But one day the black-haired T'sais came riding past on her horse, steely-eyed, slashing at flowers with her sword. The innocent Floriel wandered by and T'sais, exclaiming "Green-eyed woman—your aspect horrifies me, it is death for you!" cut her down as she had the flowers in her path.
Turjan, hearing the hooves, came from the workroom in time to witness the sword-play. He paled in rage and a spell of twisting torment rose to his lips. Then T'sais looked at him and cursed him, and in the pale face and dark eyes he saw her misery and the spirit that caused her to defy her fate and hold to her life. Many emotions fought in him, but at last he permitted T'sais to ride on. He buried Floriel by the river-bank and tried to forget her in intense study.
A few days later he raised his head from his work.
"Pandelume! Are you near?"
"What do you wish, Turjan?"
"You mentioned that when you made T'sais, a flaw warped her brain. Now I would create one like her, of the same intensity, yet sound of mind and spirit."
"As you will," replied Pandelume indifferently, and gave Turjan the pattern.
So Turjan built a sister to T'sais, and day by day watched the same slender body, the same proud features take form.
When her time came, and she sat up in her vat, eyes glowing with joyful life, Turjan was breathless in haste to help her forth.
She stood before him wet and naked, a twin to T'sais, but where the face of T'sais was racked by hate, here dwelt peace and merriment; where the eyes of T'sais glowed with fury, here shone the stars of imagination.
Turjan stood wondering at the perfection of his own creation. "Your name shall be T'sain," said he, "and already I know that you will be part of my life."
He abandoned all else to teach T'sain, and she learned with marvelous speed.
"Presently we return to Earth," he told her, "to my home beside a great river in the green land of Ascolais."
"Is the sky of Earth filled with colors?" she inquired.
"No," he replied. "The sky of Earth is a fathomless dark blue, and an ancient red sun rides across the sky. When night falls the stars appear in patterns that I will teach you. Embelyon is beautiful, but Earth is wide, and the horizons extend far off into mystery. As soon as Pandelume wills, we return to Earth."
T'sain loved to swim in the river, and sometimes Turjan came down to splash her and toss rocks in the water while he dreamed. Against T'sais he had warned her, and she had promised to be wary.
But one day, as Turjan made preparations for departure, she wandered far afield through the meadows, mindful only of the colors at play in the sky, the majesty of the tall blurred trees, the changing flowers at her feet; she looked on the world with a wonder that is only for those new from the vats. Across several low hills she wandered, and through a dark forest where she found a cold brook. She drank and sauntered along the bank, and presently came upon a small dwelling.
The door being open, T'sain looked to see who might live here. But the house was vacant, and the only furnishings were a neat pallet of grass, a table with a basket of nuts, a shelf with a few articles of wood and pewter.
T'sain turned to go on her way, but at this moment she heard the ominous thud of hooves, sweeping close like fate. The black horse slid to a stop before her. T'sain shrank back in the doorway, all Turjan's warnings returning to her mind. But T'sais had dismounted and came forward with her sword ready. As she raised to strike, their eyes met, and T'sais halted in wonder.
It was a sight to excite the brain, the beautiful twins wearing the same white waist-high breeches, with the same intense eyes and careless hair, the same slim pale bodies, the one wearing on her face hate for every atom of the universe, the other a gay exuberance.
T'sais found her voice.
"How is this, witch? You bear my semblance, yet you are not me. Or has the boon of madness come at last to dim my sight of the world?"
T'sain shook her head. "I am T'sain. You are my twin, T'sais, my sister. For this I must love you and you must love me."
"Love? I love nothing! I will kill you and so make the world better by one less evil." She raised her sword again.
"No!" cried T'sain in anguish. "Why do you wish to harm me? I have done no wrong!"
"You do wrong by existing, and you offend me by coming to mock my own hideous mold."
T'sain laughed, "Hideous? No. I am beautiful, for Turjan says so. Therefore you are beautiful, too."
