Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

TWO LIONS, A WITCH, AND THE WAR-ROBE Tanith Lee

To come on the apparently unguarded forest city of Cashloria was often a surprise, since it lay, as its name implied, deep in one of the vast ancient forests of Trosp. Enormous pines, cedars, beeches, oaks, poplars, and other trees towered up, for hundreds of miles. A single wide road, in places rather overgrown, eccentrically bisected the area. Once night began, the city was quite arresting. Then its thousands of lamp-lit windows, many with stained glass, blazed in slices between the trunks. Huge old stone mansions, public halls, and various fortresses appeared, but all smothered in among the forest, with trees growing everywhere about them, in some cases out of the stonework itself. In the narrow central valley to which the road eventually descended, where lay the city’s hub, ran the thrashing River Ca, along which only the most courageous water-traffic ventured, and that in the calm of summer.

It was now fall. The forest had clothed itself in scarlet, copper, magenta, black, and gold. Audible from a day’s ride away, the Ca roared angrily with pre-freeze melt-snow from distant mountains. Sunset dropped screaming red on the horizon and went out, and utter darkness closed its wings.

Zire the Scholar had been traveling a long while. He was weary and aggrieved. Yesterday, forest brigands had set on him and stolen his horse. Though naturally he had tracked and tricked them and stolen it back, the horse next cast a shoe, so now both of them must plod.

As night gathered and he spotted the lights of Cashloria, Zire gave a grunt of relief. He had read of the city over a year before, and set out to see it along with others, but during the last hour doubted he would find it at all. Benign unhuman guardians were supposed to take care of the conurbation, for example by protecting it with sorcery rather than city walls. This evening Zire had begun to think they had also rendered the place invisible. But lights shone. Here he was.

Zire was young and tall, and well-made. His hair was, where light revealed it, the rich somber red of the dying beech leaves. His eyes were the cold gray of approaching winter skies. His spirit was not dissimilar: fires vied with melancholy, exuberance with introversion.

Presently, the young man reached a promontory, thick with trees and pillared buildings. Below, the landscape tumbled down, still clad in darkling foliage, roofs, and windows of ruby and jade, to a coil of the angry river. A few lights also marked the river’s course, but mainly it was made obvious by its uproar. They said, in Cashloria—or so Zire had read—“The Ca is foul-mouthed and always shouting.”

Nevertheless, here was an inn, by name the Plucked Dragon.

Lanterns burned, and Zire, having tethered his horse, and maneuvered through a hedge of willows, thrust in at the door.

At once a loud outcry resounded, after which total silence enveloped the smoky yellow-lit room beyond. It was not that the several customers had reacted in astonishment on seeing a newcomer; they were reasonably used to visitors in Cashloria. It was simply that, during the exact moment Zire stepped into the inn, a man standing at the long counter had swung about and plunged his knife between the ribs of another. Everyone, Zire included, watched in inevitable awe as the knife’s unlucky recipient dropped dead on the ground.

The murderer, however, only wiped his blade on a sleeve, sheathed the weapon, and turned to regard the landlord. “Fetch me another jug, you pig. Then clear that up,” jerking his thumb over-shoulder to indicate the corpse.

He was, the murderer, a burly fellow, with dark locks hanging over a flat low brow. He wore a guardsman’s uniform of leather and studs, with a gaudy insignia of two crossed swords surmounted by a diadem. Certainly no one argued with him. Here rushed an inn-boy with a brimming jug, and there went the landlord himself with another inn-boy, hauling the dead body off along the floor and out the back. Even the third man, on whose sleeve the murderer had wiped his knife—not, presumably, wishing to soil his own—made no complaint.

“Cheers and a hale life!” cried the killer, and downed a large cupful in one gulp.

All present, with the exception of Zire, echoed the toast in fast fellowship. And some of them added, for good measure, “And hale life to you, too, Razibond!” “Yes, long life. That dolt had it coming to him.”

Razibond, satisfied, belched. Then his small eyes slid straight to Zire, still poised in the doorway. Those little eyes might just as well have been two more greasy blades. If looks could kill, they might.

“And you,” said Razibond. “What do you say, Copper-Nod?”

“I?” Zire smiled and shrugged. “About what?”

“Oh, you’re blind then, as well as carrot-mopped. Come, let’s have your opinion. You saw I slew him.”

“That? True, I did see.”

“You seem offended,” said Razibond, ugly voice now sinking to an uglier growl. “Want to make something of it, eh?”

If Zire had been in any doubt as to what Razibond meant, further evidence was instantly supplied, as all the other drinkers withdrew in haste, plastering themselves to the walls, some even crawling beneath the long tables. Even the fire crouched down abruptly on the wide hearth, while the girl who had been tending a roast there sprinted up the inn stair with a flash of bare white feet.

“Well?” bellowed ugly Razibond, seemingly further incensed by Zire’s speechlessness.

“Really,” said Zire, “what you do is your own affair. After all, perhaps the man you stabbed had done you some terrible wrong.”

“He had,” Razibond declared. “He refused me use of his wife and daughter.”

“Or, on the other hand,” continued Zire smoothly, “you are, as I suspected, merely a drunken thug who throws his weight about, that being considerable since he is now running to podge, and slaughters at random. One day you will answer in the afterlife, to an uproar of furious ghosts. Don’t think I joke there, friend Razi. Another life exists than this one, and we pay our dues once we are in it. I imagine your reckoning will be both long and tedious, not to mention painful.”

Razibond’s face was now a marvelous study for any student of the human mood. It had passed through the blank pink of shock to the crimson of wrath, sunk a second in superstitious, uneasy yellow, before escalating into an extraordinary puce—a hue that would have assured any dye-maker a fortune, had he been able to reproduce it. More than this, Razibond had swollen up like a toad. He cast his wine cup to the ground, where it shattered, being unwisely made of clay, and, disdaining his knife, heaved out a cleaverish blade some four feet long.

Zire raised his eyes to heaven, or the ceiling. Next instant, he, too, had drawn a sword, this one fine almost as a wand, and going by the name of Scribe. As Razibond lumbered at him, Zire moved, easy as smoke, from his path, extending as he did so a booted foot. This brief gesture sent the homicidal guardsman crashing, at which Zire leapt onto his back, landing with deliberate heaviness and knocking the breath right out of him. Then, with a casualness truly awful to behold, Zire drove his own bright sword straight in, through Razibond’s leathers, skin, flesh, muscle, and heart. Blood spurted like a fountain, and decorated the blackened beam above.

At the inn once more, only silence held sway. Zire did not wipe the sword, he kept it ready in one hand. He looked contritely about at the stricken faces.

