Im not sure it works like that. He said in tones of suffered patience.

You do it then. She moved away from the panel, leaning against the dark stones all around.

Held in mouth of the mountain they beheld the door called Word. It was locked, and now Riven approached a small side-panel, removing a small, elongated tool from somewhere inside his coat as he neared it.

After a moments fiddling a small click came within the massive door, and the next instant it swung open smoothly as if on oiled hinges.

He looked over, too smug by half. Its all in the wrist, you see.

Go fuck yourself.

Also in the wrist, or so Im told.

Come on, this tunnel wont car pool itself.

He laughed the way she loved and together they strode into the unlit deeps, passing through the yawning door; the maw of the mountain.

The way is dark but my step is light, her thought flitted by, held in the grasp of self-surprise.

And midnight footsteps shed shining paths, came his in reply.

Enough this internal dialogue thought she, the well of silence drunk deep enough to set all tables for two.

Enjoying this magic of two, distance fled from them and the halls were passed into the light without incident.

It was enormous and of uncertain sex, looming high into the cavern.

Going to handle this one too. She asked but not a question.

Well try.

He stepped forward, clearing the doorway and into the light.

The thing saw him and, bellowing challenge, strode thundering legs forth.

Courage, dearheart said a voice within, too deep to be called him or her, and bathed in its warmth his inner tongues moved through primordial waters, drinking in the sounds of day and night.

Setting empty space aflame by the will of his Word, he rose on a beam of braided rainbows to meet its charge, all-blazing sword taking apparition in his hand. The chorus of the wrathful and howling greeted

his arrival in the circles spontaneously assembled, like wheels on the crux of everything.

The mountain had mouths then, pouring fourth the song of ages. Aeons fled before his gaze and all births and deaths unfolded on the mirrorblade held like faceted lightning.

The spent lives of all mother beings garlanded around his neck as skulls, and riding the ashdead and twiceborn fire, he prevailed upon the sound and the light to grant him passage; he of the black flames crowned with sightless eyes.

Performing all rites at the exactly the right moment, the procession of time parts and he steps into the place between thoughts.

Summoned thus to the place all hearts knot, he wrote the shadowless word in this empty cave of the heart, riding shadows forged from forbidden lights, keying tidal locks and moving mountains made of men and gods, raining medicine from bliss-soaked clouds on all the worlds.

There beyond the veils of death and dying he reposed without strife in the bejeweled realms of palatial splendor.

Surrounded by his retinue in the spontaneous assembly, He embraced She.

The sigil sounds roared out like a lion's dream, passing over countless tongues bewined.
1.

AH! HUM! was the utterance as he formed its thought: I acknowledge the essential sameness between this apparition, enemy mine, and the together-born consort!

<expand>

The monstrosity dissolved in prismatic swirls and dark eyes like storms, and then disappearing without trace

Her laughter boomed in the heart-cave.

Alone in the mountain's heart, the stone hallowing his steps, and into the bowels of the earth, the empty 2. places, unknown forests dark; he walked strange planes.
1. 3. 4. 5. 6. End Part 1, trance sequence. 7. 8. == 9. 10. Part 2, trance sequence. 11.

The winds, showing their colors, had taken the form of my will then; a doorway into other worlds, cut into the gloom of ages by a strange knife.

Passing through then, subtle corridors and veils light and dark, vehicle and I riding myriad shadows, crossing grounds and paths uncloven by the hoofs of what used to be my steed, once more I touch down to ground after a long skywalk.

Steering wheel reigned wild in hands newly flesh. Below spun wheels like prayers painting tireless tracts on the high causeway.

Long lakes reflection to the right, mirror still and gazing far with the starry eyes.

I have come again to you now, having fallen through lightless holes and eyes turned inwards, gazing untouched by mind or time, I am here, arriving before departure.

Once more in this benighted land where fools ideas rule the day. The foot is heavy and the shoulders move to an African rhythm, this body mine enthroned in bucket seat.

