Shimrod instucted the sandestin: "Lead me back through the whorl, back to the glade by Twitten's Corner."
"The sphincter has been sealed by your enemies. We must go by way of the five clefts and a perturbation. Wear gas and prepare to use the spell."
Shimrod surrounded himself in gas from one of the bladders; it clung to him like syrup. The sandestin led him a far way, and eventually allowed him to rest. "Be at your ease; we must wait."
Time passed, of a duration Shimrod could not reckon. The sandestin spoke: "Prepare your spell."
Shimrod took the syllables into his mind, and the runes faded from the tile, leaving a blank shard.
"Now. Speak your spell."
Shimrod stood in the glade where he had come with Melancthe. She was nowhere to be seen. The time was late afternoon on a gray chilly day of late autumn, or winter. Clouds hung low over the glade; trees surrounding held up stark branches, marking the sky with black. The face of the bluff no longer showed an iron door.
The Laughing Sun and The Crying Moon on this winter evening was warm and comfortable and almost empty of guests. Hockshank the landlord welcomed Shimrod with a polite smile. "I am happy to see you, sir. I feared that you had suffered a mishap."
"Your fears were by and large accurate."
"It is no novelty. Each year folk strangely disappear from the fair."
Shimrod's garments were torn and the fabric had suffered rot; when he looked in the mirror he saw haggard cheeks, staring eyes and skin stained the curious brown of weathered wood.
After his supper he sat brooding by the fire. Melancthe, he reasoned, had sent him into Irerly for one of several possible purposes: to acquire the thirteen spangled gems, to ensure his death, or both. His death would seem her prime purpose. Otherwise she might have allowed him to bring out the gems. At the cost of her virtue? Shimrod smiled. She would break her promise as easily as she had broken faith.
In the morning Shimrod paid his score, adjusted the feathers to his new boots and departed Twitten's Corner.
In due course he arrived at Trilda. The meadow showed dreary and bleak under the lowering clouds. An additional quality of desolation surrounded the manse. Shimrod approached, step by step, then halted to appraise the manse. The door hung ajar.
He went forward slowly and entered through the broken door, into the parlor, and here he found the corpse of Grofinet, who had been suspended from the ceiling-beams by his lank legs and burned over a fire, presumably that he might be forced to reveal the location of Shimrod's treasures. By the look of affairs, Gro-finet's tail had first been roasted away, inch by inch, on a brazier. At the last his head had been lowered into the flames. No doubt, in a hysteria, he had screamed out his knowledge, suffering agonies as much for his own weakness as for the fire he dreaded so much. And then, to silence his raving, someone had split his charred face with a cleaver.
Shimrod looked under the hearth, but the gnarled object which represented his store of magical adjuncts was gone. He had expected nothing else. He knew rudimentary skills, a few charlatan's tricks, a clever spell or two. Never a great magician, Shimrod was now barely a magician of any sort.
Melancthe! She had given him no more faith than he had given her. Still, he would have brought her no great harm, while she had sealed the portal against him, so that he should die in Irerly.
"Melancthe, dire Melancthe! For your crimes you will suffer! I escaped and so I won, but in that absence caused by you I lost my possessions and Grofinet lost his life; you will suffer accordingly!" So raved Shimrod as he stalked about the manse.
The robbers who had seized upon his absence to pillage Trilda, they also must be captured and punished: who might they be?
The House Eye! Established for just such contingencies! But no, first he would bury Grofinet; and this he did, in a bower behind the manse, along with his friend's small possessions. He finished in the fading light of late afternoon. Returning inside the manse he set every lamp aglow, and built a fire in the fireplace. Still Trilda seemed bleak.
Shimrod brought the House Eye down from the ridge-beam, and set it on the carved table in the parlor, where, upon stimulus, it recreated what it had observed during Shimrod's absence.
The first few days passed without incident. Grofinet zealously discharged his duties and all was well. Then, during the middle of a languid summer afternoon the nunciator cried out: "I spy two strangers, of ilk unknown. They approach from the south!"
Grofinet hurriedly donned his dress helmet and took up what he considered a posture of authority in the doorway. He called out: "Strangers, be so good as to halt! This is Trilda, manse of the Master Magician Shimrod, and at the moment under my protection. Since I recognize no business with you, in courtesy go your way."
A voice replied: "We request of you refreshment: a loaf, a bite of cheese, a cup of wine, and we will travel onward."
"Come no further! I will bring you food and drink where you stand, then you must go your way at once. Such are my orders!"
"Sir knight, we shall do as you deem proper."
Grofinet, flattered, turned away, but was instantly seized and trussed tight with leather straps, and so began the dreadful business of the afternoon.
The intruders were two: a tall handsome man with the clothes and manners of a gentleman, and his subordinate. The gentleman was of fine and graceful physique; glossy black hair framed a set of well-shaped features. He wore dark green hunting leathers, with a black cape and carried the long sword of a knight.
The second robber showed two inches less of stature and six inches more of girth. His features were compressed, ‘twisted, crumpled together, as if smeared. A nutmeg-brown mustache drooped over his mouth. His arms were heavy; his legs were thin and seemed to pain him as he walked, so that he used a careful mincing gait. It was he who worked mischief upon Grofinet, while the other leaned against a table drinking wine and offering suggestions.
At last the deed was done. Grofinet hung smoking; the involuted box of valuables had been taken from its hiding place.
"So far so good," declared the black-haired knight, "though Shimrod has snarled his treasures into a riddle. Still, we have each done well."
"It is a happy occasion. I have toiled long and hard. Now I may rest and enjoy my wealth."
The knight laughed indulgently. "I rejoice for you. After a lifetime of lopping heads, winding the rack and twisting noses, you have become a person of substance, perhaps even of social pretension. Will you become a gentleman?"
"Not I. My face tells all. ‘Here,' it says, ‘stands a thief and a hangman.' So be it: good trades both, and alas for my sore knees that bar me from either."
"A pity! Such skills as yours are rare."
"In all truth, I've lost my taste for gut-cutting by firelight, and as for thieving, my poor sore knees are no longer fit for the trade. They bend both ways and snap aloud. Still, I won't deny myself a bit of purse-slitting and picking of pockets for amusement's sake."
"So where will you go for your new career?" "I'll be away to Dahaut and there I'll follow the fairs, and perhaps I'll become a Christian. If you need me, leave word in Avallon at the place I mentioned."
Shimrod flew on feathered feet to Swer Smod. A proclamation hung on the door:
The land is uneasy and the future is uncertain. Murgen must give over his ease that he may solve the problems of Doom. To those who have come as visitors he regrets his absence. Friends and persons in need may take shelter, but my protection is not guaranteed. To those who intend harm I need say nothing. They already know.
Shimrod indited a message, which he left on the table of the main halclass="underline"
There is little to say other than that I have come and gone. On my travels affairs went according to plan, but there were losses at Trilda. I will return, so I hope, within the year, or as soon as justice has been done. I leave in your care the gems of thirteen colors.