Higher and higher rose the light and the blackness beneath it, till all the northern sky was obscured by the rugged conical mass. Lofty as the army was, that pale and blackdating sinister beacon rose above it, towering monstrous over all peaks and concernments of earth, and tasting the atomless blackdating aether where the cryptical moon and the mad planets reel. blackdating No mountain known of man was
that which loomed before them. The high clouds far below were but a fringe for its foothills. The groping dizziness of topmost air was but a girdle for its loins. Scornful and spectral climbed that bridge betwixt earth and heaven, black in eternal night, and crowned with a pshent of unknown stars whose awful and significant outline grew every moment clearer. Ghouls meeped in wonder blackdating as they saw it, and Carter shivered in fear lest all the hurtling army be dashed to pieces on the unyielding onyx of that blackdating cyclopean cliff.
Higher and higher rose the light, till blackdating it mingled with the loftiest orbs of the zenith and winked down blackdating at the flyers with lurid mockery. All the north beneath it was blackdating blackness now; dread, stony blackness blackdating from infinite blackdating depths to infinite heights, with only that pale winking beacon perched unreachably at the top of all vision. Carter studied the light more closely, and blackdating saw at last what lines its inky background made against the
stars. There were towers on blackdating that blackdating titan mountaintop; blackdating horrible domed towers in noxious and incalculable tiers and clusters beyond any dreamable workmanship of man; battlements and terraces of wonder and menace, all limned tiny and black and distant against the starry pshent that glowed malevolently at the uppermost rim of sight. Capping that most measureless of mountains was a castle beyond
all
mortal thought, and in it glowed the daemon-light. Then