The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  She pressed her palm against his forehead, held it there. He had the sensation of whirling across the lake and through the cliffs, the same vertiginous feeling he had experienced when he had thought he stood, bodiless, within the Temple. And now he seemed to halt beside the hull of the ship in the dim cavern. He looked over its shrouded, enigmatic shapes. And as swiftly he was back in Adana’s chamber.

  “You see!” she said, “nothing of you went forth. Your sight was lengthened—that was all.”

  She picked up a silver mirror, gazed at herself complacently.

  “That is fine, daughter,” she said. “Now coif it for me.” She preened herself before the mirror, set it down. “Graydon, you have aroused old thoughts. Often I have asked, ‘What is it that is I, Adana’—and never found the answer. None of my ancestors has ever returned to tell me. Nor any of the Old Race. Now is it not strange, if there be another life beyond this one, that not love nor sorrow, wit nor strength nor compassion has ever bridged the gap between them? Think of the countless millions who have died since man became man, among them seekers of far horizons who had challenged unknown perils to bring back tidings of distant shores, great adventurers, ingenious in artifice; and men of wisdom who had sought truth not selfishly but to spread it among their kind; men and women who had loved so greatly that surely it seems they could break through any barrier, return and say—‘Behold, I am! Now grieve no more!’ Fervent priests whose fires of faith had shone like beacons to their flocks—have they come back to say—‘See! It was truth I told you! Doubt no more!’ Compassionate men, lighteners of burdens, prelates of pity—why have they not reappeared crying, ‘There is no death!’ There has come no word from them. Why are they silent?

  “Yet that proves nothing. Would that it did—for then we would be rid of sometimes troublesome thoughts. But it does not, for look you, Graydon, we march beside our sun among an army of other stars, some it must be with their own circling worlds. Beyond this universe are other armies of suns, marching like ours through space. Earth cannot be the only place in all these universes upon which is life. And if time be—then it must stretch backward as well as forward into infinitude. Well, in all illimitable time, no ship from any other world has cast anchor upon ours, no argosy has sailed between the stars bearing tidings that life is elsewhere.

  “Have we any more evidence that life exists among these visible universes than that it persists in some mysterious, invisible land whose only gateway is death? But your men of wisdom who deny the one because none has returned from it, will not deny the other though none has come to us from the star strands. They will say that they do not know—well, neither do they know the other!

  “And yet—if there be what you name the soul, whence does it come, and when, how planted in these bodies of ours? Did the ape-like creatures from which you grew have them? Did the first of your ancestors who crawled on four pads out of the waters have them? When did the soul first appear? Is it man’s alone? Is it in the egg of the woman? Or in the seed of the man? Or incomplete in both? If not, when does it enter its shell within the mother’s womb? Is it summoned by the new-born child’s first cry? From whence?”

  “Time streams like a mighty river, placid, unhurried,” said the Lord of Fools. “Across it is a rift where bubbles rise. It is life. Some bubbles float a little longer than the others. Some are large and some small. The bubbles rise and burst, rise and burst. Bursting, do they release some immortal essence? Who knows—who knows?”

  The Serpent-woman looked at herself again in the silver mirror.

  “I do not, for one,” she said, practically. “Suarra, child, you’ve done my hair splendidly. And enough of speculation. I am a practical person. What we are chiefly concerned about, Tyddo, is to keep Nimir and Lantlu from bursting those bubbles which are ourselves.

  “There is one thing I fear—that Nimir will fasten his mind upon those things of power which are within that cavern of the ship; find some way of getting them. Therefore, Graydon and Suarra, you shall go there tonight, taking with you fifty of the Emer to carry back to me what I want from it. After that, there is another thing you must do there, and then return speedily. Graydon, arise from that coffer.”

  He obeyed. She opened the coffer and drew out a thick, yard-long crystal bar, apparently hollow, its core filled with a slender pillar of pulsing violet fire.

