The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  Gory, menacing, dreadful in its red lacquer of life, a living phantom from some pirate deck of death it glared at him.

  Stop! There was something familiar about the face—the eyes! His gaze was caught by a shimmer of gold on the right arm above the elbow. It was a bracelet. And he knew that bracelet—

  The bridal gift of Sharane!

  Who was this man? He could not think clearly—how could he—with numbness in his brain, the red mists before his eyes, this weakness that was creeping back upon him?

  Sudden rage swept through him. He swung the bottle to hurl it straight at the wild fierce face.

  The left hand of the figure swung up, clutching a similar bottle—

  It was he, John Kenton, reflected in the long mirror on the wall. That ensanguined, fearfully wounded, raging shape was—himself!

  A clock chimed ten.

  As though the slow strokes had been an exorcism, a change came over Kenton. His mind cleared, purpose and will clicked back in place. He took another deep drink of the liquor, and without another look in the mirror, without a glance toward the jeweled ship, he walked to the door.

  Hand on the key he paused, considering. No, that would not do. He could not risk going out into the hallway. Jevins might still be hovering near; or some of the other servants might see him. And if he had not known himself, what would be the effect of seeing him on them?

  He could not go where water was to cleanse his hurts, wash away the blood. He must do with what was here.

  He turned back to the cabinet, stripping the table of its cloth as he passed. His foot struck something on the floor. The blade of Nabu lay there, no longer blue but stained as was he from tip of blade to hilt. For the moment he left it lie. He poured spirits upon the cloth, made shift to cleanse himself with them. From another cabinet he drew out his emergency medical kit. There was lint there and bandages and iodine. Stiff-lipped with the torture of its touch, he poured the latter into the great wound in his side, daubed it into the cut across his forehead. He made compresses of the lint and wound the linen tapes around brow and chest. The blood flow stopped. The fiery agony of the iodine diminished. He stepped again to the mirror and scanned himself.

  The clock struck the half hour.

  Half past ten! What had it been when he had clutched the golden chains of the ship—had summoned the ship and been lifted by those chains out of the room and into the mysterious world in which it sailed?

  Just nine o’clock!

  Only an hour and a half ago! Yet during that time in that other and timeless world he had been slave and conqueror, had fought great fights, had won both ship and the woman who had mocked him, had become—what now he was!

  And all this in less than two short hours!

  He walked over to the ship, picking up the sword as he went. He wiped the hilt clean of blood, the blade he did not touch. He drained the bottle before he dared drop his eyes.

  He looked first on Sharane’s cabin. There were gaps in the little blossoming trees. The door was down, flung broken on the deck. The casements of the window were shattered. Upon the roof’s edge a row of doves perched, heads a-droop, mourning.

  From the oar ports four sweeps instead of seven dipped on each side. And in the pit were no longer the eight and twenty rowers. Only ten were left, two to each of the stroke oars, one each to the other.

  On the starboard side of the hull were gashes and deep dents—the marks of the bireme’s combing of that ship of Ishtar now sailing somewhere on that unknown world from which he had been whirled.

  And at the tiller bar a manikin stood—a toy steering the toy ship. A toy man, long-haired, fair-haired. At his feet sat two other toys; one with shining, hairless head, and apelike arms; the other red bearded, agate-eyed, a shining scimitar across his knees.

  Longing shook him, heartache, such homesickness as some human soul might feel marooned upon alien star on outskirts of space.

  “Gigi!” he groaned. “Sigurd! Zubran! Bring me back to you!”

  He bent over the three, touching them with tender fingers, breathing on them, as though to give them warmth of life. Long he paused over Gigi—instinctively he felt that in the Ninevite more than the others dwelt the power to help. Sigurd was strong, the Persian subtle—but in the dwarf-legged giant ran tide of earth gods in earth’s shouting youth; archaic, filled with unknown power long lost to man.

  “Gigi!” he whispered, face close—and again and again—“Gigi! Hear me! Gigi!”

  Did the manikin move?

