The top of the spire split open, the two halves folding down like black wings. Procron stood in open air. The sky had been clear when Lann took their viewpoint through the crystal walls; now it was a roiling black mass, sending down sheets of rain which splashed on the hovering Minos and dripped into the fortress.
Procron lifted the diamond skull. Lightning struck him. To Hedia everything went white, then shimmering purple. Lightning struck again, a huge bolt which boiled water from the surface of the spire and ignited several huts in the cantonments built at its base. The walls were dimly transparent from inside, making the smoky yellow flames visible.
Procron lowered the skull toward his own head. The third lightning bolt seemed to focus the whole sky onto the Minos. Sizzling fireballs spat out like blobs ejected from the heart of Aetna.
Nothing moved; there was no sound in all the world.
Procron raised his empty hands to the sky. Purple fire from his spreading fingertips split the clouds, shoving them away with the violence of waves bursting through a wall of sand.
Where Procron's human head had been, now the diamond skull rested. The mouth opened, and the Minos laughed. His voice was the thunder which had not followed the third lightning bolt. His armored form began to sink toward the floor of the fortress as the peak folded closed above him.
Hedia was transfixed. She was only dimly aware that the ape-man beside her had pointed toward the lens-now invisible-again.
They were back in the jungle. Lann set the lens on a section of wall which hadn't been thrown down during Procron's attack. He stepped into the cavity from which he had lifted the device.
Hedia looked around, disappointed to return to this wilderness of destruction but thankful as well. Procron was frightening, even when viewed from a great distance through time and space. Even without the transformation she had just watched, she knew that Procron wasn't a man whom she could expect to twist to her will.
The ape-man was straining at another large fragment of the ruin. Hedia frowned and moved a little farther away. People concentrating on a difficult task tended to forget everything else, and she didn't want to find herself under a slab of crystal because Lann didn't remember she was present.
The distant thump/thump she heard was a flying ship; probably several of them. The Minoi had found them.
"Lann!" she said urgently. "I hear ships coming!"
The ape-man straightened slowly, pivoting a block too large for even him to carry. His lips were drawn back in a grimace which bared his teeth.
There was a deeper blackness in the leaf mold over which the crystal had lain: the entrance to a tunnel. Lann had been aware of the approaching vessels long before she was.
The ape-man gave a great cry and with a final push sent the overbalanced block toppling into the surrounding vegetation. It had been almost too much, even for him. He fell forward, sprawling across the edge of the pit he had just created.
Hedia hesitated for a moment. Lann drew in whooping gasps that sounded as though he were being strangled, but the beating sails of the Minoi were drawing closer.
She jumped down beside the ape-man and put her hand on his shoulder. "Lann?" she said. "I'm ready to go."
The ape-man straightened as much as he ever did. It was like standing beside a horse: powerful, exciting, but for the moment not even marginally human.
"Wook!" he said. He took the lens in his left hand and wormed his way through the mouth of the tunnel.
His hand reached back to summon her, but Hedia was already poising to follow. She wore the dagger on the bandolier and dragged the orichalc spear behind her.
She didn't know where they were going, but she knew what it would mean to be captured again. That wasn't going to happen if she could prevent it.
The sails beat only fitfully, like the breaths of an animal in its death throes. Corylus looked back on their course, his face as blank as he would have kept it if he were on the wrong side of the Rhine and the bushes around him were rustling. He didn't see the giant eel, but by now it couldn't be far behind.
"There's an island," the sprite called from the bow. "To the west, see?"
A finger of stone thrust up from the horizon, casting its long shadow toward them against the glowing red water. Only a thumbnail edge of the sun was still visible.
"Yes!" Corylus said with a rush of relief. He moved to her side, calling, "Master, steer to that island, if you please. Ah, will you, will we, be able to rise to the top?"
It was another nearly vertical pillar, at least as tall as the first one, and again there was no beach at the base. The ship's keel was some twenty feet above the wave tops; not nearly high enough to land on the island, and probably not safe from the eel if it caught up with them either.
The Ancient chuckled but said nothing. Corylus felt the ship turn slightly. It moved like a piece of driftwood which had been in the water so long that it could barely float.
Corylus had tied his helmet to the base of the mast, using a cord clipped from the netting which held the bread. He slipped it on, though he didn't close the face guard yet. He lifted his sword and let it fall back, just making sure that it was free in the scabbard.
"Are you afraid of what's on this island?" the sprite said. "Nothing lives here. Nothing for longer than you can imagine."
Corylus lifted his chin in understanding. "I'm glad to hear that," he said.
And he was. But they were going to land anyway, even if it meant battling wolfmen until he or all of them were dead. There was at least a chance with that, but an eel several hundred feet long was an adversary as hopeless as an avalanche was.
If we can land, that is.
The ship suddenly plunged at a steep angle. Corylus grabbed the railing, certain that the Ancient had lost control of the vessel. The sprite gave him a mocking smile, standing arms-akimbo on the deck. The antics of the hull didn't affect her any more than a branch feared to be shaken off a swaying tree-trunk.
They heeled as the ship curved upward. The sails slammed convulsively, once and again. The vessel lurched like a horse on its last strength. Corylus, looking over the bow, could see land beneath him but the stern with the Ancient was a hundred feet back: much lower and over the sea.
The keel ground on the lip of the tor. The bow tilted down and they scraped to final safety. Only the curved sternpost stuck out over air and the clashing waters.
The sun had dimmed to a bloody smear on the horizon. The ship toppled onto its starboard side. Corylus jumped to the ground, clumsy because he hadn't been expecting what had happened.
I expected to crash into the side of the pillar, drop into the sea, and drown. If the eel didn't get me first.
The moon was low but already so bright that it cast black shadows now that the sun had set. Corylus surveyed the top of the pillar where they rested. It was circular, about a hundred yards in diameter, and as flat as a drill field. In the middle was a tumble of rocks which must have been brought there: nothing else marred the sandstone surface.
The sprite stepped away from the tilted vessel with far more grace than Corylus had managed. Reassured that she was right about the island being untenanted, he walked to the cliff edge and looked down. The helmet felt awkward, so he took it off and held it in his left hand.
The sea around this spine of rock glowed. At first Corylus thought it was only froth from waves hitting the hard stone, but as he watched, he realized that the water was covered with luminescent seaweed. Eddies formed whorls which curled several hundred yards out from the base. He had a feeling that they formed a pattern, but it was beyond him what it might be.