Title: Dwellers in the Mirage (1932)
Author: A. E. Merritt (1884-1943)
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Title: Dwellers in the Mirage (1932)
Author: A. E. Merritt (1884-1943)





CONTENTS



BOOK OF KHALK'RU

CHAPTER I. SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER II. RING OF THE KRAKEN
CHAPTER III. RITUAL OF KHALK'RU
CHAPTER IV. TENTACLE OF KHALK'RU
CHAPTER V. THE MIRAGE
CHAPTER VI. THE SHADOWED-LAND
CHAPTER VII. THE LITTLE PEOPLE
CHAPTER VIII. EVALIE
CHAPTER IX  [untitled]
CHAPTER X. IF A MAN COULD USE ALL HIS BRAIN
CHAPTER XI. DRUMS OF THE LITTLE PEOPLE
CHAPTER XII. ON NANSUR BRIDGE


BOOK OF THE WITCH-WOMAN

CHAPTER XIII. KARAK
CHAPTER XIV. IN THE BLACK CITADEL
CHAPTER XV. THE LAKE OF THE GHOSTS
CHAPTER XVI. KISSES OF LUR


BOOK OF DWAYANU

CHAPTER XVII. ORDEAL BY KHALK'RU
CHAPTER XVIII. WOLVES OF LUR
CHAPTER XIX. THE TAKING OF SIRK
CHAPTER XX. "TSANTAWU-FAREWELL!"


BOOK OF LEIF

CHAPTER XXI. RETURN TO KARAK
CHAPTER XXII. GATE OF KHALK'RU
CHAPTER XXIII. IN KHALK'RU'S TEMPLE



* * * * *


BOOK OF KHALK'RU





CHAPTER I.



SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT


I raised my head, listening,--not only with my ears but with every
square inch of my skin, waiting for recurrence of the sound that had
awakened me. There was silence, utter silence. No soughing in the
boughs of the spruces clustered around the little camp. No stirring of
furtive life in the underbrush. Through the spires of the spruces the
stars shone wanly in the short sunset to sunrise twilight of the early
Alaskan summer.

A sudden wind bent the spruce tops, carrying again the sound--the
clangour of a beaten anvil.

I slipped out of my blanket, and round the dim embers of the fire
toward Jim. His voice halted me.

"All right, Leif. I hear it."

The wind sighed and died, and with it died the humming aftertones of
the anvil stroke. Before we could speak, the wind arose. It bore the
after-hum of the anvil stroke--faint and far away. And again the wind
died, and with it the sound.

"An anvil, Leif!"

"Listen!"

A stronger gust swayed the spruces. It carried a distant chanting;
voices of many women and men singing a strange, minor theme. The
chant ended on a wailing chord, archaic, dissonant.

There was a long roll of drums, rising in a swift crescendo, ending
abruptly. After it a thin and clamorous confusion.

It was smothered by a low, sustained rumbling, like thunder, muted by
miles. In it defiance, challenge.

We waited, listening. The spruces were motionless. The wind did not
return.

"Queer sort of sounds, Jim." I tried to speak casually. He sat up. A
stick flared up in the dying fire. Its light etched his face against
the darkness--thin, and brown and hawk-profiled. He did not look at me.

"Every feathered forefather for the last twenty centuries is awake and
shouting! Better call me Tsantawu, Leif. Tsi' Tsa'lagi--I am a Cherokee!
Right now--all Indian."

He smiled, but still he did not look at me, and I was glad of that.

"It was an anvil," I said. "A hell of a big anvil. And hundreds of
people singing...and how could that be in this wilderness...they
didn't sound like Indians..."

"The drums weren't Indian." He squatted by the fire, staring into it.
"When they turned loose, something played a pizzicato with icicles up
and down my back."

"They got me, too--those drums!" I thought my voice was steady, but he
looked up at me sharply; and now it was I who averted my eyes and
stared at the embers. "They reminded me of something I heard...and
thought I saw...in Mongolia. So did the singing. Damn it, Jim, why do
you look at me like that?"

I threw a stick on the fire. For the life of me I couldn't help
searching the shadows as the stick flamed. Then I met his gaze
squarely.

