CHAPTER VIII
THE LOVELY HAND OF LURKING HATE
THE chamber was small, the opal walls screening it on three sides, the black opacity covering it, the fourth side opening out into a delicious little walled garden, a mass of the fragrant, luminous blooms and delicately colored fruit. Facing it was a small table of reddish wood and from the omnipresent cushions heaped around it arose to greet us—Yolara.
Larry drew in his breath with an involuntary gasp of admiration and bowed low. My own admiration was as frank, and the priestess was well pleased with our homage.
She was swathed in the filmy, half-revelant webs, now of palest blue. The corn-silk hair was caught within a wide- meshed golden net in which sparkled tiny brilliants, like blended sapphires and diamonds. Her own azure eyes sparkled as brightly as they, and I noted again in their clear depths the half -eager approval as they rested upon O'Keefe's lithe, well-knit figure and his keen, clean-cut face. The high-arched, slender feet rested upon soft sandals whose gauzy withes laced the exquisitely formed leg to just below the dimpled knee.
"Some knockout!" exclaimed Larry, looking at me and placing a hand over his heart. "Put her on a New York roof and she'd empty Broadway. Dramatic sense too well developed, though, for comfort. Soft pedal on that stuff. I don't want any more of those Songar matinées. Take the cue from me, Doc."
He turned to Yolara.
"I said, O lady whose shining hair is a web for hearts, that in our world your beauty would dazzle the sight of men as would a little woman sun!" he said, in the florid imagery to which the tongue lends itself so well.
A tiny flush stole up through the translucent skin. The blue eyes softened and she waved us toward the cushions. Black-haired maids stole in, placing before us the fruits, the little loaves and a steaming drink somewhat the color and odor of chocolate. I was conscious of outraged hunger.
"What are you named, strangers?" she asked.
"This man is named Goodwin," said O'Keefe. "As for me, call me Larry. "Nothing like getting acquainted quick," he said to me—but kept his eyes upon Yolara as though he were voicing another honeyed phrase. And so she took it, for: "You must teach me your tongue," she said.
"Then shall I have two words where now I have one to tell you of your loveliness," he answered her.
"And also that'll take time," he spoke to me. "Essential occupation out of which we can't be drafted to make these fun loving folk any Roman holiday. Get me?"
"Larree," mused Yolara. "I like the sound. It is sweet—" And indeed it was as she spoke it.
"And what is your land named, Larree?" she continued. "And Goodwin's?" She caught the sound perfectly.
"My land, O lady of loveliness, is two—Ireland and America; his but one—America."
She repeated the two names slowly, over and over. We seized the opportunity to attack the food; halting half guiltily as she spoke again.
"Oh, but you are hungry!" she cried. "Eat then." She leaned her chin upon her hands and regarded us, whole fountains of questions brimming up in her eyes.
"How is it, Larree, that you have two countries and Goodwin but one?" she asked, at last unable to keep silent longer.
"I was born in Ireland; he in America. But I have dwelt long in his land and my heart loves each," he said.
She nodded, understandingly.
"Are all the men of Ireland like you, Larree? As all the men here are like Lugur or Rador? I like to look at you," she went on with naïve frankness. "I am tired of men like Lugur and Rador. But they are strong," she added, swiftly. "Lugur can hold up twenty in his two arms and raise six with but one hand."
We could not understand her numerals and she raised white, fingers to illustrate.
"That is little, O lady, to the men of Ireland," replied O'Keefe. "Lo, I have seen one of my race hold up ten times twenty of our—what you call that swift thing in which Rador brought us here?"
"Corial," she said.
"Hold up ten times twenty of our corials with but two fingers, and these corials of ours—"
"Coria," said she.
"And these coria of ours are each greater in weight than ten of yours. Yea, and I have seen another with but one blow of his hand raise hell!
"And so I have," he murmured to me. "And both at Forty-Second and Fifth Avenue, N. Y.—U. S. A."
Yolara considered all this with manifest doubt.
"Hell?" she inquired at last. "I know not the word."
"Well," answered O'Keefe. "Say Muria then. In many ways they are, I gather, O heart's delight, one and the same."
