CHAPTER XXVII - The Coming of
Yolara
"Never was
there such a girl!" Thus Larry, dreamily, leaning head in hand on one of
the wide divans of the chamber where Lakla had left us, pleading service to the
Silent Ones.
"An', by the
faith and the honour of the O'Keefes, an' by my dead mother's soul may God do
with me as I do by her!" he whispered fervently.
He relapsed into
open-eyed dreaming.
I walked about
the room, examining it - the first opportunity I had gained to inspect
carefully any of the rooms in the abode of the Three. It was octagonal,
carpeted with the thick rugs that seemed almost as though woven of soft mineral
wool, faintly shimmering, palest blue. I paced its diagonal; it was fifty
yards; the ceiling was arched, and either of pale rose metal or metallic
covering; it collected the light from the high, slitted windows, and shed it,
diffused, through the room.
Around the
octagon ran a low gallery not two feet from the floor, balustraded with slender
pillars, close set; broken at opposite curtained entrances over which hung
thick, dull-gold curtainings giving the same suggestion of metallic or mineral
substance as the rugs. Set within each of the eight sides, above the balcony,
were colossal slabs of lapis lazuli, inset with graceful but unplaceable
designs in scarlet and sapphire blue.
There was the
great divan on which mused Larry; two smaller ones, half a dozen low seats and
chairs carved apparently of ivory and of dull soft gold.
Most curious were
tripods, strong, pikelike legs of golden metal four feet high, holding small
circles of the lapis with intaglios of one curious symbol somewhat resembling
the ideographs of the Chinese.
There was no dust
- nowhere in these caverned spaces had I found this constant companion of ours
in the world overhead. My eyes caught a sparkle from a corner. Pursuing it I
found upon one of the low seats a flat, clear crystal oval, remarkably like a
lens. I took it and stepped up on the balcony. Standing on tiptoe I found I
commanded from the bottom of a window slit a view of the bridge approach.
Scanning it I could see no trace of the garrison there, nor of the green spear
flashes. I placed the crystal to my eyes - and with a disconcerting abruptness
the cavern mouth leaped before me, apparently not a hundred feet away;
decidedly the crystal was a very excellent lens - but where were the guards?
I peered closely.
Nothing! But now against the aperture I saw a score or more of tiny, dancing
sparks. An optical illusion, I thought, and turned the crystal in another
direction. There were no sparklings there. I turned it back again - and there
they were. And what were they like? Realization came to me - they were like the
little, dancing, radiant atoms that had played for a time about the emptiness
where had stood Sorgar of the Lower Waters before he had been shaken into the
nothingness! And that green light I had noticed - the Keth!
A cry on my lips,
I turned to Larry - and the cry died as the heavy curtainings at the entrance
on my right undulated, parted as though a body had slipped through, shook and
parted again and again - with the dreadful passing of unseen things!
"Larry!"
I cried. ”Here! Quick!"
He leaped to his
feet, gazed about wildly - and disappeared! Yes - vanished from my sight like
the snuffed flame of a candle or as though something moving with the speed of
light itself had snatched him away!
Then from the
divan came the sounds of struggle, the hissing of straining breaths, the noise
of Larry cursing. I leaped over the balustrade, drawing my own pistol - was
caught in a pair of mighty arms, my elbows crushed to my sides, drawn down
until my face pressed close to a broad, hairy breast - and through that
obstacle - formless, shadowless, transparent as air itself - I could still see
the battle on the divan!
Now there were
two sharp reports; the struggle abruptly ceased. From a point not a foot over
the great couch, as though oozing from the air itself, blood began to drop,
faster and ever faster, pouring out of nothingness.
And out of that
same air, now a dozen feet away, leaped the face of Larry - bodyless, poised
six feet above the floor, blazing with rage - floating weirdly, uncannily to a
hideous degree, in vacancy.
His hands flashed
out - armless; they wavered, appearing, disappearing - swiftly tearing
something from him. Then there, feet hidden, stiff on legs that vanished at the
ankles, striking out into vision with all the dizzy abruptness with which he
had been stricken from sight was the O'Keefe, a smoking pistol in hand.
And ever that red
stream trickled out of vacancy and spread over the couch, dripping to the
floor.
I made a mighty
movement to escape; was held more firmly - and then close to the face of Larry,
flashing out with that terrifying instantaneousness even as had his, was the
head of Yolara, as devilishly mocking as I had ever seen it, the cruelty
shining through it like delicate white flames from hell - and beautiful!
"Stir not!
Strike not - until I command!" She flung the words beyond her, addressed
to the invisible ones who had accompanied her; whose presences I sensed filling
the chamber. The floating, beautiful head, crowned high with corn-silk hair,
darted toward the Irishman. He took a swift step backward. The eyes of the
priestess deepened toward purple; sparkled with malice.
"So,"
she said. ”So, Larree - you thought you could go from me so easily!" She
laughed softly. ”In my hidden hand I hold the Keth cone," she murmured. ”Before
you can raise the death tube I can smite you - and will. And consider, Larree,
if the handmaiden, the choya comes, I can vanish - so" - the mocking head
disappeared, burst forth again -”and slay her with the Keth - or bid my people
seize her and bear her to the Shining One!"
Tiny beads of
sweat stood out on O'Keefe's forehead, and I knew he was thinking not of
himself, but of Lakla.
"What do you
want with me, Yolara?" he asked hoarsely.
"Nay,"
came the mocking voice. ”Not Yolara to you, Larree - call me by those sweet
names you taught me - Honey of the Wild Bee-e-s, Net of Hearts -” Again her
laughter tinkled.
"What do you
want with me?" his voice was strained, the lips rigid.
