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

“They’ve taken her! Lantlu has her!”

Graydon stopped short, the blood draining from his heart.

“Taken her? But she was with the Mother! How could they take her?”

“It happened in the confusion when the Ladnophaxi ended.” Regor hurried him onward. “Huon and I had gotten back an hour before that. The Indians were filtering in. There was much to do. And fivescore and more of the Old Race upon whom we had not counted had come, swearing allegiance to the Mother, demanding entrance by their ancient right. Some say Suarra went seeking you. And, not finding you, sought Kon. And that while she was seeking, a message came to her—from you!”

Graydon halted abruptly.

“From me! Good God—no!” he cried. “How could I have sent her a message? I was at that cursed Feast—forced Kon to take me. I’d only gotten back when you appeared—”

“Ah, yes, lad,” Regor shrugged his broad shoulders, helplessly. “But it is now the hour after midnight. The Feast

ended an hour before midnight. What of the two hours between?”

Now Graydon felt his head whirl. Could it be that he had

crouched behind the parapet for two whole hours? Impossible! But even so—

He thrust out his hand, struck the giant such a blow on his breast that he reeled back.

“Damn you, Regor!” he cried, furiously. “Do you hint I had anything to do with it—”

“Don’t be foolish, lad,” Regor showed no resentment. “Of course I know you sent no message. But this much is certain —had you been here, Suarra would have fallen into no such trap. And it seems just as certain that those who decoyed her must have known you were not here. How did they know it? Why did they not try to intercept you on your return? Maybe the Mother knows all that by now … she was

raging … the one she loved best snatched from under her eyes….”

He stopped where the corridor ended in a rounded buttress of wall. He touched it, and a door slid open, revealing a small circular vault or well, its sides sheathed with polished amber metal. Regor stepped into it, drawing Graydon beside him. As the door closed, he had the sensation of swift upward flight. The floor came to rest. He stood upon the roof of the Temple, under the stars; he caught the shimmer

of the Serpentwoman’s coils, heard her voice, vibrant with anxiety but without reproach or anger.

. “Come to me, Graydon. Go you back, Regor, and get for him the clothing of one of those who abandoned Lantlu. A green cloak with it—and an emerald fillet. Do not tarry!”

“You will not be hard on the lad, Mother?” muttered Regor.

“Nonsense! What blame may be, is mine! On with you, and return quickly,” she answered; and when he had gone she beckoned Graydon to her side, cupped his face with her little hands, and kissed him.

“If I had it in my heart to scold you, child, I could not— seeing into your heart with its load of self-reproach and misery. The fault is mine! Had I not yielded to impulse, had let Nimir take the shape woven upon the web instead of malforming it, he would not have struck back at me through Suarra. I wanted to shake his will, weaken him at the outset —oh, why justify myself? It was my woman’s vanity—I wanted to show him my power. I invited reprisal in kind— and it was not long coming. The fault is mine—and so enough of that.”

A thought which had been knocking at Graydon’s mind, a thought so terrible that he had fought its shaping, found utterance.

“Mother,” he said, “you know that, disobeying you, I slipped away to the Feast. When the change came upon Nimir, and after the evil Maker of Dreams had fallen to her death, his gaze began searching the tiers as though for some one. And I think he suspected I was there. I set my thought on you, hiding from him in you. But Regor tells me almost two hours passed while time went by me, unknown. During that time, even though Kon was with me and knows I did not move, could Nimir have stolen my thought, used my mind by some infernal art, to lure Suarra from the Temple? A week ago, Mother, I would have held such a thought sheer madness. But now—after what I beheld at the Feast—it no longer seems madness.”

“No,” she shook her head, but her eyes narrowed and she studied him. “No, I do not believe he knew you were there.

I did not—but then it never occurred to me to look for you—”

“He did know I was there!” Conviction came to Graydon, and with it full vision of his dreadful thought. “Again he snared me, and he left me there, like a bird on a limed twig, until he had carried out his purpose. .He did not molest me on my way back. And that was after Suarra had been taken. This is what I believe is in Nimir’s mind, Mother—that he will exchange Suarra for—me. He wanted my body. He knows I would not surrender to him to save myself from torment or death. But to save Suarra—ah, he believes I would. So he binds me helpless, takes her and will offer to return her—for what he wants from me.”

“And if he makes that offer—will you accept?” the Serpentwoman leaned forward, purple eyes deep in his.

“Yes,” he answered, and although the old horror of the Shadow rocked him, he knew that he spoke truth.

“But why did he let you return?” she asked. “Why, if you are right, did he not take you after Suarra had been trapped and while you were on your way back to the Temple?”

