "and you will take his place."

"That yet is to be seen," said Cornwall.

"You refuse, then, to give him back?"

"I refuse," said Cornwall.

The giant turned about in a lumbering fashion and went clumping up the hill. The row of Hellhounds on the ridgetop did not move.

Up the hill behind Cornwall another commotion erupted. Cornwall spun about. The trolls and goblins and other little people were fleeing in all directions, and a living horror was emerging from the ground beside the boulders.

The witch was screaming, thumping her broomstick on the ground. "I told you there'd be hell to pay," she shrieked. "He went down the ogre's hole. There isn't anyone can play footsie with the ogre."

The ogre by now had backed entirely from the hole and was tugging at something, pulling it from the hole. Galloping up the hill, Cornwall saw that the thing the ogre was hauling from the hole was Beckett, who was mewling faintly, clawing at the earth, resisting being drawn forth.

The ogre gave a mighty tug, and Beckett popped out of the hole like a cork from a bottle. Hal's bow, somewhat the worse for wear, was still looped around his throat. The ogre flung him contemptuously aside.

"Have you no respect?" the ogre shouted, not at Beckett alone, but at all of them. "Is not one secure in his own habitation? Must the world come pouring in on him? Why are all of you standing there? Tell me what is going on."

"Sir Ogre," said Cornwall, "we regret this exceedingly. It was a happening furthest from our thoughts. Under no circumstances would we willingly have disturbed your rest."

The ogre was a squat beast, almost toadlike. His eyes were saucers, and his mouth was rimmed with pointed teeth. His body seemed neither fur nor flesh but an earthy filthiness that fell from him in little patches as he moved.

"Such a thing," the ogre said, "has never happened. The people here know better. It would take an outlander to do what this creature did. Although once, long ago, there was a little minx who delighted in dribbling bark and clods of earth and other sundry items down into my burrow. What pleasure she might have gotten out of it I do not understand."

His saucer eyes swiveled around to fasten on Mary. "And if I am not mistaken," he said, "there is the little minx, quite grown now, I see, but the self-same one."

The witch raised her broom. "Back off," she shrilled. "Do not even think of laying your filthy hands on her. She was just a little tyke and she meant no harm. She was only playful and full of brimming spirits, and there is little enough of good-natured playfulness in this land of ours."

Mary said, "I am truly sorry. I had no idea it would disturb you so. You see, we pretended we were afraid of you, and we'd drop in the sticks and stones—as I remember it, very little sticks and stones—then we'd turn and run."

"You," said the ogre, "and that fiddle-footed brownie and Bromeley, the crazy troll—but, then, all trolls are crazy. You thought I did not know, but I did know and chuckled often over it. I suppose you find it hard to believe that I could ever chuckle."

"I did not know," said Mary. "If I had known that you could chuckle, I'd have come visiting and introduced myself."

"Well, now," the ogre said, seating himself on the ground, "you do know now, and this is as good a time as any. Let's do that visiting."

He patted the ground beside him. "Come over here and sit and we'll do some visiting."

The witch made a little shriek of happiness. "You do just that," she said to Mary. "I'll go and get the pot and we'll have some tea."

She turned and scurried off.

Cornwall saw that Hal and Gib had tight hold of Beckett, who lay quite passively on the ground.

"What are we going to do with him?" asked Hal.

"By rights," said Cornwall, "we should chop off his head. Either that or return him to the Hellhounds, an action I find most repulsive."

"I plead mercy," Beckett whined. "As one Christian to another, I most sincerely plead for mercy. You cannot abandon a fellow Christian to this heathen horde."

"You are at best," said Cornwall, "a very sorry Christian. I would choose ten heathens over a Christian such as you. As a man who tried his best to have me killed, I have slight compunction over whatever happens to you."

"But I never," cried Beckett, struggling to sit up, "I never tried to kill you. How could I? I have never set eyes on you. For the love of God, messire . . ."

"My name is Mark Cornwall, and you did hire men to kill me."

Oliver, popping up beside Cornwall, yelled at him. "You tried to kill him because of a certain manuscript found in the library at Wyalusing. And you would have killed me, too, if you could have managed. There was a certain monk named Oswald, who ran bearing tales to you. He was found, come morning, with his throat slit in an alley."

"But that was long ago!" howled Beckett. "Since I have repented . . ."

"Repentance is no good," said Cornwall. "Make your choice now. The Hellhounds or the sword. A bastard such as you has no right to live."

"Allow me," said Gib. "It is not right that you should stain the good steel of your blade with the blood of such as this. One stroke of my ax..."

A pair of claws grabbed Cornwall by the arm. "Hold this talk of killing," screeched the witch. "I put my claim on him. It would be a waste of good man-flesh to kill such a lusty specimen. And I have need of him. Many cold nights have gone by since I've had a man to warm my bed."

She thrust herself past Cornwall and bent to examine Beckett. She reached out a claw and chucked him beneath the chin. Beckett's eyes went glassy at the sight of her.

"He isn't worth the trouble," Oliver said to her. "He will be running off as soon as he has a chance. And there are the Hellhounds . . ."

"Hah!" said the witch, disgusted. "Those little puppy dogs know better than to get gay with me. I'll take my broomstick to them. And as for running off, I'll put a spell on him, and I guarantee there'll be no running off. Aiee, the darling," she keened, "I'll make good use of him. Once I get him under covers, I'll break his lovely back. I'll give him loving such as he's never had before. . . ."

"It seems to me," Cornwall said to Beckett, "that your choices now are three. The Hellhounds or the sword or this. . . ."

"That is utter nonsense," screamed the witch. "He has no choice. You heard me say I lay a claim on him." She made a gesture with her hands, and gibberish flowed from out her mouth. She did a little dance and clicked her heels together. "Now turn him loose," she said.

Hal and Gib let loose of him, and Cornwall backed away. Beckett turned over and got on hands and knees, crawling forward to fawn against the witch.

"Like a goddamn dog," said Cornwall, flabbergasted. "If it had been me . . ."

"Look at the darling," the witch exclaimed, delighted. "He likes me already." She reached out and patted him on the head. Beckett wriggled in ecstasy. "Come along, my dear," she said.

She turned about and headed for the house, with Beckett gamboling at her heels, still on hands and knees.

While all this had been going on, the others, excited at the tea party, had paid slight attention to it. The witch, assisted by many willing hands, had brought tea and cakes, which had been placed on a table set before the boulders, underneath which the ogre had his burrow.

Cornwall looked about. There was no sign of the sloppy giant or of the Hellhounds. Quite suddenly the place assumed a happy look. The gentle sun of an autumn afternoon shone down on the knoll, and from far below came the murmuring of the stream as it flowed beneath the bridge.

"Where are the horses?" Cornwall asked.

Hal said, "Down beside the stream, in a little meadow, knee-deep in grass and doing justice to it. Sniveley is there, keeping close watch on them."

Coon came scampering three-legged, one front paw clutching a tea cake. Hal reached down and picked him up. Coon settled contentedly in his arms and munched blissfully at the cake.

"I guess it's all over now," said Cornwall. "Let us join the party."

"I keep wondering," said Gib, "how the Hellhounds will react when they find Beckett is beyond their reach."

Cornwall shrugged. "We'll handle that," he said, "when we come to it."

23

The ogre stuffed a cake into his mouth and leered at Cornwall.

"And who," he asked of Mary, "is this down-at-heels milksop who is acting as your escort?"

"He is no milksop," said Mary, "and if you continue in your pleasantries, you'll feel the full weight of his arm." She said to Cornwall, "He doesn't really mean it. He's only trying to be pleasant. It is a way he has." "If this is being pleasant," said Cornwall, "I should hate to see him being nasty."

"Well, don't just stay standing there," the ogre boomed at Cornwall, "Here, sit down on the other side of me and have a cup of tea. I would say have a cake as well, but I fear all the cakes are gone. I never in my life have seen such a ravenous assembly. They descended on the cakes as if they were half-starved."

"They couldn't have been," said Mary. "Not after the big feast of last night."

"They are gluttonous," said the ogre. "It is the nature of them. Despite their pretty faces and the winsomeness of them, they are nothing but maws attached to enormous guts."

Cornwall sat down beside the ogre, and a fairy handed him a cup of tea. The cup was tiny, and his large hands had trouble handling it. The cup was only half full; the tea was now in short supply as well.

"The ogre," said Mary, "has been telling me of my parents. It seems he knew them quite well."

"Especially your father," said the ogre. "We found in one another much of common interest. Many an evening we sat here, as the three of us sit now, and talked many hours away. He was an intelligent and perceptive human, and it was a delight to talk with him. He was at once a scholar and a gentleman. He held a vast respect for this land of ours and the people in it, and he held no fear of them— which is an unlikely quality to be found in humans. Although I saw less of his lovely lady than I did of him, I grew quite fond of both, and this sweet child of theirs I loved almost as if she were my daughter—although it is ridiculous to think I might have had such a daughter. I'd lie in my burrow while she threw down stones and dirt and, envisioning in my mind how she then would scamper off in simulated childish terror, I would shake with laughter."

"Somehow," said Cornwall, "it is hard to imagine you shaking with laughter."

"That, my dear sir, is only because you do not know me. I have many excellent, I might say endearing, qualities which are not immediately apparent."

"One thing," said Mary, "that has been sticking in my mind ever since yesterday is whether my parents might have come from the same world Mr. Jones said that he is from."

"I do believe," the ogre said, "that they may have. Not from anything they ever said or did, but since the advent of your Mr. Jones, it has seemed to me I could detect certain similarities—little quirks of temperament, the way in which they looked at things, a certain gentle self-assurance that could, at times, verge on arrogance. Not that they came with all the magic machines that Jones packed along with him; as a matter of fact they came as humble pilgrims, with packs on their backs. I happened to be out sunning myself when the three of you came down the hill together and crossed the bridge, and it was the sweetest sight these old owl-eyes of mine have ever seen. They carried in their packs only those things that might be possessed by a human who lived beyond the Wasteland, and I have wondered since if this were done by deliberate design, so that they would seem what they actually were not."

"And you liked them," Mary said.

"Indeed, I did. I liked them very much. It was a sad day for me when they went into the west, headed for the Blasted Plain. They had intended to take you, my dear, but I talked them out of it. I knew there was no point in trying to persuade them not to go themselves, for they were set on it. As I say, they had no fear in them. They believed that if they went in peace, they'd be allowed to go in peace. They had an almost childish faith in goodness. I think the only reason they left you behind was that never for a moment did they think they would not be coming back. They consoled themselves in leaving you behind in thinking they'd spare you the rigors of the trip. Not the dangers of it, for they never once admitted there would be dangers."

"They went west, then," said Cornwall. "What did they seek there?"

"I'm not sure I ever knew," the ogre said. "Certainly they never told me. There was a time when I thought I knew, but now I'm not so sure. There was something they were looking for. I got the impression they had a good idea where it was." "And you think they now are dead," said Mary. "No, actually I don't. I've sat here at the burrow's mouth year after year and stared out across the land. There's never been a time, to say it honestly, when I expected to see them coming back. But if I had ever seen them, I would not have been surprised. There was a sense of the indestructible about them, despite all their gentleness, as if they were unkillable, as if death were not for them. I know this may sound strange, and undoubtedly I'm wrong, but there are times you have a feeling that is beyond all logic. I saw them leave. I watched them until they were out of sight. And now I suppose I'll see you going, too, for I understand that you are about to follow in their path; she is going with you, and I suppose there is no stopping her." "I wish there were a way to stop her," Cornwall said. "But there's not," said Mary. "So long as there's a chance of finding them."

"And what can I say to that?" asked Cornwall. "There is nothing you can say," the ogre told him. "I hope you are more proficient with that sword than I take it you are. You have no look of fighting man to me. You smell of books and inkpot."

"You are right," said Cornwall, "but I go in goodly company. I have stout companions, and the sword I wear is made of magic metal. I only wish I had more training in the handling of it."

"I could suggest," the ogre said, "one other you might add who would make your company the stronger."

"You mean Jones," said Cornwall.

The ogre nodded. "He proclaims himself a coward. But there is great virtue in a coward. Bravery is a disease, too often fatal. It's the kind of thing that gets you killed. Jones would take no chances; he would commit himself to no action unless he were fairly certain the advantage weighed favorably. I would suggest he might carry powerful weapons, although I would have no idea what kind of weapons they might be. He has magic, but a different kind of magic than we have—a more subtle and more brutal magic, and he would be a good man to have along."

"I don't know," said Cornwall, hesitantly. "There is something about the man that makes me uncomfortable."

"The power of his magic," said the ogre. "The power and scope of it. And its unfamiliarity."

"Perhaps you're right. Although I think, uncomfortable or not, I'll make mention of it to him."

"I think," said Mary, "that he may be only waiting for you to do so. He wants to go deeper into the Wasteland and is afraid to go alone."

"And how about you?" Cornwall asked the ogre. "Would you join forces with us?"

"No, I would not," the ogre said. "I have long since done with foolishness. Come to think of it, I was never foolish. I have arrived at that time of life when sleeping in my burrow and sitting at its entrance to watch the world go by is all I need and want."

"But you'll tell us what to expect."

"Only hearsay," said the ogre, "and you have enough of that. Anyone can give you that, and you are a fool if you pay attention to it." He looked closely at Cornwall. "I think you are no fool," he said.

24

Jones' camp seemed deserted. The three striped tents still stood, but there was no one to be seen, not even any of the little people.

The crude table still stood, and scattered about it and the now dead fire hearths, on which the feast had been cooked, were gnawed bones and here and there a beer mug. Two beer barrels still lay on the wooden horses, where they had been placed for tapping. A vagrant wind came down between the trees and stirred a tiny puff of dust in the road that ran to the battlefield.

Mary shivered. "It's lonely," she said. "After last night it is lonely. Where is everyone?"

The two horses they had ridden to the camp pawed listlessly at the ground, impatient to be back in the knee-deep pasture grass. They tossed their heads, jangling the bridle bits.

"Jones," said Cornwall. He'd meant to make it a shout, but in the moment of shouting some sense of caution toned down his lung power, and it came out as a simple word, almost conversational.

"Let's have a look," he said. He strode toward the larger tent, with Mary at his heels.

The tent was empty. The military cot still stood in its corner and the desk and chair. The corner opposite the desk was still hung with dark drapes, and beside it stood the large metallic cabinet. What Jones had called his cameras were gone. So was the box in which he had kept the little colored miniatures. So were all the other many mysterious objects that had been on the desk.

"He's gone," said Cornwall. "He has left this world. He has gone back to his own."

He sat down on the cot and clasped his hands. "There was so much he could have told us," he said, half talking to himself. "The things he started to tell me last night before the Hellhounds came along."

He glanced about the tent and for the first time felt the alien quality of it—the other-worldness of it—not so much the tent itself or the articles remaining in it, for they were, after all, not so greatly different—but some mysterious sense, some strangeness, a smell of different origins and of different time. And for the first time since he'd started on the journey he felt the prick of fear and an overwhelming loneliness.

He looked up at Mary, standing there beside him, and in a strangely magic moment her face was all the world—her face and eyes that looked back in his own.

"Mary," he said, scarcely knowing that he said it, reaching up for her, and as he reached, she was in his arms. Her arms went around him hard, and he held her close against himself, feeling the soft, yielding contours of her body against the hardness of his own. There was comfort and exultation in the warmth of her, in the smell and shape of her.

She whispered in his ear, "Mark, Mark, Mark," as if it were a prayer, as if it were a pledge.

Tightening his arms, he swung her to the cot and turned so that he was above her. She raised her head to kiss him and the kiss kept on and on. He slid a hand into her robe and felt the nakedness—the soft fullness of the breast, the taut smoothness of the belly, the tender lushness of the pubic hair.

The entire world hammered at him, trying to get in, but he was proof against it. He shut it out in a small tight world that contained only Mary and himself. There was no one else but the two of them. There was nothing mattered but the two of them.

The tent flap rustled and a tense voice called, "Mark, where are you?"

He surged up out of the private world of him and Maty and sat blinking at the figure that stood within the parted flap.

Hal said, "I'm sorry—terribly sorry to disturb you at your dalliance."

Cornwall came swiftly to his feet. "Goddamn you to hell," he yelled, "it was not dalliance."

He took a swift step forward, but Mary, rising swiftly, caught him by the arm. "It's all right," she said. "Mark, it is all right."

"I do apologize," said Hal, "to the both of you. It was most unseemly of me. But I had to warn you. Hellhounds are nosing close about."

Gib popped through the flap. "What possessed you," he asked in an angry tone of voice, "to go off by yourselves? Without the rest of us?"

"It was quiet," said Cornwall. "There seemed to be no danger."

"There is always danger. Until we leave these benighted lands, there always will be danger."

"I wanted to find Jones. To ask him if he would join us. But he has left, it seems. It doesn't look as if he's coming back."

"We need no Jones," said Hal. "The four of us, with Oliver and Sniveley, will be quite enough. No two of us alone, perhaps, but all of us together."

25

The little ones had deserted them. Now they traveled quite alone, the six of them together.

It was nearing evening, and the land had changed but little. Five miles from the knoll where the Witch House stood they had come upon the Blasted Plain. Lying to the far horizon, it was a place of desolation. Drifting sand dunes lay here and there, and in between the dunes the land was parched and empty. Dead grass, dried to the consistency of hay, could be found in the lower areas where water once had lain but now there was no water. Occasional dead trees lifted their bonelike skeletons above the land, clutching at the sky with twisted, broken fingers.

Three of the horses were loaded with water, with the members of the party taking turns at riding the other two. Early in the day, Mary had rebelled at an unspoken conspiracy that would have delegated one of the remaining mounts to her and had done her share of walking. Except in the sand dune areas the walking was not difficult, but it held down the miles they could have made if all had been mounted.

Hal and Cornwall now led the march. Hal squinted at the sun. "We should be stopping soon," he said. "All of us are tired, and we want to be well settled in before darkness comes. How about that ridge over to the left? It's high ground, so we can keep a watch. There are dead trees for fire."

"Our fire up there," protested Cornwall, "could be spotted from a long way off."

Hal shrugged. "We can't hide. You know that. Maybe there is no one watching now, but they knew we started out. They know where we can be found."

"The Hellhounds, you think?"

"Who knows?" said Hal. "Maybe the Hellhounds. Maybe something else."

"You don't sound worried."

"Of course I'm worried. You'd be stupid not to be worried. Even not to be a bit afraid. The best advice we got back there was from the ogre. He said don't go. But we had to go. There was no point in coming that far if we weren't going on."

"I quite agree with you," said Cornwall.

"In any case," said Hal, "you and Gib would have gone on alone. It would have ill behooved the rest of us to do any hanging back."

