"Nol Brute! Chewer of corpses!" he cried. "The deadare sacred! My dead are sacred!"

He had a scalpel in his hand then, and he slashedexpertly at the tendons, the bunches of muscle on thestraining shoulders, the soft belly, the ropes of the arteries.

Weeping, he dismembered the monster, limb by limb,and it bled and it bled, fouling the vehicle and the remains within it with its infernal animal juices, drippingand running until the whole plain was reddened andwrithing about them.

Render fell across the pulverized hood, and it wassoft and warm and dry. He wept upon it."Don't cry," she said.

He was hanging onto her shoulder then, holding hertightly, there beside the black lake beneath the moon thatwas Wedgewood. A single candle flickered upon their table, She held the glass to his lips."Please drink it.""Yes, give it to mel"

He gulped the wine that was all softness and lightness.It burned within him. He felt his strength returning."I am ..."

"—Render, the Shaper," splashed the lake."No!"

He turned and ran again, looking for the wreck. Hehad to go back, to return ..."You can't."

"I can!" he cried. "I can, if I try. ..."Yellow flames coiled through the thick air. Yellow serpents. They coiled, glowing, about bis ankles. Then throughthe murk, two-headed and towering, approached hisAdversary.

Small stones rattled past him. An overpowering odorcorkscrewed up his nose and into his head."Shaperi" came the bellow from one head."You have returned for the reckoning!" called the other.Render stared, remembering.

"No reckoning, Thaumiel," he said. "I beat you and Ichained you for—Rothman, yes, it was Rothman—thecabalist." He traced a pentagram in the air. "Return toQliphoth. I banish you.""This place be Qliphoth."

"... By Khamael, the angel of blood by the hosts ofSeraphim, in the Name of Elohim Gebor, I bid youvanish!"

"Not this time," laughed both heads.It advanced.

Render backed slowly away, his feet bound by theyellow serpents. He could feel the chasm opening behind him. The world was a jigsaw puzzle coming apart. Hecould see the pieces separating."Vanish!"The giant roared out its double-laugh.

Render stumbled.

"This way, lovel"

She stood within a small cave to his right.

He shook his head and backed toward the chasm.

Thaumiel reached out toward him.

Render toppled back over the edge.

"Charles!" she screamed, and the world shook itselfapart with her wailing.

"Then Vemichtung," he answered as he fell. "I join youin darkness."

Everything came to an end.

"I want to see Doctor Charles Render.**

"I'm sorry, that is impossible."

"But I skip-jetted all the way here. just to thank him.I'm a new man! He changed my life!"

"I'm sorry. Mister Erikson. When you called this moming, I told you it was impossible."

"Sir, I'm Representative Erikson—and Render oncedid me a great service."

*Then you can do him one now. Go home."

"You can't talk to me that way!"

"I just did. Please leave. Maybe next year sometime ..."

"But a few words can do wonders...."

"Save them!"

"I-I'm sorry... "

Lovely as it was. pinked over with the morning—the slopping, steaming bowl of the sea—he knew that it hadto end. Therefore ...

He descended the high tower stairway and he enteredthe courtyard. He crossed to the bower of roses and helooked down upon the pallet set in its midst.

"Good morrow, m'lord," he said.

"To you the same," said the knight, his blood mingling with the earth, the flowers, the grasses, flowed fromhis wound, sparkling over his armor, dripping from hisfingertips.

"Naught hath healed?"

The knight shook his head.

"I empty. I wait.""Your waiting is near ended."

"What mean you?" He sat upright.

"The ship. It approacheth harbor."

The knight stood. He leaned his back against a mossytree trunk. He stared at the huge, bearded servitor whocontinued to speak, words harsh with barbaric accents:

"It cometh like a dark swan before the wind—returning."

"Dark, say you? Dark?"

"The sails be black, Lord Tristram.*'

"You lie!"

"Do you wish to see? To see for yourself—Look then!"

He gestured, The earth quaked, the wall toppled. The dust swirledand settled. From where they stood they could see theship moving into the harbor on the wings of the night.

"No! You lied!—See! They are white!"

The dawn danced upon the waters. The shadows fledfrom the ship's sails.

"No, you fool! Black! They must be!"

"White! White!—Isolde! You have kept faith. You havereturned!"

He began running toward the harbor.

"Come back—Your wound! You are ill—Stop ..."

The sails were white beneath a sun that was a redbutton which the servitor reached quickly to touch.

Night fell.

I wrote this story on one of the blackest days in mymemory, a day of extreme wretchedness accompanied byan unusual burst of writing activity—which I encouraged, to keep from thinking about what was botheringme. I sat down and did three short stories, one afterthe other without leaving the typewriter. They were"Divine Madness," this one and "But Not the Herald."I later put the other two into my collection The Doorsof His Face. The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories(Donhteday's title—not mine; I had suggested Hearts &Flov/ers) and I would have included this one there, too,save that I could not locate a copy at the time I assembled the manuscript. I cannot be certain whether PeterDe Vries' The Blood of the Lamb was on my mind then,just a little though I know I'd read it before that time.

It was into the second year now, and it was maddening.

Everything which had worked before failed this time, Each day he tried to break it, and it resisted his everyeffort.

He snarled at his students, drove recklessly, bloodedhis knuckles against many walls. Nights, he lay awakecursing.

But there was no one to whom he could turn for help.His problem would have been non-existent to a psychiatrist. who doubtless would have attempted to treat himfor something else.

So he went 'away that summer, spent a month at a resort: nothing. He experimented with several hallucinogenic drugs; again, nothing. He tried free-associating intoa tape recorder, but all he got when he played it backwas a headache.

To whom does the holder of a blocked power turn,within a society of normal people?

... To another of his own kind, if he can locate one.

Milt Rand had known four other persons like himself: his cousin Gary, now deceased; Walker Jackson, a Negropreacher who had retired to somewhere down South; Tatya Stefanovich, a dancer, currently somewhere behind the Iron Curtain; and Curtis Legge, who, unfortunately, was suffering a schizoid reaction, paranoid type,in a state institution for the criminally insane. Othershe had brushed against in the night, but had never metand could not locate now.

There had been blockages before, but Milt had alwaysworked his way through them inside of a month. Thistime was different and special, though. Upsets, discomforts,disturbances, can dam up a talent, block a power. Asevent which seals it off completely for over a year, however, is more than a mere disturbance, discomfort or upset.

The divorce had beaten hell out of him.

It is bad enough to know that somewhere someone ishating you; but to have known the very form of thathatred and to have proven ineffectual against it, to haveknown it as the hater held it for you, to have lived withit growing around you, this is more than distastefulcircumstance. Whether you are offender or offended,when you are hated and you live within the circle ofthat hate, it takes a thing from you: it tears a piece ofspirit from your soul, or, if you prefer, a way of thinking from your mind; it cuts and does not cauterize.