“My apologies,” said Zire. “But I object to dying at this late hour. I would prefer supper. Oh, and my horse needs shoeing. Otherwise, if you want, we can continue the violence.”

No one answered. None moved. The landlord himself, who had ducked below his counter then reemerged to witness the short fight’s climax, stared with mouth agape.

Then there came the sound of bare feet, and down the stair hurried the inn-girl. She alone seemed able to move, and now, too, proved capable of speech, although it came out in a sort of a quavering shriek.

“Rash sir, you know not what you’ve done!”

“But I do know,” said Zire. “Let me see, killed a killer. Maybe all you here loved him, and now wish to attack me. If so, let’s get on. As I said, I’m hungry.”

“Love him?” wailed the girl. “Razibond? He was a fiend.”

At this, the strange inertia that had held the room broke in pieces. Voices from all sides honked and whispered: “He was a monster—” “A bully—no woman left alone, no man of honor safe—” “May he rot in the swampmost belly of the worst-devisable hell—”

“But,” yelled the girl on the stair, “he was one of the False Prince’s guardsmen. None must harm them no matter what their crimes. Or the False Prince will seek obscene vengeances. He is in league with dark magic, too, and will already know you have trespassed against his soldiers.”

“This inn,” intoned the landlord, gripping the counter white-knuckled, “may be burned to the earth, and all of us whipped. As for you, sir, he will hang you by your feet above a pit of snakes, whose poison dispatches in the slowest, most heinous stages—”

“Or else—” vocalized another, “he will sentence you to the death of two hundred hornets, each the size of a rat—”

“Or the live burial amid fractious scorpions—”

“Or—”

“Yes, very well,” interrupted Zire, apparently tired. “I have inferred the correct sting-laden picture of my proposed fate.”

“Run—” shrilled the pale girl from the stair. “It’s your only chance! We dare not shield you.”

Zire grimaced. He sat down on a bench. “First serve me some dinner,” he said. “Also my poor starved horse must eat. Both he and I refuse to run on an empty stomach.”

Silence once more submerged the room. The noise of the river, always angrier after moonrise, filled it instead.

Some half-mile below, at a second inn, whose name was the Quiet Night, and which directly adjoined the thunderous River Ca, Bretilf the Artisan sat over the remainder of his dinner, thoughtfully slicing the last roast meat from a bone. Beside him rested a jug of Cashloria’s black ale. His tankard stayed full. He was concentrating equally on the bone and on a shape he could detect in the bone’s surface. Once all the meat was gone, he intended to carve the figure free, but an interruption came.

Two drunken bravos, belonging—judging by their cross-swords-and-diadem insignia and studded-leather garments—to some guard militia of the city, had begun to quarrel.

Bretilf watched them sidelong through narrowed, tawny-amber eyes. His hair was of a similar shade, a type of ginger-amber, marking him out through the gilding of a stray lamp. He was otherwise young, tall, and well-made, and, had he but known it, bore a definite resemblance to another man, who only some minutes earlier, and half a mile above on the promontory, had stuck a sword straight through the heart of space-wasty Razibond.

“Damn it all, Kange,” ranted the bigger of the quarrelers, “I say we shall.”

“I don’t deny we have a perfect right. But the house walls are high and she is protected by loyal servants and hounds, the latter of which will snap off a man’s leg soon as make water on it.” This was the retort of the smaller though no less repulsive Kange.

Bretilf could hear all clearly, even through the general din. He suspected others in the room heard the dialogue, too, but pretended deafness.

“Pahf!” went on the first guard. “No need for that. We’ll knock at the gate and remind the girl the False Prince has given us permission to delve any wench we fancy. Besides, when she sees our beauty, how can she not succumb? Failing that we’ll poison both servants and dogs, and burn the house to show we called.”

“True, you’re wise, Ovrisd,” relented Kange. “But before we set forth on our mission, let’s see what money we can squeeze out of that foreigner over there, with the pumpkin-colored mane.”

Bretilf put down the meat bone.

The guardsmen were advancing, smiling winningly upon him, carefully ignored on every side by the rest of the inn.

“Greetings, stranger,” said the unpresentable Kange.

“Welcome, stranger,” added the revolting Ovrisd.

“To you also,” replied Bretilf, rising. “I believe you wish me to render you something,” he presumed.

“Oh, indeed! How perceptive. We would like all of it!”

“And pretty fast.”

“Perhaps not all, but certainly a great deal. All that you deserve,” said Bretilf. He finished mildly, “Nevertheless, once is enough. To seek me later for more will not be to your liking.” And, leaning forward, he grasped both their unlovely necks and, in one sleek, quick movement, smashed their heads together. Like two halves of a severed pear, each guardsman fell, thumpingly senseless, to the floor.

Instantly, every person in the inn, including the landlord, his slim wife, and large cat, fled the premises.

Bretilf placed coins in generous amount on the counter, and toting the jug and the sculptable bone, walked off into the riverine night.

A golden moon howled radiance like wild music in the sky. The insane river answered. Bretilf sat awhile on the bank and started the carving of the bone. But his own bones guessed the night’s difficulties were not done.

Sure enough, about an hour later, two sore-headed and bleary-eyed guardsmen came staggering to the bank with drawn blades and antisocial motives.

“I said,” gently reminded Bretilf, as once again he rose to his feet, “it was not advisable that you ask for more.”

Seething and blathering, Kange and Ovrisd leapt ungainly at him. Bretilf flipped back his cloak. The moon splashed like hot lava on a sudden broadsword, that had the name Second Thoughts. Swish, swish went the two severed heads of Kange and Ovrisd, plunging off the land’s edge into the hungry river. Their now leaderless bodies slumped, this time conclusively, to the earth.

Bretilf strode away into the slinks of Cashloria. It was his creed never to kill, if at all possible, at an initial encounter. But so many people were determined to try his patience. Reticence and extremity coexisted always with him. Presently, he found a much less clean, and more secluded, inn where he might spend the night in peace asleep, or carving the figure of a militant stag.

Bretilf awoke to find, with some bemusement, he was staring at himself in a mirror. Zire awoke to find exactly the same thing.

Neither man recalled a mirror placed before him, in either of the inns they had last night occupied. In fact, Zire had fallen asleep at the table in the Plucked Dragon, after his first cup of wine. Bretilf had done much the same in his own inn, the Affectionate Flea. Besides, the mirrors were unreliable. Bretilf immediately noted that his own reflection rubbed its eyes, which Bretilf had not done and was not doing. Zire noted that, though he had rubbed his eyes, his reflection refused to copy him. In any case, said reflection’s eyes, in both instances, were the wrong color.

“Oh,” said Zire then, boredly, “are you some sorcerous fetch summoned up to haunt me?”

