Larry Farewell!

: The Moon Pool

"My heart, Larry--" It was the handmaiden's murmur. "My heart feels

like a bird that is flying from a nest of sorrow."



We were pacing down the length of the bridge, guards of the Akka

beside us, others following with those companies of ladala that had

rushed to aid us; in front of us the bandaged Rador swung gently

within a litter; beside him, in another, lay Nak, the frog-king--much

less of him than ther had been before the battle began, but living.



Hours had passed since the terror I have just related. My first task

had been to search for Throckmartin and his wife among the fallen

multitudes strewn thick as autumn leaves along the flying arch of

stone, over the cavern ledge, and back, back as far as the eye could

reach.



At last, Lakla and Larry helping, we found them. They lay close to

the bridge-end, not parted--locked tight in each other's arms, pallid

face to face, her hair streaming over his breast! As though when that

unearthly life the Dweller had set within them passed away, their own

had come back for one fleeting instant--and they had known each other,

and clasped before kindly death had taken them.



"Love is stronger than all things." The handmaiden was weeping softly.

"Love never left them. Love was stronger than the Shining One. And

when its evil fled, love went with them--wherever souls go."



Of Stanton and Thora there was no trace; nor, after our discovery of

those other two, did I care to look more. They were dead--and they

were free.



We buried Throckmartin and Edith beside Olaf in Lakla's bower. But

before the body of my old friend was placed within the grave I gave it

a careful and sorrowful examination. The skin was firm and smooth, but

cold; not the cold of death, but with a chill that set my touching

fingers tingling unpleasantly. The body was bloodless; the course of

veins and arteries marked by faintly indented white furrows, as though

their walls had long collapsed. Lips, mouth, even the tongue, was

paper white. There was no sign of dissolution as we know it; no shadow

or stain upon the marble surface. Whatever the force that, streaming

from the Dweller or impregnating its lair, had energized the

dead-alive, it was barrier against putrescence of any kind; that at

least was certain.



But it was not barrier against the poison of the Medusae, for, our sad

task done, and looking down upon the waters, I saw the pale forms of

the Dweller's hordes dissolving, vanishing into the shifting glories

of the gigantic moons sailing down upon them from every quarter of the

Sea of Crimson.



While the frog-men, those late levies from the farthest forests, were

clearing bridge and ledge of cavern of the litter of the dead, we

listened to a leader of the ladala. They had risen, even as the

messenger had promised Rador. Fierce had been the struggle in the

gardened city by the silver waters with those Lugur and Yolara had

left behind to garrison it. Deadly had been the slaughter of the

fair-haired, reaping the harvest of hatred they had been sowing so

long. Not without a pang of regret did I think of the beautiful, gaily

malicious elfin women destroyed--evil though they may have been.



The ancient city of Lara was a charnel. Of all the rulers not

twoscore had escaped, and these into regions of peril which to

describe as sanctuary would be mockery. Nor had the ladala fared so

well. Of all the men and women, for women as well as men had taken

their part in the swift war, not more than a tenth remained alive.



And the dancing motes of light in the silver air were thick,

thick--they whispered.



They told us of the Shining One rushing through the Veil, cometlike,

its hosts streaming behind it, raging with it, in ranks that seemed

interminable!



Of the massacre of the priests and priestesses in the Cyclopean

temple; of the flashing forth of the summoning lights by unseen

hands--followed by the tearing of the rainbow curtain, by colossal

shatterings of the radiant cliffs; the vanishing behind their debris

of all trace of entrance to the haunted place wherein the hordes of

the Shining One had slaved--the sealing of the lair!



Then, when the tempest of hate had ended in seething Lara, how,

thrilled with victory, armed with the weapons of those they had slain,

they had lifted the Shadow, passed through the Portal, met and

slaughtered the fleeing remnants of Yolara's men--only to find the

tempest stilled here, too.



But of Marakinoff they had seen nothing! Had the Russian escaped, I

wondered, or was he lying out there among the dead?



But now the ladala were calling upon Lakla to come with them, to

govern them.



"I don't want to, Larry darlin'," she told him. "I want to go out

with you to Ireland. But for a time--I think the Three would have us

remain and set that place in order."



The O'Keefe was bothered about something else than the government of

Muria.



"If they've killed off all the priests, who's to marry us, heart of

mine?" he worried. "None of those Siya and Siyana rites, no matter

what," he added hastily.



"Marry!" cried the handmaiden incredulously. "Marry us? Why, Larry

dear, we are married!"



The O'Keefe's astonishment was complete; his jaw dropped; collapse

seemed imminent.



"We are?" he gasped. "When?" he stammered fatuously.



