The image began to gain substance; the world about it began to seem real. Magnus reached out in longing, a pulse of pure thought winging to his analogue: How fares it with thee, my co-walker?
There was a feeling of surprise, not unmixed with wariness, but both subsided into delight. There was a quick panorama of battles fought--evil wizards countered by Albertus and his family, maidens alluring but demanding, other maidens devastating in their loveliness but only civil in their greetings and shattering in their disinterest-of massive frustration and feelings of failure.
Magnus felt commiseration surging up in answer-in truth, the fellow was so much like him that they might be one and the same! For a brief instant, their miseries mingled....
Then a sudden, jarring jangle broke the trance, and Albertus was gone. Magnus sat bolt-upright, staring about him at a night suddenly gone silent, hearing the jangling diminish into a silver chiming. His pulse pounded in his ears; he looked about him wildly, and saw that one of the moons rode high over the clearing, its beams streaming down toward him....
And down that beam of silvery light floated a gauzy shape, gaining substance as it touched the ground-a tall, impossibly slender lady on a milk-white steed, which, like herself, was so fine-boned as to be almost attenuated. Her face was as pale as the moonlight, with huge eyes and high cheekbones, and red, red lips. She wore a grass-green gown of silk, framed by a velvet mantle, and she chimed as she rode toward Magnus. It took him a moment to realize that the sound was coming from little golden bells that were tied to the horse's mane.
He realized he was staring. He shook his head, scrambled to his feet, and doffed his hat, bowing. "Greetings, fair lady! To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"To thine own efforts, Warlock's Child," she answered, smiling.
The term rankled. Magnus forced a smile. "Surely I am worthy of the title in mine own right, lady."
"Indeed." She tilted her head to the side, amused. "Thou must needs be so, if thou canst open a pathway betwixt this world and Tir Chlis."
"Open a pathway?" Magnus stared. "Lady, I but sought to commune with my ... friend. . . ."
"Co-walker," she supplied. "Doppelganger. He who is like to thee in all respects, even to his miseries."
Magnus took a long, slow look at the lady, reassessing her-and feeling a chill at the thought of her powers. "Who art thou, lady, who knowest this of me?"
"I am a Queen among the Faerie Folk of Tir Chlis, young warlock," she said, "and I have come to visit thee."
She was easily the most beautiful woman Magnus had ever seen, with a face that would have made the greatest sculptors of the ages ache to carve her likeness; but no marble could be colder or more flawless than that moon-pale complexion, nor could any star glow brighter than her eyes. Her gown was low-cut, revealing an impossibly voluptuous figure with an incredibly small waist. In every way she was dainty, delicate-and hard, so hard. "Lady," Magnus murmured, "I am not worthy of thy regard."
"I believe thou mayest prove so." She reached down to touch his face, and his skin seemed to burn where her fingertips lingered. Suddenly, she was the only thing that mattered in all the universe; home, parents, siblings, king and queen, even God himself, seemed remote and unimportant. In a strange, detached way, he knew he was enchanted, but did not care. "All I wish," he breathed, "is to prove my virtues in thine eyes."
"Not too many virtues, I trust." She gave him a sidelong look through lowered lashes.
Magnus reddened. "All virtues that become a man-such shall I prove."
"Thou must needs come with me, then." Her tone became peremptory. "Thou must now run beside mine horse, for thy poor nag of mortal flesh ne'er can go where we shall wander. Thou must needs come with me now, and serve me seven years."
"Only that?" Magnus protested. "Must I leave thee then?"
"That, we shall speak of anon," the lady said. "For now, follow." She turned her horse about and set off.
"As thou wilt," Magnus murmured. He followed, running lightly by her side, unable to take his eyes off her face-and amazed to find that he could keep pace with her horse.
Dimly, he realized that he was running up a moonbeam, that what he was doing was totally impossible-but the moonlight dimmed, and darkness closed all about him, unrelieved even by starlight; he ran only by the glow emanating from the Queen of Elfland herself, through a darkness that made the night seem bright-but he found that he did not mind, did not care at all, so long as he was by her side.
She glanced at him once, pleased and amused, then turned her face toward the direction in which they were travelling and sang a low, soft song of a cambric shirt.
Up into the sky they ran, with the moonbeam beneath them, till Gramarye was a small irregular shape on a huge globe behind them. They came into the light of the smaller moon, just as the larger seemed to swing behind them, blocking the planet from their sight. They were in the dark of the moon now; its face was black behind them, its rim etched by scattered light, but they ran on a beam from the smaller moon, ruby beneath them. Then that ruby deepened and thickened, until it seemed to Magnus that he ran through liquid; his legs began to ache, and his steps slowed. His breath came in huge, tearing gasps, and he saw, dimly, that the smaller moon had turned dark too, while the larger had disappeared completely, and with it, the planet wherein lay his home; but the sight bothered him not at all, strangely, and he slogged onward, through a liquid that became thicker and thicker, yet his speed seemed not to slacken.
"Thou wilt never come to Elfland thus," the lady said, and reached down her hand toward him. He caught it, feeling himself unbelievably privileged to be allowed to touch her fingers; but she lifted him up behind her as though he weighed no more than a lady's fan, and he swung about onto the horse's rump, gripping its sides with his knees. She pulled his fingers down to her waist, saying, "Hold fast." Magnus did, with both hands, astounded that something that looked so dainty could seem like spring steel beneath velvet, and by the wonder of the curve of her hip beneath the heel of his hand. They rode in total darkness now; the only light was the glow that emanated from the lady herself, and from the sluggish crimson tide below them-but from the darkness all about came a hissing surge that grew into a roar, then retreated to a hiss that grew again and again in a regular rhythm, like the surge and ebb of the tide, but was compounded of white noise.
"Where are we, lady?" Magnus shivered, though he felt no chill.
"We ride between the worlds, young warlock," the Queen returned. "We ride in the Void."
Magnus felt his scalp prickle; the eerie sensation spread down his back and into his thighs.
But light blossomed ahead, swelling into a vista of trees and grass and a turquoise sky. "Are we come to Tir Chlis, milady?"
"Nay, wizard-knight," she returned, "for so I shall call thee, thou hast yet to be knighted, for I perceive thou dost merit it."
Magnus stared. "Why, how canst thou know?"
"From the tang of Cold Iron about thee, which runs deeper than bone-for here between worlds, it is the essence of a man that shows, not the dross of his skin and visage only."
"Muscle and bone may yet matter, in Tir Chlis." Magnus spoke from vivid memory.
"Aye, yet we are not come there yet." The vista grew wider and wider about them, till the horse's hooves thudded on solid earth. It slowed, nodding its head and blowing through its nostrils, then stopped. Magnus looked up at transparent leaves that seemed to have been carved from slices of emerald, growing from boughs that wore a golden sheen. Fruit hung from that tree, swelling with ripeness, like pears with double tops that turned at angles to one another. Magnus gave a cry of joy and swung down from the horse, leaping to catch at one of the fruits.