"I saw no hanging back," said Cornwall.

They trudged along in silence, sand and pebbles grating underneath their feet. They neared the ridge Hal had pointed out.

"Do you agree?" said Hal. "The ridge?"

Cornwall nodded. "You're the woodsman."

"There are no woods here."

"Nevertheless, the ridge," said Cornwall. "You are the one to know. I still remain a city man and know little of these things."

As they climbed the ridge, Hal pointed out a deep valley that gashed its side. "There is dry grass in there," he said. "The horses can do some grazing before dark. Then we'll have to bring them up to the camp for night."

Once they had gathered atop the ridge, Hal took charge. "Mark," he said, "you water the horses. Half a bucket to each horse, no more. After that, take them down to grass. Have them back before dark, and keep a sharp lookout. Mary, you'll be on watch. Watch in all directions. Scream if you see anything at all. The rest of you gather wood from that clump of trees. We'll need a lot of it."

When Cornwall got back to the ridgetop with the horses, the campfire was burning brightly, with a bed of coals raked over to one side, with Mary cooking over them. Sniveley and Oliver were on watch. Hal picketed the horses.

"You go over and have some food," he said to Cornwall. "The rest of us have eaten."

"Where is Gib?" asked Cornwall.

"He's out scouting around."

The sun had gone down, but a faint light hung over the landscape, which had turned to purple. Gazing out over it, there was nothing to be seen. It was a land of shadows.

"The moon will be coming up in an hour or so," said Hal.

At the fire Cornwall sat down on the ground.

"Hungry?" Mary asked.

"Starved," he said. "And tired. How about you?"

"I'm all right," she said. She filled a plate for him.

"Cornbread," she said, "and some bacon, but a lot of gravy. Aw- fully greasy gravy, but maybe you won't mind. No fresh meat. There was nothing for Hal to shoot. Nothing but those jackrabbits, and with them he had no chance."

She sat down beside him, moved over close against him, lifted her face to be kissed.

"I have to talk with you," she said, "before the others come back. Oliver talked with me, and he was going to talk with you, but I told him no, let me talk with you. I told him it would be better."

He asked, amused, "What did Oliver have to say to you?"

"You remember back at the tent?"

"I'll never forget it. And you? How about you, Mary?"

"I can't forget it, either. But it can't go on. Oliver says it can't. That's what he talked about."

"What the hell has Oliver got to do with it—with you and me? That is, if you feel the same as I do."

She grasped his arm, lay her head against it. "But I do. There were all those days you never even noticed me, and then suddenly you did. When you did, I could have cried. You are the first one—you must understand that—you are the first. I was a tavern wench, but never . . ."

"I never thought," he said, "I never thought back there at the tent, I never thought of you as an easy tavern wench."

"But Oliver . . ."

"I don't see what Oliver . . ."

She let go of his arm and turned to face him. "He explained," she said. "He was most embarrassed, but he did manage to explain. He said I had to stay a virgin. He said he'd talk to you, but I said—"

Cornwall started to spring to his feet, sending the plate of food flying to the ground, but she caught him by the belt and pulled him back.

"Now see what you've done!" she cried.

"That goddamn Oliver," he said. "I'll wring his neck, just like a chicken. What right has he—"

"The horn," she said. "The unicorn horn. Don't you understand? The magic of the horn."

"Oh, my God," he said.

"I took it from the tree," she said. "The only one who could and only because I'd never known a man. The horn carries powerful magic, but only in my hands. Oliver said we have so little going for us that we may need that magic badly, and it can't be spoiled. I told him I'd try to tell you, and now I have. It's not been easy, but I have.

I knew what would happen if he talked to you about it. And we couldn't let that happen. We have to stick together. We can't be fighting one another."

"I'm sorry," he said. "Sorry that you had to tell me. I should have known myself. I should have thought of it."

"Neither of us thought of it," she said. "It happened all so fast there was no time to think. Does it, my darling, always happen to everyone so quickly?"

She leaned against him, and he put his arms around her. "No," he said, "I don't suppose it does. But I couldn't help myself."

"Nor could I," she said. "I wanted you so badly. I didn't know it until then, but then I did. There is a buried slut in every woman. It takes the touch of the right man's hand to bring it out."

"It won't last forever," he said. "There'll be a time when the unicorn magic will not be needed. We can wait till then."

She nestled close. "If the time should come when we can't," she said, "when either one or the other of us can't, we'll forget about the magic."

The fire flared as a stick of wood burned through and slumped into the coals. In the east the sky brightened as a signal to the rising moon. Stars pricked out in the heavens.

Feet scuffed behind them, and then she rose. She said, "I'll get you another plate of food. There is plenty left."

26

On the afternoon of the fourth day they came in sight of the Castle of the Chaos Beast. They first saw it after climbing a steep, high ridge, which broke sharply down into a deeply eroded valley-eroded at a time when there had been water in the land, the naked soil exposed and crumbling, the sun highlighting the many-colored strata, red and pink and yellow.

The castle had a mangy look about it. At one time it must have been an imposing pile, but now it was half in ruins. Turrets had fallen, with heaps of broken masonry piled against the walls. Great cracks zigzagged down the walls themselves. Small trees grew here and there along the battlements.

They stopped atop the ridge and looked at it across the deep and scarred ravine.

"So fearsome a name," said Sniveley, "and what a wreck it is."

"But still a threat," said Oliver. "It still could pose great danger."

"There is no sign of life about," said Gib. "It well could be deserted. I'm coming to believe that nothing lives in this land. Four days and we haven't seen a thing except a jackrabbit now and then and, less often, a gopher."

"Maybe we should try to go around it," suggested Mary. "Double back and . . ."

"If there is anyone around," said Hal, "they would know we're here."

Mary appealed to Cornwall, "What do you think, Mark?"

"Hal is right," he said, "and there seems to be some sort of path across the ravine. Perhaps the only place it can be crossed for miles. Gib may be right, as well. The place may be deserted."

"But everyone back where we came from talked about the Chaos Beast," she said. "As if he still were here."

"Legend dies hard," Sniveley told her. "Once told, a story lingers on. And I would think few cross this land. There would be no recent word."

Hal started down the path into the ravine, leading one of the horses. The others followed, going slowly; the path was steep and treacherous.

Cornwall, following behind Hal, looked up at Coon, who maintained a precarious perch atop the waterbags carried by the horse being led by Hal. Coon grimaced at him and dug his claws in deeper as the horse lurched on uncertain ground, then recovered and went on.

Coon looked somewhat bedraggled, no longer the perky animal he once had been. But so do all the rest of us, thought Cornwall. The days and miles had taken their toll. It had been a hard march, and no one knew when the end would be in sight, for the geography of the Wasteland was guesswork at the best. It was told in landmarks, and the landmarks were often ill-defined and at times not even there. First the Witch House, he thought, counting off the major landmarks, then the Blasted Plain, and now, finally, the Castle of the Chaos Beast and after this, the Misty Mountains, whatever they might be. He remembered he had been told there would be He Who

Broods Upon the Mountain, wondering rather idly if one of the Misty Mountains could be the one he brooded on.

But once the Misty Mountains had been reached, the Old Ones could not be far—or so they had been told by Jones, and, once again, what Jones had told would be no more than hearsay gained from his little people. There were no hard facts here, thought Cornwall, no real information. You pointed yourself in a certain direction and you stumbled on, hoping that in time you might find what you were looking for.

They had reached the bottom of the ravine and now started on the upward slope, the horses lunging upward, fearful of the crumbling and uncertain path, scrambling to maintain their footing.

Cornwall did not look up the slope to measure their progress. He kept his eyes on the path, alert to keeping out of the way of the lunging horse behind him. So that the end of it came suddenly and more quickly than he had expected. The path came to an end, and there was level ground beneath his feet.

He straightened from his stooped position and looked across the plain. And the plain, he saw, was no longer empty, as they first had seen it. It was black with Hellhounds.

They were still some distance off, but they were advancing at a steady lope, and in front of the pack ran the sloppy giant he had bellowed back and forth with at the Witch House.

The giant ran slab-sidedly, with his pancake feet plopping on the ground, raising little spurts of dust, but he still was making time, keeping well ahead of the beasts that ran behind him.

Hal stood to one side, with an arrow nocked against the bowstring. There was no excitement in him. He stood straight and steady, waiting, as if what was happening were no more than a target match.

And he knows, thought Cornwall, with a flare of panic, he knows as well as I do that we can't withstand this charge, that it is the end for us, that the shock of the charging Hellhounds will knock us back into the ravine where, separately, we'll be hunted down.

Where had the Hellhounds come from? he wondered. There had been no sign of them before. Was it possible they were the denizens of the castle and had hidden there?

His hand went back to the hilt of the sword, and with a jerk he wrenched the blade free of the scabbard. He was somewhat surprised that he should notice, with a thrill of pride, how brilliantly the naked blade flashed and glittered in the sunlight. And, somehow, the flash of it triggered in him an action, a heroic posturing of which he would have believed himself quite incapable. Stepping quickly forward, having no idea whatsoever that he had intended to step forward, he lifted the sword and swung it vigorously above his head so that it seemed a wheel of fire. And as he swung it, there came forth from his throat a battle bellow, a strident challenge—no words at all, but simply a roaring sound such as an angry bull might make to warn an intruder in a pasture.

He swung the sword in a glittering arc, then swung it once again, still roaring out the battle song, and on the second swing the hilt slipped from his hand and he stood there, suddenly weak-kneed and foolish, defenseless and unarmed.

Sweet Jesus, he thought, I have done it now. I should never have left Wyalusing. I should not be here. What will the others think of me, an oaf who can't even hang onto a sword.

He gathered himself for a mighty leap to retrieve the blade, praying that it would not fall so far away he could not get it back.

But the sword, he saw, was not falling. It was still spinning out, a wheel of light that refused to fall, and heading straight for the sloppy-giant. The running giant tried awkwardly to get away from it, but he was too late and slow. The sword edge caught him neatly in the throat and the giant began to fall, as if he might have stumbled in his running and could not stop himself from falling. A great fountain of blood came gushing from his throat, spraying the ground, covering his head and chest. He hit the ground and bounced, slowly folding in on himself, while the sword came wheeling back toward Cornwall, who put up a hand and caught the hilt.

"I told you," Sniveley said, at his elbow, "that the blade had magic. But I did not dream this much. Perhaps it is the swordsman. You handle it expertly, indeed."

Cornwall did not answer him. He could not answer him; he stood, sword in hand, quite speechless.

The loping pack of Hellhounds had suddenly veered off.

"Stand steady," said Hal. "They'll be back again."

Gib said, "I'm not so sure of that. They do not like the sword. They are frightened of it. I wish my ax were as magic as the sword. We would have them then."

"There's something happening," said Mary quietly. "Look, toward the castle."

A ribbon of fog had emerged from one of the castle gates and was rolling swiftly toward them.

"Now what?" asked Hal. "As if we haven't got enough trouble as it is."

"Quick!" said Sniveley. "Get into the fog. Follow it to the castle. Stay in it. The Hellhounds will not dare to enter it. We'll be safe from them."

"But the castle!" Cornwall said.

"We know it's sure death out here," said Sniveley. "For my part, I'll take my chances with the Chaos Beast."

"I agree with Sniveley," said Oliver.

"All right," said Cornwall. "Let's go."

The fog had almost reached them.

"The rest of you go ahead," yelled Cornwall. "I'll take up the rear."

"And I, Sir Scholar," said Gib, "claim a place with you."

They fled down the corridor of fog.

From outside came the frantic, slobbering baying of the cheated Hellhounds.

Running, they reached the castle gate and stumbled through it. Behind them they heard the heavy portcullis slam home.

The castle yard was filled with fog, but now it began to disperse and lift.

Facing them was a row of monstrosities.

Neither group moved. They stood where they were, surveying one another.

No two of the creatures were alike; all were unspeakable. Some were squat, with drooping wings that dragged the ground. Some were semi-human toads with wide mouths that drooled a loathsome slaver. Some were scaled, with the scales falling off in leprous patches. There was one with an enormous belly and a face on the belly. There were many others. All were horrible.

Mary turned and hid her face against Cornwall's chest. Gib was gagging.

Big Belly moved out of line, waddled toward them. The small mouth in the belly spoke. It said, "We seek your help. The Chaos Beast is dead."

27

They had been offered castle room, but had declined it, setting up a camp in the castle yard. There had been plenty of wood to build a fire, and now half a dozen scrawny chickens were stewing in a kettle held on a crane above the blaze.

"It is the only way to cook them," Mary said. "They are probably so tough we couldn't eat them otherwise."

Their hosts had brought them, as well, three large loaves of new-baked bread and a basket of vegetables—carrots, beans, and squash.

And having done that, their hosts had disappeared.

From a far corner of the yard came a startled cackling.

"It's that Coon again," said Hal. "He's after the chickens. I told him there'd be chicken for him, but he likes to catch his own."

The sun had set, and the dusk of evening was beginning to creep in. They lounged about the fire waiting for supper to be done. The castle loomed above them, an ancient heap with mosses growing on the stone. Scrawny chickens wandered about the yard, scratching listlessly. Equally scrawny hogs rooted in piles of rubble. Half the yard was taken up with a fenced-in garden that was nearly at an end. A few cabbages still stood and a row of turnips waited to be dug.

"What I want to know," Cornwall said to Sniveley, "is how you knew we'd be safe inside the fog."

"Instinct, I suppose," said Sniveley. "Nothing I really knew. A body of knowledge that one may scarcely know he has, but which in reality works out to principles. Let us call it hunch. You couldn't have that hunch. No human could have, I did. Something clicked inside me and I knew."

"And now what?" asked Hal.

"I don't know," said Sniveley. "So far we've been safe. I confess I do not understand. The Chaos Beast is dead, they said, and they need our help. But I can't imagine what kind of help they need or why specifically from us. I am troubled, too, by the kind of things they are. They look like offscourings of this world of ours—no little people, no honest monsters, but something else entirely. We hear stories now and then of creatures such as this. Almost never seen. Not really stories, perhaps. More like legends. And you'll be asking me about the Chaos Beast, perhaps, and I'll tell you now I know no more of it than you do."

"Well, anyhow," said Gib, "they're leaving us alone. They brought us food, then went off. Maybe they're giving us time to get used to the idea of them, and if that's the case, I'm glad. I'm sorry about it, of course, but I gag at the sight of them."

"You'll have to get used to them," said Cornwall. "They'll be back again. There is something that they want from us. . . ."

"I hope," said Hal, "they give us time to eat first."

They did. Supper was finished and full night had come. Hal had built up the fire so that it lighted a good part of the yard.

There were only three of them—Big Belly, Toad Face, and a third that looked as if it had been a fox that had started to turn human and had gotten stuck halfway in the transformation.

They came up to the fire and sat down. Foxy grinned at them with a long jaw full of teeth. The others did not grin.

"You are comfortable," asked Toad Face, "and well fed?"

"Yes," said Cornwall. "Thank you very much."

"There are rooms made ready for you."

"We would not feel comfortable without a fire and the open sky above us."

"Humans are seldom seen here," said Foxy, grinning again to show that he was friendly. "Two of you are human."

"You are prejudiced against humans?" asked Hal.

"Not at all," said Foxy. "We need someone who isn't scared."

"We can be just as scared as you," said Cornwall.

"Maybe," Foxy agreed, "but not scared of the same things. Not as scared of the Chaos Beast as we are."

"But the Chaos Beast is dead."

"You still can be scared of a thing when it is dead. If you were scared enough of it while it was alive."

"If you are this scared, why don't you leave?"

"Because," said Toad Face, "there is something that we have to do. The Chaos Beast told us we had to do it once he was dead. He put a charge on us. And we know we have to do it, but that doesn't stop us from being scared to do it."

"And you want us to do it for you?"

"Don't you see," said Big Belly, "it won't be hard for you. You never knew the Chaos Beast. You never knew what he could do."

"Dead he can't do anything," said Gib.

"We tell ourselves that," said Foxy, "but we don't believe it. We tell ourselves and it does no good."

"Tell us about this Beast of yours," said Cornwall.

They looked at one another, hesitant.

'Tell us," Cornwall said. "If you don't, there is no deal. And there has to be a deal. We do this chore for you, what do you do for us?"

"Well, we thought. . ."

"You think because you helped us this afternoon . . ."

"Well, yes," said Big Belly, "we sort of did think that."

"I wouldn't be too sure of how much help you were," said Hal. "We were doing rather well. Mark's magic sword and a quiver full of arrows, plus Gib and his ax . . ."

"It was a help," said Mary.

"Don't let these jokers fool you," Sniveley warned. "They have some dirty work . . ."

"I admit," said Cornwall, "that you made some points this afternoon, but it seems to me this calls for more than points."

"You bargain with us?" Foxy asked.

"Well, let us say we should discuss the matter further."

"A sackful of chickens, perhaps," said Foxy. "Maybe a pig or two."

Cornwall did not answer.

"We could shoe your horses," said Toad Face. "We have a forge."

"We're going at this wrong," said Gib. "First we should find out what kind of chore they want done. It may be something we don't want to do."

"Very easy," Big Belly said. "No sweat at all. Provided you have no real fear of the Beast. Fear, of course, but not the kind of fear we have. Even to speak the name, we shudder."

All three shuddered.

"You talk about this Beast of yours and shiver," Sniveley said, tartly. "Tell us what made him so fearsome. Tell us the horror of him. Do not try to spare us. We have stout stomachs."

"He came not of this Earth," said Foxy. "He fell out of the sky."

"Hell," said Cornwall, disgusted, "half the heathen gods descended from the sky. Now, tell us something new."

"Legend says in all seriousness that he came out of the sky," said Big Belly. "Legend says he fell on this spot and lay here in all his fearsomeness. The people of that time fled for their lives, for there were many things about him that they did not like. Those were good days then, or so it is said. There was rain, and the soil was rich, and many people dwelt here in contentment and happiness. But a sickness came upon the land, a rottenness. There were no rains, and the soil lost richness, and there was famine, and the people said it was the Beast who brought the sickness of the land. So they met in council and decided that the Beast must be hedged against the land. With many years of labor they brought here great stones and fenced him in with stones, not around him only, but on top of him as well, leaving only at the very top an opening so that if it were necessary he might be reached. Although why anyone should want to reach him is not well explained. They built a vault to contain him, with deep footings of stone to support the walls, and in the opening at the top they placed a fitted stone to shut him from the land and sky.