"Why, when the Mother drew us together before her; when she put her

hands on our heads after we had made the promise! Didn't you

understand that?" asked the handmaiden wonderingly.



He looked at her, into the purity of the clear golden eyes, into the

purity of the soul that gazed out of them; all his own great love

transfiguring his keen face.



"An' is that enough for you, mavourneen?" he whispered humbly.



"Enough?" The handmaiden's puzzlement was complete, profound.

"Enough? Larry darlin', what more could we ask?"



He drew a deep breath, clasped her close.



"Kiss the bride, Doc!" cried the O'Keefe. And for the third and,

soul's sorrow! the last time, Lakla dimpling and blushing, I thrilled

to the touch of her soft, sweet lips.



Quickly were our preparations for departure made. Rador, conscious,

his immense vitality conquering fast his wounds, was to be borne ahead

of us. And when all was done, Lakla, Larry, and I made our way up to

the scarlet stone that was the doorway to the chamber of the Three. We

knew, of course, that they had gone, following, no doubt, those whose

eyes I had seen in the curdled mists, and who, coming to the aid of

the Three at last from whatever mysterious place that was their home,

had thrown their strength with them against the Shining One. Nor were

we wrong. When the great slab rolled away, no torrents of opalescence

came rushing out upon us. The vast dome was dim, tenantless; its

curved walls that had cascaded Light shone now but faintly; the dais

was empty; its wall of moon-flame radiance gone.



A little time we stood, heads bent, reverent, our hearts filled with

gratitude and love--yes, and with pity for that strange trinity so

alien to us and yet so near; children even as we, though so unlike us,

of our same Mother Earth.



And what I wondered had been the secret of that promise they had wrung

from their handmaiden and from Larry. And whence, if what the Three

had said had been all true--whence had come their power to avert the

sacrifice at the very verge of its consummation?



"Love is stronger than all things!" had said Lakla.



Was it that they had needed, must have, the force which dwells within

love, within willing sacrifice, to strengthen their own power and to

enable them to destroy the evil, glorious Thing so long shielded by

their own love? Did the thought of sacrifice, the will toward

abnegation, have to be as strong as the eternals, unshaken by faintest

thrill of hope, before the Three could make of it their key to unlock

the Dweller's guard and strike through at its life?



Here was a mystery--a mystery indeed! Lakla softly closed the crimson

stone. The mystery of the red dwarf's appearance was explained when we

discovered a half-dozen of the water coria moored in a small cove

not far from where the Sekta flashed their heads of living bloom.

The dwarfs had borne the shallops with them, and from somewhere beyond

the cavern ledge had launched them unperceived; stealing up to the

farther side of the island and risking all in one bold stroke. Well,

Lugur, no matter what he held of wickedness, held also high courage.



The cavern was paved with the dead-alive, the Akka carrying them out

by the hundreds, casting them into the waters. Through the lane down

which the Dweller had passed we went as quickly as we could, coming at

last to the space where the coria waited. And not long after we

swung past where the shadow had hung and hovered over the shining

depths of the Midnight Pool.



Upon Lakla's insistence we passed on to the palace of Lugur, not to

Yolara's--I do not know why, but go there then she would not. And

within one of its columned rooms, maidens of the black-haired folks,

the wistfulness, the fear, all gone from their sparkling eyes, served

us.



There came to me a huge desire to see the destruction they had told us

of the Dweller's lair; to observe for myself whether it was not

possible to make a way of entrance and to study its mysteries.



I spoke of this, and to my surprise both the handmaiden and the

O'Keefe showed an almost embarrassed haste to acquiesce in my hesitant

suggestion.



"Sure," cried Larry, "there's lots of time before night!"



He caught himself sheepishly; cast a glance at Lakla.



"I keep forgettin' there's no night here," he mumbled.



"What did you say, Larry?" asked she.



"I said I wish we were sitting in our home in Ireland, watching the

sun go down," he whispered to her. Vaguely I wondered why she blushed.



But now I must hasten. We went to the temple, and here at least the

ghastly litter of the dead had been cleaned away. We passed through

the blue-caverned space, crossed the narrow arch that spanned the

rushing sea stream, and, ascending, stood again upon the ivoried pave

at the foot of the frowning, towering amphitheatre of jet.



Across the Silver Waters there was sign of neither Web of Rainbows nor

colossal pillars nor the templed lips that I had seen curving out

beneath the Veil when the Shining One had swirled out to greet its

priestess and its voice and to dance with the sacrifices. There was

but a broken and rent mass of the radiant cliffs against whose base

the lake lapped.



