The dark spirit of his nearness flows to me, laps me and enfolds me, the tide of his wanting me and his consciousness of myself is strong enough to overflow his own body and lap me warm. With two fingers he touched the cut across my cheek, made by the batwing in the Vaults. He asked me what it was, his tingling breath not leaving it while I told him. He holds my bowl to my lips, his eyes waiting for mine to come up and meet his. Yes, he wants me. He should have taken me when I was confused with gratitude. Now that I am properly alive again, the very invigoration of his own presence is making me strong enough to ignore him.

I am a spectator to life—I always feel like an interloper, an impostor posing as a human being. I think that even had I not spent my formative years enclosed in the tower, I would always have felt like this. It is invigorating and exhilarating to be with someone like Zerd—someone who is very firmly rooted in life, someone to whom my whole inner mind, should he ever discover it, would seem abnormal—and who is, in spite of his liveness, someone who is aware of all the tricks human beings employ.

Zerd is human evil.

He is not ab-human, nor sub-human, nor even superhuman. Any strong intelligent man could equal his feats of strength and brain. His ruthlessness is the root of human selfishness. He is elemental man—his skin is the same sort of

thing as the highly developed fangs of some primitive races, atavistic remnants of the earlier life of the world, signs which more civilized artificial man has long since thrown off.

I went to the chariot to sleep. He wanted me to stay with him under the trees. When I was in the chariot I had a nightmare. I woke and lay looking up. The whispers seemed too loud and well-formed to be wind in the foliage. Before dawn Zerd appeared, he said he’d seen I was awake and we could talk to pass the time. We did not talk much, I pretended to be sleepy and he stroked my hair and held me cradled against him, but as soon as he appeared the whispers had gone. His is so actual a nature that the unreal can’t be sustained near him—he comes, haunts go.

With him I get the feeling I am safe from the rest of life—but am in peril from him. He is handsome, desired by every woman, feared by soldiers, popular with mankind. Continents do shake at his tread.

A chilly, grey-skied day—when the sky can be seen.

The forests are thicker and more like jungle, with fantastic undergrowth, difficult, ridged ground and conical boulders difficult to find a way between, stony ice-cold streams that have to be forded.