CHAPTER VI. NORHALA OF THE LIGHTNINGS
We looked upon a vision of loveliness such, I think, as none has beheldsince Trojan Helen was a maid. At first all I could note were the eyes,clear as rain-washed April skies, crystal clear as some secret springsacred to crescented Diana. Their wide gray irises were flecked withgolden amber and sapphire--flecks that shone like clusters of littleaureate and azure stars.
Then with a strange thrill of wonder I saw that these tinyconstellations were not in the irises alone; that they clustered evenwithin the pupils--deep within them, like far-flung stars in the depthsof velvety, midnight heavens.
Whence had come those cold fires that had flared from them, Iwondered--more menacing, far more menacing, in their cold tranquillitythan the hot flames of wrath? These eyes were not perilous--no. Calmthey were and still--yet in them a shadow of interest flickered; a ghostof friendliness smiled.
Above them were level, delicately penciled brows of bronze. The lipswere coral crimson and--asleep. Sweet were those lips as ever masterpainter, dreaming his dream of the very soul of woman's sweetness,saw in vision and limned upon his canvas--and asleep, nor wistful forawakening.
A proud, straight nose; a broad low brow, and over it the masses of thetendriling tresses--tawny, lustrous topaz, cloudy, METALLIC. Like spunsilk of ruddy copper; and misty as the wisps of cloud that Soul'tze,Goddess of Sleep, sets in the skies of dawn to catch the wanderingdreams of lovers.
Down from the wondrous face melted the rounded column of her throatto merge into exquisite curves of shoulders and breasts, half revealedbeneath the swathing veils.
But upon that face, within her eyes, kissing her red lips and clothingher breasts, was something unearthly.
Something that came straight out of the still mysteries of thestar-filled spaces; out of the ordered, the untroubled, the illimitablevoid.
A passionless spirit that watched over the human passion in the scarletmouth, in every slumbering, sculptured line of her--guarding her againstits awakening.
Twilight calm dropping down from the sun sleep to still the restlessmountain tarn. Ishtar dreamlessly asleep within Nirvana.
Something not of this world we know--and yet of it as the winds of theCosmos are to the summer breeze, the ocean to the wave, the lightningsto the glowworm.
"She isn't--human," I heard Ventnor whispering at my ear. "Look at hereyes; look at the skin of her--"
Her skin was white as milk of pearls; gossamer fine, silken and creamy;translucent as though a soft brilliancy dwelt within it. Beside itRuth's fair skin was like some sun-and-wind-roughened country lass's toTitania's.
She studied us as though she were seeing for the first time beings ofher own kind. She spoke--and her voice was elfin distant, chiminglysweet like hidden little golden bells; filled with that tranquil, faroff spirit that was part of her--as though indeed a tiny golden chimeshould ring out from the silences, speak for them, find tongues forthem. The words were hesitating, halting as though the lips that utteredthem found speech strange--as strange as the clear eyes found ourimages.
And the words were Persian--purest, most ancient Persian.
"I am Norhala," the golden voice chimed forth, whispered down intosilence. "I am Norhala."
She shook her head impatiently. A hand stole forth from beneath herveils, slender, long-fingered with nails like rosy pearls; above thewrist was coiled a golden dragon with wicked little crimson eyes. Theslender white hand touched Ruth's head, turned it until the strange,flecked orbs looked directly into the misty ones of blue.
Long they gazed--and deep. Then she who had named herself Norhala thrustout a finger, touched the tear that hung upon Ruth's curled lashes,regarded it wonderingly.
Something of recognition, of memory, seemed to awaken within her.
"You are--troubled?" she asked with that halting effort.
Ruth shook her head.
"THEY--do not trouble you?"
She pointed to the huddled heaps strewing the hollow. And then I sawwhence the light which had streamed from her great eyes came. For thelittle azure and golden stars paled, trembled, then flashed out likegalaxies of tiny, clustered silver suns.
From that weird radiance Ruth shrank, affrighted.
"No--no," she gasped. "I weep for--HIM."
She pointed where Chiu-Ming lay, a brown blotch at the edge of theshattered men.
"For--him?" There was puzzlement in the faint voice. "For--that? Butwhy?"
She looked at Chiu-Ming--and I knew that to her the sight of thecrumpled form carried no recognition of the human, nothing of kin toher. There was a faint wonder in her eyes, no longer light-filled, whenat last she turned back to us. Long she considered us.
"Now," she broke the silence, "now something stirs within me that itseems has long been sleeping. It bids me take you with me. Come!"
