The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  “The Urd had fled from the red cavern,” Regor took up the tale. “Ran, what was left of them, to hide in their deepest dens. And so the three came back to the Temple, bearing you. The next day the Mother took stock of what remained in ancient Yu-Atlanchi. Of the Old Race who defended the Temple, there was a scant hundred left. Of those who had fought for Lantlu, some four-score sent an ambassador to the Mother asking truce and pardon. She ordered them before her, slew a dozen of them, and forgave the others. There are, I suppose, as many more who, knowing they can expect no mercy, have taken to the caves and forest—become outlaws, as we were before you came, Graydon.

  “She had the Dream Makers, over whom the battle had passed unheeded, awakened and brought to the chamber of the thrones. Or the most of them—for there were some she commanded slain out of hand. She gave them the choice of abandoning their dreams and opening upon themselves the Doors of Life and Death, or—well, just death. Some fifty preferred to live. The others could find no attraction in it. They were allowed to go back to their homes, enter their favorite world of phantoms—and shortly thereafter they and their worlds ceased altogether to be.

  “Of the winged serpents, the Messengers of the Mother, not more than a quarter survived. Of the Emer there are about a thousand left—I mean men. Mostly, they are those who took no part in the battle. Our soldiers and those of Lantlu were rather thoroughly wiped out. Nimir’s shadows and the Mother’s flames made no distinction between friend and enemy. Two days ago, at the command of Adana, the bulk of these Emers were sent to the caverns to exterminate the remnants of the Urd. Oh, yes—about a half dozen of the hunting Xinli escaped, and an equal number of the riding Xinli The first are being tracked down and killed; the others we will keep.

  “That seems to be about all. We start life in Yu-Atlanchi afresh with some three hundred of the Old Race, of whom considerably more than half are women. Each and all have, perforce, put off our deathlessness. The Mother herself saw that the Two Doors were flung wide open. Having more than half of us women is better, however,” said Regor, thoughtfully, “than having more than half of us men.”

  Graydon closed his eyes; lay thinking over what he had heard. The Serpent-woman was certainly efficient once she waited! Ruthless! He visioned the Dream Makers blotted out in the midst of their mirages which were so real—so real. He hoped that the one who had created on the web of dream the miraculous world of color had chosen life. Drone and light of madness—how had Nimir created them? Some manipulation of the infrared rays, he supposed. Light waves of the lower spectrum linked in some way, transmuted somewhere in their range, to sound vibration. That the two had been so linked, were parts of the same phenomenon, he felt sure. And the Mother’s little diadem of suns? Manipulation of other radiant waves which had cancelled Nimir’s. Why had the collar saved him from one—delivered him over to the other? Some sort of receiver, probably…tuned up to Nimir’s stuff…well, it was off him…

  He sank into deep sleep.

  He saw nothing of the Serpent-woman for several days. She had gone off to the caverns, Suarra said, with the Lord of Folly and Kon, borne by the Indian women in her litter, only her Messengers guarding her. His strength returned slowly. He was carried out in Suarra’s own litter one day, the girl beside him. The once flowering plain between the Temple and the lake was blackened and desolate, blasted by the icy shadows and the leaping pillar of flame. A thin covering of impalpable dust marked where the amphitheater of the Dream Makers had stood. Many trees along the mead were dead or dying. And where the pillar had leaped upon the city there was a roughly circular place two thousand feet in width from which habitations and vegetation had been turned into the same thin ash.

  He asked Suarra what had been done with the dead. The Emer had gathered them together in great heaps, she told him; then they, too, had been blasted into dust by contrivances the Mother had ordered set up. Huon lay with his ancestors in the Cavern of the Dead.

  He told her to turn the bearers of the litter back to the Temple; recovered in the silence of the chamber of the thrones his peace.

  The next day the Mother returned; and thereafter for a week Graydon was with her many hours each day; answering her countless questions, telling her in detail of the life of men beyond the barrier, their habits and aspirations, and this time, too, of their wars and gods, and all the long history of the race since the fires of the Cro-Magnons were quenched in their caves twenty-five thousand years ago. Of the aims and conditions of the races, white and yellow, black and brown, he spoke; and of Russia’s drab experiment in communism, and the great unrest in Asia among the Chinese and Indians.

