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away.
    Abruptly he released the Pikht’s wrist. His hand shot up and gripped the dwarf’s throat—sinewy hands that had been trained on battle-ax and rapier. The knife bit into his body, ripped flesh from his breast as he twisted desperately. But the Pikht had struck too late.
    Elak’s tapering brown fingers almost met in oily flesh. Tendons stood out like rigid wires; there came a brittle cracking sound. A bubbling scream of agony died in the dwarf’s throat before it could emerge.
    The pale eyes glazed. The stunted body went limp.
    Elak stood up, bracing himself. He stared in sheer astonishment.
    It was no earthly landscape which he saw. Obscure color-patterns, shifting and dancing strangely, weaved in the cool air all about him. He thought of the shadows of trees painted on white rock, flickering arabesques of dancing leaves fluttering in the wind. Yet the weird pattern was not only on the pale clay-colored plain on which he stood, but rather all about him in the air. He stood alone in a fantastic weave of somber shadows.
    Colorless shadows, dancing. Or were they colorless? He did not know, nor was he ever to know, the color of the grotesque weavings that laced him in a web of magic, for while his mind told him that he saw colors, his eyes denied it.
    Suddenly darkness sweptdown, engulfing him. And very faintly a thudding sounded, and swiftly grew louder. With a giant pounding of Cyclopean feet something strode past Elak in the blackness, something that shook the plain with the thunder of its passing. There was no other sound save for the tremendous booming thuds of the Titan feet.
    They died in the distance; the darkness lifted. Again the flickering shadow patterns grew in the air. And again they darkened into blackness.
    The sound of wings came to Elak. Something was flying far overhead, something that wailed endlessly and mournfully, keening the cry of one lost and wandering in eternal night. A sense of overpowering awe touched Elak, and horror beyond all imagination—the horror one feels in the presence of a thing so alien that the flesh of mankind instinctively shrinks and shudders. Elak knew, somehow, that he had entered a land in which men had not been intended to exist.
    “
Elak
…”
    Faintly, from very far away, the thin whisper came—Dalan’s voice. Elak whispered the Druid’s name as the darkness changed into the vague shadow-patterns. The distant voice came again.
    “You are in a perilous place, Elak, but you live. Lycon’s swordsmen slay the Pikhts now, the crystal tells me… you are very far away, Elak, but I come swiftly. Mider aids me.…”
    Blackness again, and a roaring as of great winds. Power unimaginable shuddered through Elak’s body like a spear shattering on a shield. And it passed, and the darkness lightened to the crawling shadows.
    “You are with the gods, Elak,” came Dalan’s far whisper. “You are no longer in Atlantis, or even on earth. You are in a far land. And with you are those the Shadow has engulfed—the gods! Not the gods of Atlantis, nor the Viking gods, but the gods that have died. Around you move those whose flesh is not our flesh, whose lives are alien to ours. I come, Elak.…”
    Piercingly sweet, throbbing almost articulately, a harpstring murmured through the gloom. Dalan’s voice faded into silence, and again the note sobbed out. Above it a soft-toned song lifted in the words Elak knew were in no earthly language.
    Startled, apprehensive, the Druid called, “Elak! Elf’s magic battles mine—he—”
    Then silence, till agentle voice spoke.
    “Dalan,” it whispered. “Dalan, Elak… my enemies. Now you shall die, Elak, for the Druid cannot reach you. The power of my harp keeps him from our side.”
    Very faintly Dalan called Elak’s name. Once again he called and was silent. Shifting shadows moved through the dim air. Elak’s hand went involuntarily to his side. Remembering that he was weaponless, he stooped and pried the dagger from the Pikht’s