“No,” returned Bretilf. “I think rather your—or possibly my own—father played his flute away from home. And I, and you therefore, are half-brothers.”

“Hmn,” said Zire. “You may be correct. We’re certainly nearly doubles.”

Then each got up, conscious as they did so of three further things. First, that in height and build they were also neatly matched. Second, that the faint bee-ish buzzing in their skulls, and taste of dry wool in their mouths, was very likely the result of their having been drugged. The third revelation was that, rather than remaining at an inn, whether wholesome or squalid, they were now in a cramped stone room with iron bars across the window.

Glancing at each other, they observed as one: “Dead guards. Royal disapproval. The False Prince.”

A moment later, the door was opened, and several more guards, these ones with whom Zire and Bretilf were unacquainted, bundled into the space. They seized, then dragged Bretilf and Zire, the foray ornamented by a selection of punches and kicks, up many stairs and into another cell, plain but less prisonlike.

“Lie there, you scum,” the guards instructed. “And prepare for horrors. The prince will arrive soon to judge you.” They departed, slamming the door.

“Do you have a knife or sword?” inquired Bretilf.

“Yes, my knife. And Scribe is still with me.”

“My Second Thoughts, also,” said Bretilf. “And with my knife, the carving even that I was fashioning with it.”

“Not disarmed then.”

“Nor bound.”

“It would seem,” said Zire, “this prince has enough magical power to deal with us, whatever we try. A great shame,” he added. “I had hoped to visit Traze next, over the river. And then the Red Desert.”

“And I to finish my carving.”

A spinning began in one of the cell walls. The two men watched attentively as it grew black, then electric, and roiled away, leaving an opening into a vast white marble chamber, its ceiling high as a full-grown oak. This was easily gauged, too, since live oak trees formed a colonnade along it. But they had trunks and boughs like twisted ebony, and blue leaves that quivered on their own, filling the air with a serpentine rustling.

At the room’s far end rose a tall black chair upholstered in violet velvet. On either side of this squatted a fearsome beast, something like a wolf crossed with a raccoon. In the chair sat a stooped, thin man. He was a young man, but with an old man’s face, and weaves of gray and white ran through his own light-colored hair. His eyes were like shards chipped from something blue and long-dead. But he wore fine clothes, and on his head a silver circlet. He pointed with a long, thin finger.

“You are here for punishment. You have slain my men, my chosen guards. For this, only the worst deaths are given. What do you say?”

“Oh, dear,” said Zire.

Bretilf added, “Since Your Highness has already decided, what point for us to say anything?”

“I will have you speak.”

Zire said, “It would be redundant to attempt to placate, please, or obey you. We’re dead. We can be as rude as we like.”

“Yet,” said Bretilf, however, “why are you called the False Prince? Or is that only because all Cashlorians hate you? Just as they hate your guards, who seem, all told, a pack of cowards, rapists, thieves, and cutthroats.”

The elderly young man cursed. He reached up and pulled at the silver circlet, next sending it bowling along the floor, until it fell over into a rug. The two monsters by the chair snarled.

“Hush,” said the prince to them. “I am called False because, although I rule here, by right of direct descent, I have never inherited the one artifact that would ensure my rule, and my power. It was stolen, during the last years of my father, the Old Prince’s, reign—due to some foolishness of his. At once the Benign Guardians, said to protect the city, left us. Efforts to recover the sacred item failed. They fail always—for several have gone to reclaim it for me. All here know where it is interred. But that counts for naught. None can master the resident magics that hold it in. And all who try perish on the quest. Perish horribly, I have been led to believe, and have indeed witnessed.

“For example,” said the prince, settling himself in a doleful mimicry of some storyteller, “there was the famous hero Drod Laphel. It was well known that he alone had, twice or thrice, bested five or six men together in a sword fight—”

“Only five or six?” grunted Bretilf sotto voce.

“My revered granny,” hissed Zire, “could beat off eight at least at a go. Albeit with a special cloak-pin she possessed and not—”

“You would do well to attend,” coldly broke in the prince. “It is an option I have, to torture you a little, before sentence. This can be waived or not, as you like.”

Zire and Bretilf composed themselves meekly.

“Drod Laphel,” went on the prince, “was also handy with spear and throwing ax, and had besides learnt certain charms that enabled him to bewitch serpents. When pausing in this city, he soon fell afoul of my guardsmen. Ten set on him, and accordingly he slew them single-handedly, if admittedly in two batches of five. Following the episode, I had him dispatched to thieve back the vital article I miss. I even had, numbskull that I was, some faith that he, of all men, might succeed where no other ever had. But no. Drod Laphel, the snake-charmer, athlete, and magician of swords, returned empty-handed. Quite literally, since he lacked both of them. And he was deader than a coffin nail, besides being the awful shade of rotted plums.”

Zire cleared his throat. Bretilf regarded his boots, as if counting the cracks in their leather.

“Are we then to conclude,” said Zire, “our punishment for culling your degenerate guards is, personally, to be forced to undertake the self-same quest?”

“You are brave men,” said the False Prince with dreary jealousy. “Bold and reckless as lions. Yes, you will be made to go. That much sorcery I can command. Understand this, too. If I were able to reclaim the needed object, and my rightful power given to me, I would not require a single human guard. I would throw the degenerates out, nor would they dare return here. Additionally, though it hardly merits saying, as you will never succeed at this challenge, whoever is successful will find his reward proportionate. Rather than death, riches beyond comprehension would be rendered you.” Sourly, he recapped: “But best not to dwell on futile daydreams. Nor have I any pity for you. Why should I pity others when my own lot is so cruel? The supernatural agencies that should guard Cashloria are gone, or in hiding. The heart of the city itself refuses to acknowledge me, and conversely does me ill-turns. Only those guards, and these two creatures here, stand between me and the vengeance of a rioting populace. Were all my weakness known, I should not last a minute. But my days are scarce enough. Cashloria’s thwarted energies are already killing me. Can you see? How old would you say I am?”

Neither Bretilf nor Zire replied.

“Fifteen,” said the False Prince, lowering his blue, dead eyes. “I am fifteen. And if I leave Cashloria, its stony atoms will tear me in pieces. While if I remain, they will drain me of all life in another year. Yes, you shall go and try to snatch back for me the sacred artifact, the Garment of Winning, as it is called. Why should I spare you? Who, in the name of any god, has ever spared me?”

“So, tell me of your father,” said Zire, as they rode over the long stone bridge above the Ca.

“A minor lordlet, killed by assassins before my birth. My mother and grandsire raised me in the irksome shadow of his death. At eleven I broke free.”

“Then I believe your father died too young to have coined me.”

“Who was your own?”

