CHAPTER XXIX. THE PASSING OF NORHALA
Hundreds of feet through must have been the fallen mass--within it whoknows what chambers filled with mysteries? Yes, thousands of feet thickit must have been, for the debris of it splintered and lashed to thevery edge of the ledge on which we crouched; heaped it with the dimmingfragments of the bodies that had formed it.
We looked into a thousand vaults, a thousand spaces. There came anotheravalanche roaring--before us opened the crater of the cones.
Through the torn gap I saw them, clustering undisturbed about the baseof that one slender, coroneted and star pointing spire, rising sereneand unshaken from a hell of lightnings. But the shields that had rimmedthe crater were gone.
Ventnor snatched the glasses from my hand, leveled and held them long tohis eyes.
He thrust them back to me. "Look!"
Through the lenses the great hall leaped into full view apparently onlya few yards away. It was a cauldron of chameleon flame. It seethed withthe Hordes battling over the remaining walls and floor. But around thecrystal base of the cones was an open zone into which none broke.
In that wide ring, girdling the shimmering fantasy like a circledsanctuary, were but three forms. One was the wondrous Disk of jeweledfires I have called the Metal Emperor; the second was the sullen firedcruciform of the Keeper.
The third was Norhala!
She stood at the side of that weird master of hers--or was it after allthe servant? Between them and the Keeper's planes gleamed the giganticT-shaped tablet of countless rods which controlled the activities of thecones; that had controlled the shifting of the vanished shields; thatmanipulated too, perhaps, the energies of whatever similar but smallercornute ganglia were scattered throughout the City and one of which wehad beheld when the Emperor's guards had blasted Ventnor.
Close was Norhala in the lenses--so close that almost, it seemed, Icould reach out and touch her. The flaming hair streamed and billowedabove her glorious head like a banner of molten floss of coppery gold;her face was a mask of wrath and despair; her great eyes blazed upon theKeeper; her exquisite body was bare, stripped of every shred of silkencovering.
From streaming tresses to white feet an oval of pulsing, golden lightnimbused her. Maiden Isis, virgin Astarte she stood there, held in thegrip of the Disk--like a goddess betrayed and hopeless yet thirsting forvengeance.
For all their stillness, their immobility, it came to me that Emperorand Keeper were at grapple, locked in death grip; the realization was asdefinite as though, like Ruth, I thought with Norhala's mind, saw withher eyes.
Clearly too it came to me that in this contest between the two wasepitomized all the vast conflict that raged around them; that in it wasfast ripening that fruit of destiny of which Ventnor had spoken, andthat here in the Hall of the Cones would be settled--and soon--the fatenot only of Disk and Cross, but it might be of humanity.
But with what unknown powers was that duel being fought? They cast nolightnings, they battled with no visible weapons. Only the great planesof the inverted cruciform Shape smoked and smoldered with their sullenflares of ochres and of scarlets; while over all the face of theDisk its cold and irised fires raced and shone, beating with a rhythmincredibly rapid; its core of incandescent ruby blazed, its sapphireovals were cabochoned pools of living, lucent radiance.
There was a splitting roar that arose above all the clamor, deafeningus even in the shelter of the silent veils. On each side of the craterwhole masses of the City dropped away. Fleetingly I was aware of scoresof smaller pits in which uprose lesser replicas of the Coned Mount,lesser reservoirs of the Monster's force.
Neither the Emperor nor the Keeper moved, both seemingly indifferent tothe catastrophe fast developing around them.
Now I strained forward to the very thinnest edge of the curtainings.For between the Disk and Cross began to form fine black mist. It wastransparent. It seemed spun of minute translucent ebon corpuscles. Ithung like a black shroud suspended by unseen hands. It shook and waverednow toward the Disk, now toward the Cross.
I sensed a keying up of force within the two; knew that each wasstriving to cast like a net that hanging mist upon the other.
Abruptly the Emperor flashed forth, blindingly. As though caught upon ablast, the black shroud flew toward the Keeper--enveloped it. And as themist covered and clung I saw the sulphurous and crimson flares dim. Theywere snuffed out.
The Keeper fell!
Upon Norhala's face flamed a wild triumph, banishing despair. Theoutstretched planes of the Cross swept up as though in torment. For aninstant its fires flared and licked through the clinging blackness; itwrithed half upright, threw itself forward, crashed down prostrate uponthe enigmatic tablet which only its tentacles could manipulate.
From Norhala's face the triumph fled. On its heels rushed stark,incredulous horror.
The Mount of Cones shuddered. From it came a single mighty throb offorce--like a prodigious heart-beat. Under that pulse of power theEmperor staggered, spun--and spinning, swept Norhala from her feet,swung her close to its flashing rose.
A second throb pulsed from the cones, and mightier.
A spasm shook the Disk--a paroxysm.
Its fires faded; they flared out again, bathing the floating, unearthlyfigure of Norhala with their iridescences.
I saw her body writhe--as though it shared the agony of the Shape thatheld her. Her head twisted; the great eyes, pools of uncomprehending,unbelieving horror, stared into mine.
With a spasmodic, infinitely dreadful movement the Disk closed--
And closed upon her!
Norhala was gone--was shut within it. Crushed to the pent fires of itscrystal heart.
I heard a sobbing, agonized choking--knew it was I who sobbed. Againstme I felt Ruth's body strike, bend in convulsive arc, drop inert.
The slender steeple of the cones drooped sending its faceted coronetshattering to the floor. The Mount melted. Beneath the flooding radiancesprawled Keeper and the great inert Globe that was the Goddess woman'ssepulcher.
