“I know I will win,” said the Lord of Evil, softly. “You know it, too, don’t you, Graydon!”
“No!” said Graydon, and slipped away from that spell of helpless acquiescence which had stolen over him. He drew a deep breath, all recklessness and sense of the unreal gone, bitter anger and a fierce determination taking their place. “No, I don’t know it, Nimir. And don’t cast any more of that sorcery of yours around me—or I may decide to end things right here and now. Let it stand! I agree! Now let us go!”
“Good!” the Lord of Evil laughed, the sweetness that had laden the whisperings of the Shadow strong in that laughter, “now would you make me even more determined to win, Graydon, did I not know that my victory is certain. There is only one more detail. I will not demand that you remain within the Temple during my little debate with the Snakewoman. Indeed—I do not think you would be able to,” he looked at Graydon with a sparkle of amusement in the pale eyes—“But now that I have such a personal interest in you, it is surely within my rights to insist that every precaution be taken to keep—well, to employ a polite phrase—to keep my stake in the contract in usable condition! Therefore, you shall wear—this—” He took from his girdle a broad collar of faintly gleaming red metal, stepped forward with it in his hand. “What is it?” asked Graydon, suspiciously. “Something that will keep certain powerful servants of mine from killing you,” answered the Lord of Evil, “if and when you are shaken out of the Temple. I don’t mind your telling Adana that. She will be fully aware of what I mean when she sees it. Really, it gives you quite an advantage. I waive that, however—for broader considerations. Come,” into his voice crept implacable command—“it is necessary. It gives me no power over you, if that is what you fear. But until you wear it—the girl cannot go.”
Graydon bent his head, felt the touch of the misshapen fingers on his throat, heard the click as they fastened the collar around his neck—heard Suarra sobbing.
“And now,” said the Lord of Evil, “for your escort back to Adana—so anxiously trying to see what is happening to you! So furious because she cannot! Follow me.”
He shambled to the doorway. Hand in hand, they followed him, through the broken ring of the silent, staring nobles, past the hideous body of the lizard-man and the Emers whom the winged serpents had slain. As Graydon passed, he heard the pinions of those unseen guardians above their heads. He stifled an impulse to send them darting at Lantlu.
The Lord of Evil leading, they passed out of that chamber into a great hall filled with the Emer soldiers and with nobles who shrank back as Nimir squattered by—shrank back and let them pass and kept lips closed and faces expressionless. Only, he noted, they looked furtively at the dully gleaming collar that fettered his throat—and over some of their faces quick pallor spread.
They came at last to the entrance to the palace. The Lord of Evil beckoned a captain, and gave swift orders. A double litter was brought, borne by eight strong green-kilted bearers. Into it, courteously, Nimir waved them.
The bearers raised the litter, a score of the soldiers led by another Indian officer, surrounded it. The doors swung open, and through them marched their escort.
“Until we meet again,” smiled the Lord of Evil.
“May it be never!” answered Graydon, whole-heartedly.
“I look forward to many pleasant centuries together!” said the Lord of Evil—and laughed.
That laughter, still ringing in his ears, they entered the shadows of the trees. In the hands of the guards shone out flambeaux of clear white light. And suddenly Suarra thrust arms round his neck, drew his head down upon her soft breast.
“Graydon—Graydon, beloved—I am afraid! I am greatly afraid! It was too great a price, beloved! Better, far better, had I slain myself before you came! But I did not know…I hoped…until it was too late, and they fettered me…and then I could not kill myself…”
Well—so was he afraid! Bitterly afraid! He comforted her as best he could.
They came at last to the Temple. They halted while the officer and a squad of his men mounted the broad steps, signaling with their flambeaux as they went. Graydon heard a challenge, the rumbling of Regor’s voice. Then down the great stairway leaped the giant, to the side of their litter; lifted them out; embraced them as though they had been children returned from the dead.
