“Only a churl would require more of you,” said Aillas. “You have been more than courteous.”

  “You are pleasant guests, and I am sorry that you must go on the morrow. But now, a lady awaits me. She is new to Villa Meroe and I am anxious to enjoy her pleasure.”

  “A last question,” said Aillas. “If new guests come, the old ones must leave, or they would congest every hall and chamber of Meroe. When they leave, where do they go?”

  Lord Daldace laughed softly. “Where go the folk who live in your dreams when at last you wake?” He bowed and departed.

  Three maidens stopped before them. One spoke with mischievous boldness. “Why do you sit so quietly? Do we lack charm?”

  The three men rose to their feet. Aillas found himself facing a slender girl with pale blonde hair and features of flower-like delicacy. Eyes of violet-blue looked at him from behind the black domino. Aillas’ heart gave a startled jerk, of both pain and joy-He started to speak, then checked himself. “Excuse me,” he muttered. “I am not feeling well.” He turned away, to find that Garstang had done the same. Garstang said: “It is impossible. She resembles someone who was once very dear to me.”

  “They are dreams,” said Aillas. “They are very hard to resist. Is Lord Daldace so ingenuous, after all?”

  “Let us return to our couches. I don’t care for dreams quite so real… Where is Scharis?”

  The maidens and Scharis were not to be seen. “We must find him,” said Aillas. “His temperament will betray him.”

  They walked the chambers of Meroe, ignoring the soft lights, the fascinations, the tables laden with delicacies. At last they found Scharis, in a small courtyard opening on the terrace. He sat in the company of four others, blowing soft tones from the pipes of a syrinx. The others played various different instruments, to produce music of a haunting sweetness. Close beside Scharis sat a slim dark-haired maiden; she leaned so closely to him that her hair spread across his shoulder. In one hand she held a goblet of purple wine, which she sipped, and then, when the music stopped, she offered to Scharis.

  Scharis, in rapt abstraction, took it in his hand, but Aillas leaned low over the balustrade and snatched it away, “Scharis, what has come over you? Come along, we must sleep! Tomorrow we will put this dream-castle behind us; it is more dangerous than all the werewolves of Tantrevalles!”

  Scharis slowly rose to his feet. He looked down at the girl.

  “I must go.”

  The three men returned silently to the sleeping chamber, where Aillas said: “You almost drank from the goblet.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you drink before?”

  “No.” Scharis hesitated. “I kissed the girl, who is much like someone I once loved. She had been drinking wine and a drop hung on her lips. I tasted it.”

  Aillas groaned. “Then I must discover the antidote from Lord Daldace!”

  Again Garstang joined him; the two roamed Meroe but nowhere could they find Lord Daldace.

  The lights began to be extinguished; the two at last returned to their chamber. Scharis either slept or feigned sleep.

  Morning light entered through high windows. The six men arose and somewhat glumly considered each other. Aillas said heavily. “The day has started. Let us be on our way; we will make our breakfast along the road.”

  At the gate the horses awaited them though the gatekeeper was nowhere to be seen. Not knowing what he might discover if he looked back, Aillas resolutely kept his head turned away from Villa Meroe. His comrades did likewise, so he noticed.

  “Away, then, along the road, and let us forget the palace of dreams!”

  The six galloped away with cloaks flapping behind. A mile down the road they halted to take breakfast. Scharis sat by himself to the side. His mood was abstracted and he showed no appetite.

  Strange, thought Aillas, how loosely the trousers hung about his legs. And why did his jacket sag so oddly?

  Aillas sprang to his feet but not before Scharis slid to the ground, where his clothes lay empty. Aillas dropped to his knees. Scharis’ hat fell away; his face, a mask of a substance like pale parchment, slipped askew, and looked - somewhere.

  Aillas slowly rose to his feet. He turned to ponder the way they had come. Bode came up beside him. “Let us ride on,” said Bode gruffly. “Nothing can be gained by returning.”

  The road veered somewhat to the right, and, as the day progressed, began to lead up and down, to follow the contours of swells and swales. The soil grew thin; outcrops of rock appeared; the forest dwindled to sparse straggles of stunted yew and oak, then drew away to the east.