“A chalk merchant. I grew up white as a sheep, till at seventeen some foe threw me down a well. Crawling out, no one recognized the red-headed youth who then stole the local grandee’s horse, and pelted for freedom. I doubt my father, either, sired you. He was less white than uncouth and uncomely. No elegant lady, wed to—or widowed of—a lordlet would have let him touch her maid, let alone herself.”

After this they rode awhile unspeaking. The river gushed green below, and on the farther bank the daytime forest was massed like a russet storm cloud.

They had no choice but to undertake the lethal task, so much had been made clear to them, not least by the False Prince’s wizards, whose spokesman was a man in unfriendly middle age. “You are already under Cashloria’s geas,” he had told them. “It will avail you nothing to essay escape. You must travel to the place of dread, there enter in, and do whatever you’re able to retrieve the Garment of Princedom—which is otherwise known as The Robe Which Wins All Wars.”

At this news, Zire had yawned convulsively and Bretilf’s hungry stomach grumbled. They had been from the start well aware some coercive spell was on them. They were its captives until either they had gained the trophy—or died, “horribly,” in the attempt.

During the breakfast that was eventually served them, and that might have been enjoyable, including platters of fresh-baked shrimp, clam, and prawn, good ham, and eggs curdled with white wine, the indefatigable wizard informed them of all the conditions of their unwanted and unavoidable quest.

The original thief of the Winning Robe was allegedly a mischievously malignant elemental of the forest. It had next created a bizarre castle in which to hide the Robe, ringing it prudently with a labyrinth, unknown yet frightful safeguards, and energizing all with a sorcery so strident none had ever survived it. More than fifty men, all intelligent, cunning, and courageous, and well-versed in the use of stealth and weaponry, had been sent to the castle. And all had returned—but in disturbingly dead states: headless, footless, heartless; lurid with alien venom, rigid with stings of weird sort, skinned, scalped, or dissected. This multitude of squeam-making ends were duly attributed to the prince himself, in order the citizens might fear him and be kept down. “Hence the tales of scorpions and snakes,” Zire had muttered.

“It seems a perfect genius is needed,” said Bretilf, “if mere cleverness, cunning, and all other skills are no use.”

“Well, whatever we have to our credit, there being two of us, it’s doubled,” hazarded Zire.

They were awarded two horses, a bay gelding for Bretilf, Zire’s horse being his own gray, nicely reshod. Both animals were well fed, saddled, and burnished.

Now on the bridge over the Ca, the farther bank having become the nearer one, Zire abruptly drew rein. Bretilf copied him. “What?”

“Let us,” said Zire, “see if we’re able, after all, to turn back and make off.”

Bretilf looked once over his shoulder. “Each of us is aware he can’t. The geas prevents it. Or else we would still be escorted. We can only go forward to the goal of the castle. We were told we did not even need a map, the compulsion on us being so strong we can only follow the compulsory direction.

“Perhaps, however,” suggested Zire, “the horses can carry us in the opposite one, despite whatever spell binds us.”

They turned the horses’ heads. Grimly, Zire and Bretilf faced back down the bridge to the city, gripped the reins, and kicked both mounts lightly in the side.

The horses instantly reared as if confronted by flailing flames or slavering demons. Jumping about in a shriek of metal hooves on stone paving, they reversed themselves with such enthusiasm their riders were nearly unseated. Both mounts then tore the last quarter of a mile along the bridge in the unwanted direction, and plunged off into the forest beyond.

Only with great awkwardness and noise were they persuaded to calm down and stop. They were deep into the trees—bridge, river, and city out of sight. Bretilf and Zire scowled about at the red-leafed gloom, to which they were so well matched.

“So much for that, then.”

The morning waxed through the coppery forest canopy toward noon. Glumly, Zire and Bretilf rode along the track the geas had selected. Birds sang, and once a deer broke across the path. A pair of squirrels mocked them from a tall black pine.

Not long after, something appeared ahead at the roadside. At first, both men took it for a marker of some sort. It stayed completely still. But, presently, Zire exclaimed, “Look there. It’s a young woman. Why, it’s the inn-girl from the Plucked Dragon, who was so full of warnings.”

Bretilf added, “I seem to know her, too. Either she served me at the first inn, or the second.”

The girl, drably clad, and with a tattered white shawl over hair greasy from constant nearness to roast meat, just then raised her hand—not in greeting, but to beckon.

“Perhaps she was thrown out of work because of us,” said Zire.

“I can spare her a coin,” said Bretilf.

The riders reached the girl and halted. She gazed into their faces with dull eyes. She spoke:

“Alas! The False Prince has ensorcelled and sent you to your dooms. Oh, you’ll be done for like all the others. The Robe That Wins is untakable. Poor souls, poor lost souls!”

“Exactly,” said Zire.

Bretilf remarked, “But it’s kind of you to wish us luck so encouragingly.”

The girl took no notice either of pragmatics or sarcasm. Solemnly, she cried, in a high, self-important voice, “My name is Loë, and I am of no account. But seek the house of Ysmarel Star that lies along this very track. There only may you find assistance.”

“What is Ysmarel Star?”

“Seek the house and learn!” melodramatically declaimed the rather aggravating Loë. “You can hardly miss the mansion. White roses crowd the walls and white owls flit around it, while a huge diamond star hangs low above.”

“Not modestly self-effacing then, as are you,” said Zire.

“I am nothing. I am only Loë.”

And the girl ran suddenly off the track and in among the copper-gold patchwork of the trees. Bretilf and Zire stared after her thoughtfully.

“It seemed to me…” Bretilf murmured after a second or so.

“…also to me…” agreed Zire.

“…that where the shadow of that cedar falls…”

“…girl ceased to be girl…”

“and became instead…?”

“…a weasel,” concluded Zire. “Perhaps,” he added, “we hallucinate from hunger. Let’s enjoy a brief rest, and dine on the provisions in the saddlebags.”

During the afternoon, the autumnal forest changed from metals to wines, and so to lilacs. That evening the track, now very overgrown, and interrupted by the strong claws of neighboring trees, meandered out into a series of clearings. Here dusk filtered, littered by tiny bats.

A sweep of land was rising upward on their left, the trees thinly scattered about on it. Then a hill was to be seen, clear on the mauve-glowing sky. One star had risen there of unusual size and brilliance, and beneath lay a dark, rambling house, here and there pierced by the needles of lamps.

“Ysmarel’s mansion?”

“So it seems,” affirmed Zire.

“Do we visit?”

“Why not? The track winds close, and the geas allows intervals.”

“And anyway, to the doomed,” Bretilf appended, “all delays are good.”

The gray and bay climbed the hill.

High stone barricades appeared, smothered with moon-pale flowers, whose scent seemed enhanced by darkness. Above, six or seven gigantic bats flew about. But the low-strung star illuminated their wings, which were white. They were owls.

