Quite suddenly, at 10:05, the Master's binoculars detected a break far to southward, in the craggy wall of rock. He ordered Nissr's beak turned directly thither. Swiftly the Eagle of the Sky held her course, speeding like an arrow. And now a vast, open plain was seen to be spreading away, away to indeterminable distances; a plain the further limits of which veiled themselves in bister and dull ocher vapors.
The aureate shimmer on the sky kept steadily increasing, from a point somewhat to the left of Nissr's line of flight. What this might be, none could guess. None save the Master. More agitated than any had ever seen him, he stood there at the rail, lips tight, hands clutching the binoculars at his eyes.
"By Allah!" the major heard him mutter. "It can't be true—the thing
I've heard. Only a fable, surely! And yet—"
Now the vast plain was coming clearly to view. It appeared fully under cultivation with patches of greenery that denoted gardens, palm-groves, fruit-orchards; all signs of a well-watered region here at the center of the world's most appalling desert.
This in itself was a thing of astonishment. But it faded to insignificance as all at once a far, dazzling sheen burst on the watchers. Up against the sky a wondrous, yellow blaze seemed to be burning. Enormously far away as it still was, it filled the heart of every observer with a strange, quick thrill of wonder, of hope. Something of wild exultation seemed to leap through the Legionaries' veins, at sight of that strange fire.
Leclair glanced at the Master. The dark, taciturn man, for all his self-control, had set teeth into his lip till the blood was all but starting.
On, on swooped Nissr. Now the plain was widening. Now, off at the left, behind the shimmer of the wondrous sight that seemed a fantastic city of dreams, long black cliffs had become visible—surely some spur of the Iron Mountains, making to southward at the eastern edge of the plain. This line of crags faded, in remote distance, into the brown vapors that ringed the mystic horizon.
"The city?" asked Bohannan. "That—can't be the city, can it, now? Faith, if it is, we're too late. Damn me, sir, but the whole infernal place is on fire! Just our rotten luck, eh?"
The Master made no reply. As if he would devour the place with his eyes, he was leaning over the rail, boring through those powerful glasses at the dazzle and bright sheen of the wonder-city now every moment becoming more clearly visible.
That it was in truth a city could no longer be doubted. Long walls came to view, pierced by gates with fantastic arches. Domes rose to heaven. Delicate minarets, carved into a fretwork of amazing fineness, pointed their fingers at the yellow shimmering sky. The contrast of that brilliance, with the soft green gardens and feathery palm-groves before, the grim black cliffs behind, filled the Legionaries with a kind of silent awe.