onger 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 o