More Than Fire

He did not waste time. He took the Horn from its bag and blew it. The seven notes died, but no gate appeared on the walls of the pit. Red Orc had trapped them, no doubt of that.

He put the Horn back in the bag and turned to face the man at the end of the pit. He was tall and handsome and looked twenty-five years old, though he must have lived at least a century and a half ago, possibly more.

His long hair was brown and pulled tightly back into a ponytail. His suit of clothes was of a style in fashion among the Lords a long time ago. But he must have had them made in some Thoan universe. The threads of the jacket pulsed with green, red, white, blue, and yellow as if they were colored tubes. His once-white shirt was ruffed and open at the neck. His trousers were a bottle-green velvety material ending at the calves in a tight band. A scarlet triangular patch covered his groin.

On the middle finger of his left hand was a heavy ring of silver. It wound around the finger three times. Though Kickaha had glimpsed the ring when he had entered the pit, he now saw it in detail. He was startled. It was in the form of the scaly man. That insectile head on the ring looked exactly like the head of the being in the chamber of the dead.

"We meet again," the man said in English, smiling. His pronunciation, though, was not like any English Kickaha had ever heard.

"I am Eric Clifton. At your service. Like you, I am the prisoner of Red Orc. At least, I assume that that loathsome Lord brought you here against your will."

7

ELETH WAS NOW WAILING LOUDLY. KICKAHA SHOUTED, "STOP that caterwauling! You hated your sister, yet you're carrying on something awful, as if she was very dear to you!"

Eleth stared with red eyes at him while she choked back her grief. Sniffling, she said, "But I did love Ona! Just because we disagreed now and then. .."

"Disagreed? Now and then?" He laughed. "You and your sister were bound in a ring of loathing and spite! The only reason you didn't kill each other was because you'd lose somebody you could hate!"

"That's not true," Ona said. She sobbed once, then said, "You wouldn't understand."

"No, I wouldn't."

He turned back to Eric Clifton.

"I'm Kickaha. You may have heard of me. This is Anana the Bright. She was born at the begi

He paused, then said, "Anana and I saw you briefly when you were in the floating palace of Urthona, Lord of the Shapeshifting World. Anana and I had a hard time with Urthona and Red Orc when we were passing through Urthona's World. But we killed him. Red Orc was also a prisoner on the palace, but he escaped."

"I wondered what happened to you," Clifton said.

"Details later. You can explain to us just how you got into the Thoan universes from Earth and how you happen to be here. And how in hell did you get that ring?"

While he was talking, he was looking at the sides of the pit. An oily substance filmed them.

"It's a long story," Eric Clifton said. "Shouldn't we be thinking just now about how to get out of here before Red Orc shows up?"

"I'm doing that," Kickaha said. "But that won't interfere with my hearing your story. Keep to the highlights, though."

Clifton said that he was born somewhere around 1780 of very poor parents in London, England. His father had managed to work his way up from a day laborer to owner of a bakery shop. When that failed, he and his wife and six children had been put in debtor's prison. There his father and three children had died of malnutrition and fever. His mother had gone insane and was sent to Bedlam. Not long after he and his siblings had been released, his fourteen-year-old brother was caught and hanged for having stolen a pair of shoes. His younger sister became a whore at the age of twelve and died at eighteen of syphilis and gonorrhea.

At this point, Clifton sucked in a deep breath, and tears filmed his eyes.

"That was a very long time ago, but as you see, I am still affected by the memory of ... never mind ... anyway. .."

He had been very fortunate in being adopted, though not legally, by a childless couple. That had saved him from being deported to Australia.

"Though that could have been my great chance to be a free man and, perhaps, a rich man," Clifton said.

The man who raised him was Richard Dally. "A bookseller and publisher. He and his wife taught me to read and write. I became acquainted with Mr. William Blake, the poet, engraver, and painter, when my stepfather charged me with delivering a book to him. Mr. Blake-"

"Does this have anything to do with the main story?" Kickaha said.

"Very much so. I ca

"I read some of his poems when I was in high school."

Blake had been born, if he remembered correctly, in 1757 and had died in 1827. He was an eccentric who was Christian, but his ideas about religion differed much from the views of his time. Or from any other views then and in Kickaha's time. That much he had learned from his English teacher.

Clifton said, "Did you know that Blake wrote poetic works in which he made up his own mythology?"

"No."

"He mixed them with Christian elements."

"So?"

"His didactic and symbolical works were apocalyptic poems in which the characters were gods and goddesses he invented, or said he invented. He conceived his own mythology, and the deities in them had names such as Los, Enitharmon, Red Orc, Vala, and Ahania."

"What? You must be ... no, you're not kidding!" Kickaha said. He turned to Anana. "Did you know this?"

Her eyes widened. "Yes, I did, but don't get angry with me. The subject just didn't come up, though I've met Blake."

"You met Blake?"

Kickaha was so flabbergasted that he spluttered. Yet he knew that she must be telling the truth. This Blake matter had meant little to her, and she would have recalled it if he had mentioned the poet's name.

He said, "All right. It's okay. I was just surprised." He turned to Clifton. "Tell me how this happened."

"Mr. Blake was a mystic visionary and exceedingly eccentric. His eyes were the wildest, the brightest, and the piercingest I've ever seen. His face was like an elf's, one of the dangerous elves. Mr. Dally said that Blake claimed that when he was a child, he saw angels in a tree and the prophet Ezekiel in a field. It was also said that he had seen the face of God at his bedroom window. If you saw him and heard him talk, you'd believe that these stories were true.

"A few times, Mr. Blake visited Mr. Dally to buy a book on credit. He was very poor, you know. Twice, I overheard him and Mr. Dally in conversation, though Mr. Blake did most of the talking. Mr. Dally was fascinated by Mr. Blake, though Mr. Dally felt uneasy when Mr. Blake was indulging in his wild talk. I did too. He seemed possessed by something strange, something not quite of this world. You'd have to talk to him to know exactly what I mean.

"Anyway, one afternoon, Mr. Blake, his eyes looking more wild than I'd ever seen them, more spiritual or more visioning, I should say, told Mr. Dally that he had seen the ghost of a flea. I don't know what he meant by a flea since the ghost, as he described it, had very little of the flea in it. It looked just like the figure on this ring, except that its hand did not hold a cup for drinking blood."

Clifton held up the hand with the ring on its finger.