"Pretty bad place, was it, Leif?" he asked, quietly. I said nothing.
Jim got up and walked over to the packs. He came back with some water
and threw it over the fire. He kicked earth on the hissing coals. If he
saw me wince as the shadows rushed in upon us, he did not show it.

"That wind came from the north," he said. "So that's the way the sounds
came. Therefore, whatever made the sounds is north of us. That being
so--which way do we travel to-morrow?"

"North," I said.

My throat dried as I said it.

Jim laughed. He dropped upon his blanket, and rolled it around him. I
propped myself against the bole of one of the spruces, and sat staring
toward the north.

"The ancestors are vociferous, Leif. Promising a lodge of sorrow, I
gather--if we go north...'Bad Medicine!' say the ancestors...
'Bad Medicine for you, Tsantawu! You go to Usunhi'yi, the Darkening-land,
Tsantawu!...Into Tsusgina'i, the ghost country! Beware! Turn
from the north, Tsantawu!'"

"Oh, go to sleep, you hag-ridden redskin!"

"All right, I'm just telling you."

Then a little later:

"'And heard ancestral voices prophesying war'--it's worse than war
these ancestors of mine are prophesying, Leif."

"Damn it, will you shut up!"

A chuckle from the darkness; thereafter silence.

I leaned against the tree trunk. The sounds, or rather the evil memory
they had evoked, had shaken me more than I was willing to admit, even
to myself. The thing I had carried for two years in the buckskin bag at
the end of the chain around my neck had seemed to stir; turn cold. I
wondered how much Jim had divined of what I had tried to cover...

Why had he put out the fire? Because he had known I was afraid? To
force me to face my fear and conquer it?...Or had it been the Indian
instinct to seek cover in darkness?...By his own admission, chant
and drum-roll had played on his nerves as they had on mine...

Afraid! Of course it had been fear that had wet the palms of my hands,
and had tightened my throat so my heart had beaten in my ears like
drums.

Like drums...yes!

But...not like those drums whose beat had been borne to us by the
north wind. They had been like the cadence of the feet of men and
women, youths and maids and children, running ever more rapidly up the
side of a hollow world to dive swiftly into the void...dissolving
into the nothingness...fading as they fell...dissolving...
eaten up by the nothingness...

Like that accursed drum-roll I had heard in the secret temple of the
Gobi oasis two years ago!

Neither then nor now had it been fear alone. Fear it was, in truth, but
fear shot through with defiance...defiance of life against its
negation...upsurging, roaring, vital rage...frantic revolt of
the drowning against the strangling water, rage of the candle-flame
against the hovering extinguisher...

Was it as hopeless as that? If what I suspected to be true was true, to
think so was to be beaten at the beginning!

But there was Jim! How to keep him out of it? In my heart, I had never
laughed at those subconscious perceptions, whatever they were. that he
called the voices of his ancestors. When he had spoken of Usunhi'yi,
the Darkening-land, a chill had crept down my spine. For had not the
old Uighur priest spoken of the Shadow-land? And it was as though I had
heard the echo of his words.

I looked over to where he lay. He had been more akin to me than my own
brothers. I smiled at that, for they had never been akin to me. To all
but my soft-voiced, deep-bosomed, Norse mother I had been a stranger
in that severely conventional old house where I had been born.

The youngest son, and an unwelcome intruder; a changeling. It had been
no fault of mine that I had come into the world a throw-back to my
mother's yellow-haired, blue-eyed, strong-thewed Viking forefathers.
Not at all a Langdon. The Langdon men were dark and slender,
thin-lipped and saturnine, stamped out by the same die for generations.
They looked down at me, the changeling, from the family portraits with
faintly amused, supercilious hostility. Precisely as my father and my
four brothers, true Langdons, each of them, looked at me when I
awkwardly disposed of my bulk at their table.

It had brought me unhappiness, but it had made my mother wrap her heart
around me. I wondered, as I had wondered many times, how she had come
to give herself to that dark, self-centred man my father--with the blood
of the sea-rovers singing in her veins. It was she who had named me
Leif--as incongruous a name to tack on a Langdon as was my birth among
them.

