We looked upon a vision of loveliness such, I think, as none has beheld
since Trojan Helen was a maid. At first all I could note were the eyes,
clear as rain-washed April skies, crystal clear as some secret spring
sacred to crescented Diana. Their wide gray irises were flecked with
golden amber and sapphire--flecks that shone like clusters of little
aureate and azure stars.
Then with a strange thrill of wonder I saw that these tiny
constellations were not in the irises alone; that they clustered even
within the pupils--deep within them, like far-flung stars in the depths
of velvety, midnight heavens.
Whence had come those cold fires that had flared from them, I
wondered--more menacing, far more menacing, in their cold tranquillity
than the hot flames of wrath? These eyes were not perilous--no. Calm
they were and still--yet in them a shadow of interest flickered; a ghost
of friendliness smiled.
Above them were level, delicately penciled brows of bronze. The lips
were coral crimson and--asleep. Sweet were those lips as ever master
painter, dreaming his dream of the very soul of woman's sweetness,
saw in vision and limned upon his canvas--and asleep, nor wistful for
awakening.
A proud, straight nose; a broad low brow, and over it the masses of the
tendriling tresses--tawny, lustrous topaz, cloudy, METALLIC. Like spun
silk of ruddy copper; and misty as the wisps of cloud that Soul'tze,
Goddess of Sleep, sets in the skies of dawn to catch the wandering
dreams of lovers.
Down from the wondrous face melted the rounded column of her throat
to merge into exquisite curves of shoulders and breasts, half revealed
beneath the swathing veils.
But upon that face, within her eyes, kissing her red lips and clothing
her breasts, was something unearthly.
Something that came straight out of the still mysteries of the
star-filled spaces; out of the ordered, the untroubled, the illimitable
void.
A passionless spirit that watched over the human passion in the scarlet
mouth, in every slumbering, sculptured line of her--guarding her against
its awakening.
Twilight calm dropping down from the sun sleep to still the restless
mountain tarn. Ishtar dreamlessly asleep within Nirvana.
Something not of this world we know--and yet of it as the winds of the
Cosmos are to the summer breeze, the ocean to the wave, the lightnings
to the glowworm.
“She isn't--human,” I heard Ventnor whispering at my ear. “Look at her
eyes; look at the skin of her--”
Her skin was white as milk of pearls; gossamer fine, silken and creamy;
translucent as though a soft brilliancy dwelt within it. Beside it
Ruth's fair skin was like some sun-and-wind-roughened country lass's to
Titania's.
She studied us as though she were seeing for the first time beings of
her own kind. She spoke--and her voice was elfin distant, chimingly
sweet like hidden little golden bells; filled with that tranquil, far
off spirit that was part of her--as though indeed a tiny golden chime
should ring out from the silences, speak for them, find tongues for
them. The words were hesitating, halting as though the lips that uttered
them found speech strange--as strange as the clear eyes found our
images.
And the words were Persian--purest, most ancient Persian.
“I am Norhala,” the golden voice chimed forth, whispered down into
silence. “I am Norhala.”
She shook her head impatiently. A hand stole forth from beneath her
veils, slender, long-fingered with nails like rosy pearls; above the
wrist was coiled a golden dragon with wicked little crimson eyes. The
slender white hand touched Ruth's head, turned it until the strange,
flecked orbs looked directly into the misty ones of blue.
Long they gazed--and deep. Then she who had named herself Norhala thrust
out a finger, touched the tear that hung upon Ruth's curled lashes,
regarded it wonderingly.
Something of recognition, of memory, seemed to awaken within her.
“You are--troubled?” she asked with that halting effort.
Ruth shook her head.
“THEY--do not trouble you?”
She pointed to the huddled heaps strewing the hollow. And then I saw
whence the light which had streamed from her great eyes came. For the
little azure and golden stars paled, trembled, then flashed out like
galaxies of tiny, clustered silver suns.
From that weird radiance Ruth shrank, affrighted.
“No--no,” she gasped. “I weep for--HIM.”
She pointed where Chiu-Ming lay, a brown blotch at the edge of the
shattered men.
“For--him?” There was puzzlement in the faint voice. “For--that? But
why?”
She looked at Chiu-Ming--and I knew that to her the sight of the
crumpled form carried no recognition of the human, nothing of kin to
her. There was a faint wonder in her eyes, no longer light-filled, when
at last she turned back to us. Long she considered us.
“Now,” she broke the silence, “now something stirs within me that it
seems has long been sleeping. It bids me take you with me. Come!”