  The day was full of wind; clouds raced overhead and the five rode through alternate spaces of sun and shade.

  Sunset found them on a desolate fell among hundreds of weathered granite boulders as tall as a man or taller. Garstang and Cargus both declared them to be sarsens, though they stood without perceptible order or regularity.

  Beside a rivulet the five halted for the night. They made beds of bracken and passed the night in no great comfort but disturbed only by the whistling of the wind.

  At sunrise the five once more took to the saddle and proceeded south along the Trompada, here little more than a path wandering among the sarsen-stones.

  At noon the road swung down from the fells to rejoin the River Siss, then followed the riverbank south.

  Halfway through the afternoon the road arrived at a fork. By deciphering an age-worn signpost, they learned that Bittershaw Road angled away to the southeast while the Trompada crossed a bridge and followed the Siss in a southerly direction.

  The travelers crossed the bridge and half a mile along the road encountered a peasant leading a donkey loaded with faggots.

  Aillas held up his hand; the peasant drew back in alarm. “What now? If you be robbers, I carry no gold, and the same is true even if you not be robbers.”

  “Enough of your foolishness,” growled Cargus. “Where is the best and nearest inn?”

  The peasant blinked in perplexity. “The ‘best’ and the ‘nearest eh? Is it two inns you want?”

  “One is enough,” said Aillas.

  “In these parts inns are rare. The Old Tower down the way might serve your needs, if you are not over-nice.”

  “We are nice,” said Yane, “but not over-nice. Where is this inn?”

  “Fare forward two miles until the road turns to rise for the mountain. A bit of a track leads to the Old Tower.” Aillas tossed him a penny. “Many thanks to you.” Two miles the five followed the river-road. The sun dropped behind the mountains; the four rode in shadow, under pines and cedars.

  A bluff overlooked the Siss; here the road turned sharply up the hillside. A trail continued along the side of the bluff, back and forth under heavy foliage, until the outline of a tall round tower stood dark against the sky.

  The five rode around the tower under a mouldering wall, to come out upon a flat area overlooking the river a hundred feet below. Of the ancient castle only a corner tower and a wing stood intact. A boy came and took their horses to what had once been the great hall and which now served as a stable.

  The five entered the old tower, and found themselves in a place of gloom and a grandeur impregnable to present indignities. A fire in the fireplace sent flickering light across a great round room. Slabs of stone flagged the floor; the walls were unrelieved by hangings. Fifteen feet overhead a balcony circled the room; with another above in the shadows; and above still a third, almost invisible by reason of the gloom.

  Rough tables and benches had been placed near the fire. To the other side a fire burned in a second fireplace; here, behind a counter, an old man with a thin face and wispy white hair worked energetically over pots and pans. He seemed to have six hands, all reaching, shaking and stirring. He basted a lamb where it turned on a spit, shook up a pan of pigeons and quails, swung other pots this way and that on their pot-hooks, so that they might receive the proper heat.

  For a moment Aillas watched in respectful attention, marveling at the old man’s dexterity. At last, taking advantage of a pause in the work, he asked: “Sir, you are the landlord?”

  “Correct, my lord. I claim that role, if these makeshift premises deserve such a dignity.”

  “Dignity is the least of our concerns if you can provide us lodging for the night. From the evidence of my eyes I feel assured of a proper supper.”

  “Lodging here is of the simplest; you sleep in hay above the stable. My premises offer nothing better and I am too old to make changes.”

  “How is your ale?” asked Bode. “Serve us cool clear bitter and you will hear no complaints.”

  “You relieve all my anxieties, since I brew good ale. Be seated, if you will.”

  The five took seats by the fire and congratulated themselves that they need not spend another windy night in the bracken. A portly woman served them ale in beechwood cups, which by some means accentuated the quality of the brew, and Bode declared: “The landlord is just! He will hear no complaints from me.”

  Aillas surveyed the other guests where they sat at their tables. There were seven: an elderly peasant and his wife, a pair of peddlers and three young men who might have been woodsmen. Into the room now came a bent old woman, cloaked heavily in gray, with a cowl gathered over her head so that her face was concealed in shadow.

