as murky at best,
and reading him you were never sure where anybody was, or when any
given event was taking place.

The courtyard was empty, and after crossing it, Mallory dismounted,
encephalopathed Easy Money to stay put, and climbed the series of
stone steps that led to the castle proper. Entering the building
unchallenged, he found himself at the junction of three corridors. The
main one stretched straight ahead and debouched into a large hall. The
other two led off at right angles, one to the left and one to the
right. Boisterous laughter emanated from the hall, and he could see
knights and other nobles sitting at a long banquet table. Scattered
among them were gentlewomen in rich silks, and hovering behind them
were servants bearing large demijohns. He grinned. Just as he had
figured--King Pelles was throwing a whingding.

Quickly, Mallory turned down the left-hand corridor and started along
it, counting his footsteps. Rushes rustled beneath his feet, and the
flickering light of wall-torches gave him a series of grotesque
shadows. He saw no one: all the servants were in the banquet hall,
pouring wine and mead. He laughed aloud.

Forty-eight paces sufficed to see him to the chamber door. It was a
perfectly ordinary door. Opening it, he thought at first that the room
beyond was ordinary, too. Then he saw the burning candles arranged
along the walls, and beneath them, standing in the center of the
floor, the table of silver. The table of the Sangraal....

There was no Sangraal on the table, however. There was no Sangraal in
the room, for that matter. There was a girl, though. She was huddled
forlornly in a corner, and she was crying.

II

Mallory laid his spear aside, strode across the room, and raised the
girl to her feet. "The Sangraal," he said, forgetting in his agitation
the few odds and ends of Old English he had memorized. "Where is it!"

She raised startled eyes that were as round, and almost as large, as
plums. Her face was round, too, and faintly childlike. Her hair was
dark-brown, and done up in a strange and indeterminate coiffeur that
was as charming as it was disconcerting. Her ankle-length dress was
white, and there was a bow on the bodice that matched the
plum-blueness of her eyes. A few cosmetics, properly applied, would
have turned her into an attractive woman, and even without them, she
rated a second look.

She stared at him for some time, then, "Surely ye be an advision,
sir," she sa