  Then for another time she ceased her questionings, told him in turn of that forgotten civilization of which her strange race was the head, and of how it had come into being; of other lost civilizations and races, buried beyond trace under the dust of time; gave him blinding glimpses of attainments in science as advanced over those he knew as Einstein’s geometry over the Euclidean; conceptions of mind and matter and energy that dazed him.

  “In nothing,” she told him, “that you have seen was there touch of sorcery or magic. All that you have beheld, each manifestation, was nothing but conscious manipulation of purely natural forces, my Grayden. The slaying shadows?—a definite energy made obedient by purely mechanical means to Nimir’s will. In words of your own to make it understandable—etheric vortices, power condensed from that universal ocean of energy about us from which all energy and mind and what you term matter comes. The shapes of flame I summoned to meet them? Another harnessed force which neutralized the shadows—and more. The pillar of flame? Nimir’s last play and one I truly feared. For by his swift shutting off of that which brought the shadows into being, he disturbed abruptly the interaction of the two forces, overbalanced me; hoped that before I could gain control of it, the tremendous freed energy which shaped itself into that pillar would overwhelm me. And he came within a hair of being right!”

  She sat silently for a time; then seemed to have come to some decision; roused herself.

  “Go you with Suarra, child,” she said. “Amuse yourselves. Get strong quickly. For two days I shall have no need for either of you.”

  And when those days had passed, summons from the Snake Mother came to him by way of Regor. He found her coiled upon her cushions in her bower, complacently gazing at herself in her mirror while Suarra coifed her hair. The bower seemed oddly empty; stripped. And Suarra’s eyes were misty with unshed tears. With her was the Lord of Folly. She laid down her mirror, gave Graydon her hand to kiss.

  “I am going to leave you, child,” she began without preamble. “I am tired. I am going to sleep—oh, for a long, long time. Nay—do not look so startled and unhappy. I don’t intend to die. I know of no other world to which to go. But I don’t intend to grow old—” her eyes sparkled at Graydon’s uncontrollable expression of surprise at this remarkable statement, considering her thousands of years. “I mean I do not intend to let myself look old. Therefore, I shall sleep and renew myself—and my looks. It was the custom of my people.”

  “Now thus have I decided. There are not many of you left in Yu-Atlanchi, it is true. But shortly there will be more. Trust your race for that—if for nothing else. Let you and Regor govern here—with Tyddo to aid you. Nimir is gone forever. Those of his who still lurk, outlaw—destroy as speedily as you can. Let nothing of him nor of Lantlu remain. If any of the Makers of Dream—relapse—kill them. Danger lurks in that—Suarra! Stop your crying! You’re pulling my hair!”

  She frowned for a moment into the mirror.

  “I have told you,” went on the Mother, briskly, “that I do not intend to die. And certainly I do not intend to be made uncomfortable while I sleep. I do not think so highly of those people you’ve told me so much about, Graydon. Oh, I have no doubt that they include any number of persons as estimable as yourself. But collectively, they irritate me, to put it mildly. I don’t propose to have them digging around where I am sleeping, nor blowing up thi
ngs with their explosives, nor building—what is your quaint word—skyscrapers over me. Nor ransacking the caverns for their treasure, nor poking around trying to find out things they’re much better off not knowing—and wouldn’t know what to do with if they did find them. I will have no invasion of the Hidden Land.

  “Therefore, during the last two days I have seen to it that there cannot be. I have destroyed much of what Nimir recovered from the Cavern of the Lost Wisdom, including that which evoked the shadows. I have destroyed my two disks which summoned the shapes of flame. You will not need them—nor shall I, again.

  “And, Graydon, I have sent my Messengers on guard beyond the barrier, and especially against those flying boats of yours which have done so much to make barriers negligible. They will bring them down without mercy. They will as mercilessly destroy those who may survive the fall. No eyes shall peer down on Yu-Atlanchi to bring back strong companies who would—destroy my slumber. I put it that way, child, not to hurt your feelings.

