The Face In The Abyss

Chapter VII The Guarded Frontier

THE DIM GREENNESS of a forest glade shadowed Graydon when he opened his eyes. He was lying upon his blanket, and close beside him was his burro, placidly nibbling the grass.

Some one stirred in the shadow and came toward him. It was an Indian, but Graydon had never seen an Indian quite like him. His features were clean cut and delicate, his skin was more olive than brown. He wore a corselet and kilt of quilted blue silk. There was a thin circlet of gold around his forehead, upon his back a long bow and quiver of arrows, and in his hand a spear of black metal. He held out a silken– wrapped packet.

Graydon opened the packet. Within was Suarra's bracelet of the Snake Mother and a caraquenque feather, its shaft cunningly inlaid with gold.

"Where is she who sent me these?" he asked. The Indian smiled, shook his head, and laid two fingers over his lips. Graydon understood—upon the messenger had been laid the command of silence. He restored the feather to its covering, and thrust it into the pocket over his heart. The bracelet he slipped with some difficulty over his own wrist.

The Indian pointed to the sky, then to the trees at his left. Graydon knew that he was telling him they must be going. He nodded and took the lead–strap of the burro.

For an hour they threaded the forest—trailless so far as he could see. They passed out of it into a narrow valley between high hills. These cut off all view of the circular mountain, even had he known in what direction to look for it. The sun was half down the western sky. They reached, at dusk, a level stretch of rock through which a little stream cut a wandering channel. Here, the Indian indicated by signs that they would pass the night.

Graydon hobbled the burro where it could graze, made a fire and began to prepare a sketchy meal from his dwindling stores. The Indian had disappeared. Shortly he returned with a couple of trout. Graydon cooked them.

Night fell and with it the Andean cold. Graydon rolled himself up in his blanket, closed his eyes, and began to reconstruct, as far as possible, every step of the afternoon's journey; impressing upon his memory each landmark he had carefully noted after they had emerged from the trees. Soon these blended into a phantasmagoria of jeweled caverns, great faces of stone, dancing old men, in motley—then Suarra floated among these phantoms, banishing them. And then she, too, vanished.

It was long after noon when, having passed through another belt of trees, the Indian halted at the edge of a plateau stretching for unknown distances west and east. He pushed aside some bushes and pointed down. Graydon, following the pointing finger, saw a faint trail a hundred feet beneath him—some animal's runway, he thought, not marked out by human feet He looked at the Indian, who nodded, pointed to the burro and to Graydon, then down to the trail and eastward. Pointed next to himself, and back the way they had come.

"Plain enough!" said Graydon. "Frontier of Yu–Atlanchi. And here is where I'm deported."

The Indian broke his silence. He could not have understood what Graydon had said, but he recognized the name of Yu–Atlanchi.

"Yu–Atlanchi," he repeated gravely, and swung his hand behind him in a wide gesture. "Yu–Atlanchi! Death! Death!"

He stood aside, and waited for Graydon and the burro to pass him. When man and beast had reached the bottom, he waved his hand in farewell. He slipped back into the forest.

Graydon plodded on for perhaps a mile, eastward as he had been directed. He sank in the underbrush and waited for an hour. Then he turned back, retraced his way, and driving the burro before him reclimbed the ascent. He had but one thought, one desire—to return to Suarra. No matter what the peril—to go back to her. He drew over the edge of the plateau, and stood listening. He heard nothing. He pushed ahead of the burro—walked forward.

Instantly, close above his head, a horn note rang out—menacingly, angrily. There was a whirring of great wings.

Instinctively, he threw up his arm. It was the one upon whose wrist he had fastened the bracelet of Suarra. The purple gems flashed in the sun. He beard the horn note sound again, protestingly. There was a whistling flurry in the air close beside him, as of some unseen winged creature striving frantically to check its flight.

Something struck the bracelet a glancing blow. Something like a rapier–point thrust through his shoulder just where it joined the base of his neck. He felt the blood gush forth. Something struck his breast. He toppled over the verge of the plateau, and rolled over and over down to the trail.

When he came to his senses, he was lying at the foot of the slope with the burro standing beside him. He must have lain there unconscious for a considerable time, for shoulder and arm were stiff, and the stained ground testified he had lost much blood. There was a gash above his temple where he had struck a stone during his fall.

