The Moon Pool & Dwellers in the Mirage. Abraham Merritt
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drum in front of him and began to tap out some message. It was answered at length from far ahead by other tappings.
We swung into our way once more. The conifers began to thin. At our left and far below us I began to catch glimpses of the white river and of the dense forest on its opposite bank. The conifers ceased and we came out upon a rocky waste. Just ahead of us was an outthrust of cliff along whose base streamed the white river. The out-thrust cut off our view of what lay beyond. Here the pygmies halted and sent another drum message. The answer was startlingly close. Then around the edge of the cliff, half-way up, spear tips glinted. A group of little warriors stood there, scrutinizing us. They signalled, and we marched forward, over the waste.
There was a broad road up the side of the cliff, wide enough for six horses abreast. We climbed it. We came to the top, and I looked on Nansur Bridge and towered Karak.
Once, thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago, there had been a small mountain here, rising from the valley floor. Nanbu, the white river, had eaten it away — all except a vein of black adamantine rock.
Nanbu had fallen, fallen, steadily gnawing at the softer stone until at last it was spanned by a bridge that was like a rainbow of jet. That gigantic bow of black rock winged over the abyss with the curved flight of an arrow.
Its base, on each side, was a mesa — sculptured as Nansur had been from the original mount.
The mesa, at whose threshold I stood, was flat-topped. But on the opposite side of the river, thrusting up from the mesa-top, was a huge, quadrangular pile of the same black rock as the bow of Nansur. It looked less built from than cut out of that rock. It covered I judged about half a square mile. Towers and turrets both square and round sprang up from it. It was walled.
There was something about that immense ebon citadel that struck me with the same sense of fore-knowledge that I had felt when I had ridden into the ruins of the Gobi oasis. Also I thought it looked like that city of Dis which Dante glimpsed in Hades. And its antiquity hung over it like a sable garment.
Then I saw that Nansur was broken. Between the arch that winged from the side on which we stood and the arch that swept up and out from the side of the black citadel, there was a gap. It was as though a gigantic hammer had been swung down on the soaring bow, shattering it at its centre. I thought of Bifrost Bridge over which the Valkyries rode, bearing the souls of the warriors to Valhalla; and I thought it had been as great a blasphemy to have broken Nansur Bridge as it would have been to have broken Bifrost.
Around the citadel were other buildings, hundreds of them outside its walls — buildings of grey and brown stone, with gardens; they stretched over acres. And on each side of this city were fertile fields and flowering groves. There was a wide road stretching far, far away to cliffs shrouded in the green veils. I thought I saw the black mouth of a cavern at its end.
“Karak!” whispered Evalie. “And Nansur Bridge! And Oh, Leif, beloved . . . but my heart is heavy . . . so heavy!”
I hardly heard her, looking at Karak. Stealthy memories had begun to stir. I trod on them, and put my arm around Evalie. We went on, and now I saw why Karak had been built where it was, for on the far side the black citadel commanded both ends of the valley, and when Nansur had been unbroken, it had commanded this approach as well.
Suddenly I felt a feverish eagerness to run out upon Nansur and look down on Karak from the broken end. I was restive at the slowness of the pygmies. I started forward. The garrison came crowding around me, staring up at me, whispering to one another, studying me with their yellow eyes. Drums began to beat.
They were answered by trumpets from the citadel.
I walked ever more rapidly toward Nansur. The fever of eagerness had become consuming. I wanted to run. I pushed the golden pygmies aside impatiently. Jim’s voice came to me, warningly:
“Steady, Leif — steady!”
I paid no heed. I went out upon Nansur. Vaguely, I realized that it was wide and that low parapets guarded its edges, and that the stone was ramped for the tread of horses and the tread of marching men. And that if the white river had shaped it, the hands of men had finished its carving.
I reached the broken end. A hundred feet below me the white river raced smoothly. There were no serpents. A dull red body, slug-like, monstrous, lifted above the milky current; then another and another, round mouths gaping — the leeches of the Little People, on guard.
There was a broad plaza between the walls of the dark citadel and the end of the bridge. It was empty. Set in the walls were massive gates of bronze. I felt a curious quivering inside me, a choking in my throat. I forgot Evalie; I forgot Jim; I forgot everything in watching those gates.
There was a louder blaring of the trumpets, a clanging of bars, and the gates swung open. Through them galloped a company, led by two riders, one on a great black horse, the other upon a white. They raced across the plaza, dropped from their mounts and came walking over the bridge. They stood facing me across the fifty-foot gap.
The one who had ridden the black horse was the Witch-woman, and the other I knew for Tibur the Smith — Tibur the Laugher. I had no eyes just then for the Witch-woman or her followers. I had eyes only for Tibur.
He was a head shorter than I, but strength great or greater than mine spoke from the immense shoulders, the thick body. His red hair hung sleekly straight to his shoulders. He was red-bearded. His eyes were violet-blue and lines of laughter crinkled at their comers; and the wide, loose mouth was a laughing mouth. But the laughter which had graven those lines on Tibur’s face was not the kind to make the bearer merry.
He wore a coat of mail. At his left side hung a huge war hammer. He looked me over from head to foot and back again with narrowed, mocking eyes. If I had hated Tibur before I had seen him, it was nothing to what I felt now.
I looked from him to the Witch-woman. Her cornflower-blue eyes were drinking me in; absorbed, wondering — amused. She, too, wore a coat of mail, over which streamed her red braids. Those who were clustered behind Tibur and the Witch-woman were only a blur to me.
Tibur leaned forward.
“Welcome — Dwayanu!” he jeered. “What has brought you out of your skulking place? My challenge?”
“Was it you I heard baying yesterday?” I said. “Hai — you picked a safe distance ere you began to howl, red dog!”
There was a laugh from the group around the Witch-woman, and I saw that they were women, fair and red-haired like herself, and that there were two tall men with Tibur. But the Witch-woman said nothing, still drinking me in, a curious speculation in her eyes.
Tibur’s face grew dark. One of the men leaned, and whispered to him. Tibur nodded, and swaggered forward. He called out to me:
“Have you grown soft during your wanderings, Dwayanu? By the ancient custom, by the ancient test, we must learn that before we acknowledge you — great Dwayanu. Stand fast —”
His hand dropped to the battle-hammer at his side. He hurled it at me.
The hammer was hurtling through the air at me with the speed of a bullet — yet it seemed to come slowly. I could even see the thong that held it to Tibur’s arm slowly lengthening as it flew . . . .
Little doors were opening in my brain . . . the ancient test. . . . Hai! but I knew that play . . . I waited motionless as the ancient custom prescribed . . . but they should have given me a shield . . . no matter . . . how slowly the great sledge seemed to come . . . and it seemed to me that the hand I thrust out to catch it moved as slowly . . . .
I caught it. Its weight was all of twenty pounds, yet I caught it squarely, effortlessly, by its metal shaft. Hai! but did I not know the trick of that? . . . The little doors were opening faster now . . . and I knew another. With my other hand I gripped the thong that held the battle-hammer to Tibur’s arm and jerked him toward me.
The laugh was frozen on Tibur’s face. He tottered on Nansur’s broken edge. I heard behind me the piping shout of the pygmies . . . .
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