The Collected SF & Fantasy Works. Abraham Merritt
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fully an acre. Oblong, with its slender, vari-coloured columns spaced regularly, its walls were like the sliding screens of the Japanese — shoji.
The green dwarf hurried us up a flight of broad steps flanked by great carved serpents, winged and scaled. He stamped twice upon mosaicked stones between two of the pillars, and a screen rolled aside, revealing an immense hall scattered about with low divans on which lolled a dozen or more of the dwarfish men, dressed identically as he.
They sauntered up to us leisurely; the surprised interest in their faces tempered by the same inhumanly gay malice that seemed to be characteristic of all these people we had as yet seen.
“The Afyo Maie awaits them, Rador,” said one.
The green dwarf nodded, beckoned us, and led the way through the great hall and into a smaller chamber whose far side was covered with the opacity I had noted from the aerie of the cliff. I examined the — blackness — with lively interest.
It had neither substance nor texture; it was not matter — and yet it suggested solidity; an entire cessation, a complete absorption of light; an ebon veil at once immaterial and palpable. I stretched, involuntarily, my hand out toward it, and felt it quickly drawn back.
“Do you seek your end so soon?” whispered Rador. “But I forget — you do not know,” he added. “On your life touch not the blackness, ever. It —”
He stopped, for abruptly in the density a portal appeared; swinging out of the shadow like a picture thrown by a lantern upon a screen. Through it was revealed a chamber filled with a soft rosy glow. Rising from cushioned couches, a woman and a man regarded us, half leaning over a long, low table of what seemed polished jet, laden with flowers and unfamiliar fruits.
About the room — that part of it, at least, that I could see — were a few oddly shaped chairs of the same substance. On high, silvery tripods three immense globes stood, and it was from them that the rose glow emanated. At the side of the woman was a smaller globe whose roseate gleam was tempered by quivering waves of blue.
“Enter Rador with the strangers!” a clear, sweet voice called.
Rador bowed deeply and stood aside, motioning us to pass. We entered, the green dwarf behind us, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the doorway fade as abruptly as it had appeared and again the dense shadow fill its place.
“Come closer, strangers. Be not afraid!” commanded the bell-toned voice.
We approached.
The woman, sober scientist that I am, made the breath catch in my throat. Never had I seen a woman so beautiful as was Yolara of the Dweller’s city — and none of so perilous a beauty. Her hair was of the colour of the young tassels of the corn and coiled in a regal crown above her broad, white brows; her wide eyes were of grey that could change to a cornflower blue and in anger deepen to purple; grey or blue, they had little laughing devils within them, but when the storm of anger darkened them — they were not laughing, no! The silken webs that half covered, half revealed her did not hide the ivory whiteness of her flesh nor the sweet curve of shoulders and breasts. But for all her amazing beauty, she was — sinister! There was cruelty about the curving mouth, and in the music of her voice — not conscious cruelty, but the more terrifying, careless cruelty of nature itself.
The girl of the rose wall had been beautiful, yes! But her beauty was human, understandable. You could imagine her with a babe in her arms — but you could not so imagine this woman. About her loveliness hovered something unearthly. A sweet feminine echo of the Dweller was Yolara, the Dweller’s priestess — and as gloriously, terrifyingly evil!
CHAPTER XIV
THE JUSTICE OF LORA
As I looked at her the man arose and made his way round the table toward us. For the first time my eyes took in Lugur. A few inches taller than the green dwarf, he was far broader, more filled with the suggestion of appalling strength.
The tremendous shoulders were four feet wide if an inch, tapering down to mighty thewed thighs. The muscles of his chest stood out beneath his tunic of red. Around his forehead shone a chaplet of bright-blue stones, sparkling among the thick curls of his silver-ash hair.
Upon his face pride and ambition were written large — and power still larger. All the mockery, the malice, the hint of callous indifference that I had noted in the other dwarfish men were there, too — but intensified, touched with the satanic.
The woman spoke again.
“Who are you strangers, and how came you here?” She turned to Rador. “Or is it that they do not understand our tongue?”
“One understands and speaks it — but very badly, O Yolara,” answered the green dwarf.
“Speak, then, that one of you,” she commanded.
But it was Marakinoff who found his voice first, and I marvelled at the fluency, so much greater than mine, with which he spoke.
“We came for different purposes. I to seek knowledge of a kind; he”— pointing to me “of another. This man”— he looked at Olaf —“to find a wife and child.”
The grey-blue eyes had been regarding O’Keefe steadily and with plainly increasing interest.
“And why did YOU come?” she asked him. “Nay — I would have him speak for himself, if he can,” she stilled Marakinoff peremptorily.
When Larry spoke it was haltingly, in the tongue that was strange to him, searching for the proper words.
“I came to help these men — and because something I could not then understand called me, O lady, whose eyes are like forest pools at dawn,” he answered; and even in the unfamiliar words there was a touch of the Irish brogue, and little merry lights danced in the eyes Larry had so apostrophized.
“I could find fault with your speech, but none with its burden,” she said. “What forest pools are I know not, and the dawn has not shone upon the people of Lora these many sais of laya. 1 But I sense what you mean!”
The eyes deepened to blue as she regarded him. She smiled.
“Are there many like you in the world from which you come?” she asked softly. “Well, we soon shall —”
Lugur interrupted her almost rudely and glowering.
“Best we should know how they came hence,” he growled.
She darted a quick look at him, and again the little devils danced in her wondrous eyes.
Unquestionably there is a subtle difference between time as we know it and time in this subterranean land — its progress there being slower. This, however, is only in accord with the well-known doctrine of relativity, which predicates both space and time as necessary inventions of the human mind to orient itself to the conditions under which it finds itself. I tried often to measure this difference, but could never do so to my entire satisfaction. The closest I can come to it is to say that an hour of our time is the equivalent of an hour and five-eighths in Muria. For further information upon this matter of relativity the reader may consult any of the numerous books upon the subject. — W. T. G.
“Yes, that is true,” she said. “How came you here?”
Again it was Marakinoff who answered — slowly, considering every word.
“In the world above,” he said, “there are ruins of cities not built by any of those who now dwell there. To us these places called, and we sought for knowledge of the wise ones who made them. We found a passageway. The way led us downward to a door in yonder cliff, and through it we came here.”
“Then have you found what you sought?” spoke she. “For we are of those who built the cities. But this gateway in the rock — where is it?”
“After