part0012

N YDIA and I suspected the machine was designed to give sight into the endless oceans of life that are called Etherea—that permeate all space and all places. (1)

As Troe swam out of the blue murk and hung there looking out at us, Nydia wrinkled her small nose at me and squeezed my arm in mock fright. For Troe was a formidable looking spinny-finned merman.

I flipped the little lever at the side of the ancient mech, throwing it into a higher magnification. Now both the visual and mental impulses from the cubical screen (of twenty feet to a side) overwhelmed our consciousness of self with a vastly vivid awareness of the life within the focus of force that is the great screen. Abruptly Nydia and I ceased to exist, became as selfless a part of the scene as the blue, gold-flecked fluid through which Troe’s powerful finned limbs drove his broad-backed bulk.

Troe was, as a young male is apt to be, thinking of a woman. The woman was his step-mother. His aged father had married her two years before. Troe’s father was ruler of all this rich land of Torvan.

The ceremony had brought an end to Troe’s long expected succession to his father’s seat of power. Troe had no longer any claim upon the riches of Black-spire or the wide sea-bottoms of Torvan.

(1) For those who have not read the “Nydia” stories in Amazing Stories, I introduce Nydia—the blind witch-girl of the caverns in the depths of mother Earth. She is the mistress of an ancient art: that of producing miracles by her mastery of the use of the Elder race’s scientific mechanisms, which exist nowhere on earth but in the deep caverns where the Elder race made their home before Earth had a sun. She does not, perhaps, always understand the science behind the actions of these machines.

Nydia and myself, among other fascinating studies, had often sought to understand the use and purpose of an ancient machine which had a label in the Elder writing which seemed to translate “INSEEMECH.” Finally, we got it into operation, but for our long hours of application, got nothing from the screen but views of peculiar and alien jungles, sub-sea vistas of strange life, or of wild desert mountains, or again of airy worlds of flame and cloud and mist. But of what all this really meant or where it was that we were looking at, we could learn not a thing.

Many worlds the machine seemed to give the eye an entrance to; but in none of them did we find life immediately, until, with the dials set at “18” (which I called Ether 18 for want of a better name) we saw Troe—a swimming, finned man. —R.S.S .

Troe flexed his powerful webbed drivers in displeasure; he did not like to think of his father’s death. Primarily he did not like to think of it because he had found himself dependent upon a young woman’s will. It did not sit well to become so suddenly a mere vassal in his own ancestral home.

Lar was a woman strange to all the Torvani, of a nature incomprehensible.

Troe shot along over the bright pebbled bottom of the sea of blue fluid. Carefully he avoided the great grey star-fish that reached suckered, man-length arms for his blood. Impatiently he flicked aside the purple flowers of the passion weed. Skillfully he circled the netted tangles of blood-thorn that reared formidable barbed curtains of vine in his path.

Troe had an inner conviction that Lar, his step-mother, had flimflammed himself and his brothers out of their rights. That she had married the old man purposely to accomplish the deed. That she had hastened the senile old ruler’s death by subtle means, by her alien arts.

He suspected that now she was casting about for the most suitable consort to allay her loneliness among the alien, nigh unfriendly people whom she ruled.

When her yellow eyes had selected this man and married him, Troe knew he would have to leave.

That day he would call his friends together, lash their belongings to the backs of their dolphins, and seek a new home. That would mean a dangerous trip through wild and unknown sea areas beyond the borders. But Troe could not live in Torvan then!

But these thoughts of the alien woman who now held what was rightfully his were subsidiary. For Troe desired her for himself with all the fervor of the first love of youth—and despised himself for that desire.

My sweating hand slipped on the dial which caused the beam to follow Troe through the gold-shot blue immensity. I lost him, and sought him frantically through that vast place that is “18” on the master dial. (The dial controls the machine that is able to see other worlds of life that are perhaps ether, or perhaps many things far different from the ether concept.)

I call the swimmers in the blue, gold-lit immensity mermen, but they are far from our ordinary idea of a mermen. They are a four-limbed swimming man-like animal. They are not “men.”

All those hundred numbers on that dial give each a view of a separate alien world. What in truth, or where in truth those worlds are, I do not know, except that they are adjacent worlds .

Their time is erratic, different from our own, in world “18”. Sometimes activity speeds up strangely, compared to our own rate of motion, then again, suddenly or slowly, erratically, the whole world freezes, stops, is cast into a state of stasis where nothing moves, no change occurs. These static seizures occur sometimes locally, over small areas, and sometimes over large areas of that world.

The swimmers are conscious of this change as we are of night and day. It is a mysterious life in many ways. The stasis seizures are not cyclical, seem unpredictable.

I found Troe again because he had swam into such an area of temporary immobility. Troe hung motionless before the door of a vast and ancient palace of black stone. A time defying natural fortress that had sat there in that timeless blue ocean since. . .

I had leisure to search the whole place for Lar, the alien step-mother whom Troe desired, suspected, and in some measure feared.

She, Lar of Peristan, the forbidden city—queen now of this barbarian city of the Torvani, called Blackspire—stood within the great hall of the black pinnacled natural stronghold. It was a vast chamber hewn out of the natural rock.

In front of her hung a sphere of the same golden stuff of light that danced in little flecks through all the blue fluid that was their air and in which they swam.

I had not seen the golden flecks gathered together in quantity before, and I realized that it might have potent properties, by the intensity of her gaze upon and into the glittering sphere’s surface. The whole globe, the only moving thing in all the field of stasis, moved and rolled in cloudy iridescence in upon itself like many smoky snakes in a net—or like strange life in some weird, misty-bodied function of fecundity.

She was as tall as Troe. Her flesh was not the blue-veined marble that was Troe’s people, but a green and gleaming sculpture with smoky yellow highlights and golden veinings.

Her breasts were high and proud and purple nippled, her chin was a strong round under her wide sensuous mouth. Her eyes were deep golden mysteries under her coiled purple hair. Her long-finned arms and fragile webbed fingers were extending toward the writhing globe of yellow magic where it hung in invisible chains of magnetic force before her.

Whether those arms were extended in supplication, in invocation, or to sense with her fingers some mysterious message from the globe of living fire, I could not say. Perhaps all these things were true.

About her floated the whole court of this palace that she now ruled .

Many strong warriors floated there in the frozen, unthinking waiting of the stasis that was to them as night—a time of rest. Fitted with jeweled breastplates, hung with short broad-bladed swords upon their hips, these warriors looked capable—veterans of more than one campaign.

Two of them I recognized as brothers of Troe. Some of them were armed with tridents, the balled nets that hang at the waist from the belt in readiness, as well as the short broad blades—but these weapons now were for the most part hung in racks upon the walls. The alien queen was armed only with a long-handled cylinder of the same golden glitter inside its transparent round as the floating ball before her.

