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

by something I saw in the Cavern of the Face, once by a certain dream while I slept beside a stream, and later found was no dream—and again by a whispering Shadow. If there is not something to man beside body—then what were they?”

“Did you think it was that immortal part of me which you saw in the Cavern? Did you think that, really?” she leaned;

forward, smiling. “But that is too childish, Graydon. Surely my ethereal essence, if I have it, is not a mere shadowy duplication! Such a wonderful thing should be at least twice’ as beautiful! And different—oh, surely different! I am a

woman, Graydon, and would dearly like to try a few new fashions in appearance.”

It was not until after he had left her that he recalled how

intently the Serpentwoman had looked at him when she said this. If she thought something was within his mind—some reservation, some doubt—she was satisfied with what she found, or did not find. She laughed; then grew grave.

“Nor did anything of you rush forth from your body at my call. It was my thought that touched you beside the brook; my thought that narrowed the space between us— precisely as your harnessed force penetrates all obstacles and carries to you a distant picture. I saw you there, but it pleased me to let you see me as well. So it was that I watched Lantlu march into the Temple. Once we of the Older Race could send the seeing thought around the world, even as you are on the verge of doing with your machines. But I have used the power so little, for so long and long and long again, that now I can barely send it to the frontiers of YuAtlanchi.

“And as for Nimir—” she hesitated. “Well, he was master of strange arts. A pioneer, in a fashion. What this Shadow is —I do not know. But I do not believe it is any immortal— what do you name it, Graydon—ah, yes, soul. Not his soul! And yet—there must be a beginning in everything .. . perhaps Nimir is pioneer in soul making… who knows! But if so—why is it so weak? For compared to that which was Nimir in body this Shadow is weak. No, no! It is some product of thought; an emanation from what once was Nimir whom we fettered in the Face… a disembodied intelligence, able to manipulate the particles that formed the body of Cadok—that far I will go … but an immortal soul? No!” She dropped into one of her silences; withdrawn—then— “But the seeing thought, I do know, I will show you, Graydon—will send my sight into that place where you saw the ship, and yours shall accompany it.”

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 Serpentwoman 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 Serpentwoman 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 Serpentwoman, 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 Serpentwoman 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 Serpentwoman 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 tonight 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