Anselme took the silver oblong and obeyed Malachie’s injunction. A moment, and his nerveless fingers almost dropped the mirror. He had seen reflected within it a face that the sepulcher should have hidden long ago –
The horror of that sight had shaken him so deeply that he could not afterwards recall the circumstances of his departure from the werewolf’s lair. He had kept the werewolf’s gift; but more than once he had been prompted to throw it away. He tried to tell himself that what he had seen was merely the result of sorne wizard trick. He refused to believe that any mirror would reveal Sephora as anything but the young and lovely sweetheart whose kisses were still warm on his lips.
All such matters, however, were driven from Anselme’s mind by the situation that he found when he re-entered the tower hall. Three visitors had arrived during his absence. They stood fronting Sephoia, who, with a tranquil smile on her lips, was apparently trying to explain something to them. Anselme recognized the visitors with much amzement, not untouched with consternation.
One of them was Dorothйe des Flиches, clad in a trim traveling habit. The others were two serving men of her father, armed with longbows, quivers of arrows, broadswords and daggers. In spite of this array of weapons, they did not look any too comfortable or at home. But Dorothйe seemed to have retained her usual matter-of-fact assurance.
‘What are you doing in this queer place, Anselme?’ she cried. ‘And who is this woman, this chatelaine of Sylaire, as she calls herself?’
Anselme felt that she would hardly understand any answer that he could give to either query. He looked at Sephora, then back at Dorothйe. Sephora was the essence of all the beauty and romance that he had ever craved. How could he have fancied himself in love with Dorothйe, how could he have spent thirteen months in a hermitage because of her coldness and changeability? She was pretty enough, with the common bodily charms of youth. But she was stupid, wanting in imagination — prosy already in the flush of her girlhood as a middle-aged housewife. Small wonder that she had failed to understand him.
What brings you here?’ he countered. ‘I had not thought to see you again.’
‘I missed you, Anselme,’ she sighed. ‘People said that you had left the world because of your love for me, and had become a hermit. At last I came to seek you. But you had disappeared. Some hunters had seen you pass yesterday with a strange woman, across the moor of Druid stones. They said you had both vanished beyond the cromlech, fading as if in air. Today I followed you with my father’s serving men. We found ourselves in this strange region, of which no one has ever heard. And now this woman — ‘
The sentence was interrupted by a mad howling that filled the room with eldritch echoes. The black wolf, with jaws foaming and slavering, broke in through the door that had been opened to admit Sephora’s visitors. Dorothйe des Fleches began to scream as he dashed straight toward her, seeming to single her out for the first victim of his rabid fury.
Something, it was plain, had maddened him. Perhaps the water of the werewolf pool, substituted for the antidote, had served to redouble the original curse of lycanthropy.
The two serving men, bristling with their arsenal of weapons, stood like effigies. Anselme drew the sword given him by the enchantress, and leaped forward between Dorothйe and the wolf. He raised his weapon, which was straightbladed, and suitable for stabbing. The mad werewolf sprang as if hurled from a catapult, and his red, open gorge was spitted on the out-thrust point. Anselme’s hand was jarred on the sword-hilt, and the shock drove him backward. The wolf fell thrashing at Anselme’s feet. His jaws had clenched on the blade. The point protruded beyond the stiff bristles of his neck.
Anselme tugged vainly at the sword. Then the black-furred body ceased to thrash — and the blade came easily. It had been withdrawn from the sagging mouth of the dead ancient sorcerer, Malachie du Marais, which lay before Anselme on the flagstones. The sorcerer’s face was now the face that Anselme had seen in the mirror, when he held it up at Malachie’s injunction.
‘You have saved me! How wonderfu!’ cried Dorothйe.
Anselme saw that she had started toward him with out-thrust arms. A moment more, and the situation would become embarrassing.
He recalled the mirror, which he had kept under his jerkin, together with the vial stolen from Malachie du Marais. What, he wondered, would Dorothйe see in its burnished depths?
He drew the mirror forth swiftly and held it to her face as she advanced upon him. What she beheld in the mirror he never knew but the effect was startling. Dorothйe gasped, and her eyes dilated in manifest horror. Then, covering her eyes with her hands, as if to shut out some ghastly vision, she ran shrieking from the hall. The serving men followed her. The celerity of their movements made it plain that they were not sorry to leave this dubious lair of wizards and witches.
Sephora began to laugh sofdy. Anselme found himself chuckling. For awhile they abandoned themselves to uproarious mirth. Then Sephora sobered.
‘I know why Malachie gave you the mirror,’ she said. ‘Do you not wish to see my reflection in it?’
Anselme realized that he still held the mirror in his hand. Without answering Sephora, he went over to the nearest window, which looked down on a deep pit lined with bushes, that had been part of an ancient, half-filled moat. He hurled the silver oblong into the pit.
‘I am content with what my eyes tell me, without the aid of any mirror,’ he declared. ‘Now let us pass to other matters which have been interrupted too long.’
Again the clinging deliciousness of Sephora was in his arms, and her fruit-soft mouth was crushed beneath his hungry lips.
The strongest of all enchantments held them in its golden circle.