“Human, yes—but there is something else in her—something stronger than humanness, something that—makes it sleep!” she added astonishingly.
The ground was level as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmatic glow—emanation, it seemed to me—from Norhala which was as a light for us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky had vanished—seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars.
Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement; soft stirring all about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved an invisible host.
“There's something moving all about us—going with us,” Ruth echoed my thought.
“It's the wind,” I said, and paused—for there was no wind.
From the blackness before us came a succession of curious, muffled clickings, like a smothered mitrailleuse. The luminescence that clothed Norhala brightened, deepening the darkness.
“Cross!”
She pointed into the void ahead; then, as we started forward, thrust out a hand to Ruth, held her back. Drake and Ventnor drew close to them, questioningly, anxious. But I stepped forward, out of the dim gleaming.
Before me were two cubes; one I judged in that uncertain light to be six feet high, the other half its bulk. From them a shaft of pale-blue phosphorescence pierced the murk. They stood, the smaller pressed against the side of the larger, for all the world like a pair of immense nursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child.
As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken span of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of the dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped at my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrous girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the faint whisper of rushing waters.