"And having done so, they waited for the rain, and there was no rain. The sickness still lay upon the land, the grasses died and the sand began to blow and drift. But the people clung to the land, for once it had been good land and might be good again, and they were loath to give it up. There were certain of these people who claimed they had learned to talk with the vaulted Beast, and these told the others that he wished them to worship him. 'If we worship him, perhaps he'll take the sickness from the land.' So they worshiped him, but the worship did no good, and they said among themselves, 'Let us build a house for him, a very pleasing house. Perhaps if we do that, he will be pleased and take the sickness from the land.' Once again they labored mightily to build this castle that you see, and the people who had learned to talk with him moved into the castle to listen to what he had to say and to do those things he wanted done, and I shudder when I think of some of those acts he wanted done. . . ."

"But it did no good," said Cornwall.

"How did you know that?" asked Foxy.

"For one thing, the land continues sick."

"You are right," said Foxy. "It did no good."

"And yet you stayed here all the time," said Mary. "Since they built the castle. For you are the ones, aren't you, who talked with the Beast?"

"What there are left of us," said Toad Face. "Some of us have died, although all of us lived many times longer than the folk we once were. We lived longer and we changed. It almost seemed that we lived longer to give us the chance to change. Century after century the changes came on us. You can see the changes."

"I am not so certain," said Oliver, "that I believe all this. It seems impossible common folk would become the kind of things these are."

"It was the Beast that did it," said Big Belly. "We could feel him changing us. We don't know why he changed us, but he did."

"You should have left," said Cornwall.

"You do not understand," said Foxy. "We took a pledge to stay. To stay with the Beast. After a time the people left, but we stayed on. We were afraid that if the Beast were left alone, he'd tear down the vault and be loosed upon the Wasteland. We couldn't let that happen. We had to stand between the Wasteland and the Beast."

"And after a time," said Toad Face, "there was no place for us to go. We were so changed there was no place would take us."

"I'm not inclined," said Sniveley, "to believe a word of this. They have told us the story of the forming of a priesthood—a group of selfish, scheming leeches who fastened on the people. They used the Beast to gain an easy living and now, perhaps, the living is not so easy, since the people left, but it was at one time, and that was their purpose in saying they could converse with this Beast. Even now they would have us believe they have a noble purpose, standing, they say, between the Beast and the Wasteland. But they are no more than a gang of slickers, especially that one with the foxy face."

"Perhaps they are," said Cornwall. "Perhaps what you say is right, but let us hear the rest of it."

"That's all of it," said Big Belly. "And every word is truth."

"But the Beast is dead," said Hal. "You have no worries anymore. Sure, he told you to do something when he died, but you don't have to do it You're now beyond his reach."

"Perhaps he can't reach you," said Foxy. "Perhaps not the others of your party. But he can reach us. We have been with him for so long, perhaps becoming so much a part of him, that in many ways he can still live in us, and even in death he can reach out—yes, even in death he can reach out. . . ."

"God, yes," said Cornwall, "it could happen that way."

"We know he's dead," said Big Belly. "His body lies rotting in the vault. He was a long time dying, and we seemed to die a little with him. We could feel the dying and the death. But in the reaches of the night, in the time of silences, he is still there. Perhaps not to others; probably only to ourselves."

"Okay, then," said Hal. "Say we accept your word for all of this. You've taken a lot of time and trouble to build up your story, and you have some purpose in your mind. I submit it is now time to tell us of that purpose. You said there was a chore that you wanted done and that we could do it because we were not as fearful of the Chaos Beast as you are."

"The task requires entering the vault," said Foxy.

"You mean into the vault with that dead monstrosity!" cried Mary.

"But why?" asked Cornwall, horrified. "Why into the vault?"

"Because," said Foxy, "there is something there that must be taken out. Something the Beast said should be taken out."

"You know what this thing is?"

"No, we don't know what it is. We asked and the Beast would not tell us. But we know that it is there. We took the cover from the vault and looked down into it. It took all the courage we had, but we managed it. Not for very long. We just had a glimpse, but we saw the object that must be taken out. We took one look and fled. . . ."

"And you want us to get it out?"

"If you would, please," said Foxy.

"Could you tell us what it is?" asked Mary.

"We saw only a part of it, or I suppose we saw only a part of it. We cannot imagine what it is. It appears to be a cage, a round cage. There are strips of metal formed into a cage. It is about so big." Foxy held his hands about a foot apart.

"Embedded in the body of the beast?"

"That is right," said Foxy.

"It will be a nasty job," said Gib.

"I do not like it," said Sniveley. "There is something here that's evil. There is more than they have told us."

"Perhaps," said Cornwall, "but they have a problem, and I suppose there is a price. Not," he said to Foxy, "a few chickens and a pig."

"The goodness of the deed," suggested Foxy. "For the sake of chivalry."

"Don't talk to us of chivalry," snapped Oliver. "Chivalry is dead. It didn't last too long. It was a rotten idea while it did. So come up with something solid. If you don't, come morning we will leave."

"You dare not leave," said Foxy smugly. "The Hellhounds are lurking out there on the plain. They'll snap you up before you've gone a league. The Hellhounds never loved you, and now they love you less since you killed the giant."

"You suggest we're trapped in here," said Hal.

"Perhaps not," said Big Belly. "It's possible we could help you."

"They're working together," Sniveley charged. "These jokers and the Hellhounds. They're putting the squeeze on us."

"If you mean," said Toad Face, "that we are friendly with the Hell- hounds and with their aid have devised a devious scheme to get you to do this small service for us, you couldn't be more wrong."

"Come to think of it," said Gib, "we never saw a Hellhound until we saw the castle. We watched and waited for them and they never did show up until we reached the castle. They waited for us here. They could have jumped us anyplace along the way, but they waited for us here."

"For years," said Foxy, "the Hounds have nosed around this castle, thinking they might catch us unaware. It has been war between us almost from the start. In recent years they have grown more cautious, for we have made them smart, and they have sorely learned what we can do to them. Time after time we've whomped them with various kinds of magic, but they still hang around. They've never given up. Now, however, at the very sight of us, they tuck in their tails and scamper. We have them hexed."

"It's the castle they want?" asked Gib. "Not really you they're after, but the castle?"

"That is right," said Foxy. "It's a thing of pride with them, to be possessors of the Castle of the Chaos Beast. They never, you understand, have really amounted to anything at all. They have been the rowdies and the brawlers of the Wasteland. They've been feared, of course, but they've never been respected. But to hold the castle— that might give them status and respect."

"And you say you have them hexed?"

"They dare not lay a hand on us. They won't even come too close. But they hope that through some trick someday they will overcome us. . . ."

"Is it your thought," asked Cornwall, "that you can give us safe escort when we leave the castle?"

"That is our thought," said Foxy.

"We enter the vault and bring out the object, and once that is done, you furnish us escort until there is no longer any danger from the Hellhounds."

"They're lying to us," Oliver said. "They're scared striped of the Hounds. Just like they are scared of the Chaos Beast."

"What difference does it make?" asked Mary. "You all have made up your minds to pull this thing from the vault. You wonder what it is, and you won't rest easy until you find out what it is. . . ."

"Still," said Cornwall to Foxy, "you do promise us escort?"

"That we do," said Foxy.

"And it better be good," said Hal, "or we'll come back and clean out this nest of you."

28

The stench was green. It struck the pit of the stomach, it clogged the nostrils, burned the throat, watered the eyes; it made the mind reel. It was an alien foulness that seemed to come from somewhere other than the Earth, a violent corruption deep from the guts of Hell.

They had labored in it for hours, setting up the poles to form the tripod above the opening of the vault (although Cornwall realized he could no longer think of it as a vault, but rather as a pit), rigging the pulley, threading the rope to run in the pulley.

And, now that all was ready, Cornwall leaned over the edge of the opening to glance down into the mass of putrescence that filled the area, a gelatinous matter not quite liquid, not quite solid—a sight he had avoided until now. For the mass itself seemed to have some of the same obscene, stomach-wrenching quality that characterized the stench that came boiling out of it. The stench was bad enough; the stench combined with the sight of the vault's contents was almost unbearable. He doubled over, wracked by the dry retching that brought up nothing, for the contents of his stomach had been emptied long ago.

"Why don't you let me, Mark?" said Gib, standing at his elbow. "I don't seem to mind it as much—"

"You don't mind it so much," said Cornwall harshly, "that you vomited up your goddamned guts."

"But I am lighter," argued Gib. "I don't weigh more than a third of what you do; I'll be easier to handle on the rope."

"Stop it, Gib," Sniveley said angrily. "We talked this out hours ago. Sure, you weigh a third less than Mark, you also have only a third the strength."

"Maybe we won't need any strength."

"That thing down there," said Hal, "could be hard to yank out. If it grew out of the body of the Beast, it still could be rooted there."

"The body is a mass of soup," said Gib. "It is nothing but a puddle."

"If it were," said Cornwall, "the cage or globe or whatever it is would have sunk. It wouldn't still be there."

"We can't be sure of that," said Gib. "It could be floating."

"Let's stop this talk," said Cornwall. "As Sniveley said, we decided it. We talked it over and decided it on logic. I have more strength than any of you, and strength may be needed. I grab hold of it, and you guys pull me out along with it; it might take even more strength than I have to hang onto it. The rest of you together can handle the rope—that is, if Mary's here to help. Where the hell is Mary?"

"She went down to start the fire under the kettle," said Sniveley. "We'll need hot water to take baths once we get out of here. . . ."

"If hot water will take it off," said Oliver.

"Big Belly gave us some soap," said Sniveley.

"What would they need of soap?" asked Oliver. "From the smell of them, they never use it."

Cornwall yelled at them. "Cut out the goddamn jabber! What's soap got to do with it? What's hot water got to do with it? If a fire had to be started, any one of you could have started it. We need Mary here to help handle the rope, and what is more . . ."

He let his voice run down, ashamed of himself. What was he doing, shouting at them? It was the stench, he knew—it nibbled the mind, it frazzled the nerves, it squeezed the guts; in time it could turn a man into a shrieking maniac.

"Let's get on with it," he said.

"I'll get Mary," said Oliver. "I'll stay and watch the fire."

"Forget the fire," said Hal. "Come back with her. We could need your help."

"If we had a hook," said Hal, "we might be able to hook it out."

"But we haven't got a hook," said Hal, "and no metal to make one. They have a forge down there and no metal. . . ."

"They hid the metal," said Sniveley, "just like they're hiding themselves. There's no hide nor hair of them."

"We could get metal from one of our pots," said Gib.

"It's easier this way," said Cornwall. "Simple and direct. Tie that rope around me and let's get started."

"You'll suffocate," said Sniveley.

"Not if I tie a scarf around my mouth and nose."

"Make sure that knot is tied securely," Sniveley said to Hal. "We can't take a chance. If Mark falls into the mess, well never get him out."

"I know about knots," said Hal. "A good slip noose. It will tighten up." He said to Cornwall, "How does it feel?"

"It feels fine. Now give me that scarf."

He wrapped the scarf around his face, covering nose and mouth.

"Hold still," said Gib. "I'll tie it."

Oliver came scampering up the stairs, followed by Mary.

"Everyone's here," said Hal. "Grab hold of that rope, all of you. Hang on for your life. Let him down easy."

Cornwall leaned over the opening and gagged. It was not the smell so much, for the scarf did offer some protection, but the sight—the sea of crawling corruption, a creature dead and rotting, with nowhere for the rot to go, a puddle of putrescence, held within the vault. It was green and yellow, with streaks of red and black, and there seemed to be within it some kind of feeble current that kept it swirling slowly, so slowly that no real motion could be detected, although there was a sense of motion, almost of aliveness.

He gagged, gritting his teeth. His eyes began to smart and water.

He couldn't live down there for long, he knew. It had to be down quickly and out again as fast as possible. He flexed his right hand, as if he wanted to be sure it was in working order when he reached out to grab the cage or whatever it might be that was down there in the pit.

The rope tightened around his chest. "All ready, Mark," said Hal.

He swung over the edge. The rope tightened and held him, lifting him a little. He let loose of the edge of the vault and felt his body swinging to the center of the opening. His body dropped jerkily and was brought swiftly to a halt.

Up above him Hal was yelling. "Watch it! Take it slow! Let him down easy! Not too fast!"

The stench rose up and hit him, engulfing him, smothering him. The scarf was not enough. The stench seeped through the fabric, and he was drowning in it. His belly slammed up and hit him in the face, then dropped into a place that had no bottom. His mouth filled with a vomit he would have sworn he didn't have and was held there by the scarf wrapped about his face. He was blinded and disoriented. He clawed feebly with his hands. He tried to cry out, but no words came in his throat.

Below him he could make out the noisome surface of corruption, and it seemed to be in violent motion. A wave of it rose and reached for him, fell short and dropped back again. It had an oily and repulsive look, and the stench poured out of it. Another wave ran across its surface, struck the opposite wall of the vault and curled on itself, not as water would curl, but slowly, deliberately, ponderously, with a terrible look of power. Then it was flowing back and reaching up again, and this time it hit him. It climbed over his body, covering him, drenching him in its substance. He lifted his hands and clawed in terror to free his eyes of the clinging putridness. His stomach heaved and churned. He vomited weakly, but it was dry vomiting; there was nothing left to vomit.

He could see only blearily, and he had the horrible feeling that he was lost in an otherness that was beyond the ken of all living things. He did not sense the pressure of the rope as the others hauled him up. It was not until he felt hands upon him, hauling him free of the opening of the vault, that he realized he had been lifted free.

His feet hit hardness and his knees buckled under him. He sprawled weakly, still retching. Someone was wiping off his face. Someone was saying, "You're all right now, Mark. We have you out of it."

And someone else, off a ways, was saying, "It's not dead, I tell you. It is still alive. No wonder those slimy little bastards were afraid to go down in there. We been took, I tell you. We been took."

He struggled to his knees. Someone threw a pail of water over him. He tried to speak, but the vomit-soaked, stench-drenched scarf still covered his mouth. Hands ripped it off him and his face was free.

He saw Gib's face in front of him. Gib's mouth worked. "What a mess," he said. "Off with those clothes. Down the stairs and in the tub. The water's hot and we have soap."

29

Coon and Oliver perched on the edge of the tub. "I say give it up," said Oliver. "The castle people knew what would happen if they went into the vault. They know the thing's not dead. . . ."

"It's dead, all right," said Sniveley. "It's rotting there before your eyes. It's magic. That is what it is. The vault's bewitched. . . ."

"You can't bewitch the vault," protested Oliver. "You can't bewitch a thing. A person, sure, a living thing, but not a thing of stone."

"We have to figure out another way," said Gib. "I've been looking at that iron frying pan we have. We could use the handle of it, heat it, bend it in a hook . . ."

"Go probing down with a hook," said Hal, "and the same thing will happen. The Beast, dead or not, is not about to let us hook that object out of there."

"Any sign of Big Belly or Foxy or any of the rest of them?" asked Cornwall.

"Not a sign," said Hal. "We searched the castle. They're in some hidey-hole."

"If we have to," said Cornwall, "we'll take the place down stone by stone to find them. No one can pull a trick like this on us."

"But we have to get that thing out of there," said Mary. "We made a deal with the castle folk. The plain out there is swarming with Hellhounds. We'll never get out by ourselves."

"What makes you think," asked Sniveley, "they ever meant to keep the deal? They tried to use us. For some reason they want that thing out of the vault, and they'd have done anything. . ."

"We could tear down the vault," said Gib. "It would take a little time. . . ."

"I think I'm fairly clean," said Cornwall. "I'd better be getting out of here. Hand me my trousers, will you?"

Mary gestured at the makeshift clothesline that had been strung up. "They aren't dry," she said.

"I'll wear them wet," said Cornwall. "We'll have to start doing something. Maybe Gib is right. Tear down the vault."

"Why bother with it anymore?" asked Hal. "We can fight our way through the Hellhounds. With the giant dead, the heart's gone out of them. They won't be all that tough."

"You have only a couple of dozen arrows," said Gib. "Once they're gone, there aren't any more. Then there'll be only Mark's sword and my ax."

"Both the sword and ax are good," said Sniveley. "You'll never find better."

Coon fell in the tub. Cornwall picked him out by the scruff of his neck, reached over the edge of the tub, and dropped him on the ground. Coon shook himself, spattering everyone with soapy, smelly water.

"Here are your pants," said Mary, handing them to Cornwall. "I told you they aren't dry. You'll catch your death of cold."

"Thanks," said Cornwall. "They'll be dry in a little while."

"Good honest wool," said Hal. "No one ever suffers from wearing wet wool."

Cornwall got out of the tub, tugged on his trousers.

"I think we should talk this over," he said. "There's something in that vault the castle folk want out. If it's all that important to them, it might be as important to us. Anyhow, I think we should get it out, find out what it is. And once we get it out, we'll dig out Big Belly and the rest of them from wherever they may be and talk to them by hand. But until we get out whatever's in the vault we can't talk to them too well. All of it may do us no good, and it'll be a messy job, of course . . ."

"There might be another way," said Oliver. "The unicorn horn. The one that Mary has. Magic against magic."

Sniveley shook his head. "I'm not sure it would work. Magic comes in specific packages. . . ."

"I hesitated to mention it," Oliver apologized. "It's no place to send a lovely lady and . . ."

"Lady, hell," Cornwall snorted. "If you think it has a chance, give me the horn and I'll go in again."

"But it wouldn't work with you," said Oliver. "It would only work with Mary. She has to be the one."

"Then we tear down the vault," said Cornwall. "Unless someone can think of something else. Mary, I tell you, is not going down into that vault."

"Now, you listen here," said Mary. "You have no right to say that. You can't tell me what to do. I'm a part of this band, and I claim the right to do whatever I can do. I've packed that horn for miles and it's an awkward thing to carry. If any good can come of it—"

"How do you know it will do any good at all?" yelled Cornwall. "What if it didn't work? What if you went down in there and . . ."

"I'll take the chance," said Mary. "If Oliver thinks it will work, I'll go along with it."

"Let me try it first," said Cornwall.

"Mark," said Hal, "you're being unreasonable. Mary could try at least. We could let her down, and if there were any motion there, if there were anything at all, we could pull her out immediately."

"It's pretty bad down there," said Cornwall. "It is downright awful. The smell is overpowering."

"If it worked," said Oliver, "it would only take a minute. We could have her in and out. . ."

"She could never pull it out," said Cornwall. "It might be heavy. Maybe she couldn't get a grip on it, couldn't hang onto it even if she did get a grip."

"We could fix up that hook," said Hal. "Tie it to a rope. She hooks onto it and then we pull out both her and it."

Cornwall looked at Mary. "Do you really want to?"

"No, of course, I don't want to," she said. "You didn't want to, either, but you did. But I am ready to do it. Please, Mark, let me try."

"I only hope it works," said Sniveley. "I hate to tell you the kind of odds I'd give you that it won't."

