The monster surged forward like the tide driven in by a storm. The doors at the top of the fortress slapped closed like the shell of a clam reacting to danger. What had been the shaman covered the spire and mounded above it.
How much larger can it grow? How much larger can my friend Uktena grow?
All the world grew transparent to her eyes. Alphena saw Procron in his crystal spire and saw the fortress in the monster's swollen body like a pearl in the oyster's mantle.
The crystal shifted. It could not break free in space, but it stretched into another dimension; fading, losing color and form, becoming a sparkling ghost of itself.
The creature made a convulsive movement like a whale swallowing. Even the ghost vanished. Procron and his fortress were cut off forever from Alphena's world.
The monster, swelling still greater, trembled. The storm paused, the clouds frozen in place and the winds still.
Alphena rose to her feet. She shouted, "Uktena! Come back to me, my friend! Come back!"
The monster slumped toward her like a wall of sand collapsing. She stood with her arms crossed. Heads and tentacles drew into the vast body and the body shrank.
"My friend!" Alphena shouted.
Uktena took a step toward her collapsed into the surf. She thrust the axe helve through her sash and waded out to get him.
The sea spit light and occasionally stung her flesh like sparks from a bonfire. Uktena's compact body wobbled on the swell. He was face down.
Alphena hurled herself against the water, but her tunic dragged her back. She should have taken it off with the boots before she left the shore.
The tide was going out. It was taking Uktena with it.
Alphena untied her sash and snatched the tunic over her head to drop on the waves. The axe was gone also. That didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that she reach Uktena before he drowned. She swam toward him, wishing she had spent more time in the swimming bath even if that meant less at sword practice.
She didn't know how long it was before she reached the shaman. He turned his face to breathe, but she wasn't sure that he noticed her presence. She rolled him onto his back. Kicking and stroking with one arm, she began to return to the shore. The storm was passing, though the wind still whipped froth from the wave tops.
Alphena felt momentarily weightless; the water about her glowed white. Everything returned to normal, except that six flounders rose to the surface and began a round dance on the tips of their tails.
The fish dived back toward the bottom, their white bellies gleaming. Alphena continued to stroke shoreward. Maybe she had imagined the fish, and anyway it didn't matter.
She didn't realize how close they had come till her knees scraped sand and bits of shell from the bottom. She gasped in shock and managed to swallow water.
She squatted because she wasn't able to stand. She laid Uktena's head in her lap to keep it above water. He was breathing, but he didn't seem to be aware.
Awareness would come. He was breathing. That was all that mattered.
Alphena didn't know how long she squatted there with her eyes closed, getting her breath under control and easing the white ache of her right arm and shoulder. The surf only came to her ankles at its flux and retreated well out into the sound.
She heard voices. After a further moment, she raised her eyes. The three Sages were coming toward her, chanting in unison. Forty-odd people, probably the whole village of Cascotan, waited at the high water mark.
"Help us," Alphena said. "He's all right, he's just tired. Help us back to the kiva."
Still chanting what must be a prayer, the Sages lifted Uktena from her. Hanno and Dasemunco took the shaman's arms. Wontosa, carrying the pipe, walked ahead of them. They paid no attention to Alphena.
She got up and wavered. She should have put her hands down to help herself, but she hadn't wanted to appear weak. I could scarcely appear weaker than I really am. She followed the four men higher up the shore.
Wontosa said, "Here. The sand is dry, so he won't be able to take power from the water."
He began to fill the murrhine pipe with herbs from the embroidered deerskin pouch. Uktena had left it behind in the kiva.
"What are you doing?" Alphena shouted. She stumbled forward. Arms caught her from behind-the women Sanga and Lascosa; the latter the mother of the thing Procron had created in the marshes.
"He's too dangerous," Sanga said. "Don't you see? He has to be sent away or we'll never be safe!"
Uktena sprawled on his back on the sand. The Sages squatted around him and continued to chant. Wontosa puffed on the pipe he had taken from the greater magician.
"He saved you!" Alphena said. Her vision blurred with anger and tears. "He saved you all!"
"He's a monster!" Lascosa said in a venomous tone. "He didn't save my Mota. He would destroy us all!"
The chant reached a crescendo. Wontosa blew a great jet of smoke over the torso and head of his exhausted rival. Uktena's form blurred.
"No!" Alphena shouted as she tore loose. She flung herself over her friend's body.
The world shifted like a mirror tilting. She was alone, falling again through the emptiness from which Uktena had rescued her.
But now he cannot rescue even himself.
Lann ran heavily. He was faster when he dropped down and used his knuckles as forehooves, but even then Hedia had no difficulty keeping up. He didn't seem comfortable on all fours, however. He regularly lurched upright and tried to run on two legs like a man.
He wasn't a man, poor dear, except in his mind. And not really all of his mind, though enough to satisfy Hedia. She focused on the virtues of the men whom she liked, and Lann had most of the virtues which Saxa lacked. Between them, they made a truly wonderful man.
Hedia smiled. She'd found over the years that if she tried, she could like most men.
The ape-man paused, rose on his hind legs, and sniffed the air. He frowned in doubt. Turning, he looked back the way they had come. He didn't seem to see any more there than Hedia did-blank grayness-but he noticed the lens she carried.
"Hoo!" he cried, as delighted as if he were meeting an old friend. He snatched the device from her without ceremony.
Hedia felt her lips purse, though she didn't object. It was his, after all, though he might have been more polite.
Except that Lann couldn't be more polite. He was a beast, an animal, with major virtues. And, like Saxa, he was devoted to her.
The ape-man held the frame in one hand and touched the lens with his index finger. When he did so, he and Hedia stood on a pavement of dull metal in place of something firm but unseen in the universal grayness. She tested it with her toes.
This is what we've been walking on all the time. This isn't a mirage of the past, this is real.
Other paths branched from this one. Each was of a different materiaclass="underline" brick laid in various patterns; concrete; a hard material as black as muck from a swamp; and uncountably many others. Some tracks were dirt, sun-baked or rutted or even grassy.
One of the paths was leaf-mold on which Hedia could see her own footprints pressed delicately onto the broad, splayed marks of the ape-man who had led her. An Atlantean airship flew above that side-branch and vanished through the portal at the end; the second ship followed only moments later.
The hunters who had chased Hedia and the ape-man on foot were also running back the way they had come, but it was too late for them. Typhon crawled on its many legs from the prison which Lann had breached.
The monster seemed deceptively slow because it was so large, but its tentacles swept fleeing humans into its slavering maws. Typhon had as many heads as it had legs. They were equipped with beaks and fangs and muscular gullets to squeeze and crush and swallow. Some of the victims turned to fight, but that was like watching mice bare their teeth at a forest fire.