"Ah, you are
afraid, Larree." There was diabolic jubilation in the words. ”What should
I want but that you return with me? Why else did I creep through the lair of
the dragon worm and pass the path of perils but to ask you that? And the choya
guards you not well." Again she laughed. ”We came to the cavern's end and,
there were her Akka. And the Akka can see us - as shadows. But it was my desire
to surprise you with my coming, Larree," the voice was silken. ”And I
feared that they would hasten to be first to bring you that message to delight
in your joy. And so, Larree, I loosed the Keth upon them - and gave them peace
and rest within the nothingness. And the portal below was open - almost in
welcome!"
Once more the
malignant, silver pealing of her laughter.
"What do you
want with me?" There was wrath in his eyes, and plainly he strove for
control.
"Want!"
the silver voice hissed, grew calm. ”Do not Siya and Siyana grieve that the
rite I pledged them is but half done - and do they not desire it finished? And
am I not beautiful? More beautiful than your choya?"
The fiendishness
died from the eyes; they grew blue, wondrous; the veil of invisibility slipped
down from the neck, the shoulders, half revealing the gleaming breasts. And
weird, weird beyond all telling was that exquisite head and bust floating there
in air - and beautiful, sinisterly beautiful beyond all telling, too. So even
might Lilith, the serpent woman, have shown herself tempting Adam!
"And
perhaps," she said, ”perhaps I want you because I hate you; perhaps
because I love you - or perhaps for Lugur or perhaps for the Shining One."
"And if I go
with you?" He said it quietly.
"Then shall
I spare the handmaiden - and - who knows? - take back my armies that even now
gather at the portal and let the Silent Ones rot in peace in their abode - from
which they had no power to keep me," she added venomously.
"You will
swear that, Yolara; swear to go without harming the handmaiden?" he asked
eagerly. The little devils danced in her eyes. I wrenched my face from the
smothering contact.
"Don't trust
her, Larry!" I cried - and again the grip choked me.
"Is that
devil in front of you or behind you, old man?" he asked quietly, eyes
never leaving the priestess. ”If he's in front I'll take a chance and wing him
- and then you scoot and warn Lakla."
But I could not
answer; nor, remembering Yolara's threat, would I, had I been able.
"Decide
quickly!" There was cold threat in her voice.
The curtains
toward which O'Keefe had slowly, step by step, drawn close, opened. They framed
the handmaiden! The face of Yolara changed to that gorgon mask that had
transformed it once before at sight of the Golden Girl. In her blind rage she
forgot to cast the occulting veil. Her hand darted like a snake out of the
folds; poising itself with the little silver cone aimed at Lakla.
But before it was
wholly poised, before the priestess could loose its force, the handmaiden was
upon her. Swift as the lithe white wolf hound she leaped, and one slender hand
gripped Yolara's throat, the other the wrist that lifted the quivering death;
white limbs wrapped about the hidden ones, I saw the golden head bend, the hand
that held the Keth swept up with a vicious jerk; saw Lakla's teeth sink into
the wrist - the blood spurt forth and heard the priestess shriek. The cone
fell, bounded toward me; with all my strength I wrenched free the hand that
held my pistol, thrust it against the pressing breast and fired.
The clasp upon me
relaxed; a red rain stained me; at my feet a little pillar of blood jetted; a
hand thrust itself from nothingness, clawed - and was still.
Now Yolara was
down, Lakla meshed in her writhings and fighting like some wild mother whose
babes are serpent menaced. Over the two of them, astride, stood the O'Keefe, a
pike from one of the high tripods in his hand - thrusting, parrying, beating on
every side as with a broadsword against poniard-clutching hands that thrust
themselves out of vacancy striving to strike him; stepping here and there,
always covering, protecting Lakla with his own body even as a caveman of old
who does battle with his mate for their lives.
The sword-club
struck - and on the floor lay the half body of a dwarf, writhing with
vanishments and reappearings of legs and arms. Beside him was the shattered
tripod from which Larry had wrenched his weapon. I flung myself upon it, dashed
it down to break loose one of the remaining supports, struck in midfall one of
the unseen even as his dagger darted toward me! The seat splintered, leaving in
my clutch a golden bar. I jumped to Larry's side, guarding his back, whirling
it like a staff; felt it crunch once - twice - through unseen bone and muscle.
At the door was a
booming. Into the chamber rushed a dozen of the frog-men. While some guarded
the entrances, others leaped straight to us, and forming a circle about us
began to strike with talons and spurs at unseen things that screamed and sought
to escape. Now here and there about the blue rugs great stains of blood
appeared; heads of dwarfs, torn arms and gashed bodies, half occulted, half
revealed. And at last the priestess lay silent, vanquished, white body gleaming
with that uncanny - fragmentariness - from her torn robes. Then O'Keefe reached
down, drew Lakla from her. Shakily, Yolara rose to her feet. The handmaiden,
face still blazing with wrath, stepped before her; with difficulty she steadied
her voice.
"Yolara,"
she said, ”you have defied the Silent Ones, you have desecrated their abode,
you came to slay these men who are the guests of the Silent Ones and me, who am
their handmaiden - why did you do these things?"
"I came for
him!" gasped the priestess; she pointed to O'Keefe.
"Why?"
asked Lakla.
"Because he
is pledged to me," replied Yolara, all the devils that were hers in her
face. ”Because he wooed me! Because he is mine!"
"That is a
lie!" The handmaiden's voice shook with rage. ”It is a lie! But here and
now he shall choose, Yolara. And if you he choose, you and he shall go forth
from here unmolested - for Yolara, it is his happiness that I most desire, and
if you are that happiness - you shall go together. And now, Larry,
choose!"
Swiftly she
stepped beside the priestess; swiftly wrenched the last shreds of the hiding
robes from her.
