Elysia Read Free Page A

would be lost on Earth, bewildered, a complete outsider. An alien. A curiosity. A seven-day wonder. And finally a freak. But saying it, even thinking it, hurt him worse than it would hurt her. Which was too much. And so instead he finished with:
    'I love and will love only you. Where you are I must be. Be it Borea, heaven or hell, if you are there it's the place for me. But surely you can see that while I have found my home - the only home I need - our friend Henri-Laurent de Marigny has not yet found his. What you call my "trouble" is in fact his trouble. If you see pain in me, it's only pain for him. Moreen says he's known as The Searcher in a hundred inhabited worlds. Beings who are not men, who don't even think like men, understand his quest and have named him for it. They feel for him. And should. I hide my feelings? No, Armandra, I'm not a child to be homesick. Nor is de Marigny, not for a home he's never seen. But it's his destiny - yes, and it's driving him to distraction. My. pain is this: that I don't know how to help him.'
    Now Armandra felt wretched. She knew that she did not have to look into her man's mind, that everything he had said was right in there. Yes, this strange world with its weird auroras and inhabited moons was his world now but he was still a man of the Motherworld, and so felt for his fellow man, de Marigny The Searcher.
    `Hank, I ' she began, her voice full of shame. But before she could continue, and because he would not let her humble herself
    'I know, I know.' And he patted her, head.
    'But how can we help him?' She desired only to put. things right now. 'Should I commune with my familiar winds? For they have talked to winds from across the farthest reaches of eternity. Perhaps they have heard of this Elysia.'
    Silberhutte nodded. 'It's worth a try.' Then he stood up straighter and squared his shoulders, finally gave a snort and chuckled to himself. Armandra looked at him quizzically, but he only smiled and shook his head.
    'What is it?' she asked, raising the corner of a golden eyebrow.
    He chickled again, then shrugged. 'Once - oh, six years ago - I set out on a vengeance quest to track down and destroy your father. I knew Ithaqua was real: not supernatural but a Being of alien spaces and dimensions. That was my total belief in matters concerning things not of Earth: that Ithaqua was real, and with him others of an incredibly ancient order or pantheon of Beings, the Cthulhu Cycle Deities. Also, I was a telepath. But the rest of me was Texan, and all of me was Earthman, in many ways mundane as any other. And instead of tracking Ithaqua he tracked me and carried me and my crew here to Borea. Since when -
    'Yes?'
    'Why, see how my spheres have widened! And what's become of this vengeful, telepathic but otherwise "mundane" Texan now, eh? Warlord of polyglot peoples on an alien world; adventurer in strange moons; mate to the daughter of the one he vowed to destroy, a woman who walks on the wind and "communes" with puffs of ether from the stars? And when you say: have a word with some winds I know from the other side of eternity," this man nods and answers, "sure, it's worth a try!" ' And now he burst out laughing.
    Barely understanding this sudden bout of self-directed humour, but carried along by it anyway, Armandra joined the laughter; and she hugged him and clung to him for a moment. Then, arm in arm, they set out together to find de Marigny and tell him how she would try to help him .. .
    Henri-Laurent de Marigny was aware of some of the concern he caused in the plateau and among its inhabitants, but aware of it only on the periphery of his consciousness. His ever-advancing obsession would not allow for more than that. No, for now the quest was all that mattered. He knew it, and could do nothing about it. He suspected, too, that but for Moreen he might well have cracked long before now, that she alone was his sanity. Together they had visited many worlds with near-human, half-human, and