Free Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance

saw the gesture and sighed..
    Another idea occurred to her. "With all the evil you have suffered, do you still find beauty in the world?"

    "To be sure," said Etarr. "See how these moors stretch, sheer and clean, of marvellous subtle color. See how the crags rise in grandeur, like the spine of the world. And you," he gazed into her face, "you are of a beauty surpassing all."
    "Surpassing Javanne?" asked T'sais, and looked in puzzlement as Etarr laughed.
    "Indeed surpassing Javanne," he assured her.
    T'sais' brain went off at another angle.
    "And Javanne, do you wish to revenge yourself against her?"
    "No," answered Etarr, eyes far away across the moors. "What is revenge? I care nothing for it. Soon, when the sun goes out, men will stare into the eternal night, and all will die, and Earth will bear its history, its ruins, the mountains worn to knolls— all into infinite dark.
    Why revenge?"
    Presently they left the cottage and wandered across the moor, Etarr trying to show her beauty—the slow river Scaum flowing through green rushes, clouds basking in the wan sunlight over the crags, a bird wheeling on spread wings, the wide smoky sweep of Modavna Moor. And T'sais strove always to make her brain see this beauty, and always did she fail. But she had learned to check the wild anger that the sights of the world had once aroused. And her craving to kill diminished, and her face relaxed from its tense set.
    So they wandered on, each to his own thoughts. And they watched the sad glory of the sunset, and they saw the slow white stars raise in the heavens.
    "Are not the stars beautiful?" whispered Etarr through his black hood.
    "They have names older than man."
    And T'sais, finding only mournfulness in the sunset, and thinking the stars but small sparks in meaningless patterns, could not answer.
    "Surely two more unfortunate people do not exist," she sighed.
    Etarr said nothing. They walked on in silence. Suddenly he grasped her arm and pulled her low in the furze. Three great shapes went flapping across the afterglow. "The pelgrane!"
    They flew close overhead—gargoyle creatures, with wings creaking like rusty hinges. T'sais caught a glimpse of hard leathern body, great hatchet beak, leering eyes in a wizened face. She shrank against Etarr.
    The pelgrane flapped across the forest.
    Etarr laughed harshly. "You shrink from the visage of the pelgrane.
    The countenance I wear would put the pelgrane themselves to flight."
    The next morning he took her into the woods, and she found the trees mindful of Embelyon. They returned to the cottage in the early afternoon, and Etarr retired to his books.
    "I am no sorcerer," he told her regretfully. "I am acquainted with but a few simple spells. Yet I make occasional use of magic, which may ward me from danger tonight."
    "Tonight?" T'sais inquired vaguely, for she had forgotten.
    "Tonight is the Black Sabbath, and I must go to find Javanne."
    "I would go with you," said T'sais. "I would see the Black Sabbath, and Javanne also."
    Etarr assured her that the sights and sounds would horrify her and torment her brain. T'sais persisted, and Etarr finally allowed her to follow him, when two hours after sunset he set off in the direction of the crags.
    Over the heath, up scaly outcroppings, Etarr picked a way through the dark, with T'sais a slender shadow behind. A great scarp lay across their path. Into a black fissure, up a flight of stone steps, cut in the immemorial past, and out on top of the cliff, with Modavna Moor a black sea below.
    Now Etarr gestured T'sais to great caution. They stole through a gap between two towering rocks; concealed in the shadow, they surveyed the congress below.
    They were overlooking an amphitheater lit by two blazing fires. In the center rose a dais of stone, as high as a man. About the fire, about the dais, two-score figures, robed in gray monks-cloth, reeled sweatingly, their faces unseen.
    T'sais felt a premonitory chill. She looked at Etarr doubtfully.
    "Even here