After that, I went off a way into the wood, and threw up, as if I had never killed a man before. I mused drearily, as I leaned shuddering on a tree, that I might as well have used the killing Power in me for all the good I had got from restraint.

When I returned, everything was very still. Some time ago the rain had stopped, and I saw the red cat was picking a path inch by inch, through the bladed grass toward Hwenit’s body, stiff itself as a moving corpse. I watched this sight a minute, but a stirring nearby put me in mind that there was unfinished business.

Orek stared up at me, lying on his back. His mask had fallen off, or he had pulled it off. His face, like that ghost of another face, and the eyes the green eyes of that face, made my gorge rise again. No, whatever else, I could not kill this distorted image of Demizdor.

“Zrenn is dead,” I said to him.

His eyelids fluttered, and his lips. He was not less proud, but less royal than she had been.

“Did you love her?” he croaked at me. He could mean one only. He said, “I will tell you before you butcher me, I will tell you why I came to hunt you down like the stinking diseased dog that you are. Shall you listen, dog? Or will you silence me before I can tell?”

“I don’t want your life,” I said.

“Don’t you? Nor do I, filthy, mangy dog. Listen. She was better than any, fairer than any woman in Eshkorek. And you lay on her, on her white body. Shall I say what became of Demizdor? Shall you like to hear?”

“Erran,” I said, halting. My heart beat in great slow thunders, like the surf hitting the beach below.

“Erran? No. He got no chance. Did she show you the way, the old tunnel under the mountains? Yes, certainly she must have done. How did she bid you farewell? Did she kiss and cling, did you have her again, in the green slime of the passageway? Or did she curse you?”

“Get on,” I said. “If you will tell it, tell.”

“I will tell. She set you on your road. After this, she went to her chamber in Erran’s palace, and unbound the velvet cord from the draperies, and hanged herself with it.”

He was weeping. He was not shamed to weep for Demizdor.

I thought, I have surely known it all this while, known she was dead. At our parting did she not call to me and say, “You are my life”? But I could see her only as she had lived, riding her horse, steady as any brave; in our bed at sunup, golden with sleep; how she had lain with me, crying out my name; her skin, the living warmth of her. Cold now. Empty now. Rotting in some tall tomb in Eshkorek, shut in by diamond-headed nails.