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Far down, peeping around a jutting tower of the cliff, I saw dipping with the motion of the waves a floating garden. The flowers, too, were luminous indeed sparkling gleaming brilliants of scarlet and vermilions lighter than the flood on which they lay, mauves and odd shades of reddish-blue. They gleamed and shone like a little lake of jewels. Rador broke in upon my musings. "Lakla comes!
Those at the threshold raised their swords and peered within. Abruptly Rador was between them. One dropped his hilt and gripped him the green dwarf's poniard flashed and was buried in his throat. Down upon Rador's head swept the second blade. A flame leaped from O'Keefe's hand and the sword seemed to fling itself from its wielder's grasp another flash and the soldier crumpled.
Within was a small cube of black crystal, through whose sides I saw, dimly, a rapidly revolving, glowing ball, not more than two inches in diameter. Beneath the cube was a curiously shaped, slender cylinder winding down into the lower body of the Nautilus whorl. "Watch!" said Rador. He motioned me into the vehicle and took a place beside me.
Consciousness flooded me, in reality I was in the arms of one of the man frogs, carrying me as though I were a babe, and we were passing through some place suffused with glow enough like heart of pearl or dawn cloud to justify my awakening vagaries. Just ahead walked Lakla in earnest talk with Rador, and content enough was I for a time to watch her.
"I am done with Lugur and with Yolara and the Shining One!" cried Rador. "My hand is for you three and for Lakla and those to whom she is handmaiden!" The shell leaped forward; seemed to fly. A tal in Muria is the equivalent of thirty hours of earth surface time. The Casting of the Shadow
Rador threw himself into the shell, darted to the high seat and straight between the pillars of the Shadow we flew! There came a crackling, a darkness of vast wings flinging down upon us. The corial's flight was checked as by a giant's hand. The shell swerved sickeningly; there was an oddly metallic splintering; it quivered; shot ahead. Dizzily I picked myself up and looked behind.
Platform and bridge were swarming with men-at-arms; they crowded the parapets, looking down upon us curiously but with no evidence of hostility. Rador drew a deep breath of relief. "We don't have to break our way through, then?" There was disappointment in the Irishman's voice. "No use, Larree!" Smiling, Rador stopped the corial just beneath the arch and beside one of the piers. "Now, listen well.
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.
"Lo, I have seen one of my race hold up ten times ten of our what call you that swift thing in which Rador brought us here?" "Corial," said she. "Hold up ten times twenty of our corials with but two fingers and these corials of ours " "Coria," said she. "And these coria of ours are each greater in weight than ten of yours. Yes, and I have seen another with but one blow of his hand raise hell!
Hell or heaven I never heard formulated, nor their equivalents; unless that existence in the Shining One's domain could serve for either. Over all this was Thanaroa, remote; unheeding, but still maker and ruler of all an absentee First Cause personified! Thanaroa seemed to be the one article of belief in the creed of the soldiers Rador, with his reverence for the Ancient Ones, was an exception.
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