In June, the red rose is in bloom, But that was no flower for me, For I plucked at the bud, And it pricked me to blood, And I gazed on the willow tree."

"The willow, symbol of lovers' sadness?" Thyme sighed. "All, well could it be mine!

"What! Do I see the trace of melancholy on thy features?" The faun hopped up to her. "it must be erased-for a face so fair must not be careworn!

She glanced his way, her gloom lessened by the flattery; but she said "Why, what are you to speak so? Consider with care, foolish boy, for you are but a kid!"

"Mayhap, but I am a goat withal." A mischievous grin touched his lips. "Be mindful, sweet wanton-I will grow on you."

"Not if I can prevent it." She made a shooing gesture, irritated.

"Begone, irksome child!"

"Alack-a-day!" The faun looked up at me. "Can you not aid, Wizard?

"Could be," I said.

"Oh, it's very good drinking of ale, But it's far better drinking of wine.

I would she were clasped In her lover's arms fast, For 'tis he who has stolen her, ThymeYes, 'tis he who has stolen our Thyme."

"What nonsense do you rhyme?" Thyme demanded, nettled, but the faun lifted the panpipes to his lips and began to blow.

It was a melody amazingly sweet, but also sad, weighted with a longing beyond his apparent years, and it conjured up words to match it, not quite clearly enough to voice, hovering just on the verge of consciousness, telling a tale of unrequited desire and aching yearning.

Thyme looked up, staring in surprise.

The faun began to weave from side to side, then to move his hooves in a slow dance.

Thyme followed him with her gaze, mesmerized. The lines of sadness disappeared from her face, and she began to sway in time to the music.

I reached out and grabbed one of the tree trunks that made up the bower. That music was getting to me, working its way inside and initiating its own ache in me, from heart to loins.

Thyme's swaying grew broader; she began to move her feet, following the pattern of the faun's dance. The music thrilled with hope, and the faun's movements grew more suggestive. Thyme followed, hips swaying more broadly, body curving and retreating, her eyelids growing heavy, a knowing smile curving her lips.

Behind me, somebody moaned; I recognized Frisson's voice.

Now the two were as close as dancers in a ballroom, weaving and swaying, advancing and retreating. All signs of care were gone from Thyme's face, and a musky scent was beginning to tinge the air. The dancers moved in unison, as if a single mind animated both bodies.

out of the corner of my eye, I saw Frisson staring with eyes so wide that the whites showed all around, his face one instant from madness.

Thyme reached up to the brooch that held her dress fastened.

"Time to go." I grabbed Frisson and tugged, but he was rooted to the spot. I cried, "Gilbert! Help me!"

The squire shook himself, coming out of his trance. He flushed deep red, nodded, and took Frisson's other arm.

"Lift," I told him, and together we hoisted the poet's frozen form and moved toward the door. An agonized sound started in his throat, slid up to his mouth, and out his lips: "Noooooo!"

"Keep going," I said through clenched teeth.

"Nymph, keep me!" Frisson begged. "Use me, debase me-but keep me!"

She didn't even glance his way; her gaze was transfixed on the faun, her face glowing, her fingers fumbling with the brooch.

"Sweet nymph, farewell!" the monk murmured, and ducked out the door.

Frisson gave a horrible groan as we pulled him through the portal and away, struggling in our hands. Gilbert held fast, his back resolutely turned to the scene behind him. That meant I was facing it; I saw the dress slip, saw a flash of pearly pink skin, before the glare of the noonday sun washed out all sight of the interior. We turned frontward and stumbled away, dragging Frisson with us.

Behind us, the music grew slower, even more heavily sensual, setting up a rocking rhythm.

Frisson went slack in our arms, sobbing, and Friar Ignatius let out a long and shuddering breath. "I thank you, Wizard. Of all the assaults my virtue has suffered on this isle, this was the greatest."

His mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. "Though I must confess, 'tis cause for chagrin, to find I am so easily forgotten."

"Just think of it as proof that she was only using you," I suggested, /,or wanted to."

"Yes. Well put." He nodded. "In that fashion, I am glad to know I was right to resist-glad in worldly terms as well as spiritual, for I was but a toy to her."

"Don't worry," I said. "She isn't interested in any of us any more."

"Praise Heaven!" Gilbert shuddered. "And I thank you, Wizar ! I was almost ensnared!"

Privately, I thought it would have done him a world of good, but I didn't say so.

Chapter Twenty-seven.

Frisson didn't manage to start working his legs again until we came in sight of the ocean. Even then, it was all he could do to stagger across the beach to the boat and collapse into it, sobbing.

The rest of us heaved and pushed, driving it over the sand and back into the ocean, though I don't think we could have done it without that huge boost from Gruesome.

"In." I looked up at him, pointing to the inside of the boat.

"I'll finish pushing off this time."

The shark mouth grinned; he was glad to be leaving. He clambered in and sat huddled in the bows, moaning in anticipation of seasickness.

"Get in," I told Gilbert and Friar Ignatius. They clambered over the sides. Gilbert sat down facing aft, took up an oar, and fitted it between the pegs that passed for an oarlock-and to my amazement, Friar Ignatius did the same. They pulled together, I shoved, and the boat's bottom grated free of the last of the shingle. I vaulted up and over the stern, and the two men of different cloths threw their backs into it, rowing hard.

The last echo of music died away. I wondered what was going on back in the bower, then thought frantically about apples-it doesn't do any good to try not to think about something; you have to think about something else instead.

When the island was only a thin green line on the horizon, Friar Ignatius panted, "Hold." He and Gilbert leaned on their oars, drawing deep gasps. When he'd caught his breath, Friar Ignatius said, "I thank you, Wizard. I'd have never won free by myself."

I knew why, too-he hadn't really wanted to. I couldn't blame him.

