Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 1, 2025
I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours the facing of the Three. Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry's voice: "They look like birds."
I felt for my pocket-flash and recalled with distress that I had left it behind with my medicine kit when we fled from the gardens. But Rador seemed to need no light. "Grip hands!" he ordered. We crept, single file, holding to each other like children, through the black. At last the green dwarf paused. "Await me here," he whispered. "Do not move. And for your lives be silent!" And he was gone.
Without warning the globe beside us sent out a vicious note, Rador turned toward it, his face paling. Its surface crawled with whisperings angry, peremptory! "I hear!" he croaked, gripping the table. "I obey!" He turned to us a face devoid for once of its malice. "Ask me no more questions, strangers," he said. "And now, if you are done, I will show you where you may sleep and bathe."
Where do we go from here, old dear?" he laughed. "We tread the path of one I am not fain to meet," answered Rador. "But if meet we must, point the death tubes at the pale shield he bears upon his throat and send the flame into the flower of cold fire that is its centre nor look into his eyes!" Again Larry gasped, and I with him. "It's getting too deep for me, Doc," he muttered dejectedly.
"This man comes with us, Yolara," said O'Keefe pointing to Olaf. "Bring him," she said. "Bring him only tell him to look no more upon me as before!" she added fiercely. Beside her the three of us passed along the stalls, where sat the fair-haired, now silent, at gaze, as though in the grip of some great doubt. Silently Olaf strode beside me. Rador had disappeared.
Scanning it we found no trace of Lugur and wondered whether he too had seen the worm and had fled. Quickly we passed on; drew away from the coria path. The mosses began to thin; less and less they grew, giving way to low clumps that barely offered us shelter. Unexpectedly another screen of fern moss stretched before us. Slowly Rador made his way through it and stood hesitating.
Gasping, legs aching, we lay prone, relaxed, drawing back strength and breath. Rador was first to rise. Thrice he bent low as in homage, then "Give thanks to the Silent Ones for their power has been over us!" he exclaimed. Dimly I wondered what he meant. Something about the fern leaf at which I had been staring aroused me. I leaped to my feet and ran to its base. This was no fern, no!
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.
The Irishman was gripping my arm fiercely; the pain brought me back to my senses. "Olaf's right," he gasped. "This is hell! I'm sick." And he was, frankly and without restraint. Lugur and his others awakened from their nightmare; piled into the coria, wheeled, raced away. "On!" said Rador thickly. "Two perils have we passed the Silent Ones watch over us!"
"How is it, Larree, that you have two countries and Goodwin but one?" she asked, at last unable to keep silent longer. "I was born in Ireland; he in America. But I have dwelt long in his land and my heart loves each," he said. She nodded, understandingly. "Are all the men of Ireland like you, Larree? As all the men here are like Lugur or Rador?
Word Of The Day
Others Looking