Purple glass and glass like saffron was in the lighted windows. A bell hung over the gate.

The two men observed the bell, but before they could decide to ring it, it pealingly rang of itself. At this, the owls descended together, and perched along the tops of the walls, looking at Zire and Bretilf through the stained glass of their eyes.

Some moments later, the gate swung wide, and inside was framed a dark garden, full of white roses that caught the starshine and ghostly shone. About twenty paces on, a broad door stood open and, even as they watched, soft lamps bloomed there. It was all most enticing. So much so that neither man advanced. They sat their horses, and the owls sat on the walls, and not a sound was to be heard, as if time had grown cautious, too, and stood still.

After a while, Bretilf stirred. “Do we go in? Or retreat?”

“All’s lost, it seems, whatever we do.” They dismounted, tethered the horses among the roses, and walked straight in at the soft-lighted door.

They were at once in a charmingly informal hall, lit by depending lamps of fretted bronze and lavender glass. Luxurious rugs clothed a floor of delicate rainbow tiling.

A long table had been loaded with tall gilded flagons individually filled with black ale, red wine, blue spirit, or honeyed beer. A selection of pies, smoking roasts, cheeses, dewy salads, fruits, and sweets of many kinds waited on plates of gold or in dishes of silver decorated with pearls and zircons.

“Do you trust this feast?” asked Zire.

“Less than I’d trust a starving thief who jumped in the window.”

“My own thought. Shall we dine?”

“Let’s do so.”

But even as they pulled out the gilded chairs to sit, a curtain across the length of the room blew back, and out stepped a vision that stopped them, once more, in their tracks.

A young woman, again, but this time of surpassing attractions. The undeniable beauty of her face was made yet more marvelous by two large eyes of velvet darkness. From her lovely head cascaded darkly shining hair in loose curls, that each took a chestnut highlight from the lamps. Her slim but voluptuous figure had been clad in a filmy gown of amethyst silk, caught at the waist by serpentine twists of white gold.

“How rewarding that you should call on me,” said this apparition, in a musical voice that suggested the color of smoky peach mixed with platinum. “Pray sit.”

Bretilf the Artisan and Zire the Scholar—sat.

Instantly, some bowls of scented water were brought to them, by a pair of white rabbits. Without comment, each man rinsed his hands, at which two black rabbits appeared to offer linen towels. All four rabbits had come from under the table draperies, to which area they next withdrew. But, unceremoniously yanking up the drapery, Zire and Bretilf peered beneath—to find no sign of rabbits, bowls, towels, nor any hatch that might afford entry and exit.

Reemerging from under the cloth, the two found instead their beautiful hostess had herself sat down at the table’s central position. Her serenity was exquisite.

“Brave sirs, do choose whatever you wish to eat. Munch and Janthon there will serve you.”

Anticipating further rabbits, Bretilf and Zire were startled when a handsome, long-haired white cat appeared, walking upright out of a bouquet of pale flowers at the table’s southern end. In another breath, a larger, but also handsome, short-haired black dog manifested at the table’s northern end. This being stood on the floor by Zire’s chair. The dog, too, walked upright, which meant its head was level with Zire’s own—it was a large canine indeed.

Zire pulled himself around with a little effort. “Good evening, Janthon,” said Zire. “If you’ll be so kind, I will have—”

“No trouble, sir,” replied the dog with faultless articulation. “Your mind is read.” And, taking the proper implements from the board, dexterously began to slice for Zire the very cooked fowl he had been intent on. That done, Janthon stalked to Bretilf’s place and, unasked, extended agile front paws and carved up for him a paté and a pie. Munch the cat meanwhile filled Bretilf’s crystal glass of spirit, and now came to Zire to pour his silver tankard of beer.

Unnoted during these operations, three white owls had entered through a high window. Perching upon golden stands, they now began to sing a quiet but melodious trio, to the accompaniment of three black, crow-like birds, which seemed to have arrived via the mansion’s open door. One beat a drum with its claws, another performed on a small harp, which it struck tunefully with one wing. The third whistled through its beak.

Zire and Bretilf ate and drank some while without a word exchanged.

At last, Bretilf spoke levelly to Zire. “Have we gone mad?”

“I think so,” answered Zire in an offhand way. “Probably some effect of the geas, or else too strong a drug used to subdue us in the city.”

“Or, alternatively, perhaps it’s a dream.” Bretilf turned to their delicious female companion, who sat quietly sipping a goblet of sherbet laced with wine. “Would you say so, madam?”

“All life is a dream,” she replied, smiling. “Or so it is said.”

“You are then a philosopher, lady,” said Zire.

“No. I am a witch. Whose name is Ysmarel Star.”

Zire and Bretilf put down their silver knives and drinking vessels. Each man rose.

“A witch. What else? I fear,” said Zire, “we must be on our way.”

“Urgent business at a castle,” elaborated Bretilf, “involving doom and horrible death.”

Ysmarel Star nodded. “So many have passed by, en route to such a fate. Few ever listened to my messenger, Loë.”

“Perhaps, unlike ourselves, they knew your true vocation—witchcraft—and were too…respectful to call. There is sorcery enough in the city and the forest, surely. It tends to make even desperate men—among whom we must be counted—reluctant.” This, from Zire.

“We trust not to offend by such frankness,” finished Bretilf.

But Ysmarel paid no attention. She went on as if neither of her guests had spoken a word.

“Of the few who did heed Loë, none before, suspecting a trap, dared enter my house. There were others who, having seen Loë, failed to see my gate, or anything else. It takes, gentlemen, a particular type of acuteness and sparkle, to note such things. Even that a rabbit, cat, or dog waits on them at table. That owls make music. Let alone the presence of my humble self.”

“Any man who missed seeing you, fair lady,” said Zire, “would need to be blind, and other things besides, perhaps more personally unhappy in his lower regions.”

Bretilf said, “Any man who failed at seeing you, Ysmarel, would need to be dead.”

“However,” continued Zire, “we must get on.”

“To be late for a doom is the worst bad manners,” augmented Bretilf.

Ysmarel still gave no heed.

“I have known for long months the imposed task which the False Prince of Cashloria sets any transgressor: to steal back the Robe of War-Winning. It is a hopeless venture. Men of great courage and genius have gone to the doom you refer to. Even thirteen women of unusual battle-skills and wisdom. But all perished, male and female alike. And each, it’s true, ended horribly.

“For example,” continued Ysmarel Star, modifying her stance rather in the manner of certain feminine storytellers, “the glamorous and gifted sword-mistress, Shaiy of the Red Desert, having killed two guards who attempted unwanted affection, was sentenced to seek the Robe.

