The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  He stalked out of the throne chamber with a gesture to Graydon to follow. He led him to a balcony at the end of a corridor. He scuttled away. Graydon looked out. The bowl of Yu-Atlanchi was filled with darkness, the sun had set behind the barrier. He saw lights, like trains of fireflies, making their way to the amphitheater of the shell. There was a touch on his arm. Kon was beside him, carrying two of the mace-headed bars. Without a single click, the spider-man took him under his arm, swung over the edge of the balcony and seemed to scuttle down the sheer face of the Temple. Graydon noted with amusement that Kon did not hold him upside down as he had threatened.

  They stood close to the edge of the great flight of steps leading down to the meadow. They passed cautiously along them, and reached the bordering fringe of trees. There Kon again lifted him, but not to swing him behind him through the branches. The spider-man kept to their cover, flitting from trunk to trunk.

  There was a murmur of voices, rapidly growing louder. The fireflies became flambeaux—pale, motionless lights like frozen moonbeams. Faintly by them he saw Yu-Atlanchi’s nobles, men and women, streaming through the narrow entrance to the enormous shell. Here and there among them were the jeweled litters. The flambeaux were pallid ghostlights, gave out no glow, intensified the darkness beyond them.

  Kon detoured, and scurried silently through the trees to the back of the amphitheater. He passed the two bars to Graydon, took a firmer grip on him, and began to climb it, making a ladder of those carvings he had sketched, but which Graydon could not see in the blackness. They were at the top.

  Here was a broad parapet. Kon straddled it, set Graydon upon it with a bump, and disappeared. Soon he was back, picked him up and slid with him into the dark void beneath. Graydon gasped, then their flight was ended so abruptly that his teeth shook. Around him was the faintest of light, starshine reflected from the opaline wall towering behind and above him. Kon had slid down one of the furrows. He wondered how in the devil the spider-man was going to slide back up it with him under his arm.

  He looked around him. They were in the topmost tier of the stone seats. In front of the seats was a three-foot parapet protecting it. Not far below him he heard rustlings, whisperings, soft laughter.

  Kon took his shoulder, slid him off the seat, forced him down behind the parapet; crouched there beside him, peeping over it.

  Above the western mountains a faint glow of silver appeared. It grew brighter. The whispering below him ceased. Between two of the towering peaks a shimmering argent point sprang out. It became a rill of silver fire.

  A man’s voice, a vibrant baritone, began a chant. He was answered with strophe and anti-strophe by the unseen throng below.

  Steadily as that chant arose, so arose the moon.

  Behind him, at first in fugitive sparklings, then in steadily rising rhythms of opal radiance, the great shell began to glow—brighter and ever brighter, as steadily the moon swung out of the stone fingers of the peaks.

  The Feast of the Dream Makers had begun.

  The chanting ended. The light of the risen moon fell within the amphitheater and full upon the conchoidal walls. Their radiance quickened, the shell became a luminous opal. Rays streamed from the starry points of blue and peacock patches. They met and crossed at the center of the amphitheater, weaving a web that stretched from side to side. Steadily this ray-woven web grew denser; against it were silhouetted the heads of the nobles, many empty tiers below.

  Another chant began. A point of silver light appeared within the opposite wall, high up and close to the opening of the shell-like valves which formed the structure’s entrance. It expanded into a little moon, a replica of the orb swimming across the sky. Three more shone softly into sight beside it. Their rays crept out, touched the luminous web, spread over it. The web held now the quality of a curtain, transparent but material.

  And suddenly, through that curtain, high up on the other side of the shell, a larger moon swelled out of the semi-darkness, since there the moonlight did not fall full upon the walls. Within the glowing disk was a woman’s head. She was one of the Old Race, and aureoled by that silver nimbus, her face was transformed into truly unearthly beauty. Her eyes were closed, she seemed asleep—

  A Maker of Dreams!

  She was, he thought, within a wide niche or alcove, but whether she sat or stood he could not tell. Her body was indistinguishable. The orb behind that exquisite head throbbed, swelled, became still. The Dream Maker seemed to merge with its luminescence, become only a mist against it. The chant soared into a shouting chord, and died.