He got up, groaning. The shoulder wound was in an awkward place for examination, but so far as he could tell, it was a clean puncture. Whatever had made the wound had passed through the muscles of the shoulder and neck. It must have missed the artery by a hair, he thought, painfully dressing the stab.

Whatever had done it? Well, he knew what had wounded him. One of those feathered serpents he had seen above the abyss of the Face! One of those Messengers, as Suarra had called them, which had so inexplicably let the four of them pass the frontiers of the Forbidden Land.

It could have killed him…it had meant to kill him…what had checked its slaying thrust…diverted it? He strove to think…God, how his head hurt! What had stopped it…Why, the bracelet, of course…the glint of the purple gems.

But that must mean the Messengers would not attack the wearer of the bracelet That it was a passport to the Forbidden Land. Was that why Suarra had sent it to him? So that he could return?

Well, he couldn't determine that now…he must heal his wounds first…must find help…somewhere.., before he could go back to Suarra…

Graydon staggered along the trail, the burro at his heels. It stood patiently that night while he tossed and moaned beside the ashes of a dead fire, and fever crept slowly through every vein. Patiently it followed him the next day as he stumbled along the trail, and fell and rose, and fell and rose, sobbing, gesticulating, laughing, cursing—in the scorching grip of that fever. And patiently it trotted after the Indian hunters who ran across Graydon when death was squatting at his feet, and, who being Aymara and not Quicha, carried him to the isolated little hamlet of Chupan, nearest spot in all that wilderness where there were men of his own color who could look after him; and doctored him with their own unorthodox but highly efficient medicines as they went.

Two months passed before Graydon, wounds healed and his strength back, could leave Chupan. How much of his recovery was due to the nursing of the old padre and his household, and how much to the doses the Indians had forced into him, he did not know. Nor did he know how much he had revealed in his ravings. But, he reflected, these had probably been in English, and none in Chupan, nor the Indian hunters had a word of that language. Yet it was true that the old padre had been strangely disturbed about his leaving, had talked long about demons, their lures and devices, and of the wisdom of giving them wide berth.

During his convalescence there had been plenty of time for him to analyze what he had beheld; rationalize it; dissolve its mystery. Had the three actually turned into globules of gold? There was another explanation—and a far more probable one. The cavern of the Face might be a laboratory of Nature, a crucible wherein, under unknown rays, transmutation of one element into another took place. Within the rock out of which the Face was carved might be some substance which by these rays was transformed into gold. Fulfillment of that old dream…or inspiration…of the ancient alchemists which modern science is turning into reality. Had not Rutherford, the Englishman, succeeded in turning an entirely different element into pure copper by depriving it of an electron or two? Was not the final product of uranium, the vibrant mother of radium—dull, inert lead?

The concentration of the rays upon the Face was terrific. Beneath the bombardment of those radiant particles of energy the bodies of the three might have been swiftly disintegrated. The three droplets of gold might have been oozing from the rock behind them…the three had vanished…he had seen the drops…thought the three changed into them…an illusion.

And the Face did not really sweat and weep and slaver gold. That was the action of the rays upon it. The genius who had cut it from the stone had manipulated that…Of course!

The lure of the Face? Its power? A simple matter of psychology—once one understood it. That same genius had taken the stone, worked upon it, and reproduced so accurately man's hunger for power that inevitably, he who looked upon it responded. The subconsciousness, the consciousness as well, leaped up in response to what the Face portrayed with such tremendous fidelity. In proportion to the strength of that desire within him was the strength of the response. Like calls to like. The stronger draws the weaker. A simple matter of psychology. Again—of course!

The winged serpents—the Messengers? There, indeed, one's feet were solidly on scientific fact. Ambrose Bierce had deduced in his story "The Damned Thing" that there might be such things: H. G. Wells, the Englishman, had played with the same idea in his "Invisible Man"; and de Maupassant had worked it out, just before he went insane, in his haunting tale of the Horla. Science knew the thing was possible, and scientists the world over were trying to find the secret to use in the next war.

Yes, the invisible Messengers were easily explained. Conceive something that neither absorbs light nor throws it back. In such case the light rays stream over that something as water in a swift brook streams over a submerged bowlder. The bowlder is not visible. Nor would be the thing over which the light rays streamed. The light rays would curve over it, bringing to the eyes of the observer whatever image they carried from behind. The intervening object would be invisible. Because it neither absorbed nor threw back light, it could be nothing else.