30

They did it differently from the way they had for Cornwall. For Mary they rigged a seat, like the seat for a child's swing, and fashioned a hitch so she could be tied securely into it. They tied a cord about the horn so it could be looped about her shoulder and she need not hold it, for it was an awkward thing to hold. Thus, she had both hands free to handle the hook, which, tied to another rope, was run through a second pulley.

Finally it was time to go.

"My robe," said Mary. "It is the only one I have. It will be fouled."

"Shuck it up," said Hal. "We can tie it into place."

"It might not wash clean," she wailed.

"Take it off," said Sniveley. "Go down in your skin. None of us will mind."

"No!" said Cornwall. "No, by God, I'll not have it!"

"Sniveley," Hal said sharply, "you have gone too far. Modesty is not something you know about, of course. . ."

Gib said to Mary, "You must excuse him. He had no way to know."

"I wouldn't mind so much," said Mary. "The robe is all I have. If none of you ever spoke of it or—"

"No!" said Cornwall.

Mary said to him in a soft, low voice, "You have felt my nakedness. . . ."

"No," said Cornwall in a strangled voice.

"I'll wash out the robe while you're in the tub," Oliver offered. "I'll do a good job on it, use a lot of soap."

"I think," said Sniveley, "it's a lot of foolishness. She'll get splashed. That foul corruption will be all over her. The horn won't work—you wait and see, it won't."

They tucked up the robe and tied it into place. They put a piece of cloth around her face, Oliver having raided the castle kitchen for a jug of vinegar in which the cloth was soaked in hope that it would help to counteract the stench.

Then they swung her over the opening. The putrescent puddle boiled momentarily, then settled down again. They lowered her swiftly. The loathsome pit stirred restlessly, as if it were a stricken animal quivering in its death throes, but stayed calm.

"It's working," said Gib between his teeth. "The horn is working."

Cornwall called to Mary. "Easy does it now. Lean over with the hook. Be ready. We'll let you down another foot or so."

She leaned over with the hook poised above the cage.

"Let her down," said Hal. "She's directly over it."

Then it was done. The hook slipped over two of the metal strips and settled into place. Gib, who was handling the hook-rope, pulled it taut. "We have it," he shouted.

Cornwall heaved on the rope tied to Mary's sling and brought her up swiftly. Hands reached out and hauled her to safety.

She staggered as her feet touched solid rock, and Cornwall reached out to steady her. He ripped the cloth off her face. She looked up at him with tearful eyes. He wiped the tears away.

"It was bad," she said. "But you know. You were down there. Not as bad for me as it must have been for you."

"But you are all right?"

"I'll get over it," she said. "The smell. . ."

"We'll be out of here for good in a little while. Once we get that thing out of there." He turned to Gib. "What have we got?"

"I don't know," said Gib. "I've never seen its like."

"Let's get it out before something happens."

"Almost to the top," said Hal. "Here it comes. The Beast is getting restless."

"There it is!" yelled Oliver.

It hung at the end of the rope, dripping slime. It was no cage or globe. The globe was only the upper part of it.

"Quick!" warned Hal. "Reach over and pull it in. The Beast is working up a storm."

A wave of the vault's contents rose above the opening, curled over, breaking, sending a fine spray of filth over the edge of the opening.

Cornwall reached out, fighting to get a grip on the thing that dangled from the hook. It had a manlike look about it. The cage formed the head, its tanklike body was cylindrical, perhaps two feet through and four feet long. From the body dangled three metallic structures that could be legs. There were no arms.

Hal had a grip on one of the legs and was pulling it over the edge of the opening. Cornwall grasped another leg and together they heaved it free of the vault. A wave broke over the lip of the opening. The noisome mass sloshed out over the platform that ringed the top of the vault.

They fled down the stairs and out into the courtyard, Gib and Hal dragging the thing from the vault between them. Once in the courtyard, they stood it on its feet and stepped away. For a moment it stood where they had set it, then took a step. It paused for a short heartbeat, then took another step. It turned about slowly and swiveled its head, as if to look at them, although it had no eyes, or at least none that were visible.

"It's alive," said Mary.

They watched it, fascinated, while it stood unmoving.

"Do you have any idea," Hal asked Sniveley, "what in the world it is?"

Sniveley shook his head.

"It seems to be all right," said Gib. "It isn't angry at us."

"Let's wait awhile," cautioned Hal, "before we get too sure of that."

Its head was the cage, and inside the cage was a floating sphere of brightness that had a tendency to sparkle. The cage sat atop the tank-like body, and the body was networked with many tiny holes, as if someone had taken a nail and punched holes in it. The legs were so arranged that there was no front or back to the creature; at its option it could walk in any direction. It seemed to be metal, but there was no surety it was.

"Son of the Chaos Beast," said Cornwall speculatively.

"Maybe," said Hal. "The son? The ghost? Who knows?"

"The castle folk might know," suggested Mary. "They were the ones who knew about it." But there was still no sign of the castle folk.

31

Baths had been taken, clothing washed, supper cooked and eaten. A faint stench still, at times, wafted from the direction of the vault, but other than that, everything was peaceful. The horses munched methodically at a pile of ancient hay stacked in one corner of the courtyard. The pigs continued to root here and there, but the chickens had ceased their scratching and had gone to roost.

None of the castle folk had made an appearance.

"I'm getting worried about them," said Cornwall. "Something must have happened to them."

"They're just hiding out," said Sniveley. "They made a deal they know they can't deliver on, and now they're hiding out and waiting for us to leave. They're trying to outwait us."

"You don't think," said Mary, "they can help us with the Hellhounds?"

"I never did think so," said Sniveley.

"The place still is stiff with Hounds," said Gib. "I went up on the battlements just before sunset and they were all around. Out there and waiting."

"What are we going to do?" asked Oliver. "We can't stay here forever."

"Wait and see," said Cornwall. "Something may turn up. At least we'll sleep on it."

The moon came tumbling over the eastern horizon as night settled in. Hal piled more wood on the fire and the flames leaped high. The thing they had taken from the pit prowled restlessly about the courtyard; the rest of them lounged about the fire.

"I wonder what is wrong with Tin Bucket over there," said Hal. "He seems to have something on his mind. He is jittery."

"He's getting oriented," said Gib. "He's been jerked into a new world and he's not sure he likes it."

"It's more than that," said Hal. "He acts worried to me. Do you suppose he knows something we don't?"

"If he does," said Sniveley, "I hope he keeps it to himself. We've got enough to worry about without him adding to it. Here we are, locked up in a moldering old stone heap, with the owners of it hiding in deep dungeons and Hounds knee-deep outside. They know we'll have to come out sometime, and when we do, they'll be there, with their teeth all sharpened up."

Cornwall heaved himself to his feet. "I'm going up on the wall," he said, "and see if anything is going on."

"There are stairs over to the left," Gib told him. "Watch your step. The stones are worn and slippery."

The climb was long and steep, but he finally reached the battlement. The parapet stood three feet high or so, and the stones were crumbling. When he reached out a hand to place it on the wall, a small block of stone came loose and went crashing down into the moat.

The ground that stretched outward from the walls was splotched with moonlight and shadow, and if there were Hounds out there, he realized they would be hard to spot. Several times it seemed he detected motion, but he could not be certain.

A chill breeze was blowing from the north and he shivered in it. And there was more than the wind, he told himself, that might cause a man to shiver. Down at the fire he could not admit his concern, but here, atop the wall, he could be honest with himself. They were caught in a trap, he knew, and at the moment there was no way to get out. It would be foolishness, he knew, to try to cut their way through. A sword, an ax, a bow (with two dozen arrows at best) were the only weapons they had. A magic sword, of course, but a very inept swordsman. An expert at the bow, but what could one bow do? A stout man with an ax, but a small man, who would go under in the first determined Hellhound rush.

Somewhere out on the darkened plain a night bird was startled into flight. It went peeping its way across the land, its wings beating desperately in the night. Something was out there to have startled it, Cornwall told himself. More than likely the entire plain was alive with watching Hounds.

The peeping went away, growing fainter and fainter as the bird blundered through the darkness; but as the peeping faded, there was a cricket chirping, a sound so small and soft that Cornwall found himself straining to hear it. As he listened, he felt a strange panic stirring in him, for it seemed to him he had heard the same sound once before. Now the cricket-chirping sound changed into another sound, not as if there were a new sound, but as if the chirping had been modified to a sort of piping. And suddenly he remembered when he had heard the sound before—on that night before they had stumbled on the battlefield.

The quavery piping swelled into a wailing, as if some frightened thing in the outer dark were crying out its heart. The wailing rose and fell and there was in it something that hinted at a certain madness—a wild and terrible music that stopped one's blood to hear.

The Dark Piper, Cornwall told himself, the Dark Piper once again.

Behind him came a tinkling sound as a small bit of stone was dislodged and went bouncing down the inside wall. He swung about and saw a little sphere of softly glowing light rising above the inner wall. He stepped back in sudden fright, his fist going to the sword hilt, and then relaxed as he realized what it was—Tin Bucket making his slow and cautious way up the slippery flight of stairs.

The creature finally gained the battlement. In the light of the risen moon his metallic body glinted, and the luminous sphere inside his head-cage sparkled in a friendly manner. Cornwall saw that Tin Bucket had sprouted arms, although arms was not quite the word. Several ropelike tentacles had grown, or had been extruded, from the holes that pierced his body.

Tin Bucket moved slowly toward him, and he backed away until he came up against the parapet and could go no farther. One of the ropelike arms reached out and draped itself across one of his shoulders with a surprisingly gentle touch. Another swept out in an arc to indicate the plain beyond the wall, then doubled back on itself, the last quarter of it forming into the shape of the letter "Z." The "Z" jerked emphatically and with impatience toward the darkness beyond the castle.

The piping had stopped. It had been replaced by what seemed a terrible silence. The "Z" jerked back and forth, pointed to the plain.

"You're insane," protested Cornwall. "That's the one place we aren't going."

The letter "Z" insisted.

Cornwall shook his head. "Maybe I'm reading you wrong," he said. "You may mean something else."

Another tentacle stiffened with a snap, sternly pointing backward to the stairs that led down from the wall.

"All right, all right," Cornwall told him. "Let's go down and see if we can get this straightened out."

He moved away from the parapet and went carefully down the stairs, Tin Bucket close behind him. Below him the group around the fire, seeing the two of them descending, came swiftly to their feet. Hal strode out from the fire and was waiting when they reached the courtyard.

"What is going on?" he asked. "You having trouble with our friend?"

"I don't think trouble," said Cornwall. "He tried to tell me something. I think he tried to warn us to leave the castle. And the Dark Piper was out there."

"The Dark Piper?"

"Yes, you remember him. The night before we came on the battlefield."

Hal made a shivering motion. "Let's not tell the others. Let's say nothing of the Piper. You are sure you heard him? We didn't hear him here."

"I am sure," said Cornwall. "The sound may not have carried far. But this fellow is insistent that we do something. I gather that he wants us to get going."

"We can't do that," said Hal. "We don't know what is out there. Maybe in the morning. . ."

Tin Bucket strode heavily forward to plant himself before the gate. A dozen tentacles snapped out of his body and straightened, standing stiffly, pointing at the gate.

"You know," said Hal, "I think he does want us to leave."

"But why?" asked Gib, coming forward and catching what Hal had said.

"Maybe he knows something we don't know," said Hal. "Seems to me, if I remember, I said that just a while ago."

"But there are Hounds out there!" gasped Mary.

"I doubt," said Oliver, "that he would want to do us harm. We hauled him from the pit and he should be grateful."

"How do you know he wanted to be taken from the pit?" asked Sniveley. "We may have done him no favor. He may be sore at us."

"I think, in any case," said Cornwall, "we should get the horses loaded and be set to raise the gate. Be ready to get out of here if anything happens."

"What do you expect to happen?" Sniveley asked.

"How should any of us know?" snapped Hal. "There may nothing happen, but we play this one by ear."

Gib and Oliver already were catching up the horses and bridling them. The others moved rapidly, getting saddles on the animals, hoisting and cinching on the packs.

Nothing happened. The horses, impatient at being hauled from the hay on which they had been feeding, stamped and tossed their heads. Tin Bucket stood quietly by the fire.

"Look at him," said Sniveley, disgusted. "He started all this ruckus and now he disregards us. He stands off by himself. He contemplates the fire. Don't tell me he expects anything to happen. He is a mischief maker, that is all he is."

"It may not be time as yet for anything to happen," Gib said, quietly. "It may not be time to go."

Then, quite suddenly, it was time to go.

The wheel of fire came rushing up from the eastern horizon. It hissed and roared, and when it reached the zenith, its roar changed to a shriek as it side slipped and turned back, heading for the castle. The brilliance of it blotted out the moon and lighted the courtyard in a fierce glow. The stone walls of the castle reared up with every crack and cranny outlined in deep shadow by the blinding light, as if the castle were a drawing done by a heavy pencil, outlined in stark black and white.

Cornwall and Gib sprang for the wheel that raised the castle gate, Hal running swiftly to help them. The gate ratcheted slowly upward as they strained at the wheel. The circle of fire came plunging down, and the screaming and the brilliance of it seemed to fill the world to bursting. Ahead of it came a rush of blasting heat. It skimmed above the castle, barely missing the topmost turrets, then looped in the sky and started back again. The horses, loose now, were charging back and forth across the courtyard, neighing in terror. One of them stumbled and, thrown off balance, plunged through the fire, scattering smoking brands.

"The gate is high enough," said Cornwall. "Let us catch those horses."

But the horses were not about to be caught. Bunched together, screaming in panic, they were heading for the gate. Cornwall leaped for one of them, grabbing for a bridle strap. He touched it and tried to close his fingers on it, but it slipped through his grasp. The plunging forefoot of a horse caught him in the ribs and sent him spinning and falling. Bellowing in fury and disappointment, he scrambled to his feet. The horses, he saw, were hammering across the drawbridge and out onto the plain. The lashings that bound the packs on one of the saddles loosened, and the packs went flying as the horse bucked and reared to rid himself of them.

Hal was tugging at Cornwall's arm and yelling. "Let's get going. Let's get out of here."

The others were halfway across the drawbridge. Coon led them all, scampering wildly in a side wheeling fashion, his tail held low against the ground.

"Look at him go," said Hal, disgusted. "That coon always was a coward."

The plain was lighted as brilliantly as if the sun had been in the sky, but the intensity of the glow from the screaming wheel of fire played funny tricks with shadows, turning the landscape into a mad dream-place.

Cornwall found that he was running without ever consciously having decided that he would run, running because the others were running, because there was nothing else to do, because running was the only thing that made any sense at all. Just ahead of him, Tin Bucket was stumping along in a heavy-footed way, and Cornwall was somewhat amused to find himself wondering, in a time like this, how the metal creature managed the running with three legs. Three, he told himself, was a terribly awkward number.

There was no sign of the horses, or of the Hellhounds, either. There would, of course, he told himself, be no Hellhounds here. They had started clearing out, undoubtedly, at the first appearance of the wheel of fire—they probably wouldn't stop running, he thought with a chuckle, for the next three days.

Suddenly, just ahead of him, the others were stumbling and falling, disappearing from his view. They ran into something, he told himself, they ran into a trap. He tried to stop his running, but even as he did, the ground disappeared from beneath his feet and he went plunging into nothingness. But only a few feet of nothingness, landing on his back with a thump that left him gasping for breath.

Sniveley, off a ways, was yelping. "That clumsy Bucket—he fell on top of me!"

"Mark," said Mary, "are you all right?" Her face came into view, bending over him.

He struggled to a sitting position. "I'm all right," he said. "What happened?"

"We fell into a ditch," said Mary.

Hal came along, crawling on his hands and knees. "We'd better hunker down and stay," he said. "We're well hidden here."

"There are a half a dozen wheels up there," said Mary.

"I don't believe," said Hal, "they are after us. They seem to be concentrating on the castle."

"The horses are gone," said Gib from somewhere in the shadow of the ditch, "and our supplies went with them. We're left here naked in the middle of the wilderness."

"They bucked off some of the packs," said Oliver. "We can salvage some supplies."

Sniveley's agonized voice rose in petulance. "Get off me, you hunk of iron. Let me up."

"I guess I better go," said Hal, "and see what's wrong with him."

Cornwall looked around. The walls of the ditch or hole, or whatever it might be, rose five feet or so above the level of its floor, helping to shelter them from the intense light of the spinning wheels of fire.

He crawled to the wall facing the castle and cautiously raised himself so he could peer out. There was, as Mary had said, more wheels now. They were spinning above the castle, which stood out against the landscape in a blaze of light. Their roaring had changed to a deep hum that seemed to shake his body and burrow deep into his head. As he watched, one of the castle's turrets toppled and fell down. The grinding crunch of falling stone could be heard distinctly over the humming of the wheels.

"There are five of them," said Mary. "Have you the least idea what they are?"

He didn't answer her, for how was one to know? Magic, he thought, then forced the answer back, remembering how Jones had scoffed at him for saying magic whenever he faced a situation he could not comprehend. Certainly something not in the memory of man, for in all the ancient writings he had read, there had been no mention of anything like this—although wait a minute, he told himself, wait just a goddamn minute—there had been something written and in a most unlikely place. In the Book of Ezekiel, chapter one. He tried to remember what had been written there and was unable to, although he realized that there was a lot more to it than simply wheels of fire. He should have, he told himself, spent less time with ancient manuscripts and more time with the Bible.

The wheels had spaced themselves in a circle just above the castle and were spinning rapidly, one following the other, closing in and moving down until it seemed there was just one great fiery, spinning circle suspended above the ancient structure. The deep hum rose to an eerie howling as the ring of fire picked up speed, contracting its diameter and steadily settling down to encompass the castle.

Towers and turrets were crumbling, and underneath the howling could be heard the grinding rumble of falling blocks of masonry. Blue lightning lanced out of the wheel of fire, and the sharp crackling of thunder hammered so hard against the ground that the landscape seemed to buck and weave.

Instinctively Cornwall threw up his arms to shield his head but, fascinated by the sight, did not duck his head. Mary was huddling close against him and off somewhere to his right, someone—Sniveley more than likely, he thought—was squealing in terror.

The air was laced with lightning bolts, etched with the brilliance of the flaming wheel, the very earth was bouncing and the noise was so intense it seemed in itself a force that held one in its grasp.

From the center of the circle of fire, a great cloud was rising, and as Cornwall watched, he realized that what he saw was the dust of shattered stone rising through the circle as smoke from a fire rises through a chimney.

Suddenly it was over. The wheel of fire rose swiftly in the air and separated into five smaller wheels of fire that shot quickly upward, swinging about to race to the east. In seconds they disappeared.

