d perishing,
freezing ... when somehow with his great science Portox claimed for
their use the unavailable energy in their ... their thermodynamic
system, and saved them."

"Why do you frown so?"

"Words. Words only. I don't understand. I can only act."

"You can act," Ylia said, hugging herself tight against him. "For
Tarth and the future."

"For Tarth and the future," Bram Forest said, but he hardly heard the
words.

Ahead of them in the cold clear air a wall seemed to rise. It came up
so suddenly, and, in fact, the air had cleared so suddenly from the
accustomed murkiness, that Ylia was afraid. "It is in the legend," she
whispered. "The Black Wall, Bram Forest. And beyond it--the Place of
the Dead."

"More accurately, an edge-on view of the space-warp, where it meets
the normal world." But although he spoke the words of Portox, Bram
Forest did not sound too confident.

"We're coming closer to it, Bram. Hold me!"

He held her. There was nothing else he could do. The current swept the
barge on inexorably. The Black Wall reared ahead of them, frowned down
at them, seemed to block off all the rest of the universe and all
reality whether of Earth or of Tarth....

The barge penetrated the wall. Black and solid-seeming, solid as
stone, it yet offered no resistance. The barge disappeared within it.

Behind the barge, rope-trailing so close that its prow almost scraped
the royal wood, was a skiff in which, shaking and afraid yet somehow
triumphant because he had heard Bram Forest's strange words, was
Hultax the Abarian.

CHAPTER XV

_The Golden Ape_

Hultax the Abarian shook himself. He had lost consciousness as every
nerve-ending in his body had screamed with pain. Did this have
something to do with the warp--warping?--Bram Forest had mentioned.
Hultax the Abarian did not know. But he did know that he was alive, as
alive as anyone could be or had a right to be in the Place of the
Dead. And he did know, gratefully, that the intense cold of the River
of Ice was gone.

He wondered how long he had been unconscious. He blinked his eyes. A
balmy, pink-tinted sky. A pink sun, not on the horizon, when indeed
the sun might be pink, but overhead. On the horizon--Hultax blinked
again and thought he was mad--a second sun, smaller, paler, the ghost
of green in color.

The royal barge was in ruins. It had piled up on some rocks. The bier
of Jlomec, Prince of Nadia, had been thrown clear. He could see it on
t