The churning light and sound were gone. He drifted idly, body and mind coming softly to rest upon a bank of soft grass.
Someone knelt beside him. Someone cried softly, to the same murmurous rhythms of the crystalline forest. Without opening his eyes he sensed this, and knew also that he was still within the eery precincts of the maze. He opened his eyes, painfully.
This time, there were tears, glistening and falling slowly, glistening like crystal dewdrops in sunlight, and falling in softly tinkling shower like spilled jewels.
"Songeen!" he cried.
"Yes," murmured a tympany of glass bells, "I am here."
It was Songeen—almost, again, as he remembered her, almost human. It was Songeen, small, delicate, unreal, but sweetly feminine—almost human. It was Songeen, but with something added, changed, oddly blended into both form and personality.
"I tried to save you," she murmured. "I tried, but could not reach you. My knowledge is incomplete. I thought you were weak, confused, too frightened and disturbed to be changed easily. But you were strong, and your violence was a challenge to it. Only the Masters could understand. They saved you—not I. They intervened in time."
"The Masters!" Newlin glanced round, quickly, warily. "They are here?"
"Not here—now. But they saved you. I did not know all the dangers. They—not I—"
"Saved me from what—death?"