There they stood
- Yolara with but the filmiest net of gauze about her wonderful body; gleaming
flesh shining through it; serpent woman - -and wonderful, too, beyond the
dreams even of Phidias - and hell-fire glowing from the purple eyes.
And Lakla, like a
girl of the Vikings, like one of those warrior maids who stood and fought for
dun and babes at the side of those old heroes of Larry's own green isle;
translucent ivory lambent through the rents of her torn draperies, and in the wide,
golden eyes flaming wrath, indeed - not the diabolic flames of the priestess
but the righteous wrath of some soul that looking out of paradise sees vile
wrong in the doing.
"Lakla,"
the O'Keefe's voice was subdued, hurt, ”there is no choice. I love you and only
you - and have from the moment I saw you. It's not easy - this. God, Goodwin, I
feel like an utter cad," he flashed at me. ”There is no choice,
Lakla," he ended, eyes steady upon hers.
The priestess's
face grew deadlier still.
"What will
you do with me?" she asked.
"Keep
you," I said, ”as hostage."
O'Keefe was
silent; the Golden Girl shook her head.
"Well would
I like to," her face grew dreaming;”but the Silent Ones say - no; they bid
me let you go, Yolara -”
"The Silent
Ones," the priestess laughed. ”You, Lakla! You fear, perhaps, to let me
tarry here too close!"
Storm gathered
again in the handmaiden's eyes; she forced it back.
"No,"
she answered, ”the Silent Ones so command - and for their own purposes. Yet do
I think, Yolara, that you will have little time to feed your wickedness - tell
that to Lugur - and to your Shining One!" she added slowly.
Mockery and
disbelief rode high in the priestess's pose. ”Am I to return alone - like
this?" she asked.
"Nay,
Yolara, nay; you shall be accompanied," said Lakla;”and by those who will
guard - and watch - you well. They are here even now."
The hangings
parted, and into the chamber came Olaf and Rador.
The priestess met
the fierce hatred and contempt in the eyes of the Norseman - and for the first
time lost her bravado.
"Let not him
go with me," she gasped - her eyes searched the floor frantically.
"He goes
with you," said Lakla, and threw about Yolara a swathing that covered the
exquisite, alluring body. ”And you shall pass through the Portal, not skulk
along the path of the worm!"
She bent to
Rador, whispered to him; he nodded; she had told him, I supposed, the secret of
its opening.
"Come,"
he said, and with the ice-eyed giant behind her, Yolara, head bent, passed out
of those hangings through which, but a little before, unseen, triumph in her
grasp, she had slipped.
Then Lakla came
to the unhappy O'Keefe, rested her hands on his shoulders, looked deep into his
eyes.
"Did you woo
her, even as she said?" she asked.
The Irishman
flushed miserably.
"I did
not," he said. ”I was pleasant to her, of course, because I thought it
would bring me quicker to you, darlin'."
She looked at him
doubtfully; then -
"I think you
must have been very - pleasant!" was all she said - and leaning, kissed
him forgivingly straight on the lips. An extremely direct maiden was Lakla,
with a truly sovereign contempt for anything she might consider non-essentials;
and at this moment I decided she was wiser even than I had thought her.
He stumbled, feet
vanishing; reached down and picked up something that in the grasping turned his
hand to air.
"One of the
invisible cloaks," he said to me. ”There must be quite a lot of them about
- I guess Yolara brought her full staff of murderers. They're a bit shopworn, probably
- but we're considerably better off with 'em in our hands than in hers. And
they may come in handy - who knows?"
There was a
choking rattle at my feet; half the head of a dwarf raised out of vacancy; beat
twice upon the floor in death throes; fell back. Lakla shivered; gave a
command. The frog-men moved about; peering here and there; lifting unseen folds
revealing in stark rigidity torn form after form of the priestess's men.
Lakla had been
right - her Akka were thorough fighters!
She called, and
to her came the frog-woman who was her attendant. To her the handmaiden spoke,
pointing to the batrachians who stood, paws and forearms melted beneath the
robes they had gathered. She took them and passed out - more grotesque than
ever, shattering into streaks of vacancies, reappearing with flickers of
shining scale and yellow gems as the tattered pennants of invisibility
fluttered about her.
The frog-men
reached down, swung each a dead dwarf in his arms, and filed, booming
triumphantly away.
And then I
remembered the cone of the Keth which had slipped from Yolara's hand; knew it
had been that for which her wild eyes searched. But look as closely as we
might, search in every nook and corner as we did, we could not find it. Had the
dying hand of one of her men clutched it and had it been borne away with them?
With the thought Larry and I raced after the scaled warriors, searched every
body they carried. It was not there. Perhaps the priestess had found it,
retrieved it swiftly without our seeing.
Whatever was true
- the cone was gone. And what a weapon that one little holder of the shaking
death would have been for us!
CHAPTER XXVIII - In the Lair of
the Dweller
It is with marked
hesitation that I begin this chapter, because in it I must deal with an experience
so contrary to every known law of physics as to seem impossible. Until this
time, barring, of course, the mystery of the Dweller, I had encountered nothing
that was not susceptible of naturalistic explanation; nothing, in a word,
outside the domain of science itself; nothing that I would have felt hesitancy
in reciting to my colleagues of the International Association of Science.
Amazing, unfamiliar - advanced - as many of the phenomena were, still they lay
well within the limits of what we have mapped as the possible; in regions, it
is true, still virgin to the mind of man, but toward which that mind is
steadily advancing.
But this - well,
I confess that I have a theory that is naturalistic; but so abstruse, so
difficult to make clear within the short confines of the space I have to give
it, so dependent upon conceptions that even the highest-trained scientific
brains find difficult to grasp, that I despair.
