He flung open the heavy door and cried the word down the hallway. Stark
could hear it echoing hollowly within, and presently from the shadows
came servants clad in silks and wearing jewelled collars, and from the
guttural sound of their laughter Stark knew that they had no tongues.
Stark faltered, then. The doorway loomed hollowly before him, and it
came to him suddenly that evil lay behind it and that perhaps Zareth
was wiser than he when she warned him from the Lhari.
Then he thought of Helvi, and of other things, and lost his fear in
anger. Lightning burned the sky. The last cry of the dying storm shook
the ground under his feet. He thrust the grinning warder aside and
strode into the castle, bringing a veil of the red fog with him, and
did not listen to the closing of the door, which was stealthy and quiet
as the footfall of approaching Death.
Torches burned here and there along the walls, and by their smoky
glare he could see that the hall way was like the entrance--square and
unadorned, faced with the black rock. It was high, and wide, and there
was about the architecture a calm reflective dignity that had its own
beauty, in some ways more impressive than the sensuous loveliness of
the ruined palaces he had seen on Mars.
There were no carvings here, no paintings nor frescoes. It seemed that
the builders had felt that the hall itself was enough, in its massive
perfection of line and the sombre gleam of polished stone. The only
decoration was in the window embrasures. These were empty now, open to
the sky with the red fog wreathing through them, but there were still
scraps of jewel-toned panes clinging to the fretwork, to show what they
had once been.
A strange feeling swept over Stark. Because of his wild upbringing,
he was abnormally sensitive to the sort of impressions that most men
receive either dully or not at all.
Walking down the hall, preceded by the tongueless creatures in
their bright silks and blazing collars, he was struck by a subtle
_difference_ in the place. The castle itself was only an extension of
the minds of its builders, a dream shaped into reality. Stark felt that
that dark, cool, curiously timeless dream had not originated in a mind
like his own, nor like that of any man he had ever seen.
Then the end of the hall was reached, the way barred by low broad doors
of gold fashioned in the same chaste simplicity.
A soft scurrying of feet, a shapeless tittering from the servants, a
glancing of malicious, mocking eyes. The golden doors swung open, and
Stark was in the presence of the Lhari.
V
They had the appearance in that first glance, of creatures glimpsed in
a fever-dream, very bright and distant, robed in a misty glow that gave
them an illusion of unearthly beauty.
The place in which the Earthman now stood was like a cathedral for
breadth and loftiness. Most of it was in darkness, so that it seemed to
reach without limit above and on all sides, as though the walls were
only shadowy phantasms of the night itself. The polished black stone
under his feet held a dim translucent gleam, depthless as water in a
black tarn. There was no substance anywhere.
Far away in this shadowy vastness burned a cluster of lamps, a galaxy
of little stars to shed a silvery light upon the Lords of Shuruun.
There had been no sound in the place when Stark entered, for the
opening of the golden doors had caught the attention of the Lhari and
held it in contemplation of the stranger. Stark began to walk toward
them in this utter stillness.
Quite suddenly, in the impenetrable gloom somewhere to his right, there
came a sharp scuffling and a scratching of reptilian claws, a hissing
and a sort of low angry muttering, all magnified and distorted by the
echoing vault into a huge demoniac whispering that swept all around him.
Stark whirled around, crouched and ready, his eyes blazing and his body
bathed in cold sweat. The noise increased, rushing toward him. From
the distant glow of the lamps came a woman's tinkling laughter, thin
crystal broken against the vault. The hissing and snarling rose to
hollow crescendo, and Stark saw a blurred shape bounding at him.
His hands reached out to receive the rush, but it never came. The
strange shape resolved itself into a boy of about ten, who dragged
after him on a bit of rope a young dragon, new and toothless from the
egg, and protesting with all its strength.
Stark straightened up, feeling let down and furious--and relieved. The
boy scowled at him through a forelock of silver curls. Then he called
him a very dirty word and rushed away, kicking and hauling at the
little beast until it raged like the father of all dragons and sounded
like it, too, in that vast echo chamber.
A voice spoke. Slow, harsh, sexless, it rang thinly through the vault.
Thin--but a steel blade is thin, too. It speaks inexorably, and its
word is final.