Jim and I had entered Dartmouth on the same day. I saw him as he was
then--the tall, brown lad with his hawk face and inscrutable black eyes.
pure blood of the Cherokees, of the clan from which had come the great
Sequoiah, a clan which had produced through many centuries wisest
councillors, warriors strong in cunning.

On the college roster his name was written James T. Eagles, but on the
rolls of the Cherokee Nation it was written Two Eagles and his mother
had called him Tsantawu. From the first we had recognized spiritual
kinship. By the ancient rites of his people we had become
blood-brothers, and he had given me my secret name, known only to the
pair of us, Degataga--one who stands so close to another that the two
are one.

My one gift, besides my strength, is an aptness at languages. Soon I
spoke the Cherokee as though I had been born in the Nation. Those years
in college were the happiest I had ever known. It was during the last
of them that America entered the World War. Together we had left
Dartmouth, gone into training camp, sailed for France on the same
transport.

Sitting there, under the slow-growing Alaskan dawn, my mind leaped over
the years between...my mother's death on Armistice Day...my
return to New York to a frankly hostile home...Jim's recall to his
clan...the finishing of my course in mining engineering...my
wanderings in Asia...my second return to America and my search for
Jim...this expedition of ours to Alaska, more for comradeship and
the wilderness peace than for the gold we were supposed to be seeking--

A long trail since the War--the happiest for me these last two months of
it. It had led us from Nome over the quaking tundras, and then to the
Koyukuk, and at last to this little camp among the spruces, somewhere
between the headwaters of the Koyukuk and the Chandalar in the
foothills of the unexplored Endicott Range. A long trail...I had the
feeling that it was here the real trail of my life began.

A ray of the rising sun struck through the trees. Jim sat up, looked
over at me, and grinned.

"Didn't get much sleep after the concert, did you?"

"What did you do to the ancestors? They didn't seem to keep you awake
long."

He said, too carelessly: "Oh, they quieted down." His face and eyes
were expressionless. He was veiling his mind from me. The ancestors had
not quieted down. He had lain awake while I had thought him sleeping. I
made a swift decision. We would go south as we had planned. I would go
with him as far as Circle. I would find some pretext to leave him
there.

I said: "We're not going north. I've changed my mind."

"Yes. why?"

"I'll tell you after we've had breakfast," I said--I'm not so quick in
thinking up lies. "Rustle up a fire, Jim. I'll go down to the stream
and get some water."

"Degataga!"

I started. It was only in moments of rare sympathy or in time of peril
that he used the secret name.

"Degataga, you go north! You go if I have to march ahead of you to make
you follow..." he dropped into the Cherokee..."It is to save
your spirit, Degataga. Do we march together--blood-brothers? Or do you
creep after me--like a shivering dog at the heels of the hunter?"

The blood pounded in my temples, my hand went out toward him. He
stepped back, and laughed.

"That's better, Leif."

The quick rage left me, my hand fell.

"All right, Tsantawu. We go--north. But it wasn't--it wasn't because of
myself that I told you I'd changed my mind."

"I know damned well it wasn't!"

He busied himself with the fire. I went after the water. We drank the
strong black tea, and ate what was left of the little brown storks they
call Alaskan turkeys which we had shot the day before. When we were
through I began to talk.




CHAPTER II.



RING OF THE KRAKEN


Three years ago, so I began my story, I went into Mongolia with the
Fairchild expedition. Part of its work was a mineral survey for certain
British interests, part of it ethnographic and archeological research
for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania.

I never had a chance to prove my value as a mining engineer. At once I
became good-will representative, camp entertainer, liaison agent
between us and the tribes. My height, my yellow hair, blue eyes and
freakish strength, and my facility in picking up languages were of
never-ending interest to them. Tartars, Mongols, Buriats, Kirghiz--they
would watch while I bent horseshoes, twisted iron bars over my knees
and performed what my father used to call contemptuously my circus
tricks.