  “That is definite. That is irrevocable. And thus shall it be,” said the Serpent-woman, and Graydon had no doubt at all that quite as ruthlessly as she promised it, so would it be carried out. “And if by any newly discovered wisdom they overcome my Messengers, Tyddo will awaken me. And me, Graydon, they will not overcome. That, too, is certain.”

  She glanced again at her hair—

  “Suarra—that is really fine. Ah-h—but I am tired!” she yawned, her little pointed tongue flickering in the scarlet, heart-shaped mouth. “It has all been enjoyable—but rather fatiguing. And I think—” she looked again into the mirror—“yes, I am certain I have acquired a few wrinkles. Ah-h—it is time I slept!”

  Her eyes dwelt lovingly upon the weeping girl, and they were misted, too. Whatever the urgency that prompted the Serpent-woman to go, Graydon had swift perception that in her heart she did not feel the lightness she affected.

  “Children,” she twined her arm around Suarra’s neck. “Come with me. On my way I must seal that chamber on which open the Doors of Life and Death. You shall see it.”

  She nodded to Suarra. Under the girl’s touch the wall opposite the doorway swung open. The scarlet body of Kon swayed through, behind him four of his kind, carrying the Mother’s litter. She gave one last look in her mirror, then drew her coils into the litter’s cushions. Kon leading, Graydon and Regor on each side, Suarra lying beside her with head hidden in the Mother’s breast, the Lord of Folly following, they passed into a great empty chamber, out through its farther wall, and down a wide ramp.

  Down went the ramp, and down—far below the foundations of the Temple. They came to an alcove that curved shallowly into the wall of the passage. Here the Mother signaled her bearers. They halted close beside it. She stretched out a hand, within it the smaller sistrum. A faint ray touched the wall. An oval opening appeared, as though the ray had melted the stone away. She beckoned Graydon, drew Suarra over her body so the girl could look within.

  They peered down into a place that was like the half of a gigantic pearl. Its circled floor was some twenty yards in diameter. It was filled with a limpid rosy light as though a sun were shining behind its curved walls. The floor was like black obsidian, and set within it were two pools, oval, some twenty feet in length and half that in width. Between them was a couch of the same black glassy substance and hollowed with the outlines of a human body—as though, indeed, some perfect body of woman or man had been pressed there while the material was still plastic and, hardening, had retained the stamp.

  In one pool the water, if it was water, was like pale rose wine, shot through with sparklings and eddies of deeper rose. The liquid in the second pool was utterly colorless, translucent, still—awesome in its tranquility.

  While they watched, this tranquility was disturbed. Something came floating up from its depths. And as it approached the surface, the liquid in the rosy pool too became disturbed, its sparklings and its eddies dancing jubilantly.

  Out of each pool a bubble arose, slowly expanding until they had domed them from edge to edge.

  Rosy bubble and crystal clear bubble broke. A rainbow mist filled the chamber, hiding pools and couch. It was shot through with tiny darting particles of irised light. It pulsed for no more than three heartbeats. It vanished.

  The Serpent-woman raised the sistrum. She sent from it a ray straight into the still pool. The pool quivered as though it had been a living heart. Its translucency clouded. A cloud of little bubbles rushed up through it as if trying to escape the ray. They burst with a faint, mournful sighing. The pool again was still—but all awesome tranquillity had gone.

  The sistrum’s ray plunged into the rosy pool. There was a moment of frantic swirling in its depths. Again the bursting cloud of sighing bubbles. And it too lay still—and dead.

  “It is done!” said the Serpent-woman, tonelessly. Her face was drawn, her lips pale, her eyes like stone.

  She passed the sistrum over the aperture. The wall reappeared, seeming to form out of air as it came. She signaled the spider-men. They resumed their journey, in silence.

  They came at last to another shallow niche. Here, under the sistrum, the wall drew away into a low and rounded portal. They entered. It was circular like that of the two pools but not more than half its size. A faint blue radiance streamed from its walls, centering upon a huge nest of cushions. Around its walls were several coffers. Save for these, it was empty. Graydon was aware of a slightly pungent, curiously fresh, fragrance.

