The Door In The Hedge Part 4

The thirteenth man was a dear friend of the Prince's. They had known each other since boyhood, had learned to ride and to hunt together, and the man's father had been one of the Prince's father's good friends: the sort of friend who could speak an unpopular opinion to the King, and be heard.

The Prince went to visit his old friend and found him pale and senseless; his black eyes roved without resting, and he saw nothing that was before him, and started at shadows that were not there.

The Prince saw that his family lacked for nothing that a full pocketbook could buy, and returned to his father with a heavy heart.

"Tomorrow I ride with the Hunt," he told the King. "And I ride the day after, and the day after that, till I find what I seek: and that which I seek is the Golden Hind, and her I will pursue till I learn the mystery of her, and of the death and madness she causes; and I will stop these things if I can. Even if I cannot, try at least I will; my vow is taken." For after he had looked into the' eyes of his friend, that were his friend's eyes no longer, he did not doubt that the two men who had not returned from the Hunting of the Hind had on that Hunt met their deaths. And so the Hind must not be permitted to range the kingdom, for the proven risk of her.

The King moved to stop him, for he would lose any number of his people before he would risk his son; but the Prince left before the King could speak, and no man saw him again till morning, when he rode out with the Hunt.

It was three days that the Prince rode before he saw what he sought; three days that he spoke to no man and locked himself in his rooms as soon as he dismounted and his horse was led away: three days that he refused to see his father, even when the King himself came and knocked on his son's closed door.

No man saw him to speak to him: but a woman did; or perhaps more rightly, a girl.

The King had married in his youth a woman that he loved, and she loved him, and the country rang with their love; and at the end of several years of hopeful waiting she bore a son. The baby was strong and beautiful; but the Queen had been much weakened by the labor of bearing and birth, and when she bore a second child little more than a year later, it was too much for her unrecovered strength, and she died, and the baby died with her.

The King was shattered by his loss, and the only thing for many months after the Queen's death that could make him smile was his little son, the Prince, who grew more and more like his mother every day; and between the father and son there grew a great love.

But after four years the King yielded to the pleas of his ministers and married again; not because he believed that any child but the beloved son of his first wife would rule after him, but because he could see the usefulness of other sons, to ride at the heads of his armies, and go in state to visit other kingdoms, and be loyal friends (for he could not imagine otherwise) to their eldest brother.

The second Queen was chosen for political compatibility rather than any personal inclination on the part of herself or her new husband. She was as small and dark as the first Queen and the son she had borne were tall and fair; and if this second lady had her own quiet and poignant beauty, few noticed it, for all including the King compared her always with her who had gone before.

But the second Queen carried her part with dignity and without complaint-so far as any knew; and hers was a pale still face at the beginning, so none would notice if it grew paler or stiller.

In one thing was she a disappointment that could be mentioned aloud: she bore no children. At last, in her seventh year as Queen, she became pregnant, and a certain subdued pleasure was visible in the King, who then treated her with a less conscious and more spontaneous kindness than had been his way since she became his wife.

But the child was a girl; and this second Queen too died in childbed, her strength unequal to the effort.

The little Princess grew up, cared for with vague kindness by those around her; the same vague kindness, if she had known it, that had characterized the King's and his country's att.i.tude toward her mother. She, like her half-brother after his, took after her mother: small and quiet, neat in all her motions, and graceful with the unconscious air of a village girl who has never known the attentions of a court. And as she grew she bloomed with her mother's quiet beauty, and perhaps something more that was peculiarly her own; and by the time she reached her seventeenth year, which was the second year since the Golden Hind had first been sighted in this kingdom, her father's ministers, who had not dared mention marriage again to the King, began to think that the little-valued daughter of the second Queen would make a better political gamepiece than they had antic.i.p.ated. And, all unconscious of the Hunt and the Hind, they smiled, and began to make plans.

But the Princess knew nothing of these plans. She enjoyed her freedom: That this freedom was the result of the indifference of those who had taken care of her since her mother died she did not notice, or chose not to. She loved her father dutifully, and was always well fed and well dressed, and as she got older, well taught; but there was an unexpected depth to her nature, and she might yet have felt her freedom as sorrow if she had not found someone to love: and the someone was her glorious elder brother.

