I gripped myself, my brain steadied, I looked again. And I saw that
of body, at least body as we know it, the Shining One had
none--nothing but the throbbing, pulsing core streaked with lightning
veins of rainbows; and around this, never still, sheathing it, the
swirling, glorious veilings of its hell and heaven born radiance.
So the Dweller stood--and gazed.
Then up toward us swept a reaching, questing spiral!
Under my hand Lakla's shoulder quivered; dead-alive and their master
vanished--I danced, flickered, _within_ the rock; felt a swift sense of
shrinking, of withdrawal; slice upon slice the carded walls of stone,
of silvery waters, of elfin gardens slipped from me as cards are
withdrawn from a pack, one by one--slipped, wheeled, flattened, and
lengthened out as I passed through them and they passed from me.
Gasping, shaken, weak, I stood within the faceted oval chamber; arm
still about the handmaiden's white shoulder; Larry's hand still
clutching her girdle.
The roaring, impalpable gale from the cosmos was retreating to the
outposts of space--was still; the intense, streaming, flooding
radiance lessened--died.
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