While I feel closer to the water than the fire, my worlds are born of both. Cocytus, New Indiana, St. Martin, Buningrad, Mercy, Illyria and all the others came into being through a process of burning, washing, steaming and cooling. Now I walked through the woods of Illyria--a world I'd built as a park, a resort--I walked through the woods of an Illyria purchased by the enemy who walked by my side, emptied of the people for whom I had created it: the happy ones, the vacationers, the resters, the people who still believed in trees and lakes and mountains with pathways among them. They were gone, and the trees among which I walked were twisted, the lake toward which I headed was polluted, the land had been wounded and the fire her blood spurted from the mountain that loomed before, waiting, as the fire always is, waiting for me. Overhead hung the clouds, and between their matted whiteness and my dirty blackness flew the soot the fire sent, an infinite migration of funeral notices. Kathy would have liked Illyria, had she seen it in another time and another place. The thought of her in this time and this place, with Shandon running the show, sickened me. I cursed softly as I walked along, and those are my thoughts on alchemy.

We walked for about an hour and Green Green began complaining about his shoulder and fatigue in general. I told him he could have my sympathy so long as he kept walking. This must have satisfied him because it shut him up. An hour after that, I did let him take a break while I climbed a tree to check out the forward terrain. We were getting close, and it was about to become a steady downhill hike the rest of the way in. The day had lightened as much as it was going to and the fog had vanished almost entirely. It was already warmer than it had been at any time since my landing. The perspiration rolled down my sides as I climbed and the flaky bark bit into my hands, which had grown soft in recent years. With each branch that I disturbed a fresh cloud of dust and ashes appeared. I sneezed several times, and my eyes burned and watered.

I could see the top of the isle above the fringe of distant trees. To the left of it and somewhat back, I could see the smoldering top of a fresh-grown cone of volcanic rock. I cursed again, because I felt like it, and climbed back down.

It took us about two more hours to reach the shore of Acheron.

Reflected in the oily surface of my lake were the fires and nothing more. Lava and hot rocks spit and hissed as they struck the water. I felt dirty and sticky and hot as I looked out across what remained of my handiwork. Small waves left lines of scum and black crud upon the shore. The water was spotted with clouds of such stuff heading in toward the beach. Fishes rocked belly up in the shallows, and the air smelled like rotten eggs. I sat upon a rock and regarded it, smoking a cigarette the while.

A mile out stood my Isle of the Dead, still unchanged--stark, and ominous as a shadow with nothing to cast it. I leaned forward and tested the water with my finger. The lake was hot, quite hot. Far out and to the east, there was a second light. It seemed as if a smaller cone were growing there.

"I came to shore about a quarter mile to the west of here," said Green Green.

I nodded and continued to stare. It was still morning and I felt like contemplating the prospect. The southern face of the isle--the one I looked upon--had a narrow strip of beach following the curve of a cove perhaps two hundred feet across. From there, a natural-seeming trail zigzagged upwards, reaching various levels and, ultimately, the high, horned peaks.

"Where do you think he is?" I asked.

"About two-thirds of the way up, on this side," said Green Green, "in the chalet. That is where I had my laboratory. I expanded many of the caves behind it."

A frontal approach was almost mandatory, as the other faces of the isle possessed no beaches and rose sharply from the water.

Almost, but not quite.

I doubted that Green Green, Shandon or anybody else was aware that the northern face could be climbed. I had designed it to look unscalable, but it was not all that bad. I had done it just because I like everything to have a back door as well as a front door. If I were to employ that route, it would require my ascending all the way and coming down toward the chalet from above.

I decided I would do it that way. I also decided that I would keep it to myself until the last minute. After all, Green Green was a telepath, and for all I knew, the story he'd given me could be a line of _rouke_ manure. He and Shandon could be working together, and for that matter there might not even be a Shandon. I wouldn't have trusted him worth a plugged nickel, back when they still had nickels to plug.

"Come on," I said, rising and flipping my cigarette into the cesspool my lake. "Show me where you left the boat."

So we made our way to the left, along the shoreline, to the place where he remembered beaching the thing. Only it was not there.

"Are you sure this is the place?"

"Yes."

"Well, where is it?"

"Perhaps it was loosened by one of the shocks and drifted away."

"Could you swim as far as the isle, bad shoulder and all?"

"I am a Pei'an," he replied, which meant he could damn well swim the English Channel with two bum shoulders, then turn around and go back again. I'd only said it to irritate him.

"... But we won't be able to swim to the isle," he added.

"Why not?"

"There are hot currents from the volcano. They are worse farther out."

"Then we are going to build a raft," I said. "I'll cut the wood with my pistol while you locate something suitable for binding it together."

"Such as?" he inquired.

"You're the one who screwed up this forest," I told him, "so you know it better than I do now. I've seen some tough-looking vines, though."

"They are somewhat abrasive," he said. "I will need your knife."

I hesitated a moment.

"All right. Here."

"Waters can come over the edges of a raft. They may be very warm."

"Then the waters must be cooled."

"How?"

"Soon it will begin to rain."

"The volcanos--"

"There won't be that much water."

He shrugged, nodded and went off to cut vines. I felled and stripped trees, perhaps six inches in diameter, ten feet in length, paying as much attention as possible to my back.

Soon it began to rain.

For the next several hours, a steady, cold drizzle descended from the heavens, drenching us to the skin, poking holes in Acherori, washing some of the filth from the shrubbery. I shaped two broad paddles and cut us a pair of long poles while I waited for Green Green to harvest sufficient cordage to bind things. While I was still waiting, the ground heaved violently and a terrific eruption split the near side of the cone halfway up. A river the color of sunsets poured from the gap. My ears rang for minutes after the explosion. Then the surface of the lake picked itself up and rushed toward me--a baby tidal wave. I ran like hell and climbed the highest tree in sight.

The water reached the base of the tree, but did not get much higher than a foot. There were three such waves in twenty minutes; then the waters began to recede, trading me a lot of mud for the timber I'd cut, plus both oars.

I grew angry. I knew my rain could not put out his bloody volcano, might even exacerbate things a bit.

But I was mad as hell, seeing all that work washed away.

I began to speak the words.

From somewhere, I heard the Pei'an calling. I ignored him.

After all, I wasn't exactly Francis Sandow at that point.

I dropped to the ground and felt the tug of a powerpull from several hundred yards to my left. I moved in that direction, climbing a small rise to reach its nexus. From that point, I had a clear line of vision across the bothered waters out to the isle itself. Perhaps my visual acuity had increased. I saw the chalet quite clearly. I fancied that I also detected a movement of sorts at the place where the rail guarded the end of the courtyard that overlooked the waters. Human eyes are not as acute as a Pei'an's. Green Green had said he'd seen Shandon clearly after crossing over the waters.