  Breaking his passion of concentration came a cry. Newsboys shouting some foolish happening of importance on this foolish world on which he was cast away! It broke the threads, shattered the fragile links that he had felt forming between himself and the manikin. Cursing, he straightened. His sight dimmed; he fell. Effort had told upon him; the treacherous weakness crept back. He dragged himself to the cabinet, knocked the head off a second bottle, let half of it pour down his throat.

  The whipped blood sang in his ears; strength flowed through him. He snapped off the lights. A ray from the street came through the heavy curtains, outlining the three toy figures. Once more Kenton gathered himself for a mighty effort of will.

  “Gigi! It is I! Calling you! Gigi! Answer me! Gigi!” The manikin stirred, its body trembled, its head raised! Far, far away, thin and cold as tip of frost lance upon glass, ghostly and unreal, coming from immeasurable distances, he heard Gigi’s voice.

  “Wolf, I hear you! Wolf! Where are you?”

  His mind clung to that thread of sound as though it were a line flung to him over vast abysses.

  “Wolf—come to us!” The voice was stronger. “Gigi! Gigi! Help me to you!”

  The two voices—that far flung, thin, cold one and his own met and clung and knit. They stretched over that gulf which lay between where he stood and the unknown dimension in which sailed the ship.

  Now the little figure no longer squatted! It was upright! Louder rang Gigi’s voice:

  “Wolf! Come to us! We hear you! Come to us!” Then as though it chanted words of power:

  “Sharane! Sharane! Sharane!”

  Under the lash of the loved name his will now streamed fiercely.

  “Gigi! Gigi. Keep calling!”

  He was no longer conscious of his room. He saw the ship far, far beneath him. He was but a point of life floating high above it, yearning to it and calling, calling to Gigi to help him. The strand of sound that linked them strained and shook like a cobweb thread. But it held and ever drew him down.

  And now the ship was growing. It was misty, nebulous; but steadily it grew and steadily Kenton dropped down that rope of sound to meet it. Strengthening the two voices came other sounds weaving themselves within their threads—the chanting of Sigurd, the calling of Zubran, the thrumming of the fingers of the wind on the harpstring of the ship’s stays, the murmuring litany of the breaking waves telling their beads of foam.

  Ever more real grew the ship. Striking through its substance came the wavering image of his room. It seemed to struggle against the ship, to strive to cover it. But the ship beat it back, crying out to him with the voices of his comrades and the voices of wind and sea in one.

  “Wolf! We feel you near! Come to us—Sharane! Sharane! Sharane!”

  The phantom outlines leaped into being; they enclosed him.

  The arms of Gigi reached out to him, gripped him, plucked him out of space!

  And as they gripped, he heard a chaotic whirling, a roaring as of another world spinning from under him and lashed by mighty winds.

  He stood again upon the ship.

  He was clasped tight to Gigi’s hairy chest. Sigurd’s hands were on his shoulders. Zubran was clasping and patting Kenton’s own hands clutching Gigi’s back, singing in his joy strange intricate Persian curses.

  “Wolf!” roared Gigi, tears filling the furrows of his wrinkled face. “Where did you go? In the name of all the gods—where have you been?”

  “Never mind!” sobbed Kenton.
“Never mind where I’ve been, Gigi! I’m back! Oh, thank God, I’m back!”

  CHAPTER 16

  How the Ship Was Manned

  Faintness conquered him. The wounds and the effort of will had sapped his strength to its limit. When he came back to consciousness he was on the divan in Sharane’s raped cabin. His bandages had been replaced, his wounds re-dressed. The three men and four of Sharane’s maids were looking down upon him. There was no reproach on any of their faces—only curiosity, tempered with awe.

  “It must be a strange place to which you go, Wolf,” Gigi said at last. “For see! The slash across my chest is healed, Sigurd’s cuts, too—yet your wounds are as fresh as though made but a moment ago.”

  Kenton looked and saw that it was so; the slash across Gigi’s breast was now only a red scar.

  “Also it was a strange way to leave us, blood-brother,” rumbled the Viking.

