Creep, Shadow! by Abraham Merritt

I lay upon a wide low bed in a tapestried room where an ancient lamp burned with a dim rose light. It was Dahut's room from which she had sent me forth as shadow. My hands were crossed upon my breast, and something bound my wrists. I raised them and saw twined tight around them the witch-fetters--a twisted thread of pale-gold hair, the hair of Dahut. I broke them. My ankles were crossed and bound with the same fetters, and these I broke. I swung from the bed. Around me was a robe of the soft white cotton, a robe like that I had worn to the sacrifices. I tore it from me with loathing. There was a mirror over the dressing table--on my face were the three marks of Dahut's whip- branding, no longer crimson but livid.

How long had I been in the shadowy land? Long enough to allow Ricori to return--but how much longer? More important, what time had elapsed since Helen? A clock showed close to eleven. But was this still the same night? It might not be--shadow time and shadow space were alien. I had seemed to cover immense distances, and yet I had found Helen just outside de Keradel's gates. For I was sure that that old room had been in the house McCann had taken.