Visbhume watched her sidelong, smiling like a fox, as if he were able to read the flow of her thoughts. He said: "Glyneth, I am a person who dances to a merry tune! Still, sometimes I must, by necessity and rightness, tread to a more portentous strain. I dislike excesses where events go wildly awry and affectionate trust is forever shattered. Do you apprehend my meaning?"

"You want me to obey you, and you promise me harm if I will not."

Visbhume chuckled. "That is blunt and direct; the music to these words is not pretty. Still—"

"Sir Visbhume, I care not a twig for your music. I must also tell you that unless you in all courtesy allow me to leave this place, you will answer to King Aillas, and this is as sure as the sun rises and sets."

"King Aillas? Oh la! The suns of Tanjecterly neither rise nor set; they curvet in graceful rounds about the sky. Now then! The fabric of our love is not yet rent! Tell me what I wish to know—after all, it is no great thing—or I must compel you to a sweet obedience. I will show you, so that you will know my power. Watch!"

Visbhume went to a nearby hedge and plucked a flower of twenty pink and white petals. "See this bloom? Is it not dainty and innocent? See how I do." Visbhume pushed his long thin white fingers from the black sleeves and, petal by petal, pulled the flower apart, with each petal smiling up at Glyneth, who watched with dread growing large in her mind.

Visbhume tossed away the dead flower. "By this means I have taken a richness into my soul. But it is only a taste, when I would dine full. Watch!"

Visbhume rummaged through his wallet and found a little silver whistle. Going once more to the hedge, he blew on the pipe. Glyneth stared to where a sheath sewed to the side of the wallet showed the haft of a little stiletto. She moved a step toward the wallet, but Visbhume had turned so that her movements were under his gaze.

A bird with a blue-crested head flew to the hedge to hear Visbhume's piping. With nimble white fingers Visbhume played flourishes, trills and wild little arpeggios, and the bird cocked its head askance to hear such mad and wonderful notes.

Glyneth, through fairy magic, had been gifted with the language of all things, and she cried out to the bird: "Fly! He means you harm!"

The bird chirped uneasily, but Visbhume had seized it, and carried it back to the bench. "Now, my dear, watch! And remember, everything I do has its reason."

While Glyneth watched aghast, Visbhume performed atrocious deeds upon the bird, and finally let the tattered thing drop to the ground. He wiped his fingers fastidiously upon a tuft of grass, and smiled at Glyneth. "Such are the ways in which my blood is stirred, and a sweet savor is added to our knowledge of one another. So come closer, sweet Glyneth, I am ready to caress your warm person."

Glyneth took a deep breath and twisted her face into the caricature of a smile. Slowly she came toward Visbhume, who crowed in delight. "Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet! You come like a dear maiden should!" He reached out his arms; Glyneth shoved him smartly on the narrow chest and sent him stumbling backward, mouth pursed in a purple O of astonishment. Glyneth seized the wallet, and drew the stiletto. As Visbhume staggered back toward her she struck out. Her arm was deflected; the stiletto plunged through Visbhume's left cheek, across his mouth and out his right cheek. The stiletto, of magic properties, could not be withdrawn save by the hand which had thrust it. Visbhume gave a crazy chortling cry of pain and whirled in a circle; Glyneth seized his wallet and ran at full speed down the slope to the river. A hundred yards downstream she spied the dock. Visbhume came bounding after her, the stiletto yet protruding from his cheek.

Glyneth ran to the dock and jumped into the boat. The fisherman who dug in the mud along the shore cried out in anger: "Halt! Do not molest my boat! Away with you and your tricks!"

The language was strange, but her sleight of tongues allowed Glyneth complete understanding; nevertheless, she cast off the line and pushed out into the river just as Visbhume came running out on the dock. He stood waving his arms and trying to call, but the stiletto impeded his tongue, and his words were barely comprehensible: "... my wallet!... Glyneth! Come back; you do not know what you do! ... the holes to our world, we will never return!"

Glyneth looked for oars, but found none. The boat was caught in the current and swept off downstream, with Visbhume bounding along the bank, uttering strangled orders and pleas, until he was halted by the influx of a second river, so that he was obliged to stop and watch Glyneth, in her boat, float beyond his reach of vision, along with his wallet.

Presently Visbhume came upon a ferry operated by a pair of lumpish men, who demanded coin before they would convey him across the river. Visbhume, lacking coin, was compelled to surrender the silver buckle from his shoe for the passage.

At the ferry terminus Visbhume discovered a blacksmith shop. Upon payment of the remaining buckle, the smith sawed the handle from the shaft; then, while Visbhume shrieked in pain, he seized the tip with a pincers and pulled the blade out through Visbhume's right cheek.

From a pocket in his voluminous sleeve, Visbhume brought a round white box. He removed the top and shook out a tablet of waxy yellow balm. With sighs and exclamations of gratification he rubbed the balm on his wounds, easing his pain and healing the cuts. He returned balm into box and box into the pocket in his sleeve; the pieces of stiletto he dropped into a pocket in the side of his trousers, and once more set off in pursuit of Glyneth.

At length Visbhume reached the shore of the main river. The surface of the water lay blank; the boat had drifted far out of sight.

II

THE BOAT FLOATED ALONG THE RIVER, with the banks sliding by at either side. Glyneth sat rigidly fearful that somehow the boat might rock and pitch her into the dark deep water, and Glyneth thought that she would not like to explore the depths of this river. She looked sadly over her shoulder; with every instant she floated farther from the hut and passage back the way she had come. She told herself: "My friends will help me!" No matter what the circumstances, she must cling to this conviction—because she knew it was true.

Another dismal idea: what if she became hungry and thirsty? Dare she eat and drink the substances of Tanjecterly? More than likely they would poison her. In her mind's-eye she saw herself eating a morsel of fruit, and instantly choking, then turning black and swelling into a disgusting parody of herself.

"I must stop thinking such things!" she told herself resolutely. "Aillas will help me as soon as he finds that I am lost, and Shimrod as well, and of course my dear Dhrun... . The sooner the better, for this is a dreadful place!"

Spherical trees with foliage of red and blue and blue-black lined the banks. On several occasions Glyneth saw beasts at the river's edge: a white bull with the head of an insect and spikes along his back; a spindly stilt-man fifteen feet tall with a narrow neck and a sharp face adapted to looking into foliage for nuts and fruit.

Glyneth explored the contents of the wallet. She found a book bound in leather entitled Twitten's Almanac, evidently newly copied from an older work. She found a small bottle of wine and a little box containing a hunch of bread and a slab of cheese. Those were Visbhume's rations, and Glyneth surmised that both bottle and case were magically refilled after use. She noticed other articles whose utility was not so clear, including a half-dozen small glass bulbs swarming inside with insects.

Glyneth, in the absence of Visbhume, began to feel less desperate. Sooner or later her friends would find her, and bring her home; of this she felt sure... . Why should Visbhume so insistently inquire upon the circumstances of Dhrun's birth? He could only be acting in the interests of King Casmir, and hence disclosure of the knowledge most probably would not be to the advantage of Dhrun.