Light grew steadily, and with it came more color, more magic, and more confusion of senses. The forest-forms a.s.sumed strange geometries. They stretched about him in endless vistas, blurring and trans.m.u.ting as he watched. The dream-like cloudiness was fading from his perceptions. He caught dreadful hints now and then of new, unheard-of forms and colors, of unstable geometries as far beyond Einstein's as his were beyond Euclid's. Nothing was tangible or definite, and perhaps that was the secret. Nothing ever is. Fear wove a crystalline web about Newlin's throat, strangling.

He halted and took stock. Ahead, Songeen waited, watching him, her figure a pale, elfin flame form against the shadowy ma.s.s of colored crystals. It was a forest of gemfires, and she was the purest jewel of the forest. Naked, alien, but--

Why had he come here? His mind balked at backtracking. There was no going back. Perhaps he had already come too far. Was Songeen a vampire luring him into the hideous depths of this unknown place? He had been here before. It was like that awful illusion in the tower, but muted.

How much did he perceive? How much was sheerest self-deception? Was he mad in the midst of awful sanity, or sane in the ultimate horror of lunacy?

Her voice floated back to him, its sound the chiming crash of splintering gla.s.s.

"Try not to change too much," she warned.

"Change?" Even the word sounded strange to him, as she said it. He felt a swift surge of anger. There was no change in him--_none_!

The tinkling bell-tones matched the swirl of his emotion and rose to jangling, tormented heights. It was shrill, maniacal tumult, that ranged upward and upward into octaves beyond sound. It was a rollicking, tortured insanity. Windbells chiming, jangled; tinkling, shimmering, exploding inside his brain. Windbells shattering in a hurricane of sound and ecstasy.

With his fists, Newlin pounded at his bursting skull. Pain deadened perception, gave him a moment's relief.

He was not changing, he shouted in loud defense. He was not!

Songeen poised, watching. Her body-outlines swirled and altered in swift mutations before his eyes. She was not woman now. Not even human. She danced and flickered and gibbered at him. She was jeweled movement.

Change. She was as crystalline as the forest, as molten emerald as the sky. Points of fire inside her caught and flared and burned inside his eyes. She was not Songeen!

Newlin screamed. He looked down at his hands. He screamed again, louder.

His hands were transparent as gla.s.s, and as fluid as water. Outlines wavered, changed.

"Try not to change too much," Songeen pleaded. But her voice joined the clattering crystalline tumult which raged about him. He was cracking. He could feel the seams in his mind giving way.

Like a great, floundering beast, he charged toward her. Forms of brittle crystal shattered at his touch. Shattered into sound and pain. The forest-forms changed color, echoing his violence. New vortices of movement converged upon him. Perceptions expanded and radiance showered about him, through him.

The hovering, dancing crystal notes were now visible. Beads of light, dripping from a sky of light. They were sound a color, bright, bursting bubbles of sound. Their rhythmic tempos increased, murmur swelled into insistent roaring and the jangling of insane dissonance. Vitreous grotesques shimmered like a forest of aspens quivering in wind and sunlight. Gla.s.sy fragments of splintered sound poured in floods from sky and ground. Trampled gra.s.s gave way under his feet in brittle crunching, and the brush shivered at his touch, dissolving into chill slivers of slashing sound.

Blood was dripping. The forest changed color, as if crimson stain spread through it. h.e.l.lish glare was a roaring torrent of musical color. Red stains spread swiftly, dying the crystal columns, the gla.s.sy sward, seeping into the reeling brain.

There was blood. The taste of it in his mouth, the hot, salt smell, the sound of its dripping. He swam in seas of ruby light, crashing and plunging wildly, sinking into its crimson depths. Red light thickened around him, deepened, smothering.

The darkness was red, fire-shot, roaring....

Then pain and timeless darkness.

Newlin awakened slowly, to ugly tension in his mind. Shadows like beating wings disturbed his memory.

The churning light and sound were gone. He drifted idly, body and mind coming softly to rest upon a bank of soft gra.s.s.

