" 'Greensleeves,' " she said, "the organ is playing 'Greensleeves.' "

"So it is. You can't blame me for that though.—Observethe scalloped capitals—"

"I want to go nearer to the music."

"Very well. This way then."

Render felt that something was wrong. He could notput his finger on it.

Everything retained its solidity....

Something passed rapidly then, high above the cathe-dral, uttering a sonic boom. Render smiled at that, remembering now; it was like a slip of the tongue: for amoment he had confused EUeen with JiU—yes, that waswhat had happened.

Why, then ...

A burst of white was the altar. He had never seen itbefore, anywhere. All the walls were dark and coldabout them. Candles nickered in corners and high niches.The organ chorded thunder under invisible hands.

Render knew that something was wrong.

He turned to Eileen Shallot, whose hat was a greencone towering up into the darkness, trailing wisps ofgreen veiling. Her throat was in shadow, but...

"That necklace—Where?"

"I don't know," she smiled.

The goblet she held radiated a rosy light. It was reflected from her emerald. It washed him like a draft ofcool air.

"Drink?" she asked.

"Stand still," he ordered.

He willed the walls to fall down. They swam in shadow.

"Stand still!" he repeated urgently. "Don't do anything. Try not even to think.

"—Fall down!" he cried. And the wails were blastedin all directions and the roof was flung over the top of theworld, and they stood amid ruins lighted by a singletaper. The night was black as pitch.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, still holding thegoblet out toward him.

"Don't think. Don't think anything," he said. "Relax.You are very tired. As that candle nickers and wanesso does your consciousness. You can barely keep awake.You can hardly stay on your feet. Your eyes are- closing.There is nothing to see here anyway."

He willed the candle to go out. It continued to burn.

"I'm not tired. Please have a drink."

He heard organ music through the night. A differenttune, one he did not recognize at first.

"1 need your cooperation."

"All right. Anything."

"Look! The moon!" he pointed She looked upward and the moon appeared from behindan inky cloud.

"... And another, and another." Moons, like strung pearls, proceeded across the blackness.

"The last one will be red," he stated.

It was.

He reached out then with his right index finger, slidhis arm sideways along his field of vision, then tried totouch the red moon.

His arm ached, it burned. He could not move it,

"Wake up!" he screamed.

The red moon vanished, and the white ones.

"Please take a drink."

He dashed the goblet from her hand and turned away.When he turned back she was still holding it before him.

"A drink?"

He turned and fled into the night It was like running through a waist-high snowdrift. Itwas wrong. He was compounding the error by runninghe was minimizing his strength, maximizing hers. It wassapping his energies, draining him.

He stood still in the midst of the blackness.

"The world around me moves," he said. "I am its center."

"Please have a drink." she said, and he was standingin the glade beside their table set beside the lake. Thelake was black and the moon was silver, and high, andout of his reach. A single candle flickered on the table,making her hair as silver as her dress. She wore the moonon her brow. A bottle of Romanee-Conti stood on thewhite cloth beside a wide-brimmed wine glass. It wasfilled to overflowing, that glass, and rosy beads clung toits lip. He was very thirsty, and she was lovelier thananyone he had ever seen before, and her necklacesparkled, and the breeze came cool off the lake, andthere was something—something he should remember... .

He took a step toward her and his armor clinkedlightly as he moved. He reached toward the glass andhis right arm stiffened with pain and fell back to his side.

"You are wounded!"

Slowly, he turned his head. The blood flowed from theopen wound in his biceps and ran down his arm anddripped from his fingertips. His armor had been breached.He forced himself to look away.

"Drink this, love. It will heal you."

She stood."I will hold the glass."

He stared at her as she raised it to his lips.

"Who am I?" he asked.

She did not answer him, but something replied—withina splashing of waters out over the lake:

"You are Render, the Shaper."

"Yes, I remember," he said; and turning his mind tothe one He which might break the entire illusion heforced his mouth to say: "Eileen Shallot, I hate you."

The world shuddered and swam about him, was shaken,as by a huge sob.

"Charles!" she screamed, and the blackness swept overthem.

"Wake up! Wake up!" he cried, and his right arm burnedand ached and bled in the darkness.

He stood alone in the midst of a white plain. It wassilent, it was endless. It sloped away toward the edgesof the world. It gave off its own light, and the sky wasno sky, but was nothing overhead. Nothing. He was alone.His own voice echoed back to him from the end of theworld: "... hate you," it said, "... hate you."

He dropped to his knees. He was Render.

He wanted to cry.

A red moon appeared above the plain, casting a ghastlylight over the entire expanse. There was a wall of mountains to the left of him, another to his right.

He raised his right arm. He helped it with his left hand,He clutched his wrist, extended his index finger. Hereached for the moon.

Then there came a howl from high in the mountains, agreat wailing cry—half-human, ali challenge, all loneliness and all remorse. He saw it then, treading upon themountains, its tail brushing the snow from their highestpeaks, the ultimate loupgarou of the North—Fern-is, sonof Loki—raging at the heavens.

It leaped into the air. It swallowed the moon.

It landed near him, and its great eyes blazed yellow.It stalked him on soundless pads, across the cold whitefields that lay between the mountains; and he backedaway from it, up hills and down slopes, over crevassesand rifts, through valleys, past stalagmites and pinnacles—under the edges of glaciers, beside frozen river beds,and always downwards—until its hot breath bathed himand its laughing mouth was opened above him.He turned then and his feet became two gleamingrivers carrying him away.

The world jumped backward. He glided over the slopes,Downward. Speeding—

Away...

He looked back over his shoulder.

In the distance, the gray shape loped after him.

He felt that it could narrow the gap if it chose. He hadto move faster.

The world reeled about him. Snow began to falL

He raced on.

Ahead, a blur, a broken outline.

He tore through the veils of snow which now seemedto be falling upward from off the ground—like stringsof bubbles.

He approached the shattered form.

Like a swimmer he approached—unable to open hismouth to speak for fear of drowning—of drowning andnot knowing, of never knowing.

He could not check his forward motion; he was swepttide-like toward the wreck. He came to a stop, at last,before it.

Some things never change. They are things which havelong ceased to exist as objects and stand solely as never-tobe-calendared occasions outside that sequence of elementscalled Time.

Render stood there and did not care if Fenris leapedupon his back and ate his brains. He had covered hiseyes, but he could not stop the seeing. Not this time. Hedid not care about anything. Most of himself lay deadat his feet.

There was a howl. A gray shape swept past him.

The baleful eyes and bloody muzzle rooted within thewrecked car, chomping through the steel, the glass, groping inside for .. .