blueness brightened and cleared. The cold ceased. The fall ended.
I stood on a crimson tiled floor. Crimson walls curved up all about me, arching overhead into a crimson vault in which the brilliant white glitter of stars formed constellations unknown to me.
This chamber, I thought, I had visited before.
I tried to swallow and my mouth was as dry as a pauper’s tankard.
The voice whispered in from nowhere and everywhere.
“Sit in the chair, Dray Prescot. Sit.”
I licked my lips.
“What damned chair—?” I started to bluster.
The chair sizzled out of the enveloping crimson. It rushed toward me like a runaway totrix, flapping draperies, rippling fringes, lurched to a halt touching my knees. I twisted and fell into the seat. The arms reared up and lapped across my chest like the tentacles of an octopus and the chair hared off, hissing, racing away into the crimson shadows.
This was not madness.
No draught animals pulled the chair. It just went howling along across the floor, hissing, and when it careered around an invisible corner neither it nor I leaned over.
Expecting the light to turn from crimson to green and then to yellow, and to finish up in an ebon chamber with three oval pictures on the walls, I did not close my eyes.
No shimmering veils of gossamer brushed my cheeks.
Pungent scents stung my nostrils.
My eyes watered.
My nose ran.
I tried to clean myself up and the straps held my arms fast locked.
So, then, irritated beyond measure, I yelled.
“Everoinye! Star Lords! What footling nonsense is this?”
They heard me all right. I did not doubt that.
But they did not deign to reply.
After a space I gave up raging at them and calling them all the foul names I could put tongue to, and sat in a dull stupor waiting for what nonsense they would bring on next.
Abruptly, the chair stopped.
There was no sudden jolt. My insides did not give a forward lurch as we halted. One moment we were spinning along, the next we stopped. The transition, abrupt, made no difference to my posture or feelings.
The chair hummed to itself.
I looked around.
If I was not deceiving myself in the pervasive glow, the crimson walls curved away to each side as well as fore and aft. The chair and I waited in the center of a great cross, an intersection of crimson vaults.
A green oblong appeared to my right side.
The size of two men, it shone a refulgent greenness into the lambent crimson glow.
I bellowed.
“Is that you, Ahrinye?”
Ahrinye, a younger Star Lord, had made his opposition to the older Everoinye known. And younger and older...? What meanings did those words have to beings whose life spans must run into the millions of years?
With a whining hiss another chair shot out of the green oblong.
It rushed past me.
It hurtled away along the crimson floor, heading the way I had come.
One glance was all I had, one look at the occupant of the other chair.
He, in his turn, had had one good look at me.
His numim roar lashed out as he whistled past.
“Zaydo! You no good rascal! Skulking again, are you—”
And then he was gone, Strom Irvil of Pine Mountain, gone whirling away. His glorious lion-man’s face was in full flower, all his wounds healed. His fur, his hide, glowed more brightly than I had seen it before, when he’d been trapped in the bowels of the earth and sorely wounded. His bristling lion mane was a tawny umber. He roared with the righteous wrath of a great lord chastising a lazy body slave.
The body slave had been me, Zaydo, and Strom Irvil had been taken up before my eyes, taken up by the Everoinye.
Well, he’d come belting out of that green door.
I did not think he’d gone in there by choice.
Was it my turn next?
The chair moved.
Hissing, it curved past the green oblong. The greenness dimmed, dwindled, was gone.
I sucked in a breath.
Nothing like this had happened to me before.
The Star Lords had told me they were growing old. How old that might be was beyond my guessing. Were they
I stood on a crimson tiled floor. Crimson walls curved up all about me, arching overhead into a crimson vault in which the brilliant white glitter of stars formed constellations unknown to me.
This chamber, I thought, I had visited before.
I tried to swallow and my mouth was as dry as a pauper’s tankard.
The voice whispered in from nowhere and everywhere.
“Sit in the chair, Dray Prescot. Sit.”
I licked my lips.
“What damned chair—?” I started to bluster.
The chair sizzled out of the enveloping crimson. It rushed toward me like a runaway totrix, flapping draperies, rippling fringes, lurched to a halt touching my knees. I twisted and fell into the seat. The arms reared up and lapped across my chest like the tentacles of an octopus and the chair hared off, hissing, racing away into the crimson shadows.
This was not madness.
No draught animals pulled the chair. It just went howling along across the floor, hissing, and when it careered around an invisible corner neither it nor I leaned over.
Expecting the light to turn from crimson to green and then to yellow, and to finish up in an ebon chamber with three oval pictures on the walls, I did not close my eyes.
No shimmering veils of gossamer brushed my cheeks.
Pungent scents stung my nostrils.
My eyes watered.
My nose ran.
I tried to clean myself up and the straps held my arms fast locked.
So, then, irritated beyond measure, I yelled.
“Everoinye! Star Lords! What footling nonsense is this?”
They heard me all right. I did not doubt that.
But they did not deign to reply.
After a space I gave up raging at them and calling them all the foul names I could put tongue to, and sat in a dull stupor waiting for what nonsense they would bring on next.
Abruptly, the chair stopped.
There was no sudden jolt. My insides did not give a forward lurch as we halted. One moment we were spinning along, the next we stopped. The transition, abrupt, made no difference to my posture or feelings.
The chair hummed to itself.
I looked around.
If I was not deceiving myself in the pervasive glow, the crimson walls curved away to each side as well as fore and aft. The chair and I waited in the center of a great cross, an intersection of crimson vaults.
A green oblong appeared to my right side.
The size of two men, it shone a refulgent greenness into the lambent crimson glow.
I bellowed.
“Is that you, Ahrinye?”
Ahrinye, a younger Star Lord, had made his opposition to the older Everoinye known. And younger and older...? What meanings did those words have to beings whose life spans must run into the millions of years?
With a whining hiss another chair shot out of the green oblong.
It rushed past me.
It hurtled away along the crimson floor, heading the way I had come.
One glance was all I had, one look at the occupant of the other chair.
He, in his turn, had had one good look at me.
His numim roar lashed out as he whistled past.
“Zaydo! You no good rascal! Skulking again, are you—”
And then he was gone, Strom Irvil of Pine Mountain, gone whirling away. His glorious lion-man’s face was in full flower, all his wounds healed. His fur, his hide, glowed more brightly than I had seen it before, when he’d been trapped in the bowels of the earth and sorely wounded. His bristling lion mane was a tawny umber. He roared with the righteous wrath of a great lord chastising a lazy body slave.
The body slave had been me, Zaydo, and Strom Irvil had been taken up before my eyes, taken up by the Everoinye.
Well, he’d come belting out of that green door.
I did not think he’d gone in there by choice.
Was it my turn next?
The chair moved.
Hissing, it curved past the green oblong. The greenness dimmed, dwindled, was gone.
I sucked in a breath.
Nothing like this had happened to me before.
The Star Lords had told me they were growing old. How old that might be was beyond my guessing. Were they
Similar Books
