Citadel of Fear | Page 9

flare of distant lightning gave them twilight glimpses of
the way, but otherwise they stumbled through breathless blackness,
their only guide the feel of the trodden trail to their feet and the soft
rush and gurgle of water beside it. The path grew steeper and more
difficult, as it left the stream to flow between rapidly heightening
banks.
Came another flare of lightning, brighter and nearer. Boots halted so
abruptly that Kennedy trod on his heels.
A forest Of giant ferns had leaped into existence on their right, and
immediately before them, almost upon them, it appeared, was an
enormous, grayish figure, huge, flat-faced, that leered and grinned.
Like the flick of a camera shutter the light had come and gone. They
were blind again, but flee leader flang out his hands and touched the
thing he had glimpsed.
"Stone!" Boots' voice was distinctly relieved. "It's just a big image by
the path." Boots struck a match and held it high,
Six feet above his head the gray face leered downward. Its grin seemed
alive in the wavering light--alive and menacing, but Boots grinned back
more good-naturedly. "You poor heathen idol! You gave me a start,
you did. Aztec, do you think, Mr. Kennedy?"
"Of course. Tlaloc, God of the Hills and the Rain. Unless I'm mistaken.
Yes, there is the cross of the Tlalocs carved at the foot. Where are you
going now?"
"On, to be sure. We're coming to the pass I surmised was here that
leads from the ravine into the hills beyond. It's the beyond I've a wish
to investigate."

The path was indeed very narrow, and the sound of water came up as a
low and distant murmur. On that side was blackness and the sense of
space. On the other, an occasional brushing against face or hand told of
the great ferns that stretched thin frond-fingers across the way.
Then abruptly the path ended, or seemed to end. Their feet sank in
moss or soft turf, and Boots collided with an unexpected tree trunk.
Both men halted and for a moment stood hesitant.
The silence was uncanny. Not a whisper among the ferns, not the call
of a night-bird. Even the usual insect-hum was stifled and repressed to
a key so low that it seemed only part of the stillness. The cloud-lid was
heavy above earth. The dense air pressed on the ear drums, as on first
descent into a deep mine or well.
Then, as they stared ahead through blackness, the attention of both men
was suddenly attracted by a faint, purplish glowing. It was quite near
the ground and a short distance ahead of them. There was grass there,
straight, slender stems of it, growing in delicate silhouette against that
low, mysterious light.
Advancing, Boots peered in puzzled question. As he neared it the light
flashed brighter with a more decided tinge of purple, and out of the
grass a wonder soared up to float away on iridescent wings.
It was a huge, mothlike insect, fully ten inches from wing-tip to
wing-tip, and the glowing came from its luminous body, in color pale
amethyst, coldly afire within. The broad wings, transparent as a
globular walls of a bubble, refracted the creature's own radiance in a
network of shimmering color.
Boots gasped sheer delight, but Kennedy's comment was as usual
eminently practical.
"Sa-a-y! That beauty would bring a fortune from any museum. Do you
suppose there are any more about?"

The moth had settled in the long grass, where a dim glowing again
marked its presence. Cautiously the two men moved in that direction.
They seemed to have come upon a sort of high meadow, though what
might be its extent or general contour was impossible to say. As they
went, another and yet another of the moths glowed, shimmered and
rose, flushed up by their swishing progress through the grass.
"Like a dream of live soap bubbles," murmured Boots. "Wouldn't it be
a shame now to catch one of those beauties and smother out the
flaming life of him?"
"For a young man of your size you have the least practical
sense--hel-lo!"
There was cause for the astonished ejaculation.
He had glanced to one side and there, standing between two slender
trees with a hand on each, appeared a figure so exquisitely, startlingly
appropriate that it was no wonder if for a moment both men questioned
its reality.
The form was that of a young girl of fifteen or sixteen years--if she
reckoned her age by mortal standards, which Boots for his part
seriously doubted. But elf or human maiden, she was very beautiful.
Her skin was white as that of Astrid, the wife of Biornson, and she
watched them with wonderful, dark eyes, not in fear, but with a startled
curiosity that matched