“Heyday,” said Guivric, masterfully, “I am not going out! Instead, I am going in, even to the heart of this mischancy place; and you must go with me.”
But the lad shook his lovely evil head. “No: for, now that the Sylan is about to become human, they tell me, at the heart of the Sylan’s House is to be found pity and terror; and both of these must remain forever unknown to me.”
“Well, but why?” said Guivric, “why need those two cathartics which Aristotle most highly recommends remain forever unknown to you in particular?”
“Ah,” replied the boy, “that is a mystery. I only know it is decreed—and is decreed, for that matter, in the name of Eloim, Muthraton, Adonay, and Semiphoras,—that my rod here as it was first raised up in Gomorrah should possess quite other virtues than the rods of Moses and of Jacob.”
“Oh, in Gomorrah! So it was in that wicked city of the plain of Jordan, my spoiled child, that they first spared the rod! I see. For is not that rod to be used—thus?”
And Guivric showed with a discreet but obvious gesture what he meant.
The lad fearlessly answered him.
37.
Too Many Mouths
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