As quickly, the world resumed its silence, and all that could be heard were the clicking and crunching sounds of settling masonry, coming from the mound of shattered stone that marked the spot where the Castle of the Chaos Beast had stood.

32

Late in the afternoon of the third day they came on water. The character of the land had changed. The bleak desert of the Blasted Plain had gradually given way to a still dry, but less forbidding, upland. On the evening of the first day they had seen far in the distance the great blue uplift of the Misty Mountains and now, as they went down to the little stream, the mountains stood, perhaps no more than a day away, a great range that climbed into the sky, leaping from the plain without the benefit of foothills.

They had run out of water before noon of the second day, having been able to salvage only a small skin bag of it from the packs the fleeing horses had bucked off. They had spent some futile hours trying to reach the well in the courtyard of the castle, but the way had been blocked by a mass of fallen stone and still-shifting rubble.

The campfire had been lit, and supper was cooking.

"There'll be enough left for breakfast and that is all," said Mary. "We're down to the last of the cornmeal."

"There'll be game up ahead," said Hal. "Rough going, maybe, but we won't starve."

Sniveley came down the hill and hunkered by the fire. "Nothing stirring," he said. "I scouted all about. Not a thing in sight. No tracks, not even old tracks. No tracks of any kind. We're the only living beings that have ever come here. And we shouldn't be here. We should have gone back."

"It was as far back as it was forward," said Gib. "Maybe farther. And there is still the ax we're carrying for the Old Ones."

"The Old Ones," said Sniveley, "if we ever find them, whatever they may be, will take that precious ax of yours and smash our skulls with it."

"Quit your complaining, Sniveley," said Hal. "Sure, we've had tough luck. We lost our horses and most of our supplies, but we came out of all that ruckus at the castle without a scratch, and this is more than we could have reasonably expected."

"Yeah," said Sniveley, "and I suppose that when He Who Broods Upon the Mountain comes down and takes the last stitch off our backs and boots us so hard he leaves the mark of footprints on our rumps, you'll be saying we are lucky that he didn't—"

"Oh, stop it," Mary cried. "Stop this squabbling. We are here, aren't we? We all are still alive. We found water before we suffered from the lack of it and—"

"I got thirsty," Sniveley said. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I got so thirsty I was spitting dust."

Bucket came ambling over to the fire and stopped. He stood there, doing nothing at all.

"I wish," said Gib, "I could figure that one out. He doesn't do a thing. He can't talk, and I'm not too sure he hears."

"Don't forget," said Cornwall, "that he was the one who warned us back there at the castle. If it hadn't been for him, we might have been caught flat-footed. . . ."

"Don't forget, as well," said Hal, "that he carried more than his fair share of the supplies we salvaged. He ran out those ropes he uses for arms and latched onto the packs. . ."

"If it hadn't been for him," protested Sniveley, "we never would have got into this mess. Them wheels were after him, I tell you. Whatever they might have been, they never would have bothered with us or with that bunch of creeps who were living in the castle. None of us were that important to them. It was either the Chaos Beast or Tin Bucket that was important to them. They were the ones they were out to get."

"If it hadn't been for the wheels," Gib pointed out, "we still would be penned back there in the castle. The wheels scared the Hellhounds off, and we took some roughing up, but it all worked out for the best."

"It's funny," said Oliver, "how we now can talk so easily of the wheels. At the time we were scared out of our wits of them, but now we can talk quite easily of them. Here is something that we didn't understand, something frightening, something entirely outside any previous experience, and yet now we brush off all the mystery of it and talk about the wheels as if they were common things you might come upon at any corner you turned."

"Thing is," said Hal, "there's been too much happening. There has been so much strangeness that we have become numbed to it. You finally get to a point where you suspend all wonder and begin accepting the unusual as if it were everyday. Back there in the world we came from all of us lived quite ordinary lives. Day followed day without anything unusual happening at all, and we were satisfied that nothing ever happened. We were accustomed to nothing ever happening. On this trip we have become so accustomed to strangenesses that we no longer find them too remarkable. We do not question them. Maybe because we haven't the time to question."

"I have been doing a lot of wondering about the wheels," said Cornwall, "and I'm inclined to agree with Sniveley that their target was either the Chaos Beast or Bucket. More likely the Chaos Beast, it seems to me, for they probably did not know, or those who sent them, did not know the Chaos Beast was dead. It would seem unlikely they would have known of Bucket."

"They could have," Sniveley objected. "Somehow they could have been able to calculate the time, if they knew about the Beast, when Bucket was about to hatch."

"Which brings us to the question," said Cornwall, "not only of what the wheels were, but what was the Chaos Beast, and what is Bucket? Is Bucket another Chaos Beast?"

"We don't know what the Chaos Beast looked like," said Gib. "Maybe Bucket is a young Chaos Beast and will change when he gets older."

"Perhaps," said Cornwall. "There is a man at Oxford, a very famous savant, who just recently announced that he had worked out the method by which, through some strange metamorphosis, a worm turns into a butterfly. It is unlikely, of course, that he is right. Most of his fellow savants do not agree with him. He has been the butt of much ridicule because of his announcement. But I suppose he could be right. There are many strange occurrences we do not understand. Maybe his principle is right, and it may be that Bucket is the worm that in time will metamorphose into a Chaos Beast."

"I wish," said Mary, "that you wouldn't talk that way in front of Bucket. As if he were just a thing and not a creature like the rest of us. Just a thing to talk about. He might be able to hear, he might understand what you are saying. If that is so, you must embarrass him."

"Look at Coon," said Oliver. "He is stalking Bucket."

Hal half rose from his sitting position, but Cornwall reached out and grabbed him by the arm. "Watch," he said.

"But Coon . . ."

"It's all right," said Cornwall. "It's a game they're playing."

The end of one of Bucket's arms had dropped onto the ground, was lying there, the tip of it quivering just a little. It was the quivering tip of the tentacle that Coon was stalking, not Bucket himself. Coon made a sudden rush; the arm tip, at the last moment, flicked out of his reach. Coon checked his rush and pivoted, reaching out with one forepaw, grasping at the tentacle. His paw closed about it and he went over on his back, grabbing with the second forepaw, wrestling the tentacle. Another tentacle extruded and tickled Coon's rump. Coon released his hold on the first tentacle, somersaulted to grab at the second one.

"Why, Bucket's playing with him," Mary gasped. "Just like you'd use a string to play with a kitten. He even let him catch the tentacle."

Hal sat down heavily. "Well, I'll be damned," he said.

"Bucket's human, after all," said Mary.

"Not human," said Cornwall. "A thing like that never could be human. But he has a response to the play instinct, and that does make him seem just a little human."

"Supper's ready," Mary said. "Eat up. We have breakfast left and that is all."

Coon and Bucket went on playing.

33

Tomorrow, Cornwall thought, they'd go on toward the mountains, where they'd seek out, or try to seek out, the Old Ones. And after they had found the Old Ones, or had failed to find them, what would they do then? Surely they would not want to turn about and come back across the Blasted Plain, without horses and more than likely with Hellhounds in wait for their return. One could not be sure, he knew, that the Hellhounds would be waiting, but the possibility that they might be was not something that could be ignored.

He sat on a sandy slope of ground that ran down to the stream, leaning back against a boulder. Off to his left the campfire gleamed through the dark, and he could see the silhouettes of the rest of the party sitting around it. He hoped that for a while they would not miss him and come looking for him. For some reason that he could not completely understand, he'd wanted to be off by himself. To think, perhaps, although he realized that the time for thinking was past. The thinking should have been done much earlier, before they had gone plunging off on this incredible adventure. If there had been some thought put to it, he knew, they might not have set out on it. It had all been done on the impulse of the moment. He had fled the university once he learned that his filching the page of manuscript was known. Although, come to think of it, there had been no real need to flee. There were a hundred places on the campus or in the town where he could have holed up and hidden out. The imagined need to flee had been no more than an excuse to go off on a hunt to find the Old Ones. And from that point onward the expedition had grown by a chain of unlikely circumstances and by the same emotional response to them as he, himself, had experienced—responses that were illogical on the face of them. An unknowing fleeing perhaps, from the sameness of the ordinary life that Oliver and Hal had talked about just a few hours before.

At the sound of a soft rustling behind him, he leaped to his feet. It was Mary.

"I wondered where you were," she said. "I came looking for you. I hope you don't mind."

"I've been saving a place for you," he said. He reached out a hand to guide her to a seat against the boulder, then sat down beside her.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked.

"Thinking," he said. "Wondering. I wonder if we were right to come, what we should do now. Go on, of course, and try to find the Old Ones. But after that, what? And what if we don't find the Old Ones? Will we still go on, stumbling from adventure to adventure, simply going on for the sake of going, for the sake of new things found? A course like that could get us killed. We've been lucky so far."

"We'll be all right," she said. "You've never felt this way before. We will find the Old Ones, and Gib will give them the ax, and everything will work out the way it should."

"We're a long way from home," he said, "and maybe no way back. Or at least no easy way. For myself I don't mind so much. I never had a home except the university, and that wasn't really home. A university is never more than a stopping place. Although for Oliver, I suppose it might be. He lived up in the rafters of the library and had been there for years. But Gib had his marsh, and Hal and Coon had their hollow tree. Even Sniveley had his mine and metal-working shop. And you . . ."

"I had no home," she said, "after my foster parents died. It makes no difference to me now where I am."

"It was a thing of impulse," he said, "a sort of harebrained plan that rose out of nothing. I had been interested in the Old Ones— perhaps no more than an academic interest, but somehow it seemed very real. I can't tell you why. I don't know where their attraction lies. I had studied their language, or what purported to be their language. No one, in fact, seemed sure there were such things as Old Ones. Then I ran across the manuscript in which an ancient traveler . . ."

"And you had to go and see," said Mary. "I can't see there's so much wrong with that."

"Nothing wrong with it if only myself were involved. If only the

Hermit hadn't died and left the ax in Gib's keeping, if Gib had not saved me from the wolves, if Hal hadn't been a woodsman and a friend of Gib's, if Sniveley had not forged the magic sword—if these things hadn't happened, none of this would be happening now. . . ."

"But it did happen," said Mary, "and no matter about the rest of it, it brought the two of us together. You have no right to shoulder guilt because there is no guilt, and when you try to conjure it up and carry it, you're doing nothing more than belittle the rest of us. There are none of us here against our will. There are none of us who have regrets."

"Sniveley."

"You mean his complaining. That is just his way. That's the way he lives." She laid her head against his shoulder. "Forget it, Mark," she said. "We'll go on and find the Old Ones, and it will be all right in the end. We may even find my parents or some trace of them."

"There's been no trace of them so far," he said. "We should have asked at the castle, but there were so many other things that we never even asked. I blame myself for that. I should have thought to ask."

"I did ask," said Mary. "I asked that dirty little creature with the foxy face."

"And?"

"They stopped at the castle. They stayed for several days to rest. There were Hellhounds all about, there always were Hellhounds hanging around the castle, but they didn't bother them. Think of it, Mark, they walked in peace through the Blasted Plain, they walked in peace through packs of Hellhounds. They're somewhere up ahead, and that is another reason for us to go on."

"You hadn't mentioned that you asked."

"As you said, there were so many other things."

"They walked in peace," said Cornwall. "They must be wonderful. What is there about them—Mary, how well do you remember them?"

"Hardly at all," she said. "Just beauty—beauty for my mother, beauty and comfort. Her face I can remember just a little. A glow with a face imprinted on it. My father, I can't remember him. I love them, of course, but I can't remember why I do. Just the beauty and the comfort, that is all."

"And now you're here," said Cornwall. "A long march behind you, a long march ahead. Food almost gone and one garment to your name."

"I'm where I want to be," she said. She lifted her head, and he cupped her face in his two hands and kissed her tenderly.

"The horn of the unicorn worked," he said. "Oliver, damn his hide, was right."

"You thought of that?" she asked.

"Yes, I did think of that. You still have the horn. How about mislaying it or losing it or something?"

She settled down against him. "We'll see," she said in a happy voice.

34

They stumbled on the Old Ones when they were deep into the mountains. Climbing a sharp ridge that lay between two valleys, they came face to face with them as they reached the crest. Both parties stopped in astonishment and stood facing one another, not more than three hundred feet apart. The little band of Old Ones appeared to be a hunting party. They were short, squat men clothed in furs and carrying stone-tipped spears. Most of them wore grizzled beards, although there were a couple of striplings still innocent of whiskers. There were, altogether, not more than a dozen of them.

In the rear of the band two men shouldered a pole, on which was slung a carcass that appeared disturbingly human.

For a moment no one spoke, then Cornwall said, "Well, we have finally found them. I was beginning to doubt in the last few days that there were any Old Ones."

"You are sure?" asked Hal. "How can you be sure? No one knows what the Old Ones are. That has worried me all along—what were we looking for?"

"There were hints in the accounts written by ancient travelers," said Cornwall. "Never anything specific. No eyewitness accounts, you understand, just hearsay. Very secondhand. No solid evidence. Just horrific little hints that the Old Ones were, in some horrible way, humanoid. Humanoid, but overlaid with abundant myth content. Even the man, whoever he might have been, who wrote the Old Ones' vocabulary and grammar had nothing to say of the Old Ones themselves. He may have, and that part of his manuscript may have been lost or stolen or for some reason suppressed by some fuddy-duddy churchman centuries ago. I suspected they might be human, but I couldn't be sure. That ax Gib carries smells of human fashioning. Who other than a human could work stone so beautifully."

"Now that we've found them," said Sniveley, "what do we do about them? Does Gib just go rushing down and give the ax to them? If I were you, Gib, I would hesitate to do that. I don't like the looks of the game they carry."

"I'll go down and talk to them," said Cornwall. "Everyone stand fast. No sudden motions, please. We don't want to frighten them away."

"Somehow," said Sniveley, "they don't look nearly as frightened as I would like them to."

"I'll cover you," said Hal. "If they act hostile, don't try to be a hero."

Cornwall unbuckled his sword belt and handed it and the sword to Mary.

"We're dead right now," wailed Sniveley. "They'll gnaw our bones by nightfall."

Cornwall lifted his hands, with the palms extended outward, and began pacing slowly down the slope.

"We come in peace," he shouted in the language of the Old Ones, hoping as he spoke the words that his pronunciation was acceptable. "No fighting. No killing."

They waited, watching closely as he moved toward them. The two who were carrying the carcass dropped it and moved up with the others.

They made no response to the words he spoke to them. They stood solid, not stirring. Any facial expressions were hidden behind the grizzled beards. They had as yet made no menacing gesture with the spears, but that, he knew, could come at any minute and there'd be nothing to forewarn him.

Six feet away from them he stopped and let his arms fall to his side.

"We look for you," he said. "We bring a gift for you."

They said nothing. There was no flicker of expression in their eyes. He wondered fleetingly if they understood a word he said.

"We are friends," he said, and waited.

Finally one of them said, "How we know you friends? You may be demons. Demons take many shapes. We know demons. We are demon hunters."

He gestured at the thing slung upon the pole. A couple of them stepped aside so Cornwall could see it better. It was of human form, but the skin was dark, almost blue. It had a long slender tail and stubby horns sprouted from its forehead. The feet were hoofed.

"We trapped him," said the spokesman for the band. "We trap many. This one is small. Small and young and probably very foolish. But we trap the old as well." He smacked his lips. "Good eating."

"Eating?"

"Cook in fire. Eat." He made a pantomime of putting something in his mouth and chewing. "You eat?"

"We eat," said Cornwall. "But not demons. Not men, either."

"Long ago eat men," said the Old One. "Not now. Only demons. Men all gone. No more men to eat. Plenty demons. Old campfires tales tell of eating men. Not miss men as long as plenty demons. This one"—he gestured at the carcass tied to the pole, "be very tender eating. Not much to go around. Only one small piece for each. But very tender eating." He grinned a gap-toothed grin at the thought of how tender it would be.

Cornwall sensed an easing of the tension. The Old One was talkative, and he took that to be a good sign. You don't gossip with a man you are about to kill. He swiftly examined the other faces. There was no friendliness, but neither was there animosity.

"You sure you are not demons?" asked the Old One.

"We are sure," said Cornwall. "I am a man like you. The others all are friends."

"Demons tricky," said the Old One. "Hate us. We trap so many of them. They do anything to hurt us. You say you have gift for us."

"We have a gift."

The Old One shrugged. "No gift to us. Gift to Old Man. That is the law."

He shook his head. "You still could be demons. How are we to know? You would kill a demon?"

"Yes," said Cornwall, "we would be glad to kill a demon."

"Then you go with us."

"Glad to go with you."

"One more trap to see. You kill demon we find in it. Then we know you not demon. Demon not kill demon."

"What if there is no demon in the trap?"

"There will be demon. We use good bait. No demon can pass by without being caught. This time very special bait. Sure to be a demon. We go. You kill the demon. Then we go home. Good eating.

Eat and dance. Give gift to Old Man. Sit and talk. You tell us, we tell you. Good time had by all." "That sounds good to me," said Cornwall.

All the other Old Ones were grinning at him, lifting their spears across their shoulders. The two who had been carrying the demon picked up the pole. The demon dangled, its tail dragging on the ground.

Cornwall turned and beckoned to those waiting on the hilltop. "It's all right," he shouted. "We are going with them."

They came rapidly down the hill. The talkative spokesman for the Old Ones stayed with Cornwall, but the rest of the hunting party went angling up the slope, heading toward the north. "What's going on?" asked Hal.

"They've invited us to go along with them. They are trapping demons."

"You mean that thing they're carrying?" asked Oliver. Cornwall nodded. "There's one more trap to visit. They want us to kill the demon to prove we aren't demons."

"That wouldn't prove a thing," Sniveley pointed out. "Men kill men. Look at all the men who are killed by other men. Why shouldn't demons kill demons?"

"Maybe," said Oliver, "the Old Ones just aren't thinking straight. Lots of people have strange ideas."

"They think we are demons?" Mary asked. "How can that be— we have no tails or horns."

"They say demons can change their shapes." He said to the Old One, "My friends cannot speak your tongue. They are telling me they are happy we have met."

"You tell them," said the Old One, "we have big demon feast tonight."

"I'll tell them," Cornwall promised.

Mary handed Cornwall his sword, but before he could strap it on, the Old One said, "We must hurry on. The others are ahead of us. If we aren't there, they may be driven by excitement to kill the demon in the trap, and you must kill that demon. . . ."

"I know we must," said Cornwall. He said to the others, "Let us get going. We can't afford to linger."

"When do I give them the ax?" asked Gib, trotting along beside Cornwall.

"Later on," said Cornwall. "You have to give it to the Old Man of the tribe. Tribal law, I guess. There'll be big doings. A big feast and a dance."

