“Anything else?”
“Yes. Dreams.”
He leaned over, and spoke sharply.
“What dreams?”
“Dreams of battles—dreams of feasts…a dream of war against yellow men, and of a battlefield beside a river and of arrows flying overhead in clouds…of hand-to-hand fights in which I wield a weapon like a huge hammer against big yellow-haired men I know are like myself…dreams of towered cities through which I pass and where white, blue-eyed women toss garlands down for my horse to trample…When I wake the dreams are vague, soon lost. But always I know that while I dreamed them, they were clear, sharp-cut—real as life…”
“Is that how you knew the Witch-woman was Witch-woman—through those dreams?”
“If so, I don’t remember. I only knew that suddenly I recognized her for what she was—or that other self did.”
He sat for a while in silence.
“Leif,” he asked, “in those dreams do you ever take any part in the service of Khalk’ru? Have anything at all to do with his worship?”
“I’m sure I don’t. I’d remember that, by God! I don’t even dream of the temple in the Gobi!”
He nodded, as though I had confirmed some thought in his own mind; then was quiet for so long that I became jumpy.
“Well, Old Medicine Man of the Tsalagi’, what’s the diagnosis? Reincarnation, demonic possession, or just crazy?”
“Leif, you never had any of those dreams before the Gobi?”
“I did not.”
“Well—I’ve been trying to think as Barr would, and squaring it with my own grey matter. Here’s the result. I think that everything you’ve told me is the doing of your old priest. He had you under his control when you saw yourself riding to the Temple of Khalk’ru—and wouldn’t go in. You don’t know what else he might have suggested at that time, and have commanded you to forget consciously when you came to yourself. That’s a simple matter of hypnotism. But he had another chance at you. When you were asleep that night. How do you know he didn’t come in and do some more suggesting? Obviously, he wanted to believe you were Dwayanu. He wanted you to ‘remember’—but having had one lesson, he didn’t want you to remember what went on with Khalk’ru. That would explain why you dreamed about the pomp and glory and the pleasant things, but not the unpleasant. He was a wise old gentleman—you say that yourself. He knew enough of your psychology to foresee you would balk at a stage of the ritual. So you did—but he had tied you well up. Instantly the post-hypnotic command to the subconscious operated. You couldn’t help going on. Although your conscious self was wide-awake, fully aware, it had no control over your will. I think that’s what Barr would say. And I’d agree with him. Hell, there are drugs that do all that to you. You don’t have to go into migrations of the soul, or demons, or any medieval matter to account for it.”
“Yes,” I said, hopefully but doubtfully. “And how about the Witch-woman?”
“Somebody like her in your dreams, but forgotten. I think the explanation is what I’ve said. If it is, Leif, it worries me.”
“I don’t follow you there,” I said.
“No? Well, think this over. If all these things that puzzle you come from suggestions the old priest made—what else did he suggest? Clearly, he knew something of this place. Suppose he foresaw the possibility of your finding it. What would he want you to do when you did find it? Whatever it was, you can bet your chances of getting out that he planted it deep in your subconscious. All right—that being a reasonable deduction, what is it you will do when you come in closer contact with those red-headed ladies we saw, and with the happy few gentlemen who share their Paradise? I haven’t the slightest idea—nor have you. And if that isn’t something to worry about, tell me what is. Come on—let’s go to bed.”
We went into the tent. We had been in it before with Evalie. It had been empty then except for a pile of soft pelts and silken stuffs at one side. Now there were two such piles. We shed our clothes in the pale green darkness and turned in. I looked at my watch.
“Ten o’clock,” I said. “How many months since morning?”
“At least six. If you keep me awake I’ll murder you. I’m tired.”
So was I; but I lay long, thinking. I was not so convinced by Jim’s argument, plausible as it was. Not that I believed I had been lying dormant in some extra-spatial limbo for centuries. Nor that I had ever been this ancient Dwayanu. There was a third explanation, although I didn’t like it a bit better than that of reincarnation; and it had just as many unpleasant possibilities as that of Jim’s.
Not long ago an eminent American physician and psychologist had said he had discovered that the average man used only about one-tenth of his brain; and scientists generally agreed he was right. The ablest thinkers, all-round geniuses, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were, might use a tenth more. Any man who could use all his brain could rule the world—but probably wouldn’t want to. In the human skull was a world only one-fifth explored at the most.
What was in the terra incognita of the brain—the unexplored eight-tenths?
Well, for one thing there might be a storehouse of ancestral memories, memories reaching back to those of the hairy, ape-like ancestors who preceded man, reaching beyond them even to those of the flippered creatures who crawled out of the ancient seas to begin their march to men—and further back to their ancestors who had battled and bred in the steaming oceans when the continents were being born.
Millions upon millions of years of memories! What a reservoir of knowledge if man’s consciousness could but tap it!