I can only say
that the thing occurred; that it took place in precisely the manner I am about
to narrate, and that I experienced it.
Yet, in justice
to myself, I must open up some paths of preliminary approach toward the heart
of the perplexity. And the first path is the realization that our world
whatever it is, is certainly not the world as we see it! Regarding this I shall
refer to a discourse upon”Gravitation and the Principle of Relativity," by
the distinguished English physicist, Dr. A. S. Eddington, which I had the
pleasure of hearing him deliver before the Royal Institution.[1]
I realize, of
course, that it is not true logic to argue -”The world is not as we think it is
- therefore everything we think impossible is possible in it." Even if it
be different, it is governed by law. The truly impossible is that which is
outside law, and as nothing can be outside law, the impossible cannot exist.
The crux of the
matter then becomes our determination whether what we think is impossible may
or may not be possible under laws still beyond our knowledge.
I hope that you
will pardon me for this somewhat academic digression, but I felt it was
necessary, and it has, at least, put me more at ease. And now to resume.
We had watched,
Larry and I, the frog-men throw the bodies of Yolara's assassins into the
crimson waters. As vultures swoop down upon the dying, there came sailing
swiftly to where the dead men floated, dozens of the luminous globes. Their
slender, varicoloured tentacles whipped out; the giant iridescent bubbles
climbed over the cadavers. And as they touched them there was the swift dissolution,
the melting away into putrescence of flesh and bone that I had witnessed when
the dart touched fruit that time I had saved Rador - and upon this the Medusae
gorged; pulsing lambently; their wondrous colours shifting, changing, glowing
stronger; elfin moons now indeed, but satellites whose glimmering beauty was
fed by death; alembics of enchantment whose glorious hues were sucked from
horror.
Sick, I turned
away - O'Keefe as pale as I; passed back into the corridor that had opened on
the ledge from which we had watched; met Lakla hurrying toward us. Before she
could speak there throbbed faintly about us a vast sighing. It grew into a
murmur, a whispering, shook us - then passing like a presence, died away in far
distance.
"The Portal
has opened," said the handmaiden. A fainter sighing, like an echo of the
other, mourned about us. ”Yolara is gone," she said, ”the Portal is
closed. Now must we hasten - for the Three have commanded that you, Goodwin,
and Larry and I tread that strange road of which I have spoken, and which Olaf
may not take lest his heart break - and we must return ere he and Rador cross
the bridge."
Her hand sought
Larry's.
"Come!"
said Lakla, and we walked on; down and down through hall after hall, flight
upon flight of stairways. Deep, deep indeed, we must be beneath the domed
castle - Lakla paused before a curved, smooth breast of the crimson stone
rounding gently into the passage. She pressed its side; it revolved; we
entered; it closed behind us.
The room, the - hollow
- in which we stood was faceted like a diamond; and like a cut brilliant its
sides glistened - though dully. Its shape was a deep oval, and our path dropped
down to a circular polished base, roughly two yards in diameter. Glancing
behind me I saw that in the closing of the entrance there had been left no
trace of it save the steps that led from where that entrance had been - and as
I looked these steps turned, leaving us isolated upon the circle, only the
faceted walls about us - and in each of the gleaming faces the three of us
reflected - dimly. It was as though we were within a diamond egg whose graven
angles had been turned inward.
But the oval was
not perfect; at my right a screen cut it - a screen that gleamed with fugitive,
fleeting luminescences - stretching from the side of our standing place up to
the tip of the chamber; slightly convex and crisscrossed by millions of fine
lines like those upon a spectroscopic plate, but with this difference - that
within each line I sensed the presence of multitudes of finer lines, dwindling
into infinitude, ultramicroscopic, traced by some instrument compared to whose
delicacy our finest tool would be as a crowbar to the needle of a micrometer.
A foot or two
from it stood something like the standee of a compass, bearing, like it a
cradled dial under whose crystal ran concentric rings of prisoned, lambent
vapours, faintly blue. From the edge of the dial jutted a little shelf of
crystal, a keyboard, in which were cut eight small cups.
Within these cups
the handmaiden placed her tapering fingers. She gazed down upon the disk;
pressed a digit - and the screen behind us slipped noiselessly into another
angle.
"Put your
arm around my waist, Larry, darlin', and stand close," she murmured. ”You,
Goodwin, place your arm over my shoulder."
Wondering, I did
as she bade; she pressed other fingers upon the shelf's indentations - three of
the rings of vapour spun into intense light, raced around each other; from the
screen behind us grew a radiance that held within itself all spectrums - not
only those seen, but those unseen by man's eyes. It waxed brilliant and ever
more brilliant, all suffusing, passing through me as day streams through a
window pane!
The enclosing
facets burst into a blaze of coruscations, and in each sparkling panel I saw
our images, shaken and torn like pennants in a whirlwind. I turned to look - was
stopped by the handmaiden's swift command:”Turn not - on your life!"
The radiance
behind me grew; was a rushing tempest of light in which I was but the shadow of
a shadow. I heard, but not with my ears - nay with mind itself - a vast
roaring; an ordered tumult of sound that came hurling from the outposts of
space; approaching - rushing - hurricane out of the heart of the cosmos - closer,
closer. It wrapped itself about us with unearthly mighty arms.
And brilliant,
ever more brilliant, streamed the radiance through us.
The faceted walls
dimmed; in front of me they melted, diaphanously, like a gelatinous wall in a
blast of flame; through their vanishing, under the torrent of driving light,
the unthinkable, impalpable tornado, I began to move, slowly - then ever more
swiftly!
