Over the sky above the canyon streaked a serpentine chain of lightnings.
A sudden cyclonic gust swept the cleft, whirling us like leaves toward the Pit.
I threw myself upon my face, clutching at the smooth rock. A volley of thunder burst--but not the thunder of the Metal Monster or its Hordes; no, the bellowing of the levins of our own earth.
And the wind was cold; it bathed the burning skin; laved the fevered lungs.
Again the sky was split by the lightnings. And roaring down from it in solid sheets came the rain.
From the Pit arose a hissing as though within it raged Babylonian Tiamat, Mother of Chaos, serpent dweller in the void; Midgard-snake of the ancient Norse holding in her coils the world.
Buffeted by wind, beaten down by rain, clinging to each other like drowning men, Ventnor and I pushed on to the elfin globe. The light was dying fast. By it we saw Drake pa.s.s within the portal with his burden.
The light became embers; it went out; blackness clasped us. Guided by the lightnings, we beat our way to the door; pa.s.sed through it.
In the electric glare we saw Drake bending over Ruth. In it I saw a slide draw over the open portal through which shrieked the wind, streamed the rain.
As though its crystal panel was moved by unseen, gentle hands, the portal closed; the tempest shut out.
We dropped beside Ruth upon a pile of silken stuffs--awed, marveling, trembling with pity and--thanksgiving.
For we knew--each of us knew with an absolute definiteness as we crouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows with which the lightnings filled the blue globe--that the Metal Monster was dead.
Slain by itself!
CHAPTER x.x.x. BURNED OUT
Ruth sighed and stirred. By the glare of the lightnings, now almost continuous, we saw that her rigidity, and in fact all the puzzling cataleptic symptoms, had disappeared. Her limbs relaxed, her skin faintly flushed, she lay in deepest but natural slumber undisturbed by the incessant cannonading of the thunder under which the walls of the blue globe shuddered. Ventnor pa.s.sed through the curtains of the central hall; he returned with one of Norhala"s cloaks; covered the girl with it.
An overwhelming sleepiness took possession of me, a weariness ineffable.
Nerve and brain and muscle suddenly relaxed, went slack and numb.
Without a struggle I surrendered to an overpowering stupor and cradled deep in its heart ceased consciously to be.
When my eyes unclosed the chamber of the moonstone walls was filled with a silvery, crepuscular light. I heard the murmuring and laughing of running water, the play, I lazily realized, of the fountained pool.
I lay for whole minutes unthinking, luxuriating in the sense of tension gone and of security; lay steeped in the aftermath of complete rest.
Memory flooded me.
Quietly I sat up; Ruth still slept, breathing peacefully beneath the cloak, one white arm stretched over the shoulder of Drake--as though in her sleep she had drawn close to him.
At her feet lay Ventnor, as deep in slumber as they. I arose and tip-toed over to the closed door.
Searching, I found its key; a cupped indentation upon which I pressed.
The crystalline panel slipped back; it was moved, I suppose, by some mechanism of counterbalances responding to the weight of the hand.
It must have been some vibration of the thunder which had loosed that mechanism and had closed the panel upon the heels of our entrance--so I thought--then seeing again in memory that uncanny, deliberate shutting was not at all convinced that it had been the thunder.
I looked out. How many hours the sun had been up there was no means of knowing.
The sky was low and slaty gray; a fine rain was falling. I stepped out.
The garden of Norhala was a wreckage of uprooted and splintered trees and torn ma.s.ses of what had been blossoming verdure.
The gateway of the precipices beyond which lay the Pit was hidden in the webs of the rain. Long I gazed down the canyon--and longingly; striving to picture what the Pit now held; eager to read the riddles of the night.
There came from the valley no sound, no movement, no light.
I reentered the blue globe and paused on the threshold--staring into the wide and wondering eyes of Ruth bolt upright in her silken bed with Norhala"s cloak clutched to her chin like a suddenly awakened and startled child. As she glimpsed me she stretched out her hand. Drake, wide awake on the instant, leaped to his feet, his hand jumping to his pistol.
"d.i.c.k!" called Ruth, her voice tremulous, sweet.
He swung about, looked deep into the clear and fearless brown eyes in which--with leaping heart I realized it--was throned only that spirit which was Ruth"s and Ruth"s alone; Ruth"s clear unshadowed eyes glad and shy and soft with love.
"d.i.c.k!" she whispered, and held soft arms out to him. The cloak fell from her. He swung her up. Their lips met.
Upon them, embraced, the wakening eyes of Ventnor dwelt; they filled with relief and joy, nor was there lacking in them a certain amus.e.m.e.nt.
She drew from Drake"s arms, pushed him from her, stood for a moment shakily, with covered eyes.
"Ruth," called Ventnor softly.
"Oh!" she cried. "Oh, Martin--I forgot--" She ran to him, held him tight, face hidden in his breast. His hand rested on the cl.u.s.tering brown curls, tenderly.
"Martin." She raised her face to him. "Martin, it"s GONE! I"m--ME again!
All ME! What happened? Where"s Norhala?"
I started. Did she not know? Of course, lying bound as she had in the vanished veils, she could have seen nothing of the stupendous tragedy enacted beyond them--but had not Ventnor said that possessed by the inexplicable obsession evoked by the weird woman Ruth had seen with her eyes, thought with her mind?
And had there not been evidence that in her body had been echoed the torments of Norhala"s? Had she forgotten? I started to speak--was checked by Ventnor"s swift, warning glance.
"She"s--over in the Pit," he answered her quietly. "But do you remember nothing, little sister?"
"There"s something in my mind that"s been rubbed out," she replied.
"I remember the City of Cherkis--and your torture, Martin--and my torture--"
Her face whitened; Ventnor"s brow contracted anxiously. I knew for what he watched--but Ruth"s shamed face was all human; on it was no shadow nor trace of that alien soul which so few hours since had threatened us.
"Yes," she nodded, "I remember that. And I remember how Norhala repaid them. I remember that I was glad, fiercely glad, and then I was tired--so tired. And then--I come to the rubbed-out place," she ended perplexedly.
Deliberately, almost ba.n.a.lly had I not realized his purpose, he changed the subject. He held her from him at arm"s length.
"Ruth!" he exclaimed, half mockingly, half reprovingly. "Don"t you think your morning negligee is just a little scanty even for this G.o.dforsaken corner of the earth?"
Lips parted in sheer astonishment, she looked at him. Then her eyes dropped to her bare feet, her dimpled knees. She clasped her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; rosy red turned all her fair skin.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Oh!" And hid from Drake and me behind the tall figure of her brother.