Kreor made a futile attempt to scream through his gag. Price jerked savagely on the rope, and fondled the helve of his ax.
The three paused in the tunnel, the torch-bearer speaking. The two pike-men laughed a little, as if at some idle jest. And then the three started on in the opposite direction.
The green light, flickering on walls and floor and roof, framed them. Dark figures in a little square of green. The square grew small. Then the light was gone; the passage had turned.
“Lead on,” Price whispered. “And don’t try again to give the alarm.”
Again they were advancing in the darkness. The Arab seemed to require no light. Price kept the rope tight, counted paces. Kreor turned again to the left, into a passage that sloped sharply downward and curved smoothly to the left.
The slope, Price estimated, was one foot in four. By counting his paces, he could roughly calculate the amount of actual descent.
When he first became aware of the yellow light, they had descended eight hundred yards along the inclined passage. That meant that the spiral tunnel had carried them some six hundred feet downward, and perhaps three hundred feet below the level of the surrounding plain.
A vague, golden radiance, at first almost imperceptible. As they descended through the silent passage, the Arab leading sullenly at the end of his rope, it became denser, became a yellow fog of tiny, xanthic atoms, dancing endlessly.
He could see the walls of the passage, now, black basalt of the old volcano’s core, smoothly chiseled, the tool marks almost undistinguishable. The tunnel was perhaps eight feet wide, somewhat higher, curving downward in a great spiral.
They were, by Price’s estimate, two hundred feet lower in the yellow-lit passage, when they passed the end of a horizontal tunnel. When they were only a few yards beyond, Price heard voices from below. A man’s and a woman’s. Sharp, excited, angry.
“Come back,” he snarled to Kreor.
He made the Arab enter the horizontal way. It was the same size as the other. Lucent, glistening yellow mist filled it with shadowless, xanthic radiance.
Golden mist. The phrase throbbed suddenly in Price’s brain. The snake-man had told him that Aysa slept, deep in the mountain, in golden vapor that was changing her to living metal. Was this weird light his golden mist? Was his fantastic story true?
As Price followed the sullen Arab along the tunnel, he noticed an extraordinary thing about its walls. They were covered with yellow frost. Over the smoothly hewn, jet-black basalt was a rime of glittering crystals, a delicate tracery of golden flakes. Even the floor was dusted with it. Golden frost!
It was amazing. The gleaming crystals, he knew, must have been deposited from the yellow mist. That meant that the mist was some volatile compound of actual, metallic gold, formed, probably, in the natural laboratory of the volcanic fissures beneath the mountain.
Price roughly understood the process of petrification, in which every minutest cell and tissue of an animal may be perfectly replaced with mineral, to endure as geologic records for a million years. It was easy enough to see how such a process might turn an animal—or a human being—into gold.
But could it take place without destroying life?
Obviously not, if the tissues were replaced with pure gold. But this yellow vapor was not pure gold. To exist in the form of vapor at such temperatures, it must be roughly as volatile as water.
Water is the basis of life, of all protoplasmic compounds. Was this yellow mist a compound of gold, distilled in the vast natural retort of the volcano, that could replace the water in the body, without upsetting any chemical balance? The idea was astonishing, but not impossible.
Busy with this conjecture, Price had almost forgotten the gagged man at the end of his rope. And suddenly he discovered that the rope was slack in his hands. He had come out of the tunnel, upon a narrow, stone-railed balcony. Beyond and below was sheer space, gold-misted.
From beside the tunnel’s entrance, the snake-man leapt upon him with silent ferocity.
19. FOR THE MASTERY OF THE SERPENT
IT WAS sheer instinct for Price to drop the end of the rope tied to the Arab’s neck, as he leapt back before that unexpected attack, and swung up the great ax to defend himself. And Kreor must have been expecting something of the kind, for he turned suddenly from the suicidal charge and bolted up the gold-frosted passage, coiling the rope as he ran.
Price sprang into instant pursuit, but the snake-man’s limp seemed miraculously cured. He dashed back along the passage, gaining steadily, and disappeared where it gave into the spiral way.