There is a traveler in the desert. Suddenly he sees before him a rivulet and green palms. They are not there. They are far behind the mountain at whose base they seem to be. The rays of light carrying their images have struck upward, angled over the mountain, struck down, and have been reflected in denser hot air. It is a mirage. The example was not entirely analogous, but the basic principle was the same.

Ah, yes, thought Graydon—the winged Messengers were not hard to understand. And as for their shape—is not the bird but a feathered serpent, or feathered lizard? The plumes of the bird of paradise are only developments of the snake's scales. Science says so. The bird is a feathered serpent. The first bird, the Archeopterix, still had the jaws and teeth and tail of its reptilian ancestors.

But—these creatures understanding and obeying human command? Well, why not? The dog could be trained to do the same thing. There was nothing to puzzle about in that. The dog is intelligent. There was no reason why the flying serpents should have less intelligence than the dog. And that explained the recognition of Suarra's bracelet by the unseen creature that had attacked him.

The Snake Mother?—well, he'd have to see her before he believed in anything half–snake and half–woman. Let that be.

Having explained everything except the Serpent–woman to his own satisfaction, Graydon ceased to think, and in consequence grew rapidly better.

When he had fully recovered, he tried to pay some of his debt of life to whomsoever it was he owed that life. He sent messengers to Cerro de Pasco for funds, and other things. The padre could have the altar trappings he had long wished for, and what he gave the Indians made them thank their patron saints or secret gods that they had found him.

He had been lucky, too. He had lost his rifle in his wanderings, and his messengers had been able to pick up a superior, high–power gun in Cerro.

And now, with plenty of ammunition, four automatics, and all the equipment he needed, Graydon was on his way back to the hidden haunted trail. With him was that same patient burro which had shared his adventures in the Hidden Land.

Since leaving Chupan he had borne steadily toward the Cordillera. For the past few days he had seen no trace of Indians. Something whispered to him to be cautious.

Cautious? He smiled at the thought. It was hardly the word for this journey—one man headed deliberately into the range of the power Suarra had named Yu–Atlanchi! Cautious! Graydon laughed outright. Yet, he reflected, one probably could exercise caution even in invading Hell. And Suarra's land, from what he had seen of its phenomena, seemed rather close to some such place of the damned, if not well over its borders. Lingering upon this interesting idea, he took stock of his assets for its invasion.

A first class rifle and plenty of ammunition; four serviceable automatics, two in one of the packs, one at his belt and one tucked in a holster under his armpit. Good enough—but Yu–Atlanchi might have, and probably did have, weapons that could make these look like a bushman's bow and arrow. And what use would automatics and rifles be against the scaly armor of the dinosaurs?

What else had he? A flicker of purple light from his wrist answered him—the gleam of the jewels in Suarra's bracelet. That would be worth a hundred guns and pistols—if it were passport to the Forbidden Land.

When dusk fell on the fourteenth day of his journeying, he was in a little valley between sparsely wooded, close–lying ranges. A friendly stream gurgled and chuckled close to him. He made camp beside the brook, stripped the burro, hobbled it, and turned it loose to graze. He built his fire, boiled his tea, and prepared his supper. He measured with his eyes the southern range of hills. Till now he had been lucky in being able to follow the valleys, with few climbs and none of them a stiff one. Here, a mountain lay directly in his path. About two thousand feet high, he reckoned it; not difficult to get over. The trees marched all the way up to its summit, singly and in platoons, and always with the curious suggestion of careful planting.

He lay for awhile, thinking. His right arm was stretched outside his blanket.In the light of the dying fire the purple gems in the bracelet gleamed and waned—gleamed and waned. Larger they seemed to grow—and larger still.Sleep swept over Graydon.

He slept, and he knew that he slept. Still, even in his sleep he saw the gleaming purple jewels. He dreamed—and they guided his dream. He passed swiftly over a moonlit waste. Ahead of him frowned a black barrier. It shrouded him and was gone. He had a glimpse of an immense circular valley rimmed by sky–piercing peaks. He caught the glint of a lake, the liquid silver of a mighty torrent streaming out of the heart of a cliff. He had wheeling visions of colossi, gigantic shapes of stone bathed in the milky flood of the moon, each guarding the black mouth of a cavern.

