Hatred like a blast of furnace-heat struck upon Kern’s new awareness with an impact that jolted him out of this bewildering mental fog. Hate and fear. He had felt that blast before, invisibly in the voids of thought, and terror had come with it so that he fled blindly to escape. But this time fear did not follow after the hate. This time he welcomed conflict.
“Now we’re equals—matched equals,” he told himself, and felt even in this moment of danger and surprise the utter difference of his own mind through which thoughts moved slowly and clearly, like his new limbs through the solidity of the glass. If he had ever owned a body of flesh and blood, it was his no longer. If his mind had ever dwelt there and shaped its thoughts to the contours of brain and skull, they were shaped no longer. This was new, new, terrible and wonderful beyond human understanding.
Slow exultation began to burn in him as he rolled the great coils of fire which were his body toward that which until now had dwelt here alone. Now the Mountain had a double mind—if the fiery ribbon was indeed the mind of the thing—but moving still through a single gigantic body of opalescent glass. And within that vast body, the doubled mind moved upon itself in suicidal combat.
Hatred was a bath of flame that engulfed him as their farthest coiling loops touched—touched and engaged with sudden violence. But Kern was not afraid now, not repelled. With a surging lunge he tested the strength in that shape which was the twin of his own. The ribbons writhed and strained. Then they paused for a moment and drew back in mutual consent. And simultaneously, as if hurled by a single mind, lunged forward again.
This time the fiery limbs entangled until their full endlessly revolving lengths were wholly engaged with one another and the two identical shapes of rolling fire strove furiously together in a single knot that boiled with ceaseless motion.
Hatred burned and bubbled all around Kern’s awareness as he strove coil against coil with the enemy. But it did not touch him any more. He felt no fear. And when he began to realize that he could not vanquish this being by strength alone, not even then did he feel fear. Emotion was gone from him. Coil by coil he tested the thing he strove with, and coil by coil he found it braced irresistibly against his greatest strength. He could not swerve it by a single loop.
But it could not swerve him. Matched in strength as they were in shape, the two creatures of flame lay for a moment upon the clouded ice, limb straining against limb in a perilous balance that permitted of no motion.
Then, very delicately, the awareness that had been Kern reached out with a sense he had not until this moment known he possessed, and touched the frozen body of Bruce Hallam. For he knew now that he and this enemy were too perfectly matched for either to prevail, unless one or the other found a lever by which his adversary could be overthrown.
Was it Bruce? Gently, and then with increasing pressure, he tried that rigid, unyielding body which had once been human. There was nothing—nothing. Not even the discs of overlapping color which the still-human exhibited to his new sight moved through Bruce’s limbs. He was solid, unmoving, a shape of nothingness, and no sense could touch him. No, Bruce was not the source through which strength might be drained from the enemy.
What, then? Kern asked himself with passionless consideration. And the answer came clearly and unhurried, as if it had waited only this query to reply.
The winged men waiting outside the mountain—that was the answer.
Almost outstripping the thought, his sight and his strange new senses leaped to the surface of the Mountain. There the slaves hung on stretched wings, tilting to the updrafts from below, circling and soaring and waiting in mindless obedience for the command that would release them from their mental thrall.
Once he had seen them as winged humans fighting with fanatic violence. Now they were only shapes of overlapping discs, full of slowly turning motion, and in each the Eye of the Mountain swimming leisurely over the surface of the colors.
The Eye, he thought. The Eye!
Like a new, unguessed arm his awareness shot out and plunged into the nearest spot of darkness which swam over the colored discs. Plunged in—groped for contact—and tapped a source of flame. Up through the arm the flame leaped, and into Kern’s body of matching flame. Almost imperceptibly he felt the straining coils of the enemy give beneath the pressure of his own.
Another, and another and another of the flying shapes gave up its tiny source of fire, and Kern’s strength grew with each. The combat which had hung motionless in mutual violence now writhed suddenly into action again as the balance was destroyed. But the fury of the enemy seemed to double too as it felt itself bent backward upon its own fiery coils.
What had been combat before the stasis turned into abrupt turmoil now. The two ribbons of flame convulsed together, lashing and whipping into an incandescent fury of struggle. And Kern knew in a timeless moment or two that even this was not enough. He must find some last source of power to give him the victory.
The arm with which he had robbed the flying men of their Eyes groped, plunged deeper, seeking more power within them. And amazingly, found it.
For an instant Kern could not understand why strength in a full, deep tide flowed into him as the light began to fail in his enemy. And then he understood, and a surge of triumph for the first time glowed through his whole being.
For in giving its strength to its slaves, that it might command them, the Enemy had opened a channel which ran
