"In your hour of need I bring you the talisman against my son Karkora."
The voice died; the thunder of the seas roared in Elak's ears. A green veil blotted out the mad, shifting planes and angles. In the emerald mists shadows floated—the shadows of Mayana.
They swept down upon him. Something was thrust into his hand—something warm and wet and slippery.
He lifted it, staring. He gripped a heart, bloody, throbbing—alive!
The heart of Mayana! The heart beneath which Karkora had slumbered in the womb! The talisman against Karkora!
A shrill droning rose suddenly to a skirling shriek of madness, tearing at Elak's ears, knifing through his brain. The bleeding heart in Elak's hand drew him forward. He took a slow step, another.
About him the gray light pulsed and waned; the white shadow of Karkora grew gigantic. The mad planes danced swiftly.
And then Elak was looking down at a pit on the edge of which he stood. Only in the depths of the deep hollow was the instability of the surrounding matter lacking. And below was a shapeless and flesh-colored hulk that lay inert ten feet down.
It was man-sized and naked. But it was not human. The pulpy arms had grown to the sides; the legs had grown together. Not since birth had the thing moved by itself. It was blind, and had no mouth. Its head was a malformed grotesquerie of sheer horror.
Fat, deformed, utterly frightful, the body of Karkora rested in the pit.