Part 49 (2/2)
A hurricane of radiant lances swept it Under the scarp split away; dropped like an avalanche Its fall revealed great spaces, huge vaults and chas--out fro thunders Swiftly fro of the cubes joined Again the hole
I turned aze from the City--swept over the valley
Everywhere, in towers, in writhing coils, in whipping flails, in waves that smote and crashed, in countless forms and coainst which metal billows rushed and were broken; there were h above thesilent veil to veil--north and south, east and west the Monster slew itself beneath its racing, flas
The tortured hulk of the City lurched; it swept toward us Before it blotted out from our eyes the Pit I saw that the crystal spans upon the river of jade were gone; that the wondrous jeweled ribbons of its banks were broken
Closer ca City
I fumbled for my lenses, focussed them upon it Now I saw that where the radiant lances struck they--killed the blocks blackened under the of the tiny eyes--went out; the metal carapaces cru I lowered the glasses that itShapes that wrestled with the squared Towers
They rose again in a single monstrous wave that rushed to overwhelm them Before they could strike the City swept closer; had hidden theht the metal scarp not fifty feet aithin it the hosts of tiny eyes glittered, no longernor malicious, but insane
Nearer drew the Monster--nearer
A thousand feet away it checked its ether Then like the roar of a falling world that whole side facing us slid down to the valley's floor
CHAPTER XXIX THE PassING OF NORHALA
Hundreds of feet through must have been the fallen mass--within it who knohat chambers filled with mysteries? Yes, thousands of feet thick it must have been, for the debris of it splintered and lashed to the very edge of the ledge on which we crouched; heaped it with the diments of the bodies that had formed it
We looked into a thousand vaults, a thousand spaces There ca--before us opened the crater of the cones
Through the torn gap I saw the undisturbed about the base of that one slender, coroneted and star pointing spire, rising serene and unshaken fros But the shi+elds that had rilasses fro to his eyes
He thrust thereat hall leaped into full view apparently only a few yards away It was a cauldron of cha over the re walls and floor But around the crystal base of the cones was an open zone into which none broke
In that wide ring, girdling the shi+ fantasy like a circled sanctuary, were but three forms One was the wondrous Disk of jeweled fires I have called the Metal Emperor; the second was the sullen fired cruciform of the Keeper
The third was Norhala!
She stood at the side of that weird master of hers--or was it after all the servant? Between theantic T-shaped tablet of countless rods which controlled the activities of the cones; that had controlled the shi+fting of the vanished shi+elds; that ies of whatever sihout the City and one of which we had beheld when the Euards had blasted Ventnor
Close was Norhala in the lenses--so close that al hair strealorious head like a banner of old; her face was a reat eyes blazed upon the Keeper; her exquisite body was bare, stripped of every shred of silken covering