The breeze and the heat remained until he gained control of his forces once again. Then they fell, and he hurled his energies at the other with renewed vehemence.
...He stood upon a mountain peak, Ryle atop another. A storm was raging between them. Bolts of lightning fell upon both slopes--
"No," he said softly, "not this time," and he stood again in the chamber and continued the pressure.
...Each of them stood upon a floe of ice, tossed by a gray choppy sea--
"No."
They were in the chamber and Ryle was glaring at him. His arm was beginning to ache, but the wavelike sensation continued to pulse through it.
...There was darkness all about them, and the meteor shower began--
"No."
He maintained the focus of his concentration, ready to dismiss any new distraction. It had to be will against will.
The room began to fade and he restored it immediately.
"No."
He smiled.
For half-a-minute he maintained his assault, and then he felt the pressure beginning to mount against him. He drew upon his reserves of determination, but it continued to build.
Even this way, he realized then, Ryle had the edge. The man had played a careful game but it had not really been necessary. He knew that he could not hold him back much longer. Ryle really was stronger. Of course, he had no way of knowing that.
Pol took another step forward. If he could just reach him, could just use his fists again...
But the pressure grew excruciating with the next step. He knew that he would never make it across the chamber. And now the fat sorcerer was beginning to smile...
"Father?"
Ryle turned his head and the pressure was gone. Off to his left, Pol could see that Taisa was sitting up upon the slab of stone.
"Taisa... ?"
The man took a step forward.
Pol gathered his forces and struck. Ryle fell like a poled ox.
"Father!"
Taisa slumped back upon the stone. Larick, who had been stirring, grew still.
Gargantuan peals of laughter shook the room.
XVII
The wolf paced and turned in the great cavern, below the Face, before the frozen forms of the other beasts and the men. He slipped out only briefly to find something to eat, unable to go too great a distance from the lair, and a part of his mind always kept watch upon the entrance. He made his kill quickly and took it back with him into the grotto. He lay before the shadowy forms of the other hosts, crunching bones. Beyond this, there was only silence.
When he rose again, his movements were less rapid and they continued to slow, as did his heartbeat and his breathing.
Finally, he was barely stirring, and at last he came to a halt. His eyes grew glazed. He became totally immobile.
Slowly then, a serpent uncoiled itself upon a ledge near the place of the Face. It twisted its way down the rough, rocky wall, tongue darting, eyes bright. It slithered across the floor. It fell upon the remains of the wolf's meal and consumed them.
It mounted the wall again, exploring ledge after ledge, entering each cranny and crack, eating any insects it came upon. Tongue darting, it tested every stirring of the air.
Hours passed, its movements slowed. At length, it stopped within a night-dark crevice.
The big cat awakened and stretched. She went to regard the still and expressionless Face high upon the wall. She patrolled the cavern. She left briefly to feed, as the wolf had done, returned and grew stiff as she licked her rectum, one leg high overhead.
A man awakened. He cursed, drew his blade and inspected it, sheathed it. He began to pace. After a time, he spoke to the Face. It never replied, but he was not misled. He could feel the intelligence, the power within it. The sightless eyes seemed to follow him wherever he went.
At last his words trailed off and he became a part of the scenery.
The Harpy awakened and uttered a cry and a curse. She flapped in quick patrol about the cavern, defecating profusely, imaginatively.
Then she considered the Face and grew silent. She went to feed at the remains of the cat's meal.
All were as one before the Face.
XVIII
Pol turned toward the doorway. An unnaturally-cast shadow covered the large figure of the man who stood there. As soon as Pol's gaze fell upon him, that one moved forward and entered the chamber. The shadow went away.
Pol stared. The man wore a yellow cloak, darker garments beneath it. He was blue-eyed, with sandy hair white at the temples. His features were rugged, his expression almost open, almost honest. He smiled. He had a shiny, capped tooth.
"There is a lesson there for you, lad," he said, and Pol recognized the voice. "He had you, but he allowed himself to be distracted. I lifted an old spell, to give you an opening, to see what you would do." He shook his head. "You shouldn't have allowed yourself to be distracted, also. You should have struck instantly, not stood gawking. A better man could have killed you in that interval--would have."
"But the distraction itself might have represented a threat," Pol replied.
"If a building is falling on you, you don't concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That's survival. You were good, but you hesitated. That can be fetal."
"Car? Who the hell are you, anyway?"
"You know my name."
"Henry Spier?"
The man smiled again.
"So much for introductions."
From somewhere, he produced a black cigarette holder, screwed a cigarette into it and raised it to his lips. Smoke drifted upward from it before it reached his mouth. He puffed upon it and looked about the chamber.
"Things seem to have worked themselves out just about as I'd calculated them," he observed.
He reached beneath his cloak and produced the statuette Pol had hidden in the tunnel.
"You found it. ..."
"Of course."
Henry Spier walked past him and placed the figure at the second point from the right in the diagram upon the floor.
"Six to go," he commented as he straightened and turned.
"That is the first cigarette I've seen in this world," Pol said.
"A man of perception may choose his pleasures from many places," Spier replied. "I'll be happy to teach you all about them later. But now we have some important business to conclude."
"My dreams," Pol said. "You released me from what I might call the first series, that night on the trail ..."
Spier nodded.
"...But then there were more--set in the same world, but very different."
Again Spier nodded, and the smoke curled above his head.
"Since you were being propagandized in the first instance," he stated, "I felt it only fair that you should be granted a somewhat fuller picture when the opposition had its opportunity."
"I must confess that the fuller picture was not entirely comprehensible to me."
"It would be surprising if it were," said Spier, "since it was an alien and vastly older civilization that you viewed. What is far more important, though, is whether or not you found it attractive."
Spier's eyes suddenly met with his own and Pol looked away.
"I found it--fascinating," he said, and when he looked back he saw that Spier was smiling again.
"Excellent," the man replied. "I believe that finds us in basic agreement as to values. What say you produce the other six Keys now and we be about our business?"
Pol looked about the chamber. He gestured.
"You cautioned me against inattention and distraction. What of these?"
"My power would have to be broken for these three to awaken," he said. "It would require a faltering of my will, and I doubt the sufficiency of anything I propose doing now to work that end."