  She paused to look about the room. Aillas felt her gaze hesitate as it reached him. Then, crouching and hobbling, she crossed the room to sit at a far table among the shadows.

  The portly woman brought their supper: quail, pigeons and partridge on slabs of bread soaked in the grease of the frying; cuts of roasted lamb which exhaled a fragrance of garlic and rosemary, in the Galician style, with a salad of cress and young greens: a meal far better than any they had expected.

  As Aillas supped he watched the cloaked woman at the far table, where she took her own supper. Her manners were unsettling; leaning forward, she gobbled up her food at a snap. Aillas watched in covert fascination, and noticed that the woman seemed also to peer toward him from time to time behind the shadow cast by her cowl. She bent her head low to snap up a morsel of meat and her cloak slipped away from her foot.

  Aillas spoke to his comrades. “The old woman yonder: notice her and tell me what you see.”

  Garstang muttered in amazement: “She has a chicken’s foot!”

  Aillas said, “She is a witch, with a fox mask and the legs of a great fowl. Twice she has attacked me; twice I cut her into two sections; each time she repaired herself.”

  The witch, turning to stare, noticed their gazes and hastily drew back her foot and darted another look to see if anyone had noticed the lapse. Aillas and his companions pretended indifference. She turned once more to her food, snapping and gulping.

  “She forgets nothing,” said Aillas, “and certainly she will try to kill me, if not here, then from ambush along the trail.”

  “In that case,” said Bode, “let us kill her first, at this very moment.”

  Aillas grimaced. “So it must be, even though all will blame us for killing a helpless old woman.”

  “Not when they see her feet,” said Cargus.

  “Let us be to it, and have done,” said Bode. “I am ready.”

  “A moment,” said Aillas. “I will do the deed. Make your swords ready. One scratch of her claws means death; allow her no scope to spring.”

  The witch seemed to divine the quality of their conversation. Before they could move she arose and hobbled quickly away into the shadows, and disappeared through a low archway.

  Aillas drew his sword and went to the landlord. “You have been entertaining an evil witch; she must be killed.”

  While the landlord looked on in bewilderment Aillas ran back to the archway and looked through but could see nothing in the dark and dared not proceed. He turned back to the landlord. “Where leads the archway?”

  “To the old wing, and the chambers overhead: all ruins.”

  “Give me a candle.”

  At a slight sound Bode looked up, to discover the fox-masked woman on the first balcony. With a scream she leapt down at Aillas; Bode thrust out with a stool and struck her aside. She hissed and screamed again, then leapt at Bode with legs outstretched and clawed the length of his face, before Aillas once more hacked her head from her body, which, as before started a mad canter back and forth, buffeting itself against the walls. Cargus forced it down with a bench and Yane hacked away the legs.

  Bode lay on his back, clawing at the stone with clenched fingers. His tongue protruded; his face turned black and he died.

  Aillas cried in a guttural voice: “This time the fire! Cut this vile thing to bits! Landlord, bring logs and faggots! The fire must burn hot and long!”

  The fox-faced head set up a horrid wailing. “No fire! Give me not to the fire!”

  The grisly task was complete. Under roaring flames the witch’s flesh burned to ashes and the bones crumbled to dust. The guests, pale and dispirited, had gone to their beds in the hay; the landlord and his spouse worked with mops and buckets to clean their soiled floor.

  With morning only hours away Aillas, Garstang, Cargus and Yane sat wearily at a table and watched the fire become embers.

  The landlord brought them ale. “This is a terrible event! I assure you it is not the policy of the house.”

  “Sir, do not in any way blame yourself. Be happy that we have made an end to the creature. You and your wife have given noble assistance and you shall not suffer for it.”

  With the first glimmer of dawn the four buried Bode in a quiet shaded area, at one time a rose garden. They left Bode’s horse with the landlord as well as five gold crowns from Bode’s pouch, and rode sadly down the hill to the Trompada.