The whole immobile courtroom was a scene of weird splendor. The expressions of awe and fear and hidden, curbed anger on the warriors’ faces; the envious guarded faces of the females, told me that this usurping queen was feared and obeyed. But not greatly loved. It told me, too, that she was little understood by these people of the Torvan bottoms. And all of them stood in a frozen “here” and a fixed “now” that is the peculiar motionless lack of change of the stasis of world “18.”

Slowly the binding magnetic of the peculiar stasis relaxed. The accepted, unpredictable phenomena of their life departed, once again their fins began to fan the blue fluid.

Movement and change came more and more swiftly into the great vaulted chamber of black rock. Again, their bodies surged with the slow current of the blue fluid. Again, the golden motes that was their light source began their ever-dance.

The long green arms of Queen Lar trembled with an intensity of mysterious effort. Her long, full lips moved now; her sharp teeth glittered behind the half-smile of sensuous joy in the consciousness of power that was her expression.

Swift, into the great vaulted hall, hewn long ago from the black solidity of the spired rocks, swam now Troe. As his eyes found the queen, he swam swiftly toward her, and behind her the little blue face of a maid of his own blue race showed in pained disappointment that Troe’s eyes had not found her face first instead of the Queen’s.

“Greetings, mother, I have news!”

“Let it keep, my step-son. Can you not see I seek a vision from the ball? We must know what the Tlarg leaders plan.”

“An’ you heard me out, you would not need your flummery magical ball. I come from our outpost along the southern lower borders. I bring news of the Tlarg. Think you I have been a-fishing? ”

The tall green female took her gaze from the ball of strange golden force, let her long arms sink. Her eyes turned their yellow mysterious depths upon Troe’s hot, red gaze. Troe looked into her own eyes as dominatingly as though she were not the ruler, but herself; as in many ways, he was. Lar’s thoughts were that truly there would be fire between herself and this man, of one kind or another.

“Speak on, Troe. For your father’s sake, I listen.”

“A strong force at the Tlarg are maneuvering upon the lower border. And overhead, in stasis now, another force is frozen; waiting to descend upon us!”

A swift murmur ran through the blue fluid in the great ball. A murmur of vibrating fins, of tridents grasped from the walls, of questioning lips saying:

“War has come then?”

“They attack from overhead and from the lower border? We must move at one!” The queen was frowning. This warring was not familiar ground to her; she wanted none of it.

“Not so, my mother. These are but feints. Their attack will come out of the great cold spot. They will use that place where they can go and we cannot follow. Their gear and supplies, their main forces, must even now be nearing our border where it edges the cold spot. We cannot go into it. With their thick skins, they can survive a long period within the cold. We must prepare for their main attack from that point. If we are drawn aside by these feinting forces, we will be taken from the flank, Blackspire caught unprepared; that is their tactic.”

The queen pondered a moment. Then she turned again to the golden ball, and now there seemed less difficulty in her control of the strange golden ball of coiling force.

Within the ball’s murky heart, a scene, far off, a scene of vast activity and many shops, formed.

The swimming ranks of the Tlarg, the heavy long tubes of supplies borne on the backs of hundreds of swimming, muscular Tlarg warriors, or towed by the vast, swift paddling worms. Too, in the foreground reared the huge heads of the fighting, trained gar-worms, running on the bottom.

The long tiers of the gar-worms’ legs were like the oars of fearful galleys—their awful heads the living figureheads. Dragon ships, in truth, the fighting worms of the Tlarg.

The Tlarg warriors were a hellish crew to face, the backs and limbs with sharp spines, gave a kind of horned toad appearance to their thick-skinned, warty bodies.

The whole huge river of war gear and fighting Tlarg warriors moved slowly, as through an invisible molasses. This was the effect of the fierce cold of the dreaded cold spot, an area where no life could exist but through which the Tlargs could move protected by their thick hides and beastlike strength.

The dread this scene aroused was refleeted on the faces of Troe’s friends; the Tlarg were mean fighters. Troe knew they chosen this time for their attack because of Lar. Because of this alien step-mother succeeding to the throne, they must fight these brawny, numerous, bloodthirsty Tlarg. The knowledge did not help to make her more acceptable.

Some spy of course had told the Tlarg of the dislike and dissension her sudden accession to power had caused among the Torvani, the sons of the Great Finned God of the Deeps.

They must have learned, too, that Lar’s capabilities did not include the art of war; that the three sons of the dead ruler would be hampered in their defense by her arbitrary will, her inexperience, her ineptness, her distrust of their loyalty.

These things, too, were in the face of Lar as she studied the picture of the enemy within the mysterious golden ball, glancing at Troe’s excited eyes, fiery red as he estimated the strength of the Tlarg.

Of the fighting worms, their most terrible weapon, there were some three hundred, and Troe’s eyes paled as he estimated the chance of survival. Troe saw little to be pleased about in his swift mental computation. They might beat back the fierce Tlarg forces, but they would not enjoy the victory, for most of them would be dead.

Now Lar, her green flesh rippled over with the flaming yellow force which she alone seemed to understand, said:

“Troe, bring me that Tlarg spy from the dungeon and we will show these blundering beasts that we do not like their ways.”

Troe, who had seen somewhat of her lesser magical work, did not question, though he was irked by her commanding tone. He did not know she had been a near-queen in her own land. He admired the flaming yellow life in her eyes, admired the heaving, high breasts and wanted once to taste those long sensuous lips. Troe hastened off upon the errand.

His brothers, leaning now against the great sculptured black pillar behind the pulsing yellow globe of with fire, exchanged exasperated glances. For they both looked to the older Troe to protect their interests against this interloper who had so neatly appropriated their heritage—as they saw it.

To the minds of the two young brothers of Troe, Lar had made them all, the whole proud court, but lackeys of her whims.

Most of all it irked the two brothers that Troe truckled, did her bidding too willingly. Tonor and Tuhy(2) , both out of the same mother by Troe’s father—did not like the change in rule.

(2) Tonor and Tuhy are separated by some few inches in height from Troe, the older. Time, here is reckoned by dergs; the difference in height indicating the past time between their births. They grow at a nearly uniform rate all their lives, and the derg, unit of height, is often used to indicate difference in age. Tuhy is three dergs younger than Troe, and Tonor two dergs younger than Tuhy.

They do not think of time a great deal; it is always “now” there. When they are old, it is because the “change” has set in. The change is known to be chemical.

Even as I watched the weird court room of the Torvani, admired the soft play of subtle light on their undulant webbed limbs as they balanced on the gentle currents of blue and fluid force, responded to the fiery life of their red and beautiful eyes—a stasis froze the whole place, remained while I could have counted ten, and went as swiftly as it had come.

Troe swam back through the undulant beauty of the sinuous limbed Torvan courtiers, towing the bound form of a spiny, toad-fish Tlarg behind him.

