Red sunlight poured in through the windows, and the cottage was warm. It was paneled in golden wood, with a fretwork painted in red and blue and brown circling the ceiling. Now the man brought more broth from the fire, bread from a locker, and placed them before her. After a moment’s hesitation, T’sais ate.
Recollection suddenly came to her; she shuddered, looked wildly around the room. The man noted her taut face. He stooped and laid a hand on her head. T’sais lay quiet, half in dread.
“You are safe here,” said the man. “Fear nothing.”
A vagueness came over T’sais. Her eyes grew heavy. She slept.
When she woke the cottage was empty, and the maroon sunlight slanted in from an opposite window. She stretched her arms, tucked her hand behind her head, and lay thinking. This man of the black hood, who was he? Was he evil? Everything else of Earth had been past thought. Still, he had done nothing to harm her … She spied her garments upon the floor. She rose from the couch and dressed herself. She went to the door and pushed it open. Before her stretched the moor, fading far off beyond the under-slant of the horizon. To her left jutted a break of rocky crags, black shadow and lurid red stones. To the right extended the black margin of the forest.
Was this beautiful? T’sais pondered. Her warped brain saw bleakness in the line of the moor, cutting harshness in the crags, and in the forest — terror.
Was this beauty? At a loss, she twisted her head, squinted. She heard footsteps, jerked about, wide-eyed, expecting anything. It was he of the black hood, and T’sais leaned back against the door-jamb.
She watched him approach, tall and strong, slow of step. Why did he wear the hood? Was he ashamed of his face? She could understand something of this, for she herself found the human face repellent — an object of watery eye, wet unpleasant apertures, spongy outgrowths.
He halted before her. “Are you hungry?”
T’sais considered. “Yes.”
“Then we will eat.”
He entered the cottage, stirred up the fire, and spitted meat. T’sais stood uncertainly in the background. She had always served herself. She felt an uneasiness: co-operation was an idea she had not yet encountered.
Presently the man arose, and they sat to eat at his table.
“Tell me of yourself,” he said after a few moments. So T’sais, who had never learned to be other than artless, told him her story, thus:
“I am T’sais. I came to Earth from Embelyon, where the wizard Pandelume created me.”
“Embelyon? Where is Embelyon? And who is Pandelume?”
“Where is Embelyon?” she repeated in puzzlement. “I don’t know. It is in a place that is not Earth. It is not very large, and lights of many colors come from the sky. Pandelume lives in Embelyon. He is the greatest wizard alive — so he tells me.”
“Ah,” the man said. “Perhaps I see …”
“Pandelume created me,” continued T’sais, “but there was a flaw in the pattern.” And T’sais stared in to the fire. “I see the world as a dismal place of horror; all sounds to me are harsh, all living creatures vile, in varying degrees — things of sluggish movement and inward filth. During the first of my life I thought only to trample, crush, destroy. I knew nothing but hate. Then I met my sister T’sain, who is as I without the flaw. She told me of love and beauty and happiness — and I came to Earth seeking these.”
The grave blue eyes studied her.
“Have you found them?”
“So far,” said T’sais in a faraway voice, “I have found only such evil as I never even encountered in my nightmares.” Slowly she told him her adventures.
“Poor creature,” he said and fell to studying her once again.
“I think I shall kill myself,” said T’sais, in the same distant voice, “for what I want is infinitely lost.” And the man, watching, saw how the red afternoon sun coppered her skin, noted the loose black hair, the long thoughtful eyes. He shuddered at the thought of this creature being lost into the dust of Earth’s forgotten trillions.
“No!” he said sharply. T’sais stared at him in surprise. Surely one’s life was one’s own, to do with as one pleased.
“Have you found nothing on Earth,” he asked, “that you would regret leaving?”
T’sais knit her brows. “I can think of nothing — unless it be the peace of this cottage.”
The man laughed. “Then this shall be your home, for as long as you wish, and I will try to show you that the world is sometimes good — though in truth —” his voice changed “— I have not found it so.”
“Tell me,” said T’sais, “what is your name? Why do you wear the hood?”
“My name? Etarr,” he said in a voice subtly harsh. “Etarr is enough of it. I wear the mask because of the most wicked woman of Ascolais — Ascolais, Almery, Kauchique — the entire world. She made my face such that I cannot abide my own sight.”
He relaxed, and gave a weary laugh. “No need for anger any more.”
“Is she alive still?”
“Yes, she lives, and no doubt still works evil on all she meets.” He sat looking into the fire. “One time I knew nothing of this. She was young, beautiful, laden with a thousand fragrances and charming playfulnesses. I lived beside the ocean — in a white villa among poplar trees. Across Tenebrosa Bay the Cape of Sad Remembrance reached into the ocean, and when sunset made the sky red and the mountains black, the cape seemed to sleep on the water like one of the ancient earth-gods … All my life I spent here, and was as content as one may be while dying Earth spins out its last few courses.
“One morning I looked up from my star-charts and saw Javanne walking through the portal. She was as young and slender as yourself. Her hair was a wonderful red, and strands fell before her shoulders. She was very beautiful, and — in her white gown — pure and innocent.
“I loved her, and she said she loved me. And she gave me a band of black metal to wear. In my blindness I clasped it to my wrist, never recognizing it for the evil rune it was. And weeks of great delight passed. But presently I found that Javanne was one of dark urges that the love of man could never quell. And one midnight I found her in the embrace of a black naked demon, and the sight twisted my mind.
“I stood back aghast. I was not seen, and I went slowly away. In the morning she came running across the terrace smiling and happy, like a child. ‘Leave me,’ I told her. ‘You are vile beyond calculation.’ She uttered a word and the rune on my arm enslaved me. My mind was my own, but my body was hers, forced to obey her words.
“And she made me tell what I had seen, and she revelled and jeered. And she put me through foul degradations, and called up things from Kalu, from Fauvune, from Jeldred, to mock and defile my body. She made me witness her play with these things, and when I pointed out the creature that sickened me the most, by magic she gave me its face, the face I wear now.”
“Can such women exist?” marvelled T’sais.
“Indeed.” The grave blue eyes studied her attentively. “At last one night while the demons tumbled me across the crags behind the hills, a flint tore the rune from my arm. I was free; I chanted a spell which sent the shapes shrieking off through the sky, and returned to the villa.
“And I met Javanne of the red hair in the great hall, and her eyes were cool and innocent. I drew my knife to stab her throat, but she said, ‘Hold! Kill me and you wear your demon-face forever, for only I know how to change it.’ So she ran blithely away from the villa, and I, unable to bear the sight of the place, came to the moors. And always I seek her, to regain my face.”
