Now what would confront that orange shade of self-confidence—overwhelming belief in one’s own Powers? Again I sought—
Within the world of nature, man did not create aught but his own image. Or did he? He who dealt with beauty did so humbly, knowing that he was but the tool, not the true maker. He could foster beauty—cherish it. But that which grew from his own efforts—never was it as wonderful as it had seemed before he brought it into being. Therefore, he was always the seeker, never a fulfilled believer who had accomplished the full sum of what he had wished to do.
Green was the Magic of that seeking, lying in all things sprouting from the earth.
Blue and green.
But if I had the answer, how did I now apply it? Where had I ever seen such colors stand for any sign of Power?
My mind picture changed. Once more I crouched at the edge of the Star Tower garden path, stared at the rise of blue-green stone across the lush harvest of the herbs. The Tower held the secret, and I was walled without!
Yet, so deep now was my need that it compelled me to keep the Tower picture in my mind. I strove to imagine myself walking down the path—entering once more into the queerly shaped room where I had lain when those who dwelt there had tended me. In my mind now, I began to picture the room. It had been thus and thus—
Only I could not bring the picture into any focus. Back and forth it rippled, as might the surface of a pool on which water flies were skating. The room—it was so!
All my will I pushed into that single effort. But—
This was not the room I had known! There was no bed—nothing as I remembered it. Instead, on the walls were looped strings of shining disks, winking with some inner light of their own. Three people stood within a circle formed of a chain of the same disks, a circle that was broken in five places by a tall standing, bright silver candlestick in which burned a green candle. The flames that showed therefrom were blue and green, even as the walls about.
At my first sighting, the figures within the circle had been misty, ill defined. However, after I gazed at the candle flames and back again, I could see them as clearly as if some intervening veil or curtain had been ripped away.
The—Moon Maid! Upon her, my eyes centered first. Once more she wore her skirt of moon disks, her horned moon pendant. Her body was as silver white as the lines of the circle in which she stood. In her hands was a silver rod, wound about with the moonflowers I had first seen her harvesting.
Beyond her, also facing inward as she did, was the stranger who had worn the Were shape, though now he was a man. His brown body was bare to the waist, and between his hands was the hilt of a bared sword, the point of which rested on the floor. Along its blade ran tiny waverings of light, steely blue.
The third was the woman who had first denied me refuge in the Star Tower and then nursed my wounded body. No longer did she wear the man’s clothing I had seen on her, rather an initiate’s robe and it was green. About her waist was a binding girdle of vines still bearing unwithered leaves. The same were woven into the braids of her hair, which now hung down her back.
Her wand with its green leaf spearhead was also pointed inward. I could see her lips moving and believed that she was chanting some spell or call to the part of the Power that she could summon or command to her desire.
What moved me then was an overwhelming need to make them aware of me, for I felt as if I stood in that room though outside their charmed circle. And I cried out—.
“Look upon me! I am here!”
It was the Moon Witch whose head moved at my silent cry. She spoke, though I could not hear her words, nor did they resound in my head as had those of the snow cat.
The ones with her turned their heads, looked in my direction. I saw amazement on the woman’s face, the man half raised his sword. Then the woman’s wand came up, the leaf pointed to me. Her lips shaped words.
In this vision or dream, I could see the words, if I could not hear them. They were like glittering insects winged in the air, flying toward me. Then they winked out and were gone.
The amazement on her face grew. She looked down hastily at the wand she held. Back and forth the leaf wove some pattern. From her manner, I guessed that the motion was not of her doing, that the wand now acted independently of her will.
She spoke again and the man moved forward. His sword came up—point foremost in my direction. Still I felt no fear. There was about the vision a feeling of rightness, as if I had found my way to some place where I would be welcome. I must only give those before me time to realize that this was so.
The wavering lines upon the sword blade flashed the brighter. They ran, they dripped in tiny, flashing gobbets from the point of the blade. Only for a breath space did the man hold so, then once more the point sank down. He did not look amazed, only thoughtful. Then he nodded to the Moon Witch, and her flowered rod arose.
From the heart of the stone flowers burst other thin, white blooms. They might each be a source of flame as were the candles about us. They flared and died.
It was my belief that I had been tested in some manner, and that their defenses against me had not worked. I felt no fear, no wariness. All I wanted now, and desperately, was their full favor.
“You are here. What would you have of us?” The woman spoke then and her words were in my mind.
“I would call upon the Blue and the Green—those you serve and command. For they are mine—”
The answer I made her came not from my conscious thinking, rather out of the deepest depths of that which was Kethan.
“Give us your name—”
I knew her meaning. The name is the person, in part. For ill-wishing, a name known to the ill-wisher can serve as a bond or a weapon.
Kethan they had called me from my birth. Ursilla could command me by it if she turned to the ways of the Shadow. Was I Kethan? For a moment I was entirely uncertain. That name seemed wrong in this hour, as if it was no part of the real me. Yet I had none other to offer.
“I am Kethan.”
“Where are you?” she asked secondly.
“Within Car Do Prawn—within the bonds of the Wise Woman’s sorcery.”
“What do you seek of us?”
“What I can learn, to free myself.”
“It would seem you have already learned much,” the woman observed, “since you went forth from here.”
“I was told there was a key, if I could find it. I searched, and this was what I found—not by the belt but within myself.”
The woman nodded. “Well done, Kethan.” Her face lost the masklike quality it had always seemed to hold the times when she had looked upon me. “In truth, you have walked a goodly way down a strange road, but not one under the Shadow. I do not understand how you have become destiny-tied with us—that we must learn. But that you have been able to do so while entranced, coming thus to the edge of our summoning, that is proof that we must travel together, at least for a space. So you are caught within a Wise Woman’s sorcery.” Now she frowned a little as if facing a problem to be solved. “Tell us the manner of’ the binding about you.”
Though I did not now see Ursilla’s room behind the eyelids of my closed eyes, rather the center of the Star Tower, I spoke of the candles that blazed and how I believed that they provided the bars for my captivity.
“A longer way have you come down the road than we thought”—the man spoke now—“if you could search for that which will stand against your prison and find it here. If you are loosed from the spell, what then will you do?”
“I must have the belt—”
“That is so.” He gave agreement. “With it this Ursilla can keep you at her heel and her bidding. You know where it lies hid?”