She stood high upon a boulder that overhung the stream. She was dressed like a man in a tunic of soft, velvety green, cross-belted with a weapon swinging at each hip, but her hair was a fabulous mantle streaming down over her shoulders and hanging almost to her knees in a cascade of pale gold that rippled like water. A crown of pale gold leaves the color of the hair held it away from her face, and under the shining chaplet she looked down and smiled at us. Especially she smiled at me—at Edward Bond.
And her face was very lovely. It had the strength and innocence and calm serenity of a saint’s face, but there was warmth and humor in the red lips. Her eyes were the same color as her tunic, deep green, a color I had never seen before in my own world.
“Welcome back, Edward Bond,” she said in a clear, sweet gently hushed voice, as if she had spoken softly for so many years that even now she did not dare speak aloud.
She jumped down from the boulder, very lightly, moving with the sureness of a wild creature that had lived all its lifetime in the woods, as indeed I suppose she had. Her hair floated about her as lightly as a web, settling only slowly about her shoulders as she came forward, so that she seemed to walk in a halo of her own pale gold.
I remembered what the woodsman Ertu had said to me in Medea’s garden before her arrow struck him down.
“Aries could convince you, Edward! Even if you’re Ganelon, let me take you to Aries!”
I stood before Aries now. Of that I was sure. And if I had needed any conviction before that the woodsmen’s cause was mine, this haloed girl would have convinced me with her first words. But as for Ganelon—
How could I know what Ganelon would do?
That question was answered for me. Before my lips could frame words, before I could plan my next reaction, Aries came toward me, utterly without pretense or consciousness of the watching eyes. She put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the mouth.
And that was not like Medea’s kiss—no! Aries’ lips were cool and sweet, not warm with the dangerous, alluring honey-musk of the red witch. That intoxication of strange passion I remembered when I had held Medea in my arms did not sweep me now. There was a—a purity about Aries, an honesty that made me suddenly, horribly homesick for Earth.
She drew back. Her moss-green eyes met mine with quiet understanding. She seemed to be waiting.
“Aries,” I said, after a moment.
And that seemed to satisfy her. The vague question that had begun to show on her face was gone.
“I wondered,” she said. “They didn’t hurt you, Edward?”
Instinctively I knew what I had to say.
“No. We hadn’t reached Caer Secaire. If the woodsmen hadn’t attacked—well, there’d have been a sacrifice.”
Aries reached out and lifted a corner of my torn cloak, her slim fingers light on the silken fabric.
“The blue robe,” she said. “Yes, that is the color the sacrifice wears. The gods cast their dice on our side tonight, Edward. Now as for this foul thing, we must get rid of it.”
Her green eyes blazed. She ripped the cloak from me, tore it across and dropped it to the ground.
“You will not go hunting again alone,” she added. “I told you it was dangerous. But you laughed at me. I’ll wager you didn’t laugh when the Coven slaves caught you! Or was that the way of it?”
I nodded. A slow, deep fury was rising within me. So blue was the color of sacrifice, was it? My fears hadn’t been groundless. At Caer Secaire I would have been the offering, going blindly to my doom. Matholch had known, of course. Trust his wolf-mind to appreciate the joke. Edeyrn, thinking her cool, inhuman thoughts in the shadow of her hood, she had known too. And Medea?
Medea!
She had dared betray me! Me, Ganelon!
The Opener of the Gate, the Chose of Llyr, the great Lord Ganelon! They dared! Black thunder roared through my brain. I thought: By Llyr, but they’ll suffer for this! They’ll crawl to my feet like dogs. Begging my mercy!
Rage had opened the floodgates, and Edward Bond was no more than a set of thin memories that had slipped from me as the blue cloak had slipped from my shoulders—the blue cloak of the chosen sacrifice, on the shoulders of the Lord Ganelon!
I blinked blindly around the green-clad circle. How had I come here? How dared these woodsrunners stand in defiance before me? Blood roared in my ears and the woodland swam around me. When it steadied I would draw my weapon and reap these upstarts as a mower reaps his wheat.
But wait!
First, the Coven, my sworn comrades, had betrayed me. Why, why! They had been glad enough to see me when they brought me back from the other world, the alien land of Earth. The woodsmen I could slay whenever I wished it—the other problem came first. And Ganelon was a wise man. I might need these woods-people to help me in my vengeance. Afterward—ah, afterward!
I strove hard with memory. What could have happened to turn the Coven against me? I could have sworn this had not been Medea’s original intention—she had welcomed me back too sincerely for that. Matholch could have influenced her, but again, why, why? Or perhaps it was Edeyrn, or the Old One himself, Ghast Rhymi.-In any case, by the Golden Window that opens on the Abyss, they’d learn their error!
“Edward!” a woman’s voice, sweet and frightened, came to me as if from a great distance. I fought my way up through a whirlpool of fury and hatred. I saw a pale face haloed in floating hair, the green eyes troubled. I remembered.
Beside Aries stood a stranger, a man whose cold gray eyes upon mine provided the shock I needed to bring me back to sanity. He looked at me as if he knew me—knew Ganelon. I had never seen the man before.
He was short and sturdy, young-looking in spite of the gray flecks in his close-cropped beard. His face was tanned so deeply it had almost the color of the brown earth. In his close-fitting green suit he was the perfect personification of a woodsrunner, a glider through the forest, unseen and dangerous. Watching the powerful flex of his muscles when he moved, I knew he would be a bad antagonist. And there was deep antagonism in the way he looked at me.
A white, jagged scar had knotted his right cheek, quirking up his thin mouth so that he wore a perpetual crooked, sardonic half-grin. There was no laughter in those gelid gray eyes, though.
And I saw that the circle of woodsmen had drawn back, ringing us, watching.
The bearded man put out his arm and swept Aries behind him. Unarmed, he stepped forward, toward me.
“No, Lorryn,” Aries cried. “Don’t hurt him.”
Lorryn thrust his face into mine.
“Ganelon!” he said.
And at the name a whisper of fear, of hatred, murmured around the circle of woodsfolk. I saw furtive movements, hands slipping quietly toward the hilts of weapons. I saw Aries’ face change.
The old-time cunning of Ganelon came to my aid.
“No,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “I’m Bond, all right. It was the drug the Coven gave me. It’s still working.”
“What drug?”
“I don’t know,” I told Lorryn. “It was in Medea’s wine that I drank. And the long journey tonight has tired me.”
I took a few unsteady paces aside and leaned against the boulder, shaking my head as though to clear it. But my ears were alert. The low murmur of suspicion was dying.
Cool fingers touched mine.
“Oh, my dear,” Aries said, and whirled on Lorryn. “Do you think I don’t know Edward Bond from Ganelon? Lorryn, you’re a fool!”
“If the two weren’t identical, we’d never have switched them in the first place,” Lorryn said roughly. “Be sure, Aries. Very sure!”
Now the whispering grew again. “Better to be sure,” the woodsmen murmured. “No risks, Aries! If this is Ganelon, he must die.”
