The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  “Dwayanu,” he said, “we would recall to your memory a certain ritual. Listen carefully, watch carefully, repeat faithfully each inflection, each gesture.”

  “To what purpose?” I asked.

  “That you shall learn—” he began, then interrupted himself fiercely. “No! I will tell you now! So that this which is desert shall once more become fertile. That the Uighurs shall recover their greatness. That the ancient sacrilege against Khalk’ru, whose fruit was the desert, shall be expiated!”

  “What have I, a stranger, to do with all this?” I asked.

  “We to whom you have come,” he answered, “have not enough of the ancient blood to bring this about. You are no stranger. You are Dwayanu—the Releaser. You are of the pure blood. Because of that, only you—Dwayanu—can lift the doom.”

  I thought how delighted Barr would be to hear that explanation; how he would crow over Fairchild. I bowed to the old priest, and told him I was ready. He took from my thumb the ring, lifted the chain and its pendent jade from his neck, and told me to strip. While I was doing so, he divested himself of his own robes, and the others followed suit. A priest carried the things away, quickly returning. I looked at the shrunken shapes of the old men standing mother-naked round me, and suddenly lost all desire to laugh. The proceedings were being touched by the sinister. The lesson began.

  It was not a ritual; it was an invocation—rather, it was an evocation of a Being, Power, Force, named Khalk’ru. It was exceedingly curious, and so were the gestures that accompanied it. It was clearly couched in the archaic form of the Uighur. There were many words I did not understand. Obviously, it had been passed down from high priest to high priest from remote antiquity. Even an indifferent churchman would have considered it blasphemous to the point of damnation. I was too much interested to think much of that phase of it. I had the same odd sense of familiarity with it that I had felt at the first naming of Khalk’ru. I felt none of the repulsion, however. I felt strongly in earnest. How much this was due to the force of the united wills of the twelve priests who never took their eyes off me, I do not know.

  I won’t repeat it, except to give the gist of it. Khalk’ru was the Beginning-without-Beginning, as he would be the End-without-End. He was the Lightless Timeless Void. The Destroyer. The Eater-up of Life. The Annihilator. The Dissolver. He was not Death—Death was only a part of him. He was alive, very much so, but his quality of living was the antithesis of Life as we know it. Life was an invader, troubling Khalk’ru’s ageless calm. Gods and man, animals and birds and all creatures, vegetation and water and air and fire, sun and stars and moon—all were his to dissolve into Himself, the Living Nothingness, if he so willed. But let them go on a little longer. Why should Khalk’ru care when in the end there would be only—Khalk’ru! Let him withdraw from the barren places so life could enter and cause them to blossom again; let him touch only those who were the enemies of his worshippers, so that his worshippers would be great and powerful, evidence that Khalk’ru was the All in All. It was only for a breath in the span of his eternity. Let Khalk’ru make himself manifest in the form of his symbol and take what was offered him as evidence he had listened and consented.

  There was more, much more, but that was the gist of it. A dreadful prayer, but I felt no dread—then.

  Three times, and I was letter-perfect. The high priest gave me one more rehearsal and nodded to the priest who had taken away the clothing. He went out and returned with the robes—but not my clothes. Instead, he produced a long white mantle and a pair of sandals. I asked for my own clothes and was told by the old priest that I no longer needed them, that hereafter I would be dressed as befitted me. I agreed that this was desirable, but said I would like to have them so I could look at them once in a while. To this he acquiesced.

  They took me to another room. Faded, ragged tapestries hung on its walls. They were threaded with scenes of the hunt and of war. There were oddly shaped stools and chairs of some metal that might have been copper but also might have been gold, a wide and low divan, in one corner spears, a bow and two swords, a shield and a cap-shaped bronze helmet. Everything, except the rugs spread over the stone floor, had the appearance of great antiquity. Here I was washed and carefully shaved and my long hair trimmed—a ceremonial cleansing accompanied by rites of purification which, at times, were somewhat startling.