Now Lar said a few sharp words to the Tlarg, but he shook his head. She turned to the golden ball and with a quick darting motion of the hands reached into it, pulling one of the larger and more glitteringly armored Tlargs, who were pictured within the ball, toward her.

Now on the pulsing ball of witch-fire was the frightened face of the officer, and Lar spoke to him in cold, frightening ferocity.

“You can see that Lar, the queen of the Torvani, whom you attack, has the power to bring you into her presence even at this great distance. I could kill you, too, toad-fish, and your army as well, but I wish to warn you instead, being merciful. Look!”

Lar lifted the long-handled golden cylinder from the belt about her supple hips, pointed it at the now cowering Tlarg whose chain was held by Troe. Her teeth glistened once a swift gloating smile as she squeezed the yellow handle.

From the snout of the cylinder shot a cloud of the darting yellow motes straight into the startled face of the captive!

“Watch him die, toad of a Tlarg. And tell your warriors what they face when they reach the Torvan borders, coming out of the cold spot. When they set foot on Torvan bottom—they die! ”

The cloud of dancing fire motes burned into the now screaming face of the Tlarg spy. His eyes blackened swiftly, the flesh began to fall away in a grey powder, the bones stood out bare. The Tlarg was a terrible death’s-head of agony before he fell to the black stones of the floor. He lay writhing and screaming for long moments—those watery, gurgling screams of death.

The Tlarg officer, staring out of the ball, writhed too with fear and moaned as he realized the horror the army faced.

Lar drew her long, green finny hand out of the golden ball, and as she released her mental hold upon the Tlarg, the man’s face receded. He became again a small part of the vast pictured scene of the Tlarg army in terrifying progress across the dead waste of the barren bottoms of the Great Cold Spot.

Intently Lar’s deep, yellow eyes, and Troe’s red-flame eye swatched what this sudden horror might do to the morale of that army.

The officer called about him the other Tlarg leaders. These leaders were the larger, for they were those whom “change” had most benefited and were therefore most fitted to command. (They were men selected by the common vote of the warriors; the fiercest, most cunning; but the ruler of the Tlarg was one whose seat of power was inherited.)

Lar and Troe watched the fear-stricken officer telling the others of what he had seen through the magic of the Torvan queen—of what her alien, mysterious magic had done to the captive.

The fierce, stubborn metal of these hated Tlarg was borne home to Lar as she watched the officers decide to keep the occurrence to themselves; that the performance must be in the nature of a bluff to frighten them from their purpose.

The vast flow of the slow-moving might of the army went steadily on, nearer and nearer to the warmer bottoms that were the fishing lands of the Torvan.

Troe looked into the mystery that was the eyes of Lar, saying:

“If you can kill at a distance through that ball of fire you had better do it! For as the Norns Fates weave and clip, sure their shears are feeling now for the thread that is the life of the Torvan race.”

“First, I would counsel with you, my Troe—and then with the generals. Meanwhile, give the orders for mobilization, and then swift to my side. I will be at the palace of the green fire. I have work to do.”

Now, outside, the slender girl riders of Torvan dolphin-messengers fling their limbs along the sleek sides of the mounts and flee into the blue depths in all directions. For the branch was burning, must be borne flaming for war to each great barracks in all the Torvan bottom lands. In each girl’s hand smoked and blazed fitfully a branch of the white oil-coral, the red bale-fire that is the war-sign; the calling of the clans.

Inside his father’s palace, Troe swam slowly up the long ramp. Ahead lay the Palace of Green Fire, which was a great chamber in the black rock-spire Lar had taken for her own two years ago. She had filled it with all her alien belongings—and many were the whispered tales of her forbidden incantations and dark doings in the fearful place. There the green and fearfully strange flames of her witch-fires leaped always in the wall braziers. There, too, many a spy sent by those who feared her alien magic, had entered—but had never been seen again, alive or dead.

Troe entered, butting the wide valve of the double oval door open with his shoulder. He drove swiftly into the center of the chamber with one flip of his drivers—to conquer thus by action his fear of the place. He heard the soft laugh of Lar waiting by the great round blackness of the center pillar, smiling at his obvious aversion for the place. Her long green body was clad now only in those flickering golden veils of subtly woven threads of Seeming fire which she alone possessed. She was now again the mysterious and beautiful witch-woman whose form would not leave Troe’s mind.

Troe’s heart drummed harder under the taut muscles of his breast. His red eyes burned in the green-lit gloom. His long-webbed hands reached out against his will to touch those sleek green-glowing shoulders, to grasp her, own her, to break the barriers of hate and distrust and suspicion.

But she turned her eyes to his and he saw a desperation and fearful hesitancy there that revolted his action-minded, fearless inner self.

Those long sensuous lips that moved forever in his heated mind, moved now so close to his eyes, saying:

“My Troe, if only I could trust you and the other Torvan lords and officers. If only I was not an alien, knowing friend from foe. There are things I must tell you all, things I must teach some of you and I cannot!”

The realization that this alien woman had held secret from them many powers, many weapons, the secrets of her alien lore, struck Troe suddenly. He realized that Lar feared them all and held these secrets to herself as her only safeguard against them. Somehow that Lar should have such fear was not good to hear.

Her voice went on. “I cannot tell you what I must tell you. I cannot arm you all as I must arm you, cannot teach you my arts now; there is so little time. And you all hate me; would kill me if you knew how. So long as you all hate me, I cannot give you my powers, my weapons. If I do not you must all die while I save myself. Troe, you must swear to be my friend, to work for my interest only, then I can trust. . .

“Troe, you must marry me to save your people. Either that, or I will go now, go as I came, an unwanted hated outlander; and curse the day I found this seeming haven.”

Troe was astounded by the meaning in her flow of words. That the seemingly capable and always resourceful Lar should have had this fear and doubt of them all and of her safety here was news to him. That she would marry him; he had not known that. And she thought him reluctant—was persuading him! Well, of course she was hated, especially by the women, but they feared her far more.

Her impassioned voice went on.

“If you marry me, Troe, it will resolve all the barracks between myself and your people. You are the rightful heir in their minds; marrying me will seem to but right to them. What I do will seem your doing then, will not turn against me when they find my powers in their hands.”

Troe stretched his long arms out and grasped the green smooth shoulders, slid his hands down the soft round taper of her back, and his eyes burned like two dark coals in the green light from the witch-fires above. Even as his mind found the words to tell her of his longing for her. . .

Stasis spread numbingly through all the weird palace of Blackspire—froze them in their half-embrace. Those swelling, impassioned breasts touching, those lips half-lit with the fires of love burning nearer to each other, were frozen into strange waiting for fulfillment.

Out of the barren bottoms of the Great Cold Spot groped the stiffened, slow limbs of the Tlarg armies, and the terrible writhing strength of the fighting worms.