Well, that's exactly what I was to them--a one-man circus. And yet I was
more than that--they liked me. Old Fairchild would laugh when I
complained that I had no time for technical work. He would tell me that
I was worth a dozen mining engineers, that I was the expedition's
insurance, and that as long as I could keep up my act they wouldn't be
bothered by any trouble makers. And it is a fact that they weren't. It
was the only expedition of its kind I ever knew where you could leave
your stuff unwatched and return to find it still there. Also we were
singularly free from graft and shake-downs.

In no time I had picked up half a dozen of the dialects and could
chatter and chaff with the tribesmen in their own tongues. It made a
prodigious bit with them. And now and then a Mongol delegation would
arrive with a couple of their wrestlers, big fellows with chests like
barrels, to pit against me. I learned their tricks, and taught them
ours. We had pony lifting contests, and some of my Manchu friends
taught me how to fight with the two broadswords--a sword in each hand.

Fairchild had planned on a year, but so smoothly did the days go by
that he decided to prolong our stay. My act, he told me in his sardonic
fashion, was undoubtedly of perennial vitality; never again would
science have such an opportunity in this region--unless I made up my
mind to remain and rule. He didn't know how close he came to prophecy.

In the early summer of the following year we shifted our camp about a
hundred miles north. This was Uighur country. They are a strange
people, the Uighurs. They say of themselves that they are descendants
of a great race which ruled the Gobi when it was no desert but an
earthly Paradise, with flowing rivers and many lakes and teeming
cities. It is a fact that they are apart from all the other tribes, and
while those others cheerfully kill them when they can, still they go in
fear of them. Or rather, of the sorcery of their priests.

Seldom had Uighurs appeared at the old camp. When they did, they kept
at a distance. We had been at the new camp less than a week when a band
of twenty rode in. I was sitting in the shade of my tent. They dismounted
and came straight to me. They paid no attention to anyone else.
They halted a dozen feet from me. Three walked close up and stood,
studying me. The eyes of these three were a peculiar grey-blue; those
of the one who seemed to be their captain singularly cold. They were
bigger, taller men than the others.

I did not know the Uighur. I gave them polite salutations in the
Kirghiz. They did not answer, maintaining their close scrutiny. Finally
they spoke among themselves, nodding as though they had come to some
decision.

The leader then addressed me. As I stood up, I saw that he was not many
inches under my own six feet four. I told him, again in the Kirghiz,
that I did not know his tongue. He gave an order to his men. They
surrounded my tent, standing like guards, spears at rest beside them,
their wicked long-swords drawn.

At this my temper began to rise, but before I could protest the leader
began to speak to me in the Kirghiz. He assured me, with deference,
that their visit was entirely peaceful, only they did not wish their
contact with me to be disturbed by any of my companions. He asked if I
would show him my hands. I held them out. He and his two comrades bent
over the palms, examining them minutely, pointing to a mark or a
crossing of lines. This inspection ended, the leader touched his
forehead with my right hand.

And then to my complete astonishment, he launched without explanation
into what was a highly intelligent lesson in the Uighur tongue. He took
the Kirghiz for the comparative language. He did not seem to be
surprized at the ease with which I assimilated the tuition; indeed, I
had a puzzled idea that he regarded it as something to be expected. I
mean that his manner was less that of teaching me a new language, than
of recalling to me one I had forgotten. The lesson lasted for a full
hour. He then touched his forehead again with my hand, and gave a
command to the ring of guards. The whole party walked to their horses
and galloped off.

There had been something disquieting about the whole experience. Most
disquieting was my own vague feeling that my tutor, if I had read
correctly his manner, had been right--that I was not learning a new
tongue but one I had forgotten. Certainly I never picked up any
language with such rapidity and ease as I did the Uighur.

The rest of my party had been perplexed and apprehensive, naturally. I
went immediately to them, and talked the matter over. Our ethnologist
was the famous Professor David Barr, of Oxford. Fairchild was inclined
to take it as a joke, but Barr was greatly disturbed. He said that the
Uighur tradition was that their forefathers had been a fair race,
yellow-haired and blue-eyed, big men of great strength. In short, men
like myself. A few ancient Uighur wall paintings had been found which
had portrayed exactly this type, so there was evidence of the
correctness of the tradition. However, if the Uighurs of the present
were actually the descendants of this race, the ancient blood must have
been mixed and diluted almost to the point of extinction.