The crater filled with the pallid luminescence. Faster and ever fasterit poured down into the Pit. And from all the lesser craters of thesmaller cones swept silent cataracts of the same pale radiance.
The City began to crumble--the Monster to fall.
Like pent-up waters rushing through a broken dam the gleaming delugeswept over the valley; gushing in steady torrents from the breakingmass. Over the valley fell a vast silence. The lightnings ceased. TheMetal Hordes stood rigid, the shining flood lapping at their bases,rising swiftly ever higher.
Now from the sinking City swarmed multitudes of its weird luminaries.
Out they trooped, swirling from every rent and gap--orbs scarlet andsapphire, ruby orbs, orbs tuliped and irised--the jocund suns of thebirth chamber and side by side with them hosts of the frozen, pale gilt,stiff rayed suns.
Thousands upon thousands they marched forth and poised themselvessolemnly over all the Pit that now was a fast rising lake of yellowfroth of sun flame.
They swept forth in squadrons, in companies, in regiments, thosemysterious orbs. They floated over all the valley; they separated andswung motionless above it as though they were mysterious multiple soulsof fire brooding over the dying shell that had held them.
Beneath, thrusting up from the lambent lake like grotesque towers ofsome drowned fantastic metropolis, the great Shapes stood, black againstits glowing.
What had been the City--that which had been the bulk of the Monster--wasnow only a vast and shapeless hill from which streamed the silenttorrents of that released, unknown force which, concentrate and bound,had been the cones.
As though it was the Monster's shining life-blood it poured, raisingever higher in its swift flooding the level radiant lake.
Lower and lower sank the immense bulk; squattered and spread, everlowering--about its helpless, patient crouching something ineffablypiteous, something indescribably, COSMICALLY tragic.
Abruptly the watching orbs shook under a
hail of sparkling atomsstreaming down from the glittering sky; raining upon the lambent lake.So thick they fell that now the brooding luminaries were dim aureoleswithin them.
From the Pit came a blinding, insupportable brilliancy. From everyrigid tower gleamed out jeweled fires; their clinging units opened intoblazing star and disk and cross. The City was a hill of living gems overwhich flowed torrents of pale molten gold.
The Pit blazed.
There followed an appalling tensity; a prodigious gathering of force;a panic stirring concentration of energy. Thicker fell the clouds ofsparkling atoms--higher rose the yellow flood.
Ventnor cried out. I could not hear him, but I read his purpose--andso did Drake. Up on his broad shoulders he swung Ruth as though she hadbeen a child. Back through the throbbing veils we ran; passed out ofthem.
"Back!" shouted Ventnor. "Back as far as you can!"
On we raced; we reached the gateway of the cliffs; we dashed on andon--up the shining roadway toward the blue globe now a scant mile beforeus; ran sobbing, panting--ran, we knew, for our lives.
Out of the Pit came a sound--I cannot describe it!
An unutterably desolate, dreadful wail of despair, it shuddered past uslike the groaning of a broken-hearted star--anguished and awesome.
It died. There rushed upon us a sea of that incredible loneliness, thatlonging for extinction that had assailed us in the haunted hollow wherefirst we had seen Norhala. But its billows were resistless, invincible.Beneath them we fell; were torn by desire for swift death.
Dimly, through fainting eyes, I saw a dazzling brilliancy fill the sky;heard with dying ears a chaotic, blasting roar. A wave of air thickerthan water caught us up, hurled us hundreds of yards forward. It droppedus; in its wake rushed another wave, withering, scorching.
It raced over us. Scorching though it was, within its heat wasenergizing, revivifying force; something that slew the deadly despairand fed the fading fires of life.
I staggered to my feet; looked back. The veils were gone. The precipicewalled gateway they had curtained was filled with a Plutonic glare asthough it opened into the incandescent heart of a volcano.
Ventnor clutched my shoulder, spun me around. He pointed to the sapphirehouse, started to run to it. Far ahead I saw Drake, the body of the girlclasped to his breast. The heat became blasting, insupportable; my lungsburned.
Over the sky above the canyon streaked a serpentine chain of lightnings.A sudden cyclonic gust swept the cleft, whirling us like leaves towardthe Pit.
I threw myself upon my face, clutching at the smooth rock. A volley ofthunder burst--but not the thunder of the Metal Monster or its Hordes;no, the bellowing of the levins of our own earth.
And the wind was cold; it bathed the burning skin; laved the feveredlungs.
Again the sky was split by the lightnings. And roaring down from it insolid sheets came the rain.
From the Pit arose a hissing as though within it raged BabylonianTiamat, Mother of Chaos, serpent dweller in the void; Midgard-snake ofthe ancient Norse holding in her coils the world.
Buffeted by wind, beaten down by rain, clinging to each other likedrowning men, Ventnor and I pushed on to the elfin globe. The light wasdying fast. By it we saw Drake pass within the portal with his burden.The light became embers; it went out; blackness clasped us. Guided bythe lightnings, we beat our way to the door; passed through it.
In the electric glare we saw Drake bending over Ruth. In it I sawa slide draw over the open portal through which shrieked the wind,streamed the rain.
As though its crystal panel was moved by unseen, gentle hands, theportal closed; the tempest shut out.
We dropped beside Ruth upon a pile of silken stuffs--awed, marveling,trembling with pity and--thanksgiving.
For we knew--each of us knew with an absolute definiteness as wecrouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows withwhich the lightnings filled the blue globe--that the Metal Monster wasdead.
Slain by itself!