“We have, and you spoke the truth. Yet I must ask you again, Simon — what are you? On the sea road you felt out that ambush before the Power warned me. Yet you are a man!” For the first time her self-possession was shaken. “You know what is done here — you feel it!”

“No. I only know that there is something here that I can not see — yet it exists.” He gave her the truth once again.

“That is it!” She beat her fists together. “You should not feel such things, and yet you do! I play a part here. I do not always use the Power, that is, greater power than my own experience in reading men and women, in guessing shrewdly what lies within their hearts or are their desires. Three quarters of my gift is illusion; you have seen that at work. I summon no demons, toll nothing here from another world by my spells, which are said mainly to work upon the minds of those who watch for wonders. Yet there is the Power and sometimes it comes to my call. Then I can work what are indeed wonders. I can smell out disaster, though I may not always know what form it will take. So much can I do — and that much is real! I swear to it by my life!”

“That I believe,” Simon returned. “For in my world, too, there were things which could not be explained with any sober logic.”

“And you had your women to do such things?”

“No, it came to either sex there. I have had men under my command who had foreknowledge of disaster, of death, their own or others’. Also I have known houses, old places, in which something lurked which was not good to think about, something which could not be seen or felt any more than we can now see or feel what is with us here.”

She watched him now with undisguised wonder. Then her hand moved in the air, sketching between them some sign. And that blazed for an instant in fire hanging in space.

“You saw that?” Was that an accusation or triumphant recognition? He did not have time to discover which, for, sounding through the house was the note of a gong.

“Aldis! And she will have guards with her!” The witch crossed the room to rip open that panel where Koris had stored the ax. “In with you,” she ordered. “They will search the house as they always do, and it would be better if they do not know of your presence.”

She allowed him no time for protest, and Simon found himself cramped into space much too small. Then the panel was slammed shut. Only it was more spyhole than cupboard, he discovered. There were openings among the carvings, which gave him air to breath and sight of the room.