Scowling, he turned the pages, located what he sought, made a marginal notation, returned to the place of the original markings.
It seemed to be right. It seemed almost to fit...
A cool breeze crossed the hilltop, bringing with it wild scents that he had all but forgotten in the cities of men. Now it was the stark light of the Everyday, not the smells and noises of the city, not the files and ranks of faces in his classrooms, not the boring meetings, not the monotonous sounds of machinery, not the obscene brightness of colors that seemed a receding dream. These pages were its only token. He breathed the evening, and the back translation he had made from the print-out leaped toward his eyes and quickened within his mind like a poem suddenly understood.
Yes!
His eyes sought the havens and found the white, unblinking star that coursed them.
He rose to his feet with his fatigue forgotten. With his right foot he traced a brief pattern in the dirt. Then he pointed a finger at the satellite and read the words that he had written upon the papers he held.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then it stood still.
Silent now, he continued to point. It grew bright and began to increase in size.
Then it flared like a shooting star and was gone.
"A new omen," he said and then smiled.
9
WHEN THE DAMNED thing entered High Dudgeon, it swept from chamber to chamber in search of its Lord. When it located him at last, casting sulfur into a pool of mercury in the center of an octagonal room, it obtained his attention and suspended itself from the outstretched finger he offered. It conveyed to him then, in its own fashion, the news that it had borne.
With this he turned, performed a curious act involving a piece of cheese, a candle and a feather and departed the chamber.
He removed himself to a high tower and for a long while there regarded the east. Quickly then, he turned and studied the only other avenue in his keep-the westnorth.
Yes, there too! But it was impossible.
Unless, of course, it was an illusion...
He mounted a stair that wound widder-shins about the wall, opened a trapdoor, and climbed outside. Raising his head, he studied the great black orb bright stars all about it; he sniffed the wind. Looking downward, he regarded the massive, sprawled keep that was High Dudgeon, raised by his own power shortly after his creation upon this mountaintop. When he had learned the difference between the created and the born and had discovered that his power was centered at this point in space, he had sucked power up into him through the roots of the mountain and drawn it down in a whirlwind from the heavens, so that he had glowed, dazzling, like a struck lightning rod, and engaged in creation himself. If his power resided here, then this place was to be his home, his fortress. And so it was. Those who would do him ill had died and so had learned their lessons, or they darted the Ever-dark on leathery wings till they earned his favor. The latter he saw sufficiently well-tended so that upon their release into the manform, many had elected to remain in his service. The other Powers, perhaps as strong as he in their own ways, in their own spheres, had troubled him little once suitable boundaries had been established.
For anyone to move against High Dudgeon now... It was unthinkable! Only a fool or a madman would attempt such a thing.
Yet now there were mountains where no mountains had been-mountains, or the appearance of mountains. He raised his eyes from his home and studied the distant shapes. It troubled him that he had been unable to detect within his person the existence of such a welling of forces as would be necessary to create even the appearance of mountains within his realm.
Hearing a footstep on the stair, he turned. Evene emerged from the opening, mounted above it, and moved to his side. She wore a loose, black garment, short-skirted, belted at the waist, and clasped at her left shoulder with a silver brooch. When he put his arm about her and drew her to him, she trembled, feeling the currents of power rising in his body; she knew that he would not favor speaking.
He pointed at the mountain he faced, then at the other, to the east.
"Yes, I know," she said. "The messenger told me. That is why I hurried here. I've brought you your wand."
She raised the black, silken sheathe she bore at her girdle.
He smiled and moved his head slightly from left to right.
With his left hand, he raised and drew off the pendant and chain he wore about his neck. Holding it high, he dangled the bright gem before them.
She felt a swirling of forces and seemed for an instant to be falling forward into the stone. It grew, filling her entire field of vision.
Then it was no longer the jewel, but the sudden westnorth mountain that she beheld. For a long while, she stared at the high gray-and- black dome of stone.
"It looks real," she said. "It seems so- substantial."
Silence.
Then, as star by star, the lights in the sky vanished behind its peaks, its shoulders, its slopes, she exclaimed, "It-it's growing!" and then, "No... It's moving, moving toward us," she said.
It vanished, and she stared at the pendant as it had been. Then he turned, turning her with him, and they faced the east.
Again the swirling, the falling, the growing.
Now the eastern mountain, its face like the prow of a great, strange ship, lay before them. Cold lights lined its features and it, too, plowed the sky, advancing. As they watched, high wings of flame rose behind it and flashed before it.
"There is someone upon-" she began.
But the jewel shattered and the chain, glowing sudden red with heat, fell from her Lord's hand. It lay smoking at their feet. She received a sudden shock from his body as this occurred, and she pulled away from him.
"What happened?"
He did not reply, but extended his hand.
"What is it?"
He pointed at the wand.
She handed it to him and he raised it. Silently, he summoned his servants. For a long while he stood so, and then the first appeared. Soon they swarmed about him, his servants, the bats.
With the tip of his wand he touched one, and a man fell at his feet.
"Lord!" cried the man, bowing his head. "What is thy will?"
He pointed toward Evene, until the man raised his eyes and turned his head toward her.
"Report to Lieutenant Quazer," she said, "who will arm you and assign you duties."
She looked at her Lord and he nodded.
With his wand then, he began touching the others, and they became what they once had been.
An umbrella of bats had spread above the tower, and a seemingly endless column of larger creatures filed past Evene, down the stairway and into the keep below.
When all had passed, Evene turned toward the east.
"So much time has gone by," she said. "Look how much closer the thing has come."
She felt a hand upon her shoulder and turning, she raised her face. He kissed her eyes and mouth, then pushed her from him.
"What are you going to do?"
He pointed toward the trapdoor.
"No," she said. "I won't go. I will stay and assist you."
He continued to point.
"Do you know what it is that's out there?"
"Go," he had said, or perhaps she only thought that he had said it. She recalled it, standing within her chamber at the eastsouth edge of the keep, uncertain as to what had occurred since the word had filled her mind and body. She moved to the window and there was nothing to see but stars.
But suddenly, somehow, then, she knew.