Now the doubt in the blue eyes was strong indeed. She shook her head.
"None of our men can do that!" she answered, at length. "Nor do I think you could, Larree."
"Oh, no," said Larry easily. "I never tried to be that strong. I fly," he added, casually.
The priestess rose to her feet, gazing at him with startled eyes.
"Fly!" she repeated incredulously. "Like a zilia? A bird?"
Larry nodded, and then seeing the dawning command in her eyes, went on hastily.
"Not with my own wings, Yolara. In a—a corial that moves through—what's the word for air, Doc?—well, through this—" He made a wide gesture up toward the nebulous haze above us. He took a pencil and on a white cloth made a hasty sketch of an airplane. "In a corial like this.", She regarded the sketch gravely, thrust a hand down into her girdle and brought forth a keen-bladed poniard; cut Larry's markings out and placed the fragments carefully aside.
"That I can understand," she said.
"Remarkably intelligent young woman," muttered O'Keefe. "Hope I'm not giving anything away, but she had me."
DO YOU have a god in Ireland and "America?" she asked. Larry nodded. "What is he called?" she continued.
"He is called the Prince of Peace," answered Larry, and his tone was reverent.
"Does your god dwell with you, like—" She hesitated. "Or afar, like Thanaroa?"
"He dwells in the heart of each of His followers, Yolara," answered the Irishman gravely.
"Yes, so does Thanaroa, but—" She hesitated again.
"But what are, your women like, Larree? Are they like me? And how many have loved you?"
"In all Ireland and America there is none like you, Yolara," he answered. "And take that any way you please," he whispered in English. She took it, it was evident, as it most pleased her.
"Do you have goddesses?" she asked.
"Every woman in Ireland and America, is a goddess," he answered.
"Now that I do not believe." There was both anger and mockery in her eyes. "I know women, Larree, and if that were so there would be no peace for men."
"There isn't!" said O'Keefe. The anger died out and she laughed, sweetly, understanding.
"And which goddess do you worship?"
"You!" said Larry O'Keefe, boldly.
"Larry! Larry!" I whispered. "Be careful. It's high explosive!"
But the priestess was laughing. Little trills of sweet bell notes; and pleasure was in each note.
"You are indeed bold, Larree," she said, "to offer me your worship. Yet am I pleased by your boldness. Still, Lugur is strong; and you are not of those who—what did you say?—have tried. And your wings are not here, Larree!"
Again her laughter rang out. The Irishman flushed; it was touché for Yolara!
"Fear not for me with Lugur," he said, grimly. "Rather fear for him!"
The laughter died; she looked at him searchingly; approval again in her eyes; a little enigmatic smile about her mouth— so sweet and so cruel.
"Well, we shall see," she murmured. "You say you battle in your world. With what?"
"Oh, with this and that," answered Larry, airily. "We manage."
"Have you the Keth—I mean that with which I sent Songar into the nothingness?" she asked swiftly.
"See what she's driving at?" O'Keefe spoke to me, swiftly. "Well, I do! Gray matter in that lady's head. But here's where the O'Keefe lands.
"I said," he turned to her, "O voice of silver fire, that your spirit is high even as your beauty, and searches out men's souls as does your loveliness their hearts. And now listen, Yolara, for what I speak is truth"—into his eyes came the far-away gaze; into his voice the Irish softness. "Lo, in my land of Ireland, this many of your life's length agone—see"—he raised his ten fingers, clenched and unclenched-them twenty times—"the mighty men of my race, the Taitha-da-Dainn, could send men out into the nothingness even as do you with the Keth. And this they did by their harpings, and by words spoken—words of power, O Yolara, that have their power still—and by pipings and by slaying sounds."
His eyes were bright, dream filled; she shrank a little from him, faint pallor on the perfect skin.
"And they could make as well as destroy, those men of Ireland," he said. "I say to you, Yolara, that these things were and are—in Ireland." His voice rang strong. "And I have seen men as many as those that are in your great chamber this many times over, blasted into nothingness before your Keth could even have touched them. Yea—and rocks as mighty as those through which we came lifted up and shattered before the lids could fall over your blue eyes. And this is truth, Yolara—all truth! Stay—have you that little cone of the Keth with which you destroyed Songar?"