Abruptly she turned from us, glided to the crevice. We looked at eachother, seeking council, decision.
"Chiu-Ming," Drake spoke. "We can't leave him like that. At least let'scover him from the vultures."
"Come." The woman had reached the mouth of the fissure.
"I'm afraid! Oh, Martin--I'm afraid." Ruth reached little tremblinghands to her tall brother.
"Come!" Norhala called again. There was an echo of harshness, aclanging, peremptory and inexorable, in the chiming.
Ventnor shrugged his shoulders.
"Come, then," he said.
With one last look at the Chinese, the lammergeiers already circlingabout him, we walked to the crevice. Norhala waited, silent, broodinguntil we passed her; then glided behind us.
Before we had gone ten paces I saw that the place was no fissure. Itwas a tunnel, a passage hewn by human hands, its walls covered with thewrithing dragon lines, its roof the mountain.
The swathed woman swept by us. Swiftly we followed her. Far, far aheadwas a wan gleaming. It quivered, a faintly shimmering, ghostly curtain,a full mile away.
Now it was close; we passed through it and were out of the tunnel.Before us stretched a narrow gorge, a sword slash in the body of thetowering giant under whose feet the tunnel crept. High above was theribbon of the sky.
The sides were dark, but it came to me that here were no trees, noverdure of any kind. Its floor was strewn with boulders, fantasticallyshaped, almost indistinguishable in the fast closing dark.
Twin monoliths bulwarked the passage end; the gigantic stones wereleaning, crumbling. Fissures radiated from the opening, like deepwrinkles in the rock, showing where earth warping, range pressure, hadlong been working to close this hewn way.
"Stop," Norhala's abrupt, golden note halted us; and again through theclear eyes I saw the white starshine flash.
"It may be well--" She spoke as though to herself. "It may be well toclose this way. It is not needed--"
Her voice rang out again, vibrant, strangely disquieting, harmonious.Murmurous chanting it was at first, rhythmic and low; ripples andflutings, tones and progressions utterly unknown to me; unfamiliar,abrupt, and alien themes that kept returning, droppings of crystal-clearjewels of sound, golden tollings--and all ordered, mathematical,GEOMETRIC, even as had been the gestures of the shapes; Lilliputians ofthe ruins, Brobdignagian of the haunted hollow.
What was it? I had it--IT WAS THOSE GESTURES TRANSFORMED INTO SOUND!
There was a movement down by the tunnel mouth. It grew more rapid,seemed to vibrate with her song. Within the darkness there werelittle flashes; glimmerings of light began to come and go--likelittle awakenings of eyes of soft, jeweled flames, like giant gorgeousfireflies; flashes of cloudy amber, gleam of rose, sparkles of diamondsand of opals, of emeralds and of rubies--blinking, gleaming.
A shimmering mist drew down around them--a swift and swirling mist.It thickened, was shot with slender shuttled threads like cobweb,coruscating strands of light.
The shining threads grew thicker, pulsed, were spangled with tiny vividsparklings. They ran together, condensed--and all this in an instant, ina tenth of the time it takes m
e to write it.
From fiery mist and gemmed flashes came bolt upon bolt of lightning. Thecliff face leaped out, a cataract of green flame. The fissures widened,the monoliths trembled, fell.
In the wake of that dazzling brilliancy came utter blackness. I openedmy blinded eyes; slowly the flecks of green fire cleared. A faintlambency still clung to the cliff. By it I saw that the tunnel's mouthhad vanished, had been sealed--where it had gaped were only tons ofshattered rock.
Came a rushing past us as of great bodies; something grazed my hand,something whose touch was like that of warm metal--but metal throbbingwith life. They rushed by--and whispered down into silence.
"Come!" Norhala flitted ahead of us, a faintly luminous shape in thedarkness. Swiftly we followed. I found Ruth beside me; felt her handgrip my wrist.
"Walter," she whispered, "Walter--she isn't human!"
"Nonsense," I muttered. "Nonsense, Ruth. What do you think she is--agoddess, a spirit of the Himalayas? She's as human as you or I."
"No." Even in the darkness I could sense the stubborn shake of her curlyhead. "Not all human. Or how could she have commanded those things? Orhave summoned the lightnings that blasted the tunnel's mouth? And herskin and hair--they're too WONDERFUL, Walter.
"Why, she makes me look--look coarse. And the light that hovers abouther--why, it is by that light we are making our way. And when shetouched me--I--I glowed--all through.
