Shortly afterward a frightful pang pa.s.sed through Maskull"s heart, and he died immediately.
Krag turned his head around. "The night is really past at last, Nightspore.... The day is here."
Nightspore gazed long and earnestly at Maskull"s body. "Why was all this necessary?"
"Ask Crystalman," replied Krag sternly. "His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch--but I have a stronger... Maskull was his, but Nightspore is mine."
Chapter 21. MUSPEL
The fog thickened so that the two suns wholly disappeared, and all grew as black as night. Nightspore could no longer see his companion. The water lapped gently against the side of the island raft.
"You say the night is past," said Nightspore. "But the night is still here. Am I dead, or alive?"
"You are still in Crystalman"s world, but you belong to it no more. We are approaching Muspel."
Nightspore felt a strong, silent throbbing of the air--a rhythmical pulsation, in four-four time. "There is the drumming," he exclaimed.
"Do you understand it, or have you forgotten?"
"I half understand it, but I"m all confused."
"It"s evident Crystalman has dug his claws into you pretty deeply,"
said Krag. "The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its travelling through Crystalman"s atmosphere. His nature is rhythm as he loves to call it--or dull, deadly repet.i.tion, as I name it."
"I remember," said Nightspore, biting his nails in the dark.
The throbbing became audible; it now sounded like a distant drum. A small patch of strange light in the far distance, straight ahead of them, began faintly to illuminate the floating island and the gla.s.sy sea around it.
"Do all men escape from that ghastly world, or only I, and a few like me?" asked Nightspore.
"If all escaped, I shouldn"t sweat, my friend... There"s hard work, and anguish, and the risk of total death, waiting for us yonder."
Nightspore"s heart sank. "Have I not yet finished, then?"
"If you wish it. You have got through. But will you wish it?"
The drumming grew loud and painful. The light resolved itself into a tiny oblong of mysterious brightness in a huge wall of night. Krag"s grim and rocklike features were revealed.
"I can"t face rebirth," said Nightspore. "The horror of death is nothing to it."
"You will choose."
"I can do nothing. Crystalman is too powerful. I barely escaped with--my own soul."
"You are still stupid with Earth fumes, and see nothing straight," said Krag.
Nightspore made no reply, but seemed to be trying to recall something.
The water around them was so still, colourless, and transparent, that they scarcely seemed to be borne up by liquid matter at all. Maskull"s corpse had disappeared.
The drumming was now like the clanging of iron. The oblong patch of light grew much bigger; it burned, fierce and wild. The darkness above, below, and on either side of it, began to shape itself into the semblance of a huge, black wall, without bounds.
"Is that really a wall we are coming to?"
"You will soon find out. What you see is Muspel, and that light is the gate you have to enter."
Nightspore"s heart beat wildly.
"Shall I remember?" he muttered.
"Yes, you"ll remember."
"Accompany me, Krag, or I shall be lost."
"There is nothing for me to do in there. I shall wait outside for you."
"You are returning to the struggle?" demanded Nightspore, gnawing his fingertips.
"Yes."
"I dare not."
The thunderous clangor of the rhythmical beats struck on his head like actual blows. The light glared so vividly that he was no longer able to look at it. It had the startling irregularity of continuous lightning, but it possessed this further peculiarity--that it seemed somehow to give out not actual light, but emotion, seen as light. They continued to approach the wall of darkness, straight toward the door. The gla.s.slike water flowed right against it, its surface reaching up almost to the threshold.
They could not speak any more; the noise was too deafening.
In a few minutes they were before the gateway. Nightspore turned his back and hid his eyes in his two hands, but even then he was blinded by the light. So pa.s.sionate were his feelings that his body seemed to enlarge itself. At every frightful beat of sound, he quivered violently.
The entrance was doorless. Krag jumped onto the rocky platform and pulled Nightspore after him.
Once through the gateway, the light vanished. The rhythmical sound--blows totally ceased. Nightspore dropped his hands.... All was dark and quiet as an opened tomb. But the air was filled with grim, burning pa.s.sion, which was to light and sound what light itself is to opaque colour.
Nightspore pressed his hand to his heart. "I don"t know if I can endure it," he said, looking toward Krag. He felt his person far more vividly and distinctly than if he had been able to see him.
"Go in, and lose no time, Nightspore.... Time here is more precious than on earth. We can"t squander the minutes. There are terrible and tragic affairs to attend to, which won"t wait for us... Go in at once. Stop for nothing."
"Where shall I go to?" muttered Nightspore. "I have forgotten everything."
"Enter, enter! There is only one way. You can"t mistake it."
"Why do you bid me go in, if I am to come out again?"
"To have your wounds healed."
Almost before the words had left his mouth, Krag sprang back on to the island raft. Nightspore involuntarily started after him, but at once recovered himself and remained standing where he was. Krag was completely invisible; everything outside was black night.
The moment he had gone, a feeling shot up in Nightspore"s heart like a thousand trumpets.