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The wind curled about him and played upon him as on the string of some musical instrument. He throbbed to its vibrations as he fought it. He continued to rise against its pressures, but he felt the rapid dissipation of the energies which composed his being. A feeling came over him that if he did not make it up and through this time, he would be swept away to drift for perhaps half of an age before he recovered sufficient strength to try again.
As the battering increased and he felt himself slowing he invested all of his remaining strength in an attempt to continue the upward drive. A momentary lull permitted him a great gain, but the assault began again just as he neared the gap.
"Whoever you are that calls," he cried wordlessly toward the gap, "if you really want me, then lend a hand!"
Almost immediately, he felt the tugging--and for the first time it seemed a physical sensation rather than a psychical leading-on. He added his own energies to it and felt himself rising at a more rapid rate. He swept past the highest point he had achieved with his earlier efforts. The gap was before him if he could but bend his course and strike a proper passage now.
He exerted himself again, and the steady pull--from ahead now--assisted him. He came into the gap.
He had hoped for some sheltering from the winds once he achieved the cleft in the mountains, but now he faced a gale blowing through it. Fighting his way to the shelter of an opening in the righthand wall, he gathered his forces and considered the way ahead. He had seen prominences before him and other openings in the walls.
Braving the winds, he advanced and took shelter in the lee of a rocky rib to the left. The wind whistled by him and icy crystals sparkled in long streaks within dark grooves amid the stone. He made another effort, advancing a small distance and sheltering again. The tugging had subsided--or, rather, reverted to the mental level, as a summoning.
When he felt that he had regained sufficient strength, he entered the blast and moved forward once more. In such fashion, he traversed the long defile, finding himself at last in the final protected area, adjacent to the forward opening of the pass. As he waited there, he considered his course of action upon emerging. He decided to move immediately to the nearer side--this being the left--upon departing the gap to prevent his being swept back into it.
As he traveled that final distance, he caught a glimpse of a dark and ancient sea, far ahead, before he slipped to the side, was taken by the winds and felt himself hurled skyward.
He rose at a rapid rate, and the world spun kaleidescopically through whatever senses he possessed. He was tossed upward and outward away from the mountain and then found himself falling, to be caught and dragged through a washboard-like trough of turbulence. When this ended, he fell again, his senses in total disarray.
After a time, he slowed, and he became aware of the tugging once again. He drifted away from the region of high winds, continuing to lose altitude. Gradually, what passed for vision reasserted itself.
Below him, sweeping down to the still sea and seeming to continue beneath its surface, was a fantastic, terraced city of asymmetrical buildings, many of them of a darkly burnished metal, extending on to the right and the left to vanish at the horizon. He was drawn nearer to this place. Towers of colored smoke redolent with heavy perfumes drifted by him. His vision was constantly tricked by the unusual perspectives, the pale light. He drifted lower and saw where demons walked with their human lovers; he heard the strange, slow music from the revolving pentagons. He moved above an avenue lined with grotesque statues, all of them turning slowly in a centuries-long figure-dance. An enormous being, chained among russet pillars, wept continually into a stone basin from which green chalices were filled by the passersby. Faint flashes like heat lightning colored the somber sky far out over the sea. He grew dizzy at the prospect; there was something new and not quite comprehensible in every direction that he looked. Such as the high, yellow tower near the seaside with the statue of the dark woman-like bird-thing crouched atop it ...
Then it stirred and he knew that it was no statue.
Nyalith's voice went forth like trumpets across the land and the sea.
All morion below him was frozen for an instant.
And he knew.
He turned toward the waters and directed his course out over them, his velocity mounting steadily, the world becoming a gray, tu
Before him, there occurred a darkness at the end of the tu
He opened his beak and sent forth his answering cry across the still waters, a cry of exultation in the knowledge that he, Henry Spier, had been joined with the ancient consciousness of Prodromolu, Opener of the Way.
He rode the winds to a great height, then dived down to regard his own reflection in the waters--shadowy birdform haloed in baleful light. Here was the power, he knew. He would summon his people and lead them across the land to the place of the Gate. There he would arouse his human body on the other side. It mattered not that but one Key was in place. This would prove sufficient with the Opener of the Way as aid, once the blood of any of the fallen was added to the spell. There was nothing now to stay the merger of the planes, the salvation of his world. He beat downward once with his wings, feeling their strength, grazing the surface of the water beneath which bright things moved.
Then, sea-splitting tower of scale and mud, it rose before him, red eyes unwinking, wrack of the depths adorning its horns, upon whose back the rock-shelled scavengers danced among skeletons of ships and shards of dead things' bones. And even as it reared, it swayed, the dragger-back-into-the-mud of primordial creation, Talkne, Serpent of the Still Waters, who had for eons awaited this passage and the renewal of their eternal conflict.
Prodromolu's wings went wide, scooping at the air, slowing his forward progress. In that instant before recovery, Talkne struck.
Hammerlike, the head of the serpent fell against the fluttering bird, driving it down among the waves amid a flurry of feathers. Talkne plunged after him.
Prodromolu's talons extended like switchblade scimitars, to gouge long furrows in the serpent's side. His beak slashed as Talkne threw a coil over his back.
Then they were rolling over and over in the water, sending up mighty showers of spray, their blood darkening the foam as it billowed in all directions. His talons continued to slash against the side of the snake, seeking purchase there, as the coil tightened across his back and Talkne's head darted from side to side, moved forward, moved backward, seeking an opening for a deadly strike. Above them, the skies darkened and lightened again. Far across the water, the cry of Nyalith was repeated.
"It is a summons you will never answer, Bird," hissed Talkne.
"We've had this conversation before, Snake," Prodromolu answered.
For the first time, their eyes met, and both stared for a long, peculiar moment.
"Pol?" the bird croaked.
"Henry... ?"
And then Prodromolu struck, overwhelming the slower, human personality within. Talkne writhed in the sudden spasm of his talons, but the dark wings were already shrugging water as they beat with a sound like wet sails aluff, and the serpent was rolled onto her back, tail thrashing, as Prodromolu mounted the air and strove to raise the other into his own element.