mare, summer go a-begging, Render knew—for he had visited those worlds on a professional basis for the better part of a decade. With the crooking of a finger he could isolate the sorcerers, bring them to trial for treason against the realm —aye, and he could execute them, could appoint their successors.
Fortunately, this trip was only a courtesy call...
He moved forward through the glade, seeking her.
He could feel her awakening presence all about him.
He pushed through the branches, stood beside the lake. It was cold, blue, and bottomless, the lake, reflecting that slender willow which had become the station of her arrival.
"Eileen!"
The willow swayed toward him, swayed away.
"Eileen! Come forth!"
Leaves fell, floated upon the lake, disturbed its mirror-like placidity, distorted the reflections.
"Eileen?"
All the leaves yellowed at once then, dropped down into the water. The tree ceased its swaying. There was a strange sound in the darkening sky, like the humming of high wires on a cold day.
Suddenly there was a double file of moons passing through the heavens.
Render selected one, reached up and pressed it. The others vanished as he did so, and the world brightened; the humming went out of the air.
He circled the lake to gain a subjective respite from the rejection-action and his counter to it. He moved up along an aisle of pines toward the place where he wanted the cathedral to occur. Birds sang now in the trees. The wind came softly by him. He felt her presence quite strongly.
"Here, Eileen. Here."
She walked beside him then, green silk, hair of bronze, eyes of molten emerald; she wore an emerald in her forehead. She walked in green slippers over the pine needles, saying: "What happened?"
"You were afraid."
"Why?"
"Perhaps you fear the cathedral. Are you a witch?" He smiled.
"Yes, but it's my day off."
He laughed, and he took her arm, and they rounded an island of foliage, and there was the cathedral reconstructed on a grassy rise, pushing its way above them and above the trees, climbing into the middle air, breathing out organ notes, reflecting a stray ray of sunlight from a plane of glass.
"Hold tight to the world," he said. "Here comes the guided tour."
They moved forward and entered.
" '... With its floor-to-ceiling shafts, like so many huge treetrunks, it achieves a ruthless control over its spaces,' " he said. "—Got that from the guidebook. This is the north transept..."
'Greensleeves,' " she said, "the organ is playing 'Green-sleeves.' "
"So it is. You can't blame me for that though.—Observe the scalloped capitals—"
"I want to go nearer the music."
"Very well. This way then."
Render felt that something was wrong. He could not put his finger on it.
Everything retained its solidity . ..
Something passed rapidly then, high above the cathedral, uttering a sonic boom. Render smiled at that, remembering now; it was like a slip of the tongue: for a moment he had confused Eileen with Jill—yes, that was what had happened.
Why, then...
A burst of white was the altar. He had never seen it before, anywhere. All the walls were dark and cold about them. Candles flickered in corners and high niches. The organ chorded thunder under invisible hands.
Render knew that something was wrong.
He turned to Eileen Shallot, whose hat was a green cone towering up into the darkness, trailing wisps of green veiling. Her throat was in shadow, but...
"That necklace-Where?"
"I don't know." She smiled.
The goblet she held radiated a rosy light. It was reflected from her emerald. It washed him like a draft of cool air.
"Drink?" she asked.
"Stand still," he ordered.
He willed the walls to fall down. They swam in shadow.
"Stand still!" he repeated urgently. "Don't do anything. Try not even to think.
"—Fall down!" he cried. And the walls were blasted in all directions and the roof was flung over the top of the world, and they stood amid ruins lighted by a single taper. The night was black as pitch.
"Why did you do that?" she asked, still holding the goblet out toward him.
"Don't think. Don't think anything," he said. "Relax. You are very tired. As that candle flickers and wanes so does your consciousness. You can barely keep awake. You can hardly stay on your feet. Your eyes are closing. There is nothing to see here anyway."
He willed the candle to go out. It continued to burn.
"I'm not tired. Please have a drink."
He heard organ music through the night. A different tune, one he did not recognize at first.
"I need your cooperation."
"All right. Anything."
"Look! The moon!" He pointed.
She looked upward and the moon appeared from behind an inky cloud.
"... And another, and another."
Moons, like strung pearls, proceeded across the blackness.
"The last one will be red," he stated."
It was.
He reached out then with his right index finger, slid his arm sideways along his field of vision, then tried to touch the red moon.
His arm ached; it burned. He could not move it.
"Wake up!" he screamed.
The red moon vanished, and the white ones.
"Please take a drink."
He dashed the goblet from her hand and turned away. When he turned back she was still holding it before him.
A drink?"
He turned and fled into the night.
It was like running through a waist-high snowdrift. It was wrong. He was compounding the error by running—he was minimizing his strength, maximizing hers. It was sapping his energies, draining him.
He stood still in the midst of the blackness.
"The world around me moves," he said. "I am its center."
"Please have a drink," she said, and he was standing in the glade beside their table set beside the lake. The lake was black and the moon was silver, and high, and out of his reach. A single candle flickered on the table, making her hair as silver as her dress. She wore the moon on her brow. A bottle of Romanee-Conti stood on the white cloth beside a wide-brimmed wine glass. It was filled to overflowing, that glass, and rosy beads clung to its lip. He was very thirsty, and she was lovelier than anyone he had ever seen before, and her necklace sparkled, and the breeze came cool off the lake, and there was something—something he should remember
He took a step toward her and his armor clinked lightly as he moved. He reached toward the glass and his right arm stiffened with pain and fell back to his side.
"You are wounded I"
Slowly, he turned his head. The blood flowed from the open wound in his bicep and ran down his arm and dripped from his fingertips. His armor had been breached. He forced himself to look away.
"Drink this, love. It will heal you."
She stood.
"I will hold the glass."
He stared at her as she raised it to his lips.
"Who am I?"' he asked.
She did not answer him, but something replied—within a splashing of waters out over the lake:
"You are Render, the Shaper."
"Yes, I remember," he said; and turning his mind to the one lie which might break the entire illusion he forced his mouth to say: "Eileen Shallot, I hate you."
The world shuddered and swam about him, was shaken, as by a huge sob.
"Charles!" she screamed, and the blackness swept over them.
"Wake up! Wake up!" he cried, and his right arm burned and ached and bled in the darkness.
He stood alone in the midst of a white plain. It was silent, it was endless. It sloped away toward the edges of the world. It gave off its own light, and the sky was no sky, but was nothing overhead. Nothing. He was alone. His own voice echoed back to him from the end of the world: "... hate you," it said, "... hate you"