Collected short fiction, p.152
Collected Short Fiction, page 152
Vekyra ran in beside it. Her slim yellow arms caressed its scales again. Her voice rose in silver, liquid peals.
The serpent stopped its retreat. The broad head whipped back and rubbed against the woman’s golden body, caressingly. She stroked it.
Malikar came on. Vekyra spoke to the snake, appealingly, cajolingly, commandingly. The golden wedge of the head left her body and struck again at Malikar, but hesitantly, doubtfully.
Still the priest was shouting. The snake seemed to shrink from his harsh, brazen tones; the hate-filled hissing died. It started to writhe away. Malikar bellowed savagely; it stopped.
He strode up to its shrinking coils, stood roaring at it. He struck it with the whip. A tremor ran along its glistening length; the weird, purple-black eyes remained fixed upon him. Again he lashed it, and it did not stir.
Vekyra ran up to it. began caressing its coils again, her voice eloquent with golden pleading. It paid her no heed; the black eyes remained upon Malikar.
At length the priest dropped his whip, boomed a harsh command. Slowly, hesitantly, the flat, yellow-scaled head was thrust out at him, its fanged mouth closed. With heavy open hand he slapped it a dozen times, so hard that Price, in his high gallery, heard the blows.
Then Malikar shouted a harsh order at it. The great head moved toward the woman. She cried out, silvery tones shaken, plainly terrified. The slow movement did not cease. The snake hissed again, with the whisper of a far wind.
Vekyra screamed brokenly, as if with extreme terror. She fled across the yellow-frosted floor, toward the passage through which she and Malikar had come. After her the great serpent glided swiftly, hissing.
She vanished. The snake stopped. Malikar called to it, and it came undulating back to him, silent. Before him it drew into a mound of shimmering golden coils and lowered its flat head, watching the priest with purple-black eyes.
Malikar began to lash it.
The whip was long, and thick as his wrist at the butt, tapering. He swung it expertly. The thin tip touched the snake with explosive reports. It quivered; uneasy undulations ran along its bright coils, but the purple-black eyes did not cease their unwinking gaze. Sometimes the yellow man chuckled, thickly, evilly, as if he got a sadistic pleasure from the torture.
At last he stopped, and stood motionless a long time, staring at the snake. Then he pointed with the butt of the whip at the altar-like platform, shouted brazenly. The yellow, gleaming serpent glided bade up the ramp, coiled itself in the niche again, unmoving.
Malikar coiled the whip. Swinging it in one hand, he crossed the floor to the brink of the golden-green abyss, and started over the narrow bridge. Fully two hundred feet long, unrailed, the bridge was no more than two feet wide. Beneath was the giddy void, luminous, xanthic green, vast as the gulf between suns.
With steady stride, the red-robed priest walked the dizzy bridge, until he was midway across the awful pit. Suddenly he baited. Price thought at first that he must have been overcome with vertigo. But he casually transferred the coiled blade whip to his left hand, and absently, unconcernedly, scratched his head.
Then Malikar turned hastily, as if he had forgotten something. He walked bade to the ragged edge of the floor, and across it, and vanished along the way Vekyra had taken.
20. The Sleeper in the Mist
THE strange duel of Vekyra and Malikar, for control of the golden serpent, had held Price engrossed. For the moment he had completely forgotten his escaped prisoner, Kreor, who was certain to return as soon as he could find aid. As Malikar went out of view Price awoke to the fact that he must quit the gallery quickly if he wished to continue his free adventures in the mountain.
A glance told him there was only one way to leave the gallery: the passage through which he had come. He hastened back along it, resolving, as he went, to carry on his exploration of the yellow-lit corridors.
Kreor had told him that Aysa lay somewhere down here, sleeping. Price had no belief in the snake-man’s veracity. The story had an element of weird incredibility; but at least, he supposed, the girl was as likely to be here as anywhere else.
Price had reached the spiral passage, started cautiously downward, when he heard footsteps ahead of him, and angry, low-voiced muttering. Retreating hastily to the end of the horizontal passage, he entered it and flattened himself against the wall.