Faster they moved as the warmer currents of blue fluid took the frozen chill from their limbs. The fierce mouths of the fighting worms gaped open, long tongues lolling redly as they sucked up the warmer fluids, shot it backward through their gills. On their backs the half-frozen Tlargs, in rows of a hundred to each side of the worms, banged their shields with their tridents and shouted a war-song to get the blood flowing in their chilled veins again. They were all cheerful now, and ready for the coming fight—for were not the Torvani far toward the lower borders chasing the fleeing decoys with which the trap had been baited?

Only the officers, trailing the scouting dolphins out ahead, were sober faced. They feared what would happen now from two sources. Their own men would turn on them for not telling them what they faced when Lar began to kill with the burning yellow death. Or kill them for being so inept as not to know of and be prepared for her strange weapon. But, then, the Outlander Queen of the Torvani would not let them live long enough to reap the vengeance of their followers.

They could not know that the unpredictable stasis had seized the whole inner lands of the Torvani, that the Norns had set the threads of life running their Tlarg colors through the life-pattern.

I swung the beam of the Inseemuch far across the lower borders of Torvan, down into the pressing gulfs where no Tlarg or Torvan dared swim. There mighty monsters prowled and fought, there lay vast areas of permanent stasis with strange and horrifying life forms frozen into motionless floating forever.

There, too, beyond those gulfs and deeper far than the Torvan lands, lay the holdings of those green-skinned, long-finned people whence Lar had fled two dergs before.

A mysterious, indolent people, they drifted through the tail-towered vastness of their city of Peristan. Dreaming, they drifted, gazing into their golden balls of strange force and watching their dreams grow and spread within the infinite microfields within the balls and become weird, fascinating worlds of life.

Or they loved along the purple-vined streets and byways, arms intertwined, drifting on the quiet twilight fluids of the deep that surround and protect Peristan.

Within one of the great, towered mansions where the windows are the doors and are all open to the swimmer, were gathered three sisters of Lar, her father, her former lover and two of her long-limbed brothers.

They were gazing into one of the great fixed balls of yellow force. Within the ball was pictured the black-spired palace of the Torvan race.

Nothing moved within the many-peopled pile pictured there.

And now the focus shifted under the sister’s querying mind, to the chamber of green fire where Lar, her arms half-encircling Troe, lifted her lovely, too-wise face for his first kiss. Stasis held the scene in its strange spell, no current of the blue fluid stirred the slightest hanging fringe of the sea-dragon drapes. Not a muscle moved in that poised pair of strong and vital bodies.

A great oath broke from the lips of the tall green warrior who had been betrothed to Lar not long ago, before she fled the ruler’s wrath for her forbidden sorceries. An oath as great as that he had sworn when he had heard of her marriage to the barbarian, the senile ruler of Torvan.

The three sisters of Lar looked at each other’s faces knowingly and as they turned again to the screen in the ball a cry broke from them, for the great fighting worms of the Tlarg had reached the near edge of the stasis field. The momentum of their vast bodies plunged them into the stillness. Floating, legs outspread, they hung like great-oared undersea boats of some weird design, heavy on their backs the now frozen and still bodies of the fierce, toad-fish Tlarg.

“When that stasis field dies, the Torvani and our Lar will both die. They are not ready. . .”

The green long-finned warrior, one Tonarl, of the Black Shield, had summed up the thing in swift words, his trained warrior eyes saw that the Torvan stronghold was doomed. Delayed by the stasis, they had missed the opportunity to ready themselves for the army that now floated in the involuntary sleep, or circled the rim of the stasis field in watchful readiness to attack the instant the unpredictable tides of force relaxed their hold on the stronghold.

The fat old father of the women spoke:

“The only hope of these Torvani lies in us. Our weapons could lay this fierce band of barbarians low; did we choose to extend ourselves so far, and had we time to arrive before their fate is sealed. I for one, still love my daughter Lar, though I do not approve of her flight, of her casting her lot with an alien, barbaric people. Let us prepare, the stasis may hold them inviolate until we arrive. It is a long way.”

Lar’s sister broke in, the taller of the three, her lean, strong, wide-mouthed face eager, the purple hair fairly crackling with the yellow force that pulsed in her green translucent body with an underflow of strength.

Lar has become the ruler of this race of the Torvani people with the death of her husband. It may have been her plan to weld these people to the Lanvi. In truth, since Lar is still legally a subject of our Makro (king) the whole race of Torvan are our vassals—or our allies. It is our duty to aid them. I am going to the Makro and demand an audience. This is no matter for ourselves alone.”

The burly father turned slowly, balancing thoughtfully in the fitful current. His long, wiry, pronged fins were soft blurs of vibrant power in leash. He was still a powerful, unaged Lanvi.

“And Lar were not about to die, I would not advise telling our ruler anything. But as you say, her life and that of her subjects now depends entirely on our speed.”

The tall sister did not wait his thoughtful words, but flashed off in a swirl of golden bubbles and sharp blue spurts of fluid from her humming fins. Her long driving limbs flashed once thus and she was gone through the high wall opening into the golden streets, off through the tall towers, a trail of golden, swirling little bubbles marking her wake.

I swung the ancient Inseemuch Ray back across the endless leagues of blue and gold and grey-green sea-jungle. Across the vast dark deeps, across swarming, terrible, savage life of the alien sea-world, if it is a world.

Now again the great black stronghold of the Torvani, held still in the weird, timeless grip of the stasis.

A long the outer edge of the stasis band were imprisoned a good two-hundred of the floating sea worms like vast flies caught in molasses, or like weird reflections of their fellows caught by some vast mirror of force and held so forever—or until the Norns awoke.

Along the vast invisible barrier where the van of the Tlarg army hung, warred now the vast, waiting column with attacking bands of Torvan dolphin riders who had not been caught in the stasis band.

The riding, swift messenger girls must have reached some objectives outside the sudden grip of the stasis, brought back some forces of the outer clans.

These must have followed the outer rim of the stasis flow of force and come upon the column of Tlarg from both sides.

They had not waited but on their swift dolphins swooped at once to attack.

Some half-dozens of these bands of dolphin riders dived in long arcs down upon the column of huge war-screaming worms. Down upon the great lumbering tubes of war gear, down upon the slow-swimming ranks of lighter-armed Tlarg, the “fin” soldiers.

The cavalry of the Tlarg, dolphin-mounted, spear-carrying, swift-swimming, were for the most part rushed headlong into the stasis field by their scouting, out-rider duties.

The rear guard of dolphin cavalry were coming up swiftly from the rims of the cold spot, but had not yet arrived to repulse the sudden attack of the raiding Torvani.

Meanwhile, hindered by none of the mounted forces of the Tlarg, the Torvan dolphin-cavalry were making hay. Swooping long arcs of spear-thrust swiftness down upon the lumbering warrior and armor laden fighting worms, down upon the slow-swimming light-armed warriors of the rank and file, they thrust home their charge till the great worms swung their vast heads about, jaws gaping to engulf them. Then up and away into the gold-spangled blue fluid.

