As I looked at her the man arose and made his way round the table toward us. For the first time my eyes took in Lugur. A few inches taller than the green dwarf, he was far broader, more filled with the suggestion of appalling strength.
The tremendous shoulders were four feet wide if an inch, tapering down to mighty thewed thighs. The muscles of his chest stood out beneath his tunic of red. Around his forehead shone a chaplet of bright-blue stones, sparkling among the thick curls of his silver-ash hair.
Upon his face pride and ambition were written large — and power still larger. All the mockery, the malice, the hint of callous indifference that I had noted in the other dwarfish men were there, too — but intensified, touched with the satanic.
The woman spoke again.
“Who are you strangers, and how came you here?” She turned to Rador. “Or is it that they do not understand our tongue?”
“One understands and speaks it — but very badly, O Yolara,” answered the green dwarf.
“Speak, then, that one of you,” she commanded.
But it was Marakinoff who found his voice first, and I marvelled at the fluency, so much greater than mine, with which he spoke.
“We came for different purposes. I to seek knowledge of a kind; he”— pointing to me “of another. This man”— he looked at Olaf —“to find a wife and child.”
The grey-blue eyes had been regarding O’Keefe steadily and with plainly increasing interest.
“And why did YOU come?” she asked him. “Nay — I would have him speak for himself, if he can,” she stilled Marakinoff peremptorily.
When Larry spoke it was haltingly, in the tongue that was strange to him, searching for the proper words.
“I came to help these men — and because something I could not then understand called me, O lady, whose eyes are like forest pools at dawn,” he answered; and even in the unfamiliar words there was a touch of the Irish brogue, and little merry lights danced in the eyes Larry had so apostrophized.
“I could find fault with your speech, but none with its burden,” she said. “What forest pools are I know not, and the dawn has not shone upon the people of Lora these many sais of laya. 1 But I sense what you mean!”
1 Later I was to find that Murian reckoning rested upon the extraordinary increased luminosity of the cliffs at the time of full moon on earth — this action, to my mind, being linked either with the effect of the light streaming globes upon the Moon Pool, whose source was in the shining cliffs, or else upon some mysterious affinity of their radiant element with the flood of moonlight on earth — the latter, most probably, because even when the moon must have been clouded above, it made no difference in the phenomenon. Thirteen of these shinings forth constituted a laya, one of them a lat. Ten was sa; ten times ten times ten a said, or thousand; ten times a thousand was a sais. A sais of laya was then literally ten thousand years. What we would call an hour was by them called a va. The whole time system was, of course, a mingling of time as it had been known to their remote, surface-dwelling ancestors, and the peculiar determining factors in the vast cavern.
The eyes deepened to blue as she regarded him. She smiled.
“Are there many like you in the world from which you come?” she asked softly. “Well, we soon shall —”
Lugur interrupted her almost rudely and glowering.
“Best we should know how they came hence,” he growled.
She darted a quick look at him, and again the little devils danced in her wondrous eyes.
Unquestionably there is a subtle difference between time as we know it and time in this subterranean land — its progress there being slower. This, however, is only in accord with the well-known doctrine of relativity, which predicates both space and time as necessary inventions of the human mind to orient itself to the conditions under which it finds itself. I tried often to measure this difference, but could never do so to my entire satisfaction. The closest I can come to it is to say that an hour of our time is the equivalent of an hour and five-eighths in Muria. For further information upon this matter of relativity the reader may consult any of the numerous books upon the subject. — W. T. G.
“Yes, that is true,” she said. “How came you here?”
Again it was Marakinoff who answered — slowly, considering every word.
“In the world above,” he said, “there are ruins of cities not built by any of those who now dwell there. To us these places called, and we sought for knowledge of the wise ones who made them. We found a passageway. The way led us downward to a door in yonder cliff, and through it we came here.”
“Then have you found what you sought?” spoke she. “For we are of those who built the cities. But this gateway in the rock — where is it?”
“After we passed, it closed upon us; nor could we after find trace of it,” answered Marakinoff.
The incredulity that had shown upon the face of the green dwarf fell upon theirs; on Lugur’s it was clouded with furious anger.
He turned to Rador.
“I could find no opening, lord,” said the green dwarf quickly.
And there was so fierce a fire in the eyes of Lugur as he swung back upon us that O’Keefe’s hand slipped stealthily down toward his pistol.
“Best it is to speak truth to Yolara, priestess of the Shining One, and to Lugur, the Voice,” he cried menacingly.
“It is the truth,” I interposed. “We came down the passage. At its end was a carved vine, a vine of five flowers”— the fire died from the red dwarf’s eyes, and I could have sworn to a swift pallor. “I rested a hand upon these flowers, and a door opened. But when we had gone through it and turned, behind us was nothing but unbroken cliff. The door had vanished.”
I had taken my cue from Marakinoff. If he had eliminated the episode of car and Moon Pool, he had good reason, I had no doubt; and I would be as cautious. And deep within me something cautioned me to say nothing of my quest; to stifle all thought of Throckmartin — something that warned, peremptorily, finally, as though it were a message from Throckmartin himself!
“A vine with five flowers!” exclaimed the red dwarf. “Was it like this, say?”
He thrust forward a long arm. Upon the thumb of the hand was an immense ring, set with a dull-blue stone. Graven on the face of the jewel was the symbol of the rosy walls of the Moon Chamber that had opened to us their two portals. But cut over the vine were seven circles, one about each of the flowers and two larger ones covering, intersecting them.
“This is the same,” I said; “but these were not there”— I indicated the circles.
The woman drew a deep breath and looked deep into Lugur’s eyes.
“The sign of the Silent Ones!” he half whispered.
It was the woman who first recovered herself.
“The strangers are weary, Lugur,” she said. “When they are rested they shall show where the rocks opened.”
I sensed a subtle change in their attitude toward us; a new intentness; a doubt plainly tinged with apprehension. What was it they feared? Why had the symbol of the vine wrought the change? And who or what were the Silent Ones?
Yolara’s eyes turned to Olaf, hardened, and grew cold grey. Subconsciously I had noticed that from the first the Norseman had been absorbed in his regard of the pair; had, indeed, never taken his gaze from them; had noticed, too, the priestess dart swift glances toward him.
He returned her scrutiny fearlessly, a touch of contempt in the clear eyes — like a child watching a snake which he did not dread, but whose danger be well knew.
Under that look Yolara stirred impatiently, sensing, I know, its meaning.
“Why do you look at me so?” she cried.
An expression of bewilderment passed over Olaf’s face.
“I do not understand,” he said in English.
I caught a quickly repressed gleam in O’Keefe’s eyes. He knew, as I knew, that Olaf must have understood. But did Marakinoff?
Apparently he did not. But why was Olaf feigning ignorance?
“This man is a sailor from what we call the North,” thus Larry haltingly. “He is crazed, I think. He tells a strange tale of a something of cold fire that took his wife and babe. We found him wandering where we were. And because he is strong we brought him with us. That is all, O lady, whose voice is sweeter than the honey of the wild bees!”
“A shape of cold fire?” she repeated.
“A shape of cold fire that whirled beneath the moon, with the sound of litt............