The pain was gone. Grim lay panting, grinning. Tlokine knelt, staring,
whispering, "The Change--it's all around us--but where we are, there
isn't any Change!"
There was a radius of thirty feet where the ground lay frozen in its
strange formations, an island in the midst of the hub that was the
globe. Grim got to his feet. He held the globe in hands that shook
weakly with the reaction. Tlokine went to the horses, soothed and
stroked them. After a while the horses got to their legs.
They mounted. From the distant island where they watched, Althaya and
Black Randolph screamed their rage. But Grim only laughed and waved
an arm. With the globe in his hands, he rode the chestnut over the
motionless ground, while all around him the earth rocked and bubbled
and thrust itself upward into terrible contortions.
"It's like a magic symbol," whispered Tlokine, staring at the ribboned
globe.
"People would have called this a magic land, once," said Grim. "But
it's sheer science that makes the Change--and sheer science that knows
the key to counteract it."
They went straight across the magic land, riding without fear of the
Storm that swept outside the circumference of their enchanted circle.
As they moved, the circle of safety moved with them, with the globe as
its hub. The faster they went, the faster moved the circle.
Grim flung a hoarse laugh between his white teeth. He said, "At this
rate, we'll leave Randolph so far behind, he'll never get us."