  Something sped from the orb, something without shape or form, realized by another sense than sight. It struck the web. Under its impact the curtain trembled. And suddenly—there was no web, no ray-woven curtain! Graydon looked out into space, into the void beyond this universe. He saw the shapeless thing racing through it with a speed thousands of times that of light. Knew it for a thought from the Maker of Dreams. Following it, he felt probing into his brain something like a numbing finger, cold with the cold of outer space through which the thought moved. On and on, into unfathomable infinitude it went.

  It stopped. It became a vast nebula, spiraling like Andromeda’s starry whirl. The nebula came rushing back at the same prodigious speed, a cosmic pinwheel of suns, threatening annihilation.

  It resolved itself into its component stars, huge spinning spheres of incandescence, of every color. One sun came rolling out from its fellows, an immense orb of candent sapphire. Beside it appeared a world, fit child of that luminary in size. The sun drew away, the world drew nearer—

  It was a world of flame. He looked into jungles of flame through which moved monstrous shapes of fire; at forests built of flames over which flew other shapes whose plumage was fire of emeralds, of rubies and of diamonds; at oceans which were seas of molten jewels and through whose iridescent spray swam leviathans of fire.

  Back whirled fire world and sapphire sun among their fellows.

  Striding through the void came gigantic men, god-like, laughing. They stooped and plucked the whirling suns. They tossed them to each other. They hurled them into the outer void, streaming like comets. They sent them crashing into each other with storms of coruscant meteors, cascades of sparkling star dust.

  The laughing gods strode off, over where had lain the garden of suns they had uprooted. For an instant the void hung, empty.

  Graydon, gasping, looked again upon the curtain of woven rays.

  Had it been illusion? Had it been real? What he had seen had seemed no two-dimensional picture thrown upon that strange screen. No, it had been in three dimensions—and as actual as anything he had ever beheld. Had the thought of the Dream Maker created that wrecked universe? And the playful gods—were they, too, born of her thought? Or had they been other realities, happening upon that galaxy, stopping to destroy it, then carelessly passing on?

  There was a murmuring among the nobles, a faint applause. The orb behind the head of the Dream Maker dimmed. When it pulsed out, it held within it the head of a man, eyes closed as had been the woman’s.

  Again the thought of the Dream Maker sped. The ray curtain quivered under its impact. Graydon looked upon a desert. Its sands began to sparkle, to stir and grow. Up from the waste a city built itself—but no such city as Earth had ever borne. Vast structures of an architecture alien and unknown to man! And peopled with chimerae. Their hideousness struck his eyes like a blow. He closed them. When he opened them, the city was crumbling. In its place grew a broad landscape illumined by two suns, one saffron and one green, which swiftly circled each round the other. Under their mingled light were trees, shaped like hydras, like polyps, with fleshy, writhing reptilian limbs to which clung great pulpy flowers of a loathsome beauty. The flowers opened, and out of them sprang amorphous things which fought among the dreadful growths like obscene demons, torturing, mating—

  He closed his eyes, sickened. A wave of applause told him the Dream Maker was finished. He felt a deeper hate for these people who
could find delectable such horrors as he had beheld.

  And now Dream Maker after Dream Maker followed one another, and dream upon dream unfolded in the web of rays. Some, Graydon watched fascinated, unable to draw his eyes from them; others sent him shuddering into the shelter of the spider-man’s arms, sick of soul. A few were of surpassing beauty, Djinn worlds straight out of the Arabian Nights. There was a world of pure colors, unpeopled, colors that built of themselves gigantic symphonies, vast vistas of harmonies. Such drew little applause from these men and women whose chant was interlude between the dreams. It was carnage and cruelty, diablerie, defiled, monstrous matings, Sabbats; hideous fantasies to which Dante’s blackest hell was Paradise itself which stirred them.

  He heard a louder whispering, over it the voice of Lantlu; arrogant; vibrant with gloating anticipation.

