CHAPTER XXXV
"Larry - Farewell!"
"MY HEART, Larry - " It was the handmaiden's murmur.
"My heart feels like a bird that is flying from a nest of
sorrow."
We were pacing down the length of the bridge, guards of
the Akka beside us, others following with those companies of
ladala that had rushed to aid us; in front of us the bandaged
Rador swung gently within a litter; beside him, in another,
lay Nak, the frog-king - much less of him than there had
been before the battle began, but living.
Hours had passed since the terror I have just related. My
first task had been to search for Throckmartin and his wife
among the fallen multitudes strewn thick as autumn leaves
along the flying arch of stone, over the cavern ledge, and
back, back as far as the eye could reach.
At last, Lakla and Larry helping, we found them. They
lay close to the bridge-end, not parted - locked tight in each
other's arms, pallid face to face, her hair streaming over his
breast! As though when that unearthly life the Dweller had
set within them passed away, their own had come back for
one fleeting instant - and they had known each other, and
clasped before kindly death had taken them.
"Love is stronger than all things." The handmaiden was
weeping softly. "Love never left them. Love was stronger
than the Shining One. And when its evil fled, love went with
them - wherever souls go."
Of Stanton and Thora there was no trace; nor, after our
discovery of those other two, did I care to look more. They
were dead - and they were free.
We buried Throckmartin and Edith beside Olaf in Lakla's
bower. But before the body of my old friend was placed
within the grave I gave it a careful and sorrowful examination. The skin was firm and smooth, but cold; not the cold of
death, but with a chill that set my touching fingers tingling
unpleasantly. The body was bloodless; the course of veins
and arteries marked by faintly indented white furrows, as
though their walls had long collapsed. Lips, mouth, even the
tongue, was paper white. There was no sign of dissolution as
we know it; no shadow or stain upon the marble surface.
Whatever the force that, streaming from the Dweller or impregnating its lair, had energized the dead-alive, it was barrier against putrescence of any kind; that at least was certain.
But it was not barrier against the poison of the Medusae,
for, our sad task done, and looking down upon the waters, I
saw the pale forms of the Dweller's hordes dissolving, vanishing into the shifting glories of the gigantic moons sailing
down upon them from every quarter of the Sea of Crimson.
While the frog-men, those late levies from the farthest forests, were clearing bridge and ledge of cavern of the litter of
the dead, we listened to a leader of the ladala. They had risen,
even as the messenger had promised Rador. Fierce had been
the struggle in the gardened city by the silver waters with
those Lugur and Yolara bad left behind to garrison it. Deadly
had been the slaughter of the fair-haired, reaping the harvest of hatred they had been sowing so long. Not without
a pang of regret did I think of the beautiful, gaily malicious
elfin women destroyed - evil though they may have been.
The ancient city of Lara was a charnel. Of all the rulers
not twoscore had escaped, and these into regions of peril
which to describe as sanctuary would be mockery. Nor had
the ladala fared so well. Of all the men and women, for
women as well as men had taken their part in the swift war,
not more than a tenth remained alive.
And the dancing motes of light in the silver air were
thick, thick - they whispered.
They told us of the Shining One rushing through the Veil,
cometlike, its hosts streaming behind it, raging with it, in
ranks that seemed interminable!
Of the massacre of the priests and priestesses in the Cyclopean temple; of the flashing forth of the summoning lights by
unseen hands - followed by the tearing of the rainbow curtain, by colossal shatterings of the radiant cliffs; the vanishing behind their debris of all trace of entrance to the haunted
place wherein the hordes of the Shining One had slaved -
the sealing of the lair!
Then, when the tempest of hate had ended in seething
Lara, how, thrilled with victory, armed with the weapons of
those they had slain, they had lifted the Shadow, passed
through the Portal, met and slaughtered the fleeing remnants
of Yolara's men - only to find the tempest stilled here, too.
But of Marakinoff they had seen nothing! Had the Russian
escaped, I wondered, or was he lying out there among the
dead?
But now the ladala were calling upon Lakla to come with
them, to govern them.
"I don't want to, Larry darlin'," she told him. "I want to
go out with you to Ireland. But for a time - I think the Three
would have us remain and set that place in order."
The O'Keefe was bothered about something else than the
government of Muria.
"If they've killed off all the priests, who's to marry us,
heart of mine?" he worried. "None of those Siya and Siyana
rites, no matter what," he added hastily.
"Marry!" cried the handmaiden incredulously. "Marry us?
Why, Larry dear, we ARE married!"
The O'Keefe's astonishment was complete; his jaw
dropped; collapse seemed imminent.