"Human, yes--but there is something else in her--something stronger thanhumanness, something that--makes it sleep!" she added astonishingly.
The ground was level as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmaticglow--emanation, it seemed to me--from Norhala which was as a lightfor us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky hadvanished--seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars.
Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement; soft stirringall about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved aninvisible host.
"There's something moving all about us--going with us," Ruth echoed mythought.
"It's the wind," I said, and paused--for there was no wind.
From the blackness before us came a succession of curious, muffledclickings, like a smothered mitrailleuse. The luminescence that clothedNorhala brightened, deepening the darkness.
"Cross!"
She pointed into the void ahead; then, as we started forward, thrustout a hand to Ruth, held her back. Drake and Ventnor drew close to them,questioningly, anxious. But I stepped forward, out of the dim gleaming.
Before me were two cubes; one I judged in that uncertain light to besix feet high, the other half its bulk. From them a shaft of pale-bluephosphorescence pierced the murk. They stood, the smaller pressedagainst the side of the larger, for all the world like a pair of immensenursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child.
As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbrokenspan of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of thedragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped atmy very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrousgirder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came thefaint whisper of rushing waters.
I faltered. For these were the blocks that had formed the body of themonster of the hollow, its flailing arms. The thing that had played somurderously with the armored men.
And now had shaped itself into this anchored, quiescent bridge.
"Do not fear." It was the woman speaking, softly, as one would reassurea child. "Ascend. Cross. They obey me."
I stepped firmly upon the first block, climbed to the second. Thespan stretched, sharp edged, smooth, only a slender, shimmering linerevealing where each great cube held fast to the other.
I walked at first slowly, then with ever-increasing confidence, for upfrom the surface streamed a guiding, a holding force, that was like ahost of little invisible hands, steadying me, keeping firm my feet. Ilooked down; the myriads of enigmatic eyes were staring, staring upat me from deep within. They fascinated me; I felt my pace slowing; avertigo seized me. Resolutely I dragged my gaze up and ahead; marchedon.
From the depths came more clearly the sound of the waters. Now therewere but a few feet more of the bridge before me. I reached its end,dropped my feet over, felt them touch a smaller cube, and descended.
Over the span came Ventnor. He was leading his laden pony. He hadbandaged its eyes so that it could not look upon the narrow way it wastreading. And close behind, a hand resting reassuringly upon its flank,strode Drake, swinging along carelessly. The little beast ambled alongserenely, sure-footed as all its mountain kind, and docile to darknessand guidance.
Then, an arm about Ruth, floated Norhala. Now she was beside us; droppedher arm from Ruth; glided past us. On for a hundred yards or more wewent, and then she drew us a little toward the unseen canyon wall.
She stood before us, shielding us. One golden call she sent.
I looked back into the darkness. Something like an enormous, dimlyshimmering rod was raising itself. Higher it rose and higher. Now itstood, upright, a slender towering pillar, a gigantic slim figure whosetip pointed a full hundred feet in the air.
Then slowly it inclined itself toward us; drew closer, closer tothe ground; touched and lay there for an instant inert. Abruptly itvanished.
But well I knew what I had seen. The span over which we had passed hadraised itself even as had the baby bridge of the fortress; had lifteditself across the chasm and dropping itself upon the hither verge haddisintegrated into its units; was following us.
A bridge of metal that could build itself--and break itself. A thinking,conscious metal bridge! A metal bridge with volition--with mind--thatwas following us.
There sighed from behind a soft, sustained wailing; rapidly it nearedus. A wanly glimmering shape drew by; halted. It was like a rigidserpent cut from a gigantic square bar of cold blue steel.
Its head was a pyramid, a tetrahedron; its length vanished in thefurther darkness. The head raised itself, the blocks that formed itsneck separating into open wedges like a Brobdignagian replica of thosejointed, fantastic, little painted reptiles the Japanese toy-makers cutfrom wood.
It seemed to regard us--mockingly. The pointed head dropped--past usstreamed the body. Upon it other pyramids clustered--like the spikesthat guarded the back of the nightmare Brontosaurus. Its end cameswiftly into sight--its tail another pyramid twin to its head.
It FLIRTED by--gaily; vanished.
I had thought the span must disintegrate to follow--and it did notneed to! It could move as a COMPOSITE as well as in UNITS. Moveintelligently, consciously--as the Smiting Thing had moved.
"Come!" Norhala's command checked my thoughts; we fell in behind her.Looking up I caught the friendly sparkle of a star; knew the cleft waswidening.