Abruptly she turned from us, glided to the crevice. We looked at each
other, seeking council, decision.
“Chiu-Ming,” Drake spoke. “We can't leave him like that. At least let's
cover him from the vultures.”
“Come.” The woman had reached the mouth of the fissure.
“I'm afraid! Oh, Martin--I'm afraid.” Ruth reached little trembling
hands to her tall brother.
“Come!” Norhala called again. There was an echo of harshness, a
clanging, peremptory and inexorable, in the chiming.
Ventnor shrugged his shoulders.
“Come, then,” he said.
With one last look at the Chinese, the lammergeiers already circling
about him, we walked to the crevice. Norhala waited, silent, brooding
until we passed her; then glided behind us.
Before we had gone ten paces I saw that the place was no fissure. It
was a tunnel, a passage hewn by human hands, its walls covered with the
writhing dragon lines, its roof the mountain.
The swathed woman swept by us. Swiftly we followed her. Far, far ahead
was a wan gleaming. It quivered, a faintly shimmering, ghostly curtain,
a full mile away.
Now it was close; we passed through it and were out of the tunnel.
Before us stretched a narrow gorge, a sword slash in the body of the
towering giant under whose feet the tunnel crept. High above was the
ribbon of the sky.
The sides were dark, but it came to me that here were no trees, no
verdure of any kind. Its floor was strewn with boulders, fantastically
shaped, almost indistinguishable in the fast closing dark.
Twin monoliths bulwarked the passage end; the gigantic stones were
leaning, crumbling. Fissures radiated from the opening, like deep
wrinkles in the rock, showing where earth warping, range pressure, had
long been working to close this hewn way.
“Stop,” Norhala's abrupt, golden note halted us; and again through the
clear eyes I saw the white starshine flash.
“It may be well--” She spoke as though to herself. “It may be well to
close this way. It is not needed--”
Her voice rang out again, vibrant, strangely disquieting, harmonious.
Murmurous chanting it was at first, rhythmic and low; ripples and
flutings, tones and progressions utterly unknown to me; unfamiliar,
abrupt, and alien themes that kept returning, droppings of crystal-clear
jewels of sound, golden tollings--and all ordered, mathematical,
GEOMETRIC, even as had been the gestures of the shapes; Lilliputians of
the ruins, Brobdignagian of the haunted hollow.
What was it? I had it--IT WAS THOSE GESTURES TRANSFORMED INTO SOUND!
There was a movement down by the tunnel mouth. It grew more rapid,
seemed to vibrate with her song. Within the darkness there were
little flashes; glimmerings of light began to come and go--like
little awakenings of eyes of soft, jeweled flames, like giant gorgeous
fireflies; flashes of cloudy amber, gleam of rose, sparkles of diamonds
and of opals, of emeralds and of rubies--blinking, gleaming.
A shimmering mist drew down around them--a swift and swirling mist.
It thickened, was shot with slender shuttled threads like cobweb,
coruscating strands of light.
The shining threads grew thicker, pulsed, were spangled with tiny vivid
sparklings. They ran together, condensed--and all this in an instant, in
a tenth of the time it takes me to write it.
From fiery mist and gemmed flashes came bolt upon bolt of lightning. The
cliff face leaped out, a cataract of green flame. The fissures widened,
the monoliths trembled, fell.
In the wake of that dazzling brilliancy came utter blackness. I opened
my blinded eyes; slowly the flecks of green fire cleared. A faint
lambency still clung to the cliff. By it I saw that the tunnel's mouth
had vanished, had been sealed--where it had gaped were only tons of
shattered rock.
Came a rushing past us as of great bodies; something grazed my hand,
something whose touch was like that of warm metal--but metal throbbing
with life. They rushed by--and whispered down into silence.
“Come!” Norhala flitted ahead of us, a faintly luminous shape in the
darkness. Swiftly we followed. I found Ruth beside me; felt her hand
grip my wrist.
“Walter,” she whispered, “Walter--she isn't human!”
“Nonsense,” I muttered. “Nonsense, Ruth. What do you think she is--a
goddess, a spirit of the Himalayas? She's as human as you or I.”
“No.” Even in the darkness I could sense the stubborn shake of her curly
head. “Not all human. Or how could she have commanded those things? Or
have summoned the lightnings that blasted the tunnel's mouth? And her
skin and hair--they're too WONDERFUL, Walter.
“Why, she makes me look--look coarse. And the light that hovers about
her--why, it is by that light we are making our way. And when she
touched me--I--I glowed--all through.