  “This, Graydon, I will give you when you start,” she said. “Carry it carefully, for the lives of all of us may rest upon it. After the Emers are laden and in the passage, you must do with it what I shall shortly show you. Suarra, within the ship is a small chest—I will show you where it lies—you must bring me that. And before you set this bar in place, take whatsoever pleases you from the ancient treasures. But do not loiter—” she frowned at the throbbing flame—“I am sorry. Truly! But now must great loss come, that far greater loss does not follow. Suarra, child—follow my sight!”

  The girl came forward, stood waiting with a tranquility which indicated it was not the first time she had made such journey. The Serpent-woman pressed her palm upon her forehead as she had on Graydon’s. She kept it there for long minutes. She took away her hand; Suarra smiled at her and nodded.

  “You have seen! You know precisely what I want! You will remember!” They were not questions, they were commands.

  “I have seen, I know and I will remember,” answered Suarra.

  “Now, Graydon, you too—so there may be no mistake, and that you work quickly together.”

  She touched his forehead. With the speed of thought he was once more within the cavern. One by one those things she wanted flashed out of the vagueness—he knew precisely where each was, how to go to it. And unforgettably. Now he was in the ship, within a richly furnished cabin, and saw there the little chest Suarra was to take. And now he was beside a curious contrivance built of crystal and silver metal, the bulk of it shaped like an immense thick-bottomed bowl around whose rim were globes like that of the sistrum, ten times larger, and with none of its quicksilver quivering; quiescent. Within the crystal which formed the bulk of the bowl was a pool of the violet flame, quiescent too, not pulsing like that within the rod. Looking more closely, he saw that the top of the bowl was covered with some transparent substance, clear as air, and that the pool was prisoned within it. Set at the exact center, and vanishing in the flame, was a hollow cylinder of metal. Before him there appeared the misty shape of the rod. He saw it thrust sharply into the cylinder. He heard the voice of the Serpent-woman, whispering—“This must you do.”

  He thought that even at the spectral touch, the globes began to quiver, the violet flame to pulse. The rod vanished.

  He began the whirling flight back toward the Temple—was halted in mid-flight! He felt the horror he had known when bound to the bench before the jet throne!

  Red light beat upon him, rusted black atoms drifted round him—he was in the cavern of the Shadow, and on its throne, featureless face intent upon him, sat the Shadow!

  The dreadful gaze sifted him. He felt the grip relax; heard a whispering laugh—

  He was back in the room of the Snake Mother, trembling, breathing like a man spent from running. Suarra was beside him, his hands clutched in hers, staring at him with frightened eyes. The Serpent-woman was erect, upon her face the first amazement he had ever seen. The Lord of Folly was on his feet, red staff stretched out to him.

  “God!” sobbed Graydon, and caught at Suarra for support. “The Shadow! It caught me!”

  And suddenly he realized what had happened—that in the brief instant the Shadow had gripped him, it had read his mind like an open page, knew exactly what it was that he had looked upon in the Cavern of the Lost Wisdom, knew precisely what the Mother wanted, knew what she planned to do there—and was now making swift preparation to checkmate her! He told the Serpent-woman this.

  She listened to him, eyes glittering, head flattening like a snake’s; she hissed!

  “If Nimir read his mind, as he thinks, then he must also have
read that it was to-night he was to go,” said the Lord of Folly, quietly. “Therefore, they must go now, Adana.”

  “You are right, Tyddo. Nimir cannot enter—at least not as he is. What he will do, I do not know. But he has some plan—he laughed, you say, Graydon? Well, whatever it is, it will take him time to put it into action. He must summon others to help him. We have good chance to outrace him. Suarra, Graydon—you go at once. You with them, Tyddo.”

  The Lord of Folly nodded, eyes sparkling.

  “I would like to test Nimir’s strength once again, Adana,” he said.

  “And Kon—Kon must go with you. Suarra, child—summon Regor. Let him pick the soldiers.”

  And when Suarra had gone for Regor, the Snake Mother handed the crystal bar to the Lord of Folly.

