Hundreds of feet through must have been the fallen mass--within it who
knows what chambers filled with mysteries? Yes, thousands of feet thick
it must have been, for the debris of it splintered and lashed to the
very edge of the ledge on which we crouched; heaped it with the dimming
fragments of the bodies that had formed it.
We looked into a thousand vaults, a thousand spaces. There came another
avalanche roaring--before us opened the crater of the cones.
Through the torn gap I saw them, clustering undisturbed about the base
of that one slender, coroneted and star pointing spire, rising serene
and unshaken from a hell of lightnings. But the shields that had rimmed
the crater were gone.
Ventnor snatched the glasses from my hand, leveled and held them long to
his eyes.
He thrust them back to me. “Look!”
Through the lenses the great hall leaped into full view apparently only
a few yards away. It was a cauldron of chameleon flame. It seethed with
the Hordes battling over the remaining walls and floor. But around the
crystal base of the cones was an open zone into which none broke.
In that wide ring, girdling the shimmering fantasy like a circled
sanctuary, were but three forms. One was the wondrous Disk of jeweled
fires I have called the Metal Emperor; the second was the sullen fired
cruciform of the Keeper.
The third was Norhala!
She stood at the side of that weird master of hers--or was it after all
the servant? Between them and the Keeper's planes gleamed the gigantic
T-shaped tablet of countless rods which controlled the activities of the
cones; that had controlled the shifting of the vanished shields; that
manipulated too, perhaps, the energies of whatever similar but smaller
cornute ganglia were scattered throughout the City and one of which we
had beheld when the Emperor's guards had blasted Ventnor.
Close was Norhala in the lenses--so close that almost, it seemed, I
could reach out and touch her. The flaming hair streamed and billowed
above 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 the
Keeper; her exquisite body was bare, stripped of every shred of silken
covering.
From streaming tresses to white feet an oval of pulsing, golden light
nimbused her. Maiden Isis, virgin Astarte she stood there, held in the
grip of the Disk--like a goddess betrayed and hopeless yet thirsting for
vengeance.
For all their stillness, their immobility, it came to me that Emperor
and Keeper were at grapple, locked in death grip; the realization was as
definite as though, like Ruth, I thought with Norhala's mind, saw with
her eyes.
Clearly too it came to me that in this contest between the two was
epitomized all the vast conflict that raged around them; that in it was
fast ripening that fruit of destiny of which Ventnor had spoken, and
that here in the Hall of the Cones would be settled--and soon--the fate
not only of Disk and Cross, but it might be of humanity.
But with what unknown powers was that duel being fought? They cast no
lightnings, they battled with no visible weapons. Only the great planes
of the inverted cruciform Shape smoked and smoldered with their sullen
flares of ochres and of scarlets; while over all the face of the
Disk its cold and irised fires raced and shone, beating with a rhythm
incredibly rapid; its core of incandescent ruby blazed, its sapphire
ovals were cabochoned pools of living, lucent radiance.
There was a splitting roar that arose above all the clamor, deafening
us even in the shelter of the silent veils. On each side of the crater
whole masses of the City dropped away. Fleetingly I was aware of scores
of 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 to
the 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 was
transparent. It seemed spun of minute translucent ebon corpuscles. It
hung like a black shroud suspended by unseen hands. It shook and wavered
now toward the Disk, now toward the Cross.
I sensed a keying up of force within the two; knew that each was
striving to cast like a net that hanging mist upon the other.
Abruptly the Emperor flashed forth, blindingly. As though caught upon a
blast, the black shroud flew toward the Keeper--enveloped it. And as the
mist covered and clung I saw the sulphurous and crimson flares dim. They
were snuffed out.
The Keeper fell!
Upon Norhala's face flamed a wild triumph, banishing despair. The
outstretched planes of the Cross swept up as though in torment. For an
instant its fires flared and licked through the clinging blackness; it
writhed half upright, threw itself forward, crashed down prostrate upon
the 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 of
force--like a prodigious heart-beat. Under that pulse of power the
Emperor 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, unearthly
figure of Norhala with their iridescences.
I saw her body writhe--as though it shared the agony of the Shape that
held 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 its
crystal heart.
I heard a sobbing, agonized choking--knew it was I who sobbed. Against
me I felt Ruth's body strike, bend in convulsive arc, drop inert.
