"Hope?" cried Llorio. "When the world is done and I have been thwarted? What remains? Nothing. Neither hope nor honour nor anguish nor pain! All is gone! Ashes blow across the desert. All has been lost, or forgotten; the best and the dearest are gone. Who are these creatures who stand here so foolishly? Ildefonse? Rhialto? Vapid ghosts, mowing with round mouths! Hope! Nothing remains. All is gone, all is done; even death is in the past."

So cried out Llorio, from the passion of despair, the blood still dripping from her nose. Calanctus stood quietly, waiting till her passion spent itself.

"To Sadal Suud I will go. I have failed; I stand at bay, surrounded by the enemies of my race."

Calanctus, reaching forward, touched her face. "Call me enemy as you like! Still, I love your dear features; I treasure your virtues and your peculiar faults; and I would not have them changed save in the direction of kindliness."

Llorio took a step backward. "I concede nothing; I will change nothing."

"Ah well, it was only an idle thought. What is this blood?"

"My brain is bleeding; I used all my power to destroy this poor futile corpse. I too am dying; I taste the savor of death. Calanctus, you have won your victory at last!"

"As usual, you overshoot the mark. I have won no victory; you are not dying nor need you go off to Sadal Suud, which is a steaming quagmire infested by owls, gnats and rodents: quite unsuitable for one of your delicacy. Who would do the laundry?"

"You will allow me neither death, nor yet refuge on a new world! Is this not defeat piled on defeat?''

"Words only. Come now; take my hand and we will call a truce."

"Never!" cried Llorio. "This symbolizes the ultimate conquest, to which I will never surrender!"

"I will gladly put by the symbol for the reality. Then you shall see whether or not I am able to make good my boasts."

"Never! I submit my person to no man's pleasure."

"Then will you not at least come away with me, so that we may drink wine on the terrace of my air-castle, and look across the panorama, and speak as the words idly come to mind?"

"Never!"

"One moment!" called Ildefonse. "Before you go, be good enough to desqualmate this coterie of witches, and so spare us the effort!"

"Bah, it is no great task," said Calanctus. "Evoke the Second Retrotropic, followed by a stabilizing fixture: a matter of minutes."

"Precisely so," said Ildefonse. "This, essentially, was my plan."

Rhialto turned to Ladanque. "Bring out the witches. Rank them on the meadow."

"And the corpse?"

Rhialto spoke a spell of dissolution; the dead thing collapsed into dust.

Llorio hesitated, looking first north, then south, as if in indecision; then, turning, she walked pensively across the meadow. Calanctus followed; the two halted and stood facing each other. First Llorio spoke, then Calanctus, then Llorio; then they both looked together toward the east, and then they were gone.