"The song is nearly done. Watch the urn."
All sound and movement died away.
A tongue of green fire stabbed upwards out of the black urn. For one long instant it hung there, quivering and pulsing. It broke and faded into green mist that the breezes blew out across the chamber.
"That was the manifestation of Aava. Now we will see him as he really is."
They swept through the air with the speed of light. Matter that was wall and stone and metal blurred into a liquescent dimness that darkened the further they went. From grey to black to grim jet went the colours. And still they went on. Now the colour grew light tan, like sand.
"We are in the bowels of the Mountains of Distortion. The blackness is rock hidden forever from a glimpse of sunlight. We are nearly there. Go cautiously! This buried desert is right above him."
It was a cave. From the high rock ceiling stalactites drooped like the fringes of a weeping willow eternally etched in stone. Amid a riotous profusion of clubshaped stalagmites thrusting up from the rough cave floor, lay a circle of red space.
And in the red space stood Aava.
Green light, flickering and flaring, now subdued, now pouring forth in a verdant shower of pride and strength, flooded the cave. Thor could feel its sentience through every beat and pulse of it. Like the tongue of some mighty star trapped in matter, it licked and thrust and strove to speak its greatness.
The green fire lowered, hung brooding.