She nodded, gazing at him, fascinated, fear and puzzlement contending,
"Then use it." He took a vase of crystal from the table, placed it on the threshold that led into the garden. "Use it on this, and I will show you."
"I will use it upon one of the ladala—" she began eagerly.
The exaltation dropped from him; there was a touch of horror in the eyes he turned to her; her own dropped before it.
"It shall be as you say," she said hurriedly. She drew the shining cone from her breast, leveled it at the vase. The green ray leaped forth, spread over the crystal, but before its action could even be begun, a flash of light shot from O'Keefe's hand, his automatic spat and the trembling vase flew into fragments. As quickly as he had drawn it, he thrust the pistol back into place and stood there empty-handed, looking at her sternly. From the anteroom came shouting, a rush of feet.
YOLARA'S face was white, her eyes strained. But her voice was unshaken as she called to the clamoring guards:
"It is nothing. Go to your places!"
But when the sound of their return had ceased she stared tensely at the Irishman. Then she looked again at the shattered vase.
"It is true!" she cried, "but see, the Keth is alive!"
I followed her pointing finger. Each broken bit of the crystal was vibrating, shaking its particles out into space. Broken it the bullet of Larry's had—but not released it from the grip of the disintegrating force. The priestess's face was triumphant.
"But what matters it, O shining urn of beauty—what matters it to the vase that is broken what happens to its fragments?" asked Larry, gravely—and pointedly.
The triumph died from her face and for a space she was silent; brooding.
"Next," whispered O'Keefe to me. "Lots of surprises in the little box; keep your eye on the opening and see what comes out."
He had not long to wait. There was a sparkle of anger about Yolara, something, too, of injured pride. She clapped her hands; whispered to the maid who answered her summons, and then sat back regarding us, maliciously.
"You have answered me as to your strength, but you have not proved it; answered me as to your god, and left me doubtful indeed; but the Keth you have answered. Now answer this!" she said.
She pointed out into the garden. I saw a flowering branch suddenly bend and snap as though a hand had broken it, but no hand was there! Saw then another and another bend and break, a little tree sway and fall. And closer and closer to us came the trail of snapping boughs while down into the garden poured the silvery light revealing—nothing! Now a great ewer beside a pillar rose swiftly in air and hurled itself crashing at my feet. Cushions close to us swirled about as though in the vortex of a whirlwind.
An unseen hand held my arms in a mighty clutch fast to my sides. Another gripped my throat and I felt a needle-sharp poniard pierce my shirt, touch the skin just over my heart.
"Larry!" I cried, despairingly. I twisted my head; saw that he, too, was caught in this grip of the invisible. But his face was calm, even amused.
"Keep cool, Doc!" he said. "Remember, she wants to learn the language!"
Now from Yolara burst chime upon chime of mocking laughter. She gave a command. The hands loosened, the poniard withdrew from my heart; suddenly as I had been caught I was free. And unpleasantly weak and shaky.
"Have you that in Ireland, Larree?" cried the priestess, and once more trembled with laughter.
"A good play, Yolara." His voice was as calm as his face. "But there's a tree in Ireland, Yolara, with little red berries and it's called the rowan tree. And if you take the berries and squeeze them on your eyes and hands when the moon is just so, there's nobody can see you, at all. It's old in Ireland, Yolara! And In Goodwin's land they make ships—coria that go on water—so you can pass by them and see only sea and sky; and those water coria are each of them many times greater than this whole palace of yours."
But the priestess laughed on.
"It did get me a little," whispered Larry. "That wasn't quite up to my mark. But if we could find it out and take it back to be used for war!"
"Not so, Larree!" Yolara gasped, through her laughter. "Not so! Goodwin's cry betrayed you!"
Her good humor had entirely returned; she was like a mischievous child pleased over some successful trick; and like a child she cried—"I'll show you!"—signaled again; whispered to the maid who, quickly returning, laid before her a long metal case. Yolara took from her girdle something that looked like a small pencil, pressed it and shot a thin stream of light for all the world like an electric flash, upon its hasp. The lid flew open. Out of it she drew three flat, oval crystals, faint rose in hue. She handed one to O'Keefe and one to me.
