"Then find a more lavish lover. What of King Casmir?"
"We have few interests in common."
"Then Tamurello would seem to be your best hope."
Carfilhiot glanced sidewise and searched the delicate lines of her profile. "Has Tamurello never offered his attentions to you?"
"Certainly. But my price was too high."
"What was your price?"
"His life."
"That is inordinate. What price would you demand of me?"
Melancthe's eyebrows raised; her mouth went wryly crooked. "You would pay a notable price."
"My life?"
"The topic lacks all relevance, and disturbs me." She turned away.
"I am going inside."
"What of me?"
"Do as you please. Sleep in the sun, if you are so of a mind. Or start back to Tintzin Fyral."
Carfilhiot said reproachfully: "For one who is closer than a sister, you are most acrid."
"To the contrary; I am absolutely detached."
"Well then, if I may do as I please, I will accept your hospitality."
Melancthe, mouth pursed thoughtfully, walked into the palace, with Carfilhiot at her back. She paused in the foyer: a round chamber decorated in blue, pink and gold, and with a pale blue rug on the marble floor. She called the chamberlain. "Show Sir Faude to a chamber and attend to his needs."
Carfilhiot bathed and rested for a period. Dusk settled across the ocean and daylight faded.
Carfilhiot dressed in garments of unrelieved black. In the foyer the chamberlain presented himself. "Lady Melancthe has not yet appeared. If you like, you may await her in the small saloon."
Carfilhiot seated himself and was served a goblet of crimson wine, tasting of honey, pine needles and pomegranate.
Half an hour passed. The silver-skinned serving girl brought a tray of sweetmeats, which Carfilhiot tasted without enthusiasm.
Ten minutes later he looked up from his wine to find Melancthe standing in front of him. She wore a sleeveless black gown, cut with total simplicity. A black opal cabochon hung on a narrow black ribbon around her neck; against the black, her pale skin and large eyes gave her a look of vulnerability to the impulses of both pleasure and pain: a semblance to excite any wishing to bring her either or both.
After a pause she sat beside Carfilhiot, and took a goblet of wine from the tray. Carfilhiot waited but she sat in silence. At last he asked: "Have you enjoyed a restful afternoon?"
"Certainly not restful. I worked on certain exercises."
"Indeed? To what end?"
"It is not easy to become a sorcerer."
"That is your will?"
"Certainly."
"It is not overly difficult, then?"
"I am only at the fringes of the subject. The real difficulties lie yet ahead."
"Already you are stronger than I." Carfilhiot spoke in a jesting voice. Melancthe smiled not at all.
After a heavy silence she rose to her feet. "It is time for dinner."
She took him into a large chamber, paneled in the blackest of ebony and floored with slabs of polished black gabbro. Over the ebony a set of glass prisms illuminated the service.
Dinner was served on two sets of trays: a simple meal of mussels simmered in white wine, bread, olives and nuts. Melancthe ate little, and apart from an occasional glance at Carfilhiot, gave him no attention, and made no effort at conversation. Carfilhiot, nettled, likewise held his tongue, so that the meal went in silence. Carfilhiot drank several goblets of wine, and finally set the goblet down with a petulant thump.
"You are beautiful beyond the dreams of dreaming! Yet your thoughts are those of a fish!"
"It is no great matter."
"Why should we know constraint? Are we not ultimately one?"
"No. Desmei yielded three: I, you and Denking."
"You have said it yourself!"
Melancthe shook her head. "Everyone shares the substance of earth.
But the lion differs from the mouse and both from man."
Carfilhiot rejected the analogy with a gesture. "We are one, yet different! A fascinating condition! Yet, you are aloof!"
"True," said Melancthe. "I agree."
"For a moment consider the possibilities! The vertexes of passion!
The sheer exuberances! Can you not feel the excitement?"
"Feel? Enough that I think." For an instant her composure appeared to falter. She rose, crossed the chamber and stood looking into the sea-coal fire.
In a leisurely fashion Carfilhiot came to stand beside her. "It is easy to feel." He took her hand and laid it on his chest. "Feel! I am strong. Feel how my heart moves and gives me life."
Melancthe pulled her hand away. "I do not care to feel at your behest. Passion is a hysteria. In truth I have no yearning for men." She moved a step away from him. "Leave me now, if you please. In the morning, you will not see me, nor will I advance your enterprises."
Carfilhiot put his hands under her elbows and stood facing her, with firelight shifting along their faces. Melancthe opened her mouth to speak, but uttered no words, and Carfilhiot, bending his face to hers, kissed her mouth. He drew her down upon a couch.
"Evening stars still climb the sky. Night has just begun."
She seemed not to hear him, but sat looking into the fire.
Carfilhiot loosed the clasps at her shoulder; she let the gown slide from her body with no restraint and the odor of violets hung in the air. She watched in passive silence as Carfilhiot stepped from his own garments.
At midnight Melancthe rose from the couch, to stand nude before the fire, now a bed of embers.
Carfilhiot watched her from the couch, eyelids half-lowered, mouth compressed. Melancthe's conduct had been perplexing. Her body had joined his with suitable urgency, but never during the coupling had she looked into his face; her head had been thrown back, or laid to the side, with eyes focused on nothing whatever. She had been physically exalted, this he could sense, but when he spoke to her, she made no response, as if he were no more than a phantasm.
Melancthe looked at him over her shoulder. "Dress yourself."
Sullenly Carfilhiot donned his garments, while she stood in contemplation of the dying fire. He considered a set of remarks, one after the other, but each seemed very heavy, or peevish, or callow, or foolish and he held his tongue.
When he had dressed he came to her and put his arms around her waist.She slipped from his grasp and spoke in a pensive voice,
"don't touch me. No man has ever touched me, nor shall you."
Carfilhiot laughed. "Am I not a man? I have touched you, thoroughly and deep, to the core of your soul."
Still watching the fire Melancthe shook her head. "You occur only as an odd thing of the imagination. I have used you, now you must dissolve from my mind."
Carfilhiot peered at her in bafflement. Was she mad? "I am quite real, and I don't care to dissolve. Melancthe, listen!" Again he put his hands to her waist. "Let us truly be lovers! Are we not both remarkable?"
Again Melancthe moved away. "Again you have tried to touch me."
She pointed to a door. "Go! Dissolve from my mind!"
Carfilhiot performed a sardonic bow and went to the door. Here he hesitated, looked back. Melancthe stood by the hearth, one hand to the high mantle, firelight and black shadow shifting along her body: Carfilhiot whispered to himself, inaudibly. "Say what you will of phantoms. I took you and I had you: so much is real."
And in his ear, or in his brain, as he opened the door, came soundless words: "I played with a phantom. You thought to control reality. Phantoms feel no pain. Reflect on this, when every day pain comes past."
Carfilhiot, startled, stepped through the door, and at once it closed behind him. He stood in a dark passage between two buildings, with a glimmer of light at either end. The night sky showed overhead. The air carried an odd reek, of moldering wood and wet stone; where was the clean salt air which blew past Melancthe's palace?
Carfilhiot groped through a clutter of rubbish to the end of the passage and emerged into a town square. He looked around in slackjawed perplexity. This was not Ys, and Carfilhiot spoke a dour curse against Melancthe.