  These ended, I was given a cotton undergarment which sheathed me from toes to neck. After this, a pair of long, loose, girdled trousers that seemed spun of threads of gold reduced by some process to the softness of silk. I noticed with amusement that they had been carefully repaired and patched. I wondered how many centuries the man who had first worn them had been dead. There was a long, blouse-like coat of the same material, and my feet were slipped into cothurms, or high buskins, whose elaborate embroidery was a bit ragged.

  The old priest placed the ring on my thumb, and stood back, staring at me raptly. Quite evidently he saw nothing of the ravages of time upon my garments.

  I was to him the splendid figure from the past that he thought me.

  “So did you appear when our race was great,” he said. “And soon, when it has recovered a little of its greatness, we shall bring back those who still dwell in the Shadow-land.”

  “The Shadow-land?” I asked.

  “It is far to the East, over the Great Water,” he said. “But we know they dwell there, those of Khalk’ru who fled at the time of the great sacrilege which changed fecund Uighuriand into desert. They will be of the pure blood like yourself, Dwayanu, and you shall find mates among the women. And in time, we of the thinned blood shall pass away, and Uighuriand again be peopled by its ancient race.”

  He walked abruptly away, the lesser priests following. At the door he turned.

  “Wait here,” he said, “until the word comes from me.”

  CHAPTER IV.

  TENTACLE OF KHALK’RU

  I waited for an hour, examining the curious contents of the room, and amusing myself with shadow-fencing with the two swords. I swung round to find the Uighur captain watching me from the doorway, pale eyes glowing.

  “By Zarda!” he said. “Whatever you have forgotten, it is not your sword play! A warrior you left us, a warrior you have returned!”

  He dropped upon a knee, bent his head: “Pardon, Dwayanu! I have been sent for you. It is time to go.”

  A heady exaltation began to take me. I dropped the swords, and clapped him on the shoulder. He took it like an accolade. We passed through the corridor of the spearsmen and over the threshold of the great doorway. There was a thunderous shout.

  “Dwayanu!”

  And then a blaring of trumpets, a mighty roll of drums and the clashing of cymbals.

  Drawn up in front of the palace was a hollow square of Uighur horsemen, a full five hundred of them, spears glinting, pennons flying from their shafts. Within the square, in ordered ranks, were as many more. But now I saw that these were both men and women, clothed in garments as ancient as those I wore, and shimmering in the strong sunlight like a vast multicoloured rug of metal threads. Banners and bannerets, torn and tattered and bearing strange symbols, fluttered from them. At the far edge of the square I recognized the old priest, his lesser priests flanking him, mounted and clad in the yellow. Above them streamed a yellow banner, and as the wind whipped it straight, black upon it appeared the shape of the Kraken. Beyond the square of horsemen, hundreds of the Uighurs pressed for a glimpse of me. As I stood there, blinking, another shout mingled with the roll of the Uighur drums.

  “The King returns to his people!” Barr had said. Well, it was like that.

  A soft nose nudged me. Beside me was the black stallion. I mounted him. The Uighur captain at my heels, we trotted down the open way between the ordered ranks. I looked at them as I went by. All of them, men and women, had the pale blue-grey eyes; each of them was larger than the run of the race. I thought that these were the nobles, the pick of the ancient families, those in whom the ancient blood was stro
ngest. Their tattered banners bore the markings of their clans. There was exultation in the eyes of the men. Before I had reached the priests. I had read terror in the eyes of many of the women.

  I reached the old priest. The line of horsemen ahead of us parted. We two rode through the gap, side by side. The lesser priests fell in behind us. The nobles followed them. A long thin line upon each side of the cavalcade, the Uighur horsemen trotted—with the Uighur trumpets blaring, the Uighur kettle-drums and long-drums beating, the Uighur cymbals crashing, in wild triumphal rhythms.

  “The King returns—”

  I would to heaven that something had sent me then straight upon the Uighur spears!

