A Farce To Be Reckoned With

Chapter 3

Ylith told a story about lambs and kids gamboling on the hillsides of her native Greece. Soon the children were asleep, so she tucked them up and blew out the candle, then sneaked out of their room. She found several of the pilgrims in the common room, sitting at a table near the fire and talking over the affairs of the day.

valet to Sir Oliver.

"What else could he be?" the valet replied. His name was Morton Kornglow and he "was twenty-two years old, a rangy young fellow with ideas beyond his station.

Ylith sat down beside the woman and the valet. "What is this demon offering?" she asked.

Kornglow said, "My master told me he has to do a magical passage in order to be rewarded with his dearest wish. When I went to his room, he was gone. Vanished."

"Maybe he's just outside, walking around," Ylith suggested.

"We'd have seen him come downstairs," Kornglow said, "and he's unlikely to have dived from the window into the bramble below. He's off doing the demon's work, I tell you, and frankly, it sounds like work that would suit me."

"You wouldn't!" the female servitor said with an admiring glance.

"I'm thinking about it," Kornglow said. "I can be in the demon's play as well as any man, as long as it doesn't matter that I don't have a Sir before my name."

Ylith stared at him. "A play?"

Kornglow nodded. "That's what Sir Oliver told me. The demon is putting on some sort of play. We just have to do whatever it is we usually do, and we'll be rewarded greatly for it. That's the sort of life I want to lead."

Ylith got to her feet. "You must excuse me. I need to see someone."

She hurried off, went to the front door, and passed through it into the darkness.

"Where do you think she's gone to?" the female servitor asked.

Kornglow shrugged and sucked his teeth. "If she has an appointment it must be with an angel or a devil.

There's nothing else out there but wolves."

Ylith said to herself, "So, he's going to do it! Stage an immorality play! Wait until Michael hears about this!"