The Face in the Abyss, Abraham Merritt [important of reading books .txt] 📗

know. Not many, I fear. We were fortunate. They added a few more scars to my decorations,” he touched the bandage, “but they paid for it.”

“Dorina!” whispered Graydon, “Dorina! Then the Shadow did not lie!” Regor started, looked at him keenly. “Lad—you’ve seen the Shadow! The Dark Master!” “I’ll say I have!” said Graydon, grimly, in his own tongue, then in the Aymara, “I was his guest for a night and a day. He was bargaining for my body!”

Regor drew back a step, scrutinizing him. He clicked to Kon and the Spiderman answered at some length. When he finished, Regor stationed the Indians at guard at the opening through which they had come, and seated himself on a block of fallen stone.

“Now. tell me everything. And this time—keep nothing back.”

Graydon did, from the first stealthy onslaught of the hidden lizardman. Regor and the five YuAtlanchans listened, silent, fascinated. When he told the fate of Cadok, Regor

groaned, his face livid, and beat his breast with clenched fist.

“Good lad! Good lad!” he muttered brokenly, when Graydon had ended, and sat for a time in thought.

“That cavern where you thought you saw a ship,” he broke his silence. “If you are right—it was a ship. One of those upon which our ancestors came to the Hidden Land with the serpentpeople, and preserved there with many other precious things. So long has that cavern been locked away, unentered, that it was thought to be but another legend, a wonder tale. None but the Snake Mother and the Lord

of Folly remembers the way into it, unless it be Nimir. And if he does, it is plain he has not given the secret to Lantlu.

“The cavern of the Lost Wisdom!” there was awe in Regor’s voice. “And it exists! By the Mother, what we have forgotten! How we have fallen from the ancient strength! Once, Graydon, so the story runs, there was a wide entrance to it opening upon the lake. This was blocked with rocks, and the rocks melted, by some device the Old Ones knew, after the war that ended in the prisoning of Nimir. So cunningly was it done that none now can tell that sealed place from the surrounding stone. Yet I have heard a way was left to it from the Temple, through which the Lords and the Snake Mother passed from time to time when desire came to them to look again upon its ancient treasures. Once

in, I think we can find its door, and if we do I have that which will open it.”

He drew Graydon aside.

“Did you think I had abandoned you, lad?” he whispered, huskily. “The Urd were too thick around me to break through. Although I fought as never before. Then by lucky chance that Emer over there who held your noisy weapon set it going. The Urd scattered squealing and even Lantlu dropped from the platform. But you were nowhere in sight, or hearing. I knew you had been carried off. The Emer and I were away before Lantlu could gather his pack together. When I reached the lair, we took council. It was Huon’s idea to send Kon after you. Huon was strange—strange as when he bade you farewell. There was a cavern of red-dust light, he said. There Kon and his Weavers must search. They must start, he said, from the opening through which we passed when we left the lair .. . always have we known that there was danger of meeting the Urd in that place … but never dreamed that it was a way to the throne of the Dark One. Back, far back you must go, Huon told Kon. And then . .. his face became drawn and white as when he spoke of the slaying shadows dropping from the red sky … and he told

of a black precipice ending in a black shrine beside a garden. There they would find you.

“I opened that door and let them out. I watched them merge at once into the murk, and realized how wisely Huon

had picked them. Kon says they made their way swiftly far, far back, seeing no Urd, until at last the black cliff sprang up before them. Now which way to follow that wall, he did not know; by chance decided upon the left. On they went and on until he heard the sound of many Urd, and a man’s voice, and a voice which Kon says ‘spoke without a man to hold it.’ They waited until the Urd had gone away and until the bodiless voice had gone—

“And there you were, in the black shrine beside the garden! Strange… strange that Huon… v

He paused, shaking his head perplexedly.

“That little beast of yours is done for, I fear,” he said. “But just before the raid I took some of your weapon’s

food.”

He called the Indian who held the gun. Graydon took it, rejoicing in the feel of it. The Emer thrust a pouch out to him. Within it were about a hundred cartridges and several, clips for his automatics. He looked the rifle over, it was unharmed. He loaded it.

“Put your hand through the slit of this damned armor, Regor,” he said. “Reach up under my arm and give me what

you find there.”

Regor obeyed, drew out the automatic. Graydon thrust it into his belt. He felt much better; swords and maces were all right in their way, but every man knew his own weapons best.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Regor whistled to the guard, and touched Kon. The Spiderman beside him, he led the way up the black passage, retracing Graydon’s journey. The two Weavers fell in behind them, Graydon and the Fellowship men followed, the Indians brought up the rear. Regor did not depend upon Kon’s eyes for guidance. Now and again he cast ahead of him the vaporous, light-stimulating ball.