  “By the fire of Ormuzd!” swore the Persian. “It was a very good way! A good thing for us that you left as you did. Cyrus the King taught us that it was a good general who knew how to retreat to save his troops. And that retreat of yours was a masterly one, comrade, Without it we would not be here now to welcome you.”

  “It was no retreat! I could not help but go!” whispered Kenton.

  “Well,” the Persian shook a dubious head, “whatever it was, it saved us. One instant there you were lifted on the paws of the black priest’s dogs. Another instant you had faded into a shadow. And then, lo, even the shadow was gone!”

  “How those dogs who had held you shrieked and ran,” laughed Zubran. “And the dogs who were biting at us ran too—back to their kennels on the bireme they ran, for all Klaneth’s cursing. They had great fear, comrade—and so in fact for a moment had I. Then down went their oars, and away sped their ship with Klaneth’s cursing still sounding even after they had gotten safely out of sight of us.”

  “Sharane!” groaned Kenton. “What did they do to her? Where have they taken her?”

  “To Emakhtila, or Sorcerers’ Isle, I think,” answered Gigi. “Fear not for her, Wolf. The black priests want you both. To torture her without your eyes looking on, or to slay you without hers beholding your agonies would be no revenge for Klaneth. No—until he lays hands on you Sharane is safe enough.”

  “Not comfortable, perhaps, nor happy, but assuredly safe enough,” confirmed the Persian.

  “Three of her maids they took with her in the nets,” said Sigurd. “Three they slew. These four they left when you vanished.”

  “They took Satalu, my little vessel of joy,” mourned Gigi. “And for that Klaneth shall also pay when reckoning comes.”

  “Half the slaves were killed when the bireme crashed against us,” went on the Viking. “Oars crushed in ribs, broke backs. Others died later. The black-skin we put in Zachel’s place is a man! He fought those who dropped into the pit and slew his share. Only eight oars have we now instead of twice seven. The black-skin sits at one of them—unchained. When we take new slaves he shall be overseer again and honored.”

  “And I remember now,” it was Gigi, dropping back to his first thought, “that when I dragged you up the side of Klaneth’s cabin that day you fought his priests, you still bled from the bites of Sharane’s girls. Yet with us there had been time and time again for them to have healed, And here you are once more with old wounds fresh. It must be a strange place indeed, that you go to, Wolf, is there no time there?”

  “It is your own world,” he answered. “The world from whence all of you came.”

  And as they stared at him, he leaped up from the divan.

  “Sail to Emakhtila! At once! Find Sharane! Free her! How soon, Gigi? How soon?”

  He felt the wound in his side open, fell back, his spurt of strength exhausted.

  “Not till your wounds are healed,” said Gigi, and began to unfasten the reddening bandages. “And we must make the ship strong again before we take that journey. We must have new slaves for the oars. Now lie quiet, until you heal. Klaneth will do Sharane no harm as long as there is hope of taking you. I, Gigi, tell you this. So set your heart at ease.”

  And now began for Kenton a most impatient time of waiting. To be chained here by his wounds when, despite Gigi’s assurances, the black priest might be wreaking his ultimate vengeance upon Sharane! It was not to be borne.

  Fever set in. His wounds had been more serious than he had known. Gigi nursed him.

  The fever passed, and as he grew stronger he told him of that lost world of theirs; what had passed there during the centuries they had sailed on the timeless ship; of its machinery and its wars, its new laws and its customs.

  “And none now go viking!” mused Sigurd. “Clearly then I see that there is no place for me there. Best for Sigurd, Trygg’s son, to end his days where he is.”

  The Persian nodded.

  “And no place for me,” he echoed. “For a man of taste such as I, it seems no world at all to live in, I like not your way of waging wars, nor could I learn to like it—I who seem to be a soldier of an old, old school, indeed.”

  Even Gigi was doubtful.

  “I do not think I would care for it,” he said. “The customs seem so different. And I notice, Wolf, that you were willing to risk chains and death to get out of that world—and lose no time getting back to this.”

