In our concentration upon Ventnor none of us had given thought to the
passing of time, nor where we were going. We stripped him to the waist,
and while Ruth massaged head and neck, Drake's strong fingers kneaded
chest and abdomen. I had used to the utmost my somewhat limited medical
knowledge.
We had found no mark nor burn upon him, not even upon his hands over
which had run the licking flame. The slightly purplish, cyanotic
tinge of his skin had given way to a clear pallor; the skin was itself
disquietingly cold, the blood-pressure only slightly subnormal. The
pulse was more rapid, stronger; the breathing faint but regular, and
with no laboring. The pupils of his eyes were contracted almost to the
point of invisibility.
I could get no nervous reactions whatever. I am familiar with the
effects of electric shock and know what to do in such cases, but
Ventnor's symptoms, while similar in part, presented other features
unknown to me and most puzzling. There was a passive automatism, a
perplexing muscular rigidity which caused arms and legs, hands and head
to remain, doll-like, in any position placed.
Several times during my labors I had been aware of Norhala gazing down
upon us; but she made no effort to help, nor did she speak.
Now, my strained attention relaxing, I began to receive and note
impressions from without. There was a different feeling in the air,
a diminution of the magnetic tension; I smelled the blessed breath of
trees and water.
The light about us was clear and pearly, about the intensity of the moon
at full. Looking back along the way we had been traveling, I saw a half
mile away vertical, knife-sharp edges of two facing cliffs, the gap
between them a mile or more wide.
Through them we must have passed, for beyond them were the radiant mists
of the pit of the city, and through this precipitous gateway filtered
the enveloping luminosity. On each side of us uprose gradually
converging and perpendicular scarps along whose base huddled a sparse
foliage.
There came a low whistle of astonishment from Drake; I turned. We were
slowly gliding toward something that looked like nothing so much as a
huge and shimmering bubble of mingled sapphire and turquoise, swimming
up from and two-thirds above and the balance still hidden within earth.
It seemed to draw to itself the light, sending it back with gleamings
of the gray-blue of the star sapphire, with pellucid azures and lazulis
like clouded jades, with glistening peacock iridescences and tender,
milky greens of tropic shallows.
Little turrets globular and topaz, yellow and pierced with tiny
hexagonal openings clustered about it like baby bubbles just nestling
down to rest.
Great trees shadowed it, unfamiliar trees among whose glossy leaves
blossomed in wreaths flowers pink and white as apple-blossoms.
From their graceful branches strange fruits, golden and scarlet and
pear-shaped, hung pendulous.
It was an elfin palace; a goblin dwelling; such a bower as some
mirthful, beauty-loving Jinn King of Jewels might have built from
enchanted hoards for some well-beloved daughter of earth.
All of fifty feet in height was the blue globe, and up to a wide and
ovaled entrance ran a broad and shining roadway. Along this the cubes
swept and stopped.
“My house,” murmured Norhala.
The attraction that had held us to the surface of the blocks relaxed,
angled through changed and assisting lines of force; the hosts of
minute eyes sparkling quizzically, interestedly, at us, we gently slid
Ventnor's body; lifted down the pony.
“Enter,” sighed Norhala, and waved a welcoming hand.
“Tell her to wait a minute,” ordered Drake.
He slipped the bandage from off the pony's head, threw off the
saddlebags, and led it to the side of the roadway where thick, lush
grass was growing, spangled with flowerets. There he hobbled it and
rejoined us. Together we picked up Ventnor and passed slowly through the
portal.
We stood in a shadowed chamber. The light that filled it was
translucent, and oddly enough with little of the bluish quality I had
expected. Crystalline it was; the shadows crystalline, too, rigid--like
the facets of great crystals. And as my eyes accustomed themselves I saw
that what I had thought shadows actually were none.
They were slices of semitransparent stone like pale moonstones,
springing from the curving walls and the high dome, and bisecting and
intersecting the chamber. They were pierced with oval doorways over
which fell glimmering metallic curtains--silk of silver and gold.
I glimpsed a pile of this silken stuff near by, and as we laid our
burden upon it Ruth caught my arm with a little frightened cry.
Through a curtained oval sidled a figure.
Black and tall, its long and gnarled arms swung apelike; its shoulders
were distorted, one so much longer than the other that the hand upon
that side hung far below the knee.
It walked with a curious, crablike motion. Upon its face were stamped
countless wrinkles and its blackness seemed less that of pigmentation
than the weathering of unbelievable years, the very stain of
ancientness. And about neither face nor figure was there anything to
show whether it was man or woman.
From the twisted shoulders a short and sleeveless red tunic fell.
Incredibly old the creature was--and by its corded muscles, its sinewy
tendons, as incredibly powerful. It raised within me a half sick
revulsion, loathing. But the eyes were not ancient, no. Irisless,
lashless, black and brilliant, they blazed out of the face's carven web
of wrinkles, intent upon Norhala and filled with a flame of worship.
