Wolff decided not to waste any time. The second the matching hexaculum was finished, he went into action. He ate a light meal and drank water, since he did not know how long he might have to do without either once he stepped through the gate. He armed himself with a beamer, a knife, a bow, and a quiverful of arrows. The primitive weapons might seem curious arms to take along in view of the highly technological death-dispensers he would have to face. But it was one of the ironies of the Lords’ technology that the set-ups in which they operated sometimes permitted such weapons to be effective.
Actually, he did not expect to be able to use any of his arms. He knew too well the many types of traps the Lords had used.
“And now,” Wolff said, “it must be done. There is no use waiting any longer.”
He walked into the narrow space inside the matching hexaculum. Wind whistled and tore at him. Blackness. A sense as of great hands gripping him. All in a dizzying flash.
He was standing upon grass, giant fronds at a distance from him, a blue sea close by, a red sky above, hugging the island and the rim of the sea. There was light from every quarter of the heavens and no sun. His clothes were still upon his body, although he had felt as if they were being ripped off when he had gone through the gate. Moreover, his weapons were still with him.
Certainly, this was not the interior of Urizen’s stronghold. Or, if it were, it was the most unconventional dwelling-place of a Lord that he had ever seen.
He turned to see the hexaculum which had received him. It was not there. Instead, a tall wide hexagon of purplish metal rose from a broad flat boulder. He remembered now that something had pushed him out through it and that he had had to take several steps to keep from falling. The energy that had shoved him had caused him to pass out of it and a few paces from the boulder.
Urizen had set another gate within his hexaculum and had shunted him off to this place, wherever it was. Why Urizen had done so would become apparent quickly enough.
Wolff knew what would happen if he tried to walk back through the gate. Nevertheless, not being one to take things for granted, he did attempt it. With ease, he stepped out on the other side upon the boulder.
It was a one-way gate, just as he had expected.
Somebody coughed behind him, and he whirled, his beamer ready.
II
THE LAND ENDED ABRUPTLY AGAINST THE SEA WITH NO INTERVENING beach. The animal had just emerged from the sea and was only a few feet from him. It squatted like a toad on huge webbed feet, its columnar legs folded as if they were boneless. The torso was humanoid and sheathed in fat, with a belly that protruded like that of a Thanksgiving goose. The neck was long and supple. At its end was a human head, but the nose was flat and had long narrow nostrils. Tendrils of red flesh sprouted out around the mouth. The eyes were very large and moss-green. There were no ears. The pate was covered, like the face and body, with a dark-blue oily fur.
“Jadawin!” the creature said. It spoke in the ancient language of the Lords. “Jadawin! Don’t kill me! Don’t you know me?”
Wolff was shocked but not so much that he forgot to look behind him. This creature could be trying to distract him.
“Jadawin! Don’t you recognize your own brother!”
Wolff did not know him. The frog-seal body, lack of ears, blue fur, and squashed long-slitted nose made identification too difficult. And there was Time. If he had really called this thing brother, it must have been millennia ago.
That voice. It dug away at the layers of dusty memory, like a dog after an old bone. It scraped away level after level, it…
He shook his head and glanced behind him and at the feathery vegetation. “Who are you?” he asked.
The creature whined, and by this he knew that his brother-if it were his brother-must have been imprisoned in that body for a long long time. No Lord whined.