I asked what this had to do with me, and he replied that quite
conceivably my visitors might regard me as of the pure blood of the
ancient race. In fact, he saw no other explanation of their conduct. He
was of the opinion that their study of my palms, and their manifest
approval of what they had discovered there, clinched the matter.

Old Fairchild asked him, satirically, if he was trying to convert us to
palmistry. Barr said, coldly, that he was a scientist. As a scientist,
he was aware that certain physical resemblances can be carried on by
hereditary factors through many generations. Certain peculiarities in
the arrangement of the lines of the palms might persist through
centuries. They could reappear in cases of atavism, such as I clearly
represented.

By this time, I was getting a bit dizzy. But Barr had a few shots left
that made me more so. By now his temper was well up, and he went on to
say that the Uighurs might even be entirely correct in what he deduced
was their opinion of me. I was a throwback to the ancient Norse. Very
well. It was quite certain that the Aesir, the old Norse gods and
goddesses--Odin and Thor, Frigga and Freya, Frey and Loki of the Fire
and all the others--had once been real people. Without question they
had been leaders in some long and perilous migration. After they had
died, they had been deified, as numerous other similar heroes and
heroines had been by other tribes and races. Ethnologists were agreed
that the original Norse stock had come into North-eastern Europe from
Asia, like other Aryans. Their migration might have occurred anywhere
from 1000 B.C. to 5000 B.C. And there was no scientific reason why they
should not have come from the region now called the Gobi, nor why they
should not have been the blond race these present-day Uighurs called
their forefathers.

No one, he went on to say, knew exactly when the Gobi had become
desert--nor what were the causes that had changed it into desert. Parts
of the Gobi and all the Little Gobi might have been fertile as late as
two thousand years ago. Whatever it had been, whatever its causes, and
whether operating slowly or quickly, the change gave a perfect reason
for the migration led by Odin and the other Aesir which had ended in
the colonization of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Admittedly I was a
throwback to my mother's stock of a thousand years ago. There was no
reason why I should not also be a throwback in other recognizable ways
to the ancient Uighurs--if they actually were the original Norse.

But the practical consideration was that I was headed for trouble. So
was every other member of our party. He urgently advised going back to
the old camp where we would be among friendly tribes. In conclusion he
pointed out that, since we had come to this site, not a single Mongol,
Tartar or any other tribesman with whom I had established such pleasant
relations had come near us. He sat down with a glare at Fairchild,
observing that this was no palmist's advice but that of a recognized
scientist.

Well, Fairchild apologized, of course, but he over-ruled Barr on
returning; we could safely wait a few days longer and see what
developed. Barr remarked morosely that as a prophet Fairchild was
probably a total loss, but it was also probable that we were being
closely watched and would not be allowed to retreat, and therefore it
did not matter.

That night we heard drums beating far away, drumming between varying
intervals of silence almost until dawn, reporting and answering
questions of drums still further off.

The next day, at the same hour, along came the same troop. Their leader
made straight for me, ignoring, as before, the others in the camp. He
saluted me almost with humility. We walked back together to my tent.
Again the cordon was thrown round it, and my second lesson abruptly
began. It continued for two hours or more. Thereafter, day after day,
for three weeks, the same performance was repeated. There was no
desultory conversation, no extraneous questioning, no explanations.
These men were there for one definite purpose: to teach me their
tongue. They stuck to that admirably. Filled with curiosity, eager to
reach the end and learn what it all meant, I interposed no obstacles,
stuck as rigorously as they to the matter in hand. This, too, they
seemed to take as something expected of me. In three weeks I could
carry on a conversation in the Uigher as well as I can in English.

Barr's uneasiness kept growing. "They're grooming you for something!"
he would say. "I'd give five years of my life to be in your shoes. But
I don't like it. I'm afraid for you. I'm damned afraid!"

One night at the end of this third week, the signalling drums beat
until dawn. The next day my instructors did not appear, nor the next
day, nor the day after. But our men reported that there were Uighurs
all around us, picketing the camp. They were in fear, and no work could
be got out of them.