Swiftly the whole blue field about the stasis became flowered with death, streaked with the long red streamers of the blood of the Tlarg. Here and there floated a dead Tlarg, his throat cut and gaping or his chest pierced with the long lances of the riders. There a vast body of fighting worm thrashed in its death throes, mangling the Tlarg with its gigantic flung coils, its terrible weight overturning the baggage sledges, crushing the long tubes of war gear, hauling crippled, screaming Tlarg writhing through the blue fluid.

Now from the rear flashed the long pennoned spears of the rear-guard dolphin cavalry, far outnumbering the Torvan dolphins. Like fleeing devils, the Torvani screamed white-teethed taunts over their shoulders as they arrowed up, up, and away into the now cloudy murk about the battlefield.

As suddenly as it had come, the stasis dissolved before the harried, partly disorganized army.

The terrible, inexorable advance began again. The long red-mawed heads of the worms swayed left and right as their drivers sought to space them safely, their long oar-paddled legs began again to plod, their flat bodies to half-glide, half-swim ahead over the slippery mud. Again, the Tlarg took up their monotonous war-chant.

They sang this to the beat of their short, broad swords upon the flat, oval shields; a fierce clang-clanging, rhythmic and martial.

Above the clangor shrilled the harsh, high piping of long, yellow reed flutes, played by the Tlarg equivalent of the “vivian-dieres” riding to war on the baggage carts, anxious to be in on the looting to come. These horny finned female Tlarg were not much to look at, their fierce teeth glittering, their wide ears spread to catch the meaning in the tumult. Their wide, flattened limbs, made for swimming in the pressuring depths of the lower bottoms, were muscular, terrible, a far cry from beauty. The Tlarg were a martial, fierce, fish-like race far different from the beautiful, round-limbed, more delicate-finned Torvan and Lanvi races.

In the palace of the alien queen of the Torvani, Lar had pressed her lips to Troe’s, half-unconscious of the long lapse and fearful pressing change of position of the Tlarg outside during the stasis. Avidly Troe returned the kiss, running his webbed hands up the smooth forepart of her long green arms, touching the coiled purple tresses, gazing deep into the smoldering, passionate yellow eyes, murmuring :

“Lar, my smooth swimming, beautiful stranger, your lure has been burning in my mind, strangling my heart, since my father brought you home, wounded, that day. We all nursed you, admired you, were afraid of you. We were all somehow ashamed when your gratitude made you accept our foolish old father’s advances. If only one of us had spoken—but it was my right to speak first among us brothers, and I feared you, was unable to face your eyes.

“Now the past mistake can find a remedy. My arms, my sword will protect you from your enemies among us. Tell me, how can we ward off these Tlarg before it is too late. Their numbers are vast, they fight like blood-fish, like barracuda. Many of our people must die.”

Now, from outside, the approaching tumult of the columns of Tlarg beat at last through their enrapt senses, made them aware of the too-swift approaching doom.

Troe spun, a vortice of blue fluid leaping about his spinning body, looked down upon a vast half-moon of Tlarg slow-nearing the tall spires of Blackspire castle.

Troe’s electrified mind shrieked inwardly:

“How came they here? The stasis has held us unaware while they approached! And we are unprepared, caught now like fish in a net. The damned stasis . . .”

Troe darted in surging bursts of power through his diving fins, golden little bubbles bursting in shining clouds about his wake, down to the great lower halls of the castle. The warriors were busy swinging shut the great barred gratings of the main entries against the approaching Tlarg. Troe’s heavy shoulders and hard-driving limbs thrust too against the swinging, creaking weight of the barriers.

“The siege is on, nothing is ready—not even food stored ahead.”

Troe stood, looking out through the gratings upon the Tlarg. Blue, muscular, finned limbs boating rhythmically, row on row, thrashing the hard, bright blue of the fluid into a maelstrom of bursting gold-lit bubbles and swirling, glittering, blue vortices.

The terrible gar-worms, vast, gate mouthed, heads rearing, goggle-eyes peering in fear or anger, roaring great roars of blood rage, their long red tongues writhing like great red dripping snakes, their long whip-ended tails coiling and uncoiling. . .

The darting dolphins wheeling in perfect formations, arrow swift, their spears dripping, now dipping to the breast of a Tlarg and rising again fresh-blooded, now pennoned with the long streamers of gore in the blue. . .

The charge over, their swift flight-spiral upward and out of range of danger, only to reform and swoop again upon the fierce, stubbornly fighting and obviously winning Tlarg. . .

Troe’s heart contracted in pity at the fewness and the gallantry of the Torvan cavalry seeking to delay the advance long enough to give the Torvani time.

Now against the gates of Blackspire thundered the rams of the Tlarg. Great metal-tipped spars borne between two the gigantic gar-worms flung a terrible mass of sharp-pointed crushing weight upon the black, old metal barriers. But the ancient work held the first impact.

Into the many openings, now but lately barred against the swimmers, came the red-smoldering fire arrows. The metal crossbow bolts each bore a bit of the flaming oil-coral that burns with a hateful stubbornness. Too venom-tipped darts struck through the opening, between the bars in showers like rain. Then a great worm would wrench at the barriers with his vast claw-tipped, horribly-flattened and hand like claws, eager red eyes blazing to get at the meat of the Torvani inside.

The heavy armor—the riders on the backs of the worms, which correspond in manpower and usage more to the ancient war-galley than anything else. Swimming above these the light-armed main body of the Tlarg, armed with crossbows and short swords, and every fifth one of them bearing a great shield and twenty-foot spear, ready upon attack to form a rampart by closing together, a rampart of metal and points impervious to the charge of the Torvani.

A third tier of force hovered high above this main swimming body of troops, the cavalry of the Tlarg. Long spears with floating pennons, a small round shield, a scimitar-like weapon at their belt for close-in fighting. On shield and pennon, the great painted gar-worm head of the Tlarg.

Higher still above these wheeled a dozen troops, near a hundred to a troop, of the Torvan dolphin riders, those who had failed to reach the castle before the stasis. Wheeled. . . and swooped upon the second tier whenever an opening presented, to dart away again when the slower, heavier, less adept cavalry of the Tlarg bore down.

Beyond the vast arc of the encircling movement of the Tlarg forces were perhaps a quarter their number of Torvan troops. Their numbers slowly augmented as the border garrisons returned, as the farthest hamlets of the Torvan bottoms sent their quota to the call of the burning branch. This force waited, in disciplined ranks, waited the chance to use their smaller strength to some advantage when opportunity presented.

The pitifully few bolts, spears, short javelins and crossbow bolts from the windows of Blackspire told them that Blackspire was not fully garrisoned.

