Melancthe, turning, approached Shimrod and put her hands on his shoulders. The odor of violets came sweetly across the air.
"Shimrod, do you love me?"
"I am fascinated and obsessed." Shimrod put his arms around her waist and drew her close. "Today it is too late for Irerly. Come, we will return to the inn. Tonight you will share my chamber, and much else besides."
Melancthe, with her face three inches from his, said softly,
"Would you truly wish to learn how much I could love you?"
"That is exactly what I have in mind. Come! Irerly can wait."
"Shimrod, do this for me. Go into Irerly and bring me thirteen spangling jewels, each of a different color, and I will guard the passage."
"And then?"
"You will see."
Shimrod tried to take her to the turf. "Now."
"No, Shimrod! After!"
The two stared eye to eye, Shimrod thought, I dare press her no further; already I have forced her to a statement.
He closed his fingertips against an amulet and spoke between his teeth the syllables of a spell which had lain heavy in his mind, and time separated into seven strands. One strand of the seven lengthened and looped away at right angles, to create a temporal hiatus; along this strand moved Shimrod, while Melancthe, the clearing in the forest and all beyond remained static.
Chapter 14
MURGEN RESIDED AT SWER SMOD, a stone manse of fifty vast echoing chambers, high in the Teach tac Teach.
At the best speed of the feathered boots Shimrod flew, bounded and leapt along the East-West Road from Twitten's Corner to Oswy Undervale, then by a side trail to Swer Smod. Murgen's dreadful sentries allowed him to pass unchallenged.
The front door opened at Shimrod's approach. He entered to find Murgen awaiting him at a large table laid with a linen cloth and silver utensils.
"Be seated," said Murgen. "You will be both hungry and thirsty."
"I am both."
Servants brought tureens and platters; Shimrod satisfied his hunger while Murgen tasted trifles of this and that, and listened silently while Shimrod told of his dreams, of Melancthe and the opening into Irerly.
"I feel that she came to me under compulsion, otherwise her conduct can't be explained. At one moment she shows an almost childlike cordiality, the next she becomes totally cynical in her calculations. Purportedly she wants thirteen gems from Irerly, but I suspect that her motives are otherwise. She is so sure of my infatuation that she barely troubles to dissemble."
Murgen said: "The affair exudes the odor of Tamurello. If he defeats you he weakens me. Then, since he uses Melancthe, his agency cannot be proved. He toyed with the witch Desmei, then tired of her. For revenge she contrived two creatures of ideal beauty: Melancthe and Faude Carfilhiot. She intended that Melancthe, aloof and unattainable, should madden Tamurello. Alas for Desmei Tamurello preferred Faude Carfilhiot who is far from aloof; together they range the near and far shores of unnatural junction."
"How could Tamurello control Melancthe?"
"I have no inkling of how it might be, if indeed he is involved."
"So then—what should I do?"
"Yours is the passion; you must fulfill it as you choose."
"Well then, what of Irerly?"
"If you go there as you are now, you will never return; that is my guess."
Shimrod spoke sadly: "I find it hard to join such faithlessness with such beauty. She gambles a dangerous game, with her living self for her stake."
"No less do you, with your dead self as yours."
Shimrod, daunnted by the thought, sat back in his chair. "Worst of all she intends to win. And yet..."
Murgen waited. "'And yet?'"
"Only that."
"I see." Murgen poured wine into the two glasses. "She must not win, if for no other reason than to thwart Tamurello. Now and perhaps forever hence I am preoccupied with Doom. I saw the portent in the form of a tall sea-green wave. 1 must address myself to the problem and you may have my power perhaps before you are ready for it. Prepare yourself, Shimrod. But first: purge yourself of the infatuation, and there is but a single means to this end."
Shimrod returned to Twitten's Corner on his feathered feet. He proceeded to the glade where he had left Melancthe; she stood as he had left her. He searched the glade; no one skulked in the shade. He looked into the portaclass="underline" green striations swam and swirled to blur the passage into Irerly. From his pouch he took a ball of yarn. After knotting the loose end into a crack in the iron of the door, he tossed the ball into the opening. Now he rewove the seven strands of time, and re-entered the ordinary environment. Melancthe's words still hung in the air: "And then you will see."
"You must promise."
Melancthe sighed. "When you come back, you shall have all my love."
Shimrod reflected. "And we shall be lovers, in spirit and body; so you promise?"
Melancthe winced and closed her eyes. "Yes. I will praise you and caress you and you may commit your erotic fornications upon my body. Is that definite enough?"
"I will accept it in lieu of anything better. Tell me something of Irerly and what I must look for."
"You will find yourself in an interesting land of living mountains. They bellow and yell, but for the most part it is all braggadocio. I am told that they are ordinarily benign."
"And should I encounter one of the other sort?"
Melancthe smiled her pensive smile. "Then we shall avoid the qualms and perplexities of your return."
That remark, thought Shimrod, might as happily been left unsaid.
Melancthe went on in an abstracted voice. "Perceptions occur by unusual methods." She gave Shimrod three small transparent disks.
"These will expedite your search; in fact, you will go instantly mad without them. As soon as you pass the portal, place these on your cheeks and your forehead; they are sandestin scales and will accommodate your senses to Irerly. What is that pack you carry? I had not noticed it before."
"Personal effects and the like; don't concern yourself. What of the gems?"
"They occur in thirteen colors not known here. Their function, either here or there, I do not know, but you must find them and bring them away."
"Exactly so," said Shimrod. "Now kiss me, to demonstrate good will."
"Shimrod, you are far too frivolous."
"And trusting?"
Melancthe, as Shimrod watched, seemed to flicker, or give a quick jerk of movement. Now she was smiling. "'Trusting'? Not altogether. Now then, even to enter Irerly, you will need this sheath. It is stuff to protect you from emanations. Take these as well." She tendered a pair of iron scorpions crawling at the end of golden chains. "These are named Hither and Thither. One will take you there; the other will bring you here. You need nothing more."
"And you will wait here?"
"Yes, dear Shimrod. Now go."
Shimrod enveloped himself in the sheath, placed the sandestin scales to his forehead and cheeks, took the iron charms. "Thither!
Take me to Irerly!" He slipped into the passage, picked up his ball of yarn and went forward. Green fluctuations swarmed and pulsed. A green wind whirled him afar, another force of mingled mauve and blue-green sent him careening in other directions. The yarn spun out between his fingers. The iron scorpion known as Thither gave a great bound and pulled Shimrod to a passing luminosity, and down into Irerly.
Chapter 15
IN IRERLY CONDITIONS WERE LESS EASY than Shimrod had hoped. The sheath of sandestin-stuff lacked consistency and allowed sound and two other Irerlish sentiments, toice and gliry, to chafe against his flesh. The iron insects, both Hither and Thither, at once shriveled into mounds of ash. The fabric of Irerly was viciously malign, or—so Shimrod speculated—the creatures might not have been sandestins after all. Further, the disks intended to assist perception were out of proper adjustment, and Shimrod experienced a startling set of dislocations: a sound that reached him as a jet of ill-smelling liquid; other scents were red cones and yellow triangles which, upon adjustment of the disks, disappeared completely. Vision expressed itself as taut lines striking across space, dripping fire.