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ing screers shrieked from the midnight heavens; the night
became a shambles of madness.
Afterward, when it was all over, and they were back on
the island, Holroyd raged, 'I'll break her into little pieces.
I'll  ' His fury quieted. Because actually he knew with a
cold and deadly certainty exactly what he was going to do
with Ineznia, the beast woman.
It was not all one-sided, the battle for Gonwonlane. More
and more individuals and groups fought with V-pronged
poles and spears and the army was coming. Holroyd
watched its ponderous progress eastward, watched some of
its screer divisions as they raced ahead to protect cities and
engage the invader. Sometimes they won a battle and held
for a day, for a week, before the general staff of the invader
detached and concentrated masses of killer screers that
overrode every opposition.
In the history of warfare, it seemed to Holroyd, no army
could possibly have suffered as much as did the Gonwon-
lanian. Its supply sources cut, it ran out of food for days
on end. Great units of men went crazy with hunger and
ate their grimbs and their screers, and glared longingly at
each other's flesh. Twice, Holroyd saw men eating men.
And still there was nothing to do but wait, and wait, and
WAIT. A dozen times they talked over their plans and their
situation, the woman with the body that had been dead, and
the man whose dark eyes glowed more fiercely each day
from the horror of what he was seeing, and the gathering,
terrible determination in his soul.
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r r
'It's really very simple, this business of god power,'
Holroyd sighed one night as they sat on the green, lush
grass of their island. 'At a certain point you can project the
essence that is you; let us call it a soul. A little further on,
your whole body can be transported through space. A little
after that you can take someone else along. The next step
beyond that is the ability to move through past time, slowly,
in the immediate past but, with the help of another pole of
god power, swiftly across to parallel points of one coil of
time to another, the jumps being about two hundred million
years.
'Interspersed with those are other powers, for instance
that journey of minds that Ineznia took me on. The amaz-
ing thing to me is that the spells of Ptath turned out to be
nothing more than hypnotism, ideas planted in both your
mind and Ineznia's, and which even she, in spite of all her
power, was unable to throw off.'
L'onee said softly out of the darkness. 'The old Ptath
knew the human mind. He discovered that no brain would
hold firmly more than six commands suggestions over a
great period of time. If you will think over the six he selec-
ted you will realize how carefully he made his choice.'
Holroyd nodded wearily, but he said nothing more that
night. It was a month later that he broke a long silence
between them with:
"This old Ptath of yours, what was he like? And why did
he merge with the race? From all appearances, from all
results, it was the greatest error he ever made.'
The gaunt woman shook her head, said in a strong voice,
'Look at yourself, Peter Holroyd. You are the Ptath I knew,
the old Ptath, the great, earnest, conscientious Ptath. Look
at yourself, I say and you will see Ptath as he was and' she
added in a low tone 'as he will be!'
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r r
Before Holroyd could speak, she went on more sadly, 'As
for merging with the race, in one sense that does seem to
have been disastrous. But he said he could feel in himself
dark, alien, inhuman urges that he must purge by a return
to the spring source of decency the life force of the
people. If his fears were justified, if he would have become
more evil, then what we are seeing is not disaster but a
rebirth of hope. I swear to you that all that Ptath desired I
can now see in you, the unegotistic knowledge of what is
right, the determination that evil shall not flourish, the
ability to adjust to and strike the enemy with her own
weapons, and yet lose nothing of that will to goodness,
suffer no taint, no diminishment of honest purpose.'
Almost breathless, she paused; then sighed the old ques-
tion between them, 'Ptath, do you feel stronger? Do you
feel a growing?'
And as always, Holroyd answered with a grim satis-
faction :, 'Yes ... yes, I do!'
On the one hundred twelfth night that meant something
tangible. The daily test worked. He could move his body
through space. And on the one hundred thirtieth morning
he could take L'onee along without the use of water as a
catalytic agent. Afterward, they stood gazing at each other
with eyes that were glowing yet grim. The hour for action
had come.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FALL OF A GODDESS
LIKE wraiths they materialized in the dungeon where
L'onee's true body was chained.
It took time to transport the material they needed, the
stone forge, the fuel necessary for the breaking of metal
links. Light-saws didn't work on metal.
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r r
It took time to substitute the body of a dead woman they [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]