  We trotted through the green of the oasis. We crossed a wide bridge which had spanned the little stream when it had been a mighty river. We set our horses’ feet upon the ancient road that led straight to the mountain’s doorway a mile or more away. The heady exultation grew within me. I looked back at my company. And suddenly I remembered the repairs and patches on my breeches and my blouse. And my following was touched with the same shabbiness. It made me feel less a king, but it also made me pitiful. I saw them as men and women driven by hungry ghosts in their thinned blood, ghosts of strong ancestors growing weak as the ancient blood weakened, starving at it weakened, but still strong enough to clamour against extinction, still strong enough to command their brains and wills and drive them toward something the ghosts believed would feed their hunger, make them strong again.

  Yes, I pitied them. It was nonsense to think I could appease the hunger of their ghosts, but there was one thing I could do for them. I could give them a damned good show! I went over in my mind the ritual the old priest had taught me, rehearsed each gesture.

  I looked up to find we were at the threshold of the mountain door. It was wide enough for twenty horsemen to ride through abreast. The squat columns I had seen, under the touch of the old priest’s hands, lay shattered beside it. I felt no repulsion, no revolt against entering, as I then had. I was eager to be in and to be done with it.

  The spearsmen trotted up, and formed a guard beside the opening. I dismounted, and handed one of them the stallion’s rein. The old priest beside me, the lesser ones behind us, we passed over the threshold of the mined doorway, and into the mountain. The passage, or vestibule, was lighted by wall cressets in which burned the clear, white flame. A hundred paces from the entrance, another passage opened, piercing inward at an angle of about fifteen degrees to the wider one. Into this the old priest turned. I glanced back. The nobles had not yet entered; I could see them dismounting at the entrance. We went along this passage in silence for perhaps a thousand feet. It opened into a small square chamber, cut in the red sandstone, at whose side was another door, covered with heavy tapestries. In this chamber was nothing except a number of stone coffers of various sizes ranged along its walls.

  The old priest opened one of these. Within it was a wooden box, grey with age. He lifted its lid, and took from it two yellow garments. He slipped one of these garments over my head. It was like a smock, falling to my knees. I glanced down; woven within it, its tentacles encircling me, was the black octopus.

  The other he drew over his own head. It, too, bore the octopus, but only on the breast, the tentacles did not embrace him. He bent and took from the coffer a golden staff, across the end of which ran bars. From these fell loops of small golden bells.

  From the other coffers the lesser priests had taken drums, queerly shaped oval instruments some three feet long, with sides of sullen red metal. They sat, rolling the drumheads under their thumbs, tightening them here and there while the old priest gently shook his staff of bells, testing their chiming. They were for all the world like an orchestra tuning up. I again felt a desire to laugh;

  I did not then know how the commonplace can intensify the terrible.

  There were sounds outside the tapestried doorway, rustlings. There were three clangorous strokes like a hammer upon an anvil. Then silence. The twelve priests walked through the doorway with their drums in their arms. The high priest beckoned me to follow him, and we passed through after them.

  I looked out upon an immense cavern, cut from the living rock by the hands of men dust now for thousands of years. It told its immemorial antiquity as clearly as though the rocks had tongue. It was more than ancient; it was primeval. It was dimly lighted, so dimly that hardly could I see the Uighur nobles. They were standing, the banners of their clans above them, their faces turned up to me, upon the stone floor, a hundred yards or so away, and ten feet below me. Beyond them and behind them the cavern extended, vanishing in darkness. I saw that in front of them was a curving trough, wide—like the trough between two long waves—and that like a wave it swept upward from the hither side of the trough, curving, its lip crested, as though that wave of sculptured stone were a gigantic comber rushing back upon them. This lip formed the edge of the raised place on which I stood.