Reaching the sloping tunnel only a few moments later, Price peered up and down through dancing golden mists. The Arab had vanished, soundlessly.
Cursing his carelessness in allowing Kreor to escape, Price could not help a certain admiration for his late prisoner. To be sure, the Arab was the acolyte of the insidious Malikar, the branded adherent of an evil snake-cult; he had tried to murder Price at every opportunity. It was his very determination and ruthless enterprise that had won him Price’s regard as a worthy opponent.
While Price knew the man would hasten to spread an alarm, he could not be wholly sorry to see him escape.
For a moment Price stood at the end of the passage, uncertain whether to return to the balcony where Kreor had escaped, or to go on down the slanting way. Curiosity drew him back to the balcony; it was a strange and wonderful sight he had glimpsed from it in the brief second before the Arab’s flight and his own pursuit.
The balcony was twenty feet wide and twice as long, with a low stone railing. Beyond the railing was a Cyclopean space, a circular room, fully four hundred feet in diameter, hewn in the living rock. The roof was a vast, unbroken dome, yellow-crusted, like the walls, with frost of gold.
That colossal, rock-hewn room was filled with sparkling yellow mist. The immensity and strangeness of it awed Price. Almost timidly he crept to the edge of the high gallery and looked over the railing.
The floor was hundreds of feet below. Frosted, like the walls, with a glitter of yellow crystals, it filled a great half-circle, opposite him. The side of the amazing room directly below the gallery had no floor. The gold-rimed rock ended in a ragged line. Below was cavernous space, a far-flung void filled with xanthic mist. Mile upon awesome mile—or so it seemed—it fell beneath him, golden-green with depth upon illimitable depth.
The circular room was hewn in the basalt, above the great cave. And half the room had only that cave for a floor. A colossal temple it was, above the natural laboratory in whose volcanic crucibles was born the puzzling golden vapor.
Leaning over the gold-frosted stone parapet, Price saw the bridge, a narrow span of black stone, flung across that sheer, golden-green abyss. From the wall, directly under his gallery, it leapt across to meet the ragged edge of the floor, near the center of the vast room. Incredibly narrow, it was little more than a black line from his point of view.
The room was like a theater. The half a floor was the stage. The abyss that the narrow bridge spanned was the orchestra pit—with the bottom fallen out. The high balcony upon which Price stood was a lone box.
Price was still looking over the railing when the actors came upon that stage, to perform a weird and amazing drama.
Side by side they strode from the square opening of a rock-hewn passage, out upon the yellow-crusted floor. Malikar and Vekyra. So far below they looked like puppets.
Malikar, the golden man whom Price had twice fought. Thick-bodied, yellow-bearded, robed in crimson and wearing a red skull-cap. Coiled in one great hand was a thick, long whip.
Price had not seen Vekyra before, save in those extraordinary projections upon the sky. Her exotic beauty, wild and passionate, was almost startling. Slim, yellow-limbed, her body was cased in green. Red-golden hair was bound with a wide black band. Lids of oblique, tawny-green eyes were darkened; lips and cheeks and fingers reddened.
The two walked a little apart, and they seemed to be quarreling; Price knew at o
nce that it was their voices he had heard upon the spiral way. Their voices reached him, Vekyra’s high and clear, even in anger; Malikar’s harshly unpleasant.
The words of their conversation, however, Price did not understand. They spoke rapidly; the sound was swallowed in the ringing echoes of the vast room. He was not sure even that they spoke a familiar language.
The woman ran suddenly away from Malikar, and up the ramp that led to a stone platform, suggestive of an altar, set within a niche at the end of the great stage.
Price had not noticed the platform in detail before. Now, for the first time, he saw the snake. The real golden reptile whose dread reflection he had seen in the mirage. Huge, motionless, golden scales gleaming in the unshadowed light. Coiled in a heap of gleaming, undulating loops, the graceful pillar of its bright neck lifted in the center.
Vekyra stopped on the edge of the altar before it, and began to sing. She flung up bare yellow arms in the golden light. Her voice was keen, liquidly and tantalizingly sweet. And the song had a queer, archaic rhythm.
