CHAPTER XXIII
Dragon Worm and Moss Death
FOR a small eternity - to me at least - we waited. Then as
silent as ever the green dwarf returned. "It is well," he
said, some of the strain gone from his voice. "Grip hands
again, and follow."
"Wait a bit, Rador," this was Larry. "Does Lugur know
this side entrance? If he does, why not let Olaf and me go
back to the opening and pick them off as they come in? We
could hold the lot - and in the meantime you and Goodwin
could go after Lakla for help."
"Lugur knows the secret of the Portal - if he dare use it,"
answered the captain, with a curious indirection. "And now
that they have challenged the Silent Ones I think he WILL
dare. Also, he will find our tracks - and it may be that he
knows this hidden way."
"Well, for God's sake!" O'Keefe's appalled bewilderment
was almost ludicrous. "If HE knows all that, and YOU knew
all that, why didn't you let me click him when I had the chance?"
"Larree," the green dwarf was oddly humble. "It seemed
good to me, too - at first. And then I heard a command,
heard it clearly, to stop you - that Lugur die not now, lest a
greater vengeance fail!"
"Command? From whom?" The Irishman's voice distilled
out of the blackness the very essence of bewilderment.
"I thought," Rador was whispering - "I thought it came
from the Silent Ones!"
"Superstition!" groaned O'Keefe in utter exasperation.
"Always superstition! What can you do against it!
"Never mind, Rador." His sense of humour came to his
aid. "It's too late now, anyway. Where do we go from here,
old dear?" he laughed.
"We tread the path of one I am not fain to meet," answered
Rador. "But if meet we must, point the death tubes at the
pale shield he bears upon his throat and send the flame into
the flower of cold fire that is its centre - nor look into his
eyes!"
Again Larry gasped, and I with him.
"It's getting too deep for me, Doc," he muttered dejectedly. "Can you make head or tail of it?"
"No," I answered, shortly enough, "but Rador fears something and that's his description of it."
"Sure," he replied, "only it's a code I don't understand."
I could feel his grin. "All right for the flower of cold fire,
Rador, and I won't look into his eyes," he went on cheerfully.
"But hadn't we better be moving?"
"Come!" said the soldier; again hand in hand we went
blindly on.
O'Keefe was muttering to himself.
"Flower of cold fire! Don't look into his eyes! Some joint!
Damned superstition." Then he chuckled and carolled, softly:
"Oh, mama, pin a cold rose on me;
Two young frog-men are in love with me;
Shut my eyes so I can't see."
"Sh!" Rador was warning; he began whispering. "For half
a va we go along a way of death. From its peril we pass into
another against whose dangers I can guard you. But in part
this is in view of the roadway and it may be that Lugur will
see us. If so, we must fight as best we can. If we pass these
two roads safely, then is the way to the Crimson Sea clear,
nor need we fear Lugur nor any. And there is another thing
- that Lugur does not know - when he opens the Portal the
Silent Ones will hear and Lakla and the Akka will be swift
to greet its opener."
"Rador," I asked, "how know YOU all this?"
"The handmaiden is my own sister's child," he answered quietly.
O'Keefe drew a long breath.
"Uncle," he remarked casually in English, "meet the man
who's going to be your nephew!"
cept by the avuncular title, which Rador, humorously
enough, apparently conceived to be one of respectful endearment.
For me a light broke. Plain now was the reason for his
foreknowledge of Lakla's appearance at the feast where
Larry had so narrowly escaped Yolara's spells; plain the
determining factor that had cast his lot with ours, and my
confidence, despite his discourse of mysterious perils, experienced a remarkable quickening.
Speculation as to the marked differences in pigmentation
and appearance of niece and uncle was dissipated by my
consciousness that we were now moving in a dim half-light.
We were in a fairly wide tunnel. Not far ahead the gleam
filtered, pale yellow like sunlight sifting through the leaves
of autumn poplars. And as we drove closer to its source I
saw that it did indeed pass through a leafy screen hanging
over the passage end. This Rador drew aside cautiously,
beckoned us and we stepped through.
It appeared to be a tunnel cut through soft green mould.
Its base was a flat strip of pathway a yard wide from which
the walls curved out in perfect cylindrical form, smoothed
and evened with utmost nicety. Thirty feet wide they were at
their widest, then drew toward each other with no break in
their symmetry; they did not close. Above was, roughly, a
ten-foot rift, ragged edged, through which poured light like
that in the heart of pale amber, a buttercup light shot
through with curiously evanescent bronze shadows.