A 79 T-Bird is fastened to me, modded to hell and back, and I crowned by black hair as braided turban, wrapped thrice and half above my head, nod the land away.

Music beating like rain about, Zion I making me fly, sound system and subwoofers like pits off the leash, the skyline stared back unyielding.

I gunned the engine and shifted into overdrive. Stars streaked and screamed above and the roar of the engine growled curses between teethlike beats, and orgasmic wrath surged through limbs uprooted.

Faceless edifices turn unlit windows like eyes from my passage, certain of the right of way.

<RW:The procession of voids parted blowing instrumentality through the songs of thought.>

The streets are empty and the sky is black and radiant, bearing stars unclouded in its vasty womb.

The thrill of the night upon me and grinning over dials unseen in shadows, I shift through the gears, moving mountains made of minds into foregrounds like running fingers through the sands of time.

Towns and cows melt away before my heading alight, the horizon prostrating before me, non-pointedly drunken in my lane.

Strange sands deserted the empty reaches of the world and the snows came blackened with volcanic dust.

A toast then, to distance, I thought and took another drag, thinking, maybe, of you.

Refuge tree rains medicine in the secret garden. And I drinking the blood of the moon through a smoldering tube, but in the end just a woman named Nobody.

The night sped on, the plains fled by, though Ive walked in butterflied company much the same in lives now past, buried with their axes and ornaments.

Dont you recognize me anymore? I asked no-one in particular.

The night answered with silence and predawn glow, equanimous as of old. Soundless lightning in faraway skies, I thunder down the road cold-shouldered, the soul of the light fueling my ride like distilled summer days.

Passengers seat warm with the memory of he like the heart of homely hearths, I smoked trees in solitude in leathered interiors, the world burning on its axis and held between my lips, glowering over the dash, inhaling the life of ages and a dark places event horizon.

The moon passing between clouds winks, cyclopean, at me. She knows whos driving.

Off-beat, on-beat, bronzed girl shoulder dance, silver and no gold adorned a lithe frame somewhat shorter than the one speaking to you now. Speakers churning falling metal of the deathgods, like dropping pianos on the genre savvy, denial annihilating the wicked.

Black, that first color mine, garbed me then as now, chased with silver like moons.

Quickened by the revolution of wheels, eating ground as if swimming through land, the night parted before me sea-like and darkly wet.

Star robed sky hugs my back, reforged enormously as a greatsword, hafting high above my head, and I sway not overmuch in a weathered saddle astride she of the pounding hooves, breaking beats into countless pieces.

Saddle held fast with a days food and drink, books, sundry edged weapons and an errant lug wrench in what was a trunk. I frowned slightly and the wrench disappeared.

Feeling naked without a bow, I garb myself with the sky once more, and feel again the sweet swell of ash in my hand, recurved but slightly like those lips I dream of kissing that you might awake to me. With me, as me.

Hair braided and wrapped, turbanlike, around my head, the gnarled seeds of sacred trees beaded my ears. 5 arrows quivered where a burden might rest, silvered and straight as the moons rays.

Hail, fellow traveler. says the white rider, merging at a gallop from a tributary of this middle path, matching my stride, and I know then that I have met you well, as of old.

We, horses apace, pursue the manlike forms painted in zephyr colors fleeing before us, their raiments streaming behind them, aloft on this windswept plane.

Thunderstruck clouds peeled from the horizon and shed their bounty on oilslick cloaks and broad-brimmed brows and then. And then Rains passed, the night sheds its pretense, breaking dawn.

Earrings still hang out of view, but I feel their dead weight - bones fashioned into cunning instruments, marching well with charnel attire these fell dance steps.

"Where are you going?" you asked me with the voice of jest.

"Same place you are, I expect. Hell."

You nodded knowingly, and the silence waited with us for what must come.

As the light pierced the sky and cast its warmth my windchilled face, you dissolved into its rays, and I drank you in, the shadow and the light as one taste.

I ride on, to the heart of the last mountain and they flee before me. Us.