The Prince was past his eleventh birthday when she was born, but he accepted her at once, and, unlike the rest of the court including his own dearly loved father, the young Prince's acceptance of his little half-sister was sincere and whole-hearted. He called her pet names like "Sparrow" and "Fawn," which suited her and, though she did not realize it, made her mind the less that she was not tall and blond as he himself was. And he not only permitted but encouraged her to follow him around with the unquestioning devotion that most elder brothers find awkward and embarra.s.sing in their younger siblings.

When she grew older, he helped her with her lessons; older yet, and he made sure that her horses were as fine as his own, though lighter-boned to carry her slight weight.

She would have done anything for him; and he, while his love was less single-minded than her own for having more opportunities for loving, cared for her enough that he never took advantage of her; and when she was old enough to understand, he paid her perhaps the highest compliment of all, and made her his friend. The Court noted this, and were perhaps a little more deferential to the little half-sister than they might otherwise have been; and the Princess, by the time she was twelve, knew almost as much about the kingdom as the Prince did, and as much as he could tell her; and by the time she reached her seventeenth year, had a wisdom and discretion far beyond her years.

And so, when the Prince had locked himself away in his rooms and would see no one, the Princess's gentle tap on his door brought him up from his chair to let her in. He told her that he would ride with the Hunt until he saw the Golden Hind; and her he would follow until he learned her secret. He repeated it as if it were a lesson got by heart; and the Princess had already heard the story from several members of the horrified court. She had not doubted it, for she knew the strength of the friends.h.i.+p that had caused her brother to break his promise to the King. Now she wished only to bear him company for a little while; and when she heard the words from his own lips, she only shook her head and said nothing. As she knew her brother, she knew that no argument would sway him.

"Take care of our father till I return," said the Prince; it was the closest he would come to admitting that he might not return. "He loves you better than you know."

The Princess smiled, but shook her head again, for this was one thing she knew better than her elder brother. "I will try." And neither of them spoke of the further grief that made the King's heart desperate at the knowledge of the Prince's vow to follow the Golden Hind: the Prince, although he had pa.s.sed his eight-and-twentieth birthday, had not yet married. If he died now he would leave no heir. The Princess did not count in the King's thought, as she knew and the Prince did not; so when the Prince commended the King to her care, he thought that he truly left their father some comfort, and did not realize the impossible burden that he laid on his sister's small shoulders.

He rode away with the Hunt the next morning, and returned with them in the evening when they came bearing a brown stag and several hares. He rode away with them on the second dawning, and again on the third; but on that third day, as the sun began to fall down the afternoon sky, the Hunt saw the Golden Hind; and the Prince, with a cry of wild gladness, rode after it. His horse that day was the same tall stallion that had fretted so ill months before, when the Prince had watched another man ride in pursuit of the elusive Hind and had remained behind.

The Hunt came home slowly, but the slinking hounds told their own tale, even if the Prince's s.h.i.+ning presence among them had not at once been missed.

The Princess had no sleep that night; nor had the King. But while the King had to rise from his sleepless bed and attend to his state and to his ministers, the Princess remained where she had been since the evening before, after she had run out to meet the Hunt and found her brother no longer with them.

She had knelt on the window seat of her bedroom all that night, her head leaning against the corner where the window met the wall; there she could stare out over the wide dark forest where her brother rode after his fate. By the time dawn began to chase the shadows out of the castle courtyard, her eyes were sore and her eyelids stiff with watching.

And so the next evening, late, after the Hunt had returned that day, sober and slow and with little to show for their long hours of search and chase, and after all had gone to bed whether they slept or not, the Princess saw from her window the figure on horseback that stumbled out of the great wood and turned toward the city walls. And there were others keeping watch, so she was not the first to run out and greet the Prince, for it was he, as he sat his staggering horse; but she was among the first to welcome him home. Her voice sounded strange in her ears, high-pitched with fear, but at the sound of it the Prince, who seemed to ride in a daze, turned toward her and said, "Little sister, is it you? Are you there?" She seized his hand joyfully and said, "It is I. You are returned to us safe." But when he looked down at her, his eyes did not seem to see her; and his eyes should have been blue, but seemed covered with a grey glaze. "Little sister, I have seen her," he said, but he leaned too far over, and tumbled from his horse into her small young arms; and if several of the men had not been standing near and so caught her and him, they would have fallen to the ground.

