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a sweeping gesture he included all the stubs of tapers that Hodge should long since have replaced—on the table, in the iron candelabra, in the wall sconces. "Habeamus lucem!" He spoke confidently, for he knew he could do this, if nothing else. It was a game. Something revolved inside him, a huge tickling sensation in his stomach, like a sudden recollection from long ago, from beyond the lost threshold of childhood. It gave him a childlike delight. He laughed. Instantly the candles flamed, guttering and dribbling wax as if they had been burning for hours, and the brighter room seemed also warmer. Galen glanced surreptitiously at Valerian and was gratified to see that the other youth was impressed, watching open-mouthed. "And, let's see, how about some music!" Again he gestured, this time at the little musicians' gallery where once, he knew, flutists and lute players had entertained through nightlong banquets. Again he felt the sensation in his belly and knew exultantly that he had done it. After a moment, ghostly music drifted from a time long dead, the kind of music that would be played when the feasting was finished, when the jugglers had entertained and been thanked with their flagons of mead, and when at last, with the guests settling back in their chairs, the poet would move to the dais and begin to tell of heroic deeds and of times commensurate with the dreams of men. It was music to introduce a saga, and to contain it, as the perfect sphere of an egg contains the finished creature, even its decline and death; and it held its listeners spellbound, staring toward the phantom players.
    Before it faded, Galen turned to the cold logs in the fireplace and whispered—too tast—'Habeamus calorem. Let us have heat!" But he felt nothing but the keening music still, and he knew, even before he had completed the charm, that there would be no fire. Some few of the pilgrims had heard and turned questioningly toward him, so that he knew he must repeat the order or be discredited, and with that knowledge there came flickers of panic. Once more he concentrated on the inert logs, and this time when he spok e—"Habeamus calorem!"—it was with a voice augmented, a voice which contained the resonant power of Ulrich's voice as well; and the logs flamed, and the hall warmed, and when he turned, Ulrich himself, resplendent, stood beside him.
    He stood as he had been when Galen had first come to Cragganmore—Ulrich erect, and virile, and unbowed by age. Ulrich! his beard afire and his eyes issuing their cool challenge to all the world. "Welcome," Ulrich said, raising his right arm, and instinctively the little group of pilgrims bowed deeply. Then he descended the steps and took each one by the hand, beginning with the two foremost—Valerian, and Greil. Valerian introduced the others: Malkin and Regulus, and Rixor, and Henery son of Hen-ery, and Devlyn Major, and Stepanus, and Mavour, and Harald Wartooth, and Marcellus Minor, son of Marcellus of Ur, and Adamaeus Brittanae, and finally Xenophobius the muleteer, who glowered and mumbled even as he shook Ulrich's hand.
    "Friends," Ulrich declared when he had greeted them all, "you are welcome at Cragganmore, and as for the business which brings you hither I guess at it, and at its import for myself. But of that later; for now, let us break the fast of the night, and warm ourselves, and forget the perils through which you have passed and those which are to come."
    And so they did. Hodge returned chortling from the kitchen with a vast steaming tureen of gruel, and he brought bread and cheese as well, and they feasted. When they had finished, it was full day, and Ulrich signaled for his bowl to be removed and leaned back in his chair. Within a moment, silence had fallen around the table, and one by one the pilgrims turned expectantly to Valerian. The youth rose, opening the satchel which he had worn slung around his shoulder, and Galen was struck immediately by his graceful deportment, by the