"Quick!" commanded Rador, uneasily, and set off at a
sharp pace.
Now, my eyes accustomed to the strange light, I saw that
the tunnel's walls were of moss. In them I could trace fringe
leaf and curly leaf, pressings of enormous bladder caps
(Physcomitrium), immense splashes of what seemed to be
the scarlet-crested Cladonia, traceries of huge moss veils,
crushings of teeth (peristome) gigantic; spore cases brown
and white, saffron and ivory, hot vermilions and cerulean
blues, pressed into an astounding mosaic by some titanic
force.
"Hurry!" It was Rador calling. I had lagged behind.
He quickened the pace to a half-run; we were climbing;
panting. The amber light grew stronger; the rift above us
wider. The tunnel curved; on the left a narrow cleft appeared. The green dwarf leaped toward it, thrust us within,
pushed us ahead of him up a steep rocky fissure - well-nigh,
indeed, a chimney. Up and up this we scrambled until my
lungs were bursting and I thought I could climb no more.
The crevice ended; we crawled out and sank, even Rador,
upon a little leaf-carpeted clearing circled by lacy tree ferns.
Gasping, legs aching, we lay prone, relaxed, drawing back
strength and breath. Rador was first to rise. Thrice he bent
low as in homage, then -
"Give thanks to the Silent Ones - for their power has been
over us!" he exclaimed.
Dimly I wondered what he meant. Something about the
fern leaf at which I had been staring aroused me. I leaped to
my feet and ran to its base. This was no fern, no! It was fern
MOSS! The largest of its species I had ever found in tropic
jungles had not been more than two inches high, and this
was - twenty feet! The scientific fire I had experienced in the
tunnel returned uncontrollable. I parted the fronds, gazed out -
My outlook commanded a vista of miles - and that vista!
A Fata Morgana of plantdom! A land of flowered sorcery!
Forests of tree-high mosses spangled over with blooms of
every conceivable shape and colour; cataracts and clusters,
avalanches and nets of blossoms in pastels, in dulled metallics, in gorgeous flamboyant hues; some of them phosphorescent and shining like living jewels; some sparkling as
though with dust of opals, of sapphires, of rubies and topazes
and emeralds; thickets of convolvuli like the trumpets of the
seven archangels of Mara, king of illusion, which are shaped
from the bows of splendours arching his highest heaven!
And moss veils like banners of a marching host of Titans;
pennons and bannerets of the sunset; gonfalons of the Jinn;
webs of faery; oriflammes of elfland!
Springing up through that polychromatic flood myriads of
pedicles - slender and straight as spears, or soaring in spirals,
or curving with undulations gracile as the white serpents of
Tanit in ancient Carthaginian groves - and all surmounted
by a fantasy of spore cases in shapes of minaret and turret,
domes and spires and cones, caps of Phrygia and bishops'
mitres, shapes grotesque and unnameable - shapes delicate
and lovely!
They hung high poised, nodding and swaying - like goblins hovering over Titania's court; cacophony of Cathay accenting the Flower Maiden music of "Parsifal"; bizarrerie
of the angled, fantastic beings that people the Javan pantheon watching a bacchanal of houris in Mohammed's paradise!
Down upon it all poured the amber light; dimmed in the
distances by huge, drifting darkenings lurid as the flying
mantles of the hurricane.
And through the light, like showers of jewels, myriads of
birds, darting, dipping, soaring, and still other myriads of
gigantic, shimmering butterflies.
A sound came to us, reaching out like the first faint susurrus of the incoming tide; sighing, sighing, growing stronger
- now its mournful whispering quivered all about us, shook
us - then passing like a Presence, died away in far distances.
"The Portal!" said Rador. "Lugur has entered!"
He, too, parted the fronds and peered back along our
path. Peering with him we saw the barrier through which we
had come stretching verdure-covered walls for miles three or
more away. Like a mole burrow in a garden stretched the
trail of the tunnel; here and there we could look down
within the rift at its top; far off in it I thought I saw the glint
of spears.
"They come!" whispered Rador. "Quick! We must not
meet them here!"
And then -
"Holy St. Brigid!" gasped Larry.