The Prince was all but unconscious for the rest of the night; he rambled in his unknown dreams, and spoke s.n.a.t.c.hes of them aloud, but the Princess could not understand, nor could the King, who sat motionless at his son's bedside. With the dawn, some ease came to the Prince, and he did not toss so restlessly, and seemed to sleep. The sun was above the trees when he opened his eyes; and his eyes were blue again. But still he could not seem well to see those around him, and he repeated, "I have seen her at last," again and again. "She is more beautiful than you can imagine," he said, holding his sister's hand in his feverish one. "She could make a man blind with one glimpse of her beauty; and he would count it a favor." *The Prince was too weak to rise from his bed, and grew weaker as the days pa.s.sed.

He recognized his father and sister, and others who came to his bedside, and called them by name; but he could not or would not shake himself free of his dreams, of her whom he had seen, and his blue eyes remained cloudy, and focused only briefly and with evident effort on the faces around him. He slept little and ate less; and the doctors could do nothing for him.

Still the Hunt rode out, because they must; but all feared the sight of the Golden Hind as they might fear Death herself, and no one after the Prince ever sought her.

A month after the Prince rode home from his Hunting of the Hind he was declared to be dying.

The King rarely left his son's room, and his cheeks were almost as pale as the Prince's; the ministers might have run the country as they liked, for all the attention the King paid them; but perhaps almost against their wills they found they loved the bold young Prince too, and their political schemes held no savor.

It might have been that now the little Princess, hitherto neglected for her glamorous elder brother, would come into her own; but this did not happen. Everyone forgot about her completely, except as a small quiet presence forever at the Prince's bedside. Everyone, perhaps, but the Prince himself; for when he asked for anyone, it was most often her name on his lips, and she was always there to answer his call; and she it was who could most often persuade him to take a little food, although even her success was infrequent and insufficient. Again and again he would seize her hand and say to her as he had done on the first night: "I have seen her. At last I have seen her." And his cloudy eyes would be too wide and too brilliant with something she did not recognize and could not help but fear.

The day after the murmur of the Prince dying had pa.s.sed through the castle and out into the city, the Princess quitted her brother's bedside, where she spent her nights and dozed as she could, just at dawn.

She went down to the stable and saddled her favorite horse with her own hands; and when the Hunt gathered, she rode out to join them on her long-legged chestnut mare.

Part Two.

THE HUNT had been quiet enough the last weeks while the Prince lay on his bed and raved; but on the day that the Princess joined them no word at all was spoken, and everyone averted his eyes as if afraid to look upon her, and even the horn-calls to the dogs were subdued. The Princess left no message behind her; but the stablemen would notice the empty stall of the Princess's favorite, as the watchers at her brother's bedside would notice her empty chair.

Morning had barely broken, and the first sunlight had only begun to find its way through the leaves of the forest when the Hunt were brought to a standstill by the long-drawn-out wail of the lead dog. Into a tiny green clearing before them stepped the Golden Hind.

She was a color to make wealthy men weep, and misers drown themselves for very heartsickness.

New-minted gold could not express the least shadow of her loveliness; each single hair of her magnificent coat shone with lucent glory. Her delicate hoofs touched the earth without a sound; she turned her small graceful head toward the little group of hunters, seemingly unconscious of the miserable dog that had flattened itself almost at her feet. Her eyes were brown, and for a moment the Princess's eyes met those of this creature of wonder, and it was as though they were only inches from each other in that moment, looking into the depths of each other's souls; for the Princess knew at once that the Hind had a soul, and hope stirred within her. The brown eyes she looked into somewhere held a glint of green, and somewhere else, almost too subtle for even the Princess's lonely wisdom, a glint of sorrow.

Then the Hind turned away, and the Princess touched her unspurred heels to her fleet young mare's sides, and followed silently. The Princess had a brief vision, though she did not stay to see, of the Hunt turning to make their sad and weary way homeward before they had even begun.

The Princess had no idea how long the chase lasted. The Hind wove swiftly through the close trees, and followed paths so narrow that the young mare's light feet could hardly find width enough to hold them; but while branches lashed at her and bushes held out twisted th.o.r.n.y hands to grab at her, the Princess found that she suffered little hurt; for some reason the forest let her pa.s.s, although the men who had ridden as she rode now had been less fortunate. The mare's neck and shoulders grew streaked with sweat and then with foam, but she still followed the Hind flas.h.i.+ng through the green leaves before her, with all the heart and spirit that was in her; for the love she bore her young mistress.