Still the roaring
grew; the radiance streamed - ever faster we went. Cutting down through the
length, the extension of me, dropped a wall of rock, foreshortened, clenched
close; I caught a glimpse of the elfin gardens; they whirled, contracted, into
a thin - slice - of colour that was a part of me; another wall of rock
shrinking into a thin wedge through which I flew, and that at once took its place
within me like a card slipped beside those others!
Flashing around
me, and from Lakla and O'Keefe, were nimbuses of flickering scarlet flames. And
always the steady hurling forward - appallingly mechanical.
Another barrier
of rock - a gleam of white waters incorporating themselves into my - drawing
out - even as were the flowered moss lands, the slicing, rocky walls - still
another rampart of cliff, dwindling instantly into the vertical plane of those
others. Our flight checked; we seemed to hover within, then to sway onward - slowly,
cautiously.
A mist danced
ahead of me - a mist that grew steadily thinner. We stopped, wavered - the mist
cleared.
I looked out into
translucent, green distances; shot with swift prismatic gleamings; waves and
pulsings of luminosity like midday sun glow through green, tropic waters:
dancing, scintillating veils of sparkling atoms that flew, hither and yon,
through depths of nebulous splendour!
And Lakla and
Larry and I were, I saw, like shadow shapes upon a smooth breast of stone
twenty feet or more above the surface of this place - a surface spangled with
tiny white blossoms gleaming wanly through creeping veils of phosphorescence
like smoke of moon fire. We were shadows - and yet we had substance; we were
incorporated with, a part of, the rock - and yet we were living flesh and
blood; we stretched - nor will I qualify this - we stretched through mile upon
mile of space that weirdly enough gave at one and the same time an absolute
certainty of immense horizontal lengths and a vertical concentration that
contained nothing of length, nothing of space whatever; we stood there upon the
face of the stone - and still we were here within the faceted oval before the
screen of radiance!
"Steady!"
It was Lakla's voice - and not beside me there, but at my ear close before the
screen. ”Steady, Goodwin! And - see!"
The sparkling
haze cleared. Enormous reaches stretched before me. Shimmering up through them,
and as though growing in some medium thicker than air, was mass upon mass of verdure
- fruiting trees and trees laden with pale blossoms, arbours and bowers of
pallid blooms, like that sea fruit of oblivion - grapes of Lethe - that cling
to the tide-swept walls of the caverns of the Hebrides.
Through them,
beyond them, around and about them, drifted and eddied a horde - great as that
with which Tamerlane swept down upon Rome, vast as the myriads which Genghis
Khan rolled upon the califs - men and women and children - clothed in tatters,
half nude and wholly naked; slant-eyed Chinese, sloe-eyed Malays, islanders
black and brown and yellow, fierce-faced warriors of the Solomons with grizzled
locks fantastically bedizened; Papuans, feline Javans, Dyaks of hill and shore;
hook-nosed Phoenicians, Romans, straight-browed Greeks, and Vikings centuries
beyond their lives: scores of the black-haired Murians; white faces of our own
Westerners - men and women and children - drifting, eddying - each stamped with
that mingled horror and rapture, eyes filled with ecstasy and terror entwined,
marked by God and devil in embrace - the seal of the Shining One - the
dead-alive; the lost ones!
The loot of the
Dweller!
Soul-sick, I
gazed. They lifted to us visages of dread; they swept down toward us, glaring
upward - a bank against which other and still other waves of faces rolled, were
checked, paused; until as far as I could see, like billows piled upon an
ever-growing barrier, they stretched beneath us - staring - staring!
Now there was a
movement - far, far away; a concentrating of the lambency; the dead-alive
swayed, oscillated, separated - forming a long lane against whose outskirts
they crowded with avid, hungry insistence.
First only a
luminous cloud, then a whirling pillar of splendours through the lane came - the
Shining One. As it passed, the dead-alive swirled in its wake like leaves
behind a whirlwind, eddying, twisting; and as the Dweller raced by them,
brushing them with its spirallings and tentacles, they shone forth with
unearthly, awesome gleamings - like vessels of alabaster in which wicks flare
suddenly. And when it had passed they closed behind it, staring up at us once
more.
The Dweller
paused beneath us.
Out of the
drifting ruck swam the body of Throckmartin! Throckmartin, my friend, to find
whom I had gone to the pallid moon door; my friend whose call I had so
laggardly followed. On his face was the Dweller's dreadful stamp; the lips were
bloodless; the eyes were wide, lucent, something like pale, phosphorescence
gleaming within them - and soulless.
He stared
straight up at me, unwinking, unrecognizing. Pressing against his side was a
woman, young and gentle, and lovely - lovely even through the mask that lay
upon her face. And her wide eyes, like Throckmartin's, glowed with the lurking,
unholy fires. She pressed against him closely; though the hordes kept up the
faint churning, these two kept ever together, as though bound by unseen
fetters.
And I knew the
girl for Edith, his wife, who in vain effort to save him had cast herself into
the Dweller's embrace!
"Throckmartin!"
I cried. ”Throckmartin! I'm here!"
Did he hear? I
know now, of course, he could not.
But then I waited
- hope striving to break through the nightmare hands that gripped my heart.
Their wide eyes
never left me. There was another movement about them, others pushed past them;
they drifted back, swaying, eddying - and still staring were lost in the awful
throng.
Vainly I strained
my gaze to find them again, to force some sign of recognition, some awakening
of the clean life we know. But they were gone. Try as I would I could not see
them - nor Stanton and the northern woman named Thora who had been the first of
that tragic party to be taken by the Dweller.
"Throckmartin!"
I cried again, despairingly. My tears blinded me.
I felt Lakla's
light touch.
"Steady,"
she commanded, pitifully. ”Steady, Goodwin. You cannot help them - now! Steady
and - watch!"
