Recovering from my amazement, I directed my bodiless flight in the direction the skysled has flown. Soon I caught up with the aerial vehicle and could observe it in motion. There was no discharge of vapor or visible energy from the rear of the miniature craft, nor did I see any evidence of propellers. The motive power was a puzzle to me; much later I learned that the skysled rode the magnetic currents generated by the planetary magnetosphere, but at the time the power that propelled the vehicle was a mystery to me.
So swiftly did the skysled traverse the forest way that within mere minutes it achieved its goal.
And I looked upon an awesome spectacle.
Within the enormous bower of one gigantic tree, was a city built of black crystal.
It rose in successive tiers, the upper works tightly anchored to the bole of the tree itself, the lower levels extending out upon the level upper surface of the branch.
With the exception of the Secret City, the only other Laonese metropolis I had seen had been Phaolon itself, that sparkling capital that was fashioned of glittering gems and crystals.
This city was ebon-black in structure, and, although fashioned like Phaolon from crystals, these were dead and lusterless.
The city itself was dead.
How old it was I have no way of telling. But time had broken down its balustrades and toppled many of its soaring spires. Great cracks ran zigzag through the swelling domes and the narrow, crooked streets were littered with fallen shards.
And so it was that I first looked upon the Dead City of Sotaspra.
Not all life was extinct within the ruined metropolis, however. Life still clung to a few slender spires, guttering low like a windblown candle.
Toward one of these towers, somewhat more remote than the others, the magician directed his uncanny aerial contrivance, floating to a landing on the upmost tier.
Unseen, a drifting ghost from a distant star, I followed.
The tower toward which the cowled magician directed the skysled differed in several ways from the other structures. For one thing, whereas they were dead and blackly lusterless, this spire shimmered with brilliant color. As scarlet as new-shed blood it gleamed—a graceful, tapering shaft of smooth crystalline substance that seemed cast all in one piece, for all that I could see. At least, no segmentation or jointure could be discerned.
Toward this Scarlet Pylon the skysled flew. Hovering like a winged zaiph, it floated to a landing upon the topmost tier. I perceived that the Pylon was apart from the others, built on the utmost verge of the Dead City, where the levels rose from the crotch of the enormous branch, ascending partway up the slope of the giant tree-trunk itself.
One spire that blazed and flashed with color, amid a crumbling metropolis of dead black. The thought crossed my mind that this structure had been somehow revitalized—energized—whereas the black, lusterless, ruined towers had slumped into decay, their stores of energy vitiated. I was, much later, to realize that my first impression was strictly true and accurate.
The magician bore the unconscious boy from his craft into the Scarlet Pylon. Entering a spacious apartment, he deposited his burden on a couch of sumptuous silken stuffs and set about without further ado to lance the boy’s swollen and discolored leg. Draining off the poison, he cleansed and treated the wound with swift, economical motions, smearing the bite with a sparkling salve permeated with flecks of radiance.
Then he momentarily left the suite, returning with a peculiar apparatus like a tall floor lamp. The luminiferous element of this instrument was a coil of milky crystal, shielded in a hooded cone of glistening white metal which shaped and directed the rays.
He affixed this instrument to the floor, adjusted the extensible shaft so that the luminiferous coil was swiveled to bring is rays to bear directly upon the boy’s injured leg. He then switched the lamp on. A dim rosy light bathed the boy’s flesh. I gathered that this roseate light was a form of energy that worked on the cellular structure, accelerating the natural rate of growth.
Leaving the unconscious boy beneath the ruby rays of the healing lamp, the magician strode swiftly from the room. In a few moments he returned with a tray of various instruments and stoppered bottles whose employment obviously pertained to the healing arts. These he utilized over the next two hours in what I observed to be a vain and futile attempt to save the life of the boy.
A sympathetic audience, albeit an invisible one, I lingered in the chamber. Something in the dogged determination with which the boy had battled for life aroused my admiration.
With the aid of an apparatus which consisted of a tangled maze of glass tubes, the cowled man succeeded in draining most of the venom from the boy’s bloodstream. The healing ruby rays enormously accelerated the healing of the wound, and a poultice of glittering crystalline salts reduced the swelling and, I assume, fought infection.
But it would seem the magician’s fight against death was to be a hopeless struggle. Too much time had elapsed between the attack of the scorpion and the time the boy was brought into the Pylon laboratorium. The poison had largely accomplished its deadly purpose; the boy would not live through the night.
Unless an unknown and inscrutable fate intervened.
Night fell over the World of the Green Star. As day waned, the boy’s life waned with it. Paper-white, dripping with perspiration, he lay on the couch surrounded with healing instruments. I gathered from the expression on the cowled man’s face that the boy’s heartbeat grew ever fainter, and I could see that his breathing grew difficult. Toward the middle of night his condition worsened. His breast rose and fell almost imperceptibly now, as his breathing became more shallow.
The magician had done all that lay within the scope of his art. At length, he shrugged, switched off the apparatus, and left the apartment, abandoning the youth to his fate.
I hovered nearby, observing to the last this little drama into which chance had thrust me.
Then, toward morning, I saw an amazing sight.
It was as if a drifting whorl of luminous vapor rose slowly from the boy’s motionless body.
In the dimness of the half-lit chamber, the mysterious vapor glowed with a wan and pearly luminescence.
It seeped slowly from his flesh, floated for a brief time above his body, melting into empty air.
I sensed, with a thrill of uncanny awe, that I was observing the dissipation of his vital energy. How it came that the strange phenomenon was visible to me, I cannot precisely explain. Perhaps it was due to my bodiless state. An invisible spirit myself, perhaps I saw with the eyes of a spirit, to whom another spirit is dimly visible.
Near dawn an intense point of brilliant light seemed to emerge from the boy’s breast. Starlike, a focused point of pure flame, limpidly white, it seemed to float up from his body… hung above the motionless corpse for an instant… then drifted out of the room. And I knew that it had been given to me to observe an immortal soul leave its mansion of clay.
The boy was dead now. Still warm, his flesh would soon cool, the rich red blood congeal in his veins, his limbs stiffen in the grip of rigor mortis.
I think a madness came over me then.
What impelled me to this act I cannot say; it was no conscious act performed of my own volition.
But, swift as thought, I drifted down into the empty, warm, and waiting body!
Chapter 5
I LIVE AGAIN
My flesh was at once numb—and on fire. A sound like surf roared in my ears. My lungs fought for air, struggling against a vast weight that seemed piled upon my chest.