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to your beauty. Will you accept this friendship?"
Umphred's voice became soft and unctuous. "Even though the emotion is warmer
and dearer than simple friendship?"
Suldrun laughed drearily. She rose to her feet and pointed at the gate. "Sir,
you have my leave to go. I hope that you will not return." She turned and
descended into the garden. Brother Umphred muttered a curse and departed.
Suldrun sat beside the lime tree and looked out over the sea. "I
wonder," she asked herself, "what will become of me? I am beautiful, so
everyone says, but it has brought me only bane. Why am I punished, as if I had
done wrong? Somehow I must bestir
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- - - - Vance uses many footnotes in this volume myself; I must make a
change."
After her evening meal she wandered down to the ruined villa, where she liked
best, on clear nights, to watch the stars. Tonight they showed an
extraordinary brilliance and seemed to address themselves to her, like
wonderful children brimming with secrets... She rose to her feet and stood
listening. Imminence hung in the air; its meaning she could not decide.
The night breeze became cool; Suldrun retreated up through the garden. In the
chapel, coals yet smouldered in the fireplace.
Suldrun blew them ablaze, lay on dry driftwood and the room became warm.
In the morning, wakening very early, she went out into the dawn.
Dew lay heavy on foliage and grass; the silence had a primitive quality.
Suldrun went down through the garden, slow as a sleepwalker, down to the
beach. Surf boomed up the shingle. The sun, rising, colored far clouds at the
opposite horizon. At the southern curve of the beach, where currents brought
driftwood, she noticed a human body which had floated in on the tide. Suldrun
halted, then approached, step by step, and stared down in horror, which
quickly became pity. What tragedy, that so cold a death had taken one so
young, so wan, so comely...A wave stirred the young man's legs. His fingers
spasmodically extended, clawed into the shingle. Suldrun dropped to her knees,
pulled the body up from the water. She brushed back the sodden curls. The
hands were bloody;
the head was bruised. "Don't die," whispered Suldrun. "Please don't die!"
The eyelids flickered; eyes, glazed and filmed with sea-water, looked up at
her, then closed.
Suldrun dragged the body up into dry sand. When she tugged the right shoulder
he emitted a sad sound. Suldrun ran to the chapel, brought back coals and dry
wood, and built up a fire. She wiped the cold face with a cloth. "Don't die,"
she said again and again.
His skin began to warm. Sunlight shone over the cliffs and down upon the
beach. Aillas opened his eyes once more and wondered if
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- - - - Vance uses many footnotes in this volume indeed he had died, and now
roamed the gardens of paradise with the most beautiful of all golden-haired
angels to tend him.
Suldrun asked: "How do you feel?"
"My shoulder hurts." Aillas moved his arm. The twinge of pain assured him that
he still lived. "Where is this place?"
"This is an old garden near Lyonesse Town. I am Suldrun." She touched his
shoulder. "Do you think it's broken?"
"I don't know."
"Can you walk? I can't carry you up the hill."
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Aillas tried to rise, but fell. He tried again, with Suldrun's arm around his
waist, and stood swaying.
"Come now, I'll try to hold you."
Step by step they climbed up through the garden. At the ruins they stopped to
rest. Aillas said weakly, "I must tell you that I am
Troice. I fell from a ship. If I am captured I will be put in prison at the
very least."
Suldrun laughed. "You are already in a prison. Mine. I am not allowed to
leave. Don't worry; I will keep you safe."
She helped him to his feet; at last they reached the chapel.
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