"A feast of what?" asked Sniveley, eyeing the demon dangling from the pole. "If it's the kind of feast I think it will be, I will not eat a bite. I'll starve before I do it."

The Old One was hurrying them along. "I hope there is a big, fat one," he said. "The one we have is small and skinny. We need a big, fat one."

They had crossed the ridge and were running down a steep ravine, with the hunting band a short distance ahead of them. The ravine made a sharp turn, and as the hunters went around the bend, a mighty shouting went up. They came around the bend and there, ahead of them, the hunters were leaping up and down, waving their spears and yelling.

"Wait!" screamed the Old One. "Wait! Don't kill him. Wait for us."

The hunters swung around at the shout and stopped their yelling. But someone else was shouting.

"Let me out of here, goddamnit! What do you think you're doing? A gang of filthy savages!"

Cornwall broke through the milling hunters and skidded to a halt.

"That is no demon," Gib said. "That is our old friend, Jones."

"Jones," yelled Cornwall, "what are you doing here? Whatever happened to you? How did you get in there?"

Jones stood in the center of a small clearing from which rose a great oak tree. Broad bands of shimmering light ran in a brilliant triangle between three metallic poles set in the ground in such a fashion as to enclose the clearing and the oak. Jones was standing near one of the shimmering bands, carrying in one hand a singular contraption made of wood and metal. A naked girl crouched against the oak tree. She didn't seem too frightened.

"Thank God it's you," said Jones. "Where did you pop out from? You made it all the way, it seems, across the Blasted Plain. I never thought you would. I was on my way to hunt for you, but my bike broke down. Now, get me out of here." He waved the strange contraption. "It would be a pity to be forced to mow all the beggars down."

The Old One was jigging up and down. "You can talk with it," he squealed. "You can talk with demons."

"He is no demon," Cornwall said. "He is the same as me. You must turn him loose."

The Old One backed swiftly away. "Demons!" he shouted. "All of you are demons."

Cornwall's hand went to his sword hilt. "Stay where you are," he shouted, drawing the sword with an awkward flourish. He flicked a glance toward the other Old Ones. Spears leveled, they were moving in, but very cautiously.

"Hold it!" Jones shouted and even as he shouted, there was a vicious chattering. Little puffs of dust and flying gouts of earth stitched a line in front of the advancing spearmen. The end of the stick-like contraption in his hands twinkled with an angry redness, and there was the bitter scent of something burning.

The line of spearmen came to a halt. They stood half-frozen, but with the spears still leveled.

"Next time," Jones said calmly, "I'll hold it a little higher. I'll blast out your guts."

The Old One who had backed away had stopped in his tracks. Staring in fascination at the sword held in Cornwall's hand, he sank slowly to his knees.

"Throw down the spears," yelled Cornwall. The line of spearmen dropped their weapons.

"Watch them, Hal," said Cornwall. "If they make a move. . ."

"The rest of you get over to one side," said Hal. "Jones has some sort of weapon, and he needs a clear field for it."

The Old One who had fallen to his knees now was groveling on the ground and moaning. Cornwall, sword still in hand, walked forward and jerked him to his feet. The man shrank back and Cornwall hauled him closer.

"What is your name?" asked Cornwall.

The Old One tried to speak, but his teeth were chattering and no words would come.

"Come on, speak up," said Cornwall. "Tell me your name."

The Old One broke into speech. "The shining blade," he wailed. "The shining blade. There are tales of the shining blade."

He stared in fearful fascination at the glittering sword.

"All right," said Cornwall. "So it is a shining blade. Now tell me your name. I think the two of us should know one another's names."

"Broken Bear," the Old One said.

"Broken Bear," said Cornwall. "I am Cornwall. It is a strange name, Cornwall. It is a magic name. Now say it."

"Cornwall," said Broken Bear.

"Let me out of here," bawled Jones. "Won't someone let me out?"

Bucket walked toward the shining fence. He snapped out a tentacle and seized one of the poles. Sparks flared all about him, and the shining bands wavered, crackling and popping. With a heave Bucket uprooted the pole and flung it to one side. The shining bands were no longer there.

"And so," said Sniveley, "there is the end to all this foolishness. Why don't you, Mark, give that old friend of yours a swift kick in the pants?"

"There is nothing I'd like better," Cornwall said, "but it would be wiser not to do it. We want them to be friends."

"Some friends they turned out to be," said Sniveley.

Jones came striding toward Cornwall, the weapon held carelessly in the crook of one arm. He held out his hand, and Cornwall grasped it.

"What was that all about?" asked Jones, gesturing toward Broken Bear. "I couldn't understand a word of it."

"I spoke the language of the Old Ones."

"So these are the Old Ones that you talked about. Hell, they're nothing but a bunch of Neanderthals. Although I must admit they are very skillful trappers. They use the proper kind of bait. There was this girl, not so bad to look at, although not ravishing, but naked as a jaybird, tied to the tree and doing a moderate amount of screeching because there were wolves about—"

"Neander-whats?"

"Neanderthals. A very primitive kind of men. In my world there aren't any of them. Died out thirty thousand years ago or more. . . ."

"But you said that our two worlds split much more recently than that, or at least you implied it."

"Christ, I don't know," said Jones. "I don't know anything anymore. Once I thought I did, but now it seems I know less and less and can't be certain of anything at all."

"You said you were coming to meet us. How did you know where to look for us and what happened to you? We went up to your camp and it was apparent you had left."

"Well, you talked about the Old Ones, and I got the impression you were hell-bent to find them, and I knew you'd have to cross the Blasted Plain to reach them. You see, I tried to steal a march on you. You said something about a university, something, I gather, that that funny little gnome of yours had told you."

"So you went hunting for the university?"

"Yes, I did. And found it. Wait until I tell you—"

"But if you found it—"

"Cornwall, be reasonable. It's all there, all the records, all the books. But in several funny kinds of script. I couldn't read a line of it."

"And you thought perhaps we could."

"Look, Cornwall, let's play ball. What difference does it make? Our two worlds are separated. We belong to different places. But we can still be reasonable. You do something for me, I do something for you. That's what makes the world go round."

"I think," said Hal, "we'd better get this expedition moving. The natives are getting jittery."

"They still aren't convinced we aren't demons," Cornwall said. "We'll have to gag down some demon meat to prove it to them. Once they get a fool idea planted in their minds. . ."

He turned to Broken Bear. "Now we go home," he said. "We all are friends. We eat and dance. We will talk the sun up. We will be like brothers."

Broken Bear whimpered, "The shining blade! The shining blade!"

"Oh, Christ," said Cornwall, "he has the shining blade on the brain. Some old ancient myth told and retold for centuries around the campfire. So all right, I'll put it away."

He sheathed the sword.

He said to Broken Bear, "Let us get started. Pick up the bait you used. All of us are hungry."

"It is lucky," said Broken Bear, "we have something else than demon or it would be a starving feast. But we have at home a bear, a deer, a moose. There will be plenty. We can wallow in it."

Cornwall flung an arm about his shoulder. "Fine for you," he said. "We shall grease our faces. We shall eat until we can eat no more. We shall do it all with you."

Broken Bear grinned his snaggle-toothed grin. "You no demons," he said. "You are gods of shining blade. The fires burn high tonight and everyone is happy. For the gods come visiting."

"Did you say something about a feast?" asked Jones. "Look, coming down the hill. The son of a bitch can smell out good eating a million miles away."

It was the Gossiper, his rags fluttering in the wind, his staff stumping sturdily as he strode along. The raven perched on his shoulder, squalling obscenities and looking even more moth-eaten, Cornwall thought, than he had seen it.

Behind the Gossiper, the little white dog with spectacles limped along.

35

The Old Man was not in good shape. He had only one eye and a scar ran down from where the missing eye had been, slantwise across the cheek to the base of the neck.

He touched the empty socket with his forefinger and with it traced the scar. The hand had three fingers missing; there was only the forefinger and the thumb.

He fixed Cornwall with his one remaining, glittering eye.

"Hand to hand," he said. "Me and him. An old boar bear almost as mean as I was. And I was the one who walked away. Not the bear. He tore me up, but I was the one who walked away. We ate him. We dragged him home and cooked him, and he was the toughest meat I ever knew. Tough to eat, hard to chew. But his was the sweetest flesh I have ever eaten."

He cackled at his joke. Most of his teeth were gone.

"I couldn't eat him now," he said. He pointed at his still open mouth. "The teeth fell out. Do you know why teeth fall out?"

"No, I don't," said Cornwall.

"I'm no good no more," said the Old Man. "I'm stiff in the legs. I have only one good hand. One eye is gone. But these fellows here," he said, gesturing at the group of Old Ones who squatted behind and to either side of him, "these fellows, they don't dare to tackle me. They know I am mean and tricky. I was always mean and tricky. Wouldn't have lived this long if I hadn't been mean and tricky. I hear you are a god and carry a shining blade."

"I carry a shining blade," said Cornwall, "but I never claimed to be a god. It was Broken Bear—"

The Old Man made a disrespectful noise. "Broken Bear is full of wind," he said. He jerked out his elbow and caught Broken Bear squarely in the ribs. "Aren't you, Broken Bear?" he asked.

"No more than you, broken man/' said Broken Bear. "You have more wind than any of us. It all comes through your mouth."

"He would like to take my place," said the Old Man. "But he won't. One hand on that big neck of his and I would strangle him. The good hand, not the bad hand. I'd take care to grab him with the good hand." He guffawed toothlessly.

"You talk a good fight," said Broken Bear, "but someone has to help you up. You can't get to your feet alone."

"I wouldn't have to get to my feet to strangle you," said the Old Man. "I could do it sitting down."

"What's all this jabbering about?" asked Jones.

"He's bragging about how beat up he is," said Cornwall.

Out beyond the comer where they sat, three great fires had been built on the ledge that extended out from the rock shelter. Grills of green wood had been set up over the fires, and on them meat was cooking. There was a great scurrying about, women bustling with the importance of the moment, racing children romping about and getting underfoot, packs of dogs circulating haphazardly, with a wary eye kept out for a flailing foot, but at the same time maintaining a close watch on the carcasses on the grills.

Coon, crouched between Hal and Mary, peeked out to have a quick look at the dogs. Mary hauled him back. "You stay put," she said. "I know you licked a half dozen of them, but now you are outmatched."

Hal grinned. "Did you ever see the like of it? They never even laid a tooth on him. Let him get backed into a corner and he can hold his own."

"Nevertheless," said Mary, "he stays here. He hasn't anything to prove. He handled those that jumped him and that's enough for one day."

Gib nodded at the Old Man. "When do I give him the ax?" he asked.

"Give him time," said Jones. "He's probably building up to it. Broken Bear would have told him there was a gift, so he must know. But there's tribal protocol in a thing like this—very solemn protocol. He can't appear too anxious. He must be very urbane. He must uphold his dignity."

The Old Man was saying, "You have traveled far. You come from unknown lands. You crossed the Blasted Plain. You outran the Hellhounds. But how did you get past the Castle of the Chaos Beast?"

"We did not outrun the Hellhounds," Cornwall told him. "The

Hellhounds ran from us. We stopped at the castle and the castle now is a heap of ruins. The Chaos Beast is dead."

The Old Man raised his hand to his mouth to express amazement. 'Truly," he said, "you indeed are gods. And this one who travels with you who is not honest flesh and that travels on three legs, as would no honest man . . ."

"He is magic," Cornwall said, "as is my shining blade."

"And the horn the female carries? It is magic, too? It comes from a unicorn."

"You know of unicorns? There are still unicorns about?"

"In the Place of Knowing. There are unicorns in the Place of Knowing." He made a gesture out into the darkness. "Beyond the gorge," he said. "No man travels there. It is guarded by Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain."

Cornwall turned to Jones. "He is telling me about the Place of Knowing. He must mean the university. He talks about a gorge and says that it is guarded by Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain. Not, you will note, He Who Broods Upon the Mountain."

Jones nodded. "Undoubtedly he has it right. He should know. A bit of bad translation on the part of someone. That is all it is. And there is a gorge. It is the very gorge we traveled to reach this place. I know. I traveled it."

"Seeing none of Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain?"

"Not a one," said Jones. "But I traveled on a bike and, as you may recall, it makes hell's own amount of noise. Maybe I scared them off. Maybe they like to know what they are guarding against. Too, I was traveling the wrong way. I was traveling from the university, not toward it. There's something I want to talk with you about. This robot of yours. . ."

"What is a robot?"

"The metal man who's traveling with you."

"Later," Cornwall said. "I will tell you later."

He turned back to the Old Man. "About this Place of Knowing. Could we travel there?"

"It would be death to try it."

"But there must have been others who traveled there. Just a few seasons ago. A man and woman . . ."

"But they were different," said the Old Man.

"How different?"

"They went in peace. They traveled hand in hand. They had no weapons, and there was only goodness in them."

"They stopped here. You saw them?"

"They stayed with us for a time. They could not talk with us. They did not need to talk. We knew the goodness in them."

"You tried to warn them?"

"We did not need to warn them. There was no need of warning. They could walk in safety anywhere they wished. There is nothing that could touch them."

Cornwall spoke softly to Mary, "He says your parents were here. Then went on to the university. He says it was safe for them. He says there was nothing that could hurt them."

"Anywhere anyone else can go, we can go," said Jones.

"No," said Cornwall. "Mary's folks had something special. It is past all understanding. . . ."

"Broken Bear tells me," said the Old Man, "that you carry something for us."

"That is right," said Cornwall. "Not a gift. Not from us. It is something that belongs to you."

He motioned to Gib. "Give him the ax," he said.

Gib held out the package, and the Old Man grasped it in his one good hand. He put it on the ground in front of him and unwrapped it. Once it was unwrapped, he sat there staring at it, unspeaking. Finally, he lifted his head and stared intently at Cornwall with his one good, glittering eye.

"You mock us," he said.

"Mock you!" Cornwall exclaimed. "All we are doing—"

"Listen," said the Old Man. "Listen very closely. . . ."

"What is going on?" asked Gib. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Something's wrong," said Cornwall. "I don't know what it is."

"The old stories say," the Old One said, "that this ax was given long ago, in friendship, to a man of another place who passed our way. Now you bring it back and the friendship ends."

"I don't know," said Cornwall. "I know none of this."

The Old Man bellowed at him, "Our head is in the dust. Our gift has been thrown back into our face. There is now no friendship."

He surged to his feet and kicked the ax to one side. Behind him the other Old Ones were rising, gripping their spears.

Cornwall came to his feet, jerking out the sword.

Behind him came a snicking sound. "I'll mow 'em down," said Jones. "You stack 'em to one side."

"Not right yet," said Cornwall. "Maybe we can reason with them."

"Reason, hell," said Jones in a disgusted tone.

"We fear no gods," the Old Man said. "We will not be mocked by gods. We die before we're mocked."

"We did not mock you," Cornwall said, "but if you want to do some dying, now's the time to start."

The Old Man staggered forward a step or so, lifting his arms as if to ward off an unseen enemy. Something protruded from his chest and blood ran down his belly. Slowly he collapsed, fighting to stay erect. Cornwall, startled, stepped back to give him room to fall. When he fell, it could be seen that a spear shaft protruded from his back.

Broken Bear stood, with empty hands, behind him.

"And now," he said, "the old bag of wind is dead. You and I can talk."

A deathly silence had fallen. The children no longer ran and screamed. The women stopped their chatter. The dogs swiftly slunk away. The men who stood with Broken Bear said nothing. They stood unmoving, spears grasped in their hands, faces hard.

Broken Bear motioned toward the fallen leader. "He would have got us killed," he said. "Some of us, all of you. We didn't want that, did we?"

"No," said Cornwall. "No, I guess we didn't."

"I still do not know," said Broken Bear, "if you be gods or demons. I think one thing one time, then I think the other. The one thing I do know is we do not want you here."

"We will gladly go," said Cornwall.

"But first," said Broken Bear, "you barter for your lives."

"I am not sure," said Cornwall, "that we will barter with you. All of us, you say, and you may be right. Some of you, you say, but let us change that to say an awful lot of you. And I promise you, my friend, you will be the first."

"We will not be greedy," said Broken Bear. "All we want is the stick that smokes."

"What is going on?" asked Jones.

"He wants the stick that smokes. Your weapon."

"It would do the damn old fool no good. He'd probably shoot himself. You have to know how to use the thing. And I'll not give it up."

"He says it is dangerous to one who does not know it," Cornwall told Broken Bear. "It can kill the one who has it if you're not friends with it. It is powerful magic and not for everyone. Only a great wizard can learn how to use it."

"We want it," insisted Broken Bear, "and the horn the female carries and the shining blade."

"No," said Cornwall.

"Let us talk deep wisdom," said Broken Bear. "You give us the stick, the horn, the blade. We give you your lives." He made a thumb at the fallen Old Man. "Better than he offer. He have many dead."

"Don't bicker with the bastard," said Jones.

Cornwall put out a hand and shoved Jones' weapon to one side.

"They have us surrounded," said Hal. "We're in the middle of them. The women and the kids have grabbed up clubs and stones—"

Someone from behind shoved Cornwall roughly to one side.

"Hey, what's going on?" yelled Jones.

A ropelike tentacle reached down and wrenched the sword from Cornwall's grip.

"You can't do that!" yelled Cornwall.

Another tentacle slammed against his chest and thrust him off his feet. As he scrambled up, he saw that there were many tentacles —as if the air were full of writhing, darting ropes. They extended up and out into the press of Old Ones who were shrinking back against the shelter wall. The tentacles among them were snapping in and out, snatching spears out of their hands. One tentacle had a dozen bundled spears and, as Cornwall watched, snapped up another.

"What the hell is going on?" yelped Jones. "He took away the rifle-"

"Bucket," Cornwall bellowed, "what the hell are you doing?"

The Old Ones who had been with Broken Bear were huddled against the wall, but out around the cooking fires there was a screeching and a running as the women and children rushed wildly about. Dogs went yelping, tails tucked between their legs.

Bucket was hurling the spears he had collected out beyond the shelter's edge, out into the darkness of the gorge. Other tentacles, sweeping across the area out around the fires, scooped up clubs and rocks that had been dropped by the women and the children, heaving them after the spears.

"He's gone mad," yelled Mary. "He even grabbed the horn."

"I'll cave him in," screamed Jones, "if he damages that rifle."

Bucket bristled with tentacles. He seemed to be a metal body suspended from many tentacles, bearing some resemblance to a spider dangling in a sagging, broken web. Tentacles seemed to have issued from each of the holes that perforated his body.

Now the tentacles were pushing them along, herding them across the ledge, to where the path wound up from the gorge.

"He's got the right idea," said Gib. "Let's get out of here."

