No!
The door to Mark's apartment banged open and the man himself emerged. Mouseglove's fingers outlined and dug for the pistol within his parcel on the seat beside him, There was not time in which he might take off, no way in which he could flee.
Yet, Mark did not immediately advance. He stood with his thumbs hooked behind his belt, studying the sky, the roof. Could it be that it was only the man's insomnia which had brought him outside?
Mouseglove realized that he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly and took the pistol onto his lap. His left arm was beginning to tremble, from holding the door nearly closed against the tension of its spring.
...And don't let it rattle, he appended to his latest prayer.
He located the trigger and raised the pistol. Abruptly, Mark buttoned his jacket and closed the door behind him. He began walking across the terrace.
I'd shoot him. Right now. If I could be sure of getting him. But I've never used one of these things. And already my grip is slippery upon it. I'd take the chance with a crossbow, if I had one. If this door were shut and the window down... if...
Mark passed within five meters, without even glancing at the flier. Mouseglove, deep within his cowl, crouched, arm aching, watched him go.
It was another ten minutes before he dared to slam the hatch and turn his attention to the controls.
Pol did not permit the music to falter. The man-beast's eyes had passed over him several times as it moved slowly back and forth along the hall. It was well over two meters tall, with dark, curved horns. The room stank. Pol wondered what sort of teeth the creature possessed, with the head of a herbivore and the reputation he was still fresh on from his recent readings. He decided that he was willing to leave the question to sorcerers of a more academic bent. He turned his full attention to his playing.
Only his hands moved. He imagined that he plucked strands extending from the instrument to the horns of the beast. The force that grew within his wrist seemed to flow out through his fingertips, into the guitar, across the distance that lay between them.
...Rest. A nervous life such as yours requires some interlude of peace, he sent within the song. Not merely sleep, but the deep, muscle-easing joy of total rest that is almost pain, it is so sweet....
The minotaur slowed even more, finally coming to a standstill beside the wall. Even its awful breathing slowed.... Forget, forget the moment. The dream-sights dance already behind eyes that would close. Approach the cloud-strewn border of the land where visions dwell. They beckon...
The minotaur put out his right hand and leaned upon the wall. His head nodded. He snorted softly, once.
...Go, go to that place. There, skiey towers caressed by cool breezes make sweet the forgetting--and infields of flowing green you wander. Delight spills across your body like a gentle rain. You bathe in the pools of healing. Bright colors fill your vision. There comes a song that brings you peace....
The creature knelt, lowered himself to the floor. His eyes closed.
Pol continued to play for a long while. There was little expression upon that sleeping face, other than a certain slackness. And the minotaur's breathing had grown much slower and quieter. For the first time, Pol dared to look away from him, to trace with his eyes the path of the strand he had followed.
The green line led to a niche, high in the wall at the far end of the room. There were several clusterings of the darker strands about it, but these were far less elaborate than those he had encountered beneath the pyramid--and apparently cast where they were mainly for purposes of protecting the faintly glowing cylinder from molestation by the minotaur himself.
Pol moved quietly across the stone floor in that direction, his hands automatically continuing the melody as he studied the knottings of the spells. There were three of them, any one of which might have stopped the minotaur or an ordinary man. Yet, their undoing should take a competent sorcerer no more than--
He glanced back at the sleeping creature as he realized that he would have to stop playing in order to unwind the spells.
He reduced the tempo and strummed more softly.... Sleep, sleep, sleep...
He stopped and lowered the instrument. His left hand twisted forward. When the first spell was undone, he glanced back and saw that the beast still slumbered.
As he worked on the second one, he heard a noise behind him, but at that moment he could not look away. Finally, it fell apart beneath his hands and he turned quickly, strands dispersing all about him.
The minotaur had only turned in its sleep.
He returned to the consideration of the final spell. It was no more difficult than the others. But he could not rush its untwining for the proper pace was as much a matter of necessity as the appropriate movements. His left hand darted, hooked and twisted. These last strands were colder than the others and, correspondingly, released a greater feeling of heat when they were at last undone.
Again, Pol looked back.
The minotaur's eyes were open and staring at him.
Who are you?
A singer.
What do you want here?
A mere bauble.
The thing in the niche? It bites. Take care.
I shall. You do not mind that I take it?
Why should I? It is nothing to me. Where have I been?
Dreaming.
I had never been there before. There were bright things I'd never seen....
Colors?
Perhaps. Everything was good. Like never before. I want to go there again.
That can be arranged.
I want to dwell there forever.
Close your eyes then, and listen to the music.
The minotaur closed his eyes.
Bring this music and send me away....
Pol began to play, recovering all the visions which had come to him earlier. As he did, his eyes passed over the second section of the rod in its niche--longer, narrower than the first segment, bearing a scene of animals and men and woodland spirits, free of strife, dancing, eating, loving...
He struck the strings, reached out, seized the rod-section and fitted it into the first at his belt. Then he resumed playing as the minotaur still drowsed. He felt the increased warmth, the mightily enhanced sense of power that now twisted about the rod. As he played, he called upon it for a new usage and he felt that power move warmly through his abdomen, down his arm, into the guitar, to be joined with the music itself.
...Across the fields, where there is no strife, no hunger, no pain, where no one is a monster, where the light is soft, where the birds call and the brooks burble, where twilight comes on bringing stars like swarms of fireflies--to dwell there forever, never to awaken, never to depart--sleep, bull-man, in the peace you have never known--always, ever...
Pol turned away from the sleeper. He touched his wrist to the new section of the rod. Somewhere, buried in his unconscious, it seemed that there should be a record of every step, every turning he had taken on the way in. Therefore--
The dragon-image rose like a phoenix glowing above his wrist. Surely, it should be able to reach those buried memories.
Go! he commanded. I follow!
It darted away from him, to depart the hall from the doorway nearest the niche, rather than the one through which he had entered.
He hesitated only a moment, then followed, smiling. So much for theory. He took it as a message that the forces his special sense reached and manipulated were not to be categorized in so facile a manner.
As he took his first turn beyond the doorway, he had his final glimpse of the sleeping minotaur, over his right shoulder. He saw the knot of his own spell drifting above the prostrate form, like a giant, yellow butterfly.
Mouseglove's relief was immense as the ship cleared the highest tower and soared out, away from Anvil Mountain. Already, the lights of its city were small beneath him, and he was surprised to be taken by a sensation of beauty viewed as he looked upon it. Turning away, he continued to direct the vessel up past the regions where the dark bird-things wove their interminable patterns. So far, there was no indication of pursuit. He pushed the ship to its ultimate speed and held it there until the mountain was only a dim outline behind him. At last, this, too, faded and only the stars gave him light.