“Human, yes--but there is something else in her--something stronger than
humanness, something that--makes it sleep!” she added astonishingly.
The ground was level as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmatic
glow--emanation, it seemed to me--from Norhala which was as a light
for us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky had
vanished--seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars.
Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement; soft stirring
all about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved an
invisible host.
“There's something moving all about us--going with us,” Ruth echoed my
thought.
“It's the wind,” I said, and paused--for there was no wind.
From the blackness before us came a succession of curious, muffled
clickings, like a smothered mitrailleuse. The luminescence that clothed
Norhala brightened, deepening the darkness.
“Cross!”
She pointed into the void ahead; then, as we started forward, thrust
out a hand to Ruth, held her back. Drake and Ventnor drew close to them,
questioningly, anxious. But I stepped forward, out of the dim gleaming.
Before me were two cubes; one I judged in that uncertain light to be
six feet high, the other half its bulk. From them a shaft of pale-blue
phosphorescence pierced the murk. They stood, the smaller pressed
against the side of the larger, for all the world like a pair of immense
nursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child.
As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken
span of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of the
dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped at
my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrous
girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the
faint whisper of rushing waters.
I faltered. For these were the blocks that had formed the body of the
monster of the hollow, its flailing arms. The thing that had played so
murderously with the armored men.
And now had shaped itself into this anchored, quiescent bridge.
“Do not fear.” It was the woman speaking, softly, as one would reassure
a child. “Ascend. Cross. They obey me.”
I stepped firmly upon the first block, climbed to the second. The
span stretched, sharp edged, smooth, only a slender, shimmering line
revealing where each great cube held fast to the other.
I walked at first slowly, then with ever-increasing confidence, for up
from the surface streamed a guiding, a holding force, that was like a
host of little invisible hands, steadying me, keeping firm my feet. I
looked down; the myriads of enigmatic eyes were staring, staring up
at me from deep within. They fascinated me; I felt my pace slowing; a
vertigo seized me. Resolutely I dragged my gaze up and ahead; marched
on.
From the depths came more clearly the sound of the waters. Now there
were but a few feet more of the bridge before me. I reached its end,
dropped my feet over, felt them touch a smaller cube, and descended.
Over the span came Ventnor. He was leading his laden pony. He had
bandaged its eyes so that it could not look upon the narrow way it was
treading. And close behind, a hand resting reassuringly upon its flank,
strode Drake, swinging along carelessly. The little beast ambled along
serenely, sure-footed as all its mountain kind, and docile to darkness
and guidance.
Then, an arm about Ruth, floated Norhala. Now she was beside us; dropped
her arm from Ruth; glided past us. On for a hundred yards or more we
went, and then she drew us a little toward the unseen canyon wall.
She stood before us, shielding us. One golden call she sent.
I looked back into the darkness. Something like an enormous, dimly
shimmering rod was raising itself. Higher it rose and higher. Now it
stood, upright, a slender towering pillar, a gigantic slim figure whose
tip pointed a full hundred feet in the air.
Then slowly it inclined itself toward us; drew closer, closer to
the ground; touched and lay there for an instant inert. Abruptly it
vanished.
But well I knew what I had seen. The span over which we had passed had
raised itself even as had the baby bridge of the fortress; had lifted
itself across the chasm and dropping itself upon the hither verge had
disintegrated into its units; was following us.
A bridge of metal that could build itself--and break itself. A thinking,
conscious metal bridge! A metal bridge with volition--with mind--that
was following us.
There sighed from behind a soft, sustained wailing; rapidly it neared
us. A wanly glimmering shape drew by; halted. It was like a rigid
serpent cut from a gigantic square bar of cold blue steel.
Its head was a pyramid, a tetrahedron; its length vanished in the
further darkness. The head raised itself, the blocks that formed its
neck separating into open wedges like a Brobdignagian replica of those
jointed, fantastic, little painted reptiles the Japanese toy-makers cut
from wood.
It seemed to regard us--mockingly. The pointed head dropped--past us
streamed the body. Upon it other pyramids clustered--like the spikes
that guarded the back of the nightmare Brontosaurus. Its end came
swiftly into sight--its tail another pyramid twin to its head.
It FLIRTED by--gaily; vanished.
I had thought the span must disintegrate to follow--and it did not
need to! It could move as a COMPOSITE as well as in UNITS. Move
intelligently, consciously--as the Smiting Thing had moved.
“Come!” Norhala's command checked my thoughts; we fell in behind her.
Looking up I caught the friendly sparkle of a star; knew the cleft was
widening.
