[The Metal Monster by A. Merritt]@TWC D-Link book
The Metal Monster

CHAPTER I
11/17

High overhead a homing kite whistled, mellowly.
As if it were a signal there sprang out in the pale azure of the western sky row upon row of cirrus cloudlets, rank upon rank of them, thrusting their heads into the path of the setting sun.

They changed from mottled silver into faint rose, deepened to crimson.
"The dragons of the sky drink the blood of the sunset," said Chiu-Ming.
As though a gigantic globe of crystal had dropped upon the heavens, their blue turned swiftly to a clear and glowing amber--then as abruptly shifted to a luminous violet A soft green light pulsed through the valley.
Under it, like hills ensorcelled, the rocky walls about it seemed to flatten.

They glowed and all at once pressed forward like gigantic slices of palest emerald jade, translucent, illumined, as though by a circlet of little suns shining behind them.
The light faded, robes of deepest amethyst dropped around the mountain's mighty shoulders.

And then from every snow and glacier-crowned peak, from minaret and pinnacle and towering turret, leaped forth a confusion of soft peacock flames, a host of irised prismatic gleamings, an ordered chaos of rainbows.
Great and small, interlacing and shifting, they ringed the valley with an incredible glory--as if some god of light itself had touched the eternal rocks and bidden radiant souls stand forth.
Through the darkening sky swept a rosy pencil of living light; that utterly strange, pure beam whose coming never fails to clutch the throat of the beholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa.

For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then arched itself, divided slowly into six shining, rosy bands; began to creep downward toward the eastern horizon where a nebulous, pulsing splendor arose to meet it.
And as we watched I heard a gasp from Drake.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books