Абрахам Меррит - The Face In The Abyss

"Quick!" she cried. "The deck, Graydon!"

They ran up the ramp. They were just in time to see the Lord of Folly thrust the crystal rod down into the pool of violet flame.

Instantly, a pillar of amethyst fire shot up from it, reaching toward the roof of the cavern. It was smoothly round as though carved by sculptor's chisel, and as it drove up there came from it a sustained sighing like the first breath of a tempest. It lighted the cavern with a radiance stronger than sunlight; it destroyed all perspective, so that every object seemed to press forward, standing out in its own proportions as though rid of spacial trammels, freed from the diminishing effects of distance.

The Lord of Folly, far away as they knew him to be, seemed in that strange light to be close enough to touch. The quicksilver globes around the rim of the great bowl beside which he stood had begun to quiver like that in the sistrum of the Serpent–woman.

He looked at them, lifted his rod and pointed to the passage. They could not move, staring at that radiant column, fascinated.

A pulse shook the pillar; a ring of violet incandescence throbbed out of it, like the first ring in a still pool into which a stone has been thrown. It passed through the Lord of Folly, obscuring him in a mist of lavender. It swelled outward a score of feet—and vanished. Of all it had touched, except that figure, there remained—nothing! And from the Lord of Folly, the motley had vanished. He stood there, a withered old man, naked!

Around the pillar for a circle twice twenty feet wide was emptiness!

The sighing pillar pulsed again. A thicker ring widened slowly from it. Ahead of it hopped the Lord of Folly, shaking his staff at them, gesticulating, calling to them to go. They leaped for the ladder—

High over the sighing of the pillar sounded a hideous hissing. From the rear of the cavern poured the lizard–men. They vomited forth by hundreds, leaping down upon the withered figure standing there so quietly. And now the second ring of lambent violet touched the Lord of Folly, passed through him as had the other and went widening outward. It reached the first ranks of the onrushing Urd, lapped them up, and died away. And now within a circle twice twenty feet the cavern floor stood empty.

Into that circle swept more lizard–men, pressed onward by those behind them. The Lord of Folly stepped back, back into a third flaming ripple from the pillar. It widened on, tranquilly. And, like the others, it left behind it—nothing!

"Suarra! Down the ladder! Get to the passage!" gasped Graydon. "The rings are coming faster. They'll reach us. Tyddo knows what he's about. God—if that hell spawn sees you—"

He stopped, both speech and motion frozen. Above the hissing of the horde, the louder sighing of the pillar, arose a screaming like that of a maddened horse. The lizard–men scuttled back. Out through them, halting at the edge of emptiness left by the last ring of flame, came—Nimir!

And dreadful as he had been as the Shadow, dreadful when as Shadow he had poured himself into Cadok, they had been pleasant pictures to what he was now.

For the Dark Master had gotten himself a body! It had been a Yu– Atlanchan, one, no doubt of Lantlu's enemies, provided hastily for his Dark Master's needs. It was swollen. Its outlines wavered, as though the Shadow found it difficult to remain within, was holding its cloak of flesh together by sheer force of will. Its head lolled forward, and suddenly up from behind it shot the face of the Lord of Evil, pale eyes glaring. And Graydon's heart beat chokingly in a throat as dry as dust as he looked upon that bloated, cloudy body, its corpse–face and the face of living evil over it.

Another ring of flame came circling. Whatever the Lord of Folly's immunity from that noose of flame, it was clearly not shared. For Nimir retreated from it, stumbling back on dead feet.

And as he went, the Lord of Folly pointed his rod toward him and laughed.

"Fie upon you, Nimir!" he jeered, "to greet me after all these years in such ill–fitting garments! Draw your tattered cloak more tightly round you, Great One—or better still, go naked to the flame like me! But, I forgot, Master of the World, you cannot!"

Now it seemed to Graydon, mind swimming up through the wave of horror that had covered it, that the Lord of Folly was deliberately baiting Nimir, playing for time or for some other purpose. But the Dark Master took the bait, and rushed at him—and barely saw the hook in time; barely could stagger beyond the reach of the next obliterating ring before it had died, all that had been in its path eaten.

He stumbled back, into the halted horde. At once there was motion among it. Graydon, dropping down the ladder behind Suarra, saw the lizard–men scurrying beyond the widening circle of emptiness, tugging, pulling, hauling away at this and that while the Shadow, holding tight around him its borrowed body, urged them on.

Louder and ever louder grew the sussuration of the naming pillar, faster and faster its pulse, and swifter and wider the flaming rings flung from it.

He ran, Suarra gripping his hand, head turned, unable to take his eyes from that incredible scene. A ring enveloped the ship—and the ship was gone! Another caught a line of the lizard–men laden with coffers, and they were gone! He heard the howling of Nimir—

Suarra drew him, the Lord of Folly pushed him, into the passage. Its opening dropped. He went with them, unseeing, unhearing, as powerless to tear his mind away from what he had just beheld as he had been to tear his gaze from it.

They found the Snake Mother in a room so cluttered with her salvaged treasures that there was little room to move. She had been opening the coffers, rummaging through them. Her hair was threaded with sparkling jewels, there was a wide belt of gems around her waist, and others fell between her little breasts. She was admiring herself in her mirror.

"I am rather beautiful in my way," she said, airily. "At least I have this satisfaction—that there is no one more beautiful in my way! Suarra, child, I'm so glad you found those jewels. I always meant to get them for you. Tyddo"—she raised her hands in mock astonishment— "where are your clothes! To go thus—and at your age!"

"By your ancestors, Adana, I had quite forgotten!" the Lord of Folly hastily snatched up a piece of silk, wrapped it round his withered frame.

"Is it done?" the Serpent–woman's face lost all laughter, was sorrowful.

"It is done, Adana," answered the Lord of Folly. "And none too soon!"

She listened, with no lightening of sorrow, as he told her what had happened in the cavern.

"So much lost!" she whispered. "So much that never can be replaced, never—though the world last forever. My people—oh, my people! And the ship—Well," she brightened, "we got the better of Nimir! But again I say it, he is stronger than I believed. Dearly would I like to know what he saved. I hope he found something that will give him a permanent costume! I wonder whose body he was wearing? Now go away, children—Tyddo and I have work to do."

She dismissed them with a wave of her hand. But as Graydon turned to go, he saw the sorrow creep again over her face, her eyes fill with tears.

FOR THE NEXT two days, Graydon saw nothing of the Snake Mother; little of Regor and Huon. He spent most of his time with Suarra, and glad enough were both to be left alone. He wandered with her through the vast place at will, beholding strange and often disquieting things, experiments of the serpent–people and the ancient Yu–Atlanchans in the reshaping of life, experiments of which the spider–folk and the lizard–folk had been results; grotesque and terrifying shapes; androgynous monstrosities; hybrid prodigies—some of them of bizarre beauty. There was a great library, filled with the metallic paged and pictured books; their glyphs understandable now only by Adana and the Lord of Folly.