T'sain passed unheeding. She entered Mazirian's house, found the workroom where glowed the eternal yellow lamps. Mazirian's golden-haired vat-thing sat up suddenly and stared at her with his beautiful vacant eyes.
She found Mazirian's keys in the cabinet, and managed to claw open the trap door. Here she slumped to rest and let the pink gloom pass from her eyes. Visions began to come—Mazirian, tall and arrogant, stepping out to kill Thrang; the strange-hued flowers under the lake; Mazirian, his magic lost, fighting the whips ... She was brought from the half-trance by the vat-thing timidly fumbling with her hair.
She shook herself awake, and half-walked, half-fell down the stairs. She unlocked the thrice-bound door, thrust it open with almost the last desperate urge of her body. She wandered in to clutch at the pedestal where the glass-topped box stood and Turjan and the dragon were playing their desperate game. She flung the glass crashing to the floor, gently lifted Turjan out and set him down.
The spell was disrupted by the touch of the rune at her wrist, and Turjan became a man again. He looked aghast at the nearly unrecognizable T'sain.
She tried to smile up at him.
"Turjan—you are free—"
"And Mazirian?"
"He is dead." She slumped wearily to the stone floor and lay limp. Turjan surveyed her with an odd emotion in his eyes.
"T'sain, dear creature of my mind," he whispered, "more noble are you than I, who used the only life you knew for my freedom."
He lifted her body in his arms.
"But I shall restore you to the vats. With your brain I build another T'sain, as lovely as you. We go."
He bore her up the stone stairs.
3. T'SAIS
T'SAIS CAME riding from the grove. She checked her horse at the verge as if in indecision, and sat looking across the shimmering pastel meadow toward the river ... She stirred her knees and the horse proceeded across the turf.
She rode deep in thought, and overhead the sky rippled and cross-rippled, like a vast expanse of windy water, in tremendous shadows from horizon to horizon. Light from above, worked and refracted, flooded the land with a thousand colors, and thus, as T'sais rode, first a green beam flashed on her, then ultramarine, and topaz and ruby red, and the landscape changed in similar timings and subtlety.
T'sais closed her eyes to the shifting lights. They rasped her nerves, confused her vision. The red glared, the green stifled, the blues and purples hinted at mysteries beyond knowledge. It was as if the entire universe had been expressly designed with an eye to jarring her, provoking her to fury. ... A butterfly with wings patterned like a precious rug flitted by, and T'sais made to strike at it with her rapier. She restrained herself with great effort; for T'sais was of a passionate nature and not given to restraint. She looked down at the flowers below her horse's feet—pale daisies, blue-bells, Judas-creeper, orange sunbursts. No more would she stamp them to pulp, rend them from their roots. It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself. Swallowing her vast enmity toward the butterfly and the flowers and the changing lights of the sky, she continued across the meadow.
A bank of dark trees rose above her, and beyond were clumps of rushes and the gleam of water, all changing in hue as the light changed in the sky. She turned and followed the river bank to the long low manse.
She dismounted, walked slowly to the door of black smoky wood, which bore the image of a sardonic face. She pulled at the tongue and inside a bell tolled. There was no reply. "Pandelume!" she called. Presently there was a muffled answer: "Enter." She pushed open the door and came into a high-ceilinged room, bare except for a padded settee, a dim tapestry.
"What is your wish?" The voice, mellow and of an illimitable melancholy, came from beyond the wall.
"Pandelume, today I have learned that killing is evil, and further that my eyes trick me, and that beauty is where I see only harsh light and evil forms."
For a period Pandelume maintained a silence; then the muffled voice came, replying to the implicit plea for knowledge.
"That is, for the most part, true. Living creatures, if nothing else, have the right to life. It is their only truly precious possession, and the stealing of life is a wicked theft. ... As for the other, the fault is not with you. Beauty lies everywhere free to be seen by all—by all except you. For this I feel sorrow, for I created you. I built your primal cell; I stamped the strings of life with the pattern of your body and brain. And in spite of my craft I erred, so that when you climbed from the vat, I found that I had molded a flaw into your brain; that you saw ugliness in beauty, evil in good. True ugliness, true evil you have never seen, for in Embelyon there is nothing wicked or foul ... Should you be so unfortunate to encounter these, I fear for your brain."
"Cannot you change me?" cried T'sais. "You are a magician. Must I live my life out blind to joy?"
The shadow of a sigh penetrated the wall.
"I am a magician indeed, with knowledge of every spell yet devised, the sleight of runes, incantations, designs, exorcisms, talismans. I am Master Mathematician, the first since Phandaal, yet I can do nothing to your brain without destroying your intelligence, your personality, your soul—for I am no god. A god may will things to existence; I must rely on magic, the spells which vibrate and twist space."
Hope faded from T'sais' eyes. "I wish to go to Earth," she said presently. "The sky of Earth is a steady blue, and a red sun moves over the horizons. I tire of Embelyon where there is no voice but yours."
"Earth," mused Pandelume. "A dim place, ancient beyond knowledge. Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand strange souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time... . Earth is dying and in its twilight..." he paused.
T'sais said doubtfully: "Yet I have heard Earth is a place of beauty, and I would know beauty, even though I die."
"How will you know beauty when you see it?"
"All human beings know beauty ... Am I not human?"
"Of course."
"Then I will find beauty, and perhaps even—" T'sais faltered over the word, so alien was it to her mind, yet so full of disturbing implication.
Pandelume was silent. At last:
"You shall go if you wish. I will aid you as I may. I will give you runes to ward you from magic; I will strike life into your sword; and I will give you advice, which is this: Beware of men, for men loot beauty to sate their lust. Permit intimacy to none ... I will give you a bag of jewels, which are riches on Earth. With these you may attain much. Yet, again, show them nowhere, for certain men will slay for a copper bit."
A heavy silence came, a weight was gone from the air.
"Pandelume," called T'sais softly. There was no reply.
After a moment Pandelume returned, and the sense of his presence reached to her mind.
"In a moment," he said, "you may enter this room."
T'sais waited a period; then, as she was bid, entered the next room.
"On the bench to the left," came Pandelume's voice, "you will find an amulet and a little sack of gems. Clasp this amulet upon your wrist; it will reflect magic intended evilly against him who utters the spell. This is a most powerful rune; guard it well."
T'sais obeyed, and tied the jewels inside her sash.
"Lay your sword upon this bench, stand upon the rune in the floor and close your eyes tightly. I must enter the room. I charge you, do not attempt to see me—for there are terrible consequences."