The green-kilted guard saluted, stood at attention until they had come to the massive doors. Graydon heard the pinions of the winged serpents, darting upward to where the Mother waited; turning, saw the escort beginning their return.
He felt an immense weariness; he swayed, was caught by Regor’s strong arm, carried forward. The doors of the Temple clanged shut behind him.
CHAPTER XXV
The Collar of Nimir
Suarra’s soft hands caressed him, she was murmuring broken words of pity, of endearment. He mastered his weakness, and broke away from Regor. The immense vestibule was filled with Indian soldiers in the Mother’s blue, and some score of the nobles. Now these latter strode toward them, eagerly, their customary poise banished by devouring curiosity. But Regor waved them aside.
“To the Mother—and at once. Suarra, you are not harmed?”
She shook her head, and he hurried them onward. His eyes fell upon the metal collar around Graydon’s neck, and he paused, staring at it perplexedly.
“The badge of Nimir!” laughed Graydon, mirthlessly. The giant reached out his hand, as though to tear it from him.
“No,” Graydon pushed him away, “it’s not so easy as all that, Regor.”
The giant glared at the collar, uneasily, his brows knitted.
“It is a matter for the Mother,” said Suarra. “Quickly, for the night wanes.”
She took Graydon’s hand, sped on with him, leaving Regor to follow. On they went through wide corridors filled with the Emers and little knots of the Old Race, stopping not even for greeting, until they came to that curving buttress up through which ran the shaft to the Serpent-woman’s sanctuary. They stepped from it out onto the roof of the Temple.
“Mother!” cried Suarra.
There was a gleam of rosy-pearl, flashing to her, the coils of Adana undulating over the platform. Her body arose be side the girl, her childish arms went round her neck, drawing her head down to her little tilted breasts. For the first time, Graydon heard something suspiciously like a human sob in the Serpent-woman’s voice.
“My daughter! Suarra! My daughter!”
And Suarra clung to her, weeping, while the Mother’s heart-shaped mouth caressed her misty hair.
The Mother raised her head, thrust out a hand to Graydon. Her gaze fell upon the collar of the Lord of Evil. She grew rigid, her eyes dilated, her neck thrust forward, her pointed red tongue flicked out—once, twice—like a snake’s.
She dipped from Suarra, reached out and touched Graydon upon the heart, the forehead; then cupped his face in her tiny hands and stared deep into his eyes. And gradually into the purple pools came pity, regret—and a certain apprehension, or so it seemed to him.
“So!” she whispered, and dropped her hands. “So—that is what he plans!” Her gaze drew inward, it was as though she were talking to herself, unseeing, unaware of them—“But he will be loath to use that weapon—until the last. I can meet it, yes. But I, too, am loath to use that power—as reluctant as he. By my ancestors—had I but one of my own people to stand beside me! Yes, had I but another of the Lords to stand with Tyddo—I would not fear. Well—there is no choice. And if between us Nimir and I unloose that which we cannot again leash, will not destruction spread like a swift pestilence over all this spinning globe…make of earth a desert indeed…bare of life? Ah—but then Nimir himself cannot escape destruction…”
Her gaze came back to Graydon.
“There, child,” she said, softly. “Don’t despair. So you pitied Nimir, did you? And made his bargain! While he dropped his poison into your mind so cunningly—oh, so cunningly! Well, it was written, I suppose—and had to be. Nor was it
your fault. It was I who baited that trap, though unknowingly, when I gave way to my woman’s vanity and altered his clothing to my whim there at the Ladnophaxi. What has happened is but the pattern I made. You could have done nothing else—and it might be worse. We will let the dice lie as they have fallen. Oh, do not stare at me. It is no sorcery. I have read your thought, that is all. But I would hear the tale in words. Suarra—”
She turned to the girl. She saw, apparently for the first time, the bridal robe of green, the painted cheeks and lips. And at the sight, all her wrath against Nimir, all her hours of anxiety for Suarra, came to a focus and exploded. She threw out her hands, ripped the robe from the girl, leaving her revealed in all her white loveliness.
