Now Loren Darius grew to manhood in the bosom of his luck. He lived in a narrow country, and within its confines he grew strong and proud, such that when he departed into the larger world, that place too became fond of him in that peculiar way that seemed to others to be Darius’s birthright. Not that his life was unchecked by disaster. His parents had passed away at an early age, leaving him, a boy of five, in the stewardship of his elder sister, who herself passed away before the year was out. Yet even at that age, Loren Darius could not be refused, and when he went to a stream with a fishing pole, or with his bare hands, that stream would give up fish to him, and when he bent over twigs, even in the midst of a storm, fire would rise up to warm him. And so, despite the misfortune of those around him, Loren Darius grew to manhood.
This was an earlier age of the world. You mustn’t suppose that things were then as they are now. A city would be such and such a distance by horse, measured by how many nights one would be upon the road. There was less light in general.
Loren Darius traveled widely as a young man, along every frontier he could find. He did not know at the time what he was looking for, but he was troubled by strange dreams. He would fall asleep in a roadside inn or on a village green, or at the margin of a field, and he would dream himself into a hallway. Many doors then, along the hallway. Many doors, and great they were in size and finery. Each night he went farther down the hall, each night opening still another door.
What was behind these doors? None can say, for Loren refused to speak of it. Yet certainly as time passed he drew closer to what he sought.
Her name was Ilsa Marionette. She was the daughter of Cors Marionette, the famous hunter, he who drove the Corban Bull from Limeu all down to Viruket. You have seen monuments to his bravery. Anyway, it was not long before Ilsa was convinced that her life was with Loren, and not long before Cors was convinced of Loren’s grace in the powers of life. For Cors was often heard to say, Strength is nothing, ferocity is a plaything; when life is waged as a war, grace is the only virtue, grace shown through nimbleness. And Loren was certainly nimble. This no one could dispute.
The pair went then back to the small land where Loren was born; they took up a household and her name became Ilsa Darius. It should be remembered too that Ilsa was the fairest woman that had yet walked beneath the sun. Where she went, events of any kind would stop, as men and women alike marveled at her and at her passing by.
And yet despite her beauty and his luck, they did not have between them a profession, for he had been a wanderer, traveling back and forth through the land, and she had been a virtuous daughter, kept indoors away from the mad horde. Some money they had had from her father, but it was not much, and it lasted them only a short while. So, Loren took to traveling to nearby cities, where his luck in gambling might provide them with the money to live.
This strategy proved sound, and for several years the couple lived in great wealth and affluence. Loren would go away to a city, win enormous sums, bring them back to his bride, and live alone with her in the hills some months before leaving again to procure more. And all the time that they were apart they thought only of each other, and it was a terror in the hearts of both that the other should ever come to harm.
One day it came to pass that Loren was returning from a city, his horse and mule heavily laden with his winnings. The day was hot, and the road was a yellow line through the dust. The sun obscured vision and glanced off all it encountered, searing the very ground.
Through it Loren stumbled, leading his horse and mule. Some hours he had been upon the road, and what water he had had been given his mule and horse, for they were bearing a far heavier load then he. Yet he was sore, thirsty, and tired of the sun. Perhaps its weight was even telling upon his mind, for when he saw up ahead a broad tree and shade beneath, he dropped his horse’s reins and ran ahead to the shelter of the tree.
As he drew closer Loren saw that a man was there. He looked like some kind of merchant. He was dressed in green, in heavy cloth, even at this hour and heat. The man’s horse was behind the tree, grazing in a patch of grass. The man sat, drinking water from a large skin.
Loren approached. Behind him his horse and mule caught up and passed around the tree to take up with the other horse, and with the green grass there afforded.
—Good day, said Loren.
—Sir, said the man, with a slight tinge of a smile. It is a hot day.
—It is that, said Loren, his words spilling out in haste. Could I have some of that water? I gave the last of what I had to my horse and mule, and I have no more. Certainly I can pay you. Gold even.
The man’s smile broadened. His features were odd, grand and haughty even as they were drawn and pursed.
—I have no need for gold.
The man had knucklebones in one hand. He was casting them out upon a flat stone, then scooping them up and casting them again.
—A wager, then? asked Loren. I would wager anything against you for that skin of water. My horse? My mule?
—I have a horse, said the man. And mules in a stable.
The man unstoppered the wineskin and took another draught of water. This was almost too much for Loren, whose face betrayed his desperation.
—Have you nothing else to wager? asked the man.
And then Loren thought of the one thing that was of worth in his life, the one thing that nothing matched.
—Have you not a wife? asked the merchant.
—I have a wife, said Loren.
Now, never before had he ever considered wagering Ilsa. She was more important to him even than the good fortune that had hitherto sheltered him. But it was true that he had never lost a wager in his life.
—Then let us say, said the merchant, this skin of water set against your wife. Ilsa, her name is, no?
Loren drew back. How did the man know her name?
—She is a noted beauty in these parts, the merchant said, answering Loren’s unspoken question.
Loren drew in a deep breath. He could win this with a single throw, get the water, take the horse and mule, and be home by nightfall. It would be over in a moment. He would be hazarding her only for a moment.
The man lifted the skin to his lips again. Soon the water would be gone.
Loren reached out his hand.
—Let’s have it. Come now.
The merchant took from beneath his green coat a tattered leather cup. Into it he dropped the bones and handed them to Loren. Loren felt in himself a great unease. He looked into the merchant’s face and was terrified by what he saw there. He knew then that he should stop. He felt a horror in himself and in the world.
He threw the bones down onto the flat rock.
They skipped out and landed in that series known as “bird’s teeth.” It was the second-best throw. Never before had Loren failed to get the best throw. But “bird’s teeth” was a good throw.
