Jhary spoke to them in their own language-a language which was not that Corum had heard in the city but a language which seemed to hold faint echoes of the Vadhagh speech.
One of the men took their horses to be stabled. The other entered the house by the main door. Corum and Jhary waited without.
And then she came to the door.
She was an old, beautiful woman, her long hair pure white and braided, a mantle upon her brow. She wore a flowing gown of light blue silk, with wide sleeves and gold embroidery at neck and hem.
Jhary spoke to her in her own tongue, but she smiled then.
She spoke in the pure, rippling speech of the Vadhagh.
"I know who you are," she said. "We have been waiting for you here at the Manor in the Forest."
The Fifth Chapter
THE LADY JANE PENTALLYON
The old, beautiful lady led them into the cool room. Meats and wines and fruits were upon the table of polished oak. Jars of flowers everywhere made the air sweet. She looked at Corum more often than she looked at Jhary. And at Corum she looked almost fondly.
Corum removed his helm with a bow. "We thank you, lady, for this gracious hospitality. I find much kindness in your land, as well as hatred."
She smiled, nodding. "Some are kind," she said, "but not many. The elf folk as a race are kinder."
He said politely: "The elf folk, lady?"
"Your folk."
Jhary removed a crumpled hat from within his jerkin. It was the hat he always wore. He looked at it sorrowfully.
"It will take much to straighten that to its proper shape. These adventures are hardest of all on hats, I fear. The Lady Jane Pentallyon speaks of the Vadhagh race, Prince Corum, or their kin, the Eldren, who are not greatly different, save for the eyes, just as the Melniboneans and the Nilanrians are offshoots of the same race. In this land they are known sometimes as elves-sometimes as devils, djinns, even gods, depending upon the region."
"I am sorry," said the Lady Jane Pentallyon gently. "I had forgotten that your people prefers to use its own names for its race. And yet the name 'elf" is sweet to my ears, just as it is sweet to speak your language again after so many years."
"Call me what you will, lady," Corum said gallantly, "for almost certainly I owe you my life and, perhaps, my peace of mind. How came you to learn our tongue?"
"Eat," she said. "I have made the food as tender as I could, knowing that the elf folk have more delicate palates than we. I will tell you my story while you banish your hunger."
And Corum began to eat, discovering that this was the finest Mabden food he had ever eaten. Compared with the food he had had in the town it was light as air and delicately flavored. The Lady Jane Pentallyon began to speak, her voice distant and nostalgic.
''I was a girl," she said, "of seventeen years, and I was already mistress of this manor, for my father had died crusading and my mother had contracted the plague while on a visit to her sister. So, too, had my little brother died, for she had taken him with her. I was distressed, of course, but not old enough to know then that the best way of dealing with sorrow is to face it, not try to escape it. I affected not to care that all my family were dead. I took to reading romances and to dreaming of myself as a Guinevere or an Isolde. These servants you have seen were with me then and they seemed little younger in those days. They respected my moods and there was none to check me as a kind of quiet madness came over me and I dwelt more and more in my own dreams and less and less thought of the world, which, anyway, was far away and sent no news. And then one day there came an Egyptian tribe past the manor and they begged permission to set up their camp in a glade in the woods not far from here. I had never seen such strange, dark faces and glittering black eyes and I was fascinated by them and believed them to be the guardians of magic wisdom such as Merlin had known. I know now that most of them knew nothing at all. But there was one girl of my own age who had been orphaned like me and with whom I identified myself. She was dark and I was fair, but we were of a height and shape and, doubtless because narcissism had become one of my faults, I invited her to live in the house with me after the rest of the tribe had moved on-taking, I need not say, much of our livestock with them. But I did not care, for Aireda's tales-learned from her parents, I understood-were far wilder than any I had read in my books or imagined for myself. She spoke of dark old ones who could still be summoned to carry young girls off to lands of magic delight, to worlds where great demigods with magic swords disrupted the very stuff of nature if their moods willed it. I think now that Aireda was inventing much of what she told me-elaborating stories she had heard from her mother and father-but the essence of what she told me was, of course, true. Aireda had learned spells which, she said, would summon these beings, but she was afraid to use them. I begged her to conjure each of us a god from another world to be our lovers, but she became afraid and would not. A year passed and our deep, dark games went on, our minds became more and more full of the idea of magic and demons and gods, and Aireda, at my constant behest, slowly weakened in her resolve not to speak the spells and perform the rituals she knew…"
The Lady Jane Pentallyon took up a dish of sliced fruit and offered it to Corum. He accepted it. "Please continue, lady."
"Well, I learned from her the patterns to carve upon the stones of the floor, the herbs to brew, the arrangements of precious stones and particular lands of rocks, of candles, and the like. I got from her every piece of knowledge save the incantations and the signs which must be traced in the air with a witch knife of glowing crystal. So I carved the patterns in the stones, I gathered the herbs, I collected the stones and the rocks, and I sent to the city for the candles. And I presented them all to Aireda one day, telling her that she must call for the old ones who ruled this land before the druids, who, themselves, came before the Christians. And she agreed to do it, for by this time she had become as mad as I. We chose All Hallows Eve for the ritual, though I do not believe now that it has any special significance. We arranged the stones and the rocks and we traced the designs in the air with the crystal witch knife and we burned the candles and we brewed the herbs and we drank what we brewed and we were successful…"
Jhary sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the Lady Jane Pentallyon. He was eating an apple. "You were successful, lady," he said, "in conjuring up a demon?"
"A demon? I think not, though he looked to us like a demon with his slanting eyes and his pointed ears-a face not unlike your own, Prince Corum-and we were at first afraid, for he stood in the center of our magic ring and he was furious, shouting, threatening in a language which I could not, in those days, understand. Well, the tale grows long and I will not bore you, save to say that this poor 'demon' was of course a man of your race, dragged from his own world by our incantations and our diagrams and our crystals, and most anxious to return there."
"And did he return, lady?" Corum asked gently, for he saw that her eyes had a suggestion of tears in them. She shook her head.
"He could not, for we had no means of returning him. After the astonishment-for truly we had not really believed in our game!-we made him as comfortable here as we could, for we instantly felt sorry for what we had done when we realized that he was helpless. He learned something of our language and we learned something of his. We thought him very wise, though he insisted he was only a minor member of a large and not very important family of moderate nobility, that he was a soldier and not a scholar or a sorcerer. We understood his modesty but continued to admire him very much. I think he enjoyed that, although he continued to beg us to try to return him to his own age and his own plane."