Cormac’s face was grim and not hopeful. “But-a crowned woman! Where rules a woman?”

“Nowhere,” Samaire said, with a sigh. Her face went reflective.

“Then-”

“Then-” Bas began.

He gave pause at renewed turmoil. Their craft rocked violently. Water spurned high. The sky seemed to shimmer. When all abated, eyes were fearful and knuckles white from gripping handholds as though to keep from being hurled off the ridge of the world.

Bas commenced anew. “Then we must keep our prisoner, as our duty to all humankind, for dead Thulsa Doom cannot otherwise be slain.”

And he was fixedly, madly bent on horrid vengeance against Cormac mac Art-or him he had been in the distant past.

As they sat in tight-lipped silence, the ship on that calm sea rocked as though gale-struck. Groans rose as stomachs seemed to be wrenched, seemed to somersault. Then all was still but for the gentle breeze that swept Quester away from Kull’s isle they’d named Doom-heim, toward distant Eirrin. Thulsa Doom reappeared, helpless at the mast.

“Da-a-m-m-mnnn ye!” he ground out, and he was still.

Two ships that were in truth long boats slid across the sea in a gentle breeze, bearing history and horror.

The eyes of Bas were signally bright and wide, and he looked skyward. His hands fingered the symbols of his gods and their powers, which were those of nature, like the green of his robe. The others realized that he wrestled now with Thulsa Doom, whose powers were of darkness and illusion, rather than nature and the light.

Then Samaire was calling out. “There was a rocky little island-there! It-it’s gone!”

Her companions looked about, and in a babble of voices they agreed. The exiled princess of Leinster was right. The sea had changed; the world had changed. Bas turned from them, paced in his woods-green robe to the wizard.

“May ye be damned! It’s again and again ye’ve tried, tried amain and it’s both failure and success ye’ve grasped, isn’t it? Ye did break through into your other dimension-but ye’ve brought us with ye, into a different world!”