From the rift in the tunnel's continuation, nigh a mile
beyond the cleft through which we had fled, lifted a crown
of horns - of tentacles - erect, alert, of mottled gold and
crimson; lifted higher - and from a monstrous scarlet head
beneath them blazed two enormous, obloid eyes, their depths
wells of purplish phosphorescence; higher still - noseless,
earless, chinless; a livid, worm mouth from which a slender
scarlet tongue leaped like playing flames! Slowly it rose -
its mighty neck cuirassed with gold and scarlet scales from
whose polished surfaces the amber light glinted like flakes
of fire; and under this neck shimmered something like a
palely luminous silvery shield, guarding it. The head of horror mounted - and in the shield's centre, full ten feet across,
glowing, flickering, shining out - coldly, was a rose of white
flame, a "flower of cold fire" even as Rador had said.
Now swiftly the Thing upreared, standing like a scaled
tower a hundred feet above the rift, its eyes scanning that
movement I had seen along the course of its lair. There was
a hissing; the crown of horns fell, whipped and writhed like
the tentacles of an octopus; the towering length dropped
back.
"Quick!" gasped Rador and through the fern moss, along
the path and down the other side of the steep we raced.
Behind us for an instant there was a rushing as of a torrent; a far-away, faint, agonized screaming - silence!
"No fear NOW from those who followed," whispered the
green dwarf, pausing.
"Sainted St. Patrick!" O'Keefe gazed ruminatively at his
automatic. "An' he expected me to kill THAT with this. Well,
as Fergus O'Connor said when they sent him out to slaughter a wild bull with a potato knife: 'Ye'll niver rayilize how
I appreciate the confidence ye show in me!'
"What was it, Doc?" he asked.
"The dragon worm!" Rador said.
"It was Helvede Orm - the hell worm!" groaned Olaf.
"There you go again - " blazed Larry; but the green dwarf
was hurrying down the path and swiftly we followed, Larry
muttering, Olaf mumbling, behind me.
The green dwarf was signalling us for caution. He pointed
through a break in a grove of fifty-foot cedar mosses - we
were skirting the glassy road! Scanning it we found no trace
of Lugur and wondered whether he too had seen the worm
and had fled. Quickly we passed on; drew away from the
coria path. The mosses began to thin; less and less they grew,
giving way to low clumps that barely offered us shelter.
Unexpectedly another screen of fern moss stretched before
us. Slowly Rador made his way through it and stood hesitating.
The scene in front of us was oddly weird and depressing;
in some indefinable way - dreadful. Why, I could not tell,
but the impression was plain; I shrank from it. Then, selfanalyzing, I wondered whether it could be the uncanny resemblance the heaps of curious mossy fungi scattered about
had to beast and bird - yes, and to man - that was the cause
of it. Our path ran between a few of them. To the left they
were thick. They were viridescent, almost metallic hued -
verd-antique. Curiously indeed were they like distorted
images of dog and deerlike forms, of birds - of DWARFS and
here and there the simulacra of the giant frogs! Spore cases,
yellowish green, as large as mitres and much resembling them
in shape protruded from the heaps. My repulsion grew into
a distinct nausea.
Rador turned to us a face whiter far than that with which
he had looked upon the dragon worm.
"Now for your lives," he whispered, "tread softly here as
I do - and speak not at all!"
He stepped forward on tiptoe, slowly with utmost caution.
We crept after him; passed the heaps beside the path - and
as I passed my skin crept and I shrank and saw the others
shrink too with that unnameable loathing; nor did the green
dwarf pause until he had reached the brow of a small hillock
a hundred yards beyond. And he was trembling.
"Now what are we up against?" grumbled O'Keefe.
The green dwarf stretched a hand; stiffened; gazed over
to the left of us beyond a lower hillock upon whose broad
crest lay a file of the moss shapes. They fringed it, their
mitres having a grotesque appearance of watching what lay
below. The glistening road lay there - and from it came a
shout. A dozen of the coria clustered, filled with Lugur's
men and in one of them Lugur himself, laughing wickedly!
There was a rush of soldiers and up the low hillock raced
a score of them toward us.
"Run!" shouted Rador.
"Not much!" grunted Larry - and took swift aim at Lugur.
The automatic spat: Olaf's echoed. Both bullets went wild,
for Lugur, still laughing, threw himself into the protection of
the body of his shell. But following the shots, from the file
of moss heaps on the crest, came a series of muffled explosions. Under the pistol's concussions the mitred caps had
burst and instantly all about the running soldiers grew a
cloud of tiny, glistening white spores - like a little cloud of
puff-ball dust many times magnified. Through this cloud I
glimpsed their faces, stricken with agony.