The evil, triangular head of the serpent swayed in time to Vekyra’s singing, and the purple-black eyes watched her, smoldering with immemorial flames. Slowly the head was thrust out toward Vekyra, sank to the level of her shoulders.
The song stopped, then, and she ran up to it. Her yellow arms slipped around the motionless, horizontal column of the neck, in strange caress. She stroked the flat golden head.
Then Price heard Malikar’s angry shout. Evidently displeased with what was happening, he was stalking belligerently toward the platform, swinging the heavy whip.
Springing suddenly away from the serpent, Vekyra ran down the ramp to meet him, calling out to the snake behind her with a strange, pealing shout.
The snake uncoiled its bright, undulating length; it glided after her down the ramp. It was, Price saw, fully the size of the largest boa; its length, he estimated, was at least fifty feet.
Vekyra stopped at the foot of the ramp, and the snake swept past her, toward Malikar. The triangular head was high, mouth yawning, bright tongue flickering, twin golden fangs gleaming evilly. And the snake hissed as it struck at Malikar; a sibilant, menacing roar, astonishingly loud, reverberating eerily in the vast temple.
Malikar stood boldly in its path, shouted with a voice like a brazen clang.
The serpent stopped, arrested, before him. Still it hissed, angrily, tempestuously. Vekyra ran after it, calling out in a high, urgent tone. The snake struck, drove its fanged head at Malikar.
With surprising alertness, the priest leapt back, and swung the black whip. It cracked like a pistol. The flat head recoiled, as if hurt. Malikar strode forward, brandishing the whip. He began to shout at the serpent, his voice brazen, ringing.
The snake writhed back before him, its hiss sinking to an uncertain whisper of hate.
Vekyra ran in beside it. Her slim yellow arms caressed its scales again. Her voice rose in silver, liquid peals.
The serpent stopped its retreat. The broad head whipped back and rubbed against the woman’s golden body, caressingly. She stroked it.
Malikar came on. Vekyra spoke to the snake, appealingly, cajolingly, commandingly. The golden wedge of the head left her body and struck again at Malikar, but hesitantly, doubtfully.
Still the priest was shouting. The snake seemed to shrink from his harsh, brazen tones; the hate-filled hissing died. It started to writhe away. Malikar bellowed savagely; it stopped.
He strode up to its shrinking coils, stood roaring at it. He struck it with the whip. A tremor ran along its glistening length; the weird, purple-black eyes remained fixed upon him. Again he lashed it, and it did not stir.
Vekyra ran up to it, began caressing its coils again, her voice eloquent with golden pleading. It paid her no heed; the black eyes remained upon Malikar.
At length the priest dropped his whip, boomed a harsh command. Slowly, hesitantly, the flat, yellow-scaled head was thrust out at him, its fanged mouth closed. With heavy open hand he slapped it a dozen times, so hard that Price, in his high gallery, heard the blows.
Then Malikar shouted a harsh order at it. The great head moved toward the woman. She cried out, silvery tones shaken, plainly terrified. The slow movement did not cease. The snake hissed again, with the whisper of a far wind.
Vekyra screamed brokenly, as if with extreme terror. She fled across the yellow-frosted floor, toward the passage through which she and Malikar had come. After her the great serpent glided swiftly, hissing.
She vanished. The snake stopped. Malikar called to it, and it came undulating back to him, silent. Before him it drew into a mound of shimmering golden coils and lowered its flat head, watching the priest with purple-black eyes,
Malikar began to lash it.
The whip was long, and thick as his wrist at the butt, tapering. He swung it expertly. The thin tip touched the snake with explosive reports. It quivered; uneasy undulations ran along its bright coils, but the purple-black eyes did not cease their unwinking gaze. Sometimes the yellow man chuckled, thickly, evilly, as if he got a sadistic pleasure from the torture.
At last he stopped, and stood motionless a long time, staring at the snake. Then he pointed with the butt of the whip at the altar-like platform, shouted brazenly. The yellow, gleaming serpent glided back up the ramp, coiled itself in the niche again, unmoving.
