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He looked at the phaen askance, and drummed his fingers against his thigh. "Well, we will go together. We may find something, and in any case I shan't be sorry to converse with such a singular individual as yourself." "But I should warn you, Maskull. You and I are of different creations.
"Leehallfae, I fail to see what you personally have to hope for, since you are nothing more than a discarded, dying thought." "Have you never loved a woman?" asked the phaen, regarding him fixedly. "Perhaps I have." "When you loved, did you have no high moments?" "That's asking the same question in other words." "In those moments you were approaching Faceny.
He descended swiftly without taking too much care, for he thought he recognised his "luck" in this discovery and within twenty minutes was standing beside the phaen. "What happened?" "The rock you dislodged struck this other rock just above the spring. It tore it out of its bed. See now there's room for us to get in!" "Don't get excited!" said Maskull.
"Now I'm going to climb that. No need for both of us to risk our necks, so you wait here, and if I find anything on top I'll call you." Ale phaen glanced at him strangely. "There's nothing up there except a bare hillside. I've been there often. Have you anything special in mind?" "Heights often bring me inspiration. Sit down, and wait."
The phaen belonged, body and soul, to the outside, visible world to Faceny. This underworld is not Faceny's world, but Thire's, and Faceny's creatures cannot breathe its atmosphere. As this applies not only to whole bodies, but even to the last particles of bodies, the phaen has dissolved into Nothingness." "But don't you and I belong to the outside world too?" "We belong to all three worlds."
"Decide what you're going to do," said Maskull with a touch of contempt, "for I'm going in at once." The phaen gave an odd, meditative stare down the ravine, and after that walked into the cavern without another word. Maskull, scratching his head, followed close at aer heels. The moment they stepped across the bubbling spring, the atmosphere altered.
The phaen took him by the shoulder and held him at arm's length, endeavouring to study him with aer unsteady eyes. "Faceny's thoughts are obscure. I am his lover, you are a lover of women, yet he grants to you what he denies to me." "What does he grant to me?" "To see him, and go on living. I shall die. But it's immaterial. Tomorrow both of us will be dead."
"With that I gather life from the streams that flow in all the hundred Matterplay valleys. The streams spring direct from Faceny. My whole life has been spent trying to find Faceny himself. I've hunted so long that if I were to state the number of years you would believe I lied." Maskull looked at the phaen slowly. "In Ifdawn I met someone else from Matterplay a young man called Digrung.
At first he could not distinguish Leehallfae. Then he caught sight of legs and hindquarters a few feet up the cliff from the bottom. He perceived that the phaen had aer head in a cavity and was scrutinising something, and waited for aer to reappear. Ae emerged, looked up to Maskull, and called out in aer hornlike voice, "The entrance is here!" "I'm coming down!" roared Maskull. "Wait for me!"
The awful grin of Crystalman immediately fastened upon the phaen's dead features. While Maskull was still kneeling, he became conscious of someone standing beside him. He looked up quickly and saw a man, but did not at once rise. "Another phaen dead," said the newcomer in a grave, toneless, and intellectual voice. Maskull got up. The man was short and thickset but emaciated.
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