Абрахам Меррит - The Face In The Abyss

But Graydon was silent.

There came from the Shadow a whispering laugh. It wavered—and was gone!

Graydon waited, like a hare which has heard the fox go from where it hides, but lingers to be sure. After a time he knew definitely that the Shadow had departed. There was nothing of it left; no unseen crouching power awaiting its chance to strike. He relaxed, stood upon numb and uncertain feet, fighting a violent nausea.

And as he stood, he felt a touch upon his ankle, looked down and saw reaching from behind the edge of the carven screen a long and sinewy arm covered with scarlet hair. The needled, pointed fingers felt carefully around the metal link that fettered him, snapped it open, crept to the other and released it while Graydon stood staring stupidly, unbelievingly, at it.

A face peered round the screen's edge, chinless, scarlet elf locks falling over a sloping forehead, golden eyes filled with melancholy staring at him.

The face of Kon, the spider–man!

KON'S FACE was distorted by what was undoubtedly intended for a reassuring smile. Graydon, limp with reaction from his ordeal, dropped to his hands and knees. Kon reached over the side of the dais and lifted him up as easily as though he had been a puppy. Grotesque though he was, Graydon saw him then as more beautiful than any of those phantom women who had almost lured him into the Shadow's net. He put his arms around the hairy shoulders and clung tightly to them. The spider–man patted him on the back with his little upper hands, making odd comforting clicking sounds.

From the garden came a shrill humming as of thousands of bees in swarm. Its flowers and trees were bending and twisting as though blown by a strong wind. Kon's huge eyes scanned it doubtfully, then, with Graydon still held close, he slipped around the edge of the screen. The humming in the garden rose octaves higher in pitch, threatening and—summoning.

As they turned its edge, Graydon saw that the screen was not detached as he had supposed. It was in reality a sculptured alcove, cut from the front of a buttress which thrust into the red cavern like the prow of a ship. A smooth cliff of black rock angled back from it.

Crouching at the base of this cliff, their scarlet hair causing them to be barely discernible in the rubrous haze, were two more spider– men. They arose as Kon swung toward them. Graydon had a sense of weird duplication as they regarded him with their sorrowful golden eyes—as though not one Kon had come for him, but three. Clutched in the terminations of their four middle arms, or feet, were long metal bars like that which Regor wore, but unlike his, they had handgrips and ended in spiked knobs. Two of these bars they passed to Kon. Mingled now with the insistent humming of the garden was a faint hissing undertone, far away, and rapidly growing closer; the clamor of the Urd.

Graydon wriggled in Ken's arm, and motioned to be set down. The spider–man shook his head. He clicked to the others, gripped his two bars in the opposite hand, and dropping upon four of his stilts turned sharply from the wall of rock. He scuttled toward the wall of murk half a mile away. His comrades ranged on each side of him. They ran bent almost double, with the speed of a racing horse. They entered the rusty murk. The humming and hissing lessened to a faint drone, were swallowed by the silence.

Ahead, a barrier of reddish rock sprang out of the haze, vanishing in the heights above. At its base were great bowlders, fallen from the cliff, and among them hundreds of smaller ones, smooth and ochreous, and shaped with a queer regularity. The spider–men slowed to a walk, scanning the face of the precipice. Suddenly Graydon smelled the reek of the lizard–folk, knew those oddly similar bowlders for what they were—

"Kon!" he cried, pointing. "The Urd!"

The bowlders moved, sprang up, rushed upon them—a pack of the lizard– men, hissing, slaver dripping from ranged jaws, red eyes glowing.

Before they could turn, the pack was all around them. Kon dropped upon three stilts, out swung two other stilts whirling the great bars. His comrades rose on their hinder legs, a bar gripped in each of their four free hands. They flailed through the first ranks of the encircling pack, mowing them down. They re–formed into a triangle, back to back. Into the center of this triangle Kon set Graydon with an admonitory click. Out swung the bars again, cracking the pointed skulls of the Urd, unable to strike with their stumpy arms under that deadly ring, or to break through it.

The spider–men retreated slowly along the base of the cliff, cutting their way as they went. Graydon could no longer watch the fight, intent upon keeping his feet as he walked over the writhing bodies which paved the way. He heard a sharp clicking from Kon, felt his arm embrace and lift him. There was a quick rush forward. They had waded through the waves of the Urd. Down upon four stilts they dropped, and raced away, clicking triumphantly as they sped along. The hissing of the pack and the pad of their pursuing feet died.

Their pace decreased, they went more and more slowly, Kon studying the scarp. He halted, set Graydon down, and pointed to the cliff. High above the floor of the cavern, set in the red rock face, was an oval black stone. The spider–man scuttled up to it, raised his long arms, and began feeling delicately around it. He gave a satisfied click, and keeping his talons upon a spot at the side of the stone, beckoned to Graydon.

He took his hand, and placed it against the cliff with the fingers spread wide and the heel of the hand pressing hard against the rock. Thrice he did this, and then, lifting him, carefully placed his fingers where his own claws had rested. Graydon understood. He was showing him where some mechanism was located which Kon's sharp–pointed digits could not motivate. He pressed fingers and heel of hand as directed.

A stone moved slowly upward like a curtain, revealing a dark tunnel. Kon clicked to his comrades. The pair passed warily through the black opening, bars ready. Soon they reappeared and conferred. The spider– man patted Graydon on the back, and pointing to the tunnel, followed him into it. Here Kon again felt along the inner edge of the opening until he had found what he sought, and again he pressed Graydon's hand upon a spot which seemed to his touch precisely the same as the surrounding surface, as had the outer lock. The curtain of rock dropped, leaving him in utter blackness.

Darkness evidently meant no more to the spider–men than it did to the lizard–folk, for he heard them moving on ahead of him. Momentary panic seized him that they might not be able to understand his limitations and would leave him behind. Before he could cry out, Kon's arm was around him, had lifted him up and carried him away.

On they went, and on, through the darkness. Graydon felt rise around him a fine, impalpable dust, so fine that only by the millstones of incalculable ages could it have been ground to such tenuity. It told him that this passage was one unused by the lizard–folk or any other, and evidently it told the spider–men the same thing, for they went on confidently, with increased speed.

The darkness began to gray; now he could see the walls of the tunnel; and now they passed out of it into an immense chamber cut in the living rock. Dim within it as the light might be, it seemed glaring daylight to Graydon after the rust haze of the Shadow's cavern and the blackness of the passage. It came through fissures in the far side of the place. The impalpable dust was thick upon its floor.

In its center was a huge oval pool in which glimmered water, and around whose raised rim squatted a score of figures like gray gnomes. They were motionless, rigid. The spider–men drew together and clicked busily to each other, looking about them with obvious perplexity. Graydon walked over to the pool and touched one of the squatting gnomes. It was stone. He looked at the figures more closely. They were carven effigies of hairless, tailless, gray ape–men. Their long upper lips dropped to mouths beneath which were well–defined chins. The sinewy hands of their long arms knuckled the stone on which they sat. Their foreheads, though retreating, were semi–human. In the stone sockets of their eyes were gems resembling smoky topazes. With these topaz eyes they stared at the pool with something of that same puzzled melancholy which filled the golden eyes of Kon and his mates.