“Ever you have been the soul who told other souls where they could and could not go, barring our way into the Palace and telling us not to venture into the Park,” Swat complained. “Now it is the same again—save that I have an axe, and you do not. And though the axe may be powerless to alter the adamant form of this tower, be it said that the form you have made for yourself, o proud Ward, is made of softer stuff—softer even than the branches of the trees that yield so easily to the bite of the axe. If you would not like to suffer grievous alterations in your own form, you would do well to stand aside.”

Ward, barely wotting that he had just been threatened, stepped forward to seize the axe; but Swat swung its bright head down upon Ward’s outstretched arm, making a gash in the skin that had, until that moment, always stood between him and the world. Out of the gash came red blood that fell on the snow. He stepped away more in astonishment than fear, and watched himself bleed. Pain came.

“Behold the new way of things,” said Swat.

Sudden warmth shone on the face of Ward, and he heard an eruption of noise from all about, and his vision was dazzled as when he chanced to gaze at the sun. When it had cleared he no longer saw the other soul. Before him was a round patch of dead grass from which the snow had altogether melted away. Smoke rose from it, and also from the handle of the axe, which now lay in the center of the bare place; its iron head was as before but its wooden handle had been reduced to embers. Feeling a great wind on his back he gazed up to see Egdod alighting on the top of the tower. Egdod’s form was as it ever had been, but larger and of greater magnificence, with feathers now like those of Warm Wings.

“Behold it indeed,” said Egdod. In one hand he was gripping a bundle of jagged sticks that were too bright to look upon. With his other he reached down and gripped Ward’s unwounded arm, then hauled him into the air and flew away with him to the Palace.

Chapter 36

Chapter 36