The star points grew thicker. We stepped out into a valley small asthat hollow from which we had fled; ringed like it with heaven-touchingsummits. I could see clearly. The place was suffused with a softradiance as though into it the far, bright stars were pouring all theirrays, filling it as a cup with their pale flames.
It was luminous as the Alaskan valleys when on white arctic nights theyare lighted, the Athabascans believe, by the gleaming spears of huntinggods. The walls of the valley seemed to be drawn back into infinitedistances.
The shimmering mists that had nimbused Norhala had vanished--or merginginto the wan gleaming had become one with it.
I stared straight at her, striving to clarify in my own clouded thoughtwhat it was that I had sensed as inhuman--never of OUR world or itspeoples. Yet this conviction came not because of the light that hadhovered about her, nor of her summonings of the lightnings; nor evenof her control of those--things--which had smitten the armored men andspanned for us the abyss.
All of that I was certain lay in the domain of the explicable, could beresolved into normality once the basic facts were gained.
Suddenly, I knew. Side by side with what we term the human there dweltwit
hin this woman an actual consciousness foreign to earth, passionless,at least as we know passion, ordered, mathematical--an emanation of theeternal law which guides the circling stars.
This it was that had moved in the gestures which had evoked thelightnings. This it was that had spoken in the song which were thosegestures transformed into sound. This it was that something greater thanmy consciousness knew and accepted.
Something which shared, no--that reigned, serene and untroubled, uponthe throne of her mind; something utterly UNCOMPREHENDING, utterlyunconscious OF, cosmically blind TO all human emotion; that spreaditself like a veil over her own consciousness; that PLATED herthought--that was a strange word--why had it come to me--something thathad set its mark upon her like--like--the gigantic claw print on thepoppied field, the little print of the dragoned hall.
I caught at my mind, whirling I thought then in the grip of fantasy;strove by taking minute note of her to bring myself back to normal.
Her veils had slipped from her, baring her neck, her arms, the rightshoulder. Under the smooth throat a buckle of dull gold held the sheer,diaphanous folds of the pale amber silk which swathed the high androunded breasts, hiding no goddess curve of them.
A wide and golden girdle clasped the waist, covered the rounded hipsand thighs. The long, narrow, and high-arched feet were shod with goldensandals, laced just below the rounded knees with flat turquoise studdedbands.
And shining through the amber folds, as glowing above them, the miracleof her body.
The dream of master sculptor given life. A goddess of earth's youthreborn in Himalayan wilds.
She raised her eyes; broke the long silence.
"Now being with you," she said dreamily, "there waken within me oldthoughts, old wisdom, old questioning--all that I had forgotten andthought forgotten forever--"
The golden voice died--she who had spoken was gone from us, like thefading out of a phantom; like the breaking of a film.
A flicker shot over the skies, another and another. A brilliant ray ofintense green like that of a distant searchlight swept to the zenith,hung for a moment and withdrew. Up came pouring the lances and thestreamers of the aurora; faster and faster, banners and slender shiningspears of green and iridescent blues and smoky, glistening reds.
The valley sprang into full view.
I felt Ventnor's grip upon my wrist. I followed his pointing finger.Into the valley from the right ran a black spur of rock, half a milefrom us, fifty feet high.
Upon its crest stood--Norhala!
Her arms were lifted to the sparkling sky; her braids were loosened--andas the fires of the aurora rose and fell, raced and were still, thesilken cloud of her tresses swirled and eddied with them. Little cloudsof coruscations danced gaily like fireflies about and through it.
And all her bared body was outlined in living light, glowed and throbbedwith light--light filled her like a vessel, she bathed in it. She thrustarms through the streaming, flaming locks; held them out from her,prisoned. She swayed slowly, rhythmically; like a faint, golden chimingcame the echo of her song.
Abruptly around her, half circling her on the black spur, gleamedmyriads of gem fires. Flares and flames of pale emerald, steady glowingof flame rubies, glints and lambencies of deepest sapphire, of wansapphire, flickering opalescences, irised glitterings. A moment theygleamed. Then from them came bolt upon bolt of lightning--lightning thatdarted upon the lovely shape swaying there; lightnings that fell uponher, broke and dashed, cascading, from her radiant body.
The lightnings bathed her--she bathed in them.
The skies were covered by a swift mist. The aurora was veiled.
The valley filled with a palely shimmering radiance which dropped likeveils upon it, hiding all within it. Hiding within fold upon luminousfold--Norhala!