Free Elder Isles 2: The Green Pearl by Jack Vance Page A

they find you dangling in a tree, or catching frogs in the moat?”
    “They will think that they do not want to marry me, which is exactly to my taste.”
    At this, Dame Flora aimed a spank at Glyneth’s bottom, but Glyneth dodged nimbly aside. “That is the art of agility.”
    “Shameless little hussy, you will come to a bad end!” Flora spoke without heat, and indeed she was grinning to herself. A moment later, for a special treat, she gave Glyneth a dish of lemon cakes.
    Glyneth wore her curling golden hair loose, or tied with a black ribbon. While apparently artless, she sometimes indulged in games of mild flirtation, which she played as a kitten pretends the predacity of the jungle. Often she used Aillas as the subject of her experiments, until Aillas, gritting his teeth and turning his eyes to the sky, by main force of will drew back lest he take the game into an area where relationships might forever be altered.
    Sometimes, lying abed of nights, he wondered what went on in Glyneth’s mind, and how serious she was in her play. Always at these times other images came to disturb him.
    These were no longer dreary recollections of the secret garden at Haidion. Suldrun had long become a misty shape lost and gone across the gulfs of time. Another more vital figure marched through Aillas’ mind. Her name was Tatzel; she was Ska, and she lived at Castle Sank in North Ulfland. Tatzel’s style was unique. She was slim as a wand, with dark hair hanging loose past her ears; her complexion, like that of all the Ska, was pale olive; her eyes glowed with intelligence. Aillas had seen her most usually striding along the main gallery of the castle, looking neither right nor left. She took no notice of Aillas; as a slave, he was of less concern to her than a chair.
    Aillas could not easily define his feelings toward Tatzel. There was resentment and challenge, generated by his abraded self-esteem, but other more subtle yearnings had brought him queer little pangs whenever she walked past unseeing; he wanted to step forward to where she must stop to notice him, to look into his eyes and take heed of his own prideful being. Never could he have dared to touch her; she would have instantly cried out for the guards and Aillas would have been dragged away in disgrace, perhaps even to the gelding-board and a future too awful to contemplate, with both his manhood and all hope of Tatzel’s good opinion forever lost and gone.
    When finally Aillas had escaped Castle Sank in company with Cargus and Yane, he had turned at one point, and, looking back, had muttered: “Tatzel, take heed! Someday we shall meet again, and on different terms, so it may be!” And such was the phantom haunting Aillas’ mind.

II
    AFTER PASSING THE NIGHT AT HAG HARBOUR, and at noon crossing over Green Man’s Gap, Aillas and Tristano late in the afternoon rode clattering across the drawbridge and into the stable-yard at Watershade. Dhrun and Glyneth ran out to greet them, followed by Weare, Flora and others of the household, while Shimrod waited in the shadow of the arched passage leading out upon the terrace.
    Shimrod, while wandering the Daul countryside as ‘Doctor Fidelius. Charlatan and Mender of Sore Knees’, had befriended a pair of vagabond children named Dhrun and Glyneth, and thereafter the three had traveled together. Across the years Shimrod had changed little. A long nose, crooked mouth and gaunt cheeks gave his face a droll cast; he retained his spare physique, pale gray eyes under half-closed lids, and as ever wore his light brown hair cut short in the peasant style. See LYONESSE 1: Suldrun’s Garden.
    The travelers retired to their chambers to refresh themselves, then came down to the terrace, where Weare served the best supper his larders could afford, and the company sat long while the afterglow faded and dusk became night.
    Tristano told of the green pearl and its sinister infection. “I am baffled by the power of the object! It seemed a true