"Look!" she commanded, placing the third before her own eyes. I peered through the stone and instantly there leaped into sight, out of thin air, six grinning dwarfs! Each was covered from top of head to soles of feet in a web so tenuous that through it their bodies were plain. The gauzy stuff seemed to vibrate, its strands to run together like quick silver. I snatched the crystal from my eyes, and the chamber was empty! Put it back—and there were the grinning six!
Yolara gave another sign and they disappeared, even from the crystals.
"It is what they wear, Larree," explained Yolara, graciously. "It is something that came to us from the ancient ones. But we have so few." She sighed. "And the secret of their making is well-nigh lost. It Is difficult to make"—she hesitated—"but almost are we upon the verge of refinding its ease."
"Such treasures must be two-edged swords, Yolara," commented O'Keefe. "For how know you that one within them creeps riot to you with hand eager to strike?"
"There is no danger," she said indifferently. "I am the keeper of them, and I know always where they are. Besides, they cannot pass through the blackness. When one wears them and tries to pass, the darkness sucks the light out of him as thirsty ground does water! And at last he is naught but one of those shadows of which you speak, Larree—although, the robe itself is not harmed." I will have one of the ladala don one and show you," she added, brightly.
"No! No!" cried O'Keefe. She regarded him, amused.
"And now no more," abruptly. "You two are to appear before the council at a certain time, but fear nothing. You, Goodwin, go with Rador about our city and increase your wisdom. But you, Larree, await me here in my garden." She smiled at him, provocatively. Maliciously, too. "For shall not one who has resisted a world of goddesses be given all chance to worship when at last he finds his own?"
She laughed whole-heartedly and was gone. And at that moment I liked Yolara better than ever I had before and—alas—better than ever I was to in the future.
AS LARRY and I reached Rador, who was standing outside, I looked at my watch, which I had taken the precaution to wind before preparing for sleep. It had then been eleven o'clock of the morning in our world outside. Now the watch registered four, but whether we had slept five hours or seventeen or twenty-nine I had ho means of knowing. Rador scanned the dial with much interest; drew from his girdle a small disk, and compared the two.
His had thirteen divisions and, beneath the circle marking them, another circle divided into smaller spaces. About each circle a small growing point moved. What he held was, in principle, a watch the same as mine. But I could not know upon what system their time recording was based.
Later I was to find that reckoning rested upon the extraordinary increased luminosity of the cliffs at the time of full moon on earth. This action, to my mind, being linked either with the effect of the light-streaming globes upon the Moon Pool, whose source was in the shining cliffs, or else upon some mysterious affinity of their radiant element with the flood of moon- light on earth. The latter, most probably, because even when the moon must have been clouded above, it made no difference in the phenomenon.
Thirteen of these shining forth constituted a laya, one of them a lat. Ten was sa; ten times ten times ten a said, or thousand; ten times a thousand was a sais. A sais of laya was then literally ten thousand years. What we would call an hour was by them called a va. The whole time system was, of course, a mingling of time as it had been known to their remote, surface-dwelling ancestors, and the peculiar determining factors in the vast cavern.
An hour of our time is the equivalent of an hour and five-eighths in Muria. For further information upon this matter of relativity the reader may consult any of the numerous books upon the subject.
"Two va we have before the council sits," Rador said, thrusting the disk back in his girdle. "As a man of learning you are to be shown whatever of ours may interest you. While the Afyo Maie sits with that of yours which certainly interests her," he said, maliciously. "But this I warn you—how are you named, stranger?"
"Goodwin," I answered.
"Goodwin!" he repeated as excellently as had Yolara. "This I must warn you, Goodwin, that I will answer you all I may, but some things I must not. You shall know by my silence what these are."
On fire with eagerness I hurried on. A shell was awaiting us. I paused before entering it to examine the polished surface of runways and great road. It was obsidian—volcanic glass of pale emerald, unflawed, translucent with no sign of block or juncture. It was, indeed, as though it had been poured molten, and then gone over as carefully as a jeweler would a gem. I examined the shell.
