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Updated: June 15, 2025
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.
The Nursery of the Metal People! Norhala was gone, blotted out from our sight! Gone too were the bar of light and the chamber into which we had been peering. We stared at a smooth, blank wall. With that same ensorcelled swiftness the wall had closed even as we had stared through it; closed so quickly that we had not seen its motion.
From it came a single mighty throb of force like a prodigious heart-beat. Under that pulse of power the Emperor staggered, spun and spinning, swept Norhala from her feet, swung her close to its flashing rose. A second throb pulsed from the cones, and mightier. A spasm shook the Disk a paroxysm.
Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannonading. The Thing halted. The tower that upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode. Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us. Came a shrill, keen wailing louder than ever I had heard before. There was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a swift sinking.
But now I would not do as then quite differently would I do, Norhala; for I have learned much. I am sorry that those that you loved died as they did. I am in truth sorry!" There was a curious lurking sardonicism in the words, an undertone of mockery. Was what he really meant that in those years he had learned to inflict greater agonies, more exquisite tortures?
There came a gasp of relief from Ventnor, a sigh from Drake while, from my own heart, a weight rolled. Not ten yards ahead of us and still deep within the luminosity had appeared the regal head of Norhala, the lovely head of Ruth. The two rose out of the glow like swimmers floating from the depths. Now they were clear before us, and now we could see the surface of the cube on which they rode.
The valley filled with a palely shimmering radiance which dropped like veils upon it, hiding all within it. Hiding within fold upon luminous fold Norhala! Mutely we faced each other, white and wan in the ghostly light. The valley was very still; as silent as though sound had been withdrawn from it.
"Some new and alien thing within my heart, my brain, my soul. It came to me from Norhala when we rode the flying block, and he sealed upon me when I was in his" again she crimsoned, "embrace." And as we gazed at her, incredulously: "A thing that urges me to forget you two and Martin and all the world I've known.
As softly as though by the hand of a giant of cloud we were lifted out from the wall, and were set with no perceptible shock beside her on the back of the cubes. "Norhala " I stopped. For this was no Norhala whom we had known. Gone was all calm, vanished every trace of unearthly tranquillity. It was a Norhala awakened at last all human.
That was it as indifferent as we could be to the struggle of an ephemera; and as mildly curious. "Norhala," I turned to the woman, "she would not have him suffer; she would not have him die. She loves him." "Love?" she repeated, and all of her wonderment seemed crystallized in the word. "Love?" she asked.
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