  The high priest touched my arm. I turned my head to him, and followed his eyes. A hundred feet away from me stood a girl. She was naked. She had not long entered womanhood and quite plainly was soon to be a mother. Her eyes were as blue as those of the old priest, her hair was reddish brown, touched with gold, her skin was palest olive. The blood of the old fair race was strong within her. For all she held herself so bravely, there was terror in her eyes, and the rapid rise and fall of her rounded breasts further revealed that terror.

  She stood in a small hollow. Around her waist was a golden ring, and from that ring dropped three golden chains fastened to the rock floor. I recognized their purpose. She could not run, and if she dropped or fell, she could not writhe away, out of the cup. But run, or writhe away from what? Certainly not from me! I looked at her and smiled. Her eyes searched mine. The terror suddenly fled from them. She smiled back at me, trustingly.

  God forgive me—I smiled at her and she trusted me! I looked beyond her, from whence had come a glitter of yellow like a flash from a huge topaz. Up from the rock a hundred yards behind the girl jutted an immense fragment of the same yellow translucent stone that formed the jewel in my ring. It was like the fragment of a gigantic shattered pane. Its shape was roughly triangular. Black within it was a tentacle of the Kraken. The tentacle swung down within the yellow stone, broken from the monstrous body when the stone had been broken. It was all of fifty feet long. Its inner side was turned toward me, and plain upon all its length clustered the hideous sucking discs.

  Well, it was ugly enough—but nothing to be afraid of, I thought. I smiled again at the chained girl, and met once more her look of utter trust.

  The old priest had been watching me closely. We walked forward until we were half-way between the edge and the girl. At the lip squatted the twelve lesser priests, their drums on their laps.

  The old priest and I faced the girl and the broken tentacle. He raised his staff of golden bells and shook them. From the darkness of the cavern began a low chanting, a chant upon three minor themes, repeated and repeated, and intermingled.

  It was as primeval as the cavern; it was the voice of the cavern itself.

  The girl never took her eyes from me.

  The chanting ended. I raised my hands and made the curious gestures of salutation I had been taught. I began the ritual to Khalk’ru…

  With the first words, the odd feeling of recognition swept over me—with something added. The words, the gestures, were automatic. I did not have to exert any effort of memory; they remembered themselves. I no longer saw the chained girl. All I saw was the black tentacle in the shattered stone.

  On swept the ritual and on…was the yellow stone dissolving from around the tentacle…was the tentacle swaying?

  Desperately I tried to halt the words, the gesturing. I could not!

  Something stronger than myself possessed me, moving my muscles, speaking from my throat. I had a sense of inhuman power. On to the climax of the evil evocation—and how I knew how utterly evil it was—the ritual rushed, while I seemed to stand apa
rt, helpless to check it.

  It ended.

  And the tentacle quivered…it writhed…it reached outward to the chained girl…

  There was a devil’s roll of drums, rushing up fast and ever faster to a thunderous crescendo…

  The girl was still looking at me…but the trust was gone from her eyes…her face reflected the horror stamped upon my own.

  The black tentacle swung up and out!

  I had a swift vision of a vast cloudy body from which other cloudy tentacles writhed. A breath that had in it the cold of outer space touched me.

  The black tentacle coiled round the girl…

  She screamed—inhumanly…she faded…she dissolved…her screaming faded…her screaming became a small shrill agonized piping…a sigh.

  I heard the dash of metal from where the girl had stood. The clashing of the golden chains and girdle that had held her, falling empty on the rock.

  The girl was gone!

  I stood, nightmare horror such as I had never known in worst of nightmares paralysing me—

  The child had trusted me…I had smiled at her, and she had trusted me…and I had summoned the Kraken to destroy her!

  Searing remorse, white hot rage, broke the chains that held me. I saw the fragment of yellow stone in its place, the black tentacle inert within it. At my feet lay the old priest, flat on his face, his withered body shaking; his withered hands clawing at the rock. Beside their drums lay the lesser priests, and flat upon the floor of the cavern were the nobles—prostrate, abased, blind and deaf in stunned worship of that dread Thing I had summoned.