It threw itself at her feet, prostrate, the inordinately long arms
outstretched.
“Mistress!” it whined in a high and curiously unpleasant falsetto.
“Great lady! Goddess!”
She stretched out a sandaled foot, touched one of the black taloned
hands, and at the contact I saw a shiver of ecstasy run through the lank
body. “Yuruk--” she began, and paused, regarding us.
“The goddess speaks! Yuruk hears! The goddess speaks!” It was a chant of
adoration.
“Yuruk. Rise. Look upon the strangers.”
The creature--and now I knew what it was--writhed, twisted, and
hideously apelike crouched upon its haunches, hands knuckling the floor.
By the amazement in the unwinking eyes it was plain that not till now
had the eunuch taken cognizance of us. The amazement fled, was replaced
with a black fire of malignancy, of hatred--jealousy.
“Augh!” he snarled; leaped to his feet; thrust an arm toward Ruth. She
gave a little cry, cowered against Drake.
“None of that!” He struck down the clutching arm.
“Yuruk!” There was a hint of anger in the bell-toned voice. “Yuruk,
these belong to me. No harm must come to them. Yuruk--beware!”
“The goddess commands. Yuruk obeys.” If fear quavered in the words,
beneath was more than a trace of a sullenness, too, sinister enough.
“That's a nice little playmate for her new playthings,” muttered Drake.
“If that bird gets the least bit gay--I shoot him pronto.” He gave Ruth
a reassuring hug. “Cheer up, Ruth. Don't mind that thing. He's something
we can handle.”
Norhala waved a white hand; Yuruk sidled over to one of the curtained
ovals and through it, reappearing almost instantly with a huge platter
upon which were fruits, and a curdly white liquid in bowls of thick
porcelain.
“Eat,” she said, as the gnarled black arms placed the platter at our
feet.
“Hungry?” asked Drake. Ruth shook her head violently.
“I'm going out for the saddlebags,” said Drake. “We'll use our own
stuff--while it lasts. I'm taking no chances on what the Yuruk lad
brings--with all due respect to Norhala's good intentions.”
He started for the doorway; the eunuch blocked his way.
“We have with us food of our own, Norhala,” I explained. “He goes to get
it.”
She nodded indifferently; clapped her hands. Yuruk shrank back, and out
strode Drake.
“I am weary,” sighed Norhala. “The way was long. I will refresh
myself--”
She stretched out a foot toward Yuruk. He knelt, unlaced the turquoise
bands, drew off the sandals. Her hands sought her breast, dwelt for an
instant there.
Down slipped her silken veils, clingingly, slowly, as though reluctant
to unclasp her; whispering they fell from the high and tender breasts,
the delicate rounded hips, and clustered about her feet in soft
petalings as of some flower of pale amber foam. Out of the calyx of that
flower arose the gleaming miracle of her body crowned with glowing glory
of her cloudy hair.
Naked she was, yet clothed with an unearthly purity, the purity of the
far-flung, serene stars, of the eternal snows upon some calm, high-flung
peak, the tranquil, silver dawns of spring; protected by some spell of
divinity which chilled and slew the flame of desire. A maiden Ishtar, a
virginal Isis; a woman--yet with no more of woman's lure than if she had
been some exquisite and breathing statue of mingled ivory and milk of
pearls.
So she stood, indifferent to us who gazed upon her, withdrawn, musing,
as though she had forgotten us. And that serene indifference, with its
entire absence of what we term sex consciousness, revealed to me once
more how great was the abyss between us and her.
Slowly she raised her arms, wound the floating tresses into a coronal.
I saw Drake enter with the saddlebags; saw them drop from hands relaxing
under the shock of this amazing tableau; saw his eyes widen and fill
with wonder and half-awed admiration.
Now Norhala stepped out of her fallen robes and moved toward the further
wall, Yuruk following. He stooped, raised an ewer of silver and began
gently to pour over her shoulders its contents. Again and again he bent
and filled the vessel, dipping it into a shallow basin from which came
the bubbling and chuckling of a little spring. And again I marveled at
the marble smoothness and fineness of her skin on which the caressing
water left tiny silvery globules, gemming it. The eunuch slithered to
one side, drew from a quaint chest clothes of white floss; patted her
dry with them; threw over her shoulders a silken robe of blue.
Back she floated to us; hovered over Ruth, crouching with her brother's
head upon her knees.
She made a motion as though to draw the girl to her; hesitated as Ruth's
face set in a passion of denial. A shadow of kindness drifted through
the wide, mysterious eyes; a shadow of pity joined it as she looked
curiously down on Ventnor.
“Bathe,” she murmured, and pointed to the pool. “And rest. No harm shall
come to any of you here. And you--” A hand rested for a moment lightly
on the girl's curly head. “When you desire it--I will again give
you--peace!”
She parted the curtains, and the eunuch still following, was hidden
beyond them.