The merchant’s hands moved almost faster than Loren could see, scooping up the bones, dropping them into the cup, and passing them over the rock once, twice, three times. On the third pass he let them slide out and drop, one two three four five. They dropped slowly, perfectly into the “widow’s net,” the very best throw. Loren had lost.
With a cry he threw up his hands.
—This is foolishness, he said. I am leaving.
The merchant stood up to his full height, and he was a large man indeed. The dice cup fell from his hand.
—Loren Darius, I know you. I have known you long, and long you have been kept from my hand. But now my weight is upon you and I will never relent. Ilsa Darius is mine. I may not come for her today; I may not come tomorrow. I may not come for years. But when I do there will be nothing you can do. For on this day you have lost her to me. On this day you have given your wife for a skin of water.
The man turned and called out in a strange voice. His horse trotted up beside him. The man walked away down the road as Loren watched, and after he was gone a dozen paces, a fold of heat and light arose and the man was lost to sight.
At this, Loren stirred. He leaped onto his horse’s back and, forgetting the mule, rode at breakneck speed the remaining miles home.
As he came up the path to his house, his horse foaming and lathering, he saw upon the porch, Ilsa. She was singing and singing the song he had heard every night in his dreams as he woke again and again into that grave hallway.
He leaped from off his horse and ran up the steps.
—Ilsa, he cried. Ilsa, are you well? Have there been any visitors?
And Ilsa looked at him strangely even as he caught her up in his arms.
—No, my love. No visitors. Only your absence, and your return.
Loren breathed a sigh of relief. It must have been a dream, he thought, a dream prompted by the heat. Yet when he looked down at his wrist he saw a mark, a mark as of a burn where the man had touched him when taking the leather cup in his turn.
The curling touch.
Loren had heard of it. He had not dreamed the wager. Yet who was this man? If he came here, Loren would slay him. That was all. He would slay the man.
And so their life continued. Things continued as they had, and Loren and Ilsa were glad in their days. Yet sometimes Loren would think that he heard things or saw things. He would be returning from a trip to gather wood and he would think he saw a man leaving the house. Or he would see from afar in the window of the bedroom a man’s shape. Always he would run to the house and come shouting in, to find poor Ilsa all alone, seemingly confused at what had aroused her husband to such madness.
She bore such things well, yet as time went on, the occurrences began to come with greater and greater frequency. Loren would search the house from top to bottom. But never would he find anyone there, or anything not as it should have been. As had happened repeatedly in the past, the couple began to run out of money. But now, instead of going off to the city as he had before, Loren refused to leave the house. He was sure that as soon as he left, the man would come. Yet their money dwindled, and their food, and soon there was nothing for it but that he go.
So Loren left one day, and went along the road to the nearest city. There he stayed six days gambling, and raised such a fortune as he had never seen. He took two mules and his good horse and set out home. Yet with each mile that passed, his anxiety increased, and it was all he could do not to cast aside the slower mules and gallop home.
As he came up the path to his house he saw tracks left by a horse not his own. When he reached the house, he found Ilsa sitting, wearing clothes he had not seen before. And so his greeting to her was not, as it had been, My love, how I have missed you, or Darling, how are you, but:
—Who gave you that dress? And what horse left tracks upon the path? You have had visitors; I know it.
Ilsa told him that it was a woman who lived nearby, who had come several times to see her, for it grows lonely here when no one is around.
To which Loren said, you have never grown lonely before.
And she replied, always before you have been here with me, even when you were not.
Then they both saw that something deep and terrible had happened. But they did not know how to fix it, or even how to name it.
The mark on Loren’s wrist remained. The money he had made was enough to continue their life for a very long time without his going away. Yet still, he would go down into the meadow past the house, where a narrow path wound through trees to a brook, and the Cassila, with its flowering branches raves in good pleasure all through the spring, and even there, there with the bouquet of scent, the dazing pleasuring sunlight, the rushing swiftness of the brook, and the standing comfort of the grasses, he felt at his core the beginnings of a slight terror. It was then he would turn to the house and would see, or hear from afar, as though he were near, the sound of Ilsa’s love-making as she lay with another man, the sound of her calling out, the rustling of sheets, the noise of skin and skin.
He would rush, blue veined in anger, up the stairs, to find her at needlework by a window, or weaving in the parlor. Yet there would be to her then some slight disarray, a looseness to her hair, a flush to her lips, a half-buttoned dress or an uncaught breath, that to him would cement all his fears.
In his dreams, both waking and sleeping, he was forced to watch as different men, not just the merchant, but others, came to his wife, and she to them. Finally Loren’s angers grew too great, and Ilsa fled the house in the company of a friend she knew only slightly, a girl she had encountered once, the supposed daughter of woman she knew. They fled to a nearby village, pursued by Loren, and took shelter in the uppermost room of an inn.
Loren rode that day desperately after her. He remembered how it had been in what seemed now like their youth. He thought of her gentleness, her tenderness with him always, and how quick she had been in thought, yet always thinking of him. And as he rode, his anger softened, and he felt in his heart that he had wronged her. Yet then by chance his eye passed over the reins and over his wrist and he beheld there the raging mark, the burn of which he felt still, and with it his anger grew.
He made his way into the town and cast his luck in the air. It sent him to the inn. He tied his horse to a pole, threw open the door, and entered. A great many people were in the common room. A young man in a blue-gray suit. A woman with a fan. An old man whose age lay all about his feet, and a tall man tall with a broad, kind face, a black beard, black eyes and hair, a dog on hind legs holding a violin. The black-bearded man took Loren by the shoulder. He said,