Her gold-flecked lilac eyes suddenly opened. "Stop staring at me so!" Leda chided. "You make me feel naked!"
"You are," Gord laughed, running his hand along her breast and belly to emphasize the point.
"No. You know what I mean!" she said crossly, but with a hint of both happiness at the attention he was paying her and satisfaction that he was thus captivated. Leda removed his hand gently, sat up, and then stood. "Come on, lazybones! The pool beckons," she cried. With a happy shout she launched herself into the air, entering the water in a shallow dive that hardly sent a ripple across the smooth surface of the pool.
As soon as her head broke from the water, Gord leaped up so as to come into the pool from high above. Leda didn't see him, so when Gord's body, curled into a ball and plummeting, came down with a terrific splash, the wave washed all over her. Down he sank into the depths, so that the light above was dim, and the waving water plants at the bottom of the deep basin caressed his body. Gord stayed there a dozen feet beneath the surface. He saw small snails at work, silvery little fish hiding from the intruder suddenly precipitated into their domain, crawfish scuttling into better cover, bivalves closed shut by the shock of his coming. A minute, then two passed thus. Gord saw Leda's form far above. She was peering down, trying to see where he was, what was happening. At Just the point he thought Leda could contain herself no longer, he gathered his legs under him, pressing his feet against the pebbly bottom of the pond. Leda dived down to find him, and Gord shot upward to meet her. His force carried them both high above the surface, Leda held fast in his arms.
"You silly lout!" she managed to sputter as they crashed back down into the water and emerged bobbing. "I thought you'd struck your head or something. Don't ever play such a prank again," she admonished, then kissed him.
When twilight was drawing its purples across the vale, and the brilliant bands of the sunset were likewise fading into deep mauves, Gord and Leda walked hand in hand across the darkening meadow to where a warm golden glow showed beyond. "About time you two returned," Gellor admonished as a parent might scold children. "Put on something more than that, too. The night is chilly, and silk scraps are no substitute for decent garments of thick linen." They were in a cottage, a place whose walls were of woven leaves and whose roof was similarly thatched. It was lighted by little oil lamps, warmed by a fire of crackling logs when the night actually grew cool and required such. There were chairs and table of bamboolike stuff too, and plaited beds when sleep called.
"And what did you do today, my friend?" Gord asked cheerily, ignoring the frown on the troubador's face.
"Went fishing, as usual. Cleaned and cooked the catch for a pair of indolent lovebirds too, just as I did yesterday!"
"I think he grows bored with this," Gord laughed.
"Oh, Gellor, no! It's so beautiful here that I want to stay just so forever," Leda said sincerely.
That made him harrumph. "Well, be that as it may, I have no little companion with whom to while away the time as you do with such zest. Naturally I chafe and grow weary of this indolence."
"Can't you manage to do something, Gord?" Leda was serious, almost pleading. "You said that this place was one which exists only because we needed it. Gellor needs a woman now. Do find one for him!"
"Am I a procurer, then?" the young champion asked with mock indignation. "Next I will be called upon to furnish a troupe of minstrels and actors to provide a merry evening's entertainment, then perhaps a whole palace and harem!"
"Could you actually?"
Gellor didn't give Gord a chance to answer Leda. "Never mind that — any of it. I declined Gord's offer of a companion when first we entered this little paradise. Someone had to remain alert and cognizant of our mission."
"Time is of no meaning here," Leda rejoined. "The days we have tarried in this place are but seconds by Oerth's reckoning."
"Well . . ." Gord put in with some hesitance. "At first that was so, my sweet one. Now, however, as we become more and more attuned to the sphere, time does become more real. . .
"Say the whole of it," Gellor demanded.
"Our presence here," Gord admitted, "lends this place ever-growing reality. With that comes the true tick of time."
"And .. . ?" Gellor prompted.
"Each day now closes upon the same span elsewhere, Leda. Soon it will be day for day."
Gellor wasn't completely satisfied. "He means that the two weeks of subjective time we have thus far experienced now total three actual days elsewhere — on Oerth, for instance, or in the nether realms."
"Do something about it, Gord," Leda urged, a worried expression plain. "You made this place — change its clock so as not to go so fast!"
"Wait! I am neither deity nor adept theurge, love of mine! This island sanctuary was made for us — you, Gellor, me — by . . . allies. What our comrade says is all too true. Soon now we must gird ourselves again and face the final enemy."
"I'm not ready!" Leda said, stamping her small foot.
"You never did say — " Gellor started at the same time, then ceased speaking to allow Leda to finish. She blushed and turned away, not wanting to display more of her emotion, for it was both selfish and totally out of the question. She knew their responsibilities as well as the others did.
Gord simply looked at them. The bard resumed his query, allowing Leda to compose herself. "Who did spin this paradise, anyway?"
"A presence always at our elbow," Gord answered enigmatically with a measured voice. "I mean no slight, but I am pledged not to say more. Perhaps it is the shade of Basiliv the Demiurge who wrought this haven for us as his final act. ..."
"Riddles now?"
"Enough!" Gord made it clear the questioning was at an end. "Come, let's dine. Today was an active one, and I am famished!"
"Now that you say that," the pretty elven girl said with a sweet smile in Gellor's direction, "so am I. Will you serve? Or should I?"
Gellor scowled and stumped over to a chair where he sat heavily with crossed arms and stared at his two friends.
"He prepared this fine supper, so I believe we two should serve him," Gord said to Leda, trying to keep a straight face.
Leda giggled as she started to assemble the meal, and then Gord's laughter burst forth in peals. "Stop that now, dear Gord," Leda managed to command between suppressed chuckles and melodic little trills of laughter. "We mustn't be insensitive to Gellor's plight. Help me now, and after supper the three of us will discuss our leave-taking."
That night Leda, her curiosity unsatisfied, tried again to cajole Gord into telling her Just who or what had provided the sanctuary that gave them their current respite. When the three had used a magic portal to leave the desolation of the Abyss, she had supposed they would be on their way to some similarly hellish place to confront the slumbering evil of Tharizdun. Instead, they flashed from plane to plane, going through the sphere of the aether, then into astrality, up into the radiance of creative energy — and then, suddenly, onto the firm and beautiful reality of this place. "Where are we?" she had asked in wonder on seeing it. "Why came we by so circuitous a route?" the troubador had queried simultaneously.
"This haven is ours for a while, Leda my own," he had replied. "We came thus, old comrade, in order to make sure that Lord Entropy was not dogging our steps."
"How did you know about such a place?"
"I asked for it." Gord had so answered her question.
"Is it proof against intrusion? Will the entity be able to find us?"
Gord had been very certain then. "None will be able to disturb us, for the time we will spend here — not even the dreaded weight of Entropy is sufficient to break through into this realm."