“Shaiy was well known for her varied warrior talents, not to mention her learning and quick wit. It’s said she could compose an ode worthy of the greatest poets in twice ten minutes. Or a bawdy song inside three slow heartbeats. Riddles she could answer while asleep. She was a notoriously sage robber, said to have stolen the Great Emerald of Gullo. Though she then kindly gave it away to a destitute lover. But even Shaiy only returned from the evil castle dead, and minced small, everything of her in a tiny box, all but her dainty white ears—which were pinned on the lid in the exact form of a butterfly.”

Zire studied his boots; Bretilf cleared his throat.

Ysmarel simply clapped her slender hands. At the signal, every light in the mansion died, every waft of perfume, tasty dinner, or music—fled. A dog barked once, a rabbit squeaked, and a cat spat. A rattle of wings and clatter of discarded perches and instruments revealed where crows and owls beat it at top speed through a window and a door. The room had become black as tar. Only the star gleamed on the garden outside.

Male voices uttered.

“Are you able, Bretilf, to move at all?”

“Not I. And you, Zire?”

“Neither.”

“Rest, my friends,” murmured the seductive tones of the witch. “I have concocted, for your intelligence and reckless natures, another destiny than you predict.”

“A witch, what else? That food,” said Bretilf next, now in a slurred and impersonal way.

“Or that witchy bloody beer,” grumbled Zire. “To the lowest hell with it, we have yet again—”

“—been drugged and enspelled,” explained Bretilf.

In the darkness, there now sounded a discordant slumping couple of thuds, as of two muscular young men dropping on a tiled floor, amid their boots, garments, a part-sculpted stag, swords, and other accessories.

There followed a woman’s provocative laugh. And night extinguished the scene both inside and out, as the low diamond of the abnormal star capsized in clouds.

In sleep, there was no respite either. Each man dreamed a selection of episodes concerning those luckless heroes—and heroines—who had entered the infamous castle.

Bretilf beheld Drod Laphel, tall and powerful, with golden locks, striding through an enormous sable building, sword ready, while a huge serpent oozed toward him. It was scaled like an alligator, yet black-blue as midnight. It opened its scarlet jaws and made a noise as of steam rising from a hot spring. At that, Drod chanted some spell so hypnotic even the actually ensorcelled and drugged and anyway non-serpentine Bretilf grew helpless. Surprisingly, the serpent did not. It surged forward, a scaly wave from a midnight ocean, and the golden swordsman vanished in its coils.

Zire, too, dreamed, but his surreality concerned the beautiful Shaiy. She was a lightly sturdy young woman, with skin of cream and eyes like green embers. Now, standing inside a huge vaulted hall, she confronted a sort of puma, with the head of a falcon and falcon wings. The falcon-puma had challenged her, it seemed, to solve some conundrum, and to sing her reply. This Shaiy proceeded to do. But no sooner did her excellent mezzo-soprano fill the space than the echo of her voice itself became a living entity, which boomed and howled like thunder. Blocks of masonry started to fall. And both Shaiy and the cat-bird-sphinx were lost to view.

Thereafter there were endless such dreams. Maybe even fifty or more of those condemned to seek the Robe appeared before Bretilf and Zire. All foundered. In each case, definite clues were given as to the vile methods of their ending.

Then at last Bretilf dreamed, and Zire, too, that they themselves—each solo—entered the same lapideous building. Their names had altered, for some reason. Zire was called Izer, Bretilf—Ibfrelt. Knowing this was less than useful to them.

Upon Zire, from the shadowy architecture rushed flapping creatures, most like colossal books, and he, spinning and leaping, wielding Scribe to parry and slash and pierce, the knife to stab and slice, still battled them in vain. They closed on him, and slammed him shut inside their covers.

Bretilf found that he had tried to draw, or carve out on the walls, talismans of beneficent gods. But they erupted like boiling black milk, grew solid, ripped away his weapons from his grip. After which a giant stag rose out of the floor and tore at him, and stove in his ribs, with antlers and feet.

Slaughtered personally over and over in their dreams, Izer-Zire and Ibfrelt-Bretilf longed for day and awakening, whether in a hell or heaven, or—the favorite choice—the world.

Dawn though, as was its habit, took its own time.

A century later, perhaps, it seemed, the metal-leafed forest flooded pink as a blush. The sun rose. The things of darkness…fled?

The mansion of the witch was somber and deserted-looking in the morning. No owls, or any birds, were evident. The white roses had folded tight as buds, as if only after sunset could they open.

Even so, the door to the mansion remained wide. As did the outer gate.

In a while, something might be seen to be moving through the garden.

If the sun watched for Zire and Bretilf, the sun was due for a disappointment, since what presently padded through the gates on to the hillside, though two in number, were a pair of young lions. Once outside, both paused to sniff the gate-posts, the air. One growled, the other lashed its tail. Roughly of an age, and having the same lean girth and obvious male stamina, tawny and limber, white-fanged, and tail tufted and maned—one dark red, the other more a tangerine shade—they might have been brothers of a single pride.

A look of slight unease was swiftly concealed by them, in the way of animals. They turned and cuffed each other, and rolled about play-fighting—until suddenly rolling right across on to the track. Here they got up, shook themselves, touched noses, and glanced around, one with topaz eyes, the other with eyes of shined silver.

To anyone who knew no better than to credit all sorcery, they would be taken for Bretilf the Artisan and Zire the Scholar magicked into feline beasts.

Both lions, anyway, now raced off along the track, perhaps coincidentally in the very direction the geas prescribed.

A lion knows it is a lion, even if it has no occasion to tell itself so. Had it found occasion, it would, and using whatever words make up the lionesque language. All animals, naturally, employ language. Human ignorance of this results from the fact most humans have never understood most of the animal tongues. The reason being perhaps because, beyond the very obvious, animal language is formulated to convey states, ideas, and principles of conduct quite out of the range of human grasp. Certain schools of thought even maintain that what man sees in himself as “acting like an animal,” rather than a sign of degeneracy, is a sadly inadequate effort on mankind’s part to copy the philosophical intellectual animal technique in the mastery of life, love, and death.

Zire, then, knew himself a lion. And Bretilf likewise knew himself a lion. That they were brothers was undeniable, fundamental, and largely irrelevant. As for a strange jumble each vaguely noticed as being a name, and a distorted name, neither bothered with it.

Nevertheless, both lions were slightly conscious of bizarre concepts, which sometimes swirled about in their maned and noble heads. To these also they paid little attention. What they knew was this: the day was warm, the earth and trees smelled good, and everywhere blew the scents of interesting things both to experience and to eat. Something excited and pushed them on in a particular direction. It went without saying therefore this direction was desirable, and promised much. To resist the tug of it was not even considered.

