"It was a battle beyond our understanding—of forces that we cannot comprehend, and for a purpose beyond our knowledge—though it is said that in some manner the strife arose over the sex to be awarded the newly created Noor-Ah-Mah. Maha-Ra-Lin would have endowed the partly formed being with the attributes of a god, but Bar-Doo-Chan, Lord of the West, contended for a goddess. In their mighty clash of wills, the heavens were rent with lightning, the seas were churned, mountains were heaved by the all-powerful ones across the land. Legend has it that a single moon shone from the heavens before that event, but a lightning bolt hurled by Maha-Ra-Lin at his antagonist failed of its mark. It smote the moon by chance, splitting the heavenly body in twain, so that two moons now circle the continents of N'urth."
"Then Bar-Doo-Chan, who defeated Maha-Ra-Lin, was the mightiest."
"Nay, that you must not say. True, at the end of three days Maha-Ra-Lin acknowledged himself defeated. Yet it is written that he nobly abandoned the fray out of pity for the helpless creatures of N'urth, and for the newly created Noor-Ah-Mah, knowing that if the battle continued they would all be destroyed. And so Noor-Ah-Mah became a goddess, and in that aspect she is depicted by our sculptors as a mighty huntress, running with upraised spear cheek-by-cheek with Bar-Doo-Chan. But Maha-Ra-Lin, the Life-giver, could not wholly undo his original design, so that at times she reverted to the form of a male. That is why, in ancient carvings, we sometimes find Noor-Ah-Mah pictured as a god, carrying lightnings of destruction in his clenched hand."
"Then, after all, Maha-Ra-Lin was the greatest?"
"He was a mighty being, son. Yet how can any be considered greater than Pi-Ruh-Al, to whom even the other gods and goddesses turned for counsel? Pi-Ruh-Al, the great mother, goddess of beauty, of wisdom, creator of mortal life...."
CHAPTER I
The rain settled into a steady downpour. Drenched to the marrow, Dave Marlin struggled on through the darkness and mire. At times he stumbled away from the wagon trail and floundered through sodden verdure that tangled his feet, clutched with slimy tendrils at his clothing, or lashed his face. Occasionally he stopped to curse the road, the darkness, the storm; again to heap maledictions on the truck driver who had dumped him off on this byway to nowhere.
He should have kept to the paved highway. A light blinking through the rain, seemingly not far up the mountainside, had lured his feet. It had long since been lost to view, yet he struggled on. The trail surely must lead somewhere, even if only to a deserted sawmill or mine shaft.
His feet slipped and he went down cursing. As he struggled out of the puddle, gouging grit and slime from eyes and nostrils, he became aware of a deeper black looming ahead.