"Thou art Albertus," Magnus whispered. "And this lad is not my brother Gregory, but thy sib Vidor!"

"Even so," the doppelganger grated. "Get thee back to thine own world, find thine own place, and leave me to mine!"

Vidor looked up at Albertus, pleading. "I would not have him harmed-yet I would not see thee in bondage, neither. Canst thou not see what he doth not? Canst thou not see thou shalt be demeaned, a lord's heir debased to the role of a footman? Hast thou no pride?"

Magnus discovered, to his dismay, that he had not. Small wonder that Albertus had none, either.

"Thou shalt not take him from me." The Queen was there, slipping between himself and Albertus, hiding Vidor from his gaze, and her eyes were all that he could see again, her eyes with her face about them. "I have told thee aforetime, 'tis thine own yearning that doth hold thee in my service. Dost thou not still wish it?" She swayed closer, eyes halfclosing. "Nay, if thou hast doubts, thou must needs kiss my mouth-yet if thou wilt partake of the embrace of my lips, thou must not miss my fair body, hips, breasts, and thighsaye, all of me, all shall be given thee, that thou mayest say thou hast lain with a lady of Faerie." Close, so close, and her lips still parted from her words, parting more, closing with his....

A cry of agony, almost despair-then something slammed into him, knocked him rolling. Magnus swung up to his feet with a roar of anger, and saw himself fastened deeply to the faerie queen mouth to mouth, arms coming up about one another, hip pressing to hip, bodies moving to a music that only they could hear ...

...a music that began to sound where others could hear it, as the faerie musicians began their melody, taking their rhythm from the embracing couple before them, and all about, faerie men and women paired up to imitate their actions.

"She careth not," Magnus whispered, his anger turned to bitter despair. "She careth not whose lips she doth press, whose body she doth caress, whether it be his or mine!"

"Mayhap," said a voice at his elbow, and he looked down to discover Gregory-no, Vidor, he remembered. "Yet be mindful, she came a long and twining road to seek thee first."

"Yet doth not care if she doth find him instead," Magnus grated. Then realization swept him; his eyes widened. "Yet she could not, could she? He held aloof; he was beyond her power! Cold Iron protected him, and thy father's spells!"

"More my mother's," Vidor returned. "And he could hold aloof from the Faerie Folk, so long as he knew they would ever welcome him." He looked up at his brother sadly. "Yet when he realized thou wast here in his place, and the Faerie Queen no longer burned to possess him, then was he cast into despair, for the final road that he might take for solace in this world had closed to him."

"And therefore did he batter at the portal, and enter by force, where before he had resisted the temptation of the invitation," Magnus concluded.

Then he whirled toward the gyrating couple, howling, "Yet I wish it too! Where now shall I turn for nepenthe!" Albertus broke off from the kiss, looking up at him with a cold and implacable glare; his voice started as a groan that rose to speech, and Magnus trembled with dread as he heard the words of the old incantation: "What dost thou here, what dost thou here? Seekest thou mine end? Thou art not to be taking my place, my place here in my world; for these, these are mine, and get thee gone, get thee gone to thine own place and time, get thee hence!"

The maelstrom seized Magnus, whipping him about and away with the cry of despair on his lips, the cry that there was no Faerie Queen in his own reality. But the Void swallowed up his words as the power of the young warlock's mind unleashed the tension of the warp in space-time that his mind had twisted, and in its unleashing spun Magnus about and about, stars blurred to streaks, a roaring of white noise in his ears, filling all of creation....

Then it diminished, and the whirling slowed, stopped; the roaring faded away to a hiss of static, and was gone. Dizzy and nauseous, Magnus clung to the surface that had come up beneath him, found his fingers were clenched into grass, saw the streaks coalescing again into lights ...

The lights of the stars of Gramarye.

Trembling, he lifted his hands carefully, most carefully, but found that he still remained on Earth-and relief at his escape welled up in him, but clashed against sorrow at losing the magical kingdom. He lowered his eyes ...

And saw his clothes.

They lay in a heap near him, sword and dagger glinting in the moonlight. Of course; if Albertus had banished him as not belonging to Tir Chlis, his clothes would have been banished, also.

Which meant ...

Looking down, Magnus discovered he was quite naked. Of course; the coat of the even cloth, and the velvet shoes, had remained in their own proper place. Albertus wore them now, without a doubt, and wore them in Magnus's place by the Faerie Queen....

In the balance, he wasn't sure he was glad of it.

But he shivered in the night's chill, and reached out to take up the clothing of this mundane world.

He had pulled on his breeches when he finally realized he was not alone.

Turning about, he saw his little brother sitting there beneath the Eildon tree, eyes closed, legs folded, back ramrod straight.

Suddenly, Magnus understood a great deal. He pulled on his doublet and said softly, "Wake now, Gregory. Ope thine eyes, little brother. I am well; I am come home again."

Eyelids fluttered; the teenager looked up, staring, a little wild-eyed. Then he reached out, touching his brother's arm. "Thou art loosed!"

"Aye." Magnus patted the hand gently. "Thou hast given me rescue, my brother. I am free." In a few years, he might be happy about it. "Thou hast quite ably held ope one end of the road that could bring me back. Yet how didst thou know where I'd gone?"

"I sought with my mind, as I do every night," Gregory answered. Magnus nodded; he had long known that his little brother could not sleep unless he knew where every member of his family was-the legacy, no doubt, of his babyhood abandonment by his parents and siblings, when they had all been kidnapped to Tir Chlis.

"I sought," Gregory explained, "and could not find thee."

"Surely thou hast not kept vigil ever since!"

"It hath not been so long as that," Gregory assured him, gaze drifting. "Nay, and this trance hath restored me even as sleep doth."

"And how didst thou track me?"

"Why, I knew where thou wert yestere'en, so I went to the marge of the stream and touched soil and rock, till I found traces of thee."

Magnus's eyes widened; he had not known Gregory shared his own mixed blessing of psychometry, the ability to "read" the residue of emotions left in inanimate objects. "So thou didst track me by the echoes of my feelings? Eh! Little brother! I would not have had thee share mine agonies so!"

"I could bear it." But the paleness of the youth's face made clear how deeply the experience had shaken him. "Yet I was grieved to find thee so sorely wounded in thine heart, and shocked to find..." He broke off, looking away.

"Shocked to learn that even I, the eldest, might feel I had failed?" Magnus asked softly. "Shocked that even I might feel my life had been to no purpose?" He cast about for something reassuring to say, but could only manage, "All men feel so at some time or another, little brother. Being eldest, and accustomed to command and achievement, doth not make me immune." And, with a shock, he realized that was true.

"I had not known," Gregory muttered.

Magnus nodded. "Big brothers, too, are human, my lad." And some, he reflected, were more human than others. "But how thou couldst perceive thyself as failing, when thou dost succeed in aught thou dost attempt-!"