Someone knelt beside him. Someone cried softly, to the same murmurous rhythms of the crystalline forest. Without opening his eyes he sensed this, and knew also that he was still within the eery precincts of the maze. He opened his eyes, painfully.

This time, there were tears, glistening and falling slowly, glistening like crystal dewdrops in sunlight, and falling in softly tinkling shower like spilled jewels.

"Songeen!" he cried.

"Yes," murmured a tympany of gla.s.s bells, "I am here."

It was Songeen--almost, again, as he remembered her, almost human. It was Songeen, small, delicate, unreal, but sweetly feminine--almost human. It was Songeen, but with something added, changed, oddly blended into both form and personality.

"I tried to save you," she murmured. "I tried, but could not reach you.

My knowledge is incomplete. I thought you were weak, confused, too frightened and disturbed to be changed easily. But you were strong, and your violence was a challenge to it. Only the Masters could understand.

They saved you--not I. They intervened in time."

"The Masters!" Newlin glanced round, quickly, warily. "They are here?"

"Not here--now. But they saved you. I did not know all the dangers.

They--not I--"

"Saved me from what--death?"

"No--worse. And now they say you must go back. At once. The Masters urge haste."

Newlin tasted bitterness on his lips. "Orders from headquarters. Well, I've been kicked out of better places--but few more interesting. Too bad I forgot my bra.s.s knuckles."

Physically, he tried to rise. Every bone and muscle ached. But it could have been worse. He seemed intact. Hints of vagrant color rippled over his visible skin, but he sensed neither pain nor menace from them.

Songeen bent over him. Her arm supported him in sitting position. It was unnecessary, but the sensation of contact was pleasant. He yielded to her ministrations and looked about. It was still the forest, crystalline, murmurous--but now muted. The same glary, unpleasant light beat down from the same impossible sky. Storming, eery colors flowed infinite mutations of form through the crystal spectres of the maze. And the tinkle of myriad gla.s.s wind bells held a maddening overtone.

He had thought, somehow, that it would be different. That it would have changed, subtly, as had Songeen. But from a brief survey, nothing had changed. The tumult had faded, become bearable--but ident.i.ty remained.

Disappointed, he rose slowly, and felt her strong arm clasp about him.

He felt clumsy, off-balance, but not weak. If anything, he was stronger.

Stronger, and more cleanly, clearly alive than he had felt before.

"Come," urged Songeen. "I will take you back to the portal."

"Back--to that?"

Newlin struggled with the futility of words. He was not sure what he wanted, let alone what he wanted to say. That insinuating crystalline clatter got inside his brain, scattered thought.

Songeen caught a stirring of rebellion in him and sensed his mental confusion.

"Don't fear the hunters," she said. "There are other doorways, and you can issue onto some other planet, if you wish. Try not to think, or even feel."

Her voice penetrated the uproar of his mind, stilling troubled waters, blanketing other sounds. For seconds, it seemed to elevate him to some remote, lofty plane where life was serene, uncomplicated. Detached, he drifted with his own alien thoughts. Through senses other than visual, he watched his stumbling progress at her side as the girl threaded a pathway through the maze. Through senses not normally his own, he was aware of the utter strangeness behind this forest and its crystalline mysteries. He recognized the girl as part of the strangeness.

Dimly, he sensed some cosmic reluctance in himself, and was disturbed by his trend of thought. Faintly, he was aware of bodily movement and the crowding feel of shadowy aisles about him. But he was more aware of the girl, of her physical presence, and of the unrest she inspired in him.

Songeen! He had known many women on many, strange worlds. But none like this, none ever so strange, so wonderful, so terrifying. He had wanted her, yes. But only for an hour of pa.s.sion, at first. An hour of the blinding futility of trying, in her arms, to forget the crowding ugliness of life. He had not cared if the women he knew had souls, or if he had. Souls were unfamiliar, vague, and he would not have known one if he encountered it. Soft, white bodies, glowing like pale witchlights in the darkness. Yes, he had known many such. He had known many women, loved none.

Newlin had not spoken, not in words. But Songeen heard, by some subtle sense that was part of this abnormal forest.