  The Serpent-woman flowed out of her litter, coiled herself upon the cushions. She looked at them, tears now frankly in the purple eyes and rolling down her cheeks. She gave the sistrum to the Lord of Folly, strained Suarra to her bosom. She beckoned Graydon, and gently brought the girl’s lips and his together.

  And suddenly she held them a little away from her, bent and kissed each upon the mouth, twinkled on them mischievously, wholly tenderly, and laughed her bird-like trill.

  “Waken me to see your first-born!” said the Snake Mother.

  She thrust them from her, settled down on her cushions, and yawned. Her eyes closed, her head nodded once or twice; sleepily moved to find a better place.

  But as Graydon turned to go, he thought that a change had begun to creep over her face—that its unearthly beauty was beginning to fade…like a veil dropping…

  Resolutely, he turned his head, forbade himself to look…let that doubt remain unresolved…as she had willed him to see her, so he would remember her…

  They passed out of the low doorway, Suarra clasped close to Graydon, weeping. The Lord of Folly raised the sistrum. The stone of the portal thickened into place.

  The hidden chamber where the Snake Mother slept was sealed.

  DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE (1932) [Part 1]

  BOOK OF KHALK’RU

  CHAPTER I.

  SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT

  I raised my head, listening,—not only with my ears but with every square inch of my skin, waiting for recurrence of the sound that had awakened me. There was silence, utter silence. No soughing in the boughs of the spruces clustered around the little camp. No stirring of furtive life in the underbrush. Through the spires of the spruces the stars shone wanly in the short sunset to sunrise twilight of the early Alaskan summer.

  A sudden wind bent the spruce tops, carrying again the sound—the clangour of a beaten anvil.

  I slipped out of my blanket, and round the dim embers of the fire toward Jim. His voice halted me.

  “All right, Leif. I hear it.”

  The wind sighed and died, and with it died the humming aftertones of the anvil stroke. Before we could speak, the wind arose. It bore the after-hum of the anvil stroke—faint and far away. And again the wind died, and with it the sound.

  “An anvil, Leif!”

  “Listen!”

  A stronger gust swayed the spruces. It carried a distant chanting; voices of many women and men singing a strange, minor theme. The chant ended on a wailing chord, archaic, dissonant.

&nbs
p; There was a long roll of drums, rising in a swift crescendo, ending abruptly. After it a thin and clamorous confusion.

  It was smothered by a low, sustained rumbling, like thunder, muted by miles. In it defiance, challenge.

  We waited, listening. The spruces were motionless. The wind did not return.

  “Queer sort of sounds, Jim.” I tried to speak casually. He sat up. A stick flared up in the dying fire. Its light etched his face against the darkness—thin, and brown and hawk-profiled. He did not look at me.

  “Every feathered forefather for the last twenty centuries is awake and shouting! Better call me Tsantawu, Leif. Tsi’ Tsa’lagi—I am a Cherokee! Right now—all Indian.”

  He smiled, but still he did not look at me, and I was glad of that.

  “It was an anvil,” I said. “A hell of a big anvil. And hundreds of people singing…and how could that be in this wilderness…they didn’t sound like Indians…”

  “The drums weren’t Indian.” He squatted by the fire, staring into it. “When they turned loose, something played a pizzicato with icicles up and down my back.”

  “They got me, too—those drums!” I thought my voice was steady, but he looked up at me sharply; and now it was I who averted my eyes and stared at the embers. “They reminded me of something I heard…and thought I saw…in Mongolia. So did the singing. Damn it, Jim, why do you look at me like that?”

  I threw a stick on the fire. For the life of me I couldn’t help searching the shadows as the stick flamed. Then I met his gaze squarely.

  “Pretty bad place, was it, Leif?” he asked, quietly. I said nothing. Jim got up and walked over to the packs. He came back with some water and threw it over the fire. He kicked earth on the hissing coals. If he saw me wince as the shadows rushed in upon us, he did not show it.