The Face in the Abyss by Abraham Merritt (ebook e reader .TXT) 📖

at its head. From the crowded tiers arose a great sigh like the first sough of a tempest, a surging of bodies. Past Graydon, clicking violently, raced Kon in Regor’s wake. He raised the rifle upon Lantlu, and saw him drop behind the protecting wall as though something had whispered warning.

Dorina sat motionless, looking down at Huon. She was like one who knew her weird was upon her.

Regor was half across the arena, Kon scuttling beside him. Huon, looking not once again behind him, eyes fixed on the woman, stepped a pace nearer the wall.

He hurled his broken javelin. There was a flash of light as it sped. The light was quenched in Dorina’s breast.

Silence again for another long moment. And then the whole amphitheater roared. A shower of arrows fell round the outlaw of the lair. Kon sped past Regor, caught Huon in an arm, and came racing back. Graydon emptied his rifle into the line of archers; the storm of arrows abruptly ceased.

The trumpets sounded, peremptorily. Through opened gratings and down over the wall streamed the green-kirtled Emers. Closer to them, from each side ran others emerging from the nearer openings. Kon was close, Regor drawing near. Graydon, with burning desire for just one machinegun, emptied his rifle into those who menaced them from the sides. They halted. The frenzied dinosaur raised its head and came charging with great leaps down upon the line of soldiers pursuing Regor. They scattered out of its path. The giant swung shut the heavy doors and set the bars. The dinosaur hurled himself against them, tearing at them with its steel-like claws, dripping yellowish blood from a skull partly shattered by Graydon’s bullet.

“You’re damned hard to kill!” he muttered, and raised the rifle for another close, certain shot at the unhurt eye.

“No!” panted Regor, and caught his arm. “It will hold that door for us.”

Huon, dropped upon his feet by the Spiderman, stood like an automaton, head bent. And suddenly deep sobs shook him.

“It’s all right now, lad—it’s all right now!” comforted the giant.

An arrow flew past the dinosaur, through the grating, barely missing Graydon, then another and another. He heard the blaring of many trumpets, angry, summoning.

“Best move quickly!” grunted Regor. Arm around Huon, he ran back through the corridor, Graydon at his heels, the little hands of Kon patting him approvingly, affectionately,

as they went The others pressed close behind. They came to the guard chamber. They opened the secret door though which they had entered that place, and closed it with the clatter of pursuing feet already near. And in the little crypt Kon sought and found the means of unlocking the passage beneath the left-hand oval stone.

They closed that last portal. They set off in silence down the corridor into which it had opened, to the haven of the Temple.

CHAPTER XIX. The Snake Mother

THEY WENT SILENTLY, Regor’s arm around Huon’s shoulders. The five Fellowship men had passed the Weavers;

they marched with drawn swords behind their chief. The Indians followed Graydon. Whenever he turned he found their eyes upon him—as though they now regarded him as their leader. The one who carried his rifle had plainly become a personage, stepping proudly ahead of his fellows almost on Graydon’s heels. They came to the end of the passage, and opened without difficulty its entrance.

They stepped out of it into the columned hall of Graydon’s dream!

The beams of dimly azure light played down from its soaring, vaulted roof like the lanced rays of the aurora. Mistily radiant, they curtained a spacious alcove raised high above the tesselated, opaline pave. Behind their veil Graydon saw a sapphire throne, and lesser thrones of red, golden and black at its base of milky crystal—the seats of the Seven

Lords.

A girl stood there, just beyond the top of a broad flight

of steps dropping from the alcove, a girl with white hands clasped tightly to her breast, red lips parted in wonder, soft black eyes staring at him incredulously—

“Graydon!” she cried, and took a swift step toward him. “Suarra!” the warning voice was lisping, tinglingly pure, in it the trilling of birds. A pillar of shimmering mother-ofpearl shot up behind the girl; over her shoulder peered a face, heartshaped, coifed with hair like spun silver, purpleeyed—

The Snake Mother!

“Let us see who are these visitors who come so unceremoniously in the train of your man,” she lisped, “and by a way I thought surely none now in YuAtlanchi knew.”

She raised a little hand, in it a sistrum within whose loop, instead of bars, a glistening globule danced like quicksilver.

Regor stifled an exclamation and dropped upon his knees, the others hastily following suit with the exception of the spidermen, who stood quietly watching. Graydon hesitated, then also knelt.

“Ah, so you have remembered your manners!” there was faint mockery in the tinkling voice. “Come nearer. By my ancestors—it is Regor—and Huon … and since when did you don Lantlu’s green, Notalu? It is long since you bent the knee to me, Regor.”

“That is not my fault, Mother!” began Regor, indignantly. “Now that is not just—”

A trilling of laughter silenced him.

“Hot tempered as ever, Regor. Well, for a time at least, you shall have much practice in that neglected duty. You too, Huon, and the others of you—”

Graydon heard the giant groan with relief, saw his scarred face light up; his bellow interrupted her.

“Homage to Adana! We are her men now!” He bent until his bandaged brow touched the floor.

“Yes!” said the Mother, softly, “but for how long—ah, that even I cannot tell. …” She dropped the hand that held the quivering globe, bent further over Suarra’s shoulder, beckoned to Graydon—“Come up to me. And do you shut that door behind you, Regor.”