"What makes it go?" I asked Rador. At a word from him the driver touched a concealed spring and an aperture appeared beneath the control-lever. Within was a small cube of black crystal, through whose sides I saw, dimly, a rapidly revolving, glowing ball, not more than two inches in diameter. Beneath the cube was a curiously shaped, slender cylinder winding down into the lower body of the nautilus whorl.
"Watch!" said Rador. He motioned me into the vehicle and took a place beside me. The driver touched the lever; a stream of coruscations flew from the ball into the cylinder. The shell started smoothly, and as the tiny torrent of shining particles increased it gathered speed.
"The corial does not touch the road," explained Rador. It is lifted so far"—he held his forefinger and thumb less than a sixteenth of an inch apart—"above it."
And perhaps here is the best place to explain the activation of the shells or coria. The force utilized was atomic energy. Passing from the whirling ball the ions darted through the cylinder to two bands of a peculiar metal affixed to the base of the vehicles somewhat like skids of a sled. Impinging upon these they produced a partial negation of gravity, lifting the shell slightly, and at the same time creating a powerful repulsive force or thrust that could be directed backward, forward, or sidewise at the will of the driver. Something of the same kind of force accounted for the "hearing-talking" globes they used to communicate with each other.
THE wide, glistening road was gay with the coria. They darted in and out of the gardens; within them the fair haired, extraordinarily beautiful women on their cushions were like princesses of Elfland, caught in gorgeous fairy webs, resting within the hearts of flowers. In some shells were flaxen-haired, dwarfish men of Lugur's type. Sometimes black-polled brother officers of Rador. Often raven-tressed girls, plainly handmaidens of the women. And now and then beauties of the lower folk went by with one of the blond dwarfs—and then it was plain indeed what their relations were.
Among those who walked along the paralleling promenade were none of the fair-haired. And the haunting wistfulness that underlay the thin film of gaiety on the faces and in the eyes of the black-haired folk, and its contrast with the sinisterly sweet malice, the sheer, unhuman exuberance of life written upon the fair-haired, made something deep, deep, within me tremble with indefinite repulsion.
We swept around the turn that made of the jewel-like roadway an enormous horseshoe and, speedily, upon our right the cliffs through which we had come in our journey from the Moon Pool began to march forward beneath their mantels of moss. They formed a gigantic abutment, a titanic salient. It had been from the very front of this salient's invading angle that we had emerged. On each side of it the precipices, faintly glowing, drew back and vanished into distance.
At the bridge-span we had first crossed, Rador stopped the corial, beckoning me to accompany him. We climbed the arch and stood once more upon the mossy ledge. Half a score of the dwarfs were cutting into the cliff face, using tools much resembling our own pneumatic drills, except that they had no connection with any energizing machinery. The drills bit in smoothly but slowly. I imagined that their power was supplied by the same force that ran the coria, and asked Rador. He nodded.
"They search for your disappearing portal," he grinned, mischievously. I thought of the depth of that monstrous slice of solid stone that had dropped before us and over whose top we had passed through the hundred-foot tunnel and I felt fairly certain that they would not soon penetrate to the well of the stairway that it concealed and to which the Golden Girl had led us. And I was equally sure the art that had covered this entrance so amazingly had provided at the same time a screen for the oval, high above, through which our eyes had first beheld the city of the Shining One.
Somewhat grimly I asked Rador why they did not use the green ray to disintegrate the rock, as it had the body of Songar. He answered that they did use it, but sparingly.
There were two reasons for this, he went on to explain; first that, in varying degrees, all the rock walls resisted it; the shining cliffs on the opposite side of the White Waters completely. And, second, that when it was used it was at the risk of very dangerous rock falls. There were, it appeared, lines of non-resistance in the cliffs—faults, I suppose—which, under the Keth, disintegrated instantaneously. These lines of non-resistance could not be mapped out beforehand and were likely to bring enormous masses of the resistant portion tumbling down, exactly, I gathered, as a structure of cemented stone would tumble if the cement should abruptly crumble into dust.
