Elysia Read Online Free PDF Page B

chill of the Iceland s. Oth-Neth's body-heat would warm Tiania, he knew, until they were down in the heart of the great glacier; and as for his own welfare: this body T3RE had built for him would come to no great harm. And in any case, it was more a chill of . the spirit he felt than the frosty burn of bitter winds. For still that leaden feeling was on him.
    Away in the west, beyond the ice-shard glittering rim of the Frozen Sea, he glimpsed the blue waters of a somewhat more temperate ocean, where majestic icebergs sailed and slowly melted, but then in another moment the view was shut off as he soared down over frozen foothills and set his course parallel. to a procession of lithards who bore their riders doubtless to the same destination: Kthanid's council-chamber in the great Hall of Crystal and Pearl.
    Kthanid: super-sentient Kraken, Eminence, Sage and Father of Elysia. And benign ...
    But there was that One born of Kthanid's race and spawned in his image who was not benign, that bestial, slobbering bereft Great Old One whose cause and cult Crow had fought against all his days, that one true prime evil whose seat for three and a half billions of years had been drowned R'lyeh in Earth's vast Pacific Ocean — Cthulhu! And now Crow wondered: why did that thought spring to mind? From where?
    'And he once more quickened the pace of the cloak as finally he spied ahead a frozen river of immemorial ice and the jagged crevasse that guarded the entrance to Kthanid's sub-glacial palace.
    - Normally Crow would , show his respect, enter cautiously and continue on foot to the council-chamber, but these were not normal times. He flew the cloak dexterously into the mouth of a fantastically carved cavern, then down sweeping flights of ice-hewn steps into the heart of the glacier, until at last he swooped along a horizontal tunnel carved of ice whose floor was granite worn smooth by centuries of glaciation. And now he smelled those strange and exotic scents only ever before smelled here, borne to him on a warm breeze from inner regions ahead.
    It grew warmer still as the core of the glacier drew closer, until suddenly the dim blue light of the place came brighter, as if here some secret source of illumination was hidden behind the soft sheen of ice walls. Then those walls themselves, like the floor, became granite, and finally Crow arrived at a huge curtain of purest crystals and pearls strung on threads of gold. And he knew that beyond the curtain - whose priceless drapes went up to a dim ceiling, and whose width must be all of a hundred feet - lay the vast and awe-inspiring Hall of Crystal and Pearl, throne-room and council-chamber of Kthanid the Eminence.
    Crow had been here before, on several occasions, but they had never been ordinary times; and now once more he felt himself on the verge of momentous things, whose nature was soon to be revealed. But ... here was no longer a place for flying. He alighted, slipped out of the cloak's harness and folded that device over his arm, finally parted the jewel curtains and stepped through.
    And now indeed he knew that Oth-Neth had been correct, that trouble, 'big trouble,' was brewing in Elysia.
    Again, as always, Crow felt amazement at the sheer size of the hall, that inner sanctum wherein Kthanid thought his Great Thoughts. He stood upon the titan-paved floor of massive hexagonal flags of quartz and eyed the weird angles and proportions of the place, with its high-arched ceiling soaring overhead. Enormously ornate columns rose up on all sides, supporting high balconies made vague by the rising haze of light; and everywhere the well remembered white, pink and blood hues of multi-coloured crystal, and the shimmer of mother-of-pearl where the polished linings of prehistoric conches decorated the marching walls.
    The only thing that seemed different was the absence of the customary centrepiece a vast scarlet cushion bearing the sphere of a huge, milky crystal. Kthanid's 'shewstone' - but all else