Malikar strode past in a moment, a scowl on his yellow face, grumbling under his breath. Wondering how soon he would return, Price waited until all sound from him had ceased, then entered the sloping way again, and ran down it, ears straining for sound of the alarm that Kreor must be spreading.
The quivering golden atoms in the air became thicker as he descended, until he moved through pallid wraiths of shining xanthic mist. Even then he noticed an odd tickling sensation in his nostrils, a slight breathlessness. But in his preoccupation with other perils he disregarded the menace of the yellow mist.
The tunnel became straight, level. Price followed it into the great, circular room he had surveyed from the high gallery. Curving, gold-frosted walls rose about him, to the dome hundreds of feet above. High under die dome he made out the balcony, through golden haze.
The ragged edge of the yellow-dusted floor was two hundred feet away. Beyond that edge was sheer space, with the single narrow span of the bridge leaping across to the wall beneath the high gallery. At the end of the bridge, he saw a great niche in the wall, a wide shelf above the abyss.
On his right, eighty yards across the floor, was the altar-like dais, with the glittering length of the gold serpent upon it. At first realization that he had come into the lair of the snake, Price started back apprehensively into the passage.
But the yellow reptile’s flat head was resting quietly upon die bright coils. The dread, purple-black eyes were closed. It seemed unaware of his entrance.
The slender bridge drew Price with a sort of fascination. He feared to set foot upon it; knew that he could not easily keep his head above that stupendous chasm of green-gold vapor. But he had a sudden conviction that Aysa must be in the niche beyond it.
It was not a time to hesitate. Malikar, for all he knew, might return at any moment. Kreor would doubtless soon be back with a party to search for him. Worse, the gigantic snake might discover his presence.
Without pausing for any deliberate consideration of his position, Price slipped as silently as he could across die great floor, to its uneven edge at the center of the room. The snake remained motionless. He reached the bridge, set out across it.
Smooth, unrailed, the walk was less than two feet wide. Below was the sheer and awful void, shining immensities goldea-green with dizzying depth.
A professional acrobat, with trained sense of balance, would have found the crossing no feat at all. But Price reeled. He felt a moment of nausea, had to shut his eyes to recover his balance.
He tried not to look into the pit, tried to keep his eyes on die yellow-rimed stone at his feet. But die abyss drew his gaze with a sinister fascination.
He hurried, sometimes half running. His stomach was queerly light. Gild sweat pearled his face. He was panting, gripping his fists until nails cut into palms.
Dizziness seized him again, a sickening wave of it. He stopped to recover himself. Fiercely he willed to forget the yawning, misty void. He tried to think of Aysa. Of the night the Arabs had captured her and bartered her to Joao de Castro. Of their midnight escape from the caravan. Of their sweet, brief days in the hidden garden of Anz.
Head clear again, he hastened on.
PRICE was midway across the gulf when he was first definitely aware of the sleep descending upon him. When he first came into the thicker golden vapor he had noticed a curious tickling in his nostrils, a shortness of breath.
Now sleep was overcoming him like a rising sea. His limbs were suddenly weary, leaden-heavy. Weights pressed down his eyelids. His brain was slow and confused.
Alarmed, he stumbled on through xanthic fog.
With a sigh of vague relief, he staggered across a gold-frosted floor, safely beyond the chasm. He had gained the niche. But the sleep of the thick yellow mist was beating upon him in waves. Beating him down . . . down . . . down. . . .
With chill certainty of dread, he knew that he could not keep awake to cross that fearsome bridge again, where a single false step would send him hurtling into limitless space.
He tried to pull himself together, surveyed the great niche. Its floor was semicircular, with a radius of perhaps forty feet; and black, yellow-frosted rock arched above the recess.
Within it stood four great oblong slabs of gold-rimed stone, like massive tables. Three of them were empty. But on the fourth lay a sleeping figure, wrapped in garments that glittered with fine crystals of gold.
