Domes rose, cracked and discolored. Portals gaped, vacant of doors. Everywhere, ruin had laid its hand. Then Amalric saw one spire untouched: a shining, red, cylindrical tower, which rose in the extreme southeastern comer of the city. It gleamed among the ruins. Amalric indicated it
"Why is that tower less ruined than the others?" he asked. Lissa turned pale, trembled, and convulsively caught his hand.
"Do not speak of it!" she whispered. "Do not look toward it … do not even think of it!"
Amalric scowled; the nameless implication of her words had somehow changed the aspect of the mysterious tower. Now it seemed like a serpent's head, rearing amid ruin and desolation. A stream of black specks —bats on the wing— poured from its high black apertures.
The young Aquilonian looked warily about him. After all, he had no assurance that the people of Gazal would receive him in a friendly manner. He saw people moving leisurely about the streets. When they halted and stared at him, his flesh for some reason crawled.
They were men and women with kindly features, and their looks were mild. But their interest seemed so slight … so vague and impersonal. They made no move to approach or speak to him. It might have been the commonest thing in the world for an armed horseman to ride into their city from the desert; yet Amalric knew that this was not the case, and the casual manner with which the people of Gazal received him caused a faint uneasiness in his bosom.
Lissa spoke to them, indicating Amalric, whose hand she lifted like an affectionate child. "This is Amalric of Aquilonia, who rescued me from the black people and has brought me home."
A polite murmur of welcome rose from the people, and several of them approached to extend their hands. Amalric thought he had never seen such vague, kindly faces; their eves were soft and mild, without fear and without wonder. Yet they were not the eyes of stupid ones; rather, they were the eyes of wolves wrapped in dreams.
Their stare gave him a feeling of unreality; he hardly knew what was said to him.
His mind was occupied by the strangeness of it alclass="underline" these quiet, dreamy people, in their silken tunics and soft sandals, moving with aimless vagueness among the discolored ruins. A lotus paradise of illusion? Somehow that sinister red tower struck a discordant note.
One of the men, with a smooth, unlined face but hair of silver, said:
"Aquilonia? There was an invasion … we heard by King Bragorus of Nemedia. How went the war?''
"He was driven hack," answered Amalric briefly, resisting a shudder. Nine hundred years had passed since Bragorus had led his spearmen across the marches of Aquilonia.
His questioner did not press him further; the people drifted away, and Lissa tugged at his hand. He turned and feasted his eyes upon her. In a realm of illusion and dream, her soft, firm body anchored his wandering conjectures. She was no dream; she was real; her body was sweet and tangible as cream and honey.
"Come," she said, "let us go to rest and eat."
"What of the people?" he demurred. "Will you not tell them of your experiences?"
"They would not heed, except for a few moments," she answered. "They would listen a little, then drift away. They hardly know I have been gone. Come!"
Amalric led the horse and the camel into an enclosed court, where the grass grew high and water seeped from a broken fountain into a incredible trough. There he tethered them; then he followed Lissa. Taking his hand, she led him across the court into an arched doorway. .Night had fallen. In the open space above the court; the stars clustered, etching the jagged pinnacles.
Through a series of dark chambers Lissa went, moving with the sureness of long practice. Amalric groped after her, guided by her little hand in his. He found it no pleasant adventure. The scent of dust and decay hung in the thick darkness. Under his feet were sometimes broken tiles and sometimes worn carpets.
His free hand touched the fretted arches of doorways. Then the stars gleamed through a broken roof, showing him a dim winding hallway, hung with rotting tapestries. They rustled in a faint breeze; their noise was like the whispering of witches, causing the hair of his scalp to stir.
Then they came into a chamber dimly lighted by star-shine streaming through open windows, and Lissa released his hand. She fumbled for an instant and produced a faint light. It was a glassy knob, which glowed with a golden radiance. She set it on a marble table and indicated that Amalric should recline on a couch thickly littered with silks.
Groping into some hidden recess, she produced a golden vessel of wine and others containing food unfamiliar to Amalric. There were dates; but the other fruits and vegetables, pallid and insipid to his taste, he did not recognize. The wine was pleasant to the palate but no more heady than dishwater.
Seated on a marble seat facing him, Lissa nibbled daintily.
"What sort of place is this?" he demanded. "You are like these people, yet strangely unlike them."
"They say I am like our ancestors," answered Lissa. "Long ago, they came into the desert and built this city amid a great oasis, which contained a series of springs. The stone they took from the ruins of a much older city … only the Red Tower …" (her voice dropped, and she glanced nervously at the star-framing windows) "… only the red tower stood there. It was empty … then.''
"Our ancestors, who were called Gazali, once dwelt in southern Koth. They were noted for their scholarly wisdom. But they sought to revive the worship of Mitra, which the Kothians had long since abandoned, and the king drove them from his kingdom. They came southward, many of them: priests, scholars, teachers, and scientists, with their Shemitish slaves. They reared Gazal in the desert; but the slaves revolted almost as soon as the city was built and, fleeing, mixed with the wild tribes of the desert. They were not ill-treated; but word came to them in the night … a word that sent them fleeing madly from the city into the desert.''
"My people dwelt here, learning to produce their food and drink from such material as was at hand. Their learning was a marvel. When the slaves fled, they took with them every camel, horse, and ass in the city. Thenceforth, there was no communication with the outer world. There are whole chambers in Gazal filled with maps and books and chronicles, but they are all nine hundred years old at the least; for it was nine hundred years ago that my people fled from Koth. Since then, no man of the outside world has set foot in Gazal. And the people are slowly vanishing. They have become so dreamy and introspective that they have neither human passions nor human appetites. The city falls into ruins and none moves a hand to repair it. The horror …" (she choked and shuddered) "… when the horror came upon them, they could neither flee nor fight."
"What do you mean?" he whispered, a cold wind blowing on his spine. The rustling of rotten hangings down nameless black corridors stirred dim fears in his soul.
She shook her head. She rose, came around the marble table, and laid hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were wet and shone with horror and a desperate yearning that caught at his throat. Instinctively his arm went around her lithe form, and he felt her tremble.
"Hold me!" she' begged. "I am afraid! Oh, I have dreamed of such a man as you. I am not like my people; they are dead men walking forgotten streets; but I am alive. I am warm and sentient. I hunger and thirst and yearn for life. I cannot abide the silent streets and ruined halls and dim people of Gazal, although I have never known anything else. That is why I ran away; I yearned for life …'' She was sobbing uncontrollably in his arms. Her hair streamed over his face; her fragrance made him dizzy. Her firm body strained against his. She was lying across his knees, her arms locked about his neck. Straining her to his breast, he crushed her lips with his. Eyes, lips, cheeks, hair, throat, breasts … he showered her with hot kisses, until her sobs changed to panting gasps. His passion was not the violence of a ravisher. The passion that slumbered in her woke in one overpowering wave. The glowing golden ball, struck by his groping fingers, tumbled to the floor and was extinguished. Only the starshine gleamed through the windows.