Four pillars, arising out of the stone like strange growing things of
demoniac shape--these Redforth saw and comprehended, knowing full well
that Tarath had always abounded in monstrosities. "But what," he asked
himself, "will knowing of such as this, be of use to me, as I search for
Ghiltharmie?" For he had at last come to realise, to admit even to
himself, that he was a lost thing. The Yulphog had taken his soul. They
had exiled him to this lost land of dread. But they'd hinted of escape,
if he could find it. "Si Yamlon," he had told him, pointing to a
writhing belt of suns, lifting and lowering at the horizon like the
yellow crest of a flaming wave. And he had nodded his head. They had
vanished, disintegrating, it seemed. He didn't then know that they were
related to Topper's friends and the jeep in one thing: that their
Typonisif and Tregoifer was applicable to the atmosphere.
The four pillars were bending from their own weight. Strange
colors--like an idiot's conception of a spectrum, spectrally rippled
like irid waves across the columns. Like music in color. Assailed by
their complex harmonies, Redforth could only stand speechless, hands
thrust defensively forward. IT WAS THEN THAT HE SAW EIRY.
The pillars split. From each of then drifted a whiff of steam. They
united into a wavering cloud which shimmered an instant in mid-air, then
settled to the ground. And as it touched the metallic grass blades which
stretched on and on like the upraised swords of a midget army, the
vapor-cloud condensed into a woman's body. EIRY. Queen of Scariliop!
He recognized her at once, tho he had only read of her. She was not
human. Her body was like a snake's, and she had bat wings. From a
cluster of writhing worm-tentacles leered her face, like a mask in the
heart of a seething flower. It was oval, and the scarlet mouth was like
a velvet cushion--disproportionate--waiting for some priceless burden.
Her nose was negligible, but her lone eye was vast and blue; like a
doorway opening upon a sky too blue to belong to our world. Like blue
incarnate: and blue is the color of MYSTERY.
She opened her mouth, and her tongue unrolled, uncoiled toward Redforth.
Three feet long, the tongue was filamental, like a strand of red cobweb,
tipped by a touch of fluff like a dandelion's seed. This member wandered
lightly over Redforth's cheek, and for the first time EIRY spoke: "It
comes to me that here is the man for whom we have been seeking,
Yasgorphitove." Her voice was soft as clouds. Redforth in vain peered to
behold her companion. "Now shall we enlighten him as to the ways of
escape? In return for a favor, of course."
The air about her, for a fleeting instant, had turned blue. Then she
nodded. She leaned forward, to whisper, but suddenly there was a
crackling. "The rock!" she cried. "The rock! I must return before it is
too late and I too am trapped!" She writhed, became coiling wreathes of
smoke, and the smoke flowed back to the rocks, hovered over it. The four
pillars quivered and joined into one and then, in a twinkling, had
crumbled to powder.
But there was an uncanny blueness in the air about Redforth. And that
night he had a dreadful dream.
For he had become--Yrthicaol! And EIRY had been merely--THE BAIT!