Spellbound, he stood and stared for a time that he could not measure. And then, moved by one of the terrible impulses that seemed to control
the whole adventure, he climbed swiftly upon the top of the broad
coping, and balanced a moment where the valley gaped at his feet. But
in that very instant, as he stood hovering, a sudden movement among the
shadows of the houses caught his eye, and he turned to see the outline
of a large animal dart swiftly across the open space behind him, and
land with a flying leap upon the top of the wall a little lower down. It ran like the wind to his feet and then rose up beside him upon the
ramparts. A shiver seemed to run through the moonlight, and his sight
trembled for a second. His heart pulsed fearfully. Ilsé stood beside
him, peering into his face. Some dark substance, he saw, stained the girl’s face and skin, shining
in the moonlight as she stretched her hands towards him; she was
dressed in wretched tattered garments that yet became her mightily; rue
and vervain twined about her temples; her eyes glittered with unholy
light. He only just controlled the wild impulse to take her in his arms
and leap with her from their giddy perch into the valley below. “See!” she cried, pointing with an arm on which the rags fluttered in
the rising wind towards the forest aglow in the distance. “See where
they await us! The woods are alive! Already the Great Ones are there,
and the dance will soon begin! The salve is here! Anoint yourself and
come!”

Though a moment before the sky was clear and cloudless, yet even while
she spoke the face of the moon grew dark and the wind began to toss in
the crests of the plane trees at his feet. Stray gusts brought the
sounds of hoarse singing and crying from the lower slopes of the hill,
and the pungent odour he had already noticed about the courtyard of the
inn rose about him in the air. “Transform, transform!” she cried again, her voice rising like a song. “Rub well your skin before you fly. Come! Come with me to the Sabbath,
to the madness of its furious delight, to the sweet abandonment of its
evil worship! See! the Great Ones are there, and the terrible
Sacraments prepared. The Throne is occupied. Anoint and come! Anoint
and come!”

She grew to the height of a tree beside him, leaping upon the wall with
flaming eyes and hair strewn upon the night. He too began to change
swiftly. Her hands touched the skin of his face and neck, streaking him
with the burning salve that sent the old magic into his blood with the
power before which fades all that is good. A wild roar came up to his ears from the heart of the wood, and the
girl, when she heard it, leaped upon the wall in the frenzy of her
wicked joy. “Satan is there!” she screamed, rushing upon him and striving to draw
him with her to the edge of the wall. “Satan has come. The Sacraments
call us! Come, with your dear apostate soul, and we will worship and
dance till the moon dies and the world is forgotten!”

Just saving himself from the dreadful plunge, Vezin struggled to
release himself from her grasp, while the passion tore at his reins and
all but mastered him. He shrieked aloud, not knowing what he said, and
then he shrieked again. It was the old impulses, the old awful habits
instinctively finding voice; for though it seemed to him that he merely
shrieked nonsense, the words he uttered really had meaning in them, and
were intelligible. It was the ancient call. And it was heard below. It
was answered. The wind whistled at the skirts of his coat as the air round him
darkened with many flying forms crowding upwards out of the valley. The
crying of hoarse voices smote upon his ears, coming closer. Strokes of
wind buffeted him, tearing him this way and that along the crumbling
top of the stone wall; and Ilsé clung to him with her long shining
arms, smooth and bare, holding him fast about the neck. But not Ilsé
alone, for a dozen of them surrounded him, dropping out of the air. The
pungent odour of the anointed bodies stifled him, exciting him to the
old madness of the Sabbath, the dance of the witches and sorcerers
doing honour to the personified Evil of the world. “Anoint and away! Anoint and away!” they cried in wild chorus about
him. “To the Dance that never dies! To the sweet and fearful fantasy of
evil!”

Another moment and he would have yielded and gone, for his will turned
soft and the flood of passionate memory all but overwhelmed him,
when—so can a small thing alter the whole course of an adventure—he
caught his foot upon a loose stone in the edge of the wall, and then
fell with a sudden crash on to the ground below. But he fell towards
the houses, in the open space of dust and cobblestones, and fortunately
not into the gaping depth of the valley on the farther side. And they, too, came in a tumbling heap about him, like flies upon a
piece of food, but as they fell he was released for a moment from the
power of their touch, and in that brief instant of freedom there
flashed into his mind the sudden intuition that saved him. Before he
could regain his feet he saw them scrabbling awkwardly back upon the
wall, as though bat-like they could only fly by dropping from a height,
and had no hold upon him in the open. Then, seeing them perched there
in a row like cats upon a roof, all dark and singularly shapeless,
their eyes like lamps, the sudden memory came back to him of Ilsé’s
terror at the sight of fire. Quick as a flash he found his matches and lit the dead leaves that lay
under the wall. Dry and withered, they caught fire at once, and the wind carried the
flame in a long line down the length of the wall, licking upwards as it
ran; and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded row of forms upon the
top melted away into the air on the other side, and were gone with a
great rush and whirring of their bodies down into the heart of the
haunted valley, leaving Vezin breathless and shaken in the middle of
the deserted ground. “Ilsé!” he called feebly; “Ilsé!” for his heart ached to think that she
was really gone to the great Dance without him, and that he had lost
the opportunity of its fearful joy. Yet at the same time his relief was
so great, and he was so dazed and troubled in mind with the whole
thing, that he hardly knew what he was saying, and only cried aloud in
the fierce storm of his emotion.... The fire under the wall ran its course, and the moonlight came out
again, soft and clear, from its temporary eclipse. With one last
shuddering look at the ruined ramparts, and a feeling of horrid wonder
for the haunted valley beyond, where the shapes still crowded and flew,
he turned his face towards the town and slowly made his way in the
direction of the hotel. And as he went, a great wailing of cries, and a sound of howling,
followed him from the gleaming forest below, growing fainter and
fainter with the bursts of wind as he disappeared between the houses.