Banana Tree Ghost

"And was the article efficacious?" the traveler asked, hiding a smile.

The Shebya spread his hands. "Sir, that is not for me to determine. Suffice it to say that tomorrow will

tell; for the sake of insurance, as it were, against the risk that the purchaser may prove inadequately skilled in conjuration to extract maximum benefit from the acquisition, I suppose to be some distance hence." His mask of annoyance, willy-nilly, gave place to a grin; it was granted by everyone that, rogues though the Shebyas might be, they were at least engaging rogues.

"Howbeit," he appended, "take my advice. Don't go to Garch expecting to sell him remarkable and unique artifacts or data at such price as will ensure comfort to your old age. Apart from all else, the mansion is in a turmoil. Someone, so to speak, would appear to have laden the thegn's codpiece with live ants, and he gibbers like a man distraught, ordering all who displease him to be shortened by the head without appeal. Another excellent reason for departure-which, sir, if you will forgive the briefness of this conversation, inclines me forthwith to resume my journey."

After he and his companions had gone, the traveler remained. The air thickened still further. It felt almost resistant to the limbs, like milk turned with an admixture of rennet. Lost on a high outcrop, a kid bleated hopelessly for its nanny. Chill that one might have mistaken for agonizing frost laid a tight hold on the land, yet no pools crisped with ice. The traveler frowned and waited longer still.

Over the high tower of the mansion, at last, the coffin-black of night started to appear: solid-seeming blotches on the sky. At roughly the same time, there were noises to be heard along the road again, coming from the direction opposite to that which the Shebya and his troupe had taken. Into sight came a party of hurrying men on horseback, full-armed, glancing apprehensively at the gathering dark. Some had equipped themselves with torches, and kept making motions towards their flint and steel.

In their midst, tied face to tail on a dirty donkey, was Buldebrime moaning and crying out, hands lashed at his back and his grease-stiff smock badly torn.

Some distance behind, unable to keep pace, a furious driver cursed a pair of shaggy-fetlocked horses drawing a cart loaded until the springs sagged with candles, lamps, and articles in bags which could not clearly be discerned.

Of itself, the parade might have been amusing. Given the circumstances which had led to it, the traveler could not find it other than appalling.

The darkness spread, and yet it did not move. Rather, it occurred, moment by moment, at places further from its source.

VI

"Be calm!" Lady Scail for the latest of countless times adjured her brother.

"Be calm?" he echoed, mocking her. "How can I be? Are not they deserting us, the traitors, deserting me who gave them prosperity from this lean harsh country and made them the envy of folk in richer lands?"

It was true: news came every' few minutes of some trusted serving-man, soldier or steward who had surreptitiously crept away from the household.

"Is it not, moreover," he pursued, "the night before full moon? Is it not nearing midnight of that night? Must I not shortly go into the prescribed retreat? And how can we tell as yet how greatly we've been deceived by Buldebrime? Perhaps he miscalibrated our time-candles, so we'll have no means to tell the proper hour!"

Admittedly, it was impossible to make astronomic observations under nights as black as these.

Nonetheless, she blasted the same injunction at him, saying, "You fool, you have to keep your head at any cost! How many enchanters have not gone to doom because an elemental took advantage of just that weakness in their character?"

Sweating, gulping draught after draught of wine to lend him courage, he did his best to comply, since reason was on her side. However, self-mastery was hard. The mansion, and not only that but the entire surrounding countryside, was aquiver. The jagged range of Cleftor Heights was thrumming to a soundless vibration of menace, as though one of the beings incarcerated in a restless star had found the means to transmit terror down a shaft of light and struck the bedrock into resonating the keynote of a symphony of disaster, against the advent of the instrumentalists.