The sunlight began to cast different sorts of shadows than it had in the morning; and the mare began to stumble, and her breathing was painful to hear. The Princess drew her up in pity, though her own spirit was mad for the following and she knew her horse would run till she fell dead if she were so asked. But the Hind paused too, and seemed to wait for them to catch her up; though her golden coat was unmarred, and her flanks moved easily with her light breathing.

All through that night they followed her; and there was moonlight enough to show those gilded flanks whenever they looked for their guide; the Princess had dismounted, and she and her horse faltered wearily on, and found each other's bleak and hungry company a comfort.

Just at dawn they staggered out from the edge of the forest-an edge they had not realized lay so near ahead, for the shadows of night had hidden it. But as the first blush of dawn aroused them, they stood blinking at the beginning of a land the Princess had never seen. There was gra.s.s before them, and scattered rocks, and a stream that ran babbling off into a distance they could not discern; and then looming up like a castle at the end of a field stood a mountain of bare grey rock. From where the Princess and her mare stood, they could see the green plain stretching out before them and to their right, up to the verge of the forest they had just crossed; but to the left, and standing against the last trees of the forest on that side, was this great hump of stone.

Before this mountain, only a few arm's-lengths away, stood the Hind. She waited till she caught the Princess's eye, and held her gaze for another moment while again they drank of each other's spirit; and then the Golden Hind, who blazed up with a glory that could be hardly mortal as the morning sunlight found her, turned and disappeared into the rock face as if through a door.

The Princess dropped the bridle, and took a few steps after her; and then darkness came over her and she fell to the ground..

:When she stirred again and turned her head to look around her, for a moment she had no idea where she was; the rough gra.s.s she lay on, the wild landscape around her were utterly unfamiliar; and then her mind began to clear and she sat up. The sun was near noon, and perhaps her faint had turned to sleep, for she felt a little rested, although still dizzy and uncertain; and she looked around first for her mare.

The mare had seen her sit up, and came toward her, holding her head delicately to one side so that she would not tread on the dragging reins, and her nostrils quivered in a little whicker of greeting. The Princess contrived to stand up by holding on to one of the long chestnut legs; and she stood for a moment with her head resting on the horse's shoulder. The sweat had dried, leaving the hair rough, but when the Princess raised her head and saw the mare with her own head turned to look back at her, she saw that the mare's eye was clear, and her bits were green and sticky with her grazing; and her breathing was untroubled.

"You're stronger than I am, my Lady," she said, "but then you. have been standing in the stable and getting fat comfortably this last month ..." and at that the Princess's mind cleared completely, and she remembered why she had come so far, and with what strange guide; and her head snapped around, and she stared at the grim grey pile before her, and she thought of the Hind, and her deep eyes and treacherous ways.

First she washed her face and hands in the running stream, and drank some of the sharp cold water, and when she stood up again she felt alert and well. Then she unsaddled and unbridled her horse and flung the harness indifferently on the ground; and paused to stroke the mare's forehead. "I'd be sorry to lose you, my Lady," she said, "but you know best; I can't say when ... I can come back for you." The mare nodded solemnly, and then stretched out a foreleg and lowered her head to rub her ears against it. The Princess turned to the steep stark mountain.

She remembered where the Hind had stood, and there she went, and examined the stone carefully; but she saw nothing that resembled a hidden door, and the hard grey surface appeared unbroken. She ran her hands over all till the fingertips were rough and sore; and still she found nothing. The mare had returned to her grazing, but occasionally she raised her head to watch the Princess curiously.

The sun set, and still the Princess knew not how next to seek her chosen adventure of the Hunting of the Hind; and as the shadows lengthened, rage rose in her, and despair; and she turned to see the half-moon floating up above the horizon. She looked at it for long enough that it rose several degrees of its arc; and then she closed her eyes and crossed her arms on her breast, turned, and walked straight into the rock face.

She had been standing less than an arm's-length away from the side of the mountain as she stared at the moon; but now she walked forward-half a dozen steps, a dozen-but she feared to open her eyes to find herself caught by some magic a bodily part of the rock itself. So she continued forward, step by step, her eyes closed fast and her hands at her breast; and then she realized that her footsteps had begun to fall with an echo, as if she walked in a great cavern; and she opened her eyes.