They seldom used the ray, therefore, for tunneling or blasting rock in situ. The resistant qualities of the barriers were probably due to the presence of radioactive elements that neutralized the vibratory ray whose essence was, of course, itself radioactive.
The slender, graceful bridges under which we skimmed ended at openings in the upflung, far walls of verdure. Each had its little garrison of soldiers. Through some of the openings a rivulet of the green obsidan river passed. These were roadways to the farther country, to the land of the ladala, Rador told me; adding that none of the lesser folk could cross into the pavilioned city unless summoned or without pass.
We turned the bend of the road and flew down the further emerald ribbon we had seen from the great oval. Before us rose the shining cliffs and the lake. A half-mile, perhaps, from these the last of the bridges flung itself. It was more massive and about it hovered a spirit of ancientness lacking in the other spans; also its garrison was larger and at its base the tangent way was guarded by two massive structures, somewhat like block-houses, between which it ran. Something about it aroused in me an intense curiosity.
"Where does that road lead, Rador?" I asked.
"To the one place above all of which I may not tell you, Goodwin," he answered, And again I wondered, and into my wonder burst a thought. Did the road lead to Throckmaratin and those others the Dweller had made its prey? How could I find out?
We skimmed slowly out upon the great pier. Far to the left was the prismatic, rainbow curtain between the Cyclopean pillars. On the white waters swam graceful shells, luculent replicas of the elf chariots, but none was near that distant web of wonder.
"Rador, what is that?" I asked.
"It is the veil of the Shining One!" he answered slowly.
Was the Shining One that which we named the Dweller?
"What is the Shining One?" I cried, eagerly. Again he was silent. Nor did he speak until we had turned on our homeward way.
And lively as was my Interest, my scientific curiosity, I was conscious suddenly of acute depression. Beautiful, wondrously beautiful, this place was, and yet in its wonder dwelt a keen edge of menace, of unease, of inexplicable, inhuman woe. As though in a secret garden of God a soul should sense upon it the gaze of some lurking spirit of evil which some way, somehow, had crept into the sanctuary and only bided its time to spring.
The shell carried us straight back to the house of Yolara. We stood again before the tenebrous wall where first we had faced the priestess and the Voice. And as we stood, again the portal appeared with all its disconcerting, magical abruptness; Rador drew aside; I entered; once more the entrance faded.
But now the scene was changed. Around the jet table were grouped a number of figures—Lugur, Yolara beside him; seven others—all of them fair-haired and all men save one who sat at the left of the priestess—an old, old woman. How old the woman was I could not. tell, her face bearing traces of beauty that must once have been as great as Yolara's own, but now ravaged, in some way awesome; through its ruins the fearful, malicious gaiety shining out like a spirit of joy held within a corpse!
Larry was not present. I wondered why, but as I wondered he entered. He sent me a cheerful grin, and Yolara darted a glance at him that was revealing. Lugar saw it, too, and read it aright, for his face darkened. Began then our examination, for such it was. And as it progressed I was more and more struck by the change in the O'Keefe. All flippancy was gone; rarely did his sense of humor reveal itself in any of his answers. He was like a cautious swordsman, fencing, guarding, studying his opponent. Or rather, like a chess-player who keeps sensing some far-reaching purpose in the game; alert, contained, watchful. Always he stressed the power of our surface races, their multitudes, their solidarity.
For two hours we were questioned and then the priestess called Rador and let us go.
Larry was somber as we returned. Rador soon left us.
"One thing's sure," Larry remarked almost inconsequentially, "we've got to beat Von Hetzdorp to it. Didn't see anything of a lady named Lakla in your trip around the bazaars, did you?"
I shook my head. He walked about the room, uneasily.
"Hell's brewing here all right," he said at last, stopping before me. "I can't make, out just the particular brand. That's all that bothers me. We're going to have a stiff fight, that's sure. What I want to do quick is to find the Golden Girl, Doc. Haven't seen her on the wall, lately, have you?" he queried, hopefully fantastic.
"Laugh if you want to," he went on. "But she's our best bet. It's going to be a race between her and the O'Keefe banshee, but I put my money on her.
"Lord, I'd like to have a cigarette," he said. "Spill me a little scientific dope, old dear. What is this place, anyway?"
