“There is something strange about you,” I said.

She was silent for four or five flickerings of the candle, then said, “I’ve a touch of the second sight. My mother had more of it. People say my grandmother was a sorceress. I don’t know any of that business, though. Well, not much of it. I haven’t done it for years. I always wind up losing more than I gain.”

Then she was silent again, and I asked her, “What do you mean?”

“I used a spell to get my first man,” she said, “and look what he turned out to be. If I hadn’t, I’d have been a lot better off. I wanted a pretty daughter, and I made that happen —” She stopped abruptly and I realized she was crying.

“What’s the matter? I don’t understand…”

“I thought you knew,” she said.

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“She was the little girl in the Fairy Circle. I thought you knew…”

“I’m sorry.”

“I wish I didn’t have the touch. I never use it any more. But it won’t let me alone. It still brings me dreams and signs, and they are never over things I can do anything about. I wish it would go away and devil somebody else!”

“That’s the one thing it will not do, Lorraine. I’m afraid you are stuck with it.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve known people like you in the past, that’s all.”

“You’ve a touch of it yourself, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you feel that there is something out there now, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So do I. Do you know what it is doing?”

“It’s looking for me.”

“Yes, I feel that, too. Why?”

“Perhaps to test my strength. It knows that I am here. If I am a new ally come to Ganelon, it must wonder what I represent, who I am…”

“Is it the horned one himself?”

“I don’t know. I think not, though.”

“Why not?”

“If I am really he who would destroy it, it would be foolish to seek me out here in the keep of its enemy when I am surrounded by strength.