“Go over there and wash your face!” hissed the Snake Mother, as angrily as any old-fashioned woman might to a daughter she had caught surreptitiously dipping into the rouge pot.
The girl gasped, then fled, an ivory shadow, into the dimness around Adana’s cushioned nest. And Graydon, despite all his weariness and trouble, chuckled; it was one of the flashes of purely human character that took away from this entirely unhuman being any mind-clogging awe or sense of terrifying strangeness; that made him doubt the doubts which, significantly enough, never crossed his mind when he was with her.
The Mother looked at him angrily, raised her hand as though half inclined to slap him; then glided to Suarra. He heard her talking gently, even remorsefully, to the girl. Then she called him.
A globe of dim luminescence pulsed out beside her. By its light he saw that Suarra had thrown round herself a covering cloak, and that she had cleansed her face of paint. She glanced at him, and dropped her head. The Serpent-woman laughed, brought their faces together, cheek by cheek.
“Don’t mind, child,” she said. “He knows women have bodies, I’m sure. Or should, by this time. And Regor is old enough to be your great-grandfather, at least. Come over, Regor. Now tell us, daughter, just what happened. Here, drink this.”
She reached down into her coffer, took from it a small phial, filled a crystal goblet with water, and into it a drop from the phial. Suarra sipped, and handed it to Graydon. He drank, a tingling went through him, all weariness vanished; tenseness relaxed, his mind cleared, and he sank back beside Regor, listening to Suarra.
There was little of what she told, save how she had been trapped, that he did not know. An Emer officer had come to her after she had left the Mother and was watching the arrival of Huon’s refugees from the lair. He bore a message from the Lord Graydon, he told her, who was on the lower terrace of the Temple. The Lord Graydon had discovered something there he wanted her to see before they went to the Mother with news of it. The Lord Graydon had commanded the speaker to find her and guide her to where he waited.
The very boldness and simplicity of the ruse had snared her. She knew that the Temple terraces were guarded, and it never occurred to her to doubt the genuineness of the summons. She had gone along the lower terrace, passing several squads of guards and answering their challenges. She had just gone by one of these squads when a cloak was thrown over her head, and she was lifted up and borne away.
“They were Lantlu’s men,” said Regor. “They had killed our guards, and taken their places. They were clad in the Mother’s colors. We found the bodies of our men where they had been hurled over the terrace.”
When they had gotten into the shelter of the trees, Suarra continued, her wrists and ankles had been bound and she had been placed in a litter. She had been taken straight to Lantlu’s palace. There, Indian women had rouged and wreathed her and before she could suspect what was intended, had stripped her, clothed her in the green robe and snapped the golden manacles. Then she had been led to the room where Graydon had found her—to learn from Lantlu’s jeering lips what he had in store for her.
The Serpent-woman listened, head swaying back and forth menacingly, eyes glittering; she asked no questions, did not Interrupt. “Regor,” she said quietly, when Suarra was done, “go you now, and make sure there has been no chink left through which any other rat of Nimir can creep. Take what sleep you can—for at dawn all within the Temple must be awake and at their posts. By another dawn, either I or Nimir will have conquered. Suarra, Graydon—you two sleep here beside me for what remains of this night.”
And when Regor had gone, she took a hand of his in both of hers.
“Child,” she said, softly, “do not fear. You shall sleep deep, and without dream or fear of Nimir. There are still four hours before dawn. I will awaken you—and then we shall talk of what is to be done. About this, I mean—” she touched the sullenly glowing collar—“and other things. Now drink this—you, too, Suarra.”
She dipped again into her coffer, drew forth another phial, dropped one colorless globule into the goblet They drank of it. Suarra yawned, sank down upon the cushions, smiled at him sleepily; her eyes closed. He felt a delicious lethargy stealing over him, let his head fall upon his cushions. He looked again at the Serpent-woman. She had drawn forth her sistrum, was holding it on high. From it streamed a slender pencil of milky light. She pointed it to the zenith, began to trace within its depths an ever-widening spiral.
