The Treasure of Atlantis, J. Allan Dunn [read aloud .TXT] 📗

a tremulous blue radiance. At the farther end stood a statue of a woman wearing a helmet crested with the new moon. Hands were raised above its finely carved head, a twisted snake in each. About the statue’s body was entwined the scaly coils of an enormous serpent, with its head resting upon the shoulder. Dull eyes gleamed like uncut emeralds. A sound of chanting came from beyond the walls:

“To thee, All-Shining One

Goddess divine!

Unto thy votaries

Vouchsafe a sign.

Let thy snakes twining

Show us thou livest,

Show us that Pasiphae

Still mercy givest

Shine on thy votaries

Goddess benign.”

“Serpents?” said Morse, a question in his voice.

“Pasiphae in her chthonian representation as ‘Goddess of the Underworld,’” came the reply.

The light brightened with a brilliance that came in waves like the rays of the aurora borealis. In its shimmer the carven snakes seemed to quiver and the eyes of the great serpent grew brighter.

“Look out, Laidlaw!” cried Morse suddenly. “The brute’s alive!”

The head of the ophidian raised from the shoulder of the statue and disappeared, to glide out from beneath the arm in a swift undulation, its jaws open, its tongue vibrating. A whisper of movement was heard as scales scraped over pavement.

The blood of the initiates ran cold as they waited for the reptile’s attack. The obscene slithering was the only sound to be heard in the chamber, and they could only guess at its position.

“Ru!” snarled Morse.

Laidlaw kept silent. He had thought from the first

glance that the snake was alive, but he believed it had been coiled about the statue in a sluggish state of coma. There was no question of its identity. More than thirty feet in length, it was the most powerful and ill-tempered of all the big serpents, the anaconda.

Suddenly Morse felt a coil encircle his lower leg in a lightning loop and mount to the thigh, compressing it until it seemed that the bone must break. He set his hands on the writhing, clammy body, trying to reach the head, but encountered only a continually thickening coil. He let out an exclamation and it was echoed by Laidlaw. The anaconda had attacked both Americans at the same time, using Morse as a support on which to base the leverage of its constriction.

The firm, unyielding body of the snake offered no hold. The coil about Morse’s waist was as thick as his thigh, hard as a hempen cable, resistless, inexorable. His case was desperate, and both men were without weapons. A choking cry came from Laidlaw as Morse strove again to loosen the deadly twist that was slowly squeezing his leg into jelly, at the same time holding him powerless from moving.

“Laidlaw!” he cried.

The choking sound changed to a great sob of relief.

“Ah!” sounded Laidlaw, strength emanating from his voice. “I’ve got him! He had me about the waist. Now then!”

The long length of the snake whipped into wild action. Morse was thrown violently to the ground, and he felt Laidlaw close beside him. Between them, the infuriated reptile writhed and thrashed, dragging them over the hard stone floor. Laidlaw’s breath came in great gasps as he exerted all his strength. Morse felt the coil about his thigh relax, and dragged at it until he freed himself. He tried to rise, but his leg refused to carry his weight. He half crawled toward Laidlaw.

“How can I help you?” he cried.

A grunt answered him. The snake’s body lay across that of his friend, writhing more and more feebly. Laidlaw rolled over on top of it.

“I’ve choked the hellish thing,” he gasped. “I think it’s dead, but I don’t dare let go of it.”

A series of dull thuds came to their ears from outside

the chamber. The chanting was taken up again:

“Hear us, O Shining One

Grant our desire.

Pasiphae! Pasiphae!

Dread we thy ire

One to the other

O Bountiful Mother

Accept the gifts we bring

As at thy feet we cling,

Pasiphae! Pasiphae!

All-Shining One.”

“I think we were intended to be the gifts,” said Laidlaw. “That could well have been our funeral ode.”

The flickering radiance was gradually returning, and Morse, now with his own weight on the lower half of the anaconda, saw Laidlaw battering its head, already a shapeless bloody stump, against the stone floor. One loose coil was about his middle, and Morse tugged until it came limply away. The two sat up and looked at each other as Laidlaw flung away the battered head, and Morse kicked at the convulsively twitching mass with his sound leg while he tried to rub the other back to sensibility.

“Cheerful little trick,” he said angrily. “The snake of the goddess resenting the intrusion of strangers. That would have been the verdict, I suppose. Ru full of regrets and the snake full of us. Ugh! How did you manage to get hold of its neck?”

“Good luck! The devil has ruined my digestion forever, though.”

Morse started to laugh, and Laidlaw found himself echoing him. In the reaction to their danger, they laughed half-hysterically until they could force themselves to their feet. The scientist rubbed his stomach. My is jellied. How’s your leg?”

Morse prodded it and winced. “It’s sound, but it’s sore as the devil.”

“Well, if Ru planned this,” said Laidlaw, “he did a good job. He had an alibi ready.”

The mystic voice broke into the chamber:

“Advance, O neophytes!”

