CHAPTER XVIII
The Amphitheatre of Jet
FOR HOURs the black-haired folk had been streaming across
the bridges, flowing along the promenade by scores and by
hundreds, drifting down toward the gigantic seven-terraced
temple whose interior I had never as yet seen, and from
whose towering exterior, indeed, I had always been kept far
enough away - unobtrusively, but none the less decisively
- to prevent any real observation. The structure, I had estimated, nevertheless, could not reach less than a thousand
feet above its silvery base, and the diameter of its circular
foundation was about the same.
I wondered what was bringing the ladala into Lora, and
where they were vanishing. All of them were flower-crowned
with the luminous, lovely blooms - old and young, slender,
mocking-eyed girls, dwarfed youths, mothers with their
babes, gnomed oldsters - on they poured, silent for the most
part and sullen - a sullenness that held acid bitterness even
as their subtle, half-sinister, half-gay malice seemed tempered into little keen-edged flames, oddly, menacingly defiant.
There were many of the green-clad soldiers along the way,
and the garrison of the only bridge span I could see had certainly been doubled.
Wondering still, I turned from my point of observation
and made my way back to our pavilion, hoping that Larry,
who had been with Yolara for the past two hours, had returned. Hardly had I reached it before Rador came hurrying
up, in his manner a curious exultance mingled with what in
anyone else I would have called a decided nervousness.
"Come!" he commanded before I could speak. "The Council has made decision - and Larree is awaiting you."
"What has been decided?" I panted as we sped along the
mosaic path that led to the house of Yolara. "And why is
Larry awaiting me?"
And at his answer I felt my heart pause in its beat and
through me race a wave of mingled panic and eagerness.
"The Shining One dances!" had answered the green dwarf.
"And you are to worship!"
What was this dancing of the Shining One, of which so
often he had spoken?
Whatever my forebodings, Larry evidently had none.
"Great stuff!" he cried, when we had met in the great antechamber now empty of the dwarfs. "Hope it will be worth
seeing - have to be something damned good, though, to
catch me, after what I've seen of shows at the front," he
added.
And remembering, with a little shock of apprehension,
that he had no knowledge of the Dweller beyond my poor
description of it - for there are no words actually to describe
what that miracle of interwoven glory and horror was - I
wondered what Larry O'Keefe would say and do when he
did behold it!
Rador began to show impatience.
"Come!" he urged. "There is much to be done - and the
time grows short!"
He led us to a tiny fountain room in whose miniature pool
the white waters were concentrated, pearl-like and opalescent in their circling rim.
"Bathe!" he commanded; and set the example by stripping himself and plunging within. Only a minute or two did
the green dwarf allow us, and he checked us as we were
about to don our clothing.
Then, to my intense embarrassment, without warning, two
of the black-haired girls entered, bearing robes of a peculiar
dull-blue hue. At our manifest discomfort Rador's laughter
roared out. He took the garments from the pair, motioned
them to leave us, and, still laughing, threw one around me.
Its texture was soft, but decidedly metallic - like some blue
metal spun to the fineness of a spider's thread. The garment
buckled tightly at the throat, was girdled at the waist, and,
below this cincture, fell to the floor, its folds being held together by a half-dozen looped cords; from the shoulders a
hood resembling a monk's cowl.
Rador cast this over my head; it completely covered my
face, but was of so transparent a texture that I could see,
though somewhat mistily, through it. Finally he handed us
both a pair of long gloves of the same material and high
stockings, the feet of which were gloved - five-toed.
And again his laughter rang out at our manifest surprise.
"The priestess of the Shining One does not altogether
trust the Shining One's Voice," he said at last. "And these
are to guard against any sudden - errors. And fear not,
Goodwin," he went on kindly. "Not for the Shining One
itself would Yolara see harm come to Larree here - nor,
because of him, to you. But I would not stake much on the
great white one. And for him I am sorry, for him I do like
well."
"Is he to be with us?" asked Larry eagerly.
"He is to be where we go," replied the dwarf soberly.