An eager, poignant pain in his heart, Price ran to the slab, and looked fearfully down at the quietly breathing figure.
The sleeper was Aysa.
The girl’s lovely face, like her garments, was covered with fine crystals of yellow frost. His heart checked with sudden despair, Price tenderly brushed one cheek. To his vast relief, the dust of gold came away, leaving soft white skin.
Perhaps she was being slowly transformed to living metal. But if so, the uncanny change was not yet apparent.
“Aysa! Aysa! Wake up!” he called, and shook her; but she did not stir.
The aureate vapor was obviously somniferous. The girl was sunk in the same unnatural slumber that he felt descending upon himself.
He lifted her body. It was completely relaxed, surrendered to oblivion. She was warm, breathing regularly. But he could not wake her.
Blade despair fell upon him, made only keener by the possession of the lovely girl in his arms. He had found her—only to find with her inevitable defeat. But for the increasing influence of the soporific vapor, he could have carried her out and up to clear air, where she might wake normally. But he dared not set out across the narrow bridge, with the frightful risk that his abnormal slumber would hurl them both to death.
Price was still standing beside the slab of stone, Aysa’s shoulders lifted in his arms, fighting the sinister sleep of the golden mist, and staring across the bridge he did not dare attempt to cross, when he saw Malikar.
The black whip still coiled in his hand, the red-robed priest was striding across the floor beyond the abyss, toward the end of the bridge.
Price’s first impulse was to drop the girl, try to hide. Then he was sure that the golden man must already have seen him. And, if not, he would immediately observe that Aysa had been moved, the yellow dust brushed from her face.
Carefully he laid the unconscious girl back upon the rock table. He waited at the end of it, standing, fingers on the helve of the ancient ax. Malikar reached the bridge and started across.
Grim despair rose in Price’s breast, and mute, helpless rage at fate. Why must this insidious sleep steal upon him, just when he had won his way to the girl? Why must Malikar return just now, to crown disaster? The Durand luck—was it mocking him?
His body felt very heavy. His breathing was slow, difficult; the yellow mist still tickled his nostrils. His eyes were leaden. And waves of sleep beat about him, long slow breakers from the ocean of oblivion.
He fought to keep his eyes open, focussed on the burly yellow priest striding so confidently across the bridge. He struggled for mastery over his body, even to deal one blow with Iru’s ax. But the breakers of sleep rolled higher . . . flowed over him . . . drew him down into oblivion.
21. At the Mercy of Malikar
FROM the sleep of the yellow fog, Price woke upon utter darkness. Stripped naked, he lay upon a little pile of straw or coarse grass, that was painful to his skin. Leaping up in uncomprehending alarm, he drove his head against a low stone ceiling.
Dazed, he sank back to his knees, and explored the narrow space about him with his hands. It was a narrow dungeon, some four feet wide and seven long, the roof so low that he could not stand. The walls were cold stone, roughly hewn. The door was a metal grating, through which breathed stagnant, vitiated air. His exploring fingers found nothing in the cell save the pile of moldy straw.
Sickness of despair settled upon him. He was the helpless captive of Malikar. The fact that his misfortune might have been foreseen from the beginning of his mad adventure in the mountain made it no easier to accept.
He tried to shake the metal grille. It seemed immovable; he could not even rattle it. He shouted through it, then. His voice echoed strangely through dark corridors, until it was swallowed in silence.
Baffled, helpless, he flung himself down again on the straw. He was hungry. His mouth was dry and bitter with thirst.
He was entombed within the mountain, apparently forgotten. A man marooned upon an alien planet would not be more completely isolated, he thought—and would at least have the advantage of interesting surroundings to divert his attention.
Time crept past, unnumbered weary hours, while he endured the torture of thirst and hunger, and plumbed the ultimate desolation of despair.
He slept again, and green light awakened him, streaming through the bars. Three blue-robed men were without, armed with pikes and yataghans, one carrying a green-flaring torch.
One of them unlocked the grille, pushed through two pottery bowls, of which one held water, the other a stew of meat thickened with flour. While the men waited, Price drained the one, avidly attacked the other.
