His fingers tightened on the ruby. He turned it carefully.
He was back with Slag.
The dwarf-man was whining, and looking around him like a scared dog until he saw Thor looming massive in the fire-flames. He grinned and came close, shaking his club.
"You go where Karola went? Where the men come from?"
"Yes. It's a different world, Slag, but the same. I've a feeling this ruby with the green fire in it is some sort of passport, or key, that unlocks the path into Aava's realm. It's a physical manifestation of a geometry Euclid never got around to. Dimensional worlds."
Slag grunted. "We go after her?"
"Take hold of the ruby. That's it."
Their hands held the warm jewel. Slowly they turned it. Darkness and coldness, and dizziness, and Slag and Thor found rock under their feet, and a white moon high above them.
Thor hunted for and found a narrow path of rock that twisted from the escarpment and curved downwards toward the valley. He called to Slag and they trotted Indian fashion along it.
The walls of the elfin city loomed gigantic as they crossed the sandy plain that stretched for miles in front of it. Cyclopean stones were fitted one on another until they spread up and up, seemingly toward the stars themselves. Thor felt like a midge about to attack a mastodon.