Chapter 6: Norhala of the Lightnings

We looked upon a vision of loveliness such, I think, as none has beheld since Trojan Helen was a maid. At first all I could note were the eyes, clear as rain-washed April skies, crystal clear as some secret spring sacred to crescented Diana. Their wide gray irises were flecked with golden amber and sapphire--flecks that shone like clusters of little aureate and azure stars.

Then with a strange thrill of wonder I saw that these tiny constellations were not in the irises alone; that they clustered even within the pupils--deep within them, like far-flung stars in the depths of velvety, midnight heavens.

Whence had come those cold fires that had flared from them, I wondered--more menacing, far more menacing, in their cold tranquillity than the hot flames of wrath? These eyes were not perilous--no. Calm they were and still--yet in them a shadow of interest flickered; a ghost of friendliness smiled.

Above them were level, delicately penciled brows of bronze. The lips were coral crimson and--asleep. Sweet were those lips as ever master painter, dreaming his dream of the very soul of woman’s sweetness, saw in vision and limned upon his canvas--and asleep, nor wistful for awakening.

A proud, straight nose; a broad low brow, and over it the masses of the tendriling tresses--tawny, lustrous topaz, cloudy, METALLIC. Like spun silk of ruddy copper; and misty as the wisps of cloud that Soul’tze, Goddess of Sleep, sets in the skies of dawn to catch the wandering dreams of lovers.

Down from the wondrous face melted the rounded column of her throat to merge into exquisite curves of shoulders and breasts, half revealed beneath the swathing veils.

But upon that face, within her eyes, kissing her red lips and clothing her breasts, was something unearthly.

Something that came straight out of the still mysteries of the star-filled spaces; out of the ordered, the untroubled, the illimitable void.

A passionless spirit that watched over the human passion in the scarlet mouth, in every slumbering, sculptured line of her--guarding her against its awakening.

Twilight calm dropping down from the sun sleep to still the restless mountain tarn. Ishtar dreamlessly asleep within Nirvana.

Something not of this world we know--and yet of it as the winds of the Cosmos are to the summer breeze, the ocean to the wave, the lightnings to the glowworm.

“She isn’t--human,” I heard Ventnor whispering at my ear. “Look at her eyes; look at the skin of her--”

Her skin was white as milk of pearls; gossamer fine, silken and creamy; translucent as though a soft brilliancy dwelt within it. Beside it Ruth’s fair skin was like some sun-and-wind-roughened country lass’s to Titania’s.

She studied us as though she were seeing for the first time beings of her own kind. She spoke--and her voice was elfin distant, chimingly sweet like hidden little golden bells; filled with that tranquil, far off spirit that was part of her--as though indeed a tiny golden chime should ring out from the silences, speak for them, find tongues for them. The words were hesitating, halting as though the lips that uttered them found speech strange--as strange as the clear eyes found our images.

And the words were Persian--purest, most ancient Persian.

“I am Norhala,” the golden voice chimed forth, whispered down into silence. “I am Norhala.”

She shook her head impatiently. A hand stole forth from beneath her veils, slender, long-fingered with nails like rosy pearls; above the wrist was coiled a golden dragon with wicked little crimson eyes. The slender white hand touched Ruth’s head, turned it until the strange, flecked orbs looked directly into the misty ones of blue.

Long they gazed--and deep. Then she who had named herself Norhala thrust out a finger, touched the tear that hung upon Ruth’s curled lashes, regarded it wonderingly.

Something of recognition, of memory, seemed to awaken within her.

“You are--troubled?” she asked with that halting effort.

Ruth shook her head.

“THEY--do not trouble you?”

She pointed to the huddled heaps strewing the hollow. And then I saw whence the light which had streamed from her great eyes came. For the little azure and golden stars paled, trembled, then flashed out like galaxies of tiny, clustered silver suns.

From that weird radiance Ruth shrank, affrighted.

“No--no,” she gasped. “I weep for--HIM.”

She pointed where Chiu-Ming lay, a brown blotch at the edge of the shattered men.

“For--him?” There was puzzlement in the faint voice. “For--that? But why?”

She looked at Chiu-Ming--and I knew that to her the sight of the crumpled form carried no recognition of the human, nothing of kin to her. There was a faint wonder in her eyes, no longer light-filled, when at last she turned back to us. Long she considered us.

“Now,” she broke the silence, “now something stirs within me that it seems has long been sleeping. It bids me take you with me. Come!”

Abruptly she turned from us, glided to the crevice. We looked at each other, seeking council, decision.