Long I looked--and turned away saddened. Knowing even as I did what

the irised curtain had hidden, still it was as though some thing of

supernal beauty and wonder had been swept away, never to be replaced;

a glamour gone for ever; a work of the high gods destroyed.



"Let's go back," said Larry abruptly.



I dropped a little behind them to examine a bit of carving--and,

after all, they did not want me. I watched them pacing slowly ahead,

his arm around her, black hair close to bronze-gold ringlets. Then I

followed. Half were they over the bridge when through the roar of the

imprisoned stream I heard my name called softly.



"Goodwin! Dr. Goodwin!"



Amazed, I turned. From behind the pedestal of a carved group

slunk--Marakinoff! My premonition had been right. Some way he had

escaped, slipped through to here. He held his hands high, came forward

cautiously.



"I am finished," he whispered--"Done! I don't care what they'll do

to me." He nodded toward the handmaiden and Larry, now at the end of

the bridge and passing on, oblivious of all save each other. He drew

closer. His eyes were sunken, burning, mad; his face etched with deep

lines, as though a graver's tool had cut down through it. I took a

step backward.



A grin, like the grimace of a fiend, blasted the Russian's visage.

He threw himself upon me, his hands clenching at my throat!



"Larry!" I yelled--and as I spun around under the shock of his

onslaught, saw the two turn, stand paralyzed, then race toward me.



"But you'll carry nothing out of here!" shrieked Marakinoff. "No!"



My foot, darting out behind me, touched vacancy. The roaring of the

racing stream deafened me. I felt its mists about me; threw myself

forward.



I was falling--falling--with the Russian's hand strangling me. I

struck water, sank; the hands that gripped my throat relaxed for a

moment their clutch. I strove to writhe loose; felt that I was being

hurled with dreadful speed on--full realization came--on the breast of

that racing torrent dropping from some far ocean cleft and

rushing--where? A little time, a few breathless instants, I struggled

with the devil who clutched me--inflexibly, indomitably.



Then a shrieking as of all the pent winds of the universe in my

ears--blackness!



Consciousness returned slowly, agonizedly.



"Larry!" I groaned. "Lakla!"



A brilliant light was glowing through my closed lids. It hurt. I

opened my eyes, closed them with swords and needles of dazzling pain

shooting through them. Again I opened them cautiously. It was the sun!



I staggered to my feet. Behind me was a shattered wall of basalt

monoliths, hewn and squared. Before me was the Pacific, smooth and

blue and smiling.



And not far away, cast up on the strand even as I had been,

was--Marakinoff!



He lay there, broken and dead indeed. Yet all the waters through

which we had passed--not even the waters of death themselves--could

wash from his face the grin of triumph. With the last of my strength I

dragged the body from the strand and pushed it out into the waves. A

little billow ran up, coiled about it, and carried it away, ducking

and bending. Another seized it, and another, playing with it. It

floated from my sight--that which had been Marakinoff, with all his

schemes to turn our fair world into an undreamed-of-hell.



My strength began to come back to me. I found a thicket and slept;

slept it must have been for many hours, for when I again awakened the

dawn was rosing the east. I will not tell my sufferings. Suffice it to

say that I found a spring and some fruit, and just before dusk had

recovered enough to writhe up to the top of the wall and discover

where I was.



The place was one of the farther islets of the Nan-Matal. To the north

I caught the shadows of the ruins of Nan-Tauach, where was the moon

door, black against the sky. Where was the moon door--which, someway,

somehow, I must reach, and quickly.



At dawn of the next day I got together driftwood and bound it together

in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift

paddle, I set forth for Nan-Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to

it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the

little beach between the ruined sea-gates and, creeping up the giant

steps, made my way to the inner enclosure.



And at its opening I stopped, and the tears ran streaming down my

cheeks while I wept aloud with sorrow and with disappointment and with

weariness.



For the great wall in which had been set the pale slab whose threshold

we had crossed to the land of the Shining One lay shattered and

broken. The monoliths were heaped about; the wall had fallen, and

about them shone a film of water, half covering them.



There was no moon door!



Dazed and weeping, I drew closer, climbed upon their outlying

fragments. I looked out only upon the sea. There had been a great

subsidence, an earth shock, perhaps, tilting downward all that

side--the echo, little doubt, of that cataclysm which had blasted the

Dweller's lair!



The little squared islet called Tau, in which were hidden the seven

globes, had entirely disappeared. Upon the waters there was no trace

of it.



The moon door was gone; the passage to the Moon Pool was closed to

me--its chamber covered by the sea!



There was no road to Larry--nor to Lakla!



And there, for me, the world ended.