T'sais' face was like marble.
"You make sport of me."
"Never. You are indeed very beautiful."
T'sais dropped the point of her sword to the ground. Her face relaxed into thought.
"Beauty! What is beauty? Can it be that I am blind, that a fiend distorts my vision? Tell me, how does one see beauty?"
"I don't know," said T'sain. "It seems very plain to me. Is not the play of colors across the sky beautiful?"
T'sais looked up in astonishment. "The harsh glarings? They are either angry or dreary, in either case detestable."
"See how delicate are the flowers, fragile and charming."
"They are parasites, they smell vilely."
T'sain was puzzled. "I do not know how to explain beauty. You seem to find joy in nothing. Does nothing give you satisfaction?"
"Only killing and destruction. So then these must be beautiful."
T'sain frowned. "I would term these evil concepts."
"Do you believe so?"
"I am sure of it."
T'sais considered. "How can I know how to act? I have been certain, and now you tell me that I do evil!"
T'sain shrugged. "I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life. Turjan could explain to you easily."
"Who is Turjan?" inquired T'sais.
"He is a very good man," replied T'sain, "and I love him greatly. Soon we go to Earth, where the sky is vast and deep and of dark blue."
"Earth. ... If I went to Earth, could I also find beauty and love?"
"That may be, for you have a brain to understand beauty, and beauty of your own to attract love."
"Then I kill no more, regardless of what wickedness I see. I will ask Pandelume to send me to Earth."
T'sain stepped forward, put her arms around T'sais, and kissed her.
"You are my sister and I will love you."
T’sais’ face froze. Rend, stab, bite, said her brain, but a deeper surge welled up from her flowing blood, from every cell of her body, to suffuse her with a sudden flush of pleasure. She smiled.
"Then—I love you, my sister. I kill no more, and I will find and know beauty on Earth or die."
T'sais mounted her horse and set out for Earth, seeking love and beauty.
T'sain stood in the doorway, watching her sister ride off through the colors. Behind her came a shout, and Turjan approached.
"T'sain! Has that frenzied witch harmed you?" He did not wait for a reply. "Enough! I kill her with a spell, that she may wreak no more pain."
He turned to voice a terrible charm of fire, but T'sain put her hand to his mouth.
"No, Turjan, you must not. She has promised to kill no more. She goes to Earth seeking what she may not find in Embelyon."
So Turjan and T'sain watched T'sais disappear across the many-colored meadow.
"Turjan," spoke T'sain.
"What is your wish?"
"When we come to Earth, will you find me a black horse like that of T'sais?"
"Indeed," said Turjan, laughing, as they started back to the house of Pandelume.
2. MAZIRIAN THE MAGICIAN
DEEP IN thought, Mazirian the Magician walked his garden. Trees fruited with many intoxications overhung his path, and flowers bowed obsequiously as he passed. An inch above the ground, dull as agates, the eyes of mandrakes followed the tread of his black-slippered feet. Such was Mazirian's garden—three terraces growing with strange and wonderful vegetations. Certain plants swam with changing iridescences; others held up blooms pulsing like sea-anemones, purple, green, lilac, pink, yellow. Here grew trees like feather parasols, trees with transparent trunks threaded with red and yellow veins, trees with foliage like metal foil, each leaf a different metal—copper, silver, blue tantalum, bronze, green indium. Here blooms like bubbles tugged gently upward from glazed green leaves, there a shrub bore a thousand pipe-shaped blossoms, each whistling softly to make music of the ancient Earth, of the ruby-red sunlight, water seeping through black soil, the languid winds. And beyond the roqual hedge the trees of the forest made a tall wall of mystery. In this waning hour of Earth's life no man could count himself familiar with the glens, the glades, the dells and deeps, the secluded clearings, the ruined pavilions, the sun-dappled pleasaunces, the gullys and heights, the various brooks, freshets, ponds, the meadows, thickets, brakes and rocky outcrops.