The Collected SF & Fantasy Works. Abraham Merritt

like a Brobdignagian replica of those jointed, fantastic, little painted reptiles the Japanese toy-makers cut from wood.

      It seemed to regard us — mockingly. The pointed head dropped — past us streamed the body. Upon it other pyramids clustered — like the spikes that guarded the back of the nightmare Brontosaurus. Its end came swiftly into sight — its tail another pyramid twin to its head.

      It FLIRTED by — gaily; vanished.

      I had thought the span must disintegrate to follow — and it did not need to! It could move as a COMPOSITE as well as in UNITS. Move intelligently, consciously — as the Smiting Thing had moved.

      “Come!” Norhala’s command checked my thoughts; we fell in behind her. Looking up I caught the friendly sparkle of a star; knew the cleft was widening.

      The star points grew thicker. We stepped out into a valley small as that hollow from which we had fled; ringed like it with heaven-touching summits. I could see clearly. The place was suffused with a soft radiance as though into it the far, bright stars were pouring all their rays, filling it as a cup with their pale flames.

      It was luminous as the Alaskan valleys when on white arctic nights they are lighted, the Athabascans believe, by the gleaming spears of hunting gods. The walls of the valley seemed to be drawn back into infinite distances.

      The shimmering mists that had nimbused Norhala had vanished — or merging into the wan gleaming had become one with it.

      I stared straight at her, striving to clarify in my own clouded thought what it was that I had sensed as inhuman — never of OUR world or its peoples. Yet this conviction came not because of the light that had hovered about her, nor of her summonings of the lightnings; nor even of her control of those — things — which had smitten the armored men and spanned for us the abyss.

      All of that I was certain lay in the domain of the explicable, could be resolved into normality once the basic facts were gained.

      Suddenly, I knew. Side by side with what we term the human there dwelt within this woman an actual consciousness foreign to earth, passionless, at least as we know passion, ordered, mathematical — an emanation of the eternal law which guides the circling stars.

      This it was that had moved in the gestures which had evoked the lightnings. This it was that had spoken in the song which were those gestures transformed into sound. This it was that something greater than my consciousness knew and accepted.

      Something which shared, no — that reigned, serene and untroubled, upon the throne of her mind; something utterly UNCOMPREHENDING, utterly unconscious OF, cosmically blind TO all human emotion; that spread itself like a veil over her own consciousness; that PLATED her thought — that was a strange word — why had it come to me — something that had set its mark upon her like — like — the gigantic claw print on the poppied field, the little print of the dragoned hall.

      I caught at my mind, whirling I thought then in the grip of fantasy; strove by taking minute note of her to bring myself back to normal.

      Her veils had slipped from her, baring her neck, her arms, the right shoulder. Under the smooth throat a buckle of dull gold held the sheer, diaphanous folds of the pale amber silk which swathed the high and rounded breasts, hiding no goddess curve of them.

      A wide and golden girdle clasped the waist, covered the rounded hips and thighs. The long, narrow, and high-arched feet were shod with golden sandals, laced just below the rounded knees with flat turquoise studded bands.

      And shining through the amber folds, as glowing above them, the miracle of her body.

      The dream of master sculptor given life. A goddess of earth’s youth reborn in Himalayan wilds.

      She raised her eyes; broke the long silence.

      “Now being with you,” she said dreamily, “there waken within me old thoughts, old wisdom, old questioning — all that I had forgotten and thought forgotten forever —”

      The golden voice died — she who had spoken was gone from us, like the fading out of a phantom; like the breaking of a film.

      A flicker shot over the skies, another and another. A brilliant ray of intense green like that of a distant searchlight swept to the zenith, hung for a moment and withdrew. Up came pouring the lances and the streamers of the aurora; faster and faster, banners and slender shining spears of green and iridescent blues and smoky, glistening reds.

      The valley sprang into full view.

      I felt Ventnor’s grip upon my wrist. I followed his pointing finger. Into the valley from the right ran a black spur of rock, half a mile from us, fifty feet high.

      Upon its crest stood — Norhala!

      Her arms were lifted to the sparkling sky; her braids were loosened — and as the fires of the aurora rose and fell, raced and were still, the silken cloud of her tresses swirled and eddied with them. Little clouds of coruscations danced gaily like fireflies about and through it.

      And all her bared body was outlined in living light, glowed and throbbed with light — light filled her like a vessel, she bathed in it. She thrust arms through the streaming, flaming locks; held them out from her, prisoned. She swayed slowly, rhythmically; like a faint, golden chiming came the echo of her song.

      Abruptly around her, half circling her on the black spur, gleamed myriads of gem fires. Flares and flames of pale emerald, steady glowing of flame rubies, glints and lambencies of deepest sapphire, of wan sapphire, flickering opalescences, irised glitterings. A moment they gleamed. Then from them came bolt upon bolt of lightning — lightning that darted upon the lovely shape swaying there; lightnings that fell upon her, broke and dashed, cascading, from her radiant body.

      The lightnings bathed her — she bathed in them.

      The skies were covered by a swift mist. The aurora was veiled.

      The valley filled with a palely shimmering radiance which dropped like veils upon it, hiding all within it. Hiding within fold upon luminous fold — Norhala!

      CHAPTER VII

      THE SHAPES IN THE MIST

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      Mutely we faced each other, white and wan in the ghostly light.

      The valley was very still; as silent as though sound had been withdrawn from it. The shimmering radiance suffusing it had thickened perceptibly; hovered over the valley floor faintly sparkling mists; hid it.

      Like a shroud was that silence. Beneath it my mind struggled, its unease, its forebodings growing ever stronger. Silently we repacked the saddlebags; girthed the pony; silently we waited for Norhala’s return.

      Idly I had noted that the place on which we stood must be raised above the level of the vale. Up toward us the gathering mists had been steadily rising; still was their wavering crest a half score feet below us.

      Abruptly out of their dim nebulosity a faintly phosphorescent square broke. It lifted, slowly; then swept, a dully lustrous six-foot cube, up the slope and came to rest almost at our feet. It dwelt there; contemplated us from its myriads of deep-set, sparkling striations.

      In its wake swam, one by one, six others — their tops raising from the vapors like the first, watchfully; like shimmering backs of sea monsters; like turrets of fantastic angled submarines from phosphorescent seas. One by one they skimmed swiftly over the ledge; and one by one they nestled, edge to edge and alternately, against the cube which had gone before.

      In a crescent, they stretched before us. Back from them, a pace, ten paces, twenty, we retreated.

      They lay immobile — staring at us.

      Cleaving the mists, silk of copper hair streaming wide, unearthly eyes lambent, floated up behind them — Norhala. For an instant she was hidden behind their bulk; suddenly was upon them; drifted over them like