A city rushed up to meet him; a city ruby–roofed and opal–turreted and fantastic as though built by Djinns from the stuff of dreams.

He came to rest within a vast and columned hall from whose high roof fell beams of dimly azure light. High arose those columns, unfolding far above into wide petalings of opal and emerald and turquoise flecked with gold.

He saw—the Snake Mother!

She lay coiled in a nest of cushions just beyond the lip of a wide alcove set high above the pillared pave. Between her and him the azure beams fell, curtaining the immense niche with a misty radiance that half–revealed, half–shadowed her.

Her face was ageless—neither young nor old; free from time, free from the etching acid of the years. She might have been born yesterday—or a million years ago.

Her eyes, set wide apart, were round and luminous; they were living jewels filled with purple fires. Her forehead was wide and low; her nose delicate and long, the nostrils a little dilated. Her chin was small and pointed. Her mouth was small, and heart–shaped; her lips were a vivid scarlet.

Down her narrow, childish shoulders flowed hair that gleamed like spun silver. It arrow–headed into a point on her forehead. It gave her face that same heart shape in which her lips were formed—a heart of which the pointed chin was the basal point.

She had little high breasts, uptilted. Her face, neck, shoulders and breasts were the hue of pearls suffused faintly with rose. Her coils began just below her tilted breasts. They were half buried in a nest of silken cushions; thick coils and many; circle upon circle of them, covered with gleaming heart–shaped scales; each scale as exquisitely wrought as though by an elfin carver–of–gems; opaline; mother–of– pearl.

Her pointed chin was cupped in hands as small as a child's. Like a child's were her slender arms, their dimpled elbows resting on her topmost coil.

On her face which was both face of woman and face of serpent—and in some strange fashion neither serpent nor woman—there dwelt side by side an awesome wisdom and a weariness beyond belief—

The Serpent–woman—memory of whom or of her sisters may be the source of those legends of the Naga Princesses whose wisdom reared the cities of the vanished Khmers in the Cambodian jungles; yes, and may be the source of those persistent stories of serpent–women in the folklore of every land.

May even be the germ of truth in the legend of Lilith, first wife of Adam, whom Eve ousted.

It was thus that Graydon saw her—or thus he thought he saw her. For again and again that question of whether she was as she seemed to him to be, or whether he saw her as she willed him to see her, was to rise to torment him.

He thrilled to the beauty of that little heart–shaped face, the glistening argent glory of her hair, the childish exquisiteness of her.

He gave no heed to her coils, her—monstrousness. It was as though she reached down into his heart and plucked some deep hidden string, silent there since birth.

And in that dream—if dream it was—he knew that she was aware of all this and was well pleased. Her eyes softened, and brooded upon him; the rose–pearl coil upon which was her body raised until her head swayed twice the height of a tall man above the alcove's pave. She nodded toward him. She raised her little hands to her forehead and cupped them; then with oddly hieratic gesture lowered them, tipping the palms as though she poured from them.

Beyond her was a throne that seemed cut from the heart of a colossal sapphire. It was oval, ten feet or more in height, and hollowed like a shrine. It rested upon, or was set within, the cupped end of a pillar of milky rock–crystal It was empty, although around it clung, he thought, a faint radiance. At its foot were six lesser thrones. One was red as though carved from ruby; one was black as though cut from jet; the four thrones between the two were yellow gold.

The crimson lips of the Snake Mother opened; a slender, pointed, scarlet tongue flicked out and touched them. Whether she spoke or did not speak, Graydon heard her thought.

"I will hold up the hands of this man. Suarra loves him. He pleases me. Except for Suarra, I have no interest in those who dwell in Yu– Atlanchi. The desire of the child flies to him. So let it be! I grow weary of Lantlu and his crew. For one thing, Lantlu draws closer than I like to that Shadow of Nimir they call the Dark Master. Also, he would take Suarra. He shall not."

"By the ancient compact," the Lord of Folly spoke—"by that compact, Adana, you may not use your wisdom against any of the Old Race. Your ancestors swore it. It was sworn to long and long and long ago, before the ice drove us north from the Homeland. The oath has never been broken. Even you, Adana, cannot break that oath."

