In the Moons of Borea by Brian Lumley

fearful sight of his sovereign in the act of commanding the winds. Seeing that Armandra was already aware of all that transpired, without daring to disturb her in any way, he bowed himself out backward and hurried back the way he had come.
    His skin crawled with the sensation of unseen energies, powers of air and space that concentrated now about Armandra, held as yet in check by her, ready to leap in obedience of her slightest command .. .
    `Henri, we're in big trouble,' Silberhutte shouted up to the man who flew above him. De Marigny barely heard the other's words before they were snatched away by squalling winds which seemed to howl now from every corner of the sky. He held the cloak on course as steadily as he could and glanced down to see the Texan twisting this way and that where he hung suspended, scanning the sky and shaking his whipping hair out of his eyes.
    `Is it Ithaqua?' de Marigny shouted back.
    `Yes, and any time now. Look at the sky — there, to the east!'
    De Marigny looked as bidden and saw a fantastic, freakish thing. The sky itself seemed acrawl with sentient, deliberate motion.
    The clouds, white and grey and a mixture of both — heavy nimbostratus and wispy cumulus alike, from all strata of Borea's atmosphere — were being drawn, sucked toward some central point. It seemed to de Marigny that he gazed upon a huge whirlpool in the sky, a cauldron of boiling clouds. More strongly yet the winds howled and rushed, threatening now to drag the cloak and its passengers, too, toward that portentous and awe-inspiring aerial phenomenon.
    In a matter of seconds the sky became still darker and angry, until it was as if a deep and dreadful twilight had fallen over Borea. Now the clouds jostled and careened above, blue-black and laced with brightly flick ering trac eries of electrical fire; while eastward, at the centre of the tumult, there seemed to be a great, continuous explosion taking place in the upper atmosphere. The clouds boiled down and outward from that point, like an inverted ocean hurled back by the emergence of a volcano of the upper air, except that where the cone should be, only an area of clear sky now showed.
    The clear patch rapidly enlarged as, suddenly, the clouds took flight. They raced away from that spot, writhing and roaring their terror with thunder voices across Borea's tortured heavens, hastening one another with lashes of lightning. And finally de, Marigny and his passenger saw why the clouds fled in such chaotic panic .. .
    For now he came, striding down from vaults of space as a giant descends an invisible stairway, falling out of the sky on great webbed feet, glaring down on the white waste through huge carmine stars that burned as the fires of hell themselves in his darkly demonic head.
    Ithaqua the Wind-Walker was back on Borea!

6 Traitor Winds
    `Henri, can you get us out of here?' Silberhutte's shout fought the shrieking wind, reaching up to the man who piloted the cloak.
    `I can get closer to the ground,' de Marigny yelled back. `Try to stay close to whatever cover there is. But there's no way we can make more headway. Perhaps he won't see us.'
    `Not much hope of that. He doesn't miss a thing. But look over there — the snow-ship. That'll be Kota'na and the rest of my men.' The Warlord paused to let the shrieking of the wind die down a little, then continued: 'That ought to give Ithaqua a tiny problem: which target to pick off first!' Unwittingly he had echoed Armandra's own thoughts.
    Now the Old One's temple stood to the rear, and as the cloak dropped toward the white waste, so snow and ice crystals came up in stinging flumes to greet it. The temperature had dropped alarmingly, and de Marigny was sure that he must already be suffering from exposure. He could barely feel his fingers where they worked at the control studs, and his beard, hair, and eyebrows were rimed with frost.
    With only three or four miles to go now to the plateau, still that looming refuge of rock seemed a