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"Don't panic," Ipsewas called. "Ahhh!"
There was a thud, a splash, and a scream that made Wolff start up and bump his head hard against the
shell above him. Through the flashes of light and darkness, he saw the raven hanging limply within two
giant claws. If the raven was eagle-sized, the killer that had dropped like a bolt from the green sky
seemed, in that first second of shock, to be as huge as a roc. Wolff's vision straightened and cleared, and
he saw an eagle with a light-green body, a pale red head, and a pale yellow beak. It was six times the
bulk of the raven, and its wings, each at least thirty feet long, were flapping heavily as it strove to lift
higher from the sea into which its missile thrust had carried both it and its prey. With each powerful
downpush, it rose a few inches higher. Presently it began climbing higher, but before it got too far away, it
turned its head and allowed Wolff to see its eyes. They were black shields mirroring the flames of death.
Wolff shuddered; he had never seen such naked lust for killing.
"Well may you shudder," Ipsewas said. His grinning head was thrust into the cave of the shell. "That was
one of Podarge's pets. Podarge hates the Lord and would attack him herself if she got the chance, even if
she knew it would be her end. Which it would. She knows she can't get near the Lord, but she can tell
her pets to eat up the Eyes of the Lord. Which they do, as you have seen."
Wolff left the cavern of the shell and stood for awhile, watching the shrinking figure of the eagle and its
kill.
"Who is Podarge?"
"She is, like me, one of the Lord's monsters. She, too, once lived on the shores of the Aegean; she was
a beautiful young girl. That was when the great king Priamos and the godlike Akhilleus and crafty
Odysseus lived. I knew them all; they would spit on the Kretan Ipsewas, the once-brave sailor and
spearfighter, if they could see me now. But I was talking of Podarge. The Lord took her to this world
and fashioned a monstrous body and placed her brain within it.
"She lives up there someplace, in a cave on the very face of the mountain. She hates the Lord; she also
hates every normal human being and will eat them, if her pets don't get them first. But most of all she
hates the Lord."
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That seemed to be all that Ipsewas knew about her, except that Podarge had not been her name before
the Lord had taken her. Also, he remembered having been well acquainted with her. Wolff questioned
him further, for he was interested in what Ipsewas could tell him about Agamemnon and Achilles and
Odysseus and the other heroes of Homer's epic. He told the zebrilla that Agamemnon was supposed to
be a historical character. But what about Achilles and Odysseus? Had they really existed?
"Of course they did," Ipsewas said. He grunted, then continued, "I suppose you're curious about those
days. But there is little I can tell you. It's been too long ago. Too many idle days. Days?-centuries,
millenia!-the Lord alone knows. Too much alcohol, too."
During the rest of the day and part of the night, Wolff tried to pump Ipsewas, but he got little for his
trouble. Ipsewas, bored, drank half his supply of nuts and finally passed out snoring. Dawn came green
and golden around the mountain. Wolff stared down into the waters, so clear that he could see the
hundreds of thousands of fish, of fantastic configurations and splendors of colors. A bright-orange seal
rose from the depths, a creature like a living diamond in its mouth. A purple-veined octopus, shooting
backward, jetted by the seal. Far, far down, something enormous and white appeared for a second, then
dived back toward the bottom.
Presently the roar of the surf came to him, and a thin white line frothed at the base of Thayaphayawoed.
The mountain, so smooth at a distance, was now broken by fissures, by juts and spires, by rearing scarps
and frozen fountains of stone. Thayaphayawoed went up and up and up; it seemed to hang over the
world.
Wolff shook Ipsewas until, moaning and muttering, the zebrilla rose to his feet. He blinked reddened
eyes, scratched, coughed, then reached for another punchnut. Finally, at Wolff's urging, he steered the
sailfish so that its course paralleled the base of the mountain.
"I used to be familiar with this area," he said. "Once I thought about climbing the mountain, finding the
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