  “The new gods seem so stupid,” urged Zubran. “They do nothing. By the Nine Hells, the gods of this place are stupid enough—still they do something. Although perhaps it is better to do nothing than to do the same stupid things over and over,” he ruminated.

  “I will make me a steading on one of these islands,” said Sigurd, “after we have carried away Kenton’s woman and slain the black priest. I will take me a strong wife and breed many younglings. I will teach them to build ships. Then we shall go viking as I did of old. Skoal! Skoal to the dragons slipping through Ran’s bath with the red ravens on their sails and the black ones flying overhead!”

  “Say, blood-brother,” he turned to Kenton, “when you have your woman back will you make a steading beside mine? With Zubran taking wives and he and Gigi—if he is not too old—breeding young, and with those who will join us—by Odin, but we could all be great Jarls in this world!”

  “That is not to my liking,” replied the Persian promptly. “For one thing it takes too long to rear strong sons to fight for us. No—after we have finished our business with Klaneth I will go back to Emakhtila where there are plenty of men already made. It will be strange if I find there no discontented ones, men who can be stirred to revolt. If there be not enough of them—well, discontent is the easiest thing in the world to breed; much easier than sons, Sigurd. Also I am a great soldier. Cyrus the King himself told me so. With my army of discontented men I shall take his nest of priests and rule Emakhtila myself! And after that—beware how you raid my ships, Sigurd!”

  Thus they talked among themselves, telling Kenton things of their own lives as strange to him as his own tales must have been to them. Steadily, swiftly his wounds healed until they were at last only red welts, and strength flowed back in his veins.

  Now for many sleeps, while he grew well, they had lain hidden within a land-locked cove of one of the golden isles. Its rock-jawed mouth had been barely wide enough for them to enter. Safe enough this place seemed from pursuit or prying eyes. Nevertheless they had drawn the ship close against a high bank whose water side dropped straight down to the deep bottom. The oars had been taken in. The branches of the feathery trees drooped over the craft, covered it.

  The time came when Kenton, awakening, felt full tide of health. He walked back to the rudder bar where Sigurd, Gigi and the Persian were stretched out talking. He paused for the hundredth time beside the strange compass that was the helmsman’s guide in this world, where there was neither sun nor moon nor stars, no east or west, north or south. Set within the top of a wooden standee was a silver bowl covered with a sheet of clear crystal. Around the lip of this bowl were inlaid sixteen symbols, cuneiform
, scarlet. Attached to a needle rising vertically from the bowl’s bottom were two slender pointers, serpent shaped, blue. The larger, he knew, pointed always toward Emakhtila, that land to which, were Gigi right, Sharane had been carried by the black priest. The smaller pointed toward the nearest land.

  As always, he wondered what mysterious currents stirred them in this poleless world; what magnetic flow from the scattered isles pulled the little one; what constant flow from Emakhtila kept the big one steady? Steadier far than compass needles of earth pointed to the north.

  And as he looked it seemed to him that the little blue needle spun in its scarlet pool and lay parallel with the greater one—both pointing to the Isle of Sorcerers!

  “An omen!” he cried. “Look, Sigurd! Gigi—Zubran—look!”

  They bent over the compass, but in the instant between his call and their response the smaller needle had shifted again; again pointed to the isle where they lay moored!

  “An omen?” they asked, puzzled. “What omen?”

  “Both the needles pointed to Emakhtila!” he told them. “To Sharane! It was an omen—a summons! We must go! Quick, Gigi—Sigurd—cast loose! We sail for Emakhtila!”

  They looked at him, doubtfully; down at the compass once more; at each other covertly.

  “I saw it, I tell you.” Kenton repeated. “It was no illusion—I am well! Sharane is in peril! We must go!”

  “Sh-h-h!” Gigi held up a warning hand, listened intently, parted the curtains of the leaves and peered out.

  “A ship,” he whispered, drawing back his head. “Bid the maids get arrows and javelins. Arm—all of you. Quiet now—and speed!”