  Within the silver orb was a woman’s head. The beauty of her face was tainted, subtly debased, as though through her veins ran sweet corruption. As her head merged into misty outline on the disk, he thought he saw the closed lids open for an instant, disclose deep violet eyes that were wells of evil, and which sent some swift message toward where Lantlu boasted; they closed. For the first time, an absolute silence fell over the amphitheater; a waiting silence; a silence of suspense—of expectation.

  The curtain shook with the speeding thought of the woman. But the web did not vanish as heretofore. Instead, a film crept over it; a crawling film of shifting hues, like oil spreading over the surface of a clear pool. Rapidly the film became more dense, the motion of its shifting colors swifter.

  Dark shadows began to flit through the film, one on the skirts of the other, converging toward, settling at, the edge of the ray web. Faster they flitted, one by one, from all parts of it, gathering there, growing steadily denser—assuming shape.

  Not only taking shape—taking substance!

  Graydon clutched the stone balustrade with stiff fingers. There upon the web was the shape of a man, a giant all of ten feet tall, tenebrous, framed by the crawling colors—and no shadow. No—something material—

  Over the rim of the amphitheater shot a wide and vivid ray of red. It came from the direction of the caverns. It struck the sombrous shape, spread fanwise over it, changing it to a rusty black.

  The red ray began to feed it, to build it up. Through the beam streamed a storm of black atoms, the shape sucked them in, took substance from them—it was no longer tenebrous.

  It was a body, featureless but still a body, caught high in the web, held there by the force of the red ray.

  Borne in the wake of the black atoms came the Shadow!

  It did not come swiftly. It floated through the beam cautiously, as though none too sure of its progress. It crept, its faceless head outstretched, its unseen eyes intent upon its goal. It covered the last few yards between it and the hanging shape with a lightning leap. There was a cloudy swirling where the black body had hung, a churning mist shot through with darting crimson corpuscles.

  Something like a spark of dazzling white incandescence touched the churning mist, was swallowed by it. To Graydon it had seemed to come from outside, opposite the source of the red ray—from the Temple.

  The mist condensed, vanished. The body hung for a breath, then slithered through the web down to the ground.

  No longer the body of a man. A crouching thing, misshapen, deformed—

  Something like a great frog—and on its shoulders—

  The head of Nimir!

  Graydon thought he heard the laughter of the Serpent-woman!

  But Nimir’s pale blue eyes were alive with triumph. The imperious, Luciferean face was radiant with triumph. He shouted his triumph while a frozen silence held those who looked upon him. He capered, grotesquely, upon his sprawling legs, roaring in the lost tongue of the Lords his triumph and defiance!

  The red ray blinked out. A flare of crimson light shot up into the skies from beyond the lake.

  The hideous hopping figure became rigid; its face of a fallen angel staring at that flare. Its gaze dropped from it to its body, Graydon, every nerve at breaking point, watched incredulity change to truly demonic rage—the eyes glared like blue hell flames, the mouth became an open square from which slaver dripped, the face writhed into a Gorgon mask.

  Slowly Nimir turned his gaze to that evil Maker of Dreams who had been his tool and Lantlu’s. She was standing, awake enough now, in the niche of the silver orb.

  The monstrous arms of Nimir swung wide, he made a squattering leap toward her. The woman screamed, swayed, and fell forward from the niche. On the floor of the amphitheater, far below where she had stood, a white heap stirred feebly for an instant and was still.

  Slowly the eyes of Nimir drew from her, searched the empty tiers, drew closer—closer—to Graydon!

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The Taking of Suarra

  Graydon dropped flat behind the parapet; covered there, hiding his face, fear such as he had never known—no, not even in the red cavern—numbing him. He waited with dying heart for the sound of hopping pads…coming for him…coming to take him…

  He raised his hand, fixed his eyes upon the purple stones of the Serpent-woman’s bracelet. Their glitter steadied him. Desperately he thrust from his mind everything but the image of the Mother—clung to that image as a falling climber clings to a projecting root that has stayed his drop into some abyss; filled his mind with that image; closed his ears, closed his mind to all but that.

