"A moment. Be patient, my Elza."
The point of rock seemed presently to melt. Like a tiny volcano, at their feet, lava from it was flowing down. A little stream of melted rock, viscous, bubbling a trifle; red at the edges, white within, and with wisps of smoke curling up from it.
Elza stared with the fascination of horror, for now tiny tongues of flame were licking about. Blue tongues, licking the air, vanishing into wisps of black smoke.
Tarrano snapped off his ray. But the tongues of flame stayed alive. Spreading slowly, soundlessly, their heat now melting the ground.
A breath of the smoke touched Elza's face. Pungent, acrid. It stopped her breathing. She choked, coughed heavily to expel it.
"Come away, Lady Elza. Let us watch from a safer distance."
He led her from the hillock, up the wind to where at the edge of the forest they stood gazing.
The blue fire had spread over a distance of several feet. A sluggish, boiling, bubbling area of flame. Tongues now the height of a man. And from them, rolling upward, a heavy black cloud—deadly fumes thick, blacker than the night, spreading out, welling forward over the forest toward the Great City slumbering in its falsely peaceful security.
At last Elza knew. Stood there, cold, shuddering, thinking with all the power of her mind and being:
"Death, Jac! Death to all the City! The black cloud of death!"