It was a great cavern indeed; torches that gave off a fair and smokeless light were thrust in gold and ivory rings all around the walls, but the ceiling was lost in darkness at some immeasurable height. The walls, which from the clear light of the torches she could see to the height of cathedral walls, were of smooth stone, but that stone bore all the colors of the rainbow in its most peaceful and yet most joyful tints: yellows, greens, blues, and rosy reds; all were represented and all were glorious, and even the ever sharp thought of her dying brother was soothed a little as she looked.

The floor on which she walked was mirror smooth, and held a gleam of its own; but here was the s.h.i.+ning of the sky before a storm, thunderheads of majestic white and heavy grey; and her booted feet struck out a noise like the ringing of a bell with every step.

Then she saw, still far away from her, a low wall, she thought perhaps in the center of this great place, for it was far away from the walls she could see. And on the wall, with its head bowed, sat a figure draped in white.

As the Princess approached, she realized that the s.h.i.+ning golden head of the figure was no crown nor work of man's hands, but the fabulous ma.s.ses of heavy golden hair.

When she grew near, the figure looked up: and her eyes met deep brown eyes with a glint of green in their depths, and a glint that the Princess saw more clearly now, of sorrow. And as the Princess saw the pale perfect face that held those eyes, she remembered her brother's words, "I have seen her"; and her legs folded under her, and she knelt at the feet of a woman whose beauty could send a man mad, or blind, but grateful in his blindness, or even comfortable in his madness.

"Please, you must not kneel; it is not fit," said the woman. "Indeed, I know I am very beautiful, for I cannot help knowing; nor can I help the beauty, which is not even rightfully mine." The Princess rose slowly, and looked bewildered at the woman who had made such a curious speech; and, at her gesture, sat on the wall near her. "Do not fear me," the woman went on gently, as she read the puzzlement in the face before her; "you have looked into my eyes, and seen that I am-I am like you, whatever my face may say; and I thank you-I thank you exceedingly for that favor." She paused.

"He who keeps me here ... lent my own, my human beauty, a touch of horror and dread, that I should fill the hearts of those who look on me with a wildness of delight that would destroy them."

"Why?" said the Princess; and her whisper seemed to run out to the sheer walls, and even through them, carrying her question she could not guess where.

"Because I refused him," said the woman, but her reply went only into the Princess's ears, and to nothing that might wait beyond the walls. "And so he decided that none should have me; and that the face that had caught him would grow hateful to its owner for what it did to others ..." and the woman covered her glorious, terrible face with her hands, and tears like diamonds slid through her fingers.

"What may I do for you?" said the Princess. "I am here to help you, for my brother's sake." But her voice trembled; for while no dread had touched her heart, because she had seen past this woman's beauty into the deeps of her spirit in the green flickers of her wide eyes, still there was a fearfulness to the magnificence of the cavern, and she felt the weight of the woman's cursed beauty as a soldier might feel a weight on his sword arm.

"Tell me what to do, and I will try, as best I may." And the Princess realized as she spoke that while it was love for her brother that had brought her to dare as she did, still she was moved with sympathy for this strange woman, and would wish to help her if she could.

"For your brother's sake," said the woman, and a half-smile touched her sadness. "I have a brother too. Come." She stood up, and the Princess stood too; but reeled in her place, and the woman reached out an exquisite white hand and caught her. "Come. You shall meet my brother, and you shall have something to eat, for I see you are faint with hunger, and I know too well the cause of it. Then perhaps we can tell you how you may save us all-" and the Princess heard the desperate anxiety in that sweet voice, and realized how sharply the woman had to catch herself up when she spoke of that hope.

They walked, the Princess leaning on the woman's arm, toward one of the gorgeous colored walls; and as they approached, there was a plain simple doorway in the rock that the Princess could see and touch and understand, and she sighed as they pa.s.sed through it.

They found themselves in a small room, and a golden smokeless fire like the fire of the torches glowed in a hollow at one end of it, and a man sat at a table at the center of it; and on that table were bread and cheese and fruit, and pitchers and cups and plates. The man stood up to welcome them, and the Princess saw that he was lame; he came no more than two steps toward them, and that only by leaning heavily on the table.

"Welcome, Princess," he said, and his eyes were brown and green like his sister's, and held the same imprisoned sorrow. He stretched out his hands and took the Princess's between them for a moment, and for that little moment she thought a little less about her brother, as she had when she first looked at the rainbow walls of the cavern. "First you must eat," said this man.