“Chiu-Ming,” Drake spoke. “We can’t leave him like that. At least let’s cover him from the vultures.”

“Come.” The woman had reached the mouth of the fissure.

“I’m afraid! Oh, Martin--I’m afraid.” Ruth reached little trembling hands to her tall brother.

“Come!” Norhala called again. There was an echo of harshness, a clanging, peremptory and inexorable, in the chiming.

Ventnor shrugged his shoulders.

“Come, then,” he said.

With one last look at the Chinese, the lammergeiers already circling about him, we walked to the crevice. Norhala waited, silent, brooding until we passed her; then glided behind us.

Before we had gone ten paces I saw that the place was no fissure. It was a tunnel, a passage hewn by human hands, its walls covered with the writhing dragon lines, its roof the mountain.

The swathed woman swept by us. Swiftly we followed her. Far, far ahead was a wan gleaming. It quivered, a faintly shimmering, ghostly curtain, a full mile away.

Now it was close; we passed through it and were out of the tunnel. Before us stretched a narrow gorge, a sword slash in the body of the towering giant under whose feet the tunnel crept. High above was the ribbon of the sky.

The sides were dark, but it came to me that here were no trees, no verdure of any kind. Its floor was strewn with boulders, fantastically shaped, almost indistinguishable in the fast closing dark.

Twin monoliths bulwarked the passage end; the gigantic stones were leaning, crumbling. Fissures radiated from the opening, like deep wrinkles in the rock, showing where earth warping, range pressure, had long been working to close this hewn way.

“Stop,” Norhala’s abrupt, golden note halted us; and again through the clear eyes I saw the white starshine flash.

“It may be well--” She spoke as though to herself. “It may be well to close this way. It is not needed--”

Her voice rang out again, vibrant, strangely disquieting, harmonious. Murmurous chanting it was at first, rhythmic and low; ripples and flutings, tones and progressions utterly unknown to me; unfamiliar, abrupt, and alien themes that kept returning, droppings of crystal-clear jewels of sound, golden tollings--and all ordered, mathematical, GEOMETRIC, even as had been the gestures of the shapes; Lilliputians of the ruins, Brobdignagian of the haunted hollow.

What was it? I had it--IT WAS THOSE GESTURES TRANSFORMED INTO SOUND!

There was a movement down by the tunnel mouth. It grew more rapid, seemed to vibrate with her song. Within the darkness there were little flashes; glimmerings of light began to come and go--like little awakenings of eyes of soft, jeweled flames, like giant gorgeous fireflies; flashes of cloudy amber, gleam of rose, sparkles of diamonds and of opals, of emeralds and of rubies--blinking, gleaming.

A shimmering mist drew down around them--a swift and swirling mist. It thickened, was shot with slender shuttled threads like cobweb, coruscating strands of light.

The shining threads grew thicker, pulsed, were spangled with tiny vivid sparklings. They ran together, condensed--and all this in an instant, in a tenth of the time it takes me to write it.

From fiery mist and gemmed flashes came bolt upon bolt of lightning. The cliff face leaped out, a cataract of green flame. The fissures widened, the monoliths trembled, fell.

In the wake of that dazzling brilliancy came utter blackness. I opened my blinded eyes; slowly the flecks of green fire cleared. A faint lambency still clung to the cliff. By it I saw that the tunnel’s mouth had vanished, had been sealed--where it had gaped were only tons of shattered rock.

Came a rushing past us as of great bodies; something grazed my hand, something whose touch was like that of warm metal--but metal throbbing with life. They rushed by--and whispered down into silence.

“Come!” Norhala flitted ahead of us, a faintly luminous shape in the darkness. Swiftly we followed. I found Ruth beside me; felt her hand grip my wrist.

“Walter,” she whispered, “Walter--she isn’t human!”

“Nonsense,” I muttered. “Nonsense, Ruth. What do you think she is--a goddess, a spirit of the Himalayas? She’s as human as you or I.”

“No.” Even in the darkness I could sense the stubborn shake of her curly head. “Not all human. Or how could she have commanded those things? Or have summoned the lightnings that blasted the tunnel’s mouth? And her skin and hair--they’re too WONDERFUL, Walter.

“Why, she makes me look--look coarse. And the light that hovers about her--why, it is by that light we are making our way. And when she touched me--I--I glowed--all through.

“Human, yes--but there is something else in her--something stronger than humanness, something that--makes it sleep!” she added astonishingly.

The ground was level as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmatic glow--emanation, it seemed to me--from Norhala which was as a light for us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky had vanished--seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars.

Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement; soft stirring all about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved an invisible host.