The slender steeple of the cones drooped sending its faceted coronet
shattering to the floor. The Mount melted. Beneath the flooding radiance
sprawled Keeper and the great inert Globe that was the Goddess woman's
sepulcher.
The crater filled with the pallid luminescence. Faster and ever faster
it poured down into the Pit. And from all the lesser craters of the
smaller 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 deluge
swept over the valley; gushing in steady torrents from the breaking
mass. Over the valley fell a vast silence. The lightnings ceased. The
Metal 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 and
sapphire, ruby orbs, orbs tuliped and irised--the jocund suns of the
birth chamber and side by side with them hosts of the frozen, pale gilt,
stiff rayed suns.
Thousands upon thousands they marched forth and poised themselves
solemnly over all the Pit that now was a fast rising lake of yellow
froth of sun flame.
They swept forth in squadrons, in companies, in regiments, those
mysterious orbs. They floated over all the valley; they separated and
swung motionless above it as though they were mysterious multiple souls
of fire brooding over the dying shell that had held them.
Beneath, thrusting up from the lambent lake like grotesque towers of
some drowned fantastic metropolis, the great Shapes stood, black against
its glowing.
What had been the City--that which had been the bulk of the Monster--was
now only a vast and shapeless hill from which streamed the silent
torrents 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, raising
ever higher in its swift flooding the level radiant lake.
Lower and lower sank the immense bulk; squattered and spread, ever
lowering--about its helpless, patient crouching something ineffably
piteous, something indescribably, COSMICALLY tragic.
Abruptly the watching orbs shook under a hail of sparkling atoms
streaming down from the glittering sky; raining upon the lambent lake.
So thick they fell that now the brooding luminaries were dim aureoles
within them.
From the Pit came a blinding, insupportable brilliancy. From every
rigid tower gleamed out jeweled fires; their clinging units opened into
blazing star and disk and cross. The City was a hill of living gems over
which 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 of
sparkling atoms--higher rose the yellow flood.
Ventnor cried out. I could not hear him, but I read his purpose--and
so did Drake. Up on his broad shoulders he swung Ruth as though she had
been a child. Back through the throbbing veils we ran; passed out of
them.
“Back!” shouted Ventnor. “Back as far as you can!”
On we raced; we reached the gateway of the cliffs; we dashed on and
on--up the shining roadway toward the blue globe now a scant mile before
us; 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 us
like the groaning of a broken-hearted star--anguished and awesome.
It died. There rushed upon us a sea of that incredible loneliness, that
longing for extinction that had assailed us in the haunted hollow where
first 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 thicker
than water caught us up, hurled us hundreds of yards forward. It dropped
us; in its wake rushed another wave, withering, scorching.
It raced over us. Scorching though it was, within its heat was
energizing, revivifying force; something that slew the deadly despair
and fed the fading fires of life.
I staggered to my feet; looked back. The veils were gone. The precipice
walled gateway they had curtained was filled with a Plutonic glare as
though it opened into the incandescent heart of a volcano.
Ventnor clutched my shoulder, spun me around. He pointed to the sapphire
house, started to run to it. Far ahead I saw Drake, the body of the girl
clasped to his breast. The heat became blasting, insupportable; my lungs
burned.
Over the sky above the canyon streaked a serpentine chain of lightnings.
A sudden cyclonic gust swept the cleft, whirling us like leaves toward
the Pit.
I threw myself upon my face, clutching at the smooth rock. A volley of
thunder 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 fevered
lungs.
Again the sky was split by the lightnings. And roaring down from it in
solid sheets came the rain.
From the Pit arose a hissing as though within it raged Babylonian
Tiamat, Mother of Chaos, serpent dweller in the void; Midgard-snake of
the ancient Norse holding in her coils the world.
Buffeted by wind, beaten down by rain, clinging to each other like
drowning men, Ventnor and I pushed on to the elfin globe. The light was
dying fast. By it we saw Drake pass within the portal with his burden.
The light became embers; it went out; blackness clasped us. Guided by
the lightnings, we beat our way to the door; passed through it.
In the electric glare we saw Drake bending over Ruth. In it I saw
a 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, the
portal 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 we
crouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows with
which the lightnings filled the blue globe--that the Metal Monster was
dead.
Slain by itself!