into the double ellipse, then outward, but avoided the sun symbol. Above the
center of the glade the billowing storm clouds jigged round and round each other
in a majestic whirlpool of energy and moisture.
Lightning leapt earthward to blister the ground. No bolt struck near Clothahump,
though two trees were shattered to splinters not far away.
Somehow, above the scream of wind, of too close thunder and the howling vortex
that now dominated the center of the glade, they could still hear the steady
voice of Clothahump. Trying to shield his eyes from flying dirt and debris,
Jon-Tom clung tightly to the tree root and squinted at the turtle.
The wizard was turning easily within his proscribed symbol. He appeared
completely unaffected by the violent storm raging all around him. The sun symbol
was beginning to glow a deep orange.
Clothahump halted. His hands slowly lowered until they were pointing toward the
small heap of powders in the center of the inner ellipse. He recited, slowly and
with great care, a dozen words known only to a very few magicians and perhaps
one or two physicists.
The ancient oak shuddered. Two smaller trees nearby were torn free of the earth
and hurled into the sky. There was a mighty, rumbling crescendo of sound that
culminated in a volcanic rumble from the glade, and a brief flash of light that
fortunately no one looked at directly.
The shape that appeared out of that flash within the inner ellipse took away
what little breath remained to Jon-Tom and his companions. He could not have
moved his knuckles to his mouth to chew on them, nor could his vocal cords give
form to the feelings surging through him.
Soft, eerie moans came from Flor and a slight, labored whistling from Mudge. All
were motionless, paralyzed by the sight of M'nemaxa, whose countenance
transfigures continents and whose hoofbeats can alter the orbits of worlds.
Within the inner ellipse was a ferociously burning shape. The form M'nemaxa had
chosen to appear in was akin to all the horses that had ever been, and yet was
not. He showed himself this time as a stallion with great wings that beat at the
air more than sixty feet from tip to body. Even so the spirit shape could not be
more than partially solid. It was formed of small solar prominences bound
together in the form of a horse. Red-orange flames trailed from tail and mane,
galloping hooves and majestic wings, to trail behind the form and flicker out in
the night.
Actually the constantly shed shards of sunmeat vanished when they reached the
limits imposed by the double ellipse, disappeared harmlessly into a
thermonuclear void only Clothahump could understand. Though wings tore at the
fabric of space and flaming hooves galloped over the plane of existence, the
spirit stallion remained fixed within the boundaries of sorceral art.
There was no hint of fading. For every flaming streamer that fell and curled
from the equine inferno, new fire appeared to keep the shape familiar and
intact, as M'nemaxa continuously renewed his substance. A pair of fiery tusks
descended from the upper jaw of the not quite perfect horse shape, and pointed
teeth burned within jaws of flame.
Among all that immense length of horsehell, a living stallion sun whose breath
would have incinerated Apollo, there were only two things not composed of the
ever regenerating eternal fire-eyes as chillingly cold as the rest was
unimaginably hot.
The eyes of the stallion-spirit M'nemaxa were dragonfly eyes, great black
curving orbs that almost met atop the skull. They were far too large for a
normal horse shape, but that was only natural. Through the still angry cyclone,
Jon-Tom thought he could see within those all-seeing spheres of black tiny
points of light; purple and red, green, blue, and purest white that stood out
even against the perpetual fusion that constituted the body shape.
Though he could not know it, those eyes were fragments of the Final Universe,
the greater one which holds within it our own universe as well as thousands of
others. Galaxies drifted within the eyes of M'nemaxa.
Now a long snake tongue flicked out, a flare frora the surface of a living horse
star. It tasted of dimensions no puny creature of flesh could ever hope to
sample. It arched back its massive flaming head and whinnied. It stunned the
ears and minds of the tiny organic listeners. The earth itself trembled, and
behind the clouds the moon drew another thousand miles away in its orbit. Rarely
was so immense an eminence brought within touch of a mere single world.
"ONE WHO KNOWS THE WORDS HAS SUMMONED!" came the thunder. Great red-orange skull
and galactic eyes looked down upon the squat shape of an old turtle.
But the wizard did not bend or hide his head. He remained safe within his sun
symbol. His shells did not melt and crack, his flesh did not sear, and he looked
upon the horse-star without fear. It dug at existence and its hooves burned
time, but it moved no nearer.
"I would know the new magic that gives so much confidence to the Plated Folk of
the Greendowns as they ready their next war against my peoples!" Clothahump's
most sonorous sorceral tone sounded tinny beside the world-shaking whisper of
the horse.
"THAT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE TO ME."
"I know," said Clothahump with unbelievable brashness, "but it is of consequence
to me. You have been summoned to answer, not to question."
"WHO DARES...!" Then the anger of the stallion spirit faded slightly. "YOU HAVE
SPOKEN THE WORDS, MASTER OF A HUMBLE KNOWLEDGE. YOU HAVE DONE THE CALLING, AND I
MUST REPLY." The spirit seemed almost to smile. "BEWARE, LEADER OF AN IGNORANT
SLIME, FOR THOUGH THEY KNOW IT NOT THEMSELVES, I FORESEE THEM DESTROYING YOU
WITH MIRRORS OF WHAT IS IN YOUR OWN TINY MIND."
"I don't understand," said Clothahump with a frown.
Again the whinny that frightened planets. "AND WHY SHOULD YOU, FOR YOU HAVE
NOTHING TO UNDERSTAND WITH. THE DANGER TO YOU IS NOTHING TO ME, AND YOU CANNOT
IMAGINE IT."
"When will this take place?"
"THEY ARE UNCERTAIN, AS I MUST BE UNCERTAIN, AS IS EVER THE FUTURE UNCERTAIN.
LET ME GO NOW."
Suddenly the flaming hooves were another ten feet above the surface. Yet it was
not M'nemaxa who had moved, but the earth, which had pulled away in fear at the
spirit's rising fury. "Stay!" Clothahump threw up his hands. "I am not
finished."
"THEN BE QUICK, LITTLE CREATURE, OR, WORDS OR NOT, I WILL MAKE OF THIS WORLD
WHITE ASHES."
"I still do not understand the Plated Folk's new magic. If you cannot describe
it to me any better, at least tell me how to counter it. Then I will let you
go."
"I WILL GO ANYWAY, FOR WORDS CAN HOLD ME BUT SO LONG AND NO LONGER. I CAN TELL
YOU NO MORE. I CHOSE NOT TO ARBITRATE THE FATE OF THIS WORLD, FOR I HAVE MY OWN
JOURNEY TO MAKE AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME." There was a vast, roaring chuckle. "IF
YOU WOULD KNOW MORE, ASK YOUR ENEMY YOURSELF!"
A violent concussion shook Jon-Tom loose from the tree root. Bark came away in
his bloody fingertips. But he was blown only a few feet downslope when the wind
began to fade from hurricane to mere gale force.
The thermonuclear stallion spirit vanished in an expanding ellipse of brilliant
light. As the light faded, it left behind a three-dimensional residue. He saw a
wavy image of some huge, sinister chamber. It was decorated with red gems, blue
metal... and white bone.
Within the bower stood an insect shape ten feet tall. Chains of jewels and cloth
and small skulls of horribly familiar design draped the chitin. The nightmare