The Tlarg leader ignored this growing force of Torvani to spend his main strength and first eager fighting fury of his men upon the black gates, upon the great gold-barred openings of the rock castle, upon covering the efforts of the worm drivers to ram open the great but old metal gates.

In the chamber of the green fires, Lar labored mightily, her blue Torvan maidens flitting on swift fins at her orders. She was brewing a mighty sending of destructive magic from her Lanvian wisdom, concocting a doom to fit the terrible horde of death hammering at the gates of her castle below.

On the floor Lar traced the pentagram; and reading from a huge metal-bound book, she poured ingredients into the alembic. The distilled green fluid she had at last in her two hands, and standing within the pentagram held it aloft, her face rapt, her body rigid.

About the pentagram flickered now huge transparent forms of vibrant force, and within the chamber was the terrible sensing of unseen presence, of mighty alien thinking.

As Lar finished her incantation, she stumbled over the last weird syllables. The room grew dark, and lightnings flashed through the blue fluid, the awful black bolts of the ether-force crashing into the chamber, shaking the walls so that the mortar cracked.

But Lar recovered, her face near-white with strain. Now about the green fluid, as she intoned the last words of power—gathered a horde of misty wraith-like forms which poured unceasingly into the bowl. The fluid boiled and bubbled with a weird life, rose higher, higher—and now from the bowl and above her hands floated the green fluid—taking a globe-like form.

Spinning slowly, it rose, shimmering, beautiful with a deadly, threatening beauty, as a snake is beautiful. Ominous it was with a deadly thought of awful power humming from it.

Holding still the bowl beneath the shimmering globe of green, Lar walked to the entry window. Her maids watchfully unbarred the tall shutters. Though a few arrows slashed through, Lar stepped into the opening and cast the globe out from her hands upon the howling horde of Tlarg below.

Swiftly she flung herself back from the opening as a rain of arrowed death struck after her darting form. Back now to her shining globe of golden force, and standing beside it, she soon summoned into being a view of the green globe outside, as it hummed a grim ominous song of death. She spoke:

“O wraiths of the upper spaces, imprisoned now within my verdigris— obey Varuna!” (3)

“We obey Varuna, and Lar his priestess.”

“Destroy the Tlarg, destroy their war-dragons, their beasts and their women and their slaves. Destroy them all, and win again your freedom.”

“We hear, oh Lar, and for Varuna we obey.”

Now the weird ball of cosmic, temporarily imprisoned entities rose and fell above the warring host of Tlarg in a strange dance. And every time it touched a Tlarg or a great fighting worm, a dolphin or its rider—that thing screamed and fell lifeless.

And from the fallen bodies a green steam arose, to flow toward and mingle with the dancing green ball of death. And in the shimmering, awful force, a new green face appeared among the many within the ball, and the size of the ball increased with each addition.

But the rise and fall of the green globe was not extremely rapid, and the number of the Tlarg was very great. . .

The appearance of this new and terrible weapon, this enigmatic destroyer above them, gave the Tlarg pause for a moment, but soon the officers realized that this weapon of Lar’s would be destroyed when she was destroyed, and so explaining to their men, the attack was renewed; and with far greater fury, for they all realized that only with the fall of Blackspire would the slaying of the green globe cease.

Under the furious ramming—the great sea-worms swinging between them vast metal-shod spars—the gates of Blackspire began to loosen. Even as the waiting ranks of Torvan gathered themselves for a charge down upon the Tlarg to relieve the castle by diversion, or mayhap even to fight their way in to the aid of those within—even as their force started to dive upon the press before the gates—with a vast groaning crash, the metal hinges of the gates burst inward.

Now only a thin line of Torvan warriors held the halls of Blackspire from the fury of the Tlarg .

Into the gaping maw of the inthrusting head of the gar-worm, Troe pushed the long-barbed head of a pike, thrusting it home with all the pressure of his lashing driver fins. The worm collapsed, fell with his spar lashed to himself and to his mate, lashing coils in death agony wreaking havoc among the inrushing Tlarg, his weight pinning his mate to his side. The two vast bodies formed an effective rampart before the shattered gates.

Overhead in her tower chamber of green fire, Lar cast out now many little globes of green force spirits, and now, instead of one great dancing globe of death, hummed and danced dozens of growing little death bringers, the fierce, elemental spirits within intent upon absorbing all the life force of the Tlarg.

From the now hard-pressed Tlarg came cries of agony and despair, and also cries of desperate fury. For even as the gates of Blackspire crashed in before them, chance seemed to be turning the tide against them.

For down upon their heads flashed the full fury of the gathering Torvan riders from the southern borders, from the northern hill clans; and even from the western deeps came some loyal flat-bodied allies—the Wanar deep-water men.

Spears dipping, dolphins diving, harsh cries echoing “Eat our steel, Tlarg,” “Toad-fish Tlarg,” down dived the Torvani, rank on rank, like a resistless avalanche of fury. The water about the gates became a red murk, in which no man could see his neighbor, but struck at friend or foe alike. The scimitars of the Tlarg whirled fierce disks of stubborn steel back at the wheeling, charging Torvan riders, but their losses grew, the piles of dead about the great gates were mounds, were hills to climb over.

But the toad-fish were not warriors to turn aside at the face of death; particularly not when victory gaped before them with wide-open, shattered gates. They set upon the defenders with long spears, with a fury of crossbow fire that hailed steadily upon the thin line of armored men across the gap.

As the press forced the line of Torvan nobles back, as the press made at last swimming room possible within the gates, into the space that lay between the two warring forces that was peopled only with dead and with reaching spear points and humming arrows—into this space leaped the officers of the Tlarg, the best swordsmen, led by Onde, the Younger, the burly son of the old Tlarg ruler, Onde, the Elder.

Now face to face with the defenders, the superior numbers and greater bodily strength of the Tlarg had its way, and their swords ran red. The blue fluid turned a muggy purple. In the great hall of state, backward and backward they drove the desperate Torvani, dying now to defend their throne.

Troe’s brother, Tonal, fell, a broad Tlarg blade finding his throat!

Even as Troe, backed against the great golden dragon throne which was his by rights, but Lar’s by Fate’s blind finger, even as Troe, bleeding from a dozen wounds, still found strength to leap for the throat of Onde, the ruler’s ugly son—a great net of woven nettles fell over the heads of Troe himself and Tuhy. The brothers of Blackspire had fallen .

But still, upon the horde of Tlarg, ravenings still to enter the palace, swooped and dipped the dolphin riders of the outer clans. And still rose the green ball of death-bringing, prisoned spirit force, and still it fell to claim another Tlarg. And still buzzed and hummed the many little green balls Lar had made, not killing yet, but soon, from eating at the death about, big enough to kill.