A section of the wall slid downward and they passed through the opening into natural light, leaving the dying snake behind. At a junction of the low corridor, a gray and shapeless figure with a skull mask stood beckoning to them. Had this proved to be Ru, Morse felt that he could have done away with him then and there. But the voice of this sentinel quickly betrayed the presence as Kiron.

“The mystae to the right,” he said, “your test has ended. Yours, epoptae, to the left,” adding in a lower tone: “And courage, brother, even in darkness.”

Laidlaw held back a moment, but Morse urged him on.

“If they plan to do us harm we can’t escape it,” he said, and took the left-hand passage. It ended almost before it had begun in another gloomy chamber that grew totally dark when the door closed behind his entrance. A voice like that of a ventriloquist, its source indeterminate, accosted him.

“Now comes the final choice, epoptae. Perhaps it lies with you. Who knows? Perhaps the gods direct. Yet it is on your action that the issue hangs. Gaze and ponder before your body answers to your settled will.”

With a clang, a door slid back, and a gush of heat surged into the room. A fire glared in a passage beyond the door, pulsing with swift plays of molten orange and vermilion. The portal closed, and a second door revealed four leaping, maneless cat-creatures. Large as full-grown lions, they were skin-clad in ebony velvet, with topaz eyes, crimson mouths, and sabered ivory fangs. The beasts sprang at him and roared in frenzy as a barred gate rose up before them.

A third exit lifted, and a breath of night air, mingled with flower perfume and the clean smell of the lake, stole into his nostrils. The way lay open up a slight incline to a point where silver moonlight bathed an open causeway. As this was shut out, the voice came to him:

“Commend the prompting of your will unto the gods. As they judge you, so shall you go scatheless or to your doom.”

The floor beneath him started to revolve slowly, not enough to disturb his balance, but acquiring speed enough to wipe out any lingering idea he might hold of

the location of the respective doors.

Morse had entered the ordeal in the belief that the initiation was calculated to break the nerves of a superstitious man. The fight with the snake had disturbed his confidence; but his wrath, somewhat calmed by Kiron’s friendly message, was still dominant enough to wish to put a swift end to what he still believed to be a combination of masquerade and optical illusion.

Without hesitation, he moved to the wall. One hand encountered a projection; the other, sliding over the vertical surface, passed from coolness to heat, slight but distinctly noticeable. He moved along the contour of the chamber until he felt a second knob, and bent, listening intently. Did he hear the faint sound of muffled growls? Morse wondered if the tests might hold real quality.

Swiftly he sought the third latch, found it, clutched and pulled. It resisted, but then slid readily before a side thrust. Before him rose the incline to the moonlit causeway, and pure air met him as he ran up the rise.

Gulping the sweet air into his lungs, he reached the causeway. Behind him the egress had closed, and the carven facade of the temple showed in gray and purple silence. Morse crossed the causeway to a balustrade and leaned upon it. The crescent moon faintly outlined the temple on the isle of Sele. Here was the realm of Leola, sister of Rana, and her Dianae.

A breeze blew off the lake, and suddenly Morse wondered if this beautiful Leola could hold any of the magical enchantment that her island did, there in the moonlight. Below him, a galley with oars supplementing a silvered sail reached silently for a wharf. He straightened from his thoughts, his arms folded on the wide baluster rail, then turned reluctantly to move away. A soft, thudding rush of feet sounded behind him. A cloth was thrown over his head, and the gathered folds pinned his arms to his sides.

Morse fought against the arms that sought to hold him and lift him from his feet. Coarse oaths came to his ears, sounding dimly through the muffling linen. Then, still struggling, he was lifted from his feet and borne away.

A voice rang out. It was high pitched and as sweetly

clear as the sound of a silver trumpet. His captors paused and set him down.

“Who are you who dare to profane the bridal night of Pasiphae? Stand, before I turn you into stone!”

Morse heard the mumbling apologies of the men who had attacked him. The cloth was hastily removed, and he faced his rescuer.

It was a woman. She was slender and tall, clothed in garments that glittered, one arm raised . There was something strangely familiar about her face. It was clean-carven, imperious, set like a flower upon a neck that was as round and smooth as a column. Hair, piled high, glinted pale gold in the moonlight. Two eyes burned like azure stars.

The woman stood on the causeway. Behind her were a score of her fair sex, clad in white garments with ornaments that gleamed as they moved.

“Who are you?” she asked. “And why does this rabble molest you?”

The men who had seized him slunk away as Morse answered.

“I am one of the strangers to Atlantis.” And as he spoke he knew that this was Leola. Her likeness to Rana could not be mistaken. But here was a refinement of feature, a majesty that the queen could not approach.

“I have no idea who these are who have attacked me,” he continued, “though I might make a guess. The night has not been altogether fortunate for me—until now.”

She surveyed him with a disdain that was tempered by a half-concealed curiosity.

“You are the one who conquered Aulus,” she said, “and tonight you became an epoptae. Are you so enamored of Atlantis that you would forsake your own land?”

“I have never been enamored—until this moment,” he answered truthfully, his eyes upon hers. Did her eyes waver?

“Your words are idle,” she said.

“Yet I would thank you for my rescue.”

“I would not willingly see even