Gangnet's face was transfigured with an extraordinary spiritual beauty; he looked as if he had descended from heaven.
"I understand nothing, except that I have no self any more. But this is life."
"Is Gangnet expatiating on his famous blue sun?" said a jeering voice above them. Looking up, they saw that Krag had got to his feet.
They both rose. At the same moment the gathering mist began to obscure Alppain's disk, changing it from blue to a vivid jale.
"What do you want with us, Krag?" asked Maskull with simple composure.
Krag looked at him strangely for a few seconds. The water lapped around them.
"Don't you comprehend, Maskull, that your death has arrived?"
Maskull made no response. Krag rested an arm lightly on his shoulder, and suddenly he felt sick and faint. He sank to the ground, near the edge of the island raft. His heart was thumping heavily and queerly; its beating reminded him of the drum taps. He gazed languidly at the rippling water, and it seemed to him as if he could see right through it… away, away down… to a strange fire…
The water disappeared. The two suns were extinguished. The island was transformed into a cloud, and Maskull - alone on it - was floating through the atmosphere… Down below, it was all fire - the fire of Muspel. The light mounted higher and higher, until it filled the whole world…
He floated toward an immense perpendicular cliff of black rock, without top or bottom. Halfway up it Krag, suspended in midair, was dealing terrific blows at a blood-red spot with a huge hammer. The rhythmical, clanging sounds were hideous.
Presently Maskull made out that these sounds were the familiar drum beats. "What are you doing, Krag?" he asked.
Krag suspended his work, and turned around.
"Beating on Your heart, Maskull," was his grinning response.
The cliff and Krag vanished. Maskull saw Gangnet struggling in the air - but it was not Gangnet - it was Crystalman. He seemed to be trying to escape from the Muspel-fire, which kept surrounding and licking him, whichever way he turned. He was screaming… The fire caught him. He shrieked horribly. Maskull caught one glimpse of a vulgar, slobbering face - and then that too disappeared.
He opened his eyes. The floating island was still faintly illuminated by Alppain. Krag was standing by his side, but Gangnet was no longer there.
"What is this Ocean called?" asked Maskull, bringing out the words with difficulty.
"Surtur's Ocean."
Maskull nodded, and kept quiet for some time. He rested his face on his arm. "Where's Nightspore?" he asked suddenly.
Krag bent over him with a grave expression. "You are Nightspore."
The dying man closed his eyes, and smiled.
Opening them again, a few moments later, with an effort, he murmured, "Who are you?"
Krag maintained a gloomy silence.
Shortly afterward a frightful pang passed through Maskull's heart, and he died immediately.
Krag turned his head around. "The night is really past at last, Nightspore… The day is here."
Nightspore gazed long and earnestly at Maskull's body. "Why was all this necessary?"
"Ask Crystalman," replied Krag sternly. "His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch - but I have a stronger… Maskull was his, but Nightspore is mine."
Chapter 21
MUSPEL
The fog thickened so that the two suns wholly disappeared, and all grew as black as night. Nightspore could no longer see his companion. The water lapped gently against the side of the island raft.
"You say the night is past," said Nightspore. "But the night is still here. Am I dead, or alive?"
"You are still in Crystalman's world, but you belong to it no more. We are approaching Muspel."
Nightspore felt a strong, silent throbbing of the air - a rhythmical pulsation, in four-four time. "There is the drumming," he exclaimed.
"Do you understand it, or have you forgotten?"
"I half understand it, but I'm all confused."
"It's evident Crystalman has dug his claws into you pretty deeply," said Krag. "The sound comes from Muspel, but the rhythm is caused by its travelling through Crystalman's atmosphere. His nature is rhythm as he loves to call it - or dull, deadly repetition, as I name it."
"I remember," said Nightspore, biting his nails in the dark.
The throbbing became audible; it now sounded like a distant drum. A small patch of strange light in the far distance, straight ahead of them, began faintly to illuminate the floating island and the glassy sea around it.
"Do all men escape from that ghastly world, or only I, and a few like me?" asked Nightspore.
"If all escaped, I shouldn't sweat, my friend… There's hard work, and anguish, and the risk of total death, waiting for us yonder."
Nightspore's heart sank. "Have I not yet finished, then?"
"If you wish it. You have got through. But will you wish it?"
The drumming grew loud and painful. The light resolved itself into a tiny oblong of mysterious brightness in a huge wall of night. Krag's grim and rocklike features were revealed.
"I can't face rebirth," said Nightspore. "The horror of death is nothing to it."
"You will choose."
"I can do nothing. Crystalman is too powerful. I barely escaped with - my own soul."
"You are still stupid with Earth fumes, and see nothing straight," said Krag.
Nightspore made no reply, but seemed to be trying to recall something. The water around them was so still, colourless, and transparent, that they scarcely seemed to be borne up by liquid matter at all. Maskull's corpse had disappeared.
The drumming was now like the clanging of iron. The oblong patch of light grew much bigger; it burned, fierce and wild. The darkness above, below, and on either side of it, began to shape itself into the semblance of a huge, black wall, without bounds.
"Is that really a wall we are coming to?"
"You will soon find out. What you see is Muspel, and that light is the gate you have to enter."
Nightspore's heart beat wildly.
"Shall I remember?" he muttered.
"Yes, you'll remember."
"Accompany me, Krag, or I shall be lost."
"There is nothing for me to do in there. I shall wait outside for you."
"You are returning to the struggle?" demanded Nightspore, gnawing his fingertips.
"Yes."
"I dare not."
The thunderous clangor of the rhythmical beats struck on his head like actual blows. The light glared so vividly that he was no longer able to look at it. It had the startling irregularity of continuous lightning, but it possessed this further peculiarity - that it seemed somehow to give out not actual light, but emotion, seen as light. They continued to approach the wall of darkness, straight toward the door. The glasslike water flowed right against it, its surface reaching up almost to the threshold.
They could not speak any more; the noise was too deafening.
In a few minutes they were before the gateway. Nightspore turned his back and hid his eyes in his two hands, but even then he was blinded by the light. So passionate were his feelings that his body seemed to enlarge itself. At every frightful beat of sound, he quivered violently.
The entrance was doorless. Krag jumped onto the rocky platform and pulled Nightspore after him.
Once through the gateway, the light vanished. The rhythmical sound - blows totally ceased. Nightspore dropped his hands… All was dark and quiet as an opened tomb. But the air was filled with grim, burning passion, which was to light and sound what light itself is to opaque colour.
Nightspore pressed his hand to his heart. "I don't know if I can endure it," he said, looking toward Krag. He felt his person far more vividly and distinctly than if he had been able to see him.
"Go in, and lose no time, Nightspore… Time here is more precious than on earth. We can't squander the minutes. There are terrible and tragic affairs to attend to, which won't wait for us… Go in at once. Stop for nothing."
"Where shall I go to?" muttered Nightspore. "I have forgotten everything."