Ominous clanldngs from the machinery spoke of coming ruin and dissolution, and one day these signs could no longer be ignored.
They had passed the ice pack by this time and were steadily approaching a warmer clime. Finally they made landfall.
The country was rocky and Corenice could not find that it agreed with her maps, but from its position and volcanic smokes on the horizon, she judged it to be a young land upraised since her time.
If there were inhabitants, no sign of them could be seen as the swan-ship limped along the southern coast. Here were no bays and few landing places. The sea beat in upon an inhospitable shore where there was much floating ice from the glaciers which came down from the sea. Dust fell upon them from the frequent eruptions and at night the skies glowed red. They determined it to be an island and the only sign that indicated it to have ever been visited by man came from the sighting of a skin boat floating bottom up. There was no one near it.
A pillar of volcanic ash and smoke stood ten thousand feet in the air over the center of the island as they stood in for a landing. It seemed a dreadful place to set Gwal-chmai ashore, yet Corenice knew that there was no alternative. Further traveling was impossible. Helping him with much difficulty, since her refractory body would scarcely any longer obey her will, they carried in supplies to a low shelving beach at the end of a long firth where an ice-river came down to the sea.
Gwalchmai's hair had turned quite white from exposure to the continually discharging rays from the disrupting cells of the ship. He found his faculties were unimpaired and his strength not diminished, when they climbed the gentle slope of land leading to a height overlooking the glacier.
Snow was falling upon the bleak expanse in large soft flakes. They sat and looked down the hill at the waiting swan-ship. It was almost hidden from them by an overhanging cloud of dancing golden motes. Corenice moved within a similar aura, if anything even more lovely because of the deadly mist.
She spoke and moved with difficulty and he felt a throb of heartbreak as he remembered her gay vitality as she had danced and made music for him, so very long ago.
"This, then, must be our place of farewell. Oh, Gwalch-mail Have I brought you so far upon your way only to leave you to your death?
"The Spirit of the Wave cannot have meant to be so cruel to us."
"Your goddess would not have permitted you to become so dear to me if there was to be no other ending. I know now that when I drank my god-father Merlin's magic potion that I prolonged my life. You, my precious one, who have roamed the world in spirit and looked out of die eyes of others in many ages, must find a way to come back to me. Surely it will be allowed to us in time to come that we shall meet again."
She smiled with a great effort.
"Then you feel, as I do, that death of the body cannot be an end of life? This body is dying, but it has brought me little pleasure. To feel myself alive and know that I am metal! To know myself alive, to feel desire and to long for lovel To live so long and crave death and now to die and wish to live! Oh, Gwalchmai!
"Yet this life means little to me. You and I would never be nearer in it. If we meet again, let it be in some future existence."
"We must. We shall!" He clasped her tight. She disengaged herself easily and continued:
"There is no time for love-making! No time for anything more. You must flee far inland, for your life, for know that when I am gone the Vimana may return to seek you out and slay you. I am going now, to drive it far to sea and perhaps destroy it if I can, before my faculties fail and the power over it and my body is entirely gone.
"This is my punishment, which I deserve. I completed my vow. I slew murderers and became a Killer myself, the sin I was taught was unforgivable. Because of that sin, I die, but Ahuni-i forgive me, I cannot feel that I am wicked."
"You are not," he groaned. "Oh, Corenice! Murder and the love of killing will not be less in the world because the Nor-um-Begans are gone. Strife is a part of man, born in him, never to be removed."
"Perhaps," she gasped. "But love is better and now that I am dying, I can say it—such an unmaidenly thing, Gwal-chmai, and so strange that a girl of metal can love—but it is you who are my heart's darling—I never love another."
Gwalchmai bowed his white head and great sobs shook him. Her little fingers touched his cheek. They were still soft, but burning with the corroding action of the disintegrating metal. There was a rapt look in her eyes. She seemed to be listening. Her voice was very soft
"I have received the promise. I am forgiven. This is not the end in this place of ice and fire."
He caught her to him again, regardless of the pain the action caused him.
