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No, he thought again, but he would not run, and light broke about him, white and blinding. He stood atop a mountain higher than all mountains, in snow, with mountain peaks about it, thrusting out of cloud; and the sun turned red and stained the white with blood. The bird was back, an inky blot, hovering on rowing wings against the gales which shook his naked limbs and streamed his hair into his eyes. The winds turned warm. He looked about him, and a languor stole over him.
"It's the height of the world," the voice whispered. "The sky is very near this place." The warmth increased, melting down the drifts, and a woman lay naked in the snow, violet-lidded and seeming asleep. Her eyes began to open.
No, he thought at once, for he trusted nothing in this place. The lips parted and laughed; and the sleeper became a gri
"I am desire," it said, hissing. In the clouds about the peak, towers rose, and became what he knew for a city, and time flowed backward into an ancient past, of wars and armies and conquests, of horrors and of greatness of its kings. All of this he was offered, and all the while the black bird hovered in the winds. White beasts had gathered, and there came a faint, threatening laughter.
" Run," they taunted him. He tried to stand, but he was a beast hooved and made to be their prey. He whirled on slender legs, stretched out and ran, and they howled after him, across the snow, among the rocks. He skidded on ice, recovered and ran, bursting his heart in his ru
But they were men, like those of the ancient city, and bore bows. They pierced him with arrows and his blood stained the snow and the rocks and ran in great smears down the sky. No! he thought, refusing to die. He looked up at the bird which was always there, and saw among the rocks the violet-eyed serpent, which coiled with head uplifted, watching him. It shaped itself. He made up his mind and did the same. He was a man again, on two feet. The bird screamed in the sky, and he gave it a cold look, and healed himself of his wounds. He glanced again at the serpent, but a whole host of polychrome serpents had taken its place, and the rocks had acquired a pair of eyes, amethyst-rimmed.
They were lively with interest. "What is your name?" the voice asked. He shaped his totem again. It hung about his neck. He drew a great breath, suffused with power, and named them his name. He extended the ground at his feet, and made it golden grass, stretched it wide and pushed back the mountain peaks, until his own mountains stood there again. He made the sky blue overhead, and the sun, young and yellow. He stretched wide his arms, embracing the world, and looked again toward the rocks. A naked boy stood there, among the serpents, which hissed and threatened. The boy looked frightened, a frowning, sullen fear, with will to fight. He approved that, respected it.
"Elio," he said, for he knew that name among the others. He ignored the frown and made game in the land, and more and better birds to fly in the heavens, made the great river, and fish to swim in it, made it all as it had been, and himself as he had been, and lifted his hand and looked about him, showing it all to the boy who was a king.
"No!" the bird cried; and the serpents, far away now, wove into a man of metal which started at the horizon and clicked toward them.
"They will kill you," the boy said. "They will kill me too if I stand here. Let me out of your dream. Let me go. I should not have stepped so far apart from them."
"Do you want to leave?" he asked the boy, who, naked, looked about at the blue sky and the bright young sun and all the grasslands, and shook his head, his eyes shining violet to the depths.
"It is young," he said. "What else is it?" He shut his eyes a moment, and dreamed Ta'in, whose vast slit eyes and scaly nose took shape for him, head and great amber-scaled body. . . huge, fierce Ta'in, who had carried himfrom boyhood. The dragon rubbed against him and nosed the boy, lifted a wide slit-eyed gaze at the edge of the land, which with every step of the metal creature, turned to metal and cities, and over that creeping change, a ship hovered, bristling with offworlders' weapons. "We must run," the boy said.
He paid no heed, swung up to Ta'in's back, faced the metal edge which was growing wider and nearer, and reckoned well that this was the last time, that if he lost Ta'in again, Ta'in was truly lost, and so was he. He had his weapons again, drew bow and fired at the advancing edge, fired shaft after shaft, and saw the machines and the guns bearing down on him as they had before. He was not alone. Another dragon whipped up beside him, with a young rider in the saddle. The boy drew bow and fired, shouted for joy to see the metal edge retreat ever so slightly. And then there was another dragon, and another rider, on the boy's left.
"Mahin!" the boy cried, naming him. Three bows launched arrows now, and yet for all they took back, the metal edge still struggled forward.
And stopped its advance, for another and another dragon appeared, a hissing thunder. He saw them, shrieked a war cry, ordered attack, and the riders were still joining them, while dragon bodies surged forward, and Ta'in's power rippled between his knees. The arrows became a storm. The metal edge retreated, and the ship, last of all, began to shiver in a sky gone blue, plummeted down, grew feathers, shed them and died.
He looked about him, at the bright familiar land, at the keen-eyed warriors who had joined him, men and women, at the brave boy who was his once-lost son. Pride welled up in him.
"Your dream," his son said, love burning in his eyes, "is best of all."
"Let me in," Ginar said. He had walked far to the iron gates, and his bulk made walking difficult. Two days and Belat had not returned. It was a desperate act, to cross the bridge unbidden, to venture the catacombs. . . all but deserted now, but he had seen the movement from the hill by the port, the drift of peasants going where they would not have dared to go, the gradual desertion of the fringes of the city, the long silence. . . and Ginar, who was an addict of the dream, could no longer bear the question. "Let me in," he begged of the Keeper, who did not looklike the legendary Keepers, but more like one of the peasants. He hoped for the tape at least, to have that, to savor the dream for which he had been longing with feverish desire. The Keeper let him in. He walked, panting, the long road through the field of ruin, where peasants sat with placid eyes. Walked, with long, painful pauses, to the i
At long last he reached the doors, which stood ajar, where peasants sat along the corridors. . . he stumbled among their bodies, pushed and forced his way in gathering shadow, for the lamps were dimmed. He entered the lotus hall at last, where peasants sat among the lords of dream, where a boy sat on a flower throne.