"Well," I said. "I think it's the matrix of the moon."
"The what!" he exclaimed, with almost ludicrous amazement.
"That," I continued, "would explain these enormous, caverned spaces—scar tissue of the world, permeated with gigantic spaces as human scar tissue is often permeated with lesions beneath the scarified surface. Now these people we have encountered are undoubtedly, as poor Throckmartin divined, the remnants of that last and ancient race that built the Nan-Matal and similar Pacific structures. Undoubtedly they were forced below as their continent subsided. And here the green dwarf's statement that they made their way here 'where was the Shining One and where others before us had been' is highly suggestive."
Larry nodded, and I went on:
"That they knew nothing of the existence of the passage from the Chamber of the Moon Pool proves that they have lost much of the ancient knowledge—if, indeed, they ever possessed it.
"On the other hand, Yolara, it was clear, knows of the sinister excursions of the Dweller into the outer world."
"But knowing that, she must also know how the thing you saw comes out," Larry objected. "Besides, the place of the Moon Pool was clearly known to the builders of Nan-Tanach, who were, apparently, the forefathers of these."
"I admit that it is puzzling," I answered. "Still, neither Yolara nor Lugur did know. Perhaps the hidden road was made by the earliest of their buried kind, and the secret lost. Or it may be it was built by some of that race they found"—I had a flash of intuition—"to keep watch upon them and upon the Shining One, who may have escaped some way, somehow, their own control!"
Larry shook his head, perplexedly.
"There's some sort of scrap brewing all right," he observed. "Maybe you're right. What the devil are the 'Silent Ones'? And where is that Golden Girl who led us? Lakla, the handmaiden." His eyes grew soft and far away.
"Ask rather where is Throckmartin and his. And where the wife of Olaf," I answered, a little bruskly.
"I'm going to bed," he said abruptly. "Keep an eye on the wall, Doc!"
BETWEEN the seven sleeps that followed, Larry and I saw but little of each other. Yolara sought him more and more. Thrice we were called before the council; once we were at a great feast, whose splendors and surprises I can never forget. Largely I was in the company of Rador. Together we two passed the green barriers into the dwelling-place of the ladala.
And here I felt the atmosphere of hostility, of brooding calamity, stiffen into a definite unpleasant reality. We went among them, but never could I force my mind through the armor of their patent hate for Rador, or at least, for what he represented.
They lived in homes—if homes the pavilions could be called—that were lesser replicas of those within the city. Those who supplied the necessities and luxuries of their rulers worked in what were, in a fashion, community houses of wood and stone.
They seemed provided with everything needful for life. But everywhere was an oppressiveness, a gathering together of hate, that was spiritual rather than material. As tangible as the latter and far, far more menacing!
"They do not like to dance with the Shining One," was Rador's constant and only reply to my efforts to find the cause.
Once I had concrete evidence of the mood. Glancing behind me, I saw a white, vengeful face peer from behind a tree-trunk, a hand lift, a shining dart speed from it straight toward Rador's back. Instinctively I thrust him aside. He turned upon me angrily. I pointed to where the little missile lay, still quivering, on the ground. He gripped my hand.
"That some day I will repay!" he said. I looked again at the thing. At its end was a tiny cone covered with a glistening, gelatinous substance.
Rador pulled from a tree beside us a fruit somewhat like an apple.
"Look!" he said. He dropped it upon the dart, and at once, before my eyes, in less than ten seconds, the fruit had rotted away!
"That's what would have happened to Rador but for you, friend!" he said.
Still another curious incident I must record here. I had been commenting upon the scarcity of bird-life. The only avian species I had seen so far had been a few gaily colored, tiny, songless creatures. I mentioned, unthinkingly, the golden-eyed. bird that had greeted us. He gave evidence of perturbation indeed at this. He asked where we had seen it. On guard again, I told him that it had appeared when we emerged from the cliff.
"Tell that not to Yolara, nor to Lugur! And warn Larree," he said, earnestly.