"Glad to do it-but I had an ulterior motive."

"Aye." Friar Ignatius nodded. "You said you had need of my aid."

"That's right. You see, we're trying to stage a bit of a revolutionoverthrowing the queen of Allustria."

For a minute or so, the only sounds I heard were the surf, and Frisson's last miserable sobs.

Then Friar Ignatius said, "Well." And, "Are you, indeed."

"Yes," I said. "You see, I fell in love with one of the queen's sacrifices and managed to keep her from despairing at the last secondand being a virtuous maiden, her ghost was headed straight for Heaven. Suettay couldn't stand to let a victim get away, so she kept the body alive. I'm trying to get Angelique's body back, but it's in Suettay's castle, so ...

"The only way is to overthrow the queen." Friar Ignatius nodded with grim understanding. "Well, I cannot say the goal is unworthy, Wizard Saul, though your reasons are somewhat less than noble."

"I always thought love was very noble-if it was real." I shrugged.

"Besides, I'm not from your world, so I don't have any vested interest in your politics. This is entirely personal."

Friar Ignatius stared at me. "Surely any man has interest in the war between good and evil!"

"They're pretty abstract," I returned, "and for a long time, I wasn't even sure there was any such thing as real, genuine evil-I thought it was just the label I used for people who were opposed to me.

Over the years, though, I've seen people, those I had nothing to do with, do some really horrible things to other people, sometimes just because they enjoyed it; so I'm willing to say there is such a thing as evil.

Even so, it's not my problem, don't you see-it's none of my business."

But for the first time in my life, the words sounded hollow.

There was a racheting groan, and Frisson pulled himself up off the bottom of the boat onto a seat, staring past me at the thin green line that was Thyme's island.

I took a chance. "Feeling a little better now?"

He just sat there staring for a minute or so, then finally, reluctantly, nodded. "Aye. And I think I must thank you, friend Saul, for aiding me. I was ensnared."

"But you're still not sure you wanted to be freed," I said softly.

He shook his head, then let his chin sink onto his breast. "Ay me!

I could wish I were to die there, so long as she were to bestow her favors upon me! I could wish to have put her in a flask and taken her with me, that I might let her out whenever I wished! " "You're not the first man to wish something like that," I said softly.

"You would let her out at once," Friar Ignatius said with the certainty of one who has been there, "and never put her back. You would waste away your life in dancing attendance upon her, Master Frisson.

Frisson shuddered, remembering. "How could that be waste!"

"Because you wouldn't accomplish anything," I said. "You wouldn't become anything in your own right-just one of her toys.

Put it behind you, Frisson-as I said, you're not the first man to wish it, and you won't be the last." I turned to Friar Ignatius. "I don't want him to forget-and I don't want him distracted, not when we have so much menace facing us. You've studied magic-any ideas?"

'Tis not that I've studied magic alone," he said softly, " 'tis that I've studied God, and the Faith, and the soul." He reached out to touch Frisson on the temple. it was a very light touch, scarcely a fingertip, but Frisson went rigid, and the monk chanted something in Latin.

Frisson went limp, but the hangdog look hung lower.

Friar Ignatius took his hand away with a sigh. "As I said, I've not the talent."

"But I have?" I asked him. "Let me try."

"If the fool'd been stripped to his foolish hide, (Even as you and I!) Which she might have seen when she threw him aside(But it isn't on record the lady tried) Some of him would have lived, but the most would have died@Even as you and I! @ Yet it wasn't the lady-a friend interfered @Even as you and I! @ And rent him away from the one he revered, Before she could come in the scented dusk And suck out his juice, and toss out his huskHe turned from the lady, freed, unharmed, Though not by his choice, but his friend's strong arm @Even as you and I!Ill Frisson stiffened like an I-beam again, then slumped in total relaxation.

We waited, holding our breaths.

Slowly, the poet sat up, eyes wide. " 'Tis done! I am healed!"

He looked at me with a tremulous smile. "I cannot thank you enough, friend Saul!" But he still looked sad.

"Anything for a friend," I said. "Besides, I need you functioning, on the side of the angels."

Friar Ignatius looked at me in surprised approval. "I thought you professed to be apart from good and evil, Wizard Saul."

"Not apart from them," I corrected, "just not committed to them.

He smiled sadly. "You cannot have the one without the other, Wizard.

"Oh, yes I can," I said softly. "There is neutral ground, and I'm it."

I heard the after-echo of my own words with something resembling shock, but I plowed ahead anyway. "But that doesn't mean I'm apathetic. I do care when I see people suffering, and I'm willing to try to help if there's a way I can. I'm just not a fanatic, that's all."

"You cannot equivocate between God and the Devil, Wizard," he said softly.

I felt a chill on my back, but I shrugged it off. "Not here, maybe.

But you can keep the whole thing in perspective and not let your zeal for the letter of the law distract you from the spirit."

His eyes widened. "I thought you had no affinity for good, Wizard Saul-yet you cite our Savior's words."

"Know your Bible pretty well, do you? Well, so do I, and not entirely willingly. I had a good religious upbringing-good in my parents' eyes, maybe."

"Then how was it not good?"

"Because it showed me too many fanatics, too many people who are willing to do bad things, such as humiliate a kid publicly and convince him that he's bound for Hell."

"That is a grave error," he said, his eyes huge.

I gave him a sour smile. "I wish there were more clergy like you, Friar Ignatius."

He turned away, his face darkening. "Do not, for I am little use with a congregation, Master Wizard. In truth, if I so much as step up to a pulpit, my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth with craven fear, and I cannot utter a word."

I felt a surge of sympathy. "Hey, now-it's all right. We all get stage fright-and if you get too strong a dose of it, why, that's just not your talent. You know your own strengths, don't you?"