Grimly Larry reached down and drew from his uniform his
automatic. He popped a fresh clip into the pocket fold of his
girdle. The pistol he slung high up beneath his arm-pit.
The green dwarf looked at the weapon curiously. O'Keefe
tapped it.
"This," said Larry, "slays quicker than the Keth - I take
it so no harm shall come to the blue-eyed one whose name is
Olaf. If I should raise it - be you not in its way, Rador!" he
added significantly.
The dwarf nodded again, his eyes sparkling. He thrust a
hand out to both of us.
"A change comes," he said. "What it is I know not, nor
how it will fall. But this remember - Rador is more friend
to you than you yet can know. And now let us go!" he ended
abruptly.
He led us, not through the entrance, but into a sloping
passage ending in a blind wall; touched a symbol graven
there, and it opened, precisely as had the rosy barrier of the
Moon Pool Chamber. And, just as there, but far smaller,
was a passage end, a low curved wall facing a shaft not black
as had been that abode of living darkness, but faintly luminescent. Rador leaned over the wall. The mechanism clicked
and started; the door swung shut; the sides of the car slipped
into place, and we swept swiftly down the passage; overhead the wind whistled. In a few moments the moving platform began to slow down. It stopped in a closed chamber no
larger than itself.
Rador drew his poniard and struck twice upon the wall
with its hilt. Immediately a panel moved away, revealing a
space filled with faint, misty blue radiance. And at each side
of the open portal stood four of the dwarfish men, greyheaded, old, clad in flowing garments of white, each pointing toward us a short silver rod.
Rador drew from his girdle a ring and held it out to the
first dwarf. He examined it, handed it to the one beside him,
and not until each had inspected the ring did they lower their
curious weapons; containers of that terrific energy they
called the Keth, I thought; and later was to know that I had
been right.
We stepped out; the doors closed behind us. The place
was weird enough. Its pave was a greenish-blue stone resembling lapis lazuli. On each side were high pedestals holding carved figures of the same material. There were perhaps
a score of these, but in the mistiness I could not make out
their outlines. A droning, rushing roar beat upon our ears;
filled the whole cavern.
"I smell the sea," said Larry suddenly.
The roaring became deep-toned, clamorous, and close in
front of us a rift opened. Twenty feet in width, it cut the
cavern floor and vanished into the blue mist on each side.
The cleft was spanned by one solid slab of rock not more
than two yards wide. It had neither railing nor other protection.
The four leading priests marched out upon it one by one,
and we followed. In the middle of the span they knelt. Ten
feet beneath us was a torrent of blue sea-water racing with
prodigious speed between polished walls. It gave the impression of vast depth. It roared as it sped by, and far to the right
was a low arch through which it disappeared. It was so swift
that its surface shone like polished blue steel, and from it
came the blessed, OUR WORLDLY, familiar ocean breath that
strengthened my soul amazingly and made me realize how
earth-sick I was.
Whence came the stream, I marvelled, forgetting for the
moment, as we passed on again, all else. Were we closer to
the surface of earth than I had thought, or was this some
mighty flood falling through an opening in sea floor, Heaven
alone knew how many miles above us, losing itself in deeper
abysses beyond these? How near and how far this was from
the truth I was to learn - and never did truth come to man
in more dreadful guise!
The roaring fell away, the blue haze lessened. In front of
us stretched a wide flight of steps, huge as those which had
led us into the courtyard of Nan-Tauach through the ruined
sea-gate. We scaled it; it narrowed; from above light poured
through a still narrower opening. Side by side Larry and I
passed out of it.
We had emerged upon an enormous platform of what
seemed to be glistening ivory. It stretched before us for a
hundred yards or more and then shelved gently into the
white waters. Opposite - not a mile away - was that prodigious web of woven rainbows Rador had called the Veil of
the Shining One. There it shone in all its unearthly grandeur,
on each side of the Cyclopean pillars, as though a mountain
should stretch up arms raising between them a fairy banner
of auroral glories. Beneath it was the curved, scimitar sweep
of the pier with its clustered, gleaming temples.
