The Collected SF & Fantasy Works. Abraham Merritt

your eyes on the captive Irish princess!” he muttered to himself.

      “Rador goes to meet one of the ladala who is slipping through with news,” said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food. “Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the Akka — for there will be battle, and we must prepare. Nak,” she added, “is he who went before me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry.” She stole a swift, mischievous glance at him. “He is headman of all the Akka.”

      “Just what forces can we muster against them when they come, darlin’?” said Larry.

      “Darlin’?”— the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word —“what’s that?”

      “It’s a little word that means Lakla,” he answered. “It does — that is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry.”

      “I like that word,” mused Lakla.

      “You can even say Larry darlin’!” suggested O’Keefe.

      “Larry darlin’!” said Lakla. “When they come we shall have first of all my Akka —”

      “Can they fight, mavourneen?” interrupted Larry.

      “Can they fight! My Akka!” Again her eyes flashed. “They will fight to the last of them — with the spears that give the swift rotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those Saddu there —” She pointed through a rift in the foliage across which, on the surface of the sea, was floating one of the moon globes — and now I know why Rador had warned Larry against a plunge there. “With spears and clubs and with teeth and nails and spurs — they are a strong and brave people, Larry — darlin’, and though they hurl the Keth at them, it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while they are passing into the nothingness!”

      “And have we none of the Keth?” he asked.

      “No”— she shook her head —“none of their weapons have we here, although it was — it was the Ancient Ones who shaped them.”

      “But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?” I cried. “Surely they can tell —”

      “No,” she said slowly. “No — there is something you must know — and soon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You, especially, Goodwin, who worship wisdom.”

      “Then,” said Larry, “we have the Akka; and we have the four men of us, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges — an’— an’ the power of the Three — but what about the Shining One, Fireworks —”

      “I do not know.” Again the indecision that had been in her eyes when Yolara had launched her defiance crept back. “The Shining One is strong — and he has his — slaves!”

      “Well, we’d better get busy good and quick!” the O’Keefe’s voice rang. But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would pursue the matter no further. The trouble fled from her eyes — they danced.

      “Larry darlin’?” she murmured. “I like the touch of your lips —”

      “You do?” he whispered, all thought flying of anything but the beautiful, provocative face so close to his. “Then, acushla, you’re goin’ to get acquainted with ’em! Turn your head, Doc!” he said.

      And I turned it. There was quite a long silence, broken by an interested, soft outburst of gentle boomings from the serving frog-maids. I stole a glance behind me. Lakla’s head lay on the Irishman’s shoulder, the golden eyes misty sunpools of love and adoration; and the O’Keefe, a new look of power and strength upon his clear-cut features, was gazing down into them with that look which rises only from the heart touched for the first time with that true, all-powerful love, which is the pulse of the universe itself, the real music of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is stronger than death itself, immortal as the high gods and the true soul of all that mystery we call life.

      Then Lakla raised her hands, pressed down Larry’s head, kissed him between the eyes, drew herself with a trembling little laugh from his embrace.

      “The future Mrs. Larry O’Keefe, Goodwin,” said Larry to me a little unsteadily.

      I took their hands — and Lakla kissed me!

      She turned to the booming — smiling — frog-maids; gave them some command, for they filed away down the path. Suddenly I felt, well, a little superfluous.

      “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I think I’ll go up the path there again and look about.”

      But they were so engrossed with each other that they did not even hear me — so I walked away, up to the embrasure where Rador had taken me. The movement of the batrachians over the bridge had ceased. Dimly at the far end I could see the cluster of the garrison. My thoughts flew back to Lakla and to Larry.

      What was to be the end?

      If we won, if we were able to pass from this place, could she live in our world? A product of these caverns with their atmosphere and light that seemed in some subtle way to be both food and drink — how would she react to the unfamiliar foods and air and light of outer earth? Further, here so far as I was able to discover, there were no malignant bacilli — what immunity could Lakla have then to those microscopic evils without, which only long ages of sickness and death have bought for us a modicum of protection? I began to be oppressed. Surely they bad been long enough by themselves. I went down the path.

      I heard Larry.

      “It’s a green land, mavourneen. And the sea rocks and dimples around it — blue as the heavens, green as the isle itself, and foam horses toss their white manes, and the great clean winds blow over it, and the sun shines down on it like your eyes, acushla —”

      “And are you a king of Ireland, Larry darlin’?” Thus Lakla —

      But enough!

      At last we turned to go — and around the corner of the path I caught another glimpse of what I have called the lake of jewels. I pointed to it.

      “Those are lovely flowers, Lakla,” I said. “I have never seen anything like them in the place from whence we come.”

      She followed my pointing finger — laughed.

      “Come,” she said, “let me show you them.”

      She ran down an intersecting way, we following; came out of it upon a little ledge close to the brink, three feet or more I suppose about it. The Golden Girl’s voice rang out in a high-pitched, tremulous, throbbing call.

      The lake of jewels stirred as though a breeze had passed over it; stirred, shook, and then began to move swiftly, a shimmering torrent of shining flowers down upon us! She called again, the movement became more rapid; the gem blooms streamed closer — closer, wavering, shifting, winding — at our very feet. Above them hovered a little radiant mist. The Golden Girl leaned over; called softly, and up from the sparkling mass shot a green vine whose heads were five flowers of flaming ruby — shot up, flew into her hand and coiled about the white arm, its quintette of lambent blossoms — regarding us!

      It was the thing Lakla had called the Yekta; that with which she had threatened the priestess; the thing that carried the dreadful death — and the Golden Girl was handling it like a rose!

      Larry swore — I looked at the thing more closely. It was a hydroid, a development of that strange animal-vegetable that, sometimes almost microscopic, waves in the sea depths like a cluster of flowers paralyzing its prey with the mysterious force that dwells in its blossom heads! ²

      “Put it down, Lakla,” the distress in O’Keefe’s voice was deep. Lakla laughed mischievously, caught the real fear for her in his eyes; opened her hand, gave another faint call — and back it flew to its fellows.

      “Why, it wouldn’t hurt me, Larry!” she expostulated. “They know me!”

      “Put