  “Nimir is stronger than I had believed,” she said, gravely. “That whispering Shadow left its mark upon you, Graydon. You are too sensitive to it to risk the carrying of this key. Tyddo will use it. And take my bracelet from beneath your sleeve. Wear it openly, and should you feel the Shadow reach out to you—look quickly into the purple stones, and think of me. Give it to me—”

  She took the bracelet from him, breathed upon its gems, pressed them to her forehead, and returned it to him.

  In half an hour they were off. Regor had begged to go with them, argued and blustered and almost wept; but the Serpent-woman had forbade him. The Lord of Folly leading and bearing both crystal staff and his red rod, Suarra and Kon on each side of Graydon, half a hundred picked Emers of the Temple guard behind him, they were on their way to the Cavern of the Lost Wisdom.

  CHAPTER XXI

  The Cavern of the Lost Wisdom

  They went by another passage than that by which they had entered the Temple, high-roofed and wider. The Lord of Folly, for once, did not flitter. He walked purposefully, as though eager for some rendezvous. They entered the Cavern of the Lost Wisdom by a door which opened to the touch of Tyddo’s red rod. The new corridor had cut off all that empty space they had traversed before, and the sealed treasures of the Serpent-people and most ancient Yu-Atlanchi lay before them.

  There was no sign of the Dark Master, nor of any of his followers, man nor lizard-people. The cavern seemed untouched, crystal shimmering palely, metals gleaming and jewels glinting fugitively, the puzzling shapes designed for uses unguessable, shadowy in the dim light.

  They first took two of the crystal disks. At close range, Graydon saw details not perceptible in the painting of the primeval swamp. They were twenty feet high, lens-shaped, a yard in thickness at their centers. They were hollow. Within the center was a foot-wide disk milky as curdled moonlight. From its edges ran countless filaments, each fine as a hair on the Serpent-woman’s head, and as silvery. They were crossed by other filaments, making them resemble immense, finely spun cobwebs. Spaced regularly around the rim of the larger disk were a dozen little lenses of the moonray material. Where the radiating strands passed from the last encircling one, they were gathered into these lenses, like minute reins. The disks rested upon bases of gray metal fitted with runners, like a sled. Their bottom edges dropped into deep grooves. Whatever held them upright was hidden in their bases.

  The Indians produced long thongs, tied them to the runners, the Lord of Folly directing; then still under his eye they drew them away and into the passage. When they were safely there, he drew what seemed to Graydon a breath of relief, clicked to Kon, and the spider-man followed on the trail of the Emers.

  “Best to make sure of those,” said the Lord of Folly. “They are our strongest weapons. I bade Kon see they are taken straight to Adana. Now do you two gather those other things she wants. I go to mount guard.”

  He walked away into the obscurity of the cavern.

  They went quickly about their business, dividing the remaining Indians between them. Mainly the objects were coffers, some so small that one man could carry them, others under whose weight four strained. There were seven of the symboled silver globes in the Serpent-woman’s inventory, and he was amazed to find them light as bubbles, rolling over the floor before the push of a hand. They came at last to the end, and with the last of their men, remained only to get the chest from the ship.

  The ship rested upon a metal cradle. A ladder dropped from its side, and as Graydon clambered up it Suarra at his heels, he wondered how the ancient people had managed to get this Ark of theirs over land and through the barrier of mountains into this place; remembered that Suarra had told him the mountains had not then arisen, and that in those fargone days the ocean had been close.

  Still—to carry this ship, and it was all of three hundred feet long, into the cavern implied engines of amazing power. And how had it been preserved during the ages preceding the upthrust of the barrier? It was hard wood, almost metallic; schooner rigged, its masts thick and squat, and, curiously enough, yardless. He caught at its stern a gleam of blue, saw there one of the great disks, deep cerulean, not transparent like the others. Wondered whether it had furnished the propulsive power for the craft, and if so, then why the masts? Except for disk and squat masts the deck was clear. He remembered now that the ships upon the wall of the Painted Cavern had shown tall masts, he had not seen among them any boat such as this. Well, it might have been among the pictures of the ruined walls. He looked out over the cavern. The Lord of Folly, a patch of red and yellow, was beside that strange contrivance in whose bowl lay the pool of violet flame. He stood, motionless, listening, the crystal rod poised over the hollow cylinder.