They came to that place Regor had called the Cavern of Lost Wisdom. As he crossed its threshold, he dropped upon his knees and kissed the floor. The YuAtlanchans whispered among themselves but did not imitate him.

They threaded their way through it in the crepuscular dusk of the dying atoms; past the dim, vague shapes of the

mysterious machines, past immense coffers of metals red and gray that held, Graydon wondered, what relics of the lost world; by the huge silvery globes they went, and he saw that upon them were traced enigmatic symbolings in lacquers of gold and blue; they came to the shadowy hull of the great ship, and here again Regor bent his knee. On and on they went, through the dusk, past the science, the art, the treasures of the serpentpeople and the mighty forefathers of the YuAtlanchans. They came to their end, and looked out over an empty space whose further side they could not see.

“We must cross there,” Regor said, “until we come to the rock that seals the ancient entrance. The corridor of the Lords, so said he who told me of this, is at its edge and in the direction of the cataract, which is at the right. The tunnel runs under the lake and skirts the amphitheater of the Xinli. There we must go softly, for I do not know whether other passages may not open into the one we travel. If so, it seems to me they must be sealed—indeed, must be, since the Old Ones planned to shut this cavern off for all time. Still, we will take no chances. And, somewhere near, there is an entrance into the tunnel which Suarra traveled from the Hall of the Weavers that night she met us.”

They set off across the empty space. They came at length to a wall of rock which appeared to be formed of bowlders fused by volcanic heat. Regor grunted complacently. They skirted the wall to the right until Regor saw, set high within the rock, an oval black stone like that Kon had searched for in the red cavern.

Regor clicked to the Spiderman. Kon felt carefully around the stone as he had the other, turned and shook his head. Regor took from his belt the cone he had used to open the door from the lair and gave it to him. Light sprayed from it as the red Weaver pressed it methodically over the face of the barrier. The rock began slowly to open, like the two valves of a sliding door. They peered into a corridor, much more brilliantly lighted, dropping at an easy decline. After they had entered, Kon pressed the cone to the inner sides. The rock portal closed. Look closely as he might,

Graydon could see no traces of it; the rock was smooth and unlined.

They went through that passage for a mile or more. Straight at first, it soon began to twist tortuously, as though it had been cut from some soft, meandering vein.

“We have passed beneath the lake, I know that if nothing else,” whispered Regor.

Abruptly the corridor terminated in a small crypt. Two of its walls bore a black oval. Regor looked at them, and scratched his head.

“By Durdan the Hairy!” he grumbled. “There were so many turns that I know not which side is toward the Temple and which away from it.”

Nor could the others help him.

“Well,” he decided, “we go to the right.”

Kon manipulated the cone. Almost immediately a stone slid upward. They were in a tunnel brighter still, and running at right angles.

“If this is right, then we go right again,” said Regor. They slipped along, cautiously. They stepped out of the tunnel without warning into a guard chamber in which were half a dozen Emer soldiers, not in yellow but in green-kilted kirtles, and an officer, a noble clad also in Lantlu’s green.

These stared at the motley intruders, like men of wood. Before they could recover from their amazement, Regor signaled Kon. Instantly the three spidermen sprang upon the Indians and throttled them. Regor’s strong fingers went round the officer’s throat. And all so quickly that Graydon himself had had no time to move.

Regor loosened his grip, and raised his bar. Kon scuttled over, stood behind the YuAtlanchan, pinioned his arms.

“So right was wrong!” muttered Regor. “Speak softly, Ranena. Answer briefly. What place is this?”

Ranena glanced at the bodies of his guards at the feet of the two Weavers, and little beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.

“No need to treat me so, Regor,” he said thickly. “I have never been your enemy.”

“No?” asked Regor suavely, “and yet I thought I saw you in the lair last night. Perhaps I was mistaken. However —answer quickly, Ranena!”

“It guards a way to the amphitheater,” the answer came

sullenly. As though to confirm him, there came a rumbling as of far-away thunder, and the sound of cheering. “They race the Xinli,” he added.

“And Lantlu, of course, is there?” asked Regor.

A shade of malice crossed Ranena’s fine face.

“And Dorina,” he said.

“What have they done with Huon?”

“Listen, Regor,” Ranena’s clear eyes darkened craftily, “if I tell you where Huon is and how to reach him, will you promise not to kill me, but truss me up and gag me before you go to him?”

“What have they done with Huon?” repeated Regor.

He clicked to the Spiderman. One of Kon’s hands covered Ranena’s mouth, with the others he began slowly to lift his arms behind him and twist them. Ranena writhed, his face distorted with agony. He nodded.

Kon withdrew his hand, lowered his arms. Little drops of blood ran down the cheek where the needled fingers had pierced it.

“After the next race—he fights the Xinli,” he groaned*

“So!” said Regor quietly. “So! And now do I see that though right was wrong, wrong has become right!”

He