Some turned to fly, but before they could take a second
step stood rigid.
The spore cloud drifted and eddied about them; rained
down on their heads and half bare breasts, covered their
garments - and swiftly they began to change! Their features
grew indistinct - merged! The glistening white spores that
covered them turned to a pale yellow, grew greenish, spread
and swelled, darkened. The eyes of one of the soldiers glinted
for a moment - and then were covered by the swift growth!
Where but a few moments before had been men were only
grotesque heaps, swiftly melting, swiftly rounding into the
the semblance of the mounds that lay behind us - and already beginning to take on their gleam of ancient viridescence!
The Irishman was gripping my arm fiercely; the pain
brought me back to my senses.
"Olaf's right," he gasped. "This IS hell! I'm sick." And he
was, frankly and without restraint. Lugur and his others
awakened from their nightmare; piled into the coria,
wheeled, raced away.
"On!" said Rador thickly. Two perils have we passed -
the Silent Ones watch over us!"
Soon we were again among the familiar and so unfamiliar
moss giants. I knew what I had seen and this time Larry
could not call me - superstitious. In the jungles of Borneo I
had examined that other swiftly developing fungus which
wreaks the vengeance of some of the hill tribes upon those
who steal their women; gripping with its microscopic hooks
into the flesh; sending quick, tiny rootlets through the skin
down into the capillaries, sucking life and thriving and never
to be torn away until the living thing it clings to has been
sapped dry. Here was but another of the species in which
the development's rate was incredibly accelerated. Some of
this I tried to explain to O'Keefe as we sped along, reassuring him.
"But they turned to moss before our eyes!" he said.
Again I explained, patiently. But he seemed to derive no
comfort at all from my assurances that the phenomena were
entirely natural and, aside from their more terrifying aspect,
of peculiar interest to the botanist.
"I know," was all he would say. "But suppose one of those
things had burst while we were going through - God!"
I was wondering how I could with comparative safety
study the fungus when Rador stopped; in front of us was
again the road ribbon.
"Now is all danger passed," he said. "The way lies open
and Lugur has fled - "
There was a flash from the road. It passed me like a little
lariat of light. It struck Larry squarely between the eyes,
spread over his face and drew itself within!
"Down!" cried Rador, and hurled me to the ground. My
head struck sharply; I felt myself grow faint; Olaf fell beside
me; I saw the green dwarf draw down the O'Keefe; he collapsed limply, face still, eyes staring. A shout - and from the
roadway poured a host of Lugur's men; I could hear Lugur
bellowing.
There came a rush of little feet; soft, fragrant draperies
brushed my face; dimly I watched Lakla bend over the Irishman.
She straightened - her arms swept out and the writhing
vine, with its tendrilled heads of ruby bloom, five flames of
misty incandescence, leaped into the faces of the soldiers
now close upon us. It darted at their throats, striking, coiling, and striking again; coiling and uncoiling with incredible
rapidity and flying from leverage points of throats, of faces,
of breasts like a spring endowed with consciousness, volition
and hatred - and those it struck stood rigid as stone with
faces masks of inhuman fear and anguish; and those still
unstricken fled.
Another rush of feet - and down upon Lugur's forces
poured the frog-men, their booming giant leading, thrusting
with their lances, tearing and rending with talons and fangs
and spurs.
Against that onslaught the dwarfs could not stand. They
raced for the shells; I heard Lugur shouting, menacingly -
and then Lakla's voice, pealing like a golden bugle of wrath.
"Go, Lugur!" she cried. "Go - that you and Yolara and
your Shining One may die together! Death for you, Lugur -
death for you all! Remember Lugur - death!"
There was a great noise within my head - no matter,
Lakla was here - Lakla here - but too late - Lugur had outplayed us; moss death nor dragon worm had frightened him
away - he had crept back to trap us - Lakla had come too
late - Larry was dead - Larry! But I had heard no banshee
wailing - and Larry had said he could not die without that
warning - no, Larry was not dead. So ran the turbulent current of my mind.
A horny arm lifted me; two enormous, oddly gentle saucer
eyes were staring into mine; my head rolled; I caught a
glimpse of the Golden Girl kneeling beside the O'Keefe.
The noise in my head grew thunderous - was carrying me
away on its thunder - swept me into soft, blind darkness.
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