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The awful grin of Crystalman immediately fastened upon the phaen's dead features. While Maskull was still kneeling, he became conscious of someone standing beside him. He looked up quickly and saw a man, but did not at once rise. "Another phaen dead," said the newcomer in a grave, toneless, and intellectual voice. Maskull got up. The man was short and thickset but emaciated.
The dark spots would have existed all the same." "You could have seen them afterward. It makes all the difference whether one sees darkness through the light, or brightness through the shadows." "A clear eye is the best. Tormance is an ugly world, and I greatly prefer to know it as it really is." "The devil made it ugly, not Crystalman. These are Crystalman's thoughts, which you see around you.
"I have certainly come to another world. But why do you say he is the same as Surtur?" "Yes, he is the same. We women call him Shaping, and so do most men, but a few name him Surtur." Maskull bit his nail. "Have you ever heard of Crystalman?" "That is Shaping once again. You see, he has many names which shows how much he occupies our minds. Crystalman is a name of affection."
Beneath its coating of mud, her face bore the vulgar, ghastly Crystalman grin, but Maskull saw nothing of it. She had never appeared so beautiful to him as at that moment. He remained beside her for a long time, on his knees. He wept but, between his fits of weeping, he raised his head from time to time, and listened to the distant drum beats. An hour passed two hours.
"The night is really past at last, Nightspore.... The day is here." Nightspore gazed long and earnestly at Maskull's body. "Why was all this necessary?" "Ask Crystalman," replied Krag sternly. "His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch but I have a stronger... Maskull was his, but Nightspore is mine." The fog thickened so that the two suns wholly disappeared, and all grew as black as night.
He said that Crystalman tries to turn all things into one, and that whichever way his shapes march, in order to escape from him, they find themselves again face to face with Crystalman, and are changed into new crystals. For Surtur's world does not lie on this side of the one, which was the beginning of life, but on the other side; and to get to it we must repass through the one.
"There is the drumming," he exclaimed. "Do you understand it, or have you forgotten?" "I half understand it, but I'm all confused." "It's evident Crystalman has dug his claws into you pretty deeply," said Krag. "The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its travelling through Crystalman's atmosphere.
"It's odd," said Maskull. "I came here with quite different ideas about Crystalman." Joiwind shook her hair. "In that grove of trees over there stands a desert shrine of his. Let us go and pray there, and then we'll go on our way to Poolingdred. That is my home. It's a long way off, and we must get there before Blodsombre." "Now, what is Blodsombre?"
The spirit stream from Muspel flashed with complexity and variety. It was not below individuality, but above it. It was not the One, or the Many, but something else far beyond either. It approached Crystalman, and entered his body if that bright mist could be called a body. It passed right through him, and the passage caused him the most exquisite pleasure. The Muspel-stream was Crystalman's food.
"No, that's impossible," replied Maskull reflectively. "It was Crystalman. And it isn't a question of my suspecting it I know it." "How?" "Because this is Crystalman's world, and Surtur's world is something quite different." "That's queer, then," said Polecrab.
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