For hours the lions bounded through the forest. By now verdure was thick, and the track less than a thread between the roots of trees and laceries of fern. Now and then they paused to investigate some interesting odor, sight, or noise, rested in shade under the sun-flamed canopy, drank from a streamlet dark as malachite. All was as it should be.

Noon filled the sky and so the forest. From safe tree-tents, squirrels, chipmunks, possums, and wood pigeons watched the lions, most respectfully.

To a man, the scene that now appeared between the trees was that of a huge clearing. For almost a mile all vegetation had been mown down or dredged up, and then a floor laid there, made of odd triangular flagstones, which seemed of polished basalt. In this surface the unhidden sky reflected, so it glimmered like a black lake. At its center rose a building. To a man, again, or a woman, it was instantly apparent this structure had been formed from the trunks and heavy summer crowns of many living trees. Yet they had also been deformed. Some leaned askew, some were warped in unnerving hoops, and some forced together at their tops to provide a roof with branches, boughs, and foliage. After that, sorcery had struck them. They had turned to stone—not the smooth basalt of the paving, but petrified coal of dense, ashen black.

As no men were in the clearing, but rather lions, that analysis did not occur. The lions saw a cave-like mass, cool in the day’s heat, and having to it an olfactory tang of human flesh and blood. In other words, recent fresh corpses.

Pausing only to dip cautious paws into the lake which surrounded the caves, and so learn it was solid, they sprang forward, and vanished through the entrance.

Izer, the lion who had been Zire, darted through a succession of lowering, gaping, all-black vistas. Space led into space, some more narrow, others wider or more winding. Izer galloped blithely through them all. Their enormity, and cranky arboreal sculpting, did not faze him. He did not feel made small and vulnerable, as a man might. Instead, curious as a young cat, he climbed where able up the malformed sides of the stone trees, and stuck his long, big nose into holes and fissures. He raised his paw and scraped the petrified material with a single claw. At which blue sparks flew and he veered away.

From the guts of this inert yet nastily intestine-suggestive labyrinth, came the most insidious wavering drone of sound. It was the sound of utter soundlessness, disturbed only in the ear of the listener by the tempo of pulse and heart. Izer paid it little attention. His hearing was honed for more informative noises. Of these there seemed to be none.

Then with no warning, something rushed sharply through the air, about three lion-lengths above him. Izer raised his head.

It was a bird. But a bird Izer had never seen, nor been self-trained to expect. It had no beak, nor even a head. Its outflung, fluttering wings were dark above, with complex paler featherings below, but they supported nothing. The bird had no body either.

Izer did not identify the flying object as a book, which, to a human, it would appear to be. For him it was only logical to classify it as a bird. And as lions are generally a match for most birds, save those of supernatural size, such as a roc, he leapt straight at it, bore it to the earth and smashed it there. The book’s spine broke. Izer tore at its feather pages, champed and spat them out. The bird was not good eating, good for nothing, aside from a bit of swift exercise. When the next one came flapping at him, Izer took this in sporting spirit, sprang at it and batted it about a while, before destroying it on the ground. Other books followed in streamers, though not very many. Izer danced about with them, enjoying himself. When the last was felled, he noted tiny scurrying things that were spilling from the carcasses. He put his paws on them, bit and squashed them. They were written words, yet Izer did not know this. They meant nothing at all to him beyond a playful moment or two. They tasted only of ink anyway. He also spat their shredded bodies forth, rolled on his back, shook his henna mane, and trotted off deeper into the petrified maze.

Elsewhere, Ibfrelt, the lion who had been Bretilf, was nosing around some knots in the floor that might, once, have been edible fungi. He, too, was uninterested in the persistent yodel of the silence. However, presently he heard a curious scraping noise, and looking around saw some sharp implements worming out of a wall. No sooner were they ejected than they began to crawl over the floor, scratching irritatingly as they did so. Ibfrelt went to examine them, batting at them rather as Izer had at the books. Their steel edges made no impression on his well-toughened lion pads. In the end, he became bored with the things and loped off. He did not actually realize that they then pursued him in a highly sinister manner. To Ibfrelt, there could be nothing sinister about them. Nor did he see when, by then some way behind him, they lost momentum, rusted, flaked, and fell apart.

Wandering on into another chamber of the building, Ibfrelt paused only when a sudden form reared up from the floor. A man would have known this figure at once for a fellow man—a sword fighter for a fellow swordsman, and a dangerous one. He was tall, and laden with muscle, clad in mail, and armed both with a broadsword of considerable size and a dagger of extraordinary length. At Ibfrelt, he glared with flashing, maniacal eyes, and from a sneering gob let out a challenge: “Match me then, you damnable nonentity!”

But Ibfrelt evidently only knew men—when he had known them—as menu-worthy pieces of prey. Shows of weapons, of aggression, protective armorings—they meant nothing at all, to a lion. Ibfrelt smelled live meat, and he gave a snarl of appetite, then launched himself, like a vast ginger firework, at the threatening hulk.

Over went the hulk, amid a resounding bash and clamor, sword flying one way, and dagger doing no more damage than to shave four of Ibfrelt’s impressive whiskers, before a couple of jaws, equally impressively toothed, met in his esophageal tract.

Ibfrelt was already feeding greedily when, to his disgust, his kill dissolved like a mist and faded into thin air.

Some snaggle of labyrinthine turns away, Izer was just undergoing a similar disillusion. His adversary had been a rapier-brandishing swordsman, with a back-up ax. But Izer had simply jumped on him in the midst of the fellow’s posturing, fangs seeing to the rest. When this nice hot meal vanished, Izer let out a complaint so loud even Ibfrelt paid attention, and rumbled back.

Rising from the teasing absent carcass, Izer padded through the maze and, with leonine instincts of scent, vision, hearing, and subthought, located Ibfrelt inside two minutes.

The lions commiserated with each other. This was a poor place after all. It would be better to depart instantly.

It was then that a blazing light flared up in the next cave or chamber. They were lions; they took it for the undoing of an exit into the afternoon forest. Shoulder to shoulder, they flung themselves toward it—

They found themselves contrastingly inside a gargantuan inner region of the complex. The compartment would have evoked, to most human eyes, a colossal temple hall. To the lions, it was just an especially oversized cavern. Yet light from some invisible source filled it full.

In the very middle of the space stood a solitary living tree, or so it appeared. The tree was a sort of maple, but of absurd dimensions, and with autumnal leaves colored raspberry, orange, and ripe prune. From the boughs hung a dowdy banner—or a garment? It seemed stranded there, whatever it was, by mistake, shoddy and threadbare, stained, and itself the hue of over-cooked porridge.

