The Collected SF & Fantasy Works. Abraham Merritt

      “And yet,” he was quiet enough now, “I’m a bit scared. They’ve got the Keth ray and those gravity-destroying bombs —”

      “Gravity-destroying bombs!” I gasped.

      “Sure,” he said. “The little fairy that sent the trees and stones kiting up from Lugur’s garden. Marakinoff licked his lips over them. They cut off gravity, just about as the shadow screens cut off light — and consequently whatever’s in their range goes shooting just naturally up to the moon —

      “They get my goat, why deny it?” went on Larry. “With them and the Keth and gentle invisible soldiers walking around assassinating at will — well, the worst Bolsheviki are only puling babes, eh, Doc?

      “I don’t mind the Shining One,” said O’Keefe, “one splash of a downtown New York high-pressure fire hose would do for it! But the others — are the goods! Believe me!”

      But for once O’Keefe’s confidence found no echo within me. Not lightly, as he, did I hold that dread mystery, the Dweller — and a vision passed before me, a vision of an Apocalypse undreamed by the Evangelist.

      A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil — of peoples passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-indeath which I had seen enfold the sacrifices — of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray’s rhythmic death — of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work — of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller’s court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell — of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold this devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread!

      And then a world that was all colossal reek of cruelty and terror; a welter of lusts, of hatreds and of torment; a chaos of horror in which the Dweller waxing ever stronger, the ghastly hordes of those it had consumed growing ever greater, wreaked its inhuman will!

      At the last a ruined planet, a cosmic plague, spinning through the shuddering heavens; its verdant plains, its murmuring forests, its meadows and its mountains manned only by a countless crew of soulless, mindless dead-alive, their shells illumined with the Dweller’s infernal glory — and flaming over this vampirized earth like a flare from some hell far, infinitely far, beyond the reach of man’s farthest flung imagining — the Dweller!

      Rador jumped to his feet; walked to the whispering globe. He bent over its base; did something with its mechanism; beckoned to us. The globe swam rapidly, faster than ever I had seen it before. A low humming arose, changed into a murmur, and then from it I heard Lugur’s voice clearly.

      “It is to be war then?”

      There was a chorus of assent — from the Council, I thought.

      “I will take the tall one named — Larree.” It was the priestess’s voice. “After the three tal, you may have him, Lugur, to do with as you will.”

      “No!” it was Lugur’s voice again, but with a rasp of anger. “All must die.”

      “He shall die,” again Yolara. “But I would that first he see Lakla pass — and that she know what is to happen to him.”

      “No!” I started — for this was Marakinoff. “Now is no time, Yolara, for one’s own desires. This is my counsel. At the end of the three tal Lakla will come for our answer. Your men will be in ambush and they will slay her and her escort quickly with the Keth. But not till that is done must the three be slain — and then quickly. With Lakla dead we shall go forth to the Silent Ones — and I promise you that I will find the way to destroy them!”

      “It is well!” It was Lugur.

      “It IS well, Yolara.” It was a woman’s voice, and I knew it for that old one of ravaged beauty. “Cast from your mind whatever is in it for this stranger — either of love or hatred. In this the Council is with Lugur and the man of wisdom.”

      There was a silence. Then came the priestess’s voice, sullen but — beaten.

      “It is well!”

      “Let the three be taken now by Rador to the temple and given to the High Priest Sator”— thus Lugur —“until what we have planned comes to pass.”

      Rador gripped the base of the globe; abruptly it ceased its spinning. He turned to us as though to speak and even as he did so its bell note sounded peremptorily and on it the colour films began to creep at their accustomed pace.

      “I hear,” the green dwarf whispered. “They shall be taken there at once.” The globe grew silent. He stepped toward us.

      “You have heard,” he turned to us.

      “Not on your life, Rador,” said Larry. “Nothing doing!” And then in the Murian’s own tongue. “We follow Lakla, Rador. And YOU lead the way.” He thrust the pistol close to the green dwarf’s side.

      Rador did not move.

      “Of what use, Larree?” he said, quietly. “Me you can slay — but in the end you will be taken. Life is not held so dear in Muria that my men out there or those others who can come quickly will let you by — even though you slay many. And in the end they will overpower you.”

      There was a trace of irresolution in O’Keefe’s face.

      “And,” added Rador, “if I let you go I dance with the Shining One — or worse!”

      O’Keefe’s pistol hand dropped.

      “You’re a good sport, Rador, and far be it from me to get you in bad,” he said. “Take us to the temple — when we get there — well, your responsibility ends, doesn’t it?”

      The green dwarf nodded; on his face a curious expression — was it relief? Or was it emotion higher than this?

      He turned curtly.

      “Follow,” he said. We passed out of that gay little pavilion that had come to be home to us even in this alien place. The guards stood at attention.

      “You, Sattoya, stand by the globe,” he ordered one of them. “Should the Afyo Maie ask, say that I am on my way with the strangers even as she has commanded.”

      We passed through the lines to the corial standing like a great shell at the end of the runway leading into the green road.

      “Wait you here,” he said curtly to the driver. The green dwarf ascended to his seat, sought the lever and we swept on — on and out upon the glistening obsidian.

      Then Rador faced us and laughed.

      “Larree,” he cried, “I love you for that spirit of yours! And did you think that Rador would carry to the temple prison a man who would take the chances of torment upon his own shoulders to save him? Or you, Goodwin, who saved him from the rotting death? For what did I take the corial or lift the veil of silence that I might hear what threatened you —”

      He swept the corial to the left, away from the temple approach.

      “I am done with Lugur and with Yolara and the Shining One!” cried Rador. “My hand is for you three and for Lakla and those to whom she is handmaiden!”

      The shell leaped forward; seemed to fly.

       1. A tal in Muria is the equivalent of thirty hours of earth surface time. — W. T. G.

      CHAPTER XXII

       THE CASTING OF THE SHADOW

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