What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously. "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.

Jack Vance's Lyonesse books are the greatest fairy tale of the twentieth century.

In fact, almost every job you get somebody watching you.

A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.

Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.

Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.