The star points grew thicker. We stepped out into a valley small as
that hollow from which we had fled; ringed like it with heaven-touching
summits. I could see clearly. The place was suffused with a soft
radiance as though into it the far, bright stars were pouring all their
rays, filling it as a cup with their pale flames.
It was luminous as the Alaskan valleys when on white arctic nights they
are lighted, the Athabascans believe, by the gleaming spears of hunting
gods. The walls of the valley seemed to be drawn back into infinite
distances.
The shimmering mists that had nimbused Norhala had vanished--or merging
into the wan gleaming had become one with it.
I stared straight at her, striving to clarify in my own clouded thought
what it was that I had sensed as inhuman--never of OUR world or its
peoples. Yet this conviction came not because of the light that had
hovered about her, nor of her summonings of the lightnings; nor even
of her control of those--things--which had smitten the armored men and
spanned for us the abyss.
All of that I was certain lay in the domain of the explicable, could be
resolved into normality once the basic facts were gained.
Suddenly, I knew. Side by side with what we term the human there dwelt
within this woman an actual consciousness foreign to earth, passionless,
at least as we know passion, ordered, mathematical--an emanation of the
eternal law which guides the circling stars.
This it was that had moved in the gestures which had evoked the
lightnings. This it was that had spoken in the song which were those
gestures transformed into sound. This it was that something greater than
my consciousness knew and accepted.
Something which shared, no--that reigned, serene and untroubled, upon
the throne of her mind; something utterly UNCOMPREHENDING, utterly
unconscious OF, cosmically blind TO all human emotion; that spread
itself like a veil over her own consciousness; that PLATED her
thought--that was a strange word--why had it come to me--something that
had set its mark upon her like--like--the gigantic claw print on the
poppied field, the little print of the dragoned hall.
I caught at my mind, whirling I thought then in the grip of fantasy;
strove by taking minute note of her to bring myself back to normal.
Her veils had slipped from her, baring her neck, her arms, the right
shoulder. Under the smooth throat a buckle of dull gold held the sheer,
diaphanous folds of the pale amber silk which swathed the high and
rounded breasts, hiding no goddess curve of them.
A wide and golden girdle clasped the waist, covered the rounded hips
and thighs. The long, narrow, and high-arched feet were shod with golden
sandals, laced just below the rounded knees with flat turquoise studded
bands.
And shining through the amber folds, as glowing above them, the miracle
of her body.
The dream of master sculptor given life. A goddess of earth's youth
reborn in Himalayan wilds.
She raised her eyes; broke the long silence.
“Now being with you,” she said dreamily, “there waken within me old
thoughts, old wisdom, old questioning--all that I had forgotten and
thought forgotten forever--”
The golden voice died--she who had spoken was gone from us, like the
fading out of a phantom; like the breaking of a film.
A flicker shot over the skies, another and another. A brilliant ray of
intense green like that of a distant searchlight swept to the zenith,
hung for a moment and withdrew. Up came pouring the lances and the
streamers of the aurora; faster and faster, banners and slender shining
spears of green and iridescent blues and smoky, glistening reds.
The valley sprang into full view.
I felt Ventnor's grip upon my wrist. I followed his pointing finger.
Into the valley from the right ran a black spur of rock, half a mile
from us, fifty feet high.
Upon its crest stood--Norhala!
Her arms were lifted to the sparkling sky; her braids were loosened--and
as the fires of the aurora rose and fell, raced and were still, the
silken cloud of her tresses swirled and eddied with them. Little clouds
of coruscations danced gaily like fireflies about and through it.
And all her bared body was outlined in living light, glowed and throbbed
with light--light filled her like a vessel, she bathed in it. She thrust
arms through the streaming, flaming locks; held them out from her,
prisoned. She swayed slowly, rhythmically; like a faint, golden chiming
came the echo of her song.
Abruptly around her, half circling her on the black spur, gleamed
myriads of gem fires. Flares and flames of pale emerald, steady glowing
of flame rubies, glints and lambencies of deepest sapphire, of wan
sapphire, flickering opalescences, irised glitterings. A moment they
gleamed. Then from them came bolt upon bolt of lightning--lightning that
darted upon the lovely shape swaying there; lightnings that fell upon
her, broke and dashed, cascading, from her radiant body.
The lightnings bathed her--she bathed in them.
The skies were covered by a swift mist. The aurora was veiled.
The valley filled with a palely shimmering radiance which dropped like
veils upon it, hiding all within it. Hiding within fold upon luminous
fold--Norhala!