Part 40 (1/2)
The causeway dohich the horses of Khandawar had clattered forth to war, in its age-old desuetude had corass sprouted, and here and there creepers and even trees had taken root and in the slow irowth had displaced considerable masses of stone; so that there were pitfalls to be avoided Otherwise a litter of rubble ood Arade was rather more steep than it had seeain his breath and scrub a handkerchief over his forehead, on which sweat had started despite the cold At such tiaze would seek inevitably and involuntarily, the lotus-pointed pinnacle whereon the Eye was poised, blazing Its baleful elare coloured hiswas actually watching hi that met his eye was calculated to instil cheer into his heart Desolation worked with silence sensibly upon his thoughts, so that he presentlydiscovery that the bottom had dropped co hi over this, he stu himself that he was a fool: a conclusion so patent that neither then nor thereafter at any time did he find reason to dispute it
After so he ca it with mistrust Doubtless in the olden tih to sustain a troop of warriors but light enough to be easily drawn up, had extended across the chasnable fro since been replaced by an airy and well-ventilated latticework of boards and timbers, none of which seemed to the wary eye any too sound Aerly advanced a pace or two along it With a soft crackling a portion of the timber crumbled to dust beneath his feet He retreated hastily to the causeway, and swore, and noticed that the Eye atching him with malevolent interest, and swore some more
Entirely on iht, to thecrash and the contraption dissolved like aa solitary beaht inches thick, spanning a flight of twenty and a drop of sixty feet The river received the rubbish with several successive splashes, distinctly disconcerting, and Amber sat down on a boulder to think it over
”Clever invention,” he ete ateway opposite hiard to the Eye, and shook his fist vindictively at the latter ”If ever I get hold of the chap that invented you!” An ingenious iest any forloomyback at that stage, however Kuttarpur was rather far away, and, moreover, he doubted if he would be pero on
Moreover, Sophia Farrell was on the other side of that Side Bridge, and such being the case, cross it he would though he were to find the next world at its end Finally he considered that he was presently to undergo an Ordeal of some unknown nature, probably extre bridge ed in order to put him in a properly subdued and tractable frairder with circuh, solidly embedded in the stonework of the causeway and i his eyes froloriously across, collecting splinters and a very distinct iht-errantry was not without its drawbacks
When again he stood on his feet he was in the shadow of the outer gateway, the curtain of the second wall confronting hiht illu distinctness the frescoes, half obliterated by ti and obscene, from a Western point of view A bastion of the third wall hid the Eye, however; he was grateful for that
Casting about, he discovered the second gateway at so a way through a tangle of scrubby undergroeeds, and thorny acacia, but had taken few steps ere a heavy splash in the river below brought hi heart After an irresolute moment he turned back to see for hirounded; the Side Bridge was gone, displaced by an agency which had been proest where that cover had been found There was no one visible on the causeway, and nobody skulked in the shadows of the bastions of the ate
Furthermore it seemed hardly possible that in so scant a space of time human hands could have worked that heavy beam out of its sockets And if the hands had been human (of course any other hypothesis were ridiculous) what had beco that it were futile to badger his wits for the how and the wherefore The important fact remained that he was a prisoner in dead Kathiapur, his retreat cut off, and--Here he : his pistol was gone
A the weapon in Dulla Dad's boat, since when he had found no occasion to think of it Now either it had jolted out of his pocket in that wild ride froed deftly to abstract it while in his arainst him in real or affected terror of the Eye Of the two explanations his reason favoured the second But he hts were as black as his brow and as gri back at length he ateway and from it to the third, under the lewdly sculptured arch of which he stopped and gasped, forgetting himself as for the first time Kathiapur the Fallen was revealed to him in all the awful beauty of its naked desolation
A wide and stately avenue stretched away fros, palaces of marble and stone, tombs and mausoleums, with meaner houses of sun-dried brick and rubble, roofless all and disintegrating in the slow, terrible process of the years Here a wall had caved in, there an arch had fallen out The thoroughfare was streith fallen lintels, broken marble screens, blocks of red sandstone, bricks, and in between the and pipal nourished with the bebel-thorn, the ak, theeverywhere At the far end of the street a yawning black arch rose in the white, beautiful facade of a marble te horridly
As Arowth and scurried silently thence: a circumstance which made him very unhappy Even a brilliant chorus of sharp barks from an adjacent street failed to convince him that he had merely disturbed a pack of jackals, after all, and not the disconsolate brooding wraiths of those who had died and been buried in the i ruined tombs, what time Kathiapur boasted ten thousand swords and elephants by the herd
The as difficult and A but the jackals, an owl or two, several thousand bats and a crawling thing which had lurched along in the shadow of a wall so an ad hiutteral noises--Auide Naraini had promised hie of a broken sandstone toe in cheap irreverence ”Home,” he observed aloud, ”never was like this”
A heart-rending sigh froed rubbish Amber found himself unexpectedly in theto debate thethere with such unprecedented rapidity, looked back hopefully to the toure swept out of it and moved a few paces down the street, then paused and beckoned hiaunt arun”
The figure was apparently that of a native swathed in black froly peculiar in view of the fact that, as far as Ah his head ithout any sort of covering He gulped over the proposition for an instant, then stepped forward
”Evidently host-dance is excellently stage-h, of course, I _had_ to pick out that particular toure, which sped on with a singular lide, conscious that his equanimity had been restored rather than shaken by the incident ”You wouldn't think,” he reflected, ”that aso childish Still, I'h with it yet”
He conceived a scheuide and strip hiot no nearer, and eventually abandoned it on the consideration that it was probably most inadvisable After all, he had to remember that he was there for a purpose, and a very serious one, and that properly to further that purpose he , at least with a show of ease, each new developed lines And so he held on in pursuit of the black shadow, passing forsaken temples and lordly pleasure-houses, allapart in what had once been noble gardens, sunken tanks all weed-grown and rank with slime, humbler dooryards and cots on whose hearthstones the fires for centuries had been cold--his destination evidently the temple of the unspeakable Eye
As they drew nearer the leading shadow forsook the shade of the walls which he had see hastily across a plaza white withhole beyond theback, stopping a score of feet frole He did not falter in his purpose; he was going to enter the inky portal, butwould he ever leave it? And the world was still sweet to hiistered a dozen impressions in as many seconds: of the silver splendour spilled so lavishly upon the soulless corpse of the city, of the high, bright sky, of dead black shadows sharp-edged against the radiance, of the fleet flitting spectre that was really a flying-fox
Afar a hyena laughed with a sardonic intonation wholly uncalled-for--it was blood-curdling, besides And down the street alike a soul astray
”This won't do,” he told himself; ”it can't be worse inside than out here”
He took firm hold of his reason and went on across the dark threshold, took three uncertain strides into the li, unable to see a yard before hireat doors swung to behind him
He whirled about with a stifled cry, conscious of a ain, took a step or tard theht direction, moved a little to the left, half turned, and was lost Reverberating, the echoes of the crash rolled far away and back again, di until they were no one