Below us the
Shining One had paused - spiralling, swirling, vibrant with all its
transcendent, devilish beauty; had paused and was contemplating us. Now I could
see clearly that nucleus, that core shot through with flashing veins of
radiance, that ever-shifting shape of glory through the shroudings of
shimmering, misty plumes, throbbing lacy opalescences, vaporous spirallings of
prismatic phantom fires. Steady over it hung the seven little moons of
amethyst, of saffron, of emerald and azure and silver, of rose of life and moon
white. They poised themselves like a diadem - calm, serene, immobile - and down
from them into the Dweller, piercing plumes and swirls and spirals, ran
countless tiny strands, radiations, finer than the finest spun thread of
spider's web, gleaming filaments through which seemed to run - power - from the
seven globes; like - yes, that was it - miniatures of the seven torrents of
moon flame that poured through the septichromatic, high crystals in the Moon
Pool's chamber roof.
Swam out of the
coruscating haze the - face!
Both of man and
of woman it was - like some ancient, androgynous deity of Etruscan fanes long
dust, and yet neither woman nor man; human and unhuman, seraphic and sinister,
benign and malefic - and still no more of these four than is flame, which is
beautiful whether it warms or devours, or wind whether it feathers the trees or
shatters them, or the wave which is wondrous whether it caresses or kills.
Subtly,
undefinably it was of our world and of one not ours. Its lineaments flowed from
another sphere, took fleeting familiar form - and as swiftly withdrew whence
they had come; something amorphous, unearthly - as of unknown unheeding, unseen
gods rushing through the depths of star-hung space; and still of our own earth,
with the very soul of earth peering out from it, caught within it - and in some
- unholy - way debased.
It had eyes - eyes
that were now only shadows darkening within its luminosity like veils falling,
and falling, opening windows into the unknowable; deepening into softly glowing
blue pools, blue as the Moon Pool itself; then flashing out, and this only when
the - face - bore its most human resemblance, into twin stars large almost as
the crown of little moons; and with that same baffling suggestion of peep-holes
into a world untrodden, alien, perilous to man!
"Steady!"
came Lakla's voice, her body leaned against mine.
I gripped myself,
my brain steadied, I looked again. And I saw that of body, at least body as we
know it, the Shining One had none - nothing but the throbbing, pulsing core
streaked with lightning veins of rainbows; and around this, never still,
sheathing it, the swirling, glorious veilings of its hell and heaven born
radiance.
So the Dweller
stood - and gazed.
Then up toward us
swept a reaching, questing spiral!
Under my hand
Lakla's shoulder quivered; dead-alive and their master vanished - I danced,
flickered, within the rock; felt a swift sense of shrinking, of withdrawal;
slice upon slice the carded walls of stone, of silvery waters, of elfin gardens
slipped from me as cards are withdrawn from a pack, one by one - slipped,
wheeled, flattened, and lengthened out as I passed through them and they passed
from me.
Gasping, shaken,
weak, I stood within the faceted oval chamber; arm still about the handmaiden's
white shoulder; Larry's hand still clutching her girdle.
The roaring,
impalpable gale from the cosmos was retreating to the outposts of space - was
still; the intense, streaming, flooding radiance lessened - died.
"Now have
you beheld," said Lakla, ”and well you trod the road. And now shall you
hear, even as the Silent Ones have commanded, what the Shining One is - and how
it came to be."
The steps flashed
back; the doorway into the chamber opened.
Larry as silent
as I - we followed her through it.
[1] Reprinted in full in Nature,
in which those sufficiently interested may peruse it. - W. T. G.
CHAPTER XXIX - The Shaping of
the Shining One
We reached what I
knew to be Lakla's own boudoir, if I may so call it. Smaller than any of the
other chambers of the domed castle in which we had been, its intimacy was
revealed not only by its faint fragrance but by its high mirrors of polished
silver and various oddly wrought articles of the feminine toilet that lay here
and there; things I afterward knew to be the work of the artisans of the Akka -
and no mean metal workers were they. One of the window slits dropped almost to
the floor, and at its base was a wide, comfortably cushioned seat commanding a
view of the bridge and of the cavern ledge. To this the handmaiden beckoned us;
sank upon it, drew Larry down beside her and motioned me to sit close to him.
"Now
this," she said, ”is what the Silent Ones have commanded me to tell you
two: To you Larry, that knowing you may weigh all things in your mind and
answer as your spirit bids you a question that the Three will ask - and what
that is I know not," she murmured, ”and I, they say, must answer, too - and
it - frightens me!"
The great golden
eyes widened; darkened with dread; she sighed, shook her head impatiently.
"Not like
us, and never like us," she spoke low, wonderingly, ”the Silent Ones say
were they. Nor were those from which they sprang like those from which we have
come. Ancient, ancient beyond thought are the Taithu, the race of the Silent
Ones. Far, far below this place where now we sit, close to earth heart itself
were they born; and there they dwelt for time upon time, laya upon laya upon laya
- with others, not like them, some of which have vanished time upon time agone,
others that still dwell - below - in their - cradle.
"It is
hard" - she hesitated -”hard to tell this - that slips through my mind - because
I know so little that even as the Three told it to me it passed from me for
lack of place to stand upon," she went on, quaintly. ”Something there was
of time when earth and sun were but cold mists in the - the heavens - something
of these mists drawing together, whirling, whirling, faster and faster - drawing
as they whirled more and more of the mists - growing larger, growing warm - forming
at last into the globes they are, with others spinning around the sun - something
of regions within this globe where vast fire was prisoned and bursting forth
tore and rent the young orb - of one such bursting forth that sent what you
call moon flying out to company us and left behind those spaces whence we now
dwell - and of - of life particles that here and there below grew into the race
of the Silent Ones, and those others - but not the Akka which, like you, they
say came from above - and all this I do not understand - do you, Goodwin?"
she appealed to me.