"S–s–s–s!" the Snake Mother's scarlet tongue flickered wrathfully—"Say you so! There was another side to that compact. Did not the Old Race swear never to plot against any of us, the Serpent–people? Yet Lantlu and his followers plot with the Shadow. They plot to free Nimir from the fetters which long ago we forged for him. Free, he will seek to destroy us…and why should he not…and perhaps he may!

"Heed that, Tyddo! I say perhaps he may! Lantlu plots with Nimir, who is our enemy; therefore he plots against me—the last of the Serpent– people. The ancient compact is broken. By Lantlu—not by me."

She swayed forward.

"Suppose we abandon Yu–Atlanchi? Pass from it as did my ancestors, and the Lords who were your peers? Leave it to its rot?"

The Lord of Folly did not answer.

"Ah, well, where there is little left but folly, you of course must stay," she nodded her childish head toward him. "But what is there to keep me? By the wisdom of my people! Here was a race of hairless gray apes that we took from their trees. Took them and taught them, and turned them into men. And what have they become? Dwellers in dream, paramours of phantoms, slaves of illusion. The others—swinging ever toward the darkness, lovers of cruelty; retainers of beauty, outwardly—and under their masks, hideous. I sicken of them. Yu– Atlanchi rots—nay, it is rotten. Let it die!"

"There is Suarra," said the Lord of Folly, softly. "And there are others who are still sound. Will you abandon them?"

The Serpent–woman's face softened.

"There is Suarra," she whispered, "and there are—others. But so few! By my ancestors, so few!"

"If it were their fault alone!" said the Lord of Folly.

"But it is not, Adana. Better for them had we razed the barrier that has protected them. Better for them had we let them make their own way against the wilderness, and what of enemies it held. Better for them had we never closed the Door of Death."

"Peace!" answered the Serpent–woman, sadly. "It was my woman's tongue speaking. Yet there is a deeper reason why we may not abandon them. This Shadow of Nimir seeks a body. What this Shadow is, how strong Nimir still may be, what he has forgotten of his old arts, or what new arts he has learned through the ages—I do not know. But this I do know—if this Shadow seeks a body, it is to free Nimir from the stone. We must prepare for battle, Old One. Nimir freed, and victorious—we must go! Nor would our going be orderly and as we may desire. And in time he would spread his dominion over all the world, as other ages ago he planned to do. And that must not be!"

The Lord of Folly stirred upon the red throne, flapping about like a great red and yellow bird, uneasily.

"Well," said the Serpent–woman, practically, "I am glad I cannot read the future. If it is to be war, I have no desire to be weakened by knowing I am going to lose. Nor to be bored by knowing I am going to win. If one must exert oneself to such a degree as such war promises, one is surely entitled to the interest of uncertainty."

Graydon, for all the incredible weirdness of what he seemed to be seeing and hearing, chuckled involuntarily at this, it was so amazingly feminine. The Serpent–woman glanced at him, as though she had heard him. There was a half–malicious twinkle in her glowing eyes.

"As for this man who seeks Suarra," she said, "let him come and find me! There is much in what you have said of our error in making life too easy for Yu–Atlanchi, Tyddo. Let us not repeat it. When this man, by his own wit and courage, has found the way to me, and stands before me in body as now he stands in thought, I will arm him with power. If we win, Suarra shall be his reward. In the meantime, for sign, I shall send my winged Messengers to him, that they may know him—and also that he may know he need fear them no more."

The temple faded, and disappeared. Graydon seemed to hear around and above him a storm of elfin buglings. He thought that he opened his eyes, threw off the blanket and arose—

And that all around him, glimmering with pale silver fires, were circles upon circles of the silver–feathered serpents! Whirling and wheeling in countless spirals; hundreds upon hundreds of them, great and small, their plumes gleaming, fencing gayly with long rapier beaks, horn notes ringing—

And were gone.

At dawn he threw together a hasty breakfast, caught the burro and adjusted the packs upon it. Whistling, he set forth, up the mountain. The ascent was not difficult. In an hour he had reached the summit.

At his feet the ground sloped down to a level plain, dotted with huge standing stones. Up from this plain and not three miles from where he stood arose the scarps of a great mountain. Its precipices marched in the arc of an immense circle, on and on beyond sight—

The ramparts of Yu–Atlanchi!