  “Graydon!” called Suarra, beckoning from an open hatchway. “Make haste!”

  A cleated ramp dropped down into dark depths, and Suarra was tripping down it with the sure feet of a fawn; he followed her. From a light-cone in her hand spurted one of the luminous clouds. Under his feet was a silken carpet, deep and lush as a June meadow; in front of him a row of low oval doors, tightly shut. Suarra counted them, sped to one and thrust it open. The sparkling light streamed through after them.

  It was a wide cabin, tapestry-hung, and clearly a woman’s. What princess of most ancient Yu-Atlanchi, flying uncounted centuries ago through racked seas from the ice flood, had preened herself before that silver mirror? He glimpsed a nest of silken cushions, and knew. Suarra was beside it, lifting the little chest. He saw another coffer nearby, and opened it. Within was a long strand of gems blue as deepest sapphire, unknown radiant jewels gleaming with their own imprisoned light. He drew it out, wound it within Suarra’s midnight hair; it glittered there like captured stars. There was a book! A book whose pages of metal, thin and pliable as papyrus, were like those of some ancient missal, rich in pictures and margined with unknown symbols, letterings of the Serpent-people. He thrust it into his tunic, drew his girdle tighter to hold it.

  The purple gems of the bracelet caught his gaze. They were shining—warning him! Suarra, admiring herself in the silver mirror, saw them.

  “Quick!” she cried. “The deck, Graydon!”

  They ran up the ramp. They were just in time to see the Lord of Folly thrust the crystal rod down into the pool of violet flame.

  Instantly, a pillar of amethyst fire shot up from it, reaching toward the roof of the cavern. It was smoothly round as though carved by sculptor’s chisel, and as it drove up there came from it a sustained sighing like the first breath of a tempest. It lighted the cavern with a radiance stronger than sunlight; it destroyed all perspective, so that every object seemed to press forward, standing out in its own proportions as though rid of spacial trammels, freed from the diminishing effects of distance.

  The Lord of Folly, far away as they knew him to be, seemed in that strange light to be close enough to touch. The quicksilver globes around the rim of the great bowl beside which he stood had begun to quiver like that in the sistrum of the Serpent-woman.

  He looked at them, lifted his rod and pointed to the passage. They could not move, staring at that radiant column, fascinated.

  A pulse shook the pillar; a ring of violet incandescence throb
bed out of it, like the first ring in a still pool into which a stone has been thrown. It passed through the Lord of Folly, obscuring him in a mist of lavender. It swelled outward a score of feet—and vanished. Of all it had touched, except that figure, there remained—nothing! And from the Lord of Folly, the motley had vanished. He stood there, a withered old man, naked!

  Around the pillar for a circle twice twenty feet wide was emptiness!

  The sighing pillar pulsed again. A thicker ring widened slowly from it. Ahead of it hopped the Lord of Folly, shaking his staff at them, gesticulating, calling to them to go. They leaped for the ladder—

  High over the sighing of the pillar sounded a hideous hissing. From the rear of the cavern poured the lizard-men. They vomited forth by hundreds, leaping down upon the withered figure standing there so quietly. And now the second ring of lambent violet touched the Lord of Folly, passed through him as had the other and went widening outward. It reached the first ranks of the onrushing Urd, lapped them up, and died away. And now within a circle twice twenty feet the cavern floor stood empty.

  Into that circle swept more lizard-men, pressed onward by those behind them. The Lord of Folly stepped back, back into a third flaming ripple from the pillar. It widened on, tranquilly. And, like the others, it left behind it—nothing!

  “Suarra! Down the ladder! Get to the passage!” gasped Graydon. “The rings are coming faster. They’ll reach us. Tyddo knows what he’s about. God—if that hell spawn sees you—”