In her chamber of the green fire, Lar had seen all that had happened as her throne fell to the hated, ugly, barbarous Tlarg. Before the doors of the chamber, she and her maidens had piled the furniture that they might delay their fate so long as possible.

Now cowered about the tall, green glory that was Lar her blue, young maidens of the Torvani. Lar’s arms were upraised, her face rapt, as she communed with the elemental spirits captured within her venomous green force balls, urging them to greater efforts, swifter slaying; for now, the only hope of victory and freedom lay in the still-slaying, still-dancing green witch-fire. Now battered at the oval valves of the door of the chamber of the Green Fire, a great log, brought up from below by the Tlarg. Onde, his broad face a mask of rage, urged the wide-backed, ugly Tlarg warriors on, and the great log swung and crashed against the strong, heavy, metal-bound door.

Shattered, the wood splintered, still the hinges held, still the great log crashed against the portal, and still the rapt face of Lar implored Varuna to hasten the death of the Tlarg.

Now at last in crashed the doorway, and in upon the crouching maidens rush the Tlarg, swords out reaching for Lar’s throat.

Swiftly Lar’s voice lashed at them in their own tongue:

“And you slay Lar, the death of the witch-globes will not cease! And you treat with Lar, and bargain on her terms, the Tlarg may live.”

Onde raised a broad, spiny hand, lowered his red-dripping sword. After all, how did they know that the slaying of the green witch-globes would cease with Lar’s death? But there was an answer to that! They’d bargain her a bargain!

Under Onde’s hurried orders, Lar was trussed up to the round black central pillar of the chamber.

Stood now Lar, her golden, shimmering garments of strange fire torn, near-naked before the savage, angry faces of the Tlarg warriors—and Onde’s sneering, vaunting face pressed close to her own. But Lar’s answering smile was also full of victory, for she did not doubt that Onde would fail to force her to recall the death of the green fire globes, the taking of the spirits of the Tlarg by the servant entities of Varuna.

Lar screamed shamelessly as the fire bit at her feet, writhed with abandon as the hot wires thrust deep under her long fingernails; but Lar did nothing whatever to stay the slaying of the dancing globes outside the palace walls.

“When I have died, and when all the Tlarg around Blackspire have died, then the globes will enter the great broken gates and search out each remaining toad-fish Tlagr and slay him. Sooner or later you will die, Onde, and all the gold of your loot will not save you, nor all your promising or bargaining, nor all your prayers.”

And Lar laughed as the realization that Onde’s victory was a victory rewarded only by death, stole over the savage face of Onde.

He was realizing that in truth here Lar held the cards, and not himself.

Onde dropped his anger, dropped his vaunting, for with the knowledge of his defeat was coming the council of caution, and with honey in his words, he spoke now carefully to Lar.

“And if I offer you marriage, to be my queen over both Blackspire and over all the Tlarg bottoms upon the death of my old father—then what would you say, Lar of the Lanvi?”

For answer Lar spat, trying to strike his face but only striking his sleeve with the yellow venom from her mouth.

“You will have to offer me more sure guarantees than your word, my enemy! Your word is well known to be valueless.”

Steadily, surely, the green globes of death were cutting down the horde of the Tlarg, and the spiny-finned warriors were fleeing now right and left. The great worms lay now for the most part motionless carcasses about the entry to Blackspire. And ever the darting dolphin riders of the Torvan swooped upon the fleeing Tlarg. The horde that had come to Blackspire was now by half reduced, and those remaining stricken with a fear and a sureness of death. They stood, those who could think in spite of their fear, and waited for the death they saw no way of escaping.

Onde, his broad, crudely-sculptured face working with rage at the stubborn Lar’s defiance of his torture, whirled on his driver fins and darted to the great barred entry of the chamber, looked down from the hollow spire upon the screaming chaos that had overtaken his horde of brave warriors.

“By the blue fins of the Great Dragon, was ever a leader so tricked by fate! I win, and in victory find defeat! Blackspire is mine, and the lands of the Torvani are mine; Lar, the witch queen shrieks under my torment; and still her unnatural work slays my men. Lar, for this day’s work you shall know an agony that will not end so long as life can be kept in you. Your spirit will rot forever in the carcass that was you after death does free you from my vengeance—my Tlarg witch-doctor’s magic can see to that, at least! ”

Old Onde, the real ruler, pushed his bulk toward his strong son, peered out at the dancing witch fires that consumed their warriors, slew their fighting beasts, danced a dreadful exultation over the battlefield without.

“You will note, my son, those elementals she has prisoned within her venomous force globes do not touch the Torvani. We hold many prisoners. We could make the castle inviolate, impregnable to the spirits of the green fire, if we bound before all the windows the bodies of living Torvani. Eh, son?”

“Hah, sire! That old head is still the leader here among the Tlarg. I bow to you sire—and now to work. I will yet retrieve a victory from this morass of death.”

Swiftly the Tlarg labored, holding the struggling, cursing Torvan warriors who still lived up against the yellow metal of the barred entries, binding them in place, lashing fast another swift below; till all the entry openings were lashed tightly over with the bound bodies of the captive Torvan Warriors.

In the center of the great shattered gateway of Blackspire stood Onde, holding in his arms the bound body of Troe. One slim opening remained yet unclosed, and now swift as darting minnows fleeing from the gar-pike, the Tlarg finned down and into the castle Blackspire—and safety from the green death.

Ever, as one of the dancing, swooping globes of green bale-fire stooped to follow inward the fleeing Tlarg, Onde pressed the body of Troe tightly against the only opening, shutting the way; and the globe, under Lar’s command, not killing any Torvan warriors would recoil from the only opening into Blackspire to avoid killing Troe or any other of the living barrier.

Now Troe, seeing that all was lost unless the green fire-globes went on with their soul-stealing, death-dealing, conceived that his own life being lost anyway, he might as well get its worth from the hated Tlarg. And as the green globes clustered ever thicker before the human barrier at the gateway to Blackspire, Troe carried out a subtle plan of his own for Lar’s sake.

Outside, the last of the horde of the Tlarg had either darted to safety within the castle or had died under the dancing, swollen globes. And out to the cloud of these swollen, fat, green globes of soul-venom, Troe sent his thought—and the dancing, hungry entities within listened to him:

“O servants of Varuna, you think that I am one of the Torvani but that is not so. I am one of the Tlarg who happens to look like a Torvan warrior. I am glad you do not slay me as Lar has ordered you, for if you do not, she will never give you freedom from her spell. That way I will have my vengeance upon you for the death of my comrades. Ha, what foolish spirits, ha, ha! ”

Still as death, the hovering globes now floated, listening, what they used for thinking glowing deep within the green fire. And whether those savage elemental souls knew what Troe was up to and accepted his sacrifice, or whether they stupidly believed him will never be known. Be that what it will, slowly, slowly the globes drew nearer and nearer the barrier, nearer and nearer to the straining face of Troe inviting his death to save Lar and mayhap some of his kinsmen, nearer and nearer to the fear-frozen face of Onde peering out through the crannies between the wall of Torvan flesh he had built against the witch-fire.