Before that brief, fascinated glance was done, there
dropped upon my soul a sensation as of brooding weight intolerable; a spiritual oppression as though some vastness was
falling, pressing, stifling me, I turned - and Larry caught me
as I reeled.
"Steady! Steady, old man!" he whispered.
At first all that my staggering consciousness could realize
was an immensity, an immeasurable uprearing that brought
with it the same throat-gripping vertigo as comes from gazing downward from some great height - then a blur of white
faces - intolerable shinings of hundreds upon thousands of
eyes. Huge, incredibly huge, a colossal amphitheatre of jet,
a stupendous semi-circle, held within its mighty arc the ivory
platform on which I stood.
It reared itself almost perpendicularly hundreds of feet up
into the sparkling heavens, and thrust down on each side its
ebon bulwarks - like monstrous paws. Now, the giddiness
from its sheer greatness passing, I saw that it was indeed an
amphitheatre sloping slightly backward tier after tier, and
that the white blur of faces against its blackness, the gleaming of countless eyes were those of myriads of the people who
sat silent, flower-garlanded, their gaze focused upon the rainbow curtain and sweeping over me like a torrent - tangible,
appalling!
Five hundred feet beyond, the smooth, high retaining wall
of the amphitheatre raised itself - above it the first terrace
of the seats, and above this, dividing the tiers for another half
a thousand feet upward, set within them like a panel, was a
dead-black surface in which shone faintly with a bluish radiance a gigantic disk; above it and around it a cluster of innumerable smaller ones.
On each side of me, bordering the platform, were scores
of small pillared alcoves, a low wall stretching across their
fronts; delicate, fretted grills shielding them, save where in
each lattice an opening stared - it came to me that they were
like those stalls in ancient Gothic cathedrals wherein for
centuries had kneeled paladins and people of my own race
on earth's fair face. And within these alcoves were gathered,
score upon score, the elfin beauties, the dwarfish men of the
fair-haired folk. At my right, a few feet from the opening
through which we had come, a passageway led back between
the fretted stalls. Half-way between us and the massive base
of the amphitheatre a dais rose. Up the platform to it a wide
ramp ascended; and on ramp and dais and along the centre
of the gleaming platform down to where it kissed the white
waters, a broad ribbon of the radiant flowers lay like a fairy
carpet.
On one side of this dais, meshed in a silken web that hid
no line or curve of her sweet body, white flesh gleaming
through its folds, stood Yolara; and opposite her, crowned
with a circlet of flashing blue stones, his mighty body stark
bare, was Lugur!
O'Keefe drew a long breath; Rador touched my arm and,
still dazed, I let myself be drawn into the aisle and through
a corridor that ran behind the alcoves. At the back of one of
these the green dwarf paused, opened a door, and motioned
us within.
Entering, I found that we were exactly opposite where the
ramp ran up to the dais - and that Yolara was not more than
fifty feet away. She glanced at O'Keefe and smiled. Her eyes
were ablaze with little dancing points of light; her body
seemed to palpitate, the rounded delicate muscles beneath
the translucent skin to run with joyful little eager waves!
Larry whistled softly.
"There's Marakinoff!" he said.
I looked where he pointed. Opposite us sat the Russian,
clothed as we were, leaning forward, his eyes eager behind
his glasses; but if he saw us he gave no sign.
"And there's Olaf!" said O'Keefe.
Beneath the carved stall in which sat the Russian was an
aperture and within it was Huldricksson. Unprotected by
pillars or by grills, opening clear upon the platform, near him
stretched the trail of flowers up to the great dais which Lugur
and Yolara the priestess guarded. He sat alone, and my heart
went out to him.
O'Keefe's face softened.
"Bring him here," he said to Rador.
The green dwarf was looking at the Norseman, too, a
shade of pity upon his mocking face. He shook his head.
"Wait!" he said. "You can do nothing now - and it may
be there will be no need to do anything," he added; but I
could feel that there was little of conviction in his words.
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