I nodded - for
what she had related so fragmentarily was in reality an excellent approach to
the Chamberlain-Moulton theory of a coalescing nebula contracting into the sun
and its planets.
Astonishing was
the recognition of this theory. Even more so was the reference to the life
particles, the idea of Arrhenius, the great Swede, of life starting on earth
through the dropping of minute, life spores, propelled through space by the
driving power of light and, encountering favourable environment here,
developing through the vast ages into man and every other living thing we
know.[1]
Nor was it incredible
that in the ancient nebula that was the matrix of our solar system similar, or
rather dissimilar, particles in all but the subtle essence we call life, might
have become entangled and, resisting every cataclysm as they had resisted the
absolute zero of outer space, found in these caverned spaces their proper
environment to develop into the race of the Silent Ones and - only they could
tell what else!
"They
say," the handmaiden's voice was surer, ”they say that in their - cradle -
near earth's heart they grew; grew untroubled by the turmoil and disorder which
flayed the surface of this globe. And they say it was a place of light and that
strength came to them from earth heart - strength greater than you and those
from which you sprang ever derived from sun.
"At last,
ancient, ancient beyond all thought, they say again, was this time - they began
to know, to - to - realize - themselves. And wisdom came ever more swiftly. Up
from their cradle, because they did not wish to dwell longer with those - others
- they came and found this place.
"When all
the face of earth was covered with waters in which lived only tiny, hungry
things that knew naught save hunger and its satisfaction, they had attained
wisdom that enabled them to make paths such as we have just travelled and to
look out upon those waters! And laya upon laya thereafter, time upon time, they
went upon the paths and watched the flood recede; saw great bare flats of
steaming ooze appear on which crawled and splashed larger things which had
grown from the tiny hungry ones; watched the flats rise higher and higher and
green life begin to clothe them; saw mountains uplift and vanish.
"Ever the
green life waxed and the things which crept and crawled grew greater and took
ever different forms; until at last came a time when the steaming mists
lightened and the things which had begun as little more than tiny hungry mouths
were huge and monstrous, so huge that the tallest of my Akka would not have
reached the knee of the smallest of them.
"But in none
of these, in none, was there - realization - of themselves, say the Three;
naught but hunger driving, always driving them to still its crying.
"So for time
upon time the race of the Silent Ones took the paths no more, placing aside the
half-thought that they had of making their way to earth face even as they had
made their way from beside earth heart. They turned wholly to the seeking of
wisdom - and after other time on time they attained that which killed even the
faintest shadow of the half-thought. For they crept far within the mysteries of
life and death, they mastered the illusion of space, they lifted the veils of
creation and of its twin destruction, and they stripped the covering from the
flaming jewel of truth - but when they had crept within those mysteries they
bid me tell you, Goodwin, they found ever other mysteries veiling the way; and
after they had uncovered the jewel of truth they found it to be a gem of
infinite facets and therefore not wholly to be read before eternity's
unthinkable end!
"And for
this they were glad - because now throughout eternity might they and theirs
pursue knowledge over ways illimitable.
"They
conquered light - light that sprang at their bidding from the nothingness that
gives birth to all things and in which lie all things that are, have been and
shall be; light that streamed through their bodies cleansing them of all dross;
light that was food and drink; light that carried their vision afar or bore to
them images out of space opening many windows through which they gazed down
upon life on thousands upon thousands of the rushing worlds; light that was the
flame of life itself and in which they bathed, ever renewing their own. They
set radiant lamps within the stones, and of black light they wove the
sheltering shadows and the shadows that slay.
"Arose from
this people those Three - the Silent Ones. They led them all in wisdom so that
in the Three grew - pride. And the Three built them this place in which we sit
and set the Portal in its place and withdrew from their kind to go alone into
the mysteries and to map alone the facets of Truth Jewel.
"Then there
came the ancestors of the - Akka; not as they are now, and glowing but faintly
within them the spark of - self-realization. And the Taithu seeing this spark
did not slay them. But they took the ancient, long untrodden paths and looked
forth once more upon earth face. Now on the land were vast forests and a chaos
of green life. On the shores things scaled and fanged, fought and devoured each
other, and in the green life moved bodies great and small that slew and ran
from those that would slay.
"They
searched for the passage through which the Akka had come and closed it. Then
the Three took them and brought them here; and taught them and blew upon the
spark until it burned ever stronger and in time they became much as they are
now - my Akka.
"The Three
took counsel after this and said - 'We have strengthened life in these until it
has become articulate; shall we not create life?'" Again she hesitated,
her eyes rapt, dreaming. ”The Three are speaking," she murmured. ”They
have my tongue -”
And certainly,
with an ease and rapidity as though she were but a voice through which minds
far more facile, more powerful poured their thoughts, she spoke.
"Yea,"
the golden voice was vibrant. ”We said that what we would create should be of
the spirit of life itself, speaking to us with the tongues of the far-flung
stars, of the winds, of the waters, and of all upon and within these. Upon that
universal matrix of matter, that mother of all things that you name the ether,
we laboured. Think not that her wondrous fertility is limited by what ye see on
earth or what has been on earth from its beginning. Infinite, infinite are the
forms the mother bears and countless are the energies that are part of her.
"By our
wisdom we had fashioned many windows out of our abode and through them we
stared into the faces of myriads of worlds, and upon them all were the children
of ether even as the worlds themselves were her children.
