eyes smiled.

"Go--foolish little ones," she cried, and waved her arms. They flew
away, scolding.

A lammergeier swooped down on wide funereal wings; it peered at us;
darted away toward the cliffs.

"There will be no carrion there for you, black eater of the dead, when I
am through," I heard Norhala whisper, eyes again somber.

Steadily grew the dawn light; from Norhala's lips came again the
chanting. And now that paean, the reckless pulse of the monster we rode,
began to creep through my own veins. Into Drake's too, I knew, for his
head was held high and his eyes were clear and bright as hers who sang.

The jubilant pulse streamed through the hands that held us, throbbed
through us. The pulse of the Thing--sang!

Closer and closer grew the cliffs. Down and crashing down fell the
trees, the noise of their fall accompanying the battle chant of the
Valkyr beside me like wild harp chords of storm-lashed surf. Up to the
precipices the forest rolled, unbroken. Now the cliffs loomed overhead.
The dawn had passed. It was full day.

Cutting up through the towering granite scarps was a rift. In it the
black shadows clustered thickly. Straight toward that cleft we sped.
As we drew near, the crest of the Shape began swiftly to lower. Down we
sank and down--a hundred feet, two hundred; now we were two score yards
above the tree tops.

Out shot a neck, a tremendous serpent body. Crested it was with
pyramids; crested with them, too, was its immense head. Thickly the head
bristled with them, poised motionless upon spinning globes as huge as
they. For hundreds of feet that incredible neck stretched ahead of us
and for twice as far behind a monstrous, lizard-shaped body writhed.

We rode now upon a serpent, a glittering blue metal dragon, spiked
and knobbed and scaled. It was the weird steed of Norhala flattening,
thrusting out to pierce the rift.

And still as when it had reared on high beat through it the wild,
triumphant, questing pulse. Still rang out Norhala's chanting.

The trees parted and fell upon each side of us as though we were some
monster of the sea and they the waves we cleft.

The rift enclosed us. Lower we dropped; were not more than fifty feet
above its floor. The Thing upon which we rode was a torrent roaring
through it.

A deeper blackness enclosed us--a tunneling.

Through that we flowed. Out of it we darted into a widening filled with
wan light drifting down through a pinnacle fanged mouth miles on