Down in the gorge there was a howling and screaming. Some of the women and children had either fallen or had scrambled down in the darkness, escaping from the ledge. The group of Old Ones who had been huddled against the wall were moving out, but very cautiously.

As Cornwall and the others came to the path, Bucket pushed them along. He handed the horn back to Mary, the ax to Gib, the bow to Hal, and the sword to Cornwall. Jones' rifle he hurled out into the center of the ledge.

"Why, goddamn you!" frothed Jones. "I'll bust you up for scrap. I'll dent you out of shape—"

"Move along," growled Cornwall. "He knows what he's doing."

Bucket snapped out a twirling tentacle, wrapped it around the bear roasting on the grill, holding it well up in the air. Drops of sizzling grease spattered on Cornwall's face.

"Now we get supper," said Oliver, licking his chops.

"And," said Sniveley with relief, "we'll not have to eat any demon meat"

36

"We're safe here," said Hal. "They can't try to follow us. They're no great shakes, I'd judge, at prowling in the dark. And they're scared purple of the gorge."

"You're sure this is the gorge they spoke of?" asked Cornwall.

Jones nodded. "It is the one I followed out of the university. I must have passed right by the Old Ones' camp and not even noticed it. And now, suppose you tell me about this robot of yours? If I had a sledge at hand, I'd do some hammering on him. Although I do admit he managed to get us out of a tight spot in a most efficient manner. I only wish he could have warned us a bit ahead of time."

"He couldn't warn us," said Hal. "He can't talk."

"That was a good gun," Jones mourned. "It set me back a heap. What made him do it, do you think?"

"I wouldn't try to answer that," said Cornwall. "He's not been with us very long, and I suppose he'd have to be with us for years before we began to understand him. Apparently he thought it was not a good idea for you to retain your weapon. I can't agree with him, of course, but he must have had a reason."

"Maybe it was because this thing you call a weapon was too far out of its time," said Sniveley. "Maybe he felt it had no right to be here. There's a name for something like that. Anachronism, I think, although that doesn't sound quite right."

"Much as I regret losing it," said Jones, "I must admit that I feel no great compulsion to go back to get it. If I never see an Old One again, it will be much too soon. And in any case it is probably out of kilter. This Tin Bucket of yours did not toss it easily. When it hit, it bounced."

After traveling for miles, stumbling down the gorge in the light of a sickly moon, they had finally stopped to build a fire in the shelter of a huge pile of tumbled boulders. They had feasted on the bear and then had settled down to talk.

"I'm dying to know what is going on," said Jones. "Perhaps now you'll tell me."

Lounging against a boulder, Cornwall told the story, with much help from the others, especially Sniveley.

"The rings of fire," said Jones. "Most intriguing. They sound very much like the flying saucers with which my world is both amused and plagued. You say they were destructive."

"Extremely so," said Cornwall. "They pulverized a castle."

"After the Chaos Beast was dead."

"We think it was dead," said Hal. "It seemed to most of us that we experienced abundant evidence it was. We are considerably unsure why the wheels of fire incident should have come about. By and large we are inclined to believe the attack was aimed at Bucket. They probably figured they would hit the castle about the time that he was hatched. As it chanced, we speeded up the hatching by a few hours' time."

"The Chaos Beast must have known the danger," said Jones. "That is why it ordered the people of the castle to haul Bucket out as soon as it was dead."

"Bucket probably knew as well," said Gib. "He was the one who insisted that we leave the castle."

Jones asked, "Have you had any chance to study this stormily born robot? Have you any data on him?"

Cornwall frowned. "If you mean by data, facts and observations laboriously arrived at, the answer is no. I would suspect your world is much more concerned with data than we are. We know only a few things—that he seems to be made of metal, that he has no eyes and yet can see, that he cannot talk nor does he eat, and still it seems to me . . ."

"He gave us warning to flee the castle," said Gib. "He turned himself into a packhorse for us, carrying more than his share when we crossed the Blasted Plain. He destroyed the magic of the demon trap and this night he extracted us from a situation that could have cost our lives."

"And he plays with Coon," said Mary. "Coon likes him. And I don't think we should be talking like this about him, with him just standing over there. He must know what we are saying, and it may embarrass him."

Bucket didn't look embarrassed. He didn't look like anything at all. He stood on the other side of the fire. All his tentacles were retracted with the exception of one that was half-extruded, the end of it shaped in an intricate, boxlike form, resting on what one might think of as his chest.

"That tentacle is a funny business," said Oliver. "I wonder if it has any meaning. Are we supposed to notice it and get some meaning from it?"

"It's ritual," said Sniveley. "Some silly ritualistic gesture, probably done for some satisfaction that its symbolism may afford him."

Jones squinted at him. "I think," he said, "he is not of this earth. I think the Chaos Beast was not of this earth, either, or the wheels of fire. I think that here we deal with alien beings from deep outer space. They all came from some distant star."

"How could that be?" asked Cornwall. "The stars are no more than celestial lights set by God's mercy in the firmament. From a magic world, perhaps, from some place hidden and forbidden to us, but not from the stars."

"I refuse," Jones said icily, "to conduct a seminar for you on what the astronomers of my world have discovered. It would waste my time. You are blind to everything but magic. Run up against something that you can't understand and out pops that all-inclusive concept."

"Then," Hal said, soothingly, "let us not discuss it. I agree there can be no meeting of the minds. Nor is it essential that there should be."

"We have told you our story," Mary said. "Now, why don't you tell us yours? We went seeking you, to ask if you would join us in our journey across the Blasted Plain, but we found you gone."

"It was Cornwall's doing," said Jones. "He dropped a hint about a university. He did not seem to place too much emphasis on it, but he was wonderfully intrigued. Although he did not say so, I had the impression that the university was in fact his goal. So, in my devious and unmoral way, I decided I'd steal a march on him."

"But how could you know the location of it?" asked Cornwall. "And how could you have gotten there?"

"The location," said Jones, grinning. "Mostly a guess. I studied a map."

"But there are no maps."

"In my world there are. In my world these are not the Misty Mountains, nor the Blasted Plain. They are normal geographies settled by normal people, surveyed and mapped and with roads running into the far reaches of them. So I used the machine that enables me to move between my world and yours and went back to my world. There I studied the maps, made my guess, had my machine trucked—by that I mean I used another machine to move my traveling machine to the point in my world that corresponds with the same terrain I believed the university was located in your world. If this all sounds confusing . . ."

"It does," said Sniveley, "but proceed in any case."

"I then came back to this world, and my guess had been a good one. I landed only a couple of miles from the university. I spent a few days there, enough to know I needed help. As I told you, I found books and documents, but couldn't read a word of them. Then I thought of you. I knew you would try to make it across the Blasted Plain, and I hoped that Cornwall, with his years of study at Wyalusing, might be able to read the books. And I also had a hunch you might need some help. So I started out. You know the rest of it.

"The university? I've never seen anything quite like it. One huge building, although from a distance it has the look of many buildings. A place you might think fairies had built. A place, Sir Mark, such as your magic might have built. It looks like froth and lace, as if the hand of man had no part in it. . . ."

"Perhaps," said Sniveley, "the hand of man had not."

"There were farmlands and garden plots about it, and, while the crops had all been harvested, it was quite apparent that someone had worked to grow the crops and to take in the harvest. There was cattle. There were pigs and chickens and a few rather scrawny horses

—peacocks, ducks, geese, pigeons. Enough animals and fowl and farmland to feed a substantial population. But there was no one there. At times, as I prowled about, it seemed there was someone watching, and at times I thought I caught sight of figures scurrying out of sight, but no one came forth to greet me, no one watched me leave. They, whoever they might be, were hiding from me."

"We are glad, of course," said Sniveley, "to have heard this tale from you, for it is a most intriguing one. But the question now is what do we do?"

"We have to go on," said Cornwall. "We can't go back across the Blasted Plain. Without horses we would never make it."

"There are the Hellhounds, too," said Gib.

"We can't go back, you say," said Sniveley. "That's because you are dying to see the university. The point of it is that you should not see it, none of us should see it. You have your holy places and we have ours, and many of ours have been desecrated and obliterated. The university is one of the few places we have left, and it is left only because the knowledge of its existence has been closely guarded."

"I don't know about the rest of you," said Mary, "but I am going on. My parents passed this way, and if they are still alive, I mean to find them."

"Your parents," said Jones. "I know but little of them. I searched the Witch House for some evidence of them but found nothing. I would wager that if you strung that witch up by her heels and built a good fire underneath her, there'd be evidence forthcoming. But I had not the stomach for it. Up in my world there is no record of them, of anyone other than myself who has come into this world. But from what little I have heard I would gather they are people from my world. Perhaps people who were born some centuries after me. For witness: I must use a technological contraption to travel here, and there is no evidence they used a machine at all. In the centuries beyond my time investigators from my world may be able to travel here without benefit of machinery."

"There is a great deal in what Sniveley has to say about the university's sacred status," Cornwall said with a judicious air. "We should not intrude where we are not wanted, although the hard fact of the matter is, that we have nowhere else to go. I think everyone is agreed we can't go back. Not only are there the Hellhounds on the Blasted Plain, but now there are the Old Ones as well. By morning they will have retrieved their spears and regained their courage. I doubt very much they'll follow us down the gorge, for their fear of it seems quite genuine; but I would think it might be dangerous for us to attempt to make our way back past them. The best we can say, Sniveley, is that we pledge ourselves to keep our lips forever sealed and that we will commit no desecration."

Sniveley grumbled. "It's nothing I would count on, for most people, given a chance, become blabbermouths. But I suppose it must be accepted, for we are forced to it. I agree we can't go back the way we came."

"It was a wild goose chase all around," said Cornwall, "and I am sincerely sorry that we made it. I feel responsible."

"The fault was mostly mine," said Gib. "I was the one who insisted that I must deliver with my own hands the ax made by the Old Ones."

"It was no one's fault," said Mary. "How could anyone have ever guessed the Old Ones would react as they did?"

"So we go on," said Hal. "I wonder what we'll find."

Somewhere far off a wolf howled, and, listening to the howl in the fallen silence, they waited for another howl to answer, but there was no answer. The fire was burning low, and Hal threw more wood on it.

Up the gorge a twig snapped loudly in the silence and they leaped to their feet, moving away from the fire.

A tattered figure came blundering down the gorge, his staff thumping on the ground as he walked along. The ragged raven clutched his shoulder desperately, and behind him the little white dog limped faithfully along.

"My God," exclaimed Cornwall, "it is the Gossiper. We had forgotten all about him."

"He intended that we should," Sniveley said nastily. "He slips in and out of your consciousness. It is the nature of him. Now you see him, now you don't. And when you don't see him, you never even think of him. You forget him easily because he wants you to forget. He is a slippery character."

"Dammit, man," Jones bellowed at the Gossiper, "where have you been? Where did you disappear to?"

"If my nostrils do not deceive me," said the Gossiper, "there is good roast meat about. A very gorgeous roast. I hunger greatly. . . ."

"Hell," said Jones, "you forever hunger greatly."

37

It was late afternoon and they were almost through the gorge when the first dot appeared in the sky. As they stood and watched, there were other dots.

"Just birds," said Gib. "We are getting jumpy. We are almost there but are convinced from what the Old Ones told us that something is bound to happen. You said we were almost through the gorge, didn't you, Master Jones?"

Jones nodded.

"What bothers me about those dots," said Hal, "is that the Old Ones talked about Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain. And the things that brood are birds, hatching out their eggs."

"You came through the gorge," Cornwall said to Jones, "and nothing happened to you. Nothing even threatened you."

"I'm convinced," said Jones, "that it was only because I was going in the right direction. It would seem logical that whatever's here is here to protect the university. They'd pay no attention to someone who was leaving."

There were more dots now, circling but dropping lower as they circled.

The walls of rock rose up from the gorge's narrow floor, shutting out the sun. Only at high noon would there be sunlight in this place. Here and there trees, mostly cedar and other small evergreens; sprouted from the rock faces of the wall, clinging stubbornly to little pockets of soil lodged in the unevenness of the rock. The wind moaned as it blew along the tortuous course the gorge pursued.

"I don't like this place," said Sniveley. "It puts a chill into my bones."

"And here I stand," lamented Jones, "without a weapon to my hand other than this driftwood cudgel I managed to pick up. If I only had the rifle. If that stupid robot had not thrown away my rifle ..."

The stupid robot stood unperturbed by what Jones had said—if, indeed, he had heard what had been said. All his tentacles were retracted except for the one on his chest, which lay arranged in a box-like fashion.

The dots were dropping lower, and now it could be seen that they were enormous birds with a monstrous wingspread.

"If I only had my glasses, I could make out what they are," said Jones. "But, no, of course, I haven't got my glasses. I persuaded myself that I had to travel light. It's a goddamn wonder I brought anything at all. The only two things I had that counted were the rifle and the bike, and now both of them are gone." "I can tell you what they are," said Hal. "You have sharp eyes, my friend." "He has forest eyes," said Gib. "A hunter's eyes." Hal said, "They are harpies."

"The meanest things in the Enchanted Land," screeched Sniveley. "Meaner than the Hellhounds. And us out in the open."

Steel rasped as Cornwall drew his blade. "You're getting good at that," Hal said nonchalantly. "Almost smooth as silk. If you'd practice just a little."

The harpies were plunging down in a deadly dive, their wings half-folded, their cruel, skull-like human faces equipped with deadly beaks thrust out as they dived.

Hal's bowstring twanged, and one of the harpies broke out of the dive and tumbled, turning end for end, its folded wings coming loose and spreading out limply in the air. The string twanged again, and a second one was tumbling.

The others waited for them and the Gossiper, backed against a rocky wall, held his staff at ready. The little lame dog crouched between his feet and the raven reared on his shoulder, squalling.

"Let me get just one good crack at them," said the Gossiper, almost as if he were praying or, more likely, talking to himself. "I'll crack their stupid necks. I hate the filthy things. I need not be here, but I cannot go away right yet. I've greased my gut with this company, not once but twice, and my Fido and their Coon get along together."

"Get down," Cornwall told Mary. "Close against the ground. Stay right here beside me."

Sniveley and Oliver had hastily gathered a small pile of rocks and now stood on either side of it, with rocks clutched in their hands. The harpies were almost on top of them and now shifted the direction of their dive, pivoting in midair so that they presented their massively taloned feet rather than their beaked heads. Cornwall swung his sword and the singing blade sliced off the feet of a plunging harpy. The heavy body, falling to the ground, bounced and rolled. The vicious beak of the wounded monster stabbed at Hal's leg as it rolled past, but missed the stroke.

Standing close to the Gossiper, Bucket was the center of a network of lashing tentacles, knocking the diving harpies off their mark, catching them and hurling them against the stony walls.

Jones, swinging his club with lusty will, knocked down two of the attackers. The third got through, fastening one claw on his arm, trying to reach his face with the other. The mighty wings beat heavily to lift him. Hal, hearing Jones' startled yell, swung about and sent an arrow into the body of the monster. Both the harpy and Jones fell heavily. Jones jerked free, and with his club beat in the harpy's skull. His left arm, streaming blood, hung limply.

The Gossiper beat off an attack with his staff, the raven screaming in triumph. Oliver and Sniveley sturdily kept on pegging rocks.

Gib cut down two of the attackers with his ax while Cornwall, swinging a deadly, gleaming blade, fought off harpy after harpy. A half a dozen wounded harpies hopped and fluttered about the rocky floor of the gorge. The air was filled with floating feathers.

One of the harpies, missing its plunge at Sniveley, perhaps diverted by the barrage of rocks that Oliver and Sniveley kept up, apparently quite by accident hooked one of its claws in Sniveley's belt and started to beat skyward. Sniveley squalled in terror, and Hal, seeing what had happened, winged an arrow that drove through the creature's neck. It fell heavily, dragging Sniveley with it.

The harpies drew off, laboring mightily to drive their massive bodies skyward.

Cornwall lowered his sword and looked about. Mary crouched at his feet. Sniveley, snarling oaths, was pulling himself free of the dead harpy's grasping talon. Hal lowered his bow and watched the retreating harpies.

"They'll be back," he said, "taking only enough time to regroup. And I have but three arrows left. I could retrieve some from the bodies of the harpies, but that will take some time."

Sniveley, still spitting fury, came limping up the gorge. He raged at Hal. "That arrow you loosed almost hit me. I could feel the wind of it going past my ear."

"Would you rather I had let it haul you off?" asked Hal.

"You should be more careful," Sniveley yelled.

Cornwall asked Jones, "How badly are you hurt?"

"My arm is deeply cut. It will stiffen, and I fear there will be infection." He said to Hal, "I thank you for your shot."

"We'll be hard pressed," said Cornwall, "to fight them off next time. We were lucky this time. I think that our resistance considerably surprised them."

Now heavy shadows lay within the gorge. The sun no longer lighted anything but a thin segment of the soaring walls of rock. Black pools of darkness lay here and there in the sharp angles of the floor.

"There is a way," said the Gossiper, "by which we may be able to evoke some help. I am not too certain, but I think it might work."

Bucket stood stolidly where he had been standing all the time, his tentacles now retracted except for the one, folded in its boxlike conformation, resting on his chest.

The Gossiper reached out his staff and touched the folded tentacle with the tip of it, holding out his other hand.

"Please," he said. "Please give it to me. It may be the one thing that will save us."

Bucket stirred, began deliberately to unwind the tentacle as they watched. Finally, they could see what he had been holding—the fist ax of the Old Ones.

"He cleaned the floor of the shelter of all the stones and clubs," said Gib. "That was when he got it."

Bucket held out the ax to the Gossiper.

"Thank you," said the Gossiper, taking it.

He fit it in his hand and raised it high into the air, beginning a wild, melodious chant. The narrow walls caught the singsong phrases and flung them back and forth so that the little area between them seemed to be filled with many-voiced chanting, as if a choir were chanting. As the chant went on, the shadows deepened even further, and in the shadows there was a stirring and a sound—the sound of many padding feet.

Mary screamed, and Cornwall jerked up his sword, then lowered it slowly. "God save us now," he said.

There seemed to be hundreds of them, little more than shadows in the shadows, but delineated enough even in the gloom so they could be seen for what they were—great brutish gnarly men, naked for large part, although some of them wore pelts about their middles. They slouched on knees that did not want to straighten out, and they walked bent forward from the waist. They carried shafts with crude stone points attached, and their eyes gleamed redly in the gloom.

High in the brightness of the sky, the ranks of harpies ceased to spiral upward and began their dive. They hurtled down in a mass attack and Cornwall, watching, knew that this time there was no chance to stop them. He reached out his free arm and drew Mary close against him.

Savage yells drowned out the chanting of the Gossiper. The gnarly men were screaming in a frenzy and shaking their spears at the diving harpies. The shadowy men moved in closer, crowding in. The gorge seemed filled with them.

