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straight up into a great, storming whirlwind.
As he clung to the thread, he found to his relief that it passed into the
relatively calm center of the maelstrom. But he was astounded by the power
and momentum carried by those clouds, now racing in a vast circle around him
and above him. Lightning flashed within the cloud walls, and the layers
churned as they spun around, as though each wisp of cloud were vying for the
inside position. The sheer power was terrifying enough; but more than that,
he had the impression that there was a purposefulness in the movements within
the cloud wall, as though there were a strength and intelligence there, not
just in the crafting behind the storm, but dwelling in the storm's power
itself.
Almost as though ... it were alive ...
As though ... it were not just a creation of Tar-skel, but an actual coiling
of the Enemy's own personality through the underweb.
And if that was true ...
FullSky had a sudden, terrible feeling that the Enemy himself might be
breathing within those clouds, and looking out through them.
FullSky had never actually met the Enemy face-to-face; but this dark,
endlessly spinning mass was making him quake with fear.
He slowed, but did not stop. He tried to draw his kuu, tekka close about him,
making his presence as small as it could be. Around him, the great walls of
cloud were turning, racing in the sky. The pale
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thread continued upward through the eye, but edged frighteningly close to the
cloud wall.
Something new began to happen now. A great fist of cloud erupted from the far
side of the storm, pushing out into the stillness in the center, then turning
upward, moving with agonizing slowness-and yet, for a cloud, with shocking
speed. FullSky felt faint at the power he sensed in that fist ... or was it a
Nail? ... pushing into the sky.
He shivered, and fought to keep his fear from shining out through his
kuutekka. There was an overwhelming presence inside that cloud; it was a
presence he had contested once, and lost to, and did not want to battle again.
FullSky felt a tremendously oppressive dread in his heart; he was sure now
that it was Tar-skel he was seeing, the Enemy's kuutekka manifest in the
underrealm, the Enemy looking out upon the face of the realm that he was
claiming for his own.
A current of air was rising beneath FullSky, carrying him upward, closer and
closer to that great, swelling fist. He could not turn back now if he wanted
to, not without battling the current, not without drawing attention to
himself. How small could he make himself he wondered desperately. As surely
as if he were physically here, he felt himself holding his breath, riding the
updraft as a fleck of dust or a droplet of water, riding it wherever the winds
would take him, spiraling and spinning about the path thread, but drawn
inexorably toward the eruption of the Nail's presence.
The fist seemed to be closing around the thread-path, as though to clutch it.
FullSky was flying headlong into its grip. He felt a rushing despair as he
rose, helplessly, ever closer to the impossibly dense cloud. He became aware
of tiny, churning microstorms on its surface, and imagined that those tiny
disturbances were eyes, peering out into the g sky. Peering ...
He was certain that that was Tar-skel's gaze shifting to and fro, taking in
the sight of his underrealm. How could that gaze miss the kuutekka of a
dragon rising alongside it?
As he struggled to reduce himself to an invisible speck, he thought of his
physical body, captive in the dungeons of the Dark Vale; and he knew that if
Tar-skel recognized him, no matter what evasions he might try here in the
underrealm, his body could be destroyed within a moment of the Nail's command.
The only mountain he would reach then would be
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