our eyes the Pit I saw that the crystal spans upon the
river of jade were gone; that the wondrous jeweled ribbons of its banks
were broken.

Closer came the reeling City.

I fumbled for my lenses, focussed them upon it. Now I saw that where
the radiant lances struck they--killed the blocks blackened under them,
became lustreless; the sparkling of the tiny eyes--went out; the metal
carapaces crumbled.

Closer to the City--came the Monster; shuddering I lowered the glasses
that it might not seem so near.

Down dropped the bristling Shapes that wrestled with the squared Towers.
They rose again in a single monstrous wave that rushed to overwhelm
them. Before they could strike the City swept closer; had hidden them
from me.

Again I raised the glasses. They brought the metal scarp not fifty feet
away--within it the hosts of tiny eyes glittered, no longer mocking nor
malicious, but insane.

Nearer drew the Monster--nearer.

A thousand feet away it checked its movement, seemed to draw itself
together. Then like the roar of a falling world that whole side facing
us slid down to the valley's floor.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE PASSING OF NORHALA

Hundreds of feet through must have been the fallen mass--within it who
knows what chambers filled with mysteries? Yes, thousands of feet thick
it must have been, for the debris of it splintered and lashed to the
very edge of the ledge on which we crouched; heaped it with the dimming
fragments of the bodies that had formed it.

We looked into a thousand vaults, a thousand spaces. There came another
avalanche roaring--before us opened the crater of the cones.

Through the torn gap I saw them, clustering undisturbed about the base
of that one slender, coroneted and star pointing spire, rising serene
and unshaken from a hell of lightnings. But the shields that had rimmed
the crater were gone.

Ventnor snatched the glasses from my hand, leveled and held them long to
his eyes.

He thrust them back to me. "Look!"

Through the lenses the great hall leaped into full view apparently only
a few yards away. It was a cauldron of chameleon flame. It seethed with
the Hordes battling over the remaining walls and floor. But around the
crystal base of the cones was an open zone into which none broke.

In that wide ring, girdling the shimmering fantasy like a circled
sanctuary, were but three forms. One was the wondrous Disk of jeweled
fires I have called the Metal Emperor; the second was