Neither lion glanced at it. A spectacle of greater fascination pended. The living trunk was slowly splitting along a hinge of softer, more elusive light. When the gap was wide enough, a form burst from within. It cantered into the cavern, a sight to render any warrior numb with astonished horror.

Directly before the lions epically bulged a stag of unusual size. It was almost spotless white, its antlers like boughs, its eyes glittering like fires. It snorted, and from its nostrils black smolders gushed out.

Lions do not shake hands, or smite paws together to announce brotherhood. If they did, these two would have done.

Without preamble, both vaulted headfirst at the stag. They hit it square, one to each side of the breast. Fearful splinterings, jangles, cracks, and clangs engulfed the air. In a thousand shards, the stag, which seemed fashioned from one house-huge bone, collapsed. The giant maple shook at the detonation. Leaves rained like—rain. One other item was dislodged and drifted foolishly down, like dirty washing. Izer and Ibfrelt, Ibfrelt and Izer, ignored this. They were busy. The bone of which the monster stag had been constructed had once belonged to some improbably prodigious roast. They were engaged in extracting the marrow, any shreds of meat, savoring the cooked tastes, finding every splinter on the ground.

In this way, they missed the dim phantasmal wailing of something, which, seeing all its ploys, even those untried, would never work, lamented in the stony masonry. They missed the dislodgement of the building, too, and how its walls and halls, openings and enclosures, came apart and smeared into nothing. They even missed the last descent of the unappealing porridge-colored garment, until it fell over both their heads.

“So, what do you make of it?”

Trudging back through the forest, stark naked, and with the fall weather turning a touch more chilly, Bretilf put this question to the matchingly unclothed and chilled Zire.

Zire said, “It seems, now, perfectly obvious.”

“To me also. Yet maybe we’ve drawn two different conclusions.”

Bretilf carried the item from the cave-labyrinth, bundled up and tied tight with grasses.

From the trees, which overnight seemed themselves partly to have disrobed, leaving great swathes of cold and unclad sky and blowing wind, birds and squirrels threw nutshells at them. Foxes and wild pig distantly passed, snorting as if with scornful laughter. Snakes seemed embarrassed by the stupidity of men and slipped down holes.

Bretilf and Zire had not decided what they made of anything, despite their exchange. And some hours on, when they reached the mansion of the witch Ysmarel Star, and found only the hill—they made not much of that, either. The gray and the bay horses were tethered nearby, however, and adjacent were neatly folded clothes, swords, and so on. Bretilf examined the part-finished carving he had begun of a stag.

“Just as I thought,” said Bretilf.

“Oh, indeed,” concurred Zire.

There followed a short conversation then, on whether it was worse to eat men or words, not mentioning meat bones. The consensus on this was that probably none of those items had been strictly real, more elemental, if potentially fatal, and so no moral issue was involved.

They rode the rest of the way to the city of Cashloria. Zire had taken his turn at carrying the rolled-up wretched rag from the maple. Neither man had wished to try it on, not even when naked in the woods. Just the first swipe of it across their heads had changed them back into men. That was enough.

Even so, sitting once more above the crazy River Ca, they held their horses in check and stared at nothing.

“It seems to me,” said Bretilf, “the witch Ysmarel—”

“Yes?”

“Ensorcelled us into animal shape less to cause us trouble in the manner of ancient legends—”

“—than in order we might survive the maze and regain the Robe. Any intelligent or gifted man or woman who intruded on that spot,” Zire went on, “was seemingly destroyed by demons conjured from their own abilities.”

“The singer found her song turned against her in so dreadful a way, it tore the ears from her lovely head.”

“The charmer of snakes found a snake he could not charm, which poisoned him.”

The horses cropped the grass. Both men digested the effect of the beautiful witch’s spell. By making them beasts, she had released them from any true engagement with their everyday beliefs. Though ghosts of their human preoccupations were yet accessible to the sorcery in the labyrinth, when presented with nightmare elements of them, as lions, they had either had no interest, or made short work and dined.

The humanly superior had perished in that place. But they, as lions, had had another agenda, another superiority. Which was why, too, they had gained the Winning-of-War-Robe. It had meant nothing to them; they had only run out growling with it tangled in their manes—then hair.

Modestly, Zire and Bretilf reentered the city. Yet on the streets people swarmed to gape and cheer. At the False Prince’s villa, they were admitted after a wait of only an hour.

The prince lay on a couch like one almost dead. He gazed up with weary dislike. “Who are these ruffians?”

“Highness,” said the affronted servant, “can’t you hear the joyful uproar outside? These—ruffians—have won back the Robe—the Robe of the Winning of War With Oneself.”

“Garbage,” said the prince and turned over on his face.

Another hour on, when he had been, rather roughly, convinced by his attendants, Zire and Bretilf had the dubious pleasure of beholding the transformation. With some revulsion, they saw how the War-Robe, when the prince had put it on, altered from a sartorial nonevent to a glowing sumptuousness of colors and gems. The prince was also changed. In a matter of seconds, he grew young and strong, handsome and profound, pristine, pure, and kingly. And then, with pleasing open-handedness, from the coffers of the city, stunning riches were obtained and loaded on to mules, all for Bretilf and Zire.

They were by then incorrigibly drunk. They had sampled much of the royal cellars, and also rambled about the city, where everyone was eager to stand them a drink. Sometimes they drew into corners and spoke in low tones of the anomaly of such a man as the prince, so sticky with cruelty and crime, now entirely changed into a genuine paragon, worthy only of loyalty and praise. But they heard, too, a rumor of a kitchen girl, named Loë, who had that very day ridden off in a carriage that sparkled like a diamond, and with her many animals, owls, and crows from neglected temples, rabbits kept for the pot, cats and dogs who had earned their keep in various inns. Loë, or Weasel as she was sometimes called, or Ermine, was now said to be one of the Benign Guardians of Cashloria, who had lingered on the premises in disguise during the city’s troubles. The Robe’s return had freed her, it seemed, to go back to her own mysterious life on a distant star.

“I could sleep a million years,” said Zire. “Alas, it’s farewell now between us.”

“Perhaps neither, yet,” said Bretilf. “I’ve heard another rumor—that those villainous guards the prince is about to expel have vengefully scored our names on their swords. Will we fare better alone or in tandem?”

“Where are the horses and mules?” asked Zire, with respectable common sense.

“Below,” said Bretilf, ditto.

As they jumped from the window to the backs of bay and gray, they picked up the nearby threatening roar composed of rejoicing, rage, and river. But soon the happy pounce of hooves, blissful jingle of coins and jewels, rumble of determined mules and carts, muffled all else. Heed this, then. The more noisily and threateningly the torrent bellows below and around, the louder make your song.