They must be wiped out! All this misshapen, jumbled, inharmonious ugliness must be wiped out! It must be ground down to smooth unbroken planes, harmonious curvings, shapeliness--harmonies of arc and line and angle!

Something deep within me fought to speak--fought to tell me that this thought was not human thought, not my thought--that it was the reflected thought of the Metal Things!

It told me--and fiercely it struggled to make me realize what it was that it told. Its insistence was borne upon little despairing, rhythmic beatings--throbbings that were like the m.u.f.fled sobbings of the drums of grief. Louder, closer came the throbbing; clearer with it my perception of the inhumanness of my thought.

The drum beat tapped at my humanity, became a dolorous knocking at my heart.

It was the sobbing of Cherkis!

The gross face was shrunken, the cheeks sagging in folds of woe; cruelty and wickedness were wiped from it; the evil in the eyes had been washed out by tears. Eyes streaming, bull throat and barrel chest racked by his sobbing, he watched the pa.s.sing of his people and his city.

And relentlessly, coldly, Norhala watched him--as though loath to lose the faintest shadow of his agony.

Now I saw we were close to the top of the mount. Packed between us and the immense white structures that crowned it were thousands of the people. They fell on their knees before us, prayed to us. They tore at each other, striving to hide themselves from us in the ma.s.s that was themselves. They beat against the barred doors of the sanctuaries; they climbed the pillars; they swarmed over the golden roofs.

There was a moment of chaos--a chaos of which we were the heart.

Then temple and palace cracked, burst; were shattered; fell. I caught glimpses of gleaming sculptures, glitterings of gold and of silver, flashing of gems, shimmering of gorgeous draperies--under them a weltering of men and women.

We closed down upon them--over them!

The dreadful sobbing ceased. I saw the head of Cherkis swing heavily upon a shoulder; the eyes closed.

The Destroying Things touched. Their flailing arms coiled back, withdrew into their bodies. They joined, forming for an instant a tremendous hollow pillar far down in whose center we stood. They parted; shifted in shape? rolled down the mount over the ruins like a widening wave--crushing into the stone all over which they pa.s.sed.

Afar away I saw the gleaming serpent still at play--still writhing along, still obliterating the few score scattered fugitives that some way, somehow, had slipped by the Destroying Things.

We halted. For one long moment Norhala looked upon the drooping body of him upon whom she had let fall this mighty vengeance.

Then the metal arm that held Cherkis whirled. Thrown from it, the cloaked form flew like a great blue bat. It fell upon the flattened mound that had once been the proud crown of his city. A blue blot upon desolation the broken body of Cherkis lay.

A black speck appeared high in the sky; grew fast--the lammergeier.

"I have left carrion for you--after all!" cried Norhala.

With an ebon swirling of wings the vulture dropped beside the blue heap--thrust in it its beak.

CHAPTER XXVII. "THE DRUMS OF DESTINY"

Slowly we descended that mount of desolation; lingeringly, as though the brooding eyes of Norhala were not yet sated with destruction. Of human life, of green life, of life of any kind there was none.

Man and tree, woman and flower, babe and bud, palace, temple and home--Norhala had stamped flat. She had crushed them within the rock--even as she had promised.

The tremendous tragedy had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth's scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the red brand across Ventnor's forehead.

In his eyes and in Drake's I saw reflected the horror I knew was in my own. But in the eyes of Ruth was none of this--sternly, coldly triumphant, indifferent to its piteousness as Norhala herself, she scanned the waste that less than an hour since had been a place of living beauty.

I felt a shock of repulsion. After all, those who had been destroyed so ruthlessly could not ALL have been wholly evil. Yet mother and blossoming maid, youth and oldster, all the pageant of humanity within the great walls were now but lines within the stone. According to their different lights, it came to me, there had been in Ruszark no greater number of the wicked than one could find in any great city of our own civilization.

From Norhala, of course, I looked for no perception of any of this. But from Ruth--

My reaction grew; the pity long withheld racing through me linked with a burning anger, a hatred for this woman who had been the directing soul of that catastrophe.

My gaze fell again upon the red brand. I saw that it was a deep indentation as though a thong had been twisted around Ventnor's head biting the bone. There was dried blood on the edges, a double ring of swollen white flesh r.i.m.m.i.n.g the cincture. It was the mark of--torture!

"Martin," I cried. "That ring? What did they do to you?"

"They waked me with that," he answered quietly. "I suppose I ought to be grateful--although their intentions were not exactly--therapeutic--"

"They tortured him," Ruth's voice was tense, bitter; she spoke in Persian--for Norhala's benefit I thought then, not guessing a deeper reason. "They tortured him. They gave him agony until he--returned. And they promised him other agonies that would make him pray long for death.

"And me--me"--she raised little clenched hands--"me they stripped like a slave. They led me through the city and the people mocked me. They took me before that swine Norhala has punished--and stripped me before him--like a slave. Before my eyes they tortured my brother.

Norhala--they were evil, all evil! Norhala--you did well to slay them!"

She caught the woman's hands, pressed close to her. Norhala gazed at her from great gray eyes in which the wrath was dying, into which the old tranquillity, the old serenity was flowing. And when she spoke the golden voice held more than returning echoes of the far-away, faint chimings.

"It is done," she said. "And it was well done--sister. Now you and I shall dwell together in peace--sister. Or if there be those in the world from which you came that you would have slain, then you and I shall go forth with our companies and stamp them out--even as I did these."

My heart stopped beating--for from the depths of Ruth's eyes shining shadows were rising, wraiths answering Norhala's calling; and, as they rose, steadily they drew life from the clear radiance summoning--drew closer to the semblance of that tranquil spirit which her vengeance had banished but that had now returned to its twin thrones of Norhala's eyes.

And at last it was twin sister of Norhala who looked upon her from the face of Ruth!

The white arms of the woman encircled her; the glorious head bent over her; flaming tresses mingled with tender brown curls.

"Sister!" she whispered. "Little sister! These men you shall have as long as it pleases you--to do with as you will. Or if it is your wish they shall go back to their world and I will guard them to its gates.

"But you and I, little sister, will dwell together--in the vastnesses--in the peace. Shall it not be so?"

With no faltering, with no glance toward us three--lover, brother, old friend--Ruth crept closer to her, rested her head upon the virginal, royal b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"It shall be so!" she murmured. "Sister--it shall be so. Norhala--I am tired. Norhala--I have seen enough of men."

An ecstasy of tenderness, a flame of unearthly rapture, trembled over the woman's wondrous face. Hungrily, defiantly, she pressed the girl to her; the stars in the lucid heavens of her eyes were soft and gentle and caressing.

"Ruth!" cried Drake--and sprang toward them. She paid no heed; and even as he leaped he was caught, whirled back against us.

"Wait," said Ventnor, and caught him by the arm as wrathfully, blindedly, he strove against the force that held him. "Wait. No use--now."

There was a curious understanding in his voice--a curious sympathy, too, in the patient, untroubled gaze that dwelt upon his sister and this weirdly exquisite woman who held her.

"Wait!" exclaimed Drake. "Wait--h.e.l.l! The d.a.m.ned witch is stealing her away from us!"

Again he threw himself forward; recoiled as though swept back by an invisible arm; fell against us and was clasped and held by Ventnor. And as he struggled the Thing we rode halted. Like metal waves back into it rushed the enigmatic billows that had washed over the fragments of the city.

We were lifted; between us and the woman and girl a cleft appeared; it widened into a rift. It was as though Norhala had decreed it as a symbol of this her second victory--or had set it between us as a barrier.