The Amphitheatre Of Jet

: The Moon Pool

For hours the black-haired folk had been streaming across the bridges,

flowing along the promenade by scores and by hundreds, drifting down

toward the gigantic seven-terraced temple whose interior I had never

as yet seen, and from whose towering exterior, indeed, I had always

been kept far enough away--unobtrusively, but none the less decisively--to

prevent any real observation. The structure, I had estimated,

neverthe
ess, could not reach less than a thousand feet above its

silvery base, and the diameter of its circular foundation was about

the same.



I wondered what was bringing the ladala into Lora, and where they

were vanishing. All of them were flower-crowned with the luminous,

lovely blooms--old and young, slender, mocking-eyed girls, dwarfed

youths, mothers with their babes, gnomed oldsters--on they poured,

silent for the most part and sullen--a sullenness that held acid

bitterness even as their subtle, half-sinister, half-gay malice seemed

tempered into little keen-edged flames, oddly, menacingly defiant.



There were many of the green-clad soldiers along the way, and the

garrison of the only bridge span I could see had certainly been

doubled.



Wondering still, I turned from my point of observation and made my way

back to our pavilion, hoping that Larry, who had been with Yolara for

the past two hours, had returned. Hardly had I reached it before Rador

came hurrying up, in his manner a curious exultance mingled with what

in anyone else I would have called a decided nervousness.



"Come!" he commanded before I could speak. "The Council has made

decision--and Larree is awaiting you."



"What has been decided?" I panted as we sped along the mosaic path

that led to the house of Yolara. "And why is Larry awaiting me?"



And at his answer I felt my heart pause in its beat and through me

race a wave of mingled panic and eagerness.



"The Shining One dances!" had answered the green dwarf. "And you are

to worship!"



What was this dancing of the Shining One, of which so often he had

spoken?



Whatever my forebodings, Larry evidently had none.



"Great stuff!" he cried, when we had met in the great antechamber now

empty of the dwarfs. "Hope it will be worth seeing--have to be

something damned good, though, to catch me, after what I've seen of

shows at the front," he added.



And remembering, with a little shock of apprehension, that he had no

knowledge of the Dweller beyond my poor description of it--for there

are no words actually to describe what that miracle of interwoven

glory and horror was--I wondered what Larry O'Keefe would say and do

when he did behold it!



Rador began to show impatience.



"Come!" he urged. "There is much to be done--and the time grows

short!"



He led us to a tiny fountain room in whose miniature pool the white

waters were concentrated, pearl-like and opalescent in their circling

rim.



"Bathe!" he commanded; and set the example by stripping himself and

plunging within. Only a minute or two did the green dwarf allow us,

and he checked us as we were about to don our clothing.



Then, to my intense embarrassment, without warning, two of the

black-haired girls entered, bearing robes of a peculiar dull-blue hue.

At our manifest discomfort Rador's laughter roared out. He took the

garments from the pair, motioned them to leave us, and, still

laughing, threw one around me. Its texture was soft, but decidedly

metallic--like some blue metal spun to the fineness of a spider's

thread. The garment buckled tightly at the throat, was girdled at the

waist, and, below this cincture, fell to the floor, its folds being

held together by a half-dozen looped cords; from the shoulders a hood

resembling a monk's cowl.



Rador cast this over my head; it completely covered my face, but was

of so transparent a texture that I could see, though somewhat mistily,

through it. Finally he handed us both a pair of long gloves of the

same material and high stockings, the feet of which were

gloved--five-toed.



And again his laughter rang out at our manifest surprise.



"The priestess of the Shining One does not altogether trust the

Shining One's Voice," he said at last. "And these are to guard against

any sudden--errors. And fear not, Goodwin," he went on kindly. "Not

for the Shining One itself would Yolara see harm come to Larree

here--nor, because of him, to you. But I would not stake much on the

great white one. And for him I am sorry, for him I do like well."



"Is he to be with us?" asked Larry eagerly.



"He is to be where we go," replied the dwarf soberly.