She was signaling. Signaling, he wondered drowsily, to whom—to what? He fell asleep.
The Mother’s touch awakened him; he looked up into her face bending over him. Her purple eyes were dilated, phosphorescent, enormous in the heart of her childish face. He sprang to his feet. At the edge of the platform was the Lord of Folly, peering over toward the lake; the scarlet figure of Kon, the spider-man, and the black bulk of Regor beside him. Suarra was still asleep, her cheek nestled in the crook of one white arm stretched from under a heap of silken coverings.
Graydon shivered, feeling suddenly chill. For the first time since he had entered the Hidden Land, the sky was obscured. The clouds hung low, not more than three hundred feet above the Temple. They were less like clouds than a solid steel-gray ceiling, motionless.
Above him, and all around him, was a continuous soughing and whispering like the circling flight of countless and immense birds. Rhythmically they pulsed, this beating of unseen pinions—
The winged serpents! The Messengers of the Snake Mother! It was they she had been summoning from beyond the barrier with her slender beam of light!
She took his hand, glided with him over to the platform’s edge, gave him a lens similar to that he had used in Huon’s lair, pointed a finger to the nearer shore of the lake. He looked through it.
The shore was encrusted with the lizard-men! They surged there by the hundreds, by the thousands, it seemed to him; their ranks moving slowly forward as others joined them, wading up from the waters. And now he saw that the Urd horde was streaming across the lake from the caverns, that the surface was streaked from side to side with the swimming horde. And that along the front of those who had landed rode a half dozen of Lantlu’s nobles upon the black dinosaurs, whipping them into order with huge lashes shaped like sjamboks. One of them leaned over the side of his monstrous steed. Graydon caught the dull glimmer of red metal around his throat, looked more closely. It was a collar such as that which the Lord of Evil had snapped around his own neck.
Another of the dinosaur riders bore this badge of Nimir—and another. He dropped the lens, turned to the Serpent-woman. She nodded, answering his unspoken question.
“Yes,” she said, “Nimir has linked you to him. Part of what he told you was truth, Graydon—but part of it was lies. When he said that it would protect you, he spoke truth. But when he said it gave him no power over you—there he lied, indeed.”
She was silent, while he stared at her, miserably. “And that is why you may not stay here with me to help us as I had hoped. For Nimir is cunning and desperate—and I hope will soon be much more desperate—and it might be that in one unguarded moment of yours he could wreck through you all that I plan.”
“Not through me!” groaned Graydon. “No, no!”
“We cannot afford to run the risk,” answere
d the Mother. “Now I could rid you of his mark—but something whispers to me to let it be. That in doing this to you, Nimir has made a mistake. That if he had been wise he would have let the cards fall as I had disposed them for him. That he should have bent his mind solely upon this issue, but that his eagerness to possess you may react upon him, even as my vanity has reacted upon me. How this advantage may come, I do not know—but it is there—”
“The last Urd has reached the shore, Adana,” muttered Regor. “We should go.”
“Go you then with Regor and Huon,” said the Mother. “They have use for you. And of this be sure—Nimir shall not have you. This I have promised you. And I, Adana, tell you that thus it shall be.”
And suddenly she leaned forward and set her lips to his forehead.
“Awaken Suarra,” she said. “Bid her good-by—then go swiftly. If we meet never again—I loved you, child.”
Again she kissed him, then pushed him away. He bent over the sleeping girl. She opened drowsy eyes, looked up at him, dropped an arm around his neck and drew his lips down to hers.
“Oh, but I have slept,” she murmured, but half-awake. “And is it already dawn?”
“It is well beyond dawn, heart of mine,” he told her. “And I must go with Regor and Huon down into the Temple—”
“Into the Temple!” she sat up, all awake. “But I thought you were to be here. With me. Mother—”
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 134
