Could such things be? Witchery was something which, like death, he had no more than heard of from the world beyond his world. When he was a lad in the village among the spurs of the Shining Mountains, there was the fat old woman who had grown so dreadfully thin, all in a week, and people saying it was witchery on her. The priest came with his oils, but it was too late, and she died the next day, and no one ever found the witch, if there were one. Oh, aye, there were prosecutions of witchery in town, and now the mule-driver’s wife, Lalette, the Blue Star, and he himself caught into something he did not understand and which made him afraid . . . and because he had done no more than cherish high ideals and obey orders. The pains were less, but all his muscles so immobile that they afforded no yielding to the throw of the cart, and thus piled bruise on bruise. A long ride; it must be after the meridian of the sun, though even heightened perception would not tell him if this were so, since he had lost all sense of direction in the intricacy of the turnings. The mule’s feet and cart’s tires struck paving stones, the movement became uneven, voices were audible and they were entering a town, so that Rodvard began to hope of a rescue—and with that hope, a fear of what would happen if there were no rescue. What did the man mean to do with him? He found no visible answer, for though it was evident that though the repulsive spouses were minded for murders, and himself not the first to fall into their clutches, it hardly seemed they would have fixed the mechanician’s badge on his breast in mere anticipation of disposing of a body. Droll to think of oneself as a body—an idea he did not remember having held before, ever. His mind achieved a wedding between this line of thought and the earlier one, or how it was when that urge toward the Countess Aiella had slipped out of merely playing a part into deep desire, it was the voice of body speaking to body. But it was not that way on the widow’s bed; that night it was as though a flame sprang up, to which their bodies responded last of all. Ah, Maritzl (he thought), with you also there might have been such a union of flames, to last forever and ever, only I did not know, I did not dare, before the Blue Star had bound me to this other.