On the afternoon of the fourth day we saw a cloud of dust drifting
rapidly down upon us from the north. Soon we heard the sound of the
Uighur drums. Then out of the dust emerged a troop of horsemen. There
were two or three hundred of them, spears glinting, many of them with
good rifles. They drew up in a wide semi-circle before the camp. The
cold-eyed leader who had been my chief instructor dismounted and came
forward leading a magnificent black stallion. A big horse, a strong
horse, unlike the rangy horses that carried them; a horse that could
bear my weight with ease.

The Uighur dropped on one knee, handing me the stallion's reins, I took
them, automatically. The horse looked me over, sniffed at me, and
rested its nose on my shoulder. At once the troop raised their spears,
shouting some word I could not catch, then dropped from their mounts
and stood waiting.

The leader arose. He drew from his tunic a small cube of ancient jade.
He sank again upon his knee, handed me the cube. It seemed solid, but
as I pressed it flew open. Within, was a ring. It was of heavy gold,
thick and wide. Set in it was a yellow, translucent stone about an inch
and a half square. And within this stone was the shape of a black
octopus.

Its tentacles spread out fan-wise from its body. They had the effect of
reaching forward through the yellow stone. I could even see upon their
nearer tips the sucking discs. The body was not so clearly defined. It
was nebulous, seeming to reach into far distance. The black octopus had
not been cut upon the jewel. It was within it.

I was aware of a curious mingling of feelings--repulsion and a peculiar
sense of familiarity, like the trick of the mind that causes what we
call double memory, the sensation of having experienced the same thing
before. Without thinking. I slipped the ring over my thumb which it
fitted perfectly, and held it up to the sun to catch the light through
the stone. Instantly every man of the troop threw himself down upon his
belly, prostrating himself before it.

The Uighur captain spoke to me. I had been subconsciously aware that
from the moment of handing me the jade he had been watching me closely.
I thought that now there was awe in his eyes.

"Your horse is ready--" again he used the unfamiliar word with which the
troop had saluted me. "Show me what you wish to take with you, and your
men shall carry it."

"Where do we go--and for how long?" I asked.

"To a holy man of your people," he answered. "For how long--he alone can
answer."

I felt a momentary irritation at the casualness with which I was being
disposed of. Also I wondered why he spoke of his men and his people as
mine.

"Why does he not come to me?" I asked.

"He is old," he answered. "He could not make the journey."

I looked at the troop, now standing up beside their horses. If I
refused to go, it would undoubtedly mean the wiping out of the camp if
my companions attempted, as they would, to resist my taking. Besides, I
was on fire with curiosity.

"I must speak to my comrades before I go," I said.

"If it please Dwayanu"--this time I caught the word--"to bid farewell to
his dogs, let him." There was a nicker of contempt in his eyes as he
looked at old Fairchild and the others.

Definitely I did not like what he had said, nor his manner.

"Await me here," I told him curtly, and walked over to Fairchild. I
drew him into his tent, Barr and the others of the expedition at our
heels. I told them what was happening. Barr took my hand, and
scrutinized the ring. He whistled softly.

"Don't you know what this is?" he asked me. "It's the Kraken--that
super-wise, malignant and mythical sea-monster of the old Norsemen.
See, its tentacles are not eight but twelve. Never was it pictured with
less than ten. It symbolized the principle that is inimical to Life--not
Death precisely, more accurately annihilation. The Kraken--and here in
Mongolia!"

"See here, Chief," I spoke to Fairchild. "There's only one way you can
help me--if I need help. And that's to get back quick as you can to the
old camp. Get hold of the Mongols and send word to that chief who kept
bringing in the big wrestlers--they'll know whom I mean. Persuade or
hire him to get as many able fighting men at the camp as you can. I'll
be back, but I'll probably come back running. Outside of that, you're
all in danger. Not at the moment, maybe, but things may develop which
will make these people think it better to wipe you out. I know what I'm
talking about, Chief. I ask you to do this for my sake, if not for your
own."

"But they watch the camp--" he began to object.

"They won't--after I've gone. Not for a little while at least. Everyone
of them will be streaking away with me." I spoke with complete
certainty, and Barr nodded acquiescence.

