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

a wall. The Serpentwoman touched the lever again. His hand went out into air so abruptly that he almost fell.

“Not even the strongest of your weapons could break that, Graydon,” she said. “Nor has Nimir anything that can penetrate it. If I could extend that wall around the Temple, as I can round myself here, there would be no need for guards. Yet there is no magic in it. Your wise men believe that what you call matter is nothing but force, energy, in another form. They are right. All this is energy somewhat more abruptly made matter—of a sort—and a most stubborn matter, child. Oh, most stubborn—Regor, you took your time!”

The opening in the platform through which they had risen had disgorged the giant, with a little pile of clothing over his arm.

“Not the easiest thing to find anything to fit him,” he rumbled.

“Take off your clothes,” the Mother nodded to Graydon, “put those on. Nay, child, don’t be disconcerted. Remember —I am a very old, old woman!” Her eyes had danced at his involuntary movement of embarrassment. “And while you dress, listen to me.”

He began to strip.

“Now this it is,” she said. “I could loose destruction upon the city, or loose it upon the palace of Lantlu alone. But such weapons as I handle make no distinction between friend or foe. Suarra would be slain with the others. Therefore, that is barred—at least—” she looked at Graydon, a message in her eyes—“at least for the moment. Nor can we send out any force to rescue her, since that would mean open fighting, and before they could reach her, she would be spirited away where we could not find her. It is a matter for stealth and cunning, courage and ready resource—and one man. One.man can pass unnoticed where many could not. It cannot be

you, Regor, for you bear too many distinctive marks for successful disguise. Nor Huon, since his strength is not in cunning nor resourcefulness. Nor would I trust any other YuAtlanchan.

“It must be you, Graydon—and you must be alone. Also it will be the last thing they will expect—or at least, I hope so. You shall carry your own weapons.”

Graydon, half-dressed, nodded approvingly at that.

“She is in the house of Lantlu. Whether Nimir is there or not I do not know. As he obscured my sight when I tried to find him in his den, so has he there. Where Suarra is, in what plight, I cannot see—always the veiling murk balks me, Ah—I told you Nimir is more cunning than I had thought —But I can send your sight as far as that place, Graydon, so that you will know how to go to it. And another thing I can do to help you—but that later. Bend to me—”

She pressed her hand against his forehead as when she sent his sight to the cavern that time Nimir had noosed him. He seemed to float from the roof, pass as fast as a man could run away from the Temple, along this lane and that, pausing now here and now there to note a landmark, until he came to a palace of turquoise and opal set around with trees from which drooped long panicles of flowers all red and silver. There were immense windows, casemented, latticed with fretted metal delicate as lace-work, set in walls and turrets, and behind them light and the movement of many people. Light and movement he sensed, rather than saw, for ever as he strove to look within, his sight was met by what seemed a fine dark mist through which it could not penetrate.

Back he returned, at the same pace, pausing again at the landmarks that were his clews in this labyrinth of lanes. He stood, swaying a little, beside the Serpentwoman.

“You know the way! You will remember!” As before, they were less questions than commands. And, as before, he answered:

“I know. I will remember.” And realized that every foot between the Temple and the palace of Lantlu was etched into his memory as though he had traversed the way ten thousand times.

. She took the fillet of emerald and pressed it down upon his forehead; threw the cloak of green over his shoulders, drew a fold of it up over his mouth. She pushed him away— regarded him, doubtfully.

“For the first time, child, I’m sorry you haven’t the beauty of which I am so weary. You look somewhat like some one half between the Emers and the Old Race. By my ancestors, why weren’t you born with blue eyes instead of gray, and with your hair yellow? Well—it can’t be helped! The tide of things is with you—there is great confusion, and they will not expect attack; certainly, not attack from you, singlehanded. And if you fail—I will avenge you as I have promised.”

He bowed over her hand, turned to go.

“Wait!” She drew up her body, sent out a soft call like a faint echo of the elfin bugles. And now he realized that if those winged serpents she called her Messengers were invisible to him, they were not so to her. Forth from the shadows came a beating of strong pinions. The air about him eddied with the sweep of unseen wings. She reached out her arms, seemed to gather something within each, drew them close, looking, with eyes that plainly saw, into eyes none else could see. She began a low, sweet trilling. Weird enough it was to hear those birdlike notes answered by others out of empty air close beside her lips. She dropped her arms.

Graydon heard the wings close over his own head. Something touched his shoulder, wrapped itself gently about his upper arm and sent a coil around his waist; something pressed his cheek, caressingly. Involuntarily, he thrust up a hand and gripped it. It was a serpent shape, yet contact with it brought no shrinking, nor repugnance. It was cool, but not cold; he drew tentative fingers around it. The coil, he thought, must be all of eight inches through. It puzzled him that the creature had so little weight. There was a rapid pulsation above him like the whirring of an enormous humming-bird;

he knew that it was holding its weight off him—that it meant its embrace to be reassuring.