The harpies plunged down between the looming walls. Then, suddenly, the charge was broken. In midair they windmilled their wings to check their plunge, bumping into one another, a flurry of beating wings and flying feathers. They squalled in surprise and outrage, and beneath them the gnarly men howled in exultant triumph.

The Gossiper ceased his chanting and cried out in a loud voice. "Now, run! Run for your lives!"

Cornwall pushed Mary behind him. "Follow me," he said. "Stay close. I'll open up a path."

He lowered his head and charged, expecting resistance from the press of bodies all about him. But there was no resistance. He plowed through the gnarly men as if they had been a storm of autumn-blown leaves. Ahead of him Jones stumbled and fell, screaming as his mangled arm came in contact with the stone beneath him. Cornwall stooped and caught him, lifting him, slinging him across his shoulder. Ahead of him all the others, including Mary, were racing through the drifts of shadowy gnarly men. Glancing upward, he saw that the harpies were breaking free from the constrictions of the rock walls of the gorge, bursting out into sunlit sky.

Just ahead was light where the gorge ended on what appeared to be a level plain. The gnarly men were gone. He passed the Gossiper who was stumping along as rapidly as he could, grunting with his effort. Ahead of the Gossiper, the little white dog skipped along with a weaving, three-legged gait, Coon loping at his side.

Then they were out of the gorge, running more easily now. Ahead of them, a few miles out on the little plain, which was ringed in by towering mountains, loomed a fairy building—as Jones had said, all froth and lace, but even in its insubstantiality, with a breathtaking grandeur in it.

"You can let me down now," said Jones. "Thank you for the lift."

Cornwall slowed to a halt and lowered him to his feet.

Jones jerked his head at the injured arm. "The whole damn thing's on fire," he said, "and it's pounding like a bell."

He fell into step with Cornwall. "My vehicle's just up ahead," he said. "You can see it there, off to the right. I have a hypodermic— Oh, hell, don't ask me to explain. It's a magic needle. You may have to help me with it. I'll show you how."

Coming across the meadow that lay between them and the fairy building was a group of beings, too distant to be seen with any distinctness except that it could be seen that one of them stood taller than the others.

"Well, I be damned," said Jones. "When I was here before, I wandered all about and there was no one here to greet me, and now look at the multitude that is coming out to meet us."

Ahead of all the others ran a tiny figure that yipped and squealed with joy, turning cartwheels to express its exuberance.

"Mary!" it yipped. "Mary! Mary! Mary!"

"Why," Mary said, astounded, "I do believe it is Fiddlefingers. I have wondered all along where the little rascal went to."

"You mean the one who made mud pies with you?" asked Cornwall.

"The very one," said Mary.

She knelt and cried out to him, and he came in with a rush to throw himself into her arms. "They told me you were coming," he shrieked, "but I could not believe them."

He wriggled free and backed off a way to have a look at her. "You've gone and grown up," he said accusingly. "I never grew at all."

"I asked at the Witch House," said Mary, "and they told me you had disappeared."

"I have been here for years and years," the little brownie said. "I have so many things to show you."

By now the rest of those who were coming in to meet them had drawn close enough for them to see that most of them were little people, a dancing, hopping gaggle of brownies, trolls, elves, and fairies. Walking in their midst was a somber manlike figure clothed in a long black gown, with a black cowl pulled about his head and face. Except that it seemed he really had no face—either that or the shadow of the cowl concealed his face from view. And there was about him a sort of mistiness, as if he walked through a fogginess that now revealed and now concealed his shape.

When he was close to them, he stopped and said in a voice that was as somber as his dress, "I am the Caretaker, and I bid you welcome here. I suspect you had some trouble with the harpies. At times they become somewhat overzealous."

"Not in the least," said Hal. "We gently brushed them off."

"We have disregarded them," said the Caretaker, "because we have few visitors. I believe, my dear," he said, speaking to Mary, "that your parents were here several years ago. Since then, there have been no others."

"I was here a few days ago," said Jones, "and you paid no attention to me. I think you made a deliberate effort to make it seem that this place was deserted."

"We looked you over, sir," said the Caretaker. "Before we made ourselves known to you, we wanted to find out what kind of thing you were. But you left rather hurriedly. . . ."

Mary interrupted him. "You say that they were here," she said, "my parents. Are they here no longer, then?"

"They went to another place," said the Caretaker. "I will tell you of that and much more a little later on. All of you will join us at table, will you not?"

"Now that you speak of it," said the Gossiper, "I believe that I could do with a small bit of nourishment."

38

The Caretaker sat at the head of the table, and now it was apparent that he, indeed, did not have a face. Where the face should have been, underneath the cowl, was what seemed an area of fogginess, although now and then, Cornwall thought, watching him, there was at times faint, paired red sparks that might take the place of eyes.

He did not eat but sat there while they did, speaking to them pleasantly enough but of inconsequential things, asking them about their journey, talking about how the crops had been, discussing the vagaries of the weather—simply making conversation.

And there was about him, Cornwall thought, not only a fogginess about his face but about his entire being, as if he might be some sort of wraith so insubstantial that one would not have been amazed if he had disappeared altogether, blown by the wind.

"I do not know what to make of him," Sniveley said to Cornwall, speaking in a confidential whisper. "He fits in with nothing I've ever heard of as dwelling in the Wasteland. A ghost one might think at first, but he is not a ghost, of that I am quite certain. There is a certain misty character to him that I do not like."

The food was in no way fancy, but it was good and solid fare, and there was plenty of it. The Caretaker kept urging them to eat. "There is plenty of it," he kept saying. "There is enough for all."

But finally it became apparent that everyone had eaten all they could, and the Caretaker said, "Now that we are finished, there is much explanation that is due and there may be some questions you want to ask."

Sniveley piped up hurriedly. "We have been wondering . . ." But the Caretaker waved him down.

"You're the one who has been wondering what I am," he said, "and I think it is only fair I tell you, which I would have in any case, but in its proper time. I told you I am the Caretaker and, in a sense, I am. But basically I'm what you might call a philosopher, although that is not the word exactly. There is no word in your world that can precisely describe what I am. 'Philosophical engineer,' probably would come as close as any, and you, Mr. Jones, and you, Sir Mark, if you wish to make dispute of this, please to wait a while. . . ."

"We'll hold our questions," Cornwall said, "but there is one thing that I demand to know. You are acquainted with our names, but we have never told you them."

"You will not like me when I tell you," the Caretaker said, "but the honest answer is I can see into your minds. Very deeply, should I wish, but to go deeply would be impolite, so I merely brush the surface. Only the surface information: who you are and where you've been. Although should I go deeply and unearth your inmost secrets, you need feel no embarrassment. For I am not of this planet and my values are not entirely your values, and even should they coincide, I would not presume to judge you, for I know from many eons the great diversities of minds—"

"Before the rest of you get in with your questions," Mary said, hurrying before anyone else could speak, "I want to know what happened to my folks."

"They went back home," the Caretaker said.

"You mean they went without me. They never even thought of coming back to get me."

"You will hate me for this," said the Caretaker, "as you very rightly should. But I persuaded them, and supplied convincing evidence, that you had died."

"What a hateful thing to do," said Mary scornfully. "What a nasty thing. I hope you had a reason. . . ."

"My dear, I had a reason. And I consoled myself that it would work out in the end. . . ."

"So you're clairvoyant, too," said Jones. "With all your other creepy qualities."

"Well, not exactly," said the Caretaker, a little flustered. "I have, rather, a certain sense of destiny. In the sort of work I do it is necessary, and—"

"Forget about the destiny," said Mary coldly, "and tell us what was so important—"

"If you'd quit shouting at me and give me a chance."

"I wasn't shouting," Mary said.

"We'll give you your chance," said Cornwall, "and I warn you, sir, your reason had better be a good one."

"Perhaps," said the Caretaker, "I had best begin at the beginning, which is what I should have done to start with. My race is an ancient one, and it rose on the planet situated well within the galactic core. Long before there was such a thing as a human being, perhaps before the first life crawled out of the sea, we had built a great civilization. And I know, Sir Mark, that you are confounded and perhaps a bit incensed . . ."

"He'll be all right," said Jones. "He can ask his questions later; he is achieving an open mind in seeing that there is more than magic. So please get on with it."

"All right, then, I will," the Caretaker said. "We could have advanced to a very lofty culture that would have set us aside from the galaxy, perhaps from the universe. For we were among the first intelligence and had a head start on all the others. We could have fashioned for ourselves a way of life that by now would have been beyond anything even we ourselves can imagine, but there were certain wise men among us in very ancient times who saw the loneliness of such a course, if it should be taken. They knew that if we continued as we were going, we would stand alone, cutting ourselves off from all other life. Facing a decision, we made it, and the decision was that we would not live for ourselves alone but for the other intelligences that might evolve throughout the galaxy."

"Mister," Jones said harshly, "I know your kind. In my world, we are up to our armpits in them. Do-gooders who make it their business to interfere with other people, who would be much happier without the interference."

"You mistake me," said the Caretaker. "We are observers only. We try not to interfere. It is only at a crisis point—"

"And you think this is a crisis point?"

"I have a feeling that it might be. Not that any great catastrophe is about to happen, but through the fear that something that could happen may fail to happen. Here, on this little plot of ground, there exists a chance for greatness. If the greatness does not come about, a unique culture will be lost to the galaxy, perhaps to the universe. And if it will make you feel any better, Mr. Jones, it is not you people here with whom I am concerned, but with the citizens of the galaxy.

"I would have you believe that we are not missionaries. We are not welfare workers. We are only observers. We merely watch and hope. We reveal ourselves and take a hand in things only when there seems no alternative."

"This is all well and good," said Cornwall, "and it sounds very pretty in the telling, but it still leaves me confused. And the greatest confusion of all is by what means you see greatness in this place. A repository, of course, for Wasteland lore, and that certainly is worth the saving. . . ."

"Not the Wasteland lore, alone, my friend, but the lore, the hopes, the potentialities of three great civilizations, all springing from a common source, three divergent philosophies, which, if they could be fused together . . ."

"Three," said Jones. "I think I see what you are getting at, but there are only two, not three. The culture of the Wasteland and of Cornwall's world and the culture of my world. Magic and technology, and I agree they might work in tandem."

"There is another world," the Caretaker said. "The world of Mary's people. Your world split not once, but twice. You are three worlds in one."

"I have enough difficulty with two worlds, let alone with three," said Cornwall. "We had thought that Mary's people came from the same world as Jones, perhaps some centuries in his future. . . ."

"And it was this third world that my folks went back to," Mary said. "Why was it so important—"

"I could not take the chance," said the Caretaker, "that they would slip from my grasp. If something happened to them, there was no guarantee—nay, only the slightest possibility—that someone else from the third world would ever show up. I prevailed upon them to go back to their own world to bring back to this one the documentary culture . . ."

"You've got it all worked out," said Jones. "All laid out neat and simple."

The Caretaker nodded. "I would hope so. Make this place the depository of the knowledge of three worlds. From your world, Mr. Jones, the technology; from the world of Mary's people, the great humanistic concept that both this world and yours would seem, somehow, to have missed. Put it all together, meld it all together, build a cultural concept that is not of any of the worlds, but the best of all of them. Bring in scholars from distant reaches of the galaxy, some of them representing disciplines that you have never heard of . . ."

"I take it," said Cornwall, "that you do have here a large body of ancient writings. I can hardly wait to see them. I have some small capability in some of the ancient languages. Although I think quite likely that my goblin friend may, in many instances, have much more than I do. He spent many years in the library at Wyalusing."

"This is fine for you," said Gib, "but what about the others of us? You can settle down with the ancient writings and fill your days with them. But Hal and Coon and I would have no purpose here. We have accomplished what we set out to do. We delivered the ax to the Old Ones, and we could have saved our time, but we got it done. And we went on to find this place—"

"We can't even read," said Hal. "We were never taught to read. None of the Marsh People or the Hill People—"

"For that matter," said Sniveley, "neither can I, although that has nothing to do with my wanting to go back. I have a mine to run and there are friends I left behind. Both Gib and Hal have business that they must attend to. But if there is any other way to manage it, we do not want to go back the way we came."

"I can take you back," said Jones. "I must go to my own world to get my arm attended to. With the injection that Mark gave me and the bandaging that Mary did, it is quite comfortable, but—"

"I am certain," said Oliver, "that if you'd give me the time to scan some of the old tomes, I could hit upon some magic. . ."

Jones groaned. "I have my belly full of magic. I am going back to where they have antibiotics. I can take the others with me, move my machine to what is equivalent in my world to their old stomping grounds and return them home quite neatly. The only thing is that they would have to remain under cover. I could not take the chance of their being seen."

"Most willingly," said Gib. "We'll be as quiet as mice."

"But you will return?" the Caretaker asked of Jones.

"Christ, yes!" said Jones. "I wouldn't miss this for the world. Not for the sake of your precious galaxy, you understand, not to try to build that magnificent culture you are twittering about, but for the laughs that will be in it. I can see some of them now."

"And you will bring with you the basic documents of your technologies, the philosophies that go with it, what your great men have written . . ."

"You must be kidding," Jones said. "You don't know what you're talking about. I'll bring tons of it, and there still will be tons of it left behind. What do you want—technical handbooks, blueprints, theories, white papers, scientific journals? Oh, hell, I'll try to bring the best I can, and I'll stand around and chuckle while you try to make some sense of it."

"I am pleased," said the Caretaker, "that you think you will get some enjoyment out of it."

"There are three of us I know for certain will be staying," said Cornwall. "And I suppose Bucket, too. You say you can scan our minds. Can you scan his as well? He cannot talk with us, although he seems to understand. Would it be ethical to tell us what you know of him?"

"He is well disposed toward you," said the Caretaker, "if that is your question. He is grateful to you, and he is a friend. You can place all trust in him. But as to what he is, I have no idea, for he does not seem to know himself. Perhaps in time he will, but he still is very young. He carries some instinctive knowledge imparted by his parent, who was, it seems, a refugee from some far point in space. He is not the image of his parent, as you probably are aware. The race from which he springs, it seems, had the capability to alter the genetics of their offspring to any form they wished, and I gather, on a very primal level, with no details at all, that the Bucket's parent fashioned this offspring of his in such a way that it possessed survival values it might find handy as the child of a hunted being, the hunters more than likely extending their hunting from the father to the child. But I gather that as yet the Bucket has no realization of the capabilities that his father imprinted in him. The likelihood is that he'll find them one by one as the need occurs. We must wind up by concluding that he is still an unknown factor."

"Which," said Jones, "is a damn funny way of putting it."

"Perhaps, Mr. Jones. But I think you must agree that in an unknown factor may often lie the greatest hope."

"I hope," said Jones, "that this unknown factor doesn't rise up and slug us in the chops. After the rifle incident. . ."

"Hush, Mr. Jones," the Caretaker said. "There is one other who has not spoken yet. Master Gossiper, have you anything to say?"

"I am a mere messenger," said the Gossiper, "a runner of the errands, a patcher-up of small difficulties, one who sees that everything's in place and that nothing is forgotten."

"You don't intend to stay?"

"I have too much to do, too many leagues to cover. I must neaten things all up, and I might as well begin."

He reached into the pocket of his robe and hauled forth the Old Ones' ax.

"Since the Old Ones spurned this," he said, "it must be returned to the one who carried it and guarded it all the weary way. It may be poor payment for all the trouble that he went to, but it is at least a token."

He tossed the ax and Gib caught it, grinning.

"It'll be a thing to show when I tell the tale," he said. "I thank you kindly, Gossiper."

The Gossiper reached out a scrawny hand to Mary. "And now," he said, "if you please, the horn of the unicorn. You have no further need of it. Please to give it to me."

"Most willingly," said Mary, "but I don't understand."

"It must be taken back," said the Gossiper, "and securely inserted into the great oak once again so it will be there and ready when the next pilgrims come along. You must understand that the horns of unicorns are in very short supply and that we must make the best possible use of them."

39

Now they were gone, the good companions of the pilgrimage. Along with Jones' machine, they had been whisked into nothingness.

Cornwall turned heavily to follow the rest of the party across the nighttime meadow, back toward the fairy structure that glimmered in the moonlight. The little folks skipped blithely along, and in their midst the Caretaker seemed to float along. Off to one side, still by himself, as if he did not quite belong, Bucket jerked ahead with his unsteady gait.

So this was the end of it, Cornwall thought, the end of the long trail that had started at Wyalusing when he'd found the hidden manuscript—and a different ending from the one he had imagined, an ending that, at that time, he could not have imagined. He had set out to find the Old Ones, and now the Old Ones no longer mattered, for they had been something other than he had expected.

He remembered that night when they had reached first water after crossing the Blasted Plain and he had gone off by himself, sunk in guilt for having led the pilgrimage, and wondered what could be done when the end should come, knowing that it would be almost certain death to return by the route they had come. Now it all was finished, and there was no need of going back, for a lifetime's work, more than a lifetime's work, lay here in this little meadow ringed in by the peaks of the Misty Mountains.

Here, if the Caretaker were correct, lay the opportunity to merge three great cultures into one even greater culture, with the aid, perhaps, of strange scholars from strange worlds, equipped with unknown arts and philosophies. And there was, as well, he thought, an unknown factor in the person of the lurching Bucket, which might give to the project a dimension of which there was, as yet, no hint.

Beside him, Mary said, "Don't feel so bad, Mark. They are going home. That's where they want to be."

He shook his head. "There was nothing I could say to them. At the very end there was nothing I could say. I guess, as well, there was nothing they could say to us. All of us, I think, did a little dying back there. They did so much for me. . ."

"You did as much for them," said Mary. "You filled their lives for them. They'll spend many winter nights in the years to come talking of the trip—Sniveley at his mine, Hal and Coon in their hollow tree, Gib in his marsh."

"Thank you, Mary," Cornwall said. "You always know exactly what to say. You take away the hurt."

They walked in silence for a time, then Mary said, "Fiddlefingers told me there'd be new clothes for us, and this is something that we need. You are out at knees and elbows, and this old gown of mine is worth little except as a dusting rag. He said that if I wanted, I could have a gown of cloth of gold. Can you imagine me dressed up in cloth of gold? I'd be like a princess."

He put out a hand to stop her, turning her to face him. "Without cloth of gold," he said, "you are still a princess. I love you best in that very gown you wear, with some of the stink of the Chaos Beast still in it, worn and rent and ragged, spattered with bacon grease from the cooking fire. Promise me you'll never use it as a dusting cloth."

She came to him, put her arms around him, and he held her close.

"It'll be a good life, Mark," she whispered. "Cloth of gold or not, it'll be a good life for us."