  The four toiled up a steep stony valley by a road which twisted and sidled back and forth, up and’around bluffs and boulders, and eventually gained to wind-haunted Glayrider Gap. A side road led off across the moors toward Oaldes; the Trompada swung south and slanted down a long declivity, past a series of ancient tin mines to the town Market Flading. At the Tin Man Inn the four travelers, weary after the work of the night before and the toilsome ride of the day, gratefully supped on mutton and barley, and slept on straw pallets in an upper chamber.

  In the morning they set out once more along the Trompada, which now followed the North Evander along a wide shallow valley toward the far purple bulk of Tac Tor.

  At noon, with Tintzin Fyral only five miles to the south, the land began to rise and close in beside the gorge of the North Evander. Three miles farther along, with the nearness of Tintzin Fyral impressing a sense of menace upon the air, Aillas discovered a dim trail leading away and up a gulley, which he thought might be that trail by which, so long ago, he had hoped to descend from Tac Tor.

  The track climbed a long spur which trailed down from Tac Tor like the splayed root of a tree, then followed the rounded ridge by a relatively easy route. Aillas led the way up the trail to the hollow where he had camped, only yards below the flat summit of Tac Tor.

  . He found the Never-fail where he had left it. As before the tooth pointed something north of east. “In that direction,” said Aillas, “is my son, and this is where I must go.”

  “You can choose from two routes,” said Garstang. “Back the way we came, then east; or through Lyonesse by Old Street, then north into Dahaut. The first may be shorter, but the second avoids the forest, and in the end is probably faster.”

  The second, by all means,” said Aillas.

  The four passed by Kaul Bocach and entered Lyonesse without incident. At Nolsby Sevan they swung to the east along Old Street, and after four days of hard riding arrived at the town Audelart. Here Garstang took leave of his comrades. “Twanbow Hall is only twenty miles south. I shall be home for supper and my adventures will be the marvel of all.” He embraced his three comrades. “Needless to say, you will always be welcome guests at Twanbow! We have come a long way together; we have known much hardship. Never shall I forget!”

  “Nor I.”

  “Nor I.”

  “Nor I.”

  Aillas, Cargus and Yane watched Garstang ride south until he disappeared. Aillas heaved a sigh. “Now we are three.”

  “One by one we dwindle,” said Cargus.

  “Come,” said Yane. “Let us be off. I lack patience for sentiment.”

  The three departed Audelart by Old Street and three days later they arrived at Tatwillow, where Old Street crossed Icnield Way. The Never-fail pointed north, in the direction of Avallon: a good sign, or so it would seem, since the direction avoided the forest.

  They set off up Icnield Way toward Avallon in Dahaut.

  Chapter 25

  GLYN’ETH AND DHRUN had joined Dr. Fidelius at the Glassblowers Fair in Hazelwood. For the first few days the association was tentative and wary. Glyneth and Dhrun conducted themselves as if walking on eggs, meanwhile watching Dr. Fidelius sidelong that they might anticipate any sudden irrationalities or quick fits of fury. But Dr. Fidelius, after assuring their comfort, showed such even and impersonal politeness that Glyneth began to worry that Dr. Fidelius did not like them.

  Shimrod, watching the two from his disguise with the same surreptitious interest they gave him, was impressed by their composure and charmed by their desire to please him. They were, he thought, an extraordinary pair: clean, neat, intelligent and loving. Glyneth’s native cheerfulness at times broke free into bursts of exuberance which she quickly controlled lest she annoy Dr. Fidelius. Dhrun tended to long periods of silence, while he sat gazing blankly into the sunlight, thinking his private thoughts.

  Upon leaving the Glassblowers Fair, Shimrod turned his wagon north toward the market-town Porroigh and the yearly Sheep-sellers Fair. Late in the afternoon Shimrod drove the wagon off the road and halted in a little glen beside a stream. Glyneth gathered sticks and set a fire; Shimrod erected a tripod, hung a kettle and cooked a stew of chicken, onions, turnips, meadow-greens and parsley, with mustard-seed and garlic for seasoning. Glyneth gathered cress for a salad, and found a clump of morels which Shimrod added to the stew. Dhrun sat quietly by, listening to the wind in the trees and the crackle of the fire.