Абрахам Меррит - The Face In The Abyss

It was their faces that chilled Graydon's blood. There was no mistaking the human element in them. They were man and lizard inextricably, inexplicably, mingled—as man and spider had been mingled in the scarlet thing Suarra had named the Weaver.

Beyond their narrow, pointed foreheads their heads were covered with scarlet scales which stood upright like multiple cockscombs. Their eyes were red, round and unwinking. Their noses were flat, but under them their jaws extended in a broad six–inch snout armed with yellow fangs, strong and cruel as a crocodile's. They had no chins, and only rudiments of ears.

What sickened him most was that around their loins were filthy strips of cloth.

The three Indians stood back to back in a triangle, battering at the lizard–men with maul–headed clubs of some shining metal. That they had given good account of themselves a half dozen of the creatures, heads crushed in, gave proof. But now in rapid succession first one Indian and then a second was pulled to the ground and hidden by the loathsome bodies.

Graydon threw off his paralysis and shouted to the remaining Indian.

He raised his rifle, took rapid aim, and fired. The lizard–man he had picked out staggered under the impact of the bullet, then dropped. At the report, echoing like a miniature peal of thunder from the rocky walls, the pack turned as one toward him, fanged mouths open and staring, bodies crouched, glaring at him with the unwinking red eyes.

The Indian stooped, lifted the body of one of his comrades, and sprang clear. Freed from fear of hitting him, Graydon emptied his rifle into the creatures. He rapidly reloaded his magazine. Then, as he began dropping them, they broke from their stupor, leaped for the walls, and like true lizards swarmed up the sheer faces of the cliffs. Hissing and screeching, they darted into the black mouths of the caves. They vanished into their dark depths.

The Indian stood with his wounded comrade in his arms. There was amazement and awe on his finely featured brown face. Graydon threw the rifle thong around his neck, and held out both hands in the universal gesture of peace. The Indian gently lowered the other to the ground, and bowed low, the backs of his hands to his forehead.

Graydon walked toward the Indian. He stopped for a moment to look more closely at the creatures his bullets had dropped. He saw that only those whose skulls had been pierced by the high power bullets lay there. And the limbs of these drew up and down spasmodically as though they still lived. One of them had been shot straight through the heart. But still that heart beat on. He could see the leathery yellow chest throb with its pulsations. Only those whose skulls had been crushed by the clubs seemed quite dead.

And again the perverted humanness of these things shook him.

One of them lay face down. The stained breech–clout had slipped off. At the base of its spine was a blunt, scaled tail.

He was aware of the first Indian beside him. He saluted again, and methodically began to crush with his club the heads of those Graydon had shot.

"This," he said in the Aymara, "so they cannot live again. It is the only way."

Graydon walked over to the second Indian. He was unconscious and badly mauled, but not necessarily fatally, so he thought, going carefully over the wounds. He took his emergency kit out of the saddle–bag, treated and bandaged the worst of them. He looked up to see the other Indian standing over him, watching with eyes in which the awe was stronger, "If we can get him to some place where those brutes can't interrupt, I can do more for him," said Graydon, also in the Aymara tongue, rising.

"A little way," answered the Indian, "and we shall be safe from them, Mighty Lord!"

"Let's go," said Graydon, in English, grinning at the title.

He bent down and lifted the wounded man's shoulders. The Indian took his feet. Burro once more in the lead, they made their way down the canyon.

The openings of the caves watched them. Within them nothing stirred, but Graydon felt upon him the gaze of malignant eyes—the devil eyes of the lizard–men hidden in the shadow of their dens.

THE CLIFF BURROWS of the lizard–men became fewer; at last the precipices were clean of them. The Indians gave them no attention whatever, satisfied apparently of Graydon's ability to handle any fresh assault by the monsters.

The man they were carrying groaned, opened his eyes, and spoke. His comrade nodded, and set his feet on the ground. He stood upright, looking at Graydon with the same amazement his fellow had shown, and then, as he saw the bracelet of the Snake Mother, with the same awe. The first Indian spoke rapidly, too rapidly, for Graydon to understand. When he had finished, the second took his hand, laid it first upon his heart and then upon his forehead.

"Lord," he said, "my life is yours."

"Where is it that you go?" Graydon asked.

They looked at each other, uneasily.

"Lord, we go to our own place," answered one at last, evasively.

"I suppose you do," said Graydon. "Is that place—Yu–Atlanchi?"

Again they hesitated before replying.

"We do not go into the City, Lord," said the first Indian, finally.

Graydon weighed their evasiveness, their reluctance to give him straight answer, wondering how far he might trust their gratitude. They had asked him no questions whence he had come, nor why, nor who nor what he was. But that reticence had been due to courtesy or some other potent reason; not to any lack of curiosity, for clearly that burned in each. He felt he could expect no such consideration from others he might meet, once he was inside the Hidden Land. He could look for no help, at least not yet, from the Snake Mother. He was convinced that his vision of the Temple had been no illusion. The guiding buglings of the flying serpents, and his immunity from them was proof to him of that. And the Serpent–woman had said that he must win to her by his own wit and courage before she would aid him.

He could not win to her by blundering into Yu–Adanchi like any reckless fool. But where could he hide until he had been able to reconnoiter, to make some plan…

"You," he turned to the wounded man, decision made for good or bad, "have said your life is mine?"

The Indian again took his hand, and touched it to heart and forehead.

"I would enter Yu–Atlanchi," said Graydon, "but for a time I would not be seen by others there. Can you guide me, give me shelter, none but you knowing of my presence, until such time as I choose to go my own way?"

"Do you jest with us, Mighty Lord?" asked the first Indian. "What does one who wears the symbol of the Mother, and who wields this," he pointed to the rifle, "need of our guidance? Are you not a messenger of…her? Did not those who are her servants let you pass? Lord, why jest with us?"

"I do not jest," said Graydon, and, watching them narrowly, added, "Know you the Lord Lanflu?"

Their faces hardened, their eyes became suspicious; he knew that the two hated the master of the dinosaur pack. Good, he would tell them something more.

"I seek the Mother," he said. "If I am not her messenger, I at least am her servant The Lord Lantlu stands between her and me. There are reasons why I must cope with him without her help. Therefore I must have time to plan, and he must know nothing of me until I have made my plan."

There was relief in their faces, and a curious elation. They whispered.

"Lord," said the first, "will you swear by the Mother," again they made reverence to the bracelet, "raise her to your lips and swear by her that what you have said is truth; that you are no friend nor— spy—of the Lord Lantlu?"

Graydon raised the bracelet.