Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner Page B

his very presence blasphemed. Kane's mind was twisted to a state of dreamlike clarity and obscurity, his thoughts a dichotomy of inspired certainty, enshrouded disregard. But a demonic haunting that transcended sanity had overshadowed Kane's mind ever since his eyes had first gazed into the bloodstone ring.
    Nimbus about the flame, the open plaza encircled the monolithic dome. As Kane emerged from the avenue, it seemed as if the encroaching trees were stunted, twisted by the aura that emanated from the dome, their roots forced into octopoid contortions as they sought to penetrate the court pavement. At closer observation the giant dome was not unmarred by the centuries. Fissures traced patterns across its curvature; in same places, jagged apertures gaped to reveal a double wall cross-braced with struts of bronze alloy. But not even the awesome weight of millennia had conquered this masterwork of alien engineering. Battle-scarred but erect, the dome rose in defiance of time, and only in a few sections did rifts breach both inner and outer wall.
    No doorway broke the hemispherical trimness of design. However, as Kane crossed the courtyard, he saw that the avenue led toward an opening in the perimeter, wherein a flight of steps inclined gently downward into darkness. Similar depressions could be seen on either side, and presumably Arellarti's symmetry of design dictated subterranean ramps at each of the seven radial avenues. With the same reckless confidence, Kane descended the oddly spaced steps to the sunken entrance that waited in the dim light below. Sliding doors of bronze alloy stood apart across the semicircular opening, their massive slabs drawn back within the double wall. Entangled vines gave evidence of how long the doorway had lain open, awaiting entrance through its thirty-foot portal--entrance of whom? Kane stepped through.
    The dome glowed, not from the sun--the fire was within. Sudden fleeting impressions, noted briefly as attention is swept past, drawn meteorlike to the heart of Arellarti: Vast open space, twilight. The sunlight filtering through fissures in the giant hemisphere in blobs of wan yellow, streaks of starlight dripping across the midnight dome of heaven. Trailing streamers of liana, like clouds against the sky, sick-toned and leprous-fleshed in the weak light. Strewn mounds of fallen rubble, soaring columns of bronze alloy, curved to brace the walls so high above. Pillars of cyclopean machinery, huddled in shrouds of fleshy creeper like brooding sentinels. Fantastic banks of ceramic and stone, metal and crystal--curiously patterned, multihued--all intertwined with mammoth lengths of copper that crawled throughout, like unthinkably huge serpents writhing from a nest of eggs.
    And overawing all wonders... Bloodstone!
    A gigantic crystal hemisphere nearly a hundred yards across filled the chamber's center, a smooth half-globe of dark green veined with red. Peripheral to its base was a circle of silver-white metal, linked by copper arteries to the looming columns of machinery. The heart of Arellarti did not beat; within the crystal its fires slumbered. But in the dim light Kane recognized immediately the kinship of this monolithic crystal to the bloodstone ring upon his forger. Passages of the Book of the Elders flashed through his consciousness and bombarded his senses with intolerable excitement as he understood the validity of its eldritch history.
    No mine on Earth could have quarried so gigantic a crystal; Bloodstone, like the ring on Kane's hand, had come from beyond the stars. Here under this vast dome lay the culmination of Krelran science, the core of their ancient power. But that power lay dormant, buried by the centuries, and, as with the gemstone of the ring, only an aura of evil hinted of the immeasurable potential quiescent within the crystal's murky depths. No vestige of decay marred Bloodstone, nor did any vine cling to its gleaming curve. A crescent bank of the mottled red igneous stone