The mountains loomed even larger, and he knew that--no matter what the nature of his form--their traversal would not be easy. He began studying their silhouette, looking for a low area, a gap--anything that might ease his passage. He thought that he detected such a place off to the left, and he made an effort to direct his course toward it.
He was surprised when this actually occurred. It was his first voluntary act that he could recall since coming into consciousness, and it pleased him to see it prove fruitful. Immediately, however, he wondered what had been directing him up until this time.
He became aware then of a kind of tugging, of the sensation of being drawn onward by something beyond the mountains, something which was willing to give him a little leeway, that he come more rapidly and safely into its lands. He exerted himself again, and his velocity increased.
As he drew nearer to the mountains it seemed that he grew more tangible than he had been earlier. For now he began to meet with resistance, to feel the buffeting of the winds.
The mountains towered above him, their peaks vanishing in the darkness overhead. He rose to an even greater altitude as he came nearer, approaching the gap. The winds caught him and cast him back down, screaming now in their passage.
He stabilized himself and mounted again, moving even nearer to the rocky face as he ascended. This time he rose higher before the screaming winds forced him back.
On his third attempt, he moved more rapidly, driving himself upward with great force, the slope of the mountain becoming a dark blur before him. When the winds finally took hold of him, he fought them, almost reaching the level of the bright gap before he was forced downward yet again.
The fourth time he tried a different angle of attack and was beaten back almost immediately.
He hovered at a lower altitude, recovering orientation and stability, mustering fortitude. He massed his energies once more. Then he began to rise.
This time he followed the best course he had taken earlier, close to the face of the mountain. He hurled himself upward, attempting to exceed all earlier velocities.
The wind curled about him and played upon him as on the string of some musical instrument. He throbbed to its vibrations as he fought it. He continued to rise against its pressures, but he felt the rapid dissipation of the energies which composed his being. A feeling came over him that if he did not make it up and through this time, he would be swept away to drift for perhaps half of an age before he recovered sufficient strength to try again.
As the battering increased and he felt himself slowing he invested all of his remaining strength in an attempt to continue the upward drive. A momentary lull permitted him a great gain, but the assault began again just as he neared the gap.
"Whoever you are that calls," he cried wordlessly toward the gap, "if you really want me, then lend a hand!"
Almost immediately, he felt the tugging--and for the first time it seemed a physical sensation rather than a psychical leading-on. He added his own energies to it and felt himself rising at a more rapid rate. He swept past the highest point he had achieved with his earlier efforts. The gap was before him if he could but bend his course and strike a proper passage now.
He exerted himself again, and the steady pull--from ahead now--assisted him. He came into the gap.
He had hoped for some sheltering from the winds once he achieved the cleft in the mountains, but now he faced a gale blowing through it. Fighting his way to the shelter of an opening in the righthand wall, he gathered his forces and considered the way ahead. He had seen prominences before him and other openings in the walls.
Braving the winds, he advanced and took shelter in the lee of a rocky rib to the left. The wind whistled by him and icy crystals sparkled in long streaks within dark grooves amid the stone. He made another effort, advancing a small distance and sheltering again. The tugging had subsided--or, rather, reverted to the mental level, as a summoning.
When he felt that he had regained sufficient strength, he entered the blast and moved forward once more. In such fashion, he traversed the long defile, finding himself at last in the final protected area, adjacent to the forward opening of the pass. As he waited there, he considered his course of action upon emerging. He decided to move immediately to the nearer side--this being the left--upon departing the gap to prevent his being swept back into it.
As he traveled that final distance, he caught a glimpse of a dark and ancient sea, far ahead, before he slipped to the side, was taken by the winds and felt himself hurled skyward.
He rose at a rapid rate, and the world spun kaleidescopically through whatever senses he possessed. He was tossed upward and outward away from the mountain and then found himself falling, to be caught and dragged through a washboard-like trough of turbulence. When this ended, he fell again, his senses in total disarray.
After a time, he slowed, and he became aware of the tugging once again. He drifted away from the region of high winds, continuing to lose altitude. Gradually, what passed for vision reasserted itself.
Below him, sweeping down to the still sea and seeming to continue beneath its surface, was a fantastic, terraced city of asymmetrical buildings, many of them of a darkly burnished metal, extending on to the right and the left to vanish at the horizon. He was drawn nearer to this place. Towers of colored smoke redolent with heavy perfumes drifted by him. His vision was constantly tricked by the unusual perspectives, the pale light. He drifted lower and saw where demons walked with their human lovers; he heard the strange, slow music from the revolving pentagons. He moved above an avenue lined with grotesque statues, all of them turning slowly in a centuries-long figure-dance. An enormous being, chained among russet pillars, wept continually into a stone basin from which green chalices were filled by the passersby. Faint flashes like heat lightning colored the somber sky far out over the sea. He grew dizzy at the prospect; there was something new and not quite comprehensible in every direction that he looked. Such as the high, yellow tower near the seaside with the statue of the dark woman-like bird-thing crouched atop it ...
Then it stirred and he knew that it was no statue.
Nyalith's voice went forth like trumpets across the land and the sea.
All morion below him was frozen for an instant.
And he knew.
He turned toward the waters and directed his course out over them, his velocity mounting steadily, the world becoming a gray, tunnel-like blur about him. He moved along that line of force which had drawn him across the world. He felt, for the first time, the presence toward which his flight was bearing him.
Before him, there occurred a darkness at the end of the tunnel. Then, for one flashing moment, he caught sight of the great black-winged form, limned against a violet sky, lightnings flickering about it. A moment only, and then he was swept to that destined rendezvous, his newly awakened consciousness shifting and breaking apart, merging.
He opened his beak and sent forth his answering cry across the still waters, a cry of exultation in the knowledge that he, Henry Spier, had been joined with the ancient consciousness of Prodromolu, Opener of the Way.
He rode the winds to a great height, then dived down to regard his own reflection in the waters--shadowy birdform haloed in baleful light. Here was the power, he knew. He would summon his people and lead them across the land to the place of the Gate. There he would arouse his human body on the other side. It mattered not that but one Key was in place. This would prove sufficient with the Opener of the Way as aid, once the blood of any of the fallen was added to the spell. There was nothing now to stay the merger of the planes, the salvation of his world. He beat downward once with his wings, feeling their strength, grazing the surface of the water beneath which bright things moved.