Chapter XXVI: The Last City of Lothar

Presently we turned and trudged wearily back to the Omnimobile. There was nothing else to do. I was sick with an aching heart. It was incredible that Sam, kind and true friend that he had always been, should be no more. A choking lump rose in my throat, and I confess that a few tears rolled down my cheek.

But I still had Xenora. As we walked, I put my arms around her, protectingly, in the grim determination that this strange world should not rob me also of the dream girl for whom I had searched two worlds. My love of her kept me from utter despair, but even then I knew that our ideal life could not go on.

I would have to find what it was that had taken Sam--to identify the thing that Xenora called so vaguely "the menace of the purple wood." Might it be the wild plant monsters, or was it something even more alien and terrible? And I thought more seriously of the danger to the earth, that I had been trying so vainly to forget. Sam's responsibility had fallen on my shoulders. I must see what I could do.

With the wonderful intuitive knowledge of one another's thoughts that Xenora and I have always had, she understood what was passing in my mind before I said anything. Softly, she took my fingers in her hand, and looked at me with deep sympathy in her eyes.

"I know, Melvin, what you think. And it is right. It is hard, so soon after you have come here to find me--but it must be. I can guide you to the city of my people. I can even show you to the brink of the pit of Xath, if you would go there!"

"You are very brave and true, my princess!"

"I come from Lothar! If you feel that your duty bids you risk the violet death in Xath, I would not dissuade you. But the Lord of Flame is mighty--no man can fight him! He has power over all!"

"Except our love," I said. I stopped, and took her in my arms, and pressed her red warm lips against my own. In the whole world, she was all that was mine. She clung to me fiercely, as if the terrible power of the pit of flames was trying to tear her away.

At last we went on, and presently we reached the Omnimobile, hidden in the purple grove. In Sam's absence, it looked very cheerless and lonely. We got aboard and made ready for departure. I tuned up the motors, and examined the electric weapons, and cleaned and loaded the little cannon again. As I worked, Xenora went in the galley and fixed a lunch. We ate quickly, under the silent pall of bitter tragedy, thinking of the smiling old man that should have been with us.

Then we climbed into the conning-tower, and I switched on the engines. The humming of the generators rose again, and the great machine lumbered clumsily out of the little wood, where it had been hidden for so many happy days. For many hours we held a north-westward course over the green plateaus and through the purple woodlands, with the light of the crimson day shining through the ports.

Xenora stood by me and chose the route. For the last few miles we crept along just east of a high, bare ridge of rocks. At last she bade me stop the machine in a clump of trees at the foot of the hill. The last city of Lothar, she said, lay but a mile beyond.

I took my binoculars and a rifle, and we left the machine and clambered up a half mile to the top of the ridge. The girl led the way, slipping cautiously through the rocks. At last she threw herself down behind a fringe of the low green plants, and motioned me to crawl up beside her.

"Look," she whispered, "and see all that is left of Lothar, the proud kingdom of my fathers, under the curse of the Lord of Flame!"

Indeed it was a scene of ruined grandeur that met my eyes. A little valley, perhaps two miles wide, lay beyond the ridge on which we were concealed. On the low hill beyond, standing out against the crimson sky, was a massive ruined wall. Back of it rose the crumbling desolate ruins of great towers and palaces of stone, covered with the moss of centuries of decay--merely the bare bleached skull of a dead civilization!

"It was in those fallen palaces of my fathers," Xenora whispered again, "that I found the strange machine that brought me the first dream of you."

I put up the glasses and made out the actual city outside the wall. Certainly Lothar had fallen since its days of radio. There was a mere straggling village of rude stone huts spread out on the valley floor, below the colossal ruined metropolis. The few hundred buildings were surrounded by a little cleared space, with the purple forest creeping up to reclaim it forever. I made out a few children playing about the trees, and a dozen ill-clad men working in the clearings. A few wreaths of smoke curled up from the dwellings; the people had not yet lost the art of fire!

And hanging silent and menacing in the air above the village was the visible symbol of the alien power that had wrecked that ancient civilization! A great, gleaming silver ball--a ship like the one we had fought--hung motionless above the huts, with a quick purple beam from it flickering frequently over them!

For a long time we lay there watching that desolate, pitiful scene, and then Xenora touched my arms, and we slipped back down the ridge. She was silent, with grief and despair in her eyes.

"See!" she whispered at last. "See! Lothar is dead! The Lord of Flame has killed it! The men are poor struggling wretches; they could do nothing even if the flame were gone! My father was the last king of Lothar. His was a troubled reign, and he has been dead many hundred sleeps!"

"Don't grieve so, my princess," I said. "There are still vast cities above the waters, where men are powerful and wise, and where the sky is blue and a white sun shines, and where there is a domain many times larger than all this abyss!"

"Can we go there--ever?" she questioned eagerly.

"No. We can never leave this land, even if the Lord of Flame is killed. The machine cannot break through the roof of water from below. And the power of the Lord of Flame is coming to earth. Even now it may be a dead and frozen world."

And drooping in the silence of dull despair, we reached the machine, and drove quickly for the protection of the deeper wood.