The scream burst out, an inhuman agony in its raw-edged keening.
It stopped.
In Stuart's hand was—nothing.
He opened his eyes. The dazzling glitter of star-points had vanished. Only the forest, with its purple shadows, lay empty and silent around him.
Stuart got up slowly, swallowed dry-throated. The creatures of the Aesir were not invulnerable, then. Not to one who knew their weaknesses.
How had he known?
What voice had spoken in his brain? There had been an odd, impossible familiarity to that—that mental voice, now that he remembered it. Somewhere he had heard it, sensed it before.
That gap in his memory—
He tried to bridge it, but he could not. There was only a quickening of the desire to go on westward. He felt suddenly certain that he would find the Aesir in that direction.
He took a hesitant step—and another. And with each step, a queer, unmotivated confidence poured into him. As though some barrier in his mind had broken down, letting some strange flood of proud defiance rush in.