Then from behind them I caught another movement and saw something emerging out of the snow. A magnificent white buffalo with huge, curving horns and glaring, red-rimmed blue eyes, which I could see even from here, shook snow from her flanks and trotted past the mammoth and its riders. I could see how big the buffalo was in relation to the mammoth. Her hump almost reached the mammoth's shoulder.

The white buffalo's speed increased to a gallop. Head down, the creature thundered full tilt at the roaring black tornado. From behind me Prince Lobkowitz began to laugh in spontaneous admiration. It was impossible not to applaud the sheer audacity of an animal with the courage to challenge a tornado, the undisputed tyrant of the prairie.

"She is magnificent, " he said proudly. "She is everything I ever hoped she would become! How proud you must be, Prince Elric! "

Thraw weet croon tak' me hero pain.

Thraw ta give ana thraw ta reave.

Thraw ta live ana thraw ta laugh.

Thraw ta dee and thraw ta grieve.

"Thraw Croon /Three Crows, " TRAD. (WHELDRAKE'S VERSION)

Three for the staff, the cup ana the ring,

Six for me swords which the lance shall bring;

Nine for the bier, the shield, me talisman,

Twelve for the flute, the horn, the pale man,

Nine by nine ana three by three,

You snail seek the Skraeling Tree.

Three by seven ana seven by three,

Who will find the Skraeling Tree?

WHELDRAKE, "The Skraeling Tree"

Let me tell you now I tarried,

Tarried in the starry yonder,

Tarried where the skies are silver,

Tarried in the tracks of time.

W S. HARTE, "Winnebago's Vision"

My struggle with the pale giants was brief. They were armed with spears and round shields, obsidian clubs and long flint knives, but they did not threaten me with their weapons. Indeed, they were careful not to harm me. They used their full strength only to pin my arms and collapse my legs. I did not give up readily and grabbed at their weapons, getting my hands first on a tomahawk, then on a war-shield. I was lucky not to be cut, for I had difficulty gripping them. My attackers were very powerful. Though I am almost as fit as I was twenty years ago, I was no match for them. When I resisted them, my limbs seemed to sink into theirs. They were certainly not insubstantial, but their substance was of a different quality, protecting them and giving them added strength. Whatever their peculiar power, they soon bundled me into my own canoe and struck off towards the Old Woman as my beautiful wife, wide-eyed with fear, ran down to the jetty in pursuit. A wild wind was beginning to rise. It blew her fine, silvery hair about her face. I tried to call out to her, to reassure her, but it snatched away my words. Somehow I was not afraid of these creatures. I did not think they meant me harm. But she could not hear me. I prayed she would not risk her own life in an effort to rescue me.

You can imagine the array of emotions I was experiencing. Every fear I had dismissed a few hours earlier threatened to become reality. I was being drawn from a dream of happiness and achievement back to some parallel existence of despair and threatened failure. But I sensed this was not a desperate fantasy of escape created by my tortured brain and body in a Nazi concentration camp. In spite of all my terrors and anxieties, it was Oona I feared for most. I knew her well. I knew what her instincts would tell her to do. I could only hope that common sense would prevail.

With extraordinary speed this bizarre raiding party neared the Old Woman, whose voice lifted in a strange, pensive wail. And from somewhere another wind rose and shrieked as if in frustrated anger. At one point it seemed that it extended fingers of ice, gripping my head and pulling me clear of my captors. It was not trying to rescue me. I was certain that it meant me ill.

I was relieved to escape it when suddenly the canoe dipped downwards, and we were beneath the surface. Everywhere was swirling water. I was not breathing, yet I was not drowning. Great eddies of emerald green and white-veined blue rose like smoke from below. I felt something bump the bottom of the canoe. On impulse I sought the source of the collision, but it was already too late.

Like an arrow, the canoe drove down through the agitated currents, down towards a flickering ruby light, tipped with orange and yellow. I thought at first we had begun to ascend and I was looking at the sun, but the flames were too unstable. Down here, deep at the core of the maelstrom, a great fire burned. What could this mean? We were heading for the very core of the earth! Where else could fire burn in water? Could these gigantic Indians be messengers of the OffMoo, that strange subterranean people whom Gaynor had driven from their old cities? Were these their new, less-hospitable territories? The flames licked through the water, and I was sure we would be consumed. Then the canoe twisted slightly in the current, and immediately we were above an unfathomable abyss lit by dark blue-and-scarlet volcanic fires.

All sound fell behind us.

A great column of white flame stabbed upwards erratically from the depths and dissipated into roiling smoke. We drifted in neither air nor water, descending slowly through the foaming fumes into the chasm itself.

My captors had not uttered a word. Now I struggled in the strips of leather which bound me and demanded they tell me what they were doing and why. Could my words be heard? I was not sure. While they acknowledged me with some gravity, they did not reply.

The blackness of the chasm grew more intense in contrast to the vivid tongues of fire, which licked out every few seconds and illuminated my immediate surroundings before vanishing. Everywhere brooded a sense of massive stillness behind which was frenetic activity. I felt as if something had been bottled up in this chasm, and I could not guess if it was a physical or some crude supernatural force.

The glinting obsidian of the vast sides was veined with brilliant streams of fire. The mouths of caves, many of them clearly man-made, often glowed scarlet, like the open maws of hungry animals. Sounds were loud, then quickly muffled and echoing. My nostrils filled with the stink of sulphur. I choked on the thick air, almost drowning in it. The canoe continued to sink between the mighty black walls. I could see no surface, no bottom. Only the red-and-indigo flames gave us light, and what that light revealed was alien, ancient, unwholesome. I am not given to fanciful imaginings, especially at such times, but I felt as if I was descending into the bowels of Hell!

After a very long time the canoe began to rock gently under me, and I realized with a shock that we were floating on a great, slow-moving river. For a moment I wondered if it was the source of the river which both fed and lit the world of the Off-Moo. But this was almost the opposite of phosphorescent. This river seemed to absorb the light. I could now see that we drifted on water dark as blood which reflected the flashes of flame from above. By the weird, intermittent light my captors paddled into the entrance of a wide old harbor, its bizarre architecture built on a huge scale.

Every piece of stone was fluid and organic, but seemingly frozen at the moment of its greatest vitality. The sculptors had found the natural lines of the rock and turned these forms into exquisite but chilling imagery. Great eyes glared from agonized heads. Hands twisted into their own petrified flesh, as if trying to escape some frightful terror or seeking to tear their own organs from their bodies. I had half an idea that the statues had once been living beings, but the thought was too terrible. I forced the idea from my mind. Desperately my eyes darted everywhere, hoping to see some living creature among all this inanimate horror, while at the same time fearing what I might be forced to confront. What kind of life chose to inhabit such a hellish landscape? In spite of my situation, I began to speculate on the kind of minds which had found this place good and built their city here.