Grimly Larry reached down and drew from his uniform his automatic. He

popped a fresh clip into the pocket fold of his girdle. The pistol he

slung high up beneath his arm-pit.



The green dwarf looked at the weapon curiously. O'Keefe tapped it.



"This," said Larry, "slays quicker than the Keth--I take it so no

harm shall come to the blue-eyed one whose name is Olaf. If I should

raise it--be you not in its way, Rador!" he added significantly.



The dwarf nodded again, his eyes sparkling. He thrust a hand out to

both of us.



"A change comes," he said. "What it is I know not, nor how it will

fall. But this remember--Rador is more friend to you than you yet can

know. And now let us go!" he ended abruptly.



He led us, not through the entrance, but into a sloping passage ending

in a blind wall; touched a symbol graven there, and it opened,

precisely as had the rosy barrier of the Moon Pool Chamber. And, just

as there, but far smaller, was a passage end, a low curved wall facing

a shaft not black as had been that abode of living darkness, but

faintly luminescent. Rador leaned over the wall. The mechanism clicked

and started; the door swung shut; the sides of the car slipped into

place, and we swept swiftly down the passage; overhead the wind

whistled. In a few moments the moving platform began to slow down. It

stopped in a closed chamber no larger than itself.



Rador drew his poniard and struck twice upon the wall with its hilt.

Immediately a panel moved away, revealing a space filled with faint,

misty blue radiance. And at each side of the open portal stood four of

the dwarfish men, grey-headed, old, clad in flowing garments of white,

each pointing toward us a short silver rod.



Rador drew from his girdle a ring and held it out to the first dwarf.

He examined it, handed it to the one beside him, and not until each

had inspected the ring did they lower their curious weapons;

containers of that terrific energy they called the Keth, I thought;

and later was to know that I had been right.



We stepped out; the doors closed behind us. The place was weird

enough. Its pave was a greenish-blue stone resembling lapis lazuli. On

each side were high pedestals holding carved figures of the same

material. There were perhaps a score of these, but in the mistiness I

could not make out their outlines. A droning, rushing roar beat upon

our ears; filled the whole cavern.



"I smell the sea," said Larry suddenly.



The roaring became deep-toned, clamorous, and close in front of us a

rift opened. Twenty feet in width, it cut the cavern floor and

vanished into the blue mist on each side. The cleft was spanned by one

solid slab of rock not more than two yards wide. It had neither

railing nor other protection.



The four leading priests marched out upon it one by one, and we

followed. In the middle of the span they knelt. Ten feet beneath us

was a torrent of blue sea-water racing with prodigious speed between

polished walls. It gave the impression of vast depth. It roared as it

sped by, and far to the right was a low arch through which it

disappeared. It was so swift that its surface shone like polished blue

steel, and from it came the blessed, our worldly, familiar ocean

breath that strengthened my soul amazingly and made me realize how

earth-sick I was.



Whence came the stream, I marvelled, forgetting for the moment, as we

passed on again, all else. Were we closer to the surface of earth than

I had thought, or was this some mighty flood falling through an

opening in sea floor, Heaven alone knew how many miles above us,

losing itself in deeper abysses beyond these? How near and how far

this was from the truth I was to learn--and never did truth come to

man in more dreadful guise!



The roaring fell away, the blue haze lessened. In front of us

stretched a wide flight of steps, huge as those which had led us into

the courtyard of Nan-Tauach through the ruined sea-gate. We scaled it;

it narrowed; from above light poured through a still narrower opening.

Side by side Larry and I passed out of it.



We had emerged upon an enormous platform of what seemed to be

glistening ivory. It stretched before us for a hundred yards or more

and then shelved gently into the white waters. Opposite--not a mile

away--was that prodigious web of woven rainbows Rador had called the

Veil of the Shining One. There it shone in all its unearthly grandeur,

on each side of the Cyclopean pillars, as though a mountain should

stretch up arms raising between them a fairy banner of auroral

glories. Beneath it was the curved, scimitar sweep of the pier with

its clustered, gleaming temples.