  How long he crouched there he never knew. He was aroused by the patting of Kon’s little hands. Trembling, sick, he raised his head, stared around him. He was in semi-darkness. The moon had traveled past its zenith, was descending. Its rays no longer shone upon the shell behind him. The opaline glow was dim, the web of rays gone.

  The amphitheater was empty.

  After a little time, Graydon mastered his weakness, crept with the spider-man, hugging the shadow, down the wide aisle that led to the pave; slipped without challenge through the valves of the entrance and into the shelter of the trees.

  He reached the Temple. He was lifted by Kon up to that balcony from which they had set forth. He stared from it down upon the city.

  The city was ablaze with lights; it was astir and roaring!

  He hesitated, uncertain what to do; and while he hesitated, the curtains parted. Into the chamber marched Regor at the head of a score of Emers armed with bows and spears.

  His face was haggard. Without a word to Graydon, he stationed the Indians at the opening. He clicked to Kon, and for a minute or two a rapid conversation went on between them. Regor gave some command; with more than his usual melancholy, the spider-man looked at Graydon, and sidled out.

  “Come,” Regor touched him on the shoulder, “the Mother wants you.”

  A chill of apprehension shot through Graydon. If his conscience had not been so troubled, he would have burst into immediate questions. As it was, he followed Regor without speaking. The outer corridor was filled with Indians, among them a sprinkling of the nobles. A few he recognized as of the Fellowship—some of Huon’s rescued remnant. These saluted him, with, he thought, pity in their gaze.

  “Regor,” he said, “something’s wrong. What is it?”

  Regor mumbled inarticulately, shook his head, and hurried on. Graydon, fighting an increasing dread, kept step with him. They were mounting toward the top of the Temple, not going to the room where always heretofore he had been summoned to the Mother.

  And everywhere were companies of the Emers, threaded by the nobles. A number of the latter were clothed in Lantlu’s green…the defection from the dinosaur master must have been more considerable than Regor had reckoned…plenty of women among them, too—and armed like the men with the short swords and javelins and small round shields. Plenty here for defense…and all of them seemed to know exactly what they were doing…under perfect discipline…

  He realized that in reality he didn’t care whether they were or not; that he was deliberately marking time, desperate
ly taking note of exterior things to check a fear he had not dared put into words. He could do it no longer. He had to know.

  “Regor,” he said, “is it—Suarra?”

  The big man’s arm went round his shoulders.

  “They’ve taken her! Lantlu has her!”

  Graydon stopped short, the blood draining from his heart.

  “Taken her? But she was with the Mother! How could they take her?”

  “It happened in the confusion when the Ladnophaxi ended.” Regor hurried him onward. “Huon and I had gotten back an hour before that. The Indians were filtering in. There was much to do. And fivescore and more of the Old Race upon whom we had not counted had come, swearing allegiance to the Mother, demanding entrance by their ancient right. Some say Suarra went seeking you. And, not finding you, sought Kon. And that while she was seeking, a message came to her—from you!”

  Graydon halted abruptly.

  “From me! Good God—no!” he cried. “How could I have sent her a message? I was at that cursed Feast—forced Kon to take me. I’d only gotten back when you appeared—”

  “Ah, yes, lad,” Regor shrugged his broad shoulders, helplessly. “But it is now the hour after midnight. The Feast ended an hour before midnight. What of the two hours between?”

  Now Graydon felt his head whirl. Could it be that he had crouched behind the parapet for two whole hours? Impossible! But even so—

  He thrust out his hand, struck the giant such a blow on his breast that he reeled back.

  “Damn you, Regor!” he cried, furiously. “Do you hint I had anything to do with it—”

  “Don’t be foolish, lad,” Regor showed no resentment. “Of course I know you sent no message. But this much is certain—had you been here, Suarra would have fallen into no such trap. And it seems just as certain that those who decoyed her must have known you were not here. How did they know it? Why did they not try to intercept you on your return? Maybe the Mother knows all that by now…she was raging…the one she loved best snatched from under her eyes…”