the soul of a slave-wench? Her body is the property of any two-legged beast that claims it; why should not Sathanas have her soul?"
"Nay, Basta, hear me," he entreated. "I jested not when I declared my love"
"Let be!" her voice was thin drawn to the breaking-point. She dipped her hand into the pocket hanging from her girdle. "An thou'lt accept a gift from one whose soul is forfeit, take these in parting." She let a cataract of jewels flash through her fingers to the earth. "Yesternight thou named thyself a landless fugitive. These be the pick of Otto Wolfberg's treasure. I took them ere we fled. Take them with thee to rebuild thy fortunes; 'tis the ransom of a king"
"What talk is this of parting?" he demanded. "Have I not said I love thee? Come, come thy ways, my love. The road is open to our feet, and there is none to say us nay. I know not where the nearest town may be, but sure there is a priest there who will"
Her gesture halted him. "I am become as one of them," she told him, pointing to the clearing where the dead and dying werewolves lay.
"Sayest thou?"
"Indeed. Bethink thee: Upon the night we met I told thee that I sought a flower. It is a bloom of hell, and whoso eats of it straight shifts his shape into the beast he most resembles. Thereafter for three twelvemonths he must live in bestial form, with only little intervals of human shape. I found the flower not when I first sought it, but e'en now when the wolf-men came on us I saw it growing at my very feet. I knew the price required, but I paid it willingly that Otto Wolfberg and his followers might be destroyed. Farewell, my love, my heart, my very dearest. . ." Her voice broke on a choking note, as if her throat were stopped with sobs, and she dropped to hands and knees as if she sought some lost thing in the leaves.
"Basta, carissima," he cried, "it boots not what your outward form may be, if so be that your heart inclines to me"
Like one who flees quick death she scurried on all fours into the bracken. There was a thrashing in the conifers. Then the brandies parted. A great black panther looked at him with moss-green eyes. For a long moment it stood there, regarding him unwinkingly. Then it turned and padded silently away into the whispering wood.
He stooped and took a palmful from the pile of gems that glittered at his feet and let them trickle slowly through his outspread fingers. Emeralds . . . rubies . . . pearls.
Emeralds for the green of eyes that looked into his heart, rubies for her vivid lips, pearls for the white skin of her.
Rubies, pearls and emeralds. The ransom of a king she'd named them, soothly. With such gems as these he could buy houses, lands and goods and live like any lord. The King of Sicily offered refuge to the fleeing Provençals. He could live richly there for a long lifetime and not expend the tithe of that which glittered in his palm.
Yea, he could live wrapped in the arms of luxury. But his own arms would be empty.
One look he cast into the thicket where the panther disappeared, then raised his shoulders in a shrug. The Moorish sages had the right of it. No man could overcome his fate.
"Aye, we be Fortune's fools, we two," he murmured as he turned to seek his horse.
Untouched, the little pyramid of gems glowed like a fallen star against the brown leaf-mold.
