Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 9. Abraham Merritt
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Afar away I saw the gleaming serpent still at play—still writhing among, still obliterating the few score scattered fugitives that some way, somehow, had slipped by the Destroying Things.
We halted. For one long moment Norhala looked upon the drooping body of him upon whom she had let fall this mighty vengeance.
Then the metal arm that held Cherkis whirled. Thrown from it, the cloaked form flew like a great blue bat. It fell upon the flattened mound that had once been the proud crown of his city. A blue blot upon desolation the broken body of Cherkis lay.
A black speck appeared high in the sky; grew fast—the lammergeier.
"I have left carrion for you—after all!" cried Norhala.
With an ebon swirling of wings the vulture dropped beside the blue heap —thrust in it its beak.
XVII
"THE DRUMS OF DESTINY"
Slowly we descended that mount of desolation; lingeringly, as though the brooding eyes of Norhala were not yet sated with destruction. Of human life, of green life, of life of any kind there was none.
Man and tree, woman and flower, babe and bud, palace, temple and home —Norhala had stamped flat. She had crushed them within the rock —even as she had promised.
The tremendous tragedy had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the red brand across Ventnor's forehead.
In his eyes and in Drake's I saw reflected the horror I knew was in my own. But in the eyes of Ruth was none of this—sternly, coldly triumphant, indifferent to its piteousness as Norhala herself, she scanned the waste that less than an hour since had been a place of living beauty.
I felt a shock of repulsion. After all, those who had been destroyed so ruthlessly could not ALL have been wholly evil. Yet mother and blossoming maid, youth and oldster, all the pageant of humanity within the great walls were now but lines within the stone. According to their different lights, it came to me, there had been in Ruszark no greater number of the wicked than one could find in any great city of our own civilization.
From Norhala, of course, I looked for no perception of any of this. But from Ruth—
My reaction grew; the pity long withheld racing through me linked with a burning anger, a hatred for this woman who had been the directing soul of that catastrophe.
My gaze fell again upon the red brand. I saw that it was a deep indentation as though a thong had been twisted around Ventnor's head biting the bone. There was dried blood on the edges, a double ring of swollen white flesh rimming the cincture. It was the mark of—torture!
"Martin," I cried. "That ring? What did they do to you?"
"They waked me with that," he answered quietly. "I suppose I ought to be grateful—although their intentions were not exactly— therapeutic—"
"They tortured him," Ruth's voice was tense, bitter; she spoke in Persian —for Norhala's benefit I thought then, not guessing a deeper reason. "They tortured him. They gave him agony until he—returned. And they promised him other agonies that would make him pray long for death.
"And me—me"—she raised little clenched hands—"me they stripped like a slave. They led me through the city and the people mocked me. They took me before that swine Norhala has punished—and stripped me before him—like a slave. Before my eyes they tortured my brother. Norhala—they were evil, all evil! Norhala—you did well to slay them!"
She caught the woman's hands, pressed close to her. Norhala gazed at her from great gray eyes in which the wrath was dying, into which the old tranquillity, the old serenity was flowing. And when she spoke the golden voice held more than returning echoes of the far-away, faint chimings.
"It is done," she said. "And it was well done—sister. Now you and I shall dwell together in peace—sister. Or if there be those in the world from which you came that you would have slain, then you and I shall go forth with our companies and stamp them out—even as I did these."
My heart stopped beating—for from the depths of Ruth's eyes shining shadows were rising, wraiths answering Norhala's calling; and, as they rose, steadily they drew life from the clear radiance summoning— drew closer to the semblance of that tranquil spirit which her vengeance had banished but that had now returned to its twin thrones of Norhala's eyes.
And at last it was twin sister of Norhala who looked upon her from the face of Ruth!
The white arms of the woman encircled her; the glorious head bent over her; flaming tresses mingled with tender brown curls.
"Sister!" she whispered. "Little sister! These men you shall have as long as it pleases you—to do with as you will. Or if it is your wish they shall go back to their world and I will guard them to its gates.
"But you and I, little sister, will dwell together—in the vastnesses—in the peace. Shall it not be so?"
With no faltering, with no glance toward us three—lover, brother, old friend—Ruth crept closer to her, rested her head upon the virginal, royal breasts.
"It shall be so!" she murmured. "Sister—it shall be so. Norhala —I am tired. Norhala—I have seen enough of men."
An ecstasy of tenderness, a flame of unearthly rapture, trembled over the woman's wondrous face. Hungrily, defiantly, she pressed the girl to her; the stars in the lucid heavens of her eyes were soft and gentle and caressing.
"Ruth!" cried Drake—and sprang toward them. She paid no heed; and even as he leaped he was caught, whirled back against us.
"Wait," said Ventnor, and caught him by the arm as wrathfully, blindedly, he strove against the force that held him. "Wait. No use—now."
There was a curious understanding in his voice—a curious sympathy, too, in the patient, untroubled gaze that dwelt upon his sister and this weirdly exquisite woman who held her.
"Wait!" exclaimed Drake. "Wait—hell! The damned witch is stealing her away from us!"
Again he threw himself forward; recoiled as though swept back by an invisible arm; fell against us and was clasped and held by Ventnor. And as he struggled the Thing we rode halted. Like metal waves back into it rushed the enigmatic billows that had washed over the fragments of the city.
We were lifted; between us and the woman and girl a cleft appeared; it widened into a rift. It was as though Norhala had decreed it as a symbol of this her second victory—or had set it between us as a barrier.
Wider grew the rift. Save for the bridge of our voices it separated us from Ruth as though she stood upon another world.
Higher we rose; the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon whose counterpart fifty feet away and facing the homeward path, Ruth and Norhala stood with white arms interlaced.
The serpent shape flashed toward us; it vanished beneath, merging into the waiting Thing.
Then slowly the Thing began to move; quietly it glided to the chasm it had blasted in the cliff wall. The shadow of those walls fell upon us. As one we looked back; as one we searched out the patch of blue with the black blot at its breast.
We found it; then the precipices hid it. Silently we streamed through the chasm, through the canyon and the tunnel—speaking no word, Drake's eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon Norhala, Ventnor brooding upon her always with that enigmatic sympathy. We passed between the walls of the further cleft; stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest.
There came to us as though from immeasurable distances, a faint, sustained thrumming—like the beating of countless muffled drums.