“You brought ruin on me!” cried the double voice. “You wrecked my castle and my life! You must die and all your kind with you!”
The eyes caught Miller’s in a drowning stare. He could not look away, and the eyes were growing larger and larger, engulfing him in darkness and in the darkness the madness of two minds swirled terribly, carrying away his own sanity on those dreadful, reasonless vortices. …
Miller could no longer see Orelle but he heard her moan, a soft whimper of helpless terror. “I can’t—help you,” she was saying from far away. “I can’t fight the two of them. Llesi—Llesi—where are you?”
For a moment there was no answer. The mad twin-mind buffeted at Miller’s from both sides at once, pulling it asunder, spinning in two opposite directions and straining him apart between them. No single mind could withstand the doubled strength of that split brain dragging him down to madness. …
And then, suddenly, he was not fighting alone. Out of the darkness Llesi’s mind came swiftly, intangibly, yet with a strength as if the man himself had set his shoulder against Miller’s, bracing him against the whirlpool whose vortex led down to insanity.
Perhaps no other mind in existence could have stood against the riven mind of Brann-Tsi. But in Miller’s brain too a double mind had been housed—his own and Llesi’s. They had learned to work together. And now they could fight. …
There was a voiceless scream of fury—Brann’s thin, high, sweet-toned rage. And the buffeting redoubled from two sides at once. But now there were two minds to meet the attack. Miller drew a deep breath and set himself stubbornly against the whirling drag that was pulling him down to darkness. He could feel the strong resistance of Llesi’s mind, fighting beside his own, struggling hard against the double pull.
For a timeless moment the vortex held them both. In that roaring silence, while madness raved about them, neither side seemed able to shake the others. Attacker and attacked stood matched so perfectly that the balance might have held forever with the fury of the split mind screaming its soundless cry in infinity.
Then the scream shivered up to a peak of madness that no sane mind could sustain. And while the vortex still rang with it …
The robed figure on the dais moved suddenly. Miller’s blindness lifted again. He could see the dark robe stream back from Tsi’s rainbow garments as she plunged down the steps toward the crystal block, where the halo of the Power turned in its singing silence.
A bolt of the mind reached out before her toward the halo—a summoning bolt. One quivering thought shook the air of the room. Death was the thought. Tsi and Brann could not live together in the same brain and face the knowledge of their oneness. There was no choice but death for them now.
The bolt of white lightning blazed up to meet that plunging figure in answer to its summons. Blazed up and swallowed Tsi—and Brann.
There was a shimmer in the air where the body and the twin mind had hovered. And then—nothing. …
IX
Fairy Gold
Miller found himself sitting on the broken marble steps with his head in his hands. How long a time had passed he had no idea. Orelle’s touch on his shoulder made him look up at last. She was smiling a little but her eyes were grave.
“Are you all right now?” she asked. “You’re safe. We’re all safe, thanks to you. I’m glad I’ve never known your world if you could understand a thing like that—that madness. But I’m glad you did understand it—for our sakes. You saved us, Miller. You can ask your own reward.”
He looked at her groggily, thinking with incongruous steadiness that he was probably suffering from shock now and not really responsible. But he glanced involuntarily toward the crystal block of the Power.
Orelle’s smile was sad. “Yes,” she said, “we can make you a duplicate if you ask us. But it would be effort wasted in the end.”
He stared at her, not understanding. Then his eyes went beyond her to the shattered wall and the beautiful shining day outside. New senses were burgeoning in him and he could sense in that glittering sunlight colors and sounds and glories beyond anything words could tell.
The air was a tangible thing against his cheek, velvet soft, sweeter than perfume. He was beginning to perceive new shapes moving dimly on the edge of vision, as if there were a whole unknown world just now slowly unveiling before his freshly opened eyes.
Miller laughed suddenly. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I must be stupid, not to have seen it until now. Of course I won’t want a duplicate of the Power. Why should I? I’m not going back to Slade. I’d be crazy if I left a paradise like this. What good would a duplicate do me when I’m staying on here—forever!”
Orelle shook her shining head. Her eyes were very sad. In a gentle voice she began to speak. And Llesi’s voice, gentle too in the dimness of his mind, spoke with her.
Very quietly they told him the truth.
“So you know now it was fairy gold,” the Belgian said, sliding the bottle across the table. “Well, I could not have made you believe. You had to experience it yourself.”
Miller looked at nothing.
Van Hornung glanced toward the fire, shivered and reached out a stubby finger toward the dull cube on the table between them.
“Drink,” he said.
Slowly Miller obeyed. There was a long silence.
Finally Van Hornung said, “It is—still the same up there? The castles and the wonderful people and the—colors? But it would be. The colors—I was an artist once. I think the colors meant most to me. There were so many we do not know.”
“Orelle told me,” Miller said dully. “I wouldn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her.”
“There are the legends, Miller,” Van Hornung said. “You and I aren’t the first. We won’t be the last. There have