"The King returns to his Kingdom," he said. "All his loyal subjects
with him. He's in no danger--while he's with them. But--God, if I could
only go with you, Leif! The Kraken! And the ancient legend of the
South Seas told of the Great Octopus, dozing on and biding his time
till he felt like destroying the world and all its life. And three
miles up in the air the Black Octopus is cut into the cliffs of the
Andes! Norsemen--and the South Sea Islanders--and the Andeans! And the
same symbol--here!"

"Please promise?" I asked Fairchild. "My life may depend on it."

"It's like abandoning you. I don't like it!"

"Chief, this crowd could wipe you out in a minute. Go back, and get the
Mongols. The Tartars will help. They hate the Uighurs. I'll come back,
don't fear. But I'd bet everything that this whole crowd, and more,
will be at my heels. When I come, I want a wall to duck behind."

"We'll go," he said.

I went out of that tent, and over to my own. The odd-eyed Uighur
followed me. I took my rifle and an automatic, stuffed a toothbrush and
a shaving-kit in my pocket, and turned to go.

"Is there nothing else?" There was surprise in his question.

"If there is, I'll come back for it," I answered.

"Not after you have--remembered," he said, enigmatically.

Side by side we walked to the black stallion. I lifted myself to his
back.

The troop wheeled in behind us. Their spears a barrier between me and
the camp, we galloped south.




CHAPTER III.



RITUAL OF KHALK'RU


The stallion settled down to a steady, swinging lope. He carried my
weight easily. About an hour from dusk we were over the edge of the
desert. At our right loomed a low range of red sandstone hills. Close
ahead was a defile. We rode into it, and picked our way through it. In
about half an hour we emerged into a boulder-strewn region, upon what
had once been a wide road. The road stretched straight ahead of us to
the north-east, toward another and higher range of red sandstone,
perhaps five miles away. This we reached just as night began, and here
my guide halted, saying that we would encamp until dawn. Some twenty of
the troop dismounted; the rest rode on.

Those who remained waited, looking at me, plainly expectant. I wondered
what I was supposed to do; then, noticing that the stallion had been
sweating, I called for something to rub him down, and for food and
water for him. This, apparently, was what had been looked for. The
captain himself brought me the cloths, grain and water while the men
whispered. After the horse was cooled down, I fed him. I then asked for
blankets to put on him, for the nights were cold. When I had finished I
found that supper had been prepared. I sat beside a fire with the
leader. I was hungry, and, as usual when it was possible, I ate
voraciously. I asked few questions, and most of these were answered so
evasively, with such obvious reluctance, that I soon asked none. When
the supper was over, I was sleepy. I said so. I was given blankets, and
walked over to the stallion. I spread my blankets beside him, dropped,
and rolled myself up.

The stallion bent his head, nosed me gently, blew a long breath down my
neck, and lay down carefully beside me. I shifted so that I could rest
my head on his neck. I heard excited whispering among the Uighurs. I
went to sleep.

At dawn I was awakened. Breakfast was ready. We set out again on the
ancient road. It ran along the hills, skirting the bed of what had long
ago been a large river. For some time the eastern hills protected us
from the sun. When it began to strike directly down upon us, we rested
under the shadow of some immense rocks. By mid-afternoon we were once
more on our way. Shortly before sun-down, we crossed the dry river bed
over what had once been a massive bridge. We passed into another defile
through which the long-gone stream had flowed, and just at dusk reached
its end.

Each side of the end of the shallow gorge was commanded by stone forts.
They were manned by dozens of the Uighurs. They shouted as we drew
near, and again I heard the word "Dwayanu" repeated again and again.

The heavy gates of the right-hand fort swung open. We went through,
into a passage under the thick wall. We trotted across a wide
enclosure. We passed out of it through similar gates.

I looked upon an oasis hemmed in by the bare mountains. It had once
been the site of a fair-sized city, for ruins dotted it everywhere.
What had possibly been the sources of the river had dwindled to a brook
which sunk into the sands not far from where I stood. At the right of
this brook there was vegetation and trees; to the left of it was a
desolation. The road passed through the oasis and ran on across this
barren. It stopped at, or entered, a huge square-cut opening in the
rock wall more than a mile away, an opening that was like a door in
that mountain, or like the entrance to some gigantic Egyptian tomb.