And so the Princess sat down, and ate white bread and yellow cheese, and fruits of green and red and deep blue-purple, and the woman of the terrible beauty ate with her, as did that woman's brother, although the Princess noticed that they ate very little.

When they had finished, and the Princess stared into her cup without drinking, the man said gently: "My name is Darin, and my sister is Sellena. This place is a place of much magic, and little of that good, but you may trust us with your name without fear. Will you give it us?" The Princess looked up and answered at once: "My name is Korah." There was silence a moment, and Sellena reached across the table to touch the Princess's hand.

"Thank you. We have not heard another name beyond our own in this place for many a long year."

"You are welcome to it," said the Princess, and smiled; and she thought, as something that was almost an answering smile hovered like a shadow over Sellena's mouth, that it was the first time in many a long year that a smile had been seen in this place either.

"Now that I have eaten," said the Princess, "and we hold each other's names, will you not tell me something of your durance here?" and her hands tightened involuntarily around the cup she held.

"I am sent out as the Hind again and again whether I will or nay," Sellena burst out; and in her voice was anger and helplessness and pleading mixed, "for he who holds us here loves to prove his power again and again with each new victim I bring him. And yet there is no other hope of our ever winning free but to go out as he wills, in the guise of a brute beast, and lure those who will come. And every failure weighs on my heart, for it is I who lead each to his destruction, however little I wish it to fall out so."

"I tried once to free her," said Darin in a low voice. "Even I: indeed, I was the first. I do not know if perhaps the wizard had not yet fully formed his plans, for I escaped with my mind, and only he lamed my leg; so I may think, but may not walk. And I am permitted to keep my sister company in her exile, and no further harm has he tried to do me. But perhaps it amuses him best so, to see the two or us clinging to each other in our powerlessness to resist him; and I do not know if it is a blessing to be spared, spared to watch all the brave hunters going to their doom."

"It is a blessing to me, brother," said Sellena softly; and Darin bowed his head.

Then the Princess said to them both as she had said to Sellena alone: "What may I do for you? For I will take my turn, and seek to free you, if I may."

Darin answered soberly, "You must go to him who keeps us here and ask him to let us go." The Princess looked at him, and his eyes were grave. "It sounds an easy task, does it not? And yet there have been hundreds who followed the Golden Hind to this mountain. Some few of those, and of them we have no counting, have lost all but their lives in just the sight of the Golden Hind, and they go home tired and dreaming, and so spend the years remaining to them without strength or will. Some of those who track the Hind to the walls of this mountain do find their way inside. Some few of these cannot bear the sight of Sellena as you see her, for the dread wizard did lay upon her beauty; and even those who bear it are dazzled by it, so they cannot hold their spirits still within them when they go to face the enchanter. Of those six-and-thirty who have pa.s.sed through the wizard's chamber, eleven have died, and so completely did the wizard destroy them that not even their bodies remained to be given burial; and the other five-and-twenty returned to their lives and homes mad."

"All but the last," Sellena said, in a voice so low that it was scarcely audible; and the Princess stiffened in her chair.

"All but the last," repeated Darin; "but I fear that the wound he received will still prove mortal." Sellena covered her beautiful face with her hands and moaned.

"That last was my brother," said the Princess; "he lies on his bed dying even now, if he is not yet dead. He is why I am here."

Again Sellena reached across the table to touch the Princess's hand; but this time Sellena spoke no word, and though the hand trembled, it did not move away.

"He whom you must ask for our freedom," said Darin, "will turn whatever is in you against you. The greater your strength, the graver the wound you will receive from the weapon he will forge of it. You must go to him empty, drained of all that is your spirit and your heart and your mind; you must be an empty sh.e.l.l carrying only the question: *Will you set the two you hold in bondage free?" The Princess stared at Darin. "Tell me one thing first, and then I will go as you bid me. What happened to my brother?"

It was Sellena who answered: "He looked into my eyes, even as you did-and as none other ever has; by this I should have recognized your kins.h.i.+p. But as you saw only that my spirit was like unto yours and could see in me a sister, he-he loved me. I, who have never been loved so, for my perilous beauty has blinded all those that look at it: all but Darin my brother, and you, Korah my sister-and that one other. Your brother, who lies dying for it." And another diamond tear crept down her glowing cheek.

