His feet kicked endless grains of dust walking along that massive barrier. Mile after mile they trudged, and found no gates.
Slag said, "How get in?"
Thor put a hand in his frayed pocket and drew out the warm ruby. He said, "This must be the only key. We haven't found any door yet."
They put hands on the jewel and moved it. They went forward over the red grasslands for a hundred feet. Thor said, "This ought to be just about right." Once more they turned the jewel, and experienced the dark, the coldness, and the vertigo.
Cobblestones underfoot, and smooth rock walls lining the streets as they crept forward. It was a dead city lying under the white moon, stark in its emptiness, sorrowful in its brooding strength. The windows were dark, the doorways shadowed.
Once Thor and Slag heard footsteps, but they came from a great distance, and soon faded into the eternal silence.
Ahead of them loomed the temple with the golden dome, where the paean to Aava had thundered forth, where the urn that held the green flame stood on its white pedestal.
"They will have taken Karola there, to Aava," whispered Thor. "That is where we must go. To the temple of the green flame."
A massive knob of bronze, covered with greenish rot and carved with the emblem of Aava-in-the-urn, screeched as Thor turned it. The thick oaken door swung wide. Pale radiance bathed the arched columns that trod the mosaic floor of the vast chamber. At the far end of the room, the black urn stood empty and black.
Thor ran across the vast chamber, his footfalls sounding loud and lonely. He stepped to the white pedestal and peered within the black urn. Green flakes and crystal chips encrusted the bowled bottom of the urn.