When they had covered half the distance that separated them from the foot of the hill, Maskull heard the drum taps. They came from behind the hill, and were loud, sharp, almost explosive. He glanced at Sullenbode, but she appeared to hear nothing. A minute later the whole sky behind and above the long chain of stone posts on the crest of the hill began to be illuminated by a strange radiance. The moonlight in that quarter faded; the posts stood out black on a background of fire. It was the light of Muspel. As the moments passed, it grew more and more vivid, peculiar, and awful. It was of no colour, and resembled nothing - it was supernatural and indescribable. Maskull's spirit swelled. He stood fast, with expanded nostrils and terrible eyes.
Sullenbode touched him lightly.
'What do you see, Maskull?'
'Muspel-light.'
'I see nothing.'
The light shot up, until Maskull scarcely knew where he stood. It burned with a fiercer and stranger glare than ever before. He forgot the existence of Sullenbode. The drum beats grew deafeningly loud. Each beat was like a rip of startling thunder, crashing through the sky and making the air tremble. Presently the crashes coalesced, and one continuous roar of thunder rocked the world. But the rhythm persisted - the four beats, with the third accented, still came pulsing through the atmosphere, only now against a background of thunder, and not of silence.
Maskull's heart beat wildly. His body was like a prison. He longed to throw it off, to spring up and become incorporated with the sublime universe which was beginning to unveil itself.
Sullenbode suddenly enfolded him in her arms, and kissed him - passionately, again and again. He made no response; he was unaware of what she was doing. She unclasped him and, with bent head and streaming eyes, went noiselessly away. She started to go back toward the Mornstab Pass.
A few minutes afterward the radiance began to fade. The thunder died down. The moonlight reappeared, the stone posts and the hillside were again bright. In a short time the supernatural light had entirely vanished, but the drum taps still sounded faintly, a muffled rhythm, from behind the hill. Maskull started violently, and stared around him like a suddenly awakened sleeper.
He saw Sullenbode walking slowly away from him, a few hundred yards off. At that sight, death entered his heart. He ran after her, calling out… She did not look around. When he had lessened the distance between them by a half, he saw her suddenly stumble and fall. She did not get up again, but lay motionless where she fell.
He flew toward her, and bent over her body. His worst fears were realised. Life had departed.
Beneath its coating of mud, her face bore the vulgar, ghastly Crystalman grin, but Maskull saw nothing of it. She had never appeared so beautiful to him as at that moment.
He remained beside her for a long time, on his knees. He wept - but, between his fits of weeping, he raised his head from time to time, and listened to the distant drum beats.
An hour passed - two hours. Teargeld was now in the south-west. Maskull lifted Sullenbode's dead body on to his shoulders, and started to walk toward the Pass. He cared no more for Muspel. He intended to look for water in which to wash the corpse of his beloved, and earth in which to bury her.
When he had reached the boulder overlooking the landslip, on which they had sat together, he lowered his burden, and, placing the dead girl on the stone, seated himself beside her for a time, gazing over toward Barey.
After that, he commenced his descent of the Mornstab Pass.
Chapter 20
BAREY
The day had already dawned, but it was not yet sunrise when Maskull awoke from his miserable sleep. He sat up and yawned feebly. The air was cool and sweet. Far away down the landslip a bird was singing; the song consisted of only two notes, but it was so plaintive and heartbreaking that he scarcely knew how to endure it.
The eastern sky was a delicate green, crossed by a long, thin band of chocolate-coloured cloud near the horizon. The atmosphere was blue-tinted, mysterious, and hazy. Neither Sarclash nor Adage was visible.
The saddle of the Pass was five hundred feet above him; he had descended that distance overnight. The landslip continued downward, like a huge flying staircase, to the upper slopes of Barey, which lay perhaps fifteen hundred feet beneath. The surface of the Pass was rough, and the angle was excessively steep, though not precipitous. It was above a mile across. On each side of it, east and west, the dark walls of the ridge descended sheer. At the point where the pass sprang outward they were two thousand feet from top to bottom, but as the ridge went upward, on the one hand toward Adage, on the other toward Sarclash, they attained almost unbelievable heights. Despite the great breadth and solidity of the pass, Maskull felt as though he were suspended in midair.
The patch of broken, rich, brown soil observable not far away marked Sullenbode's grave. He had interred her by the light of the moon, with a long, flat stone for a spade. A little lower down, the white steam of a hot spring was curling about in the twilight. From where he sat he was unable to see the pool into which the spring ultimately flowed, but it was in that pool that he had last night washed first of all the dead girl's body, and then his own.
He got up, yawned again, stretched himself, and looked around him dully. For a long time he eyed the grave. The half-darkness changed by imperceptible degrees to full day; the sun was about to appear. The sky was nearly cloudless. The whole wonderful extent of the mighty ridge behind him began to emerge from the morning mist… there was a part of Sarclash, and the ice-green crest of gigantic Adage itself, which he could only take in by throwing his head right back.
He gazed at everything in weary apathy, like a lost soul. All his desires were gone forever; he wished to go nowhere, and to do nothing. He thought he would go to Barey.
He went to the warm pool, to wash the sleep out of his eyes. Sitting beside it, watching the bubbles, was Krag.
Maskull thought that he was dreaming. The man was clothed in a skin shirt and breeches. His face was stern, yellow, and ugly. He eyed Maskull without smiling or getting up.
'Where in the devil's name have you come from, Krag?'
'The great point is, I am here.'
'Where's Nightspore?'
'Not far away.'
'It seems a hundred years since I saw you. Why did you two leave me in such a damnable fashion?'
'You were strong enough to get through alone.'
'So it turned out, but how were you to know?… Anyway, you've timed it well. It seems I am to die today.'
Krag scowled. 'You will die this morning.'
'If I am to, I shall. But where have you heard it from?'
'You are ripe for it. You have run through the gamut. What else is there to live for?'
'Nothing,' said Maskull, uttering a short laugh. 'I am quite ready. I have failed in everything. I only wondered how you knew… So now you've come to rejoin me. Where are we going?'
'Through Barey.'
'And what about Nightspore?'
Krag jumped to his feet with clumsy agility. 'We won't wait for him. He'll be there as soon as we shall.'
'Where?'
'At our destination… Come! The sun's rising.'
As they started clambering down the pass side by side, Branchspell, huge and white, leaped fiercely into the sky. All the delicacy of the dawn vanished, and another vulgar day began. They passed some trees and plants, the leaves of which were all curled up, as if in sleep.
Maskull pointed them out to his companion.
'How is it the sunshine doesn't open them?'