Graydon walked to the alcove, mounted the steps, his fascinated eyes upon the purple ones fixed upon him so searchingly. As he drew close, the Serpentwoman moved from behind the girl, the shimmering pillar from which sprang her childish body between him and Suarra. And he felt again that curious, deep-seated throb of love for this strange being— like a harp string in his heart which none but she could pluck. He knelt again, and kissed the tiny hand she held out to him. He looked up into her face, and it was

tender, all age-old weariness gone, her eyes soft—and he had not even memory of those doubts which had risen in the Painted Cavern; so strong her witchery—if witchery it was.

“You have been well brought up, child,” she murmured. “Nay, daughter—” she glanced at Suarra, mischievously, “be not disturbed. It is only to my years that he does reverence.”

“Mother Adana—” began Suarra, face burning—

“Oh, go over there and talk, you babes,” the scarlet, heartshaped lips were smiling. “You have much to say to each other. Sit on the golden thrones, if you like. What were you thinking then, Suarra’s man? That a golden throne was symbol to you of journey’s end? Surely, you were. Why it should be, I do not know—but that was your thought. Well then, take one.”

Graydon, beginning to rise, dropped back on his knee. When she had spoken of the golden thrones lines of an old negro spiritual had cropped up in his head—

When I’m through with this weary wanderin’, When I’m through, Lawd! I’ll sit on a golden throne—

The Snake Mother was laughing. She beckoned Suarra. She took the girl’s hand and put it in Graydon’s. She gave them a little push away.

“Regor,” she called. “Come to me. Tell me what has happened.”

Swinging his bar, marching jauntily, Regor approached. Suarra drew Graydon back to a nest of curtains at the rear of the alcove. He watched Regor mount beside the Serpentwoman, saw her bend her head to him, prepare to listen. Then he forgot them entirely, absorbed in Suarra, overflowing with concern for him, and curiosity.

“What did happen, Graydon?” her arm slipped round his_ neck. “We had gone quickly, and were close to the cataract It was very noisy, but I thought I heard your weapon. I hesitated, thinking to return. But there was no further sound,

so I went on. And Regor and the others—how did they get their wounds?”

“Lantlu sacked the lair. Huon was betrayed by Dorina. Lantlu took Huon and matched him against one of his cursed

Xinli. We rescued him. Huon killed Dorina,” he told her,

staccato.

“Dorina betrayed him! He killed her!” Her eyes widened.

“She was an aunt of yours, in some way, wasn’t she?” he

asked.

“Oh, I suppose so—in a way—long, long ago,” she answered.

And suddenly he determined to settle once for all that question which had been tormenting him—he’d find out if she was one of these “deathless ones” or just the normal girl she seemed … if she was like the rest of them, then he’d have to accept the fact he loved a girl old enough to be his greatgrandmother, maybe—if she wasn’t, then he didn’t give a damn about all the rest of the puzzles—

“See here, Suarra,” he demanded, “how old are you?” “Why, Graydon, I’m twenty,” she answered, wonderingly. “I know,” he said, “but do you mean you’re twenty, or that you were twenty, the Mother alone knows how many

years ago, when you closed those infernal Gates, whatever they may be, on yourself?”

“But, beloved,” said Suarra, “why are you so disturbed? I’ve never gone into the Chamber of the Gates! I’m really

twenty—I mean not staying twenty, but getting older every

year.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Graydon, fervently, a load rolling from his mind. “Now after the good news, comes the

bad. Lantlu, and most of YuAtlanchi, I gather, are out hunting for us at this very moment.”

“Oh, but that doesn’t matter,” said Suarra, “now that the Mother has accepted you.”

Graydon had his doubts about the accuracy of that, but he did not trouble her with them. He began the tale of his adventures. In the middle of his first sentence he heard a

hissing exclamation from the Serpentwoman; heard Regor

rumble—

“It is truth. Kon found him there.”

He looked toward them. The Snake Mother’s eyes were upon him. She beckoned him; and when he stood beside her she raised herself, swayed forward until her face was almost

touching his.

“The Shadow, Graydon—tell me of it. From the moment you saw it appear upon the black throne. Nay wait—I would see while you tell me—” she placed a hand upon his forehead—“now speak.”

He obeyed, going step by step over his ordeal. He lived it

again; so vivid were the pictures of it that it was as though his brain were a silver screen upon which a camera unreeled them. At his recital of the death of Cadok he felt the hand upon his forehead tremble; he spoke of Kon, and the hand dropped away.

“Enough!”

She drew back; she regarded him, thoughtfully; there was something of surprise in her gaze, something of wonder— something, the odd idea came to him, of the emotion a mathematician might feel if in a mass of well studied formulae he should suddenly come across an entirely new

equation.

“You are more than I thought, Graydon,” she echoed

that odd ideation. “Now I wonder… up from the gray apemen you came … yet all I know of men is from those who dwell here … what else have you developed, you who have grown up beyond our barrier… I wonder….”

Silent again, she studied him; then— “You thought the Shadow real—I mean, no shadow, no

shade, not—immaterial—”

“Material enough, substantial enough to pour itself into Cadok,” he interrupted. “Substantial enough to destroy him. It poured into Cadok like water in a jar. It sucked from him —life. And for—ten heartbeats—the Shadow was no Shadow,