"Watching we
learned, and learning we formed that ye term the Dweller, which those without
name - the Shining One. Within the Universal Mother we shaped it, to be a voice
to tell us her secrets, a lamp to go before us lighting the mysteries. Out of
the ether we fashioned it, giving it the soul of light that still ye know not
nor perhaps ever may know, and with the essence of life that ye saw blossoming
deep in the abyss and that is the pulse of earth heart we filled it. And we
wrought with pain and with love, with yearning and with scorching pride and
from our travail came the Shining One - our child!
"There is an
energy beyond and above ether, a purposeful, sentient force that laps like an
ocean the furthest-flung star, that transfuses all that ether bears, that sees
and speaks and feels in us and in you, that is incorporate in beast and bird
and reptile, in tree and grass and all living things, that sleeps in rock and
stone, that finds sparkling tongue in jewel and star and in all dwellers within
the firmament. And this ye call consciousness!
"We crowned
the Shining One with the seven orbs of light which are the channels between it
and the sentience we sought to make articulate, the portals through which flow
its currents and so flowing, become choate, vocal, self-realizant within our
child.
"But as we
shaped, there passed some of the essence of our pride; in giving will we had
given power, perforce, to exercise that will for good or for evil, to speak or
to be silent, to tell us what we wished of that which poured into it through
the seven orbs or to withhold that knowledge itself; and in forging it from the
immortal energies we had endowed it with their indifference; open to all
consciousness it held within it the pole of utter joy and the pole of utter woe
with all the arc that lies between; all the ecstasies of the countless worlds
and suns and all their sorrows; all that ye symbolize as gods and all ye
symbolize as devils - not negativing each other, for there is no such thing as
negation, but holding them together, balancing them, encompassing them, pole
upon pole!"
So this was the
explanation of the entwined emotions of joy and terror that had changed so
appallingly Throckmartin's face and the faces of all the Dweller's slaves!
The handmaiden's
eyes grew bright, alert, again; the brooding passed from her face; the golden
voice that had been so deep found its own familiar pitch.
"I listened
while the Three spoke to you," she said. ”Now the shaping of the Shining
One had been a long, long travail and time had flown over the outer world laya
upon laya. For a space the Shining One was content to dwell here; to be fed
with the foods of light: to open the eyes of the Three to mystery upon mystery
and to read for them facet after facet of the gem of truth. Yet as the tides of
consciousness flowed through it they left behind shadowings and echoes of their
burdens; and the Shining One grew stronger, always stronger of itself within
itself. Its will strengthened and now not always was it the will of the Three;
and the pride that was woven in the making of it waxed, while the love for them
that its creators had set within it waned.
"Not
ignorant were the Taithu of the work of the Three. First there were a few, then
more and more who coveted the Shining One and who would have had the Three
share with them the knowledge it drew in for them. But the Silent Ones in their
pride, would not.
"There came
a time when its will was now all its own, and it rebelled, turning its gaze to
the wider spaces beyond the Portal, offering itself to the many there who would
serve it; tiring of the Three, their control and their abode.
"Now the
Shining One has its limitations, even as we. Over water it can pass, through
air and through fire; but pass it cannot, through rock or metal. So it sent a message
- how I know not - to the Taithu who desired it, whispering to them the secret
of the Portal. And when the time was ripe they opened the Portal and the
Shining One passed through it to them; nor would it return to the Three though
they commanded, and when they would have forced it they found that it had hived
and hidden a knowledge that they could not overcome.
"Yet by
their arts the Three could have shattered the seven shining orbs; but they
would not because - they loved, it!
"Those to
whom it had gone built for it that place I have shown you, and they bowed to it
and drew wisdom from it. And ever they turned more and more from the ways in
which the Taithu had walked - for it seemed that which came to the Shining One
through the seven orbs had less and less of good and more and more of the power
you call evil. Knowledge it gave and understanding, yes; but not that which,
clear and serene, lights the paths of right wisdom; rather were they flares
pointing the dark roads that lead to - to the ultimate evil!
"Not all of
the race of the Three followed the counsel of the Shining One. There were many,
many, who would have none of it nor of its power. So were the Taithu split; and
to this place where there had been none, came hatred, fear and suspicion. Those
who pursued the ancient ways went to the Three and pleaded with them to destroy
their work - and they would not, for still they loved it.
"Stronger
grew the Dweller and less and less did it lay before its worshippers - for now
so they had become - the fruits of its knowledge; and it grew - restless - turning
its gaze upon earth face even as it had turned it from the Three. It whispered
to the Taithu to take again the paths and look out upon the world. Lo! above
them was a great fertile land on which dwelt an unfamiliar race, skilled in
arts, seeking and finding wisdom - mankind! Mighty builders were they; vast
were their cities and huge their temples of stone.
"They called
their lands Muria and they worshipped a god Thanaroa whom they imagined to be
the maker of all things, dwelling far away. They worshipped as closer gods, not
indifferent but to be prayed to and to be propitiated, the moon and the sun. Two
kings they had, each with his council and his court. One was high priest to the
moon and the other high priest to the sun.
"The mass of
this people were black-haired, but the sun king and his nobles were ruddy with
hair like mine; and the moon king and his followers were like Yolara - or
Lugur. And this, the Three say, Goodwin, came about because for time upon time
the law had been that whenever a ruddy-haired or ashen-tressed child was born
of the black-haired it became dedicated at once to either sun god or moon god,
later wedding and bearing children only to their own kind. Until at last from
the black-haired came no more of the light-locked ones, but the ruddy ones,
being stronger, still arose from them."
[1] Professor Svante August
Arrhenius, in his Worlds in the Making - the conception that life is
universally diffused, constantly emitted from all habitable worlds in the form
of spores which traverse space for years and ages, the majority being
ultimately destroyed by the heat of some blazing star, but some few finding a
resting-place on globes which have reached the habitable stage. - W. T. G.