He patted it, as he would have a dog. The coils slipped away. The whirring continued. Listening, he thought that there were two there.

“Go now, Graydon,” said the Mother. “Go quickly. These two shall attend you. You cannot talk to them. Point to those you would have slain—and they will slay them. Trust them. They have intelligence, Graydon. You cannot understand, but they have it. Trust them—go—”

She pushed him away from her. Regor wheeled him round;

marched him to the edge of the Temple’s roof. There he stooped and drew forth a stout rope at whose end was a grappling hook. He fastened the hook to the cornice, threw the rope over.

“There’s your path, lad,” he said, huskily; “The Mother wants none to see you leave. Over with you! And take this—”

He thrust his long poniard into Graydon’s girdle. Rifle slung over his shoulders, he caught the rope, slipped over the parapet. He slid down, the whirring of the winged serpents accompanying him. He reached the end of the rope, stood ‘for an instant in the darkness, wondering which way to go.

He felt the touch of one of the Messengers, urging him on. And suddenly, in his brain, he saw the way to Lantlu’s palace sharply outlined as a map.

Graydon began to run along these lanes his sight had followed when the Serpentwoman had touched him. Over him, matching his pace, beat the unseen wings.

CHAPTER XXIV. Bride of the LizardMan

IT WAS a luminously clear night. He found his way easily, as though his feet had been long trained to every turn and curve. After a little he stopped running; for one thing, to conserve his strength for what was to come, for another, lest it draw attention to him from those who might also be traveling his path.

He was close to the palace of Lantlu when he had his first encounter. It proved to him the deadly mettle of those animate rapier blades the Mother had assigned to him for servants. From a shrubbery-concealed lane emerged a couple of Emers carrying javelins and flambeaux in which, instead of flames, were globes gleaming with a golden light. Behind them came a litter carried by four Indians. In it was a noble clad in green. He was followed by another pair of guards.

Graydon had no chance to retreat, nor to slip into the shadow. The occupant of the litter waved his hand, greeted him. Graydon, holding his cloak to hide his face as much as possible, returned the greeting briefly, tried to pass on. Such brusque behavior was apparently not the custom, for the noble raised himself, gave a sharp command to his men, then leaped out and advanced toward him with drawn sword.

There was but one thing to do, and Graydon did it. He pointed at the Emers, and hurled himself upon the YuAtlanchan. He ducked beneath a vicious thrust of the sword, and the next instant had caught the noble’s right wrist in one hand while the other throttled him. It was no time for niceties. Up came his knee, and caught his opponent in the groin. Under the agony of that blow, the YuAtlanchan relaxed, his sword dropped. Graydon pinned him through the heart with Regor’s dagger.

He did not dare use his rifle, so bent swiftly, picked up the dead man’s sword, turned to face the Emers.

They, too, were dead.

They lay, the eight of them, pierced by the rapier bills of the winged serpents before they could make out-cry or lift a single javelin, slain in that brief moment it had taken him to kill one man.

He looked down at their bodies. It semed incredible that those eight lives could have been wiped out in such little time. He heard the wings of the creatures whirring close over his head, and stared up toward the sound. Above him, as though an unseen finger had traced them in the air, were two slender crimson lines. They shook, and a little shower of crimson drops fell from them—

The winged serpents cleansing their beaks!

He went on with a ruthless elation in his heart. All sense of aloneness had fled; he felt as though he had an army at his back. He sped on, boldly. The lane entered a dense coppice of flowering trees. He crept softly along through the copse. He halted in the deepest shadow. Not a hundred yards away was the palace of Lantlu. The structure covered, he estimated, a little more than an acre. It seemed to be octagonal, not lofty, the bulk of it composed of two high-vaulted floors. From its center arose a dome, shimmering sapphire and opal; and shaped like that which Tamerlane the Conqueror brought back from ravished Damascus to grace his beloved Samarkand. Up to its swelling base pushed clusters of small jeweled turrets, like little bowers built by gnomes for their women.

The octagonal walls were sheathed with tiles glimmering as though lacquered with molten pale rubies, sun-yellow topazes, water-green emeralds. They contained windows, both rectangular and oval, casemented and latticed by fretwork of stone and metal delicate as lace. Out from their base extended a tessellated pave, thirty feet wide, of black and white polished stone. Slender pillars of gold were ranged at its edge, bearing silken canopies. Soft light streamed from every window through webbed curtainings. There was no door.

Graydon crept forward to the edge of the copse. Between him and the pave was a smooth stretch of sward, open, and

impossible to cross without being