"We are?" he gasped. "When?" he stammered fatuously.
"Why, when the Mother drew us together before her;
when she put her hands on our heads after we had made the
promise! Didn't you understand that?" asked the handmaiden wonderingly.
He looked at her, into the purity of the clear golden eyes,
into the purity of the soul that gazed out of them; all his
own great love transfiguring his keen face.
"An' is that enough for you, mavourneen?" he whispered
humbly.
"Enough?" The handmaiden's puzzlement was complete,
profound. "Enough? Larry darlin', what MORE could we ask?"
He drew a deep breath, clasped her close.
"Kiss the bride, Doc!" cried the O'Keefe. And for the
third and, soul's sorrow! the last time, Lakla dimpling and
blushing, I thrilled to the touch of her soft, sweet lips.
Quickly were our preparations for departure made. Rador,
conscious, his immense vitality conquering fast his wounds,
was to be borne ahead of us. And when all was done, Lakla,
Larry, and I made our way up to the scarlet stone that was
the doorway to the chamber of the Three. We knew, of
course, that they had gone, following, no doubt, those whose
eyes I had seen in the curdled mists, and who, coming to the
aid of the Three at last from whatever mysterious place that
was their home, had thrown their strength with them against
the Shining One. Nor were we wrong. When the great slab
rolled away, no torrents of opalescence came rushing out
upon us. The vast dome was dim, tenantless; its curved walls
that had cascaded Light shone now but faintly; the dais was
empty; its wall of moon-flame radiance gone.
A little time we stood, heads bent, reverent, our hearts
filled with gratitude and love - yes, and with pity for that
strange trinity so alien to us and yet so near; children even
as we, though so unlike us, of our same Mother Earth.
And what I wondered had been the secret of that promise
they had wrung from their handmaiden and from Larry. And
whence, if what the Three had said had been all true -
whence had come their power to avert the sacrifice at the
very verge of its consummation?
"Love is stronger than all things!" had said Lakla.
Was it that they had needed, must have, the force which
dwells within love, within willing sacrifice, to strengthen
their own power and to enable them to destroy the evil,
glorious Thing so long shielded by their own love? Did the
thought of sacrifice, the will toward abnegation, have to be
as strong as the eternals, unshaken by faintest thrill of hope,
before the Three could make of it their key to unlock the
Dweller's guard and strike through at its life?
Here was a mystery - a mystery indeed! Lakla softly
closed the crimson stone. The mystery of the red dwarf's
appearance was explained when we discovered a half-dozen
of the water coria moored in a small cove not far from
where the Sekta flashed their heads of living bloom. The
dwarfs had borne the shallops with them, and from somewhere beyond the cavern ledge had launched them unperceived; stealing up to the farther side of the island and risking all in one bold stroke. Well, Lugur, no matter what he
held of wickedness, held also high courage.
The cavern was paved with the dead-alive, the Akka carrying them out by the hundreds, casting them into the waters.
Through the lane down which the Dweller had passed we
went as quickly as we could, coming at last to the space
where the coria waited. And not long after we swung past
where the shadow had hung and hovered over the shining
depths of the Midnight Pool.
Upon Lakla's insistence we passed on to the palace of
Lugur, not to Yolara's - I do not know why, but go there
then she would not. And within one of its columned rooms,
maidens of the black-haired folks, the wistfulness, the fear,
all gone from their sparkling eyes, served us.
There came to me a huge desire to see the destruction
they had told us of the Dweller's lair; to observe for myself
whether it was not possible to make a way of entrance and
to study its mysteries.
I spoke of this, and to my surprise both the handmaiden
and the O'Keefe showed an almost embarrassed haste to
acquiesce in my hesitant suggestion.
"Sure," cried Larry, "there's lots of time before night!"
He caught himself sheepishly; cast a glance at Lakla.
"I keep forgettin' there's no night here," he mumbled.
"What did you say, Larry?" asked she.
"I said I wish we were sitting in our home in Ireland,
watching the sun go down," he whispered to her. Vaguely I
wondered why she blushed.
But now I must hasten. We went to the temple, and here
at least the ghastly litter of the dead had been cleaned away.
We passed through the blue-caverned space, crossed the
narrow arch that spanned the rushing sea stream, and, ascending, stood again upon the ivoried pave at the foot of the
frowning, towering amphitheatre of jet.
Across the Silver Waters there was sign of neither Web of
Rainbows nor colossal pillars nor the templed lips that I had
seen curving out beneath the Veil when the Shining One
had swirled out to greet its priestess and its voice and to
dance with the sacrifices. There was but a broken and rent
mass of the radiant cliffs against whose base the lake lapped.