There was nothing more unbelievable in this than that the physical memory of the race could be contained in the two single cells which start the cycle of birth. In them are all the complexities of the human body—brain and nerves, muscles, bone and blood. In them, too, are those traits we call hereditary—family resemblances, resemblances not only of face and body but of thought, habits, emotions, reactions to environment: grandfather’s nose, great-grandmother’s eyes, great-great-grandfather’s irascibility, moodiness or what not. If all this can be carried in those seven and forty, and eight and forty, microscopic rods within the birth cells which biologists call the chromosomes, tiny mysterious gods of birth who determine from the beginning what blend of ancestors a boy or girl shall be, why could they not carry, too, the accumulated experiences, the memories of those ancestors?
Somewhere in the human brain might be a section of records, each neatly graven with lines of memories, waiting only for the needle of consciousness to run over them to make them articulate.
Maybe the consciousness did now and then touch and read them. Maybe there were a few people who by some freak had a limited power of tapping their contents.
If that were true, it would explain many mysteries. Jim’s ghostly voices, for example. My own uncanny ability of picking up languages.
Suppose that I had come straight down from this Dwayanu. And that in this unknown world of my brain, my consciousness, that which now was I, could and did reach in and touch those memories that had been Dwayanu. Or that those memories stirred and reached my consciousness? When that happened—Dwayanu would awaken and live. And I would be both Dwayanu and Leif Langdon!
Might it not be that the old priest had known something of this? By words and rites and by suggestion, even as Jim had said, had reached into that terra incognita and wakened these memories that were—Dwayanu?
They were strong—those memories. They had not been wholly asleep; else I would not have learned so quickly the Uighur…nor experienced those strange, reluctant flashes of recognition before ever I met the old priest…
Yes, Dwayanu was strong. And in some way I knew he was ruthless. I was afraid of Dwayanu—of those memories that once had been Dwayanu. I had no power to arouse them, and I had no power to control them. Twice they had seized my will, had pushed me aside.
What if they grew stronger?
What if they became—all of me?
CHAPTE
R XI.
DRUMS OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE
Six times the green light of the Shadowed-land had darkened into the pale dusk that was its night, and I had heard nothing, seen nothing of the Witch-woman or of any of those who dwelt on the far side of the white river. They had been six days and nights of curious interest. We had gone with Evalie among the golden pygmies over all their guarded plain; and we had gone at will among them, alone.
We had watched them at their work and at their play, listened to their drumming and looked on in wonder at their dances—dances so intricate, so extraordinary, that they were more like complex choral harmonies than steps and gestures. Sometimes the Little People danced in small groups of a dozen or so, and then it was like some simple song. But sometimes they were dancing by the hundreds, interlaced, over a score of the smooth-turfed dancing greens; and then it was like symphonies translated into choreographic measures.
They danced always to the music of their drums; they had no other music, nor did they need any. The drums of the Little People were of many shapes and sizes, in range covering all of ten octaves, and producing not only the semitones of our own familiar scale, but quarter and eighth-tones and even finer gradations that oddly affect the listener—at least, they did me. They ranged in pitch from the pipe organ’s deepest bass to a high staccato soprano. Some, the pygmies played with thumbs and fingers, and some with palms of their hands, and some with sticks. There were drums that whispered, drums that hummed, drums that laughed, and drums that sang.
Dances and drums, but especially the drums, were evocative of strange thoughts, strange pictures; the drums beat at the doors of another world—and now and then opened them wide enough to give a glimpse of fleeting, weirdly beautiful, weirdly disturbing, images.
There must have been between four and five thousand of the Little People in the approximately twenty square miles of cultivated, fertile plain enclosed by their wall; how many outside of it, I had no means of knowing. There were a score or more of small colonies, Evalie told us. These were like hunting or mining posts from which came the pelts, the metals and other things the horde fashioned to their uses. At Nansur Bridge was a strong warrior post. Some balance of nature, so far as I could learn from her, kept them at about the same constant; they grew quickly into maturity and their lives were not long.
She told us of Sirk, the city of those who had fled from the Sacrifice. From her description an impregnable place, built against the cliffs; walled; boiling springs welling up at the base of its battlements and forming an impassable moat. There was constant warfare between the people of Sirk and the white wolves of Lur, lurking in the encompassing forest, keeping watch to intercept those fleeing to it from Karak. I had the feeling that there was furtive intercourse between Sirk and the golden pygmies, that perhaps the horror of the Sacrifice which both shared, and the revolt of those in Sirk against the worshippers of Khalk’ru was a bond. And that when they could, the Little People helped them, and would even join hands with them, were it not for the deep ancient fear of what might follow should they break the compact their forefathers had made with the Ayjir.
It was a thing Evalie said that made me think that.
“If you had turned the other way, Leif—and if you had escaped the wolves of Lur—you would have come to Sirk. And a great change might have grown from that, for Sirk would have welcomed you, and who knows what might have followed, with you as their leader. Nor would my Little People then…”
She stopped there, nor would she complete the sentence, for all my urging. So I told her there were too many ifs about the matter, and I was content that the dice had fallen as they had. It pleased her.