"He escaped sick and strengthless only," said Darin, "because for all the strength of the love he suddenly found for my sister, it was of a clarity even the wizard could not bend entirely against him; and so he lost neither his life nor his sanity by it." Then Darin turned frowning to the Princess and said: "This must have been a great blow to the vanity of this enchanter, who has shattered all who have approached him during our long keeping; and I fear for the sister of him who dealt that blow, for the added malice the wizard will hold toward anyone of the same blood."

The Princess shook her head, just a tremor, right to left, for she feared to shake tears over the brink of her eyelids. "Still I will go, and fear no more than I must. The sickness laid upon my brother is a wasting fever that no doctor can halt; and he will yet ... die, of that wizard's work." She turned her eyes, still bright with tears, to meet Darin's quiet eyes, seeking comfort, and comfort she found. She let herself sink into their green depths and felt that she could rest there forever; and even as she felt Darin's spirit reaching to touch hers, she remembered Sellena's words: He-he loved me; and she shook herself free with a gasp.

Darin at once covered his eyes with a hand, and bowed his head. "Forgive me," he said, and his voice was deep with an emotion the Princess chose not to hear; "I-I had no thought of this."

"Where is the wizard's cell?" said the Princess; and her breast rose and fell with her quick breathing.

"Will you show me where I must enter? I do not wish to tarry."

She looked at Sellena, and did not permit even the flick of a glance to where Darin sat with his dark eyes still behind his hand.

"Yes. Come." The two women stood up; Darin remained motionless as Sellena opened another door in the small chamber in which they had sat, not the one they had entered by. Across this threshold it was very dark. Sellena took the Princess's hand to lead her. "I know the way and will not stumble. It is better without light, for the walls here are similar to those in the cavern where you met me, but the colors will lead you to confusion if you look at them long." And down the dark road they went, hand in hand; their breathing and their soft footsteps were the only sounds.

"Here," said Sellena at last. "I can take you no farther." The blackness was perfect; the Princess could see not the vaguest outline of the woman who stood beside her, but she could tell by the sound of her voice that Sellena had turned to face her. "There is no danger here, in this simple dark; but your next step will begin your final journey which will take you to the wizard's den, arid once you have taken that step you will be able neither to stop nor to turn back.

"Stand here awhile, till everything you are, everything you think and remember and feel, drains out of you. What my brother told you of the wizard's ways is true. Even when you think you have left yourself like a discarded cloak, wait-search again, into every corner of your being; you must not leave even a shred of your personality for the wizard to seize upon. He will search you like the dagger in the hand of the a.s.sa.s.sin. What you leave here, I will hold for you in the palms of my hands, and I will wait here for your return and give these things up to you again just as they were when you left them in my keeping.

Your heart and your hopes are safe here with me, but you must not take them with you, for he whom you will face will make spears of them and drive them back upon you." The Princess stood awhile, with the blackness standing all around her; and she remembered all of the months that had gone to make up her tally of seventeen years; and each week of those months she remembered. She remembered how she had learned to leave her heart behind her when she was summoned by her father, because his lack of love for her hurt her; and how she had only taken up her heart again gladly, and joined it to her hopes and fears, when she went to meet her brother. And she thought of her brother and how he had never understood the hurtfulness of love, so that when he discovered a great love in the eyes of Sellena he had not been able to lay it aside when he went to face the wizard; and now he lay dying of his weakness, of his simple honesty.

She thought of all these things, and then she felt Sellena's hands on her face; and silently she yielded up all of her that was hers to Sellena's care, saving only the question she must ask the wizard. And she felt her body as dark and empty as the tunnel she stood in, with herself and Sellena the questions who waited their asking, and she took the first step of the last stage of her journey to the wizard.

She was dimly aware of a roaring in her ears, and heat against her skin that came and went, and a flickering like lightning in her eyes; but she had left herself no thoughts to think, and she did not think of these things. She could not even count the steps she took, but she came at last to a lighted place, a cavern, low and white, and at the center of the cavern was a chair of white rock that seemed to grow up out of the floor without break or joint. The white light, for which there was no source visible, burnt fiercely upon the face of the figure that sat in the chair; and the face and the figure bore the semblance of a man. He wore long black robes that covered all but his long white fingers and pale face; a hood was pulled over his head and low upon his brow, but his eyes glared at her, bright with rage and brighter with power. But she had no names for these things now, and so she did not try to name them; nor had she left herself fear, and so the frenzy in the face before her inspired in her no fear.