When the bowls were empty, the snake-men unlocked the door again; one commanded harshly: “Come!”
They conducted him along the dark corridor, up a sloping, spiral way like that he had followed down to the serpent’s lair, and finally through a wide, arched passage into an amazing room. A long chamber, hewn from the mountain’s black volcanic mass. A score of feet wide, three times that long, with high, vaulted ceiling. The first thing about it that struck Price as strange was that it was illuminated by shaded electric lamps.
Along either wall stood a dozen snake-men, in blue, rigid, staring straight before them, armed with pikes and yataghans.
In the farther end of the room sat Malikar. Beneath a duster of frosted electric globes, he sat behind a heavy mahogany desk, that might have come from some Manhattan office. Upon the desk was an electric fan, whirring noisily, and beside it lay the long black whip with which the priest had castigated the snake.
In crimson robe and skull-cap, the yellow man sat with thick golden hands resting on the desk. The strange eyes in his harsh face, shallow, tawny, watched Price from the moment of his entrance.
Along the stone wall behind Malikar were green-painted steel filing-cabinets, bookcases filled with volumes bound in the Occidental style, and a long bench scattered with scientific instruments—compound microscope, balances, test-tubes, reagents, camera, brass telescope.
Above was a large wall-map of the world, dated 1921, with the imprint of a famous American publishing house.
Those scraps of Western dvilization were as amazing to Price as any of the weird wonders he had encountered in the hidden land. And Malikar seemed to read his astonishment, as the snake-men stopped him before the desk.
“SUPRIZED to find me a cosmopolitan, eh?” the yellow priest asked, in his hard, dead voice. And the language was English.
“Yes,” Price said. “I’m surprized.”
“You are English, aren’t you?”
“American.”
“Ah. I visited New York ten years ago. An interesting city.”
Price stared at him.
“I’ve been going abroad rather frequently, since about the time of the fall of Rome,” the yellow man added. “My last trip was in 1921-22. I spent a few months at Oxford and Heidelberg, to acquaint myself with the latest developments of your crude civilization, and returned home around the world, by way of your country. I use a disguise, of course, that I don’t find necessary here.
“By the way, I believe you followed my route in here from the sea?”
“You mean the road of skulls?”
“Precisely. The human skull is an enduring marker, with high visibility.—But now I’d like some information about yourself, and the circumstances to which I am indebted for your call.”
Price flushed at the mocking irony in his dead, cold tones.
“What’s your name?”
“Price Durand.”
“You are aware that you have been mistaken for an ancient ruler named Iru—whose tomb you appear to have rifled?”
“Perhaps so.”
The shallow, tawny eyes regarded Price fixedly.
“Mr. Durand, you might explain the purpose of your visit.”
Price hesitated, decided to speak. There was no need of caution; nothing could make his circumstances any more hopeless.
“I was looking for Aysa. The girl you abducted.”
“I am glad you are honest, at least,” the golden man mocked him. “But, unfortunately for you, the young woman has been selected to fill a higher destiny than you planned for her. She is to be priestess of the snake—and my consort.”
“Are you turning her to gold?” Price demanded flatly, controlling his anger.
“The snake would accept no ordinary human as its priestess,” Malikar informed him, tauntingly. “She must be of the golden blood.
“Don’t you understand the transformation? The yellow mist in the lair of the snake is a rare auriferous compound, formed in the volcanic heart of the earth. Condensing upon the walls of the temple, it forms yellow frost.
“When inhaled into a living body, this compound replaces the water in the protoplasm, forming a living substance, the color of gold, that is far stronger and more enduring than common flesh.”
“And you expect Aysa to give herself to you?” Price angrily demanded. “You know she hates you—deservedly!”
“I fear her regard for me is not of the kindest,” Malikar leered. “But once of the golden blood, she will not easily escape me. She can not seek death. Taming her may be pleasant sport—and time is nothing to the lucky immortals. She will learn to love me.”
