energy, knew also that he had sent that hideous Being out to bring back her friends from the waking world. To bring them back-or to kill them!
"Did you think to escape from Thinistor Udd so easily, girl?" he whispered through cracked lips which scarcely moved, so great was his pain. "I can see that you did. Well, old Thinistor's not dead yet, not by a thousand years or more! And you'll pay for your treachery, you may count on it. As for your friends: they've seen their last morning in dreamland, I fear. They took Yibb-Tstll's eye, which displeased him greatly. Even if I wanted to I couldn't save them now-and I don't want to!"
"No!" he cautioned, as Aminza made to rise. "Don't move, girl, or they'll have you quick as a flash!" He cast his eyes up to the ceiling where clung the two gaunts which had recaptured her.
As she sank down again to the floor of the temple, Thinistor laughed. "Aye, best to do as you're told. Gaunts have no faces but they're manlike enough in other ways, eh, girl?" And despite his obvious agony he cackled mercilessly before returning his gaze to the weave of green light where it flowed from his wand ...
Chapter Nine
The Dark God Walks
Chapter Nine
Reaching the cave entrance under the overhang, Hero paused. The bristling of the short hairs at the base of his neck warned him that apart from all else there was something here completely outside human experience, dreaming or otherwise, something which never should be in any sane or ordered universe. A wind was rushing from the tunnel, carrying with it a rotten smell that had him pinching his nostrils in disgust. He stood, as at the lip of a tomb freshly opened after many centuries, and his eyes widened as he saw, deep in the gloom of the cave, a greenish light swelling and brightening even as he watched. Something was coming down the tunnel from Yibb-Tstll's temple, and the way die dreamer's feet suddenly seemed rooted to the earth, he knew that whatever it was it boded ill for any merely human adversary.
Dawn's light was brightening rapidly now, and the wind from the west had slackened slightly. Incapable of motion and feeling that chill but gentle wind on his back, Hero's eyes bugged as he watched the green glow pulsing closer still and his inner mind screamed for him to take some defensive action, to run and put distance between himself and the unknown horror. Then, breaking his paralysis-
"David!" came Eldin's cry, carried on the wind that blew from the looming keep. "Man, come back and give me a hand. I can't handle all of them myself!" At that the younger dreamer half-turned, saw his companion less than a hundred yards away, hard pressed by the flight of gaunts which had returned and now hovered about him where he slashed and hacked. Alone, he could barely hold them at bay; and slowly but surely they were driving him back toward die cave's entrance, back to whatever it was mat came in greenish rottenness, looming ever larger from the depths of the tunnel.
Hero cast one more glance into the gloomy bowels of the mountain, enough to make out the outline of the thing that moved there in its nimbus of emerald fire, and then his feet seemed to grow wings as he sped back to Eldin and joined him in fighting off the gaunts.
"What now, lad?" Eldin panted, his face white in the half-light and drawn with awful exertions. "Back to the cave?"
"No," gasped Hero, skewering a gaunt and withdrawing his blade before the dead creature could crash to earth at his feet. "I've seen what's coming after us. I think it's Yibb-Tsdl himself. And these damned gaunts are simply here to slow us down!"
Eldin roared his anger as one of the rubbery monsters fell onto his back, almost throwing him from his feet. He leaned forward and Hero lopped off the horror's blind head. On the next instant, as the carcass of the headless creature slid from the older man's straining frame, the remaining gaunts lifted skyward in a concerted throbbing of wings. For a second the two dreamers stared at each other wide-eyed, then gazed back toward the cave beneath the overhang.
Yibb-TstH's bulk was emerging into the still dim light, surrounded by a greenish glow, and one look at that black god of horror was almost too much for the adventurers to bear. Eldin grasped Hero's arm