“That answer is easy,” Graydon smiled wryly. “He knew that I would fight, feared that this body he covets might be injured, marred, perhaps, even be destroyed. I heard Nimir express himself very clearly on that point. Why should he run that risk—if he could make me come to him of my own volition, entirely intact?”

One of the Mother’s childish arms went round his neck, drew his head to her shoulder.

“How far you have marched, you children of the gray apemen!” she whispered. “And I can offer you little comfort, Graydon, if the truth be that. But this is also true—Nimir will think long before he shakes off the body he now has. The mechanism which sent the feeding ray is destroyed. I sent back on the ray the force which annihilated it. So not again may Nimir weave clothing for himself in that manner, even though he may be able to shed what he wears. It may be that he can become Shadow once more, an intelligence disembodied—and enter you. If you throw open your gates to him. But would he dare take the chance at this moment?

Not now, when I am ready to strike. If he could but be sure he could enter you—ah, yes. But he cannot be sure. If such bargain is in his mind, he would hold you beside him until the issue between us is settled. And then, if he won, put on your strong clean body—if he could.”

“There’s a large flaw in his reasoning, if that’s his idea,” said Graydon, grimly. “If he destroys you, Mother, it is not likely Suarra would survive. And then I would very speedily put this body of mine in such condition he could not occupy it—as once before, when captive to him, I had planned to do.”

“But I don’t want to be destroyed, nor Suarra, nor you, child,” replied the Mother, practically. “And I don’t intend we shall be. Nevertheless, whether you are right or wrong as to Nimir’s motives, it amounts to the same thing. You are the only one who can save Suarra—if she can be saved. It may be that I play directly into Nimir’s hands by what I have decided. I cannot see, though, how we are any worse off by taking the aggressive. If you fail, you only anticipate by a few hours what you fear—”

She rose high upon her coils, all bird-trills gone from the lisping voice.

“Alone, as soon as may be, you must go to the house of Lantlu, face that spawn of evil and his Dark Master, take Suarra from them. If you fail, then this I promise you—you shall not become the habitation of Nimir. For I, Adana, will blast YuAtlanchi and every living thing within it from earth’s face—though in doing this I, too, must pass with them!”

She sank down, red tongue flickering.

“You would have it so, Graydon?”

“I would, Mother,” he answered, steadily, “if in that annihilation Nimir is surely included.”

“Ease your mind of any doubt on that score,” she answered, dryly.

“Then the sooner I go the better,” he said. “God—what’s keeping Regor!”

“He comes,” she answered. “Look around you, Graydon.”

For the first time, he took conscious note of the place. He Was upon a circular platform raised high upon the roof of

the Temple. Above him were the stars and in the west the sinking moon. At the right and far below was the city, its agitated lights like a panic among fireflies. Its clamor came faintly to him. Across the lake, the caverns of the colossi were black mouths in the moon-glow on the cliffs. At his left was the shadowy plain.

And now he saw that this platform was a circle some two hundred feet wide, rimmed with a high curb of the amber metal. At its edge, facing the caverns, was one of the great crystal disks; a second disk looked down upon the city. The metal bases in which they rested were open; within them were oblong coffers of crystal filled with the quicksilver of the Mother’s sistrum. From these coffers protruded rods of crystal filled with the purple flame of the destroying pillar in the Cavern of the Lost Wisdom.

Close by where the Serpentwoman lay was a curious contrivance resembling somewhat the bowl from which the pillar of violet light had ascended, but much smaller, and tipped as though it were a searchlight which could be swung upward or around in any direction. This, too, bristled with the crystal rods. There were other things whose uses he could not guess, the contents he supposed of those mysterious chests they had carried to her. And set here and there within the circle of the platform were the seven huge silver globes.

“Adana in her arsenal,” she smiled for the first time. “And if you only knew, my Graydon, what weapons these are! I wish that we could have destroyed all in the Cavern before Nimir came to it. Yes, and especially that feeding ray by which in ancient times my ancestors built up many strange beings for use—and for amusement—but always destroyed when their uses were done. Aye, much do I wish it now— who a little time ago hoped as earnestly that Nimir had found it. Ah, well—go to the curb and pass your hand over it.”

Wonderingly, he obeyed, stretched out his hand over the amber curb—felt nothing but air.

“And now—” she leaned over, touched a rod in the bowl beside her. From the curb flashed a ring of atomically tiny sparks of violet light. It rushed up, a hundred feet into the air, contracted there into a globe of violet fire, and vanished.

“Now stretch your hand—” she said. He reached out.

His fingers touched substance. He pressed his palm against it; it seemed slightly warm, glasslike and subtly conveyed a sense of impenetrability. The noise of the city was stilled— there was absolute silence about him. He pressed against the obstacle, beat his closed, fist on it—he could see nothing, yet there was