Now suddenly, with one simultaneous darting motion, the cloud of globes, the huge fat one and the many swollen smaller globes, rushed at Troe, into his body, which quivered once and then froze stiffly in the swift chill of this dread death that sucks the all of a man out into the elemental’s being.

“Now may the Gods watch over the Tlarg,” swore Onde softly, holding still the dead form of Troe against the opening wherein had entered the last of his army, and dread was in his fate. For the whole body of Troe turned swiftly green and writhed with the pulse of the weird undead life that had swept into him. And then with a scream of terror Onde leaped back, for instead of leaving on the outer side of Troe’s body as Onde had hoped, the green globes oozed inward into the great throne room, the main hall of Blackspire.

Now began again a rich feasting for the hungry, awful spirits Lar’s wizardry had conjured up in her extremity. Their lifting savage round forms, mirroring the utter horror of their faces from the half-world of death, from the limbo where all things that should never have lived are driven; their fell swoop upon the now shrieking, cowering Tlarg, casting aside their swords, their armor, struggling futilely to rush out into the outer space from which they had just fled in; all this was sweet music to the bound Lar in her green chamber of fire and she writhed against her binding ropes of the nettle fiber till the blood ran. Steadily her thought urged the green death globes on to the slaughter, and now at last there were of all the horde of Toad-men not one left alive.

And over the castle of Blackspire could be heard the half-mad laughter of Lar, the witch queen, exulting and weeping, sobbing, crying and cursing, for she knew, from watching in her yellow image globe, how Troe had died for her. Vengeance she had, but it came too swiftly after her loss for her to be benefited by it.

Now in all the pile of Blackspire were left only the bound Torvani at the entry windows; the tall green form of Lar bound against her black pillar within the green chamber; and the dead Tlarg.

Before Lar hovered the green globes of dread spirits of the past, waiting for the release she had promised for the work they had done for her. And her hands were bound, she could not work her spells. There was no one to release her, for the Torvani who had fought so gallantly outside were far off toward the lower bottoms, pursuing the last fleeing remnants of the Tlarg horde, the rear guard who had not been near enough to call down the green death upon them.

How long would these dread devourers wait? Lar’s thoughts sought them, and they froze their weird minds against her, waited ominously for their reward. And well Lar knew what fate would be hers did she not do with them exactly as she had said. It was the doom that usually befalls those who call up the forbidden entities, the savage spirits who are condemned forever to Limbo. That fate was joining them in their endless torments, the grey emptiness of waiting that was their life. And could she not give them release from that, they would surely take her to themselves.

It was a weeping, shaking Lar, who looked up from her despair to see her sisters’ faces swimming toward her through the gold-lit blueness. It was a grateful Lar who slumped to the floor with weakness as her sisters unbound her, helped her open the great book and prepare the spells that were needed. To return these spirits to Limbo was not enough. To release them from their ancient fate: that required wisdom, and that was what Lar had promised. Her father looked upon her ashen, dim-green face with fear, for even the studious Lar could not cozen the strength of Varuna into doing her favors, could not rule the fates that control the lands of Death.

It was a mighty conjure that the three sisters of the Lanvi worked, and vast were the fears their father held for their fate as they labored over their pentagrams and conjure marks and distillations of forbidden alchemicals. But at last the green forces that stood waiting in their swollen, sullen strength began to shrink, and at last there waited there before the shaking hands of Lar but one small globe containing one vague face. And Lar sank weeping upon the long lounge of gold embroidered green damask, for the face that waited for her work was the face of Troe. And she could not say the words that would banish him into the land of death and death’s vague savagery. For Lar knew many things, but what that place was from which those souls came to her and to which they went she did not know.

And even while her sisters waited for her to say the word that would send Troe upon his way to Hell or what place it might be; even as her former Lanvian lover stretched out his arms to take her again to his breast; even as her father pondered the words with which he would bless his daughter’s reunion with her former lover, her decision to return again to Peristan and her former home and ways; even as the Lanvians unbound the Torvani from the great entry ways and swung wide the bars to let the refreshing fluids pour through the dark bloody pile of Blackspire. . .

Lar stretched out her arms to the pale greenness that waited there before her with the sad face of Troe, her step-son. Stretched out her arms and with a fierce, weird cry touched her fingers to the swimming vague sphere of elemental force that was now the soul of the rightful ruler of Torvani.

As she touched the sphere, the green and hungry force swept into her glorious body, and she drooped, fell slowly, graceful across the lounge. As she stiffened into death, from her breast arose a larger, brighter bubble of witch-fire. And within the sphere shone two faces, smiling upon each other. And that was a strange, courageous smile upon Lar’s face, where she lay dead.

Tearfully her two sisters did those things needful. And the last green sphere of elemental force vanished from the ruined castle of Blackspire.

Somewhere in space, the vast green face of Varuna smiled too. For he loves his children when they are brave and love gallantly and wholly.

A STORY ABOUT spirits, from me, who explains all spirit and religious phenomena as the work of the subterranean hidden people (who have duped all surface men for endless centuries with their ray-projections and ray-phone voices) needs some explaining.

I think that the history of the worlds in space, given in Ohaspe, has behind it, certain vast truths. I think that the ether, the microcosm, other planets, all contain life which would often prove imperceptible to us, but is nevertheless there.

I think that some “things” that might act like we concept spirits as acting, could exist on earth except that the poisons from our sun make conditions for that type of life too difficult. If such things exist, they are even more ephemeral and less intelligent than man himself.

Thus, I can write a story about spirits, if I place the story in another plane of life reachable only by a cavern mechanism that l have heard of but never myself seen, with a clear conscience.

I do not believe in spirits upon our present-day earth. Such fragile forms of live could not exist here, where we find it so difficult for our comparatively sturdy bodies .

But that something of the kind might populate all the so-called “ether,” all the voids of space, I do not dispute. I do not dispute that such so-called bodiless “entities” might even find their way to earth upon occasions, perhaps even frequent occasions. But I do not think they could stay alive here, where our radioactivity kills men in sixty to seventy years—and mosquitoes in weeks. Such a bodiless life would be slain by the first strong wind, or first spinning magnetic vortice from our sun, or the first touch of Pittsburgh smog.

In my stories, that something men call conscience will keep me from giving you anything I do not believe could be true—under the conditions I give you. It is quite probable that such creatures as Troe and Lar do swim in blue etherean seas, far from our deadly sun, and that such sorceresses as Lar do summon bodiless “spirits” by force sendings, by obscure symbols in forgotten languages, as all our legends tell us. These things may have been true in the far past on earth—all our legends tell us so—and I have found more important truths in many legends than in all the history books.