I asked why. He shook his head. And then, softly, his thoughts clearly finding unconscious vent in words:
"Have the Silent Ones still the power, even as she says? Is the old wisdom yet strong? Almost do I believe, and it comes to me that I would be glad to believe. And what said Songar? That these strangers—"
He broke off and once more fell into silence.
I cite these two happenings for the light they cast upon that which I have still to tell.
Come now between this and the prelude to the latter half of the tremendous drama whose history this narrative is. The interlude, rather, between what has gone before and the second curtain soon to rise so amazingly—only scattering and necessarily fragmentary observations.
First, the nature of the ebon opacities, blocking out the spaces between the pavilion-pillars or covering their tops like roofs. These were magnetic fields, light absorbers, negativing the vibrations of radiance. Literally screens of electric force which formed as impervious a barrier to light as would have screens of steel.
They instantaneously made night appear in a place where no night was. But they interposed no obstacle to air or to sound. They were, extremely simple in their inception. No more miraculous than is glass, which, inversely, admits the vibrations of light, but shuts out those coarser ones we call air and, partly, those others which produce upon auditory nerves the effects which we call sound.
There were two favored classes of the ladala. They were soldiers and the dream-makers. The dream-makers were the most astonishing social phenomena, I think, of all. Denied by their circumscribed environment the wider experiences of us of the outer world, the Murians had perfected an amazing system of escape through the imagination.
The dream-makers were recruited from the ladala, and must have seen extremely powerful, far more so than the vulgar fortunetellers of earth. Because to a certain extent the sleep visions they induced were their own. Or were they?
At any rate, they led a precarious life, because if their patrons were annoyed by unpleasant sleep experiences they suffered for it either by death or by cruel beatings.
At the one feast that I attended I saw them summoned to the side of half-drunken women and men to ply their mysterious profession.
And before the sixth sleep I myself was induced by Rador to call upon one. I remember slipping straight out of this consciousness straight into another—visions of a young world—nightmare figures—steaming jungles—monsters—a bestial shaggy woman beast whom I, also a beast, loved brutally. But enough!
They were intensely musical. Their favorite instruments were double flutes; immensely complex pipe-organs; harps, great and small. They had another remarkable instrument made up of a double octave of small drums which gave forth percussions remarkably disturbing to the emotional centers.
Their development of music was, indeed, as decadent—if that be the right word to use—as the activities of the dream-makers. They were—I quote an extraordinary phrase of O'Keefe's—"jazz- jag hounds!"
It was this love of music that gave rise to one of the few truly humorous incidents of our caverned life.
Larry came to me just after our fourth sleep.
"Come on with me to a concert, Goodwin," he said.
We skimmed off to one of the bridge garrisons. Rador called the twoscore guards to attention. And then, to my utter stupefaction, the whole company, O'Keele leading them, roared out the "Marseillaise" Allons , enfants de la patrie!" they sang in a closer approach to the French than might have been expected ten or fifty miles below France's level. "Marchons! Marchons!" they bellowed.
It was irresistibly funny; and in my laughter I forgot for the moment my forebodings.
"Just wait until you hear Yolara lisp a pretty little thing I taught her," said Larry as we set back for what we now called home. There was an impish twinkle in his eyes.
And I did hear. For it was not many minutes after that the priestess condescended to command me to come to her with O'Keefe.
"Show Goodwin how much you have learned of our speech, O lady of the lips of honeyed flame!" murmured Larry.
She hesitated; smiled at him, and then from that perfect mouth, out of the exquisite throat, in the voice that was like the chiming of little silver bells, she trilled a melody that was very familiar to me:
"She's only a bird in a gilded cage,
A bee-yu-tiful sight to see—"
And so on to the bitter end. I did not dare to look at O'Keefe.
"She thinks it's a love-song," said Larry when we had left.
Through those seven sleeps there was no sign either of Olaf or of Von Hetzdorp. Always, when we asked Yolara, she said that they were both well and content. Nor was there sign of the Golden Girl.
And ever the passion light in the eyes of the priestess grew stronger, more perilous, when she looked upon Larry O'Keefe. And steadily the face of Lugur grew more forbidding.
Then at last came the summons to that tragic interlude which was to be the curtain raiser to the dread, the incredible, the glorious finale of our amazing adventure.