Part 36 (2/2)

We passed a coether, their tops wide spinning wheels through which the tendrils of an opened globe fed translucent, colorless ingots--the substance it seemed to me of which Norhala's shadoalls were made, the crystal of which the bars that built out the base of the Cones were for faces; e cylinders; were seized as they slipped down by a crouching block, whose place as it glided aas instantly taken by another Inforuessable ends, the composite, anioblin bustle, trollish racketings, ringing of gnoes--a claens

We ca the walls of the workshop Its incline, though steep, was not dangerous

Into it we stepped; climbed onward it seemed interminably Far ahead of us at last appeared the outline of its further entrance, silhouetted against and filled with a brighter luminosity We drew near; stopped cautiously at its threshold, peering out

Well it was that we had hesitated Before us was open space--an abyss in the body of the Metal Monster

The corridor opened into it like aThrusting out our heads,an unbroken wall both above and below Half a mile aas its opposite side Over this pit was a ainst the heavens was the lip of it--the cornices of this chasm within the City

Far, far beneath us atched the Hordes throw theirder-straight bridges; gigantic we knew these spans must be yet dwarfed to slender footways by distance Over thelitterings--prisolden; plutonic scarlets,upward fro the fruits of the es swung up, coiled and thrust thes that closed behind the whipped out other spans so that always across that abyss a sentient, shi+fting as hung

We drew back, stared into each other's white face Panic swept through me, in quick, alternate pulse of ice and fire For crushi+ngly, no longer to be denied, came certainty that ere lost within the mazes of this incredible City--lost in the body of the Metal Monster which that City was There was a sick despair inthe sloping corridor

A hundred yards, perhaps, we had gone in silence before we stopped, gazing stupidly at an opening in the wall beside us The portal had not been there e had passed--of that I was certain

”It's opened since ent by,” whispered Drake

We peered through it The passage was narrow; its pave led doard

For ain both ourthe perils that crowded in upon us what choice had we? There could be no er there than here

Both ere--ALIVE, both obedient to impulses over which we had nothan mice in some complex, man-made trap Furtherh its pitch was less and it did not therefore drop as quickly toward that level we sought and wherein lay the openings of escape into the outer valley, it fell at right angles to the corridor through which we had come

We knew that to retrace our steps noould but take us back to the forges and thence to the hall of the Cones and the certain peril waiting for us there

We stepped into this opened way For a little distance it ran straightly, then turned and sloped gently upward; and a little distance ushed out a flood of soft radiance, opalescent, filled with pearly glih a door had opened into some world of luminescence From it the lambent torrent poured; billowed down upon us In its wake cahty harmonies, the sonorous chords, the crystalline thes of tiny golden star bells could be naht and sound we moved, nor could we have halted nor withdrawn had illed; the radiance drew us to it as the sun the water drop, and irresistibly the sweet, unearthly music called Closer we caht poured--into it we crept--and went no further

We peered into a vast and coluh up in it, strewn manifold, danced and shone soft orbs like tender suns No pale gilt luent, jubilant, they flamed--orbs red as wine of rubies that Djinns of Al shi+raz press from his enchanted vineyards of jewels; twin orbs rosy white as breasts of pa opalescences and orbs of the , crocused orbs and orbs of royal coral; suns that throbbed with singing rays of wedded rose and pearl and of sapphires and topazes ainal dawns and of i rainbows of fire

They danced, these countless aureoles; they swung and threaded in radiant choral patterns, in linked haray rays caressed and bathed myriads of the Metal Folk open beneath them Under the rays the jewel fires of disk and star and cross leaped and pulsed and danced to the saht the source of thecrystal pipes like soreat flas, in bannerets and bandrols, leaped upon the crystal pipes, and ed within theed into sound!

Throbbing bass viols of roaring vernal winds, diapasons of waterfall and torrents--these had been flareat streamers of scarlet--rose flames that had dissolved into echoes of fulfills that led Pleiades transe suns danced

And now I saw--realizing with a clutch of indescribable aith a sense of inexplicable profanation the secret of this ensorcelled cha rose of irised fire that was the heart of a disk, from every rubrous, clipped rose of a cross, and fro of a star there nestled a tiny disk, a tiny cross, a tiny star, luminous and symboled even as those that cradled them