Before that brief, fascinated glance was done, there dropped upon my

soul a sensation as of brooding weight intolerable; a spiritual

oppression as though some vastness was falling, pressing, stifling me,

I turned--and Larry caught me as I reeled.



"Steady! Steady, old man!" he whispered.



At first all that my staggering consciousness could realize was an

immensity, an immeasurable uprearing that brought with it the same

throat-gripping vertigo as comes from gazing downward from some great

height--then a blur of white faces--intolerable shinings of hundreds

upon thousands of eyes. Huge, incredibly huge, a colossal amphitheatre

of jet, a stupendous semi-circle, held within its mighty arc the ivory

platform on which I stood.



It reared itself almost perpendicularly hundreds of feet up into the

sparkling heavens, and thrust down on each side its ebon

bulwarks--like monstrous paws. Now, the giddiness from its sheer

greatness passing, I saw that it was indeed an amphitheatre sloping

slightly backward tier after tier, and that the white blur of faces

against its blackness, the gleaming of countless eyes were those of

myriads of the people who sat silent, flower-garlanded, their gaze

focused upon the rainbow curtain and sweeping over me like a

torrent--tangible, appalling!



Five hundred feet beyond, the smooth, high retaining wall of the

amphitheatre raised itself--above it the first terrace of the seats,

and above this, dividing the tiers for another half a thousand feet

upward, set within them like a panel, was a dead-black surface in

which shone faintly with a bluish radiance a gigantic disk; above it

and around it a cluster of innumerable smaller ones.



On each side of me, bordering the platform, were scores of small

pillared alcoves, a low wall stretching across their fronts; delicate,

fretted grills shielding them, save where in each lattice an opening

stared--it came to me that they were like those stalls in ancient

Gothic cathedrals wherein for centuries had kneeled paladins and

people of my own race on earth's fair face. And within these alcoves

were gathered, score upon score, the elfin beauties, the dwarfish men

of the fair-haired folk. At my right, a few feet from the opening

through which we had come, a passageway led back between the fretted

stalls. Half-way between us and the massive base of the amphitheatre a

dais rose. Up the platform to it a wide ramp ascended; and on ramp and

dais and along the centre of the gleaming platform down to where it

kissed the white waters, a broad ribbon of the radiant flowers lay

like a fairy carpet.



On one side of this dais, meshed in a silken web that hid no line or

curve of her sweet body, white flesh gleaming through its folds, stood

Yolara; and opposite her, crowned with a circlet of flashing blue

stones, his mighty body stark bare, was Lugur!



O'Keefe drew a long breath; Rador touched my arm and, still dazed, I

let myself be drawn into the aisle and through a corridor that ran

behind the alcoves. At the back of one of these the green dwarf

paused, opened a door, and motioned us within.



Entering, I found that we were exactly opposite where the ramp ran up

to the dais--and that Yolara was not more than fifty feet away. She

glanced at O'Keefe and smiled. Her eyes were ablaze with little

dancing points of light; her body seemed to palpitate, the rounded

delicate muscles beneath the translucent skin to run with joyful

little eager waves!



Larry whistled softly.



"There's Marakinoff!" he said.



I looked where he pointed. Opposite us sat the Russian, clothed as we

were, leaning forward, his eyes eager behind his glasses; but if he

saw us he gave no sign.



"And there's Olaf!" said O'Keefe.



Beneath the carved stall in which sat the Russian was an aperture and

within it was Huldricksson. Unprotected by pillars or by grills,

opening clear upon the platform, near him stretched the trail of

flowers up to the great dais which Lugur and Yolara the priestess

guarded. He sat alone, and my heart went out to him.



O'Keefe's face softened.



"Bring him here," he said to Rador.



The green dwarf was looking at the Norseman, too, a shade of pity upon

his mocking face. He shook his head.



"Wait!" he said. "You can do nothing now--and it may be there will be

no need to do anything," he added; but I could feel that there was

little of conviction in his words.



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