“You won’t bless anything if the Wizard’s Rainbow gets hold of you,” Latigo said grimly, and swung his attention back to Jonas. “You’ll want to be even more careful taking it back than you were in giving it over. The old witch-woman’s likely under its glam by now.”

“I intend to send Rimer and Avery. Avery ain’t much of a shake, but Rimer’s a trig boy.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Latigo said.

“Won’t it?” Jonas said. His hand tightened on Coral’s leg and he smiled unpleasantly at Latigo. “Perhaps you could tell your ’umble servant why it won’t do?”

It was Coral who answered. “Because,” said she, “when the piece of the Wizard’s Rainbow Rhea holds is taken back into custody, the Chancellor will be busy accompanying my brother to his final resting place.”

“What’s she talking about, Eldred?” Depape asked.

“That Rimer dies, too,” Jonas said. He began to grin. “Another foul crime to lay at the feet of John Farson’s filthy spyboys.”

Coral smiled in sweet agreement, put her hands over Jonas’s, moved it higher on her thigh, and then picked up her knitting again.

2

The girl, although young, was married.

The boy, although fair, was unstable.

She met him one night in a remote place to tell him their affair, sweet as it had been, must end. He replied that it would never end, it was written in the stars. She told him that might be, but at some point the constellations had changed. Perhaps he began to weep. Perhaps she laughed—out of nervousness, very likely. Whatever the cause, such laughter was disastrously timed. He picked up a stone and dashed out her brains with it. Then, coming to his senses and realizing what he had done, he sat down with his back against a granite slab, drew her poor battered head into his lap, and cut his own throat as an owl looked on from a nearby tree. He died covering her face with kisses, and when they were found, their lips were sealed together with his life’s blood and with hers.

An old story. Every town has its version. The site is usually the local lovers’ lane, or a secluded stretch of riverbank, or the town graveyard. Once the details of what actually happened have been distorted enough to please the morbidly romantic, songs are made. These are usually sung by yearning virgins who play guitar or mando badly and cannot quite stay on key. Choruses tend to include such lachrymose refrains as

My-di-I-de-I-de-o, There they died together-o.