Spier raised his eyes and they bored into his own. Pol suddenly felt a resistance rising.
Spier took a step toward him.
It was as if he suddenly faced a heat backlash, as if the target of his exertions stood directly before him rather than some distance away.
Frantically, he switched to the second seeing. His vision focused upon Spier, advancing upon him, fists raised. The image of Spier, still standing in the distance, faded. The man's face was twisted into a smirk and perspiration dotted his brow. His fist was already moving.
Pol's concentration was broken. He ducked forward, raising his hands to protect his face. He heard a solid thunk, followed by a brief cry and realized immediately that Spier's blow had fallen upon the Gate.
He dropped his hands and drove his left fist, followed by his right, into Spier's abdomen. The blows had surprisingly little effect. The man was solid.
Even as he swung a left uppercut and felt it connect, he realized that the main pain the man seemed to have felt was in the bloodied knuckles of his right hand, which he now held in an awkward position. Pol immediately threw a right toward his face, but this blow was blocked. Then Spier rushed him.
Spier's bulk crashed into him, driving him back against the Gate. Pol was dazed as his head struck upon it. Then Spier stepped back and their eyes met again.
He called upon the dragonmark to raise a defense as a shock ran through his entire system like a jolt of electricity. He struck out with the power he had wielded earlier, but it barely seemed to shield him against the forces the other was turning against him. He felt a pressure beginning to build, not unlike that which Ryle had turned upon him. Both he and Spier stood absolutely still now, and though he threw everything he had into the defense, the pressure continued to mount.
A throbbing began in his temples and his breathing became labored. He grew damp with perspiration, though he still felt abnormally cold. A wave of dizziness came and went, came again. He felt that he might only be able to hold Spier off for a few more seconds. His defenses would crumble, the man would place him under control, force him to produce the statuettes and then possibly use him for the sacrifice. Where was the flame which had guided him, protected him?
He seemed to hear faint, mocking laughter. In that instant he realized that this was the end toward which they had guided him. They wanted the Gate opened. If he were not willing, then they would not protect him against the one who would.
His vision began to fade as the vertigo retuned. If this were to be the end, then at least he ought to try inflicting a final hurt upon his enemy.
He placed his right foot flat upon the door behind him and thrust himself forward toward Spier, striking outward and upward with both fists.
He was surprised that his blow actually landed. The last thing that he saw before he fell was the look of astonishment on Spier's face as the man toppled over backwards.
A wave of darkness rushed through Pol's head. He felt nothing as he hit the floor.
XIX
Drifting. He was drifting through blackness and silence. His only other sensation was a feeling of intense cold, but after a time this passed.
For how long he drifted, he could not tell--moments, ages... The sensation was not unpleasant, now that the coldness had passed. Memory required too much effort. He only knew that it was good to know something of rest, of an end to all exertion.
A gentle rocking motion began. Even so ... It was hardly disturbing. But then motion commenced in a single direction. He rode with it, still feeling the rocking as he was drawn along.
He perceived a feint light. It seemed to be coming from all directions, but he did not wonder at the variety of sensory apparatus the sensation might require. His consciousness was growing, but portions of his mind were numb.
The light grew and the morion continued. Whatever was below seemed a pale yellow with smoky patches.
Now the prospect grew clearer, but his sense of perspective was warped. The light values were strange, and there was no way of determining his distance from the slowly resolving objects below. It was a broken land, rocky, sandy, shadowed, with wind-borne clouds of dust and low-lying, snaky mists. But there was nothing recognizable for contrast, nothing to provide a scale. Yet the place was familiar. Where? When?
He dropped lower. Were they mountain peaks or low ridges above which he moved?
And where was he going? Was he controlling his own movements, only drifting, or both? Or neither? It almost seemed--
He was moving alongside one of the larger stone prominences. Suddenly, he rounded it and the matter of relative proportions was resolved.
About ten feet below him, high on a stake, a demonic head was impaled. Something which might be classifiable as a grin drew the dark, scaly face tight. The eyes were ftilly opened, very black and appeared to be staring directly at him.
He felt something akin to a shudder as he was swept on past the grisly thing, with the distinct impression that it had winked at him. The wasteland fell farther below him as he soared into a twilit area of pale stars in a pale sky above the level of blowing dust. Here the wind still blew, cold, with a moaning sound, empty of everything.
Far below now, the features of the landscape fled backward. A fountain of sparks rose as if to intercept him, but he veered far wide of it. Shortly afterwards, a crashing metallic note filled the air, as of the striking of a great gong, the reverberations of which seemed to remain with him for many long minutes.
A bright meteor cut a long, slow trail above and before him; and he heard a sound like thunder though there were no clouds in the sky. His velocity seemed to increase, and the moaning of the wind rose in pitch. Far below him, the dark and light patches of the land moved in a sea of distortions, rendering themselves into momentary faces--elongate, twisted, beautiful, alien, angry, composed, bereft. He passed over a shattered city above which dark forms hovered and turned. Small blue lights darted amid the ruins. Occasionally, the dark things fell upon one and extinguished it. He passed above a black tower from whence a lovely, liquid-voiced singing emerged. A squat, many-legged creature with a juicy, cracked skin, lay like a rotten plum atop it. A brazen chariot passed silently through the middle air, driven by a dead-white being muffled in saffron, drawn by long-tailed creatures whose breath emerged in white clouds to congeal and fell as crystals upon the winds. In a moment, the apparition was gone, and he began to doubt whether he had actually seen it.
A tinkling, as of hundreds of tiny bells, accompanied his passage above a gray plain where armies of humans and demons stood frozen in martial attitudes beneath some ancient enchantment whose fringes he had touched. Ahead of him then, the horizon was broken along its entire length--a thin, irregular edge of the world, rising. He focused his attention upon it.
It grew into a saw-toothed band and then a rampart--mighty, towering and black. For a long while it seemed that at any moment he might be dashed against the great range. And then a shifting of light lay a new perspective across the land, and he realized that it was incredibly distant, incredibly huge. Something tightened within the cloud of his being as he realized intuitively that he must pass over it.
Below, the hidden features of the land were still revealed in fragmentary flashes. He no longer had vision to the rear, but he felt, vaguely, that something was following him. Briefly, he assaulted the frozen part of his own mind, with inquiry as to what he was, where he had come from. Nothing yielded, the brief frenzy passed and forgetfulness of its occurrence ensued. He continued his contemplation of the world before him, realizing that he had come this way before, knowing that this time it was different, knowing that he had a mission to fulfill.