"Let me die with you," he murmured. "Here, together, like this!"
She tore herself violently away and stood up, swaying, with a little of the old imperiousness.
"No!" she cried, but the bell music of her voice was sadly jangled. Then in swift regret she stooped and kissed him with lips that were tender and sweet as any girl of flesh.
"This is not goodbye, my very dear, for now that I know you love me, I will find a way to come again. I will see you complete your vow and somehow I will help you on your long journey. Have faith and we shall be together in some other life. Yea, we shall meet and live and love again— though it be two hundred year!
"Ahuni-i protect you now, my lover, for I cannot any longer!"
She turned away and ran, stumbling, down the slope toward the waiting ship, an aura of glowing vapor all about her, a golden ghost in a golden cloud.
"Wait, Corenice, wait!" he cried in anguish, running after. "Let me go with you! When shall we meet? How shall I know you in another lif e?"
She looked back over her shoulder.
"Know me by gold!" she cried and vanished below the
Vimana's deck. Almost instantly it wheeled, heading out to sea.
He climbed to his former point of eminence, sitting there with his head in his hands, watching the ship until it passed out of sight. The ring on his finger became burning hot.
Disregarding her last warning, he remained motionless upon his rock, eyeing dully the grim and forbidding horizon. Thick dark clouds let down a heavy sifting of snow-flakes upon him and the wind grew bitter, but he did not bestir himself to find shelter, though night was rapidly falling.
Then a brilliant glow became visible upon the far line where sky met sea, as though the sun were rising again. With a start, he realized that it was rapidly growing more huge and distinct. It was an effulgent blur, a cloud of fire tearing across the surface of the water in his direction.
Now it was at the entrance to the firth! The swan-ship on its way back to destroy him—free at last of any restraint!
Without stopping for any of his supplies, he ran inland across the surface of the glacier, far and fast, leaping cracks scarcely visible in the blinding snow which grew momentarily more like falling sparks in the rapidly approaching light behind him.
Frantic, knowing that he could not escape, he turned. The Vimana had reached the strand. Its head lay back for the discharge and the hissing of a thousand serpents filled the air. He stood still to die.
At that instant, an apparition took form on the ice before him. At first, he thought it Corenice mystically returned to be with him, but as she turned and smiled upon him, he saw her to be a stranger.
Her face was oval, but not human! Beautiful it was beyond the telling, but her eyes were square and her skin was faintly edged with jewel-like scales, Sea-green were her robes and dripping with brine. She was armored to the waist and helmeted, but bore no weapon of any kind. Instead, she carried a concave shield, emblazoned with a great serpent, represented as in the act of swallowing its own tail.
The brilliance of her metal hurt his eyes as she waved him behind her. The terrific blast of the Thunder Bird tore over the ice, but quicker even than that the strange being swung up her shield to cover him, deflecting the ray back upon its sender.
Up to the very storm cloud
s thundered a sheet of "fire, a fountain of rocketing heat, as every disrupted atom in the swan-ship gave up its mite to create an unparalleled gush of energy into the heavens.
The bottom of the firth became visible, steaming and black, but the water discharged into the sea soon came rushing back higher than before, thudding against the glacier.
The whole face of it slipped off and splashed down into the turbulent waves, splitting between the two, carrying away his savior into the sea from whence she had come.
Back from the dangerous edge he ran. New cracks had opened from the shock. He avoided these, but a few hundred feet away a snow bridge covered an old crevasse which he did not see.
It collapsed beneath him and he fell with it, deep down within the heart of the glacier, striking, rebounding, striking again, to be buried deeper yet and unconscious in the massed drifts below. More snow, dislodged by his body, fell now upon him, packing itself around him as he lay there, and upon it all, as he lay encoffined, a soft shroud of flakes descended into the crevasse, sealing him away from the world.
A tiny spark of knowledge lit his memory for a brief instant before it went out in the blackness over which he had no control.
"We shall meet and love again—though it be two hundred yearF
The Ship from Atlantis Page 11
