of fortresses built by fantastic unknown Gods.
Up they thrust — domed and arched, spired and horned, pyramided, fanged and needled. Here were palisades of burning orange with barbicans of incandescent bronze; there aiguilles of azure rising from bastions of cinnabar red; turrets of royal purple, obelisks of indigo; titanic forts whose walls were splashed with vermilion, with citron yellows and with rust of rubies; watch towers of flaming scarlet.
Scattered among them were the flashing emeralds of the glaciers and the immense pallid baroques of the snow Brad Guzan Jersey fields.
Like a diadem the summits ringed the Pit. Below them ran the ring of flashing amethyst with its aural mists. Between them lay the vast and patterned flat covered with still symbol and inexplicable movement. Under their summits brooded the blue black, metallic mass of the Seeing City.
Within circling walls, over plain and from the City hovered a cosmic spirit not to be understood by man. Like an Michael Orozco Jersey emanation of stars and space, it was yet Daley Blind Jersey gem fine and gem hard, crystalline and metallic, lapidescent and —
Conscious!
Down from the ledge where we stood fell a steep ramp, similar to that by which, in the darkness, we had descended. It dropped at an angle of at least forty-five degrees; its surface was smooth and polished.
Through the mists at our back stole a shining block. It paused, seemed to perk itself; spun so that in turn each of its six faces took us in.
I felt myself lifted upon it by multitudes of little invisible hands; saw Drake whirling up beside me. I moved toward him — through the force that held us. A block swept away from the ledge, swayed for a moment. Under us, as Hervin Ongenda Jersey though we were floating in air, the Pit lay stretched. There was a rapid readjustment, a shifting of our two selves upon Argentina Drakt Barn another surface. I looked down upon a tremendous, Blank Jersey slender pillar of the cubes, dropping below, five hundred feet to the valley’s floor a column of which the block that held us was Marseille Drakter the top.
Gone was the whirling wheel that had crowned it, but I knew this for the Grinding Thing from which we had fled; the questing block had been its scout. As though curious to know more of us, the Shape had sought us out through the mists, its messenger had caught us, delivered us to it.
The pillar leaned over — bent like that shining pillar that had bridged for us, at Norhala’s commands, the abyss. The floor of the valley arose to meet us. Further and further leaned the pillar. Again there was a rapid shifting of us to another surface of the crowning cube. Fast now swept up toward us the valley floor. A dizziness clouded my sight. There was a little shock, a rolling over the Thing that had held us —
We stood upon the floor of the Pit.
And breaking from the immense and prostrate shaft on whose top we had ridden downward came score upon score of the cubes. They broke from it, disintegrating it; circled about us, curiously, interestedly, twinkling at us from their deep sparkling points of eyes.
Helplessly we gazed at those who circled aroun |