Long I looked - and turned away saddened. Knowing even
as I did what the irised curtain had hidden, still it was as
though some thing of supernal beauty and wonder had been
swept away, never to be replaced; a glamour gone for ever;
a work of the high gods destroyed.
"Let's go back," said Larry abruptly.
I dropped a little behind them to examine a bit of carving
- and, after all, they did not want me. I watched them pacing
slowly ahead, his arm around her, black hair close to bronzegold ringlets. Then I followed. Half were they over the
bridge when through the roar of the imprisoned stream I
heard my name called softly.
"Goodwin! Dr. Goodwin!"
Amazed, I turned. From behind the pedestal of a carved
group slunk - Marakinoff! My premonition had been right.
Some way he had escaped, slipped through to here. He held
his hands high, came forward cautiously.
"I am finished," he whispered - "Done! I don't care what
THEY'LL do to me." He nodded toward the handmaiden and
Larry, now at the end of the bridge and passing on, oblivious
of all save each other. He drew closer. His eyes were sunken,
burning, mad; his face etched with deep lines, as though a
graver's tool had cut down through it. I took a step backward.
A grin, like the grimace of a fiend, blasted the Russian's
visage. He threw himself upon me, his hands clenching at
my throat!
"Larry!" I yelled - and as I spun around under the shock
of his onslaught, saw the two turn, stand paralyzed, then race
toward me.
"But YOU'LL carry nothing out of here!" shrieked Marakinoff. "No!"
My foot, darting out behind me, touched vacancy. The
roaring of the racing stream deafened me. I felt its mists
about me; threw myself forward.
I was falling - falling - with the Russian's hand strangling
me. I struck water, sank; the hands that gripped my throat
relaxed for a moment their clutch. I strove to writhe loose;
felt that I was being hurled with dreadful speed on - full
realization came - on the breast of that racing torrent dropping from some far ocean cleft and rushing - where? A little
time, a few breathless instants, I struggled with the devil who
clutched me - inflexibly, indomitably.
Then a shrieking as of all the pent winds of the universe
in my ears - blackness!
Consciousness returned slowly, agonizedly.
"Larry!" I groaned. "Lakla!"
A brilliant light was glowing through my closed lids. It
hurt. I opened my eyes, closed them with swords and needles
of dazzling pain shooting through them. Again I opened
them cautiously. It was the sun!
I staggered to my feet. Behind me was a shattered wall of
basalt monoliths, hewn and squared. Before me was the Pacific, smooth and blue and smiling.
And not far away, cast up on the strand even as I had
been, was - Marakinoff!
He lay there, broken and dead indeed. Yet all the waters
through which we had passed - not even the waters of death
themselves - could wash from his face the grin of triumph.
With the last of my strength I dragged the body from the
strand and pushed it out into the waves. A little billow ran
up, coiled about it, and carried it away, ducking and bending. Another seized it, and another, playing with it. It floated
from my sight - that which had been Marakinoff, with all his
schemes to turn our fair world into an undreamed-of-hell.
My strength began to come back to me. I found a thicket
and slept; slept it must have been for many hours, for when
I again awakened the dawn was rosing the east. I will not tell
my sufferings. Suffice it to say that I found a spring and some
fruit, and just before dusk had recovered enough to writhe
up to the top of the wall and discover where I was.
The place was one of the farther islets of the Nan-Matal.
To the north I caught the shadows of the ruins of NanTauach, where was the moon door, black against the sky.
Where was the moon door - which, someway, somehow, I
must reach, and quickly.
At dawn of the next day I got together driftwood and
bound it together in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift paddle, I set forth for NanTauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach
between the ruined sea-gates and, creeping up the giant steps,
made my way to the inner enclosure.
And at its opening I stopped, and the tears ran streaming
down my cheeks while I wept aloud with sorrow and with
disappointment and with weariness.
For the great wall in which had been set the pale slab
whose threshold we had crossed to the land of the Shining
One lay shattered and broken. The monoliths were heaped
about; the wall had fallen, and about them shone a film of
water, half covering them.
There was no moon door!
Dazed and weeping, I drew closer, climbed upon their outlying fragments. I looked out only upon the sea. There had
been a great subsidence, an earth shock, perhaps, tilting
downward all that side - the echo, little doubt, of that cataclysm which had blasted the Dweller's lair!
The little squared islet called Tau, in which were hidden
the seven globes, had entirely disappeared. Upon the waters
there was no trace of it.
The moon door was gone; the passage to the Moon Pool
was closed to me - its chamber covered by the sea!
There was no road to Larry - nor to Lakla!
And there, for me, the world ended.
THE END
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