Malikar coiled the whip. Swinging it in one hand, he crossed the floor to the brink of the golden-green abyss, and started over the narrow bridge. Fully two hundred feet long, unrailed, the bridge was no more than two feet wide. Beneath was the giddy void, luminous, xanthic green, vast as the gulf between suns.
With steady stride, the red-robed priest walked the dizzy bridge, until he was midway across the awful pit. Suddenly he halted. Price thought at first that he must have been overcome with vertigo. But he casually transferred the coiled black whip to his left hand, and absently, unconcernedly, scratched his head.
Then Malikar turned hastily, as if he had forgotten something. He walked back to the ragged edge of the floor, and across it, and vanished along the way Vekyra had taken.
20. THE SLEEPER IN THE MIST
THE strange duel of Vekyra and Malikar, for control of the golden serpent, had held Price engrossed. For the moment he had completely forgotten his escaped prisoner, Kreor, who was certain to return as soon as he could find aid. As Malikar went out of view Price awoke to the fact that he must quit the gallery quickly if he wished to continue his free adventures in the mountain.
A glance told him there was only one way to leave the gallery: the passage through which he had come. He hastened back along it, resolving, as he went, to carry on his exploration of the yellow-lit corridors.
Kreor had told him that Aysa lay somewhere down here, sleeping. Price had no belief in the snake-man’s veracity. The story had an element of weird incredibility; but at least, he supposed, the girl was as likely to be here as anywhere else.
Price had reached the spiral passage, started cautiously downward, when he heard footsteps ahead of him, and angry, low-voiced muttering. Retreating hastily to the end of the horizontal passage, he entered it and flattened himself against the wall.
Malikar strode past in a moment, a scowl on his yellow face, grumbling under his breath. Wondering how soon he would return, Price waited until all sound from him had ceased, then entered the sloping way again, and ran down it, ears straining for sound of the alarm that Kreor must be spreading.
The quivering golden atoms in the air became thicker as he descended, until he moved through pallid wraiths of shirring xanthic mist. Even then he noticed an odd tickling sensation in his nostrils, a slight breathlessness. But in his preoccupation with other perils he disregarded the menace of the yellow mist.
The tunnel became straight, level. Price followed it into the great, circular room he had surveyed from the high gallery. Curving, gold-frosted walls rose about him, to the dome hundreds of feet above. High under the dome he made out the balcony, th
rough golden haze.
The ragged edge of the yellow-dusted floor was two hundred feet away. Beyond that edge was sheer space, with the single narrow span of the bridge leaping across to the wall beneath the high gallery. At the end of the bridge, he saw a great niche in the wall, a wide shelf above the abyss.
On his right, eighty yards across the floor, was the altar-like dais, with the glittering length of the gold serpent upon it. At first realization that he had come into the lair of the snake, Price started back apprehensively into the passage.
But the yellow reptile’s flat head was resting quietly upon the bright coils. The dread, purple-black eyes were closed. It seemed unaware of his entrance.
The slender bridge drew Price with a sort of fascination. He feared to set foot upon it; knew that he could not easily keep his head above that stupendous chasm of green-gold vapor. But he had a sudden conviction that Aysa must be in the niche beyond it.
It was not a time to hesitate. Malikar, for all he knew, might return at any moment. Kreor would doubtless soon be back with a party to search for him. Worse, the gigantic snake might discover his presence.
Without pausing for any deliberate consideration of his position, Price slipped as silently as he could across the great floor, to its uneven edge at the center of the room. The snake remained motionless. He reached the bridge, set out across it.
Smooth, unrailed, the walk was less than two feet wide. Below was the sheer and awful void, shining immensities golden-green with dizzying depth.
A professional acrobat, with trained sense of balance, would have found the crossing no feat at all. But Price reeled. He felt a moment of nausea, had to shut his eyes to recover his balance.
He tried not to look into the pit, tried to keep his eyes on the yellow-rimed stone at his feet. But the abyss drew his gaze with a sinister fascination.
He hurried, sometimes half running. His stomach was queerly light. Cold sweat pearled his face. He was panting, gripping his fists until nails cut into palms.
Golden Blood Page 12