I had one experience not shared by Jim. Its significance I did not then recognize. The Little People were as I have said—worshippers of life. That was their whole creed and faith. Here and there about the plain were small cairns, altars in fact, upon which, cut from wood or stone or fossil ivory, were the ancient symbols of fertility; sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs, and sometimes in a form curiously like that same symbol of the old Egyptians—the looped cross, the crux ansata which Osiris, God of the Resurrection, carried in his hand and touched, in the Hall of the Dead, those souls which had passed all tests and had earned immortality.
It happened on the third day. Evalie bade me go with her, and alone. We walked along the well-kept path that ran along the base of the cliffs in which the pygmies had their lairs. The tiny golden-eyed women peeped out at us and trilled to their dolls of children as we passed. Groups of elders, both men and women, came dancing toward us and fell in behind us as we went on. Each and all carried drums of a type I had not yet seen. They did not beat them, nor did they talk; group by group they dropped in behind us, silently.
After awhile I noticed that there were no more lairs. At the end of half an hour we turned a bastion of the dins. We were at the edge of a small meadow carpeted with moss, fine and soft as the pile of a silken carpet. The meadow was perhaps five hundred feet wide and about as many feet deep. Opposite me was another bastion. It was as though a rounded chisel had been thrust down, cutting out a semicircle in the precipice. At the far end of the meadow was what, at first glance, I thought a huge domed building, and then saw was an excrescence from the cliff itself.
In this rounded rock was an oval entrance, not much larger than an average door. As I stood, wondering, Evalie took my hand and led me toward it. We went through it.
The domed rock was hollow.
It was a temple of the Little People—I knew that, of course, as soon as I had crossed the threshold. Its walls of some cool, green stone curved smoothly up. It was not dark within the temple. The rocky dome had been pierced as though by the needle of a lace-maker, and through hundreds of the frets light streamed. The walls caught it, and dispersed it from thousands of crystalline angles within the stone. The floor was carpeted with the thick, soft moss, and this was faintly luminous, adding to the strange pellucid light; it must have covered at least two acres.
Evalie drew me forward. In the exact centre of the floor was a depression, like an immense bowl. Between it and me stood one of the looped-cross symbols, thrice the height of a tall man. It was polished, and glimmered as though cut from some enormous amethystine crystal. I glanced behind me. The pygmies who had followed us were pouring through the oval doorway.
They crowded close behind us as Evalie again took my hand and led me toward the cross. She pointed, and I peered down into the bowl.
I looked upon the Kraken!
There it lay, sprawled out within the bowl, black tentacles spread fanwise from its bloated body, its huge black eyes staring inscrutably up into mine!
Resurgence of the old horror swept me. I jumped back with an oath.
The pygmies were crowding around my knees, staring up at me intently. I knew that my horror was written plain upon my face. They began an excited trilling, nodding to one another, gesticulating. Evalie watched them gravely, and then I saw her own face lighten as though with relief.
She smiled at me, and pointed again to the bowl. I forced myself to look. And now I saw that the shape within it had been cunningly carved. The dreadful, inscrutable eyes were of jet-like jewel. Through the end of each of the fifty-foot-long tentacles had been driven one of the crux ansatas, pinioning it like a spike; and through the monstrous body had been driven a larger one. I read the meaning: life fettering the enemy of life; rendering it impotent; prisoning it with the secret, ancient and holy symbol of that very thing it was bent upon destroying. And the great looped-cross above—watching and guarding like the god of life.
I heard a rippling and rustling and rushing from the drums. On and on it went in quickly increasing tempo. There was triumph in it—the triumph of onrushing conquering waves, the triumph of the free rushing wind; and there was peace and surety of peace in it—like the rippling song of little waterfalls chanting their faith that “they will go on and on for ever,” the rippling of little waves among the sedges of the river-bank, and the
rustling of the rain bringing life to all the green things of earth.
Round the amethystine cross Evalie began to dance, circling it slowly to the rippling, the rustling and the rushing music of the drums. And she was the spirit of that song they sang, and the spirit of all those things of which they sang.
Three times she circled it. She came dancing to me, took my hand once more and led me away, out through the portal. From behind us, as we passed through, there came a sustained rolling of the little drums, no longer rippling, rustling, rushing—defiant now, triumphal.
But of that ceremony, or of its reasons, or of the temple itself she would speak no word thereafter, question her as I might.
And we still had to stand upon Nansur Bridge and look on towered Karak.
“On the morrow,” she would say; and when the morrow came, again she would say—“on the morrow.” When she answered me, she would drop long lashes over the clear brown eyes and glance at me from beneath them, strangely; or touch my hair and say that there were many morrows and what did it matter on which of them we went, since Nansur would not run away. There was some reluctance I could not fathom. And day by day her sweetness and her beauty wound a web around my heart until I began to wonder whether it might become a shield against the touch of what I carried on my breast.
But the Little People still had their doubts about me, temple ceremony or none; that was plain enough. Jim, they had taken to their hearts; they twittered and trilled and laughed with him as though he were one of them. They were polite and friendly enough to me, but they watched me. Jim could take up the tiny doll-like children and play with them. The mothers didn’t like me to do that and showed it very clearly. I received direct confirmation of how they felt about me that morning.
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 146