We rode straight down into the fertile side. There were hundreds of the
ancient stone buildings here, and fair attempts had been made to keep
some in repair. Even so, their ancientness struck against my nerves.
There were tents among the trees also. And out of the buildings and
tents were pouring Uighurs, men, women and children. There must have
been a thousand of the warriors alone. Unlike the men at the
guardhouses, these watched me in awed silence as I passed.

We halted in front of a time-bitten pile that might have been a
palace--five thousand years or twice that ago. Or a temple. A colonnade
of squat, square columns ran across its front. Heavier ones stood at
its entrance. Here we dismounted. The stallion and my guide's horse
were taken by our escort. Bowing low at the threshold, my guide invited
me to enter.

I stepped into a wide corridor, lined with spearsmen and lighted by
torches of some resinous wood. The Uighur leader walked beside me. The
corridor led into a huge room--high-ceilinged, so wide and long that the
flambeaux on the walls made its centre seem the darker. At the far end
of this place was a low dais, and upon it a stone table, and seated at
this table were a number of hooded men.

As I drew nearer, I felt the eyes of these hooded men intent upon me,
and saw that they were thirteen--six upon each side and one seated in a
larger chair at the table's end. High cressets of metal stood about
them in which burned some substance that gave out a steady, clear white
light. I came close, and halted. My guide did not speak. Nor did these
others.

Suddenly, the light glinted upon the ring on my thumb.

The hooded man at the table's end stood up, gripping its edge with
trembling hands that were like withered claws. I heard him
whisper--"Dwayanu!"

The hood slipped back from his head. I saw an old, old face in which
were eyes almost as blue as my own, and they were filled with stark
wonder and avid hope. It touched me, for it was the look of a man long
lost to despair who sees a saviour appear.

Now the others arose, slipped back their hoods. They were old men, all
of them, but not so old as he who had whispered. Their eyes of
cold blue-grey weighed me. The high priest, for that I so guessed him
and such he turned out to be, spoke again:

"They told me--but I could not believe! Will you come to me?"

I jumped on the dais and walked to him. He drew his old face close to
mine, searching my eyes. He touched my hair. He thrust his hand within
my shirt and laid it on my heart. He said:

"Let me see your hands."

I placed them, palms upward, on the table. He gave them the same minute
scrutiny as had the Uighur leader. The twelve others clustered round,
following his fingers as he pointed to this marking and to that. He
lifted from his neck a chain of golden links, drawing from beneath his
robe a large, flat square of jade. He opened this. Within it was a
yellow stone, larger than that in my ring, but otherwise precisely
similar, the black octopus--or the Kraken--writhing from its depths.
Beside it was a small phial of jade and a small, lancet-like jade
knife. He took my right hand, and brought the wrist over the yellow
stone. He looked at me and at the others with eyes in which was agony.

"The last test," he whispered. "The blood!"

He nicked a vein of my wrist with the knife. Blood fell, slow drop by
drop upon the stone; I saw then that it was slightly concave. As the
blood dripped, it spread like a thin film from bottom to lip. The old
priest lifted the phial of jade, unstoppered it, and by what was
plainly violent exercise of his will, held it steadily over the yellow
stone. One drop of colourless fluid fell and mingled with my blood.

The room was now utterly silent, high priest and his ministers seemed
not to breathe, staring at the stone. I shot a glance at the Uighur
leader, and he was glaring at me, fanatic fires in his eyes.

There was an exclamation from the high priest, echoed by the others. I
looked down at the stone. The pinkish film was changing colour. A
curious sparkle ran through it; it changed into a film of clear,
luminous green.

"Dwayanu!" gasped the high priest, and sank back into his chair,
covering his face with shaking hands. The others stared at me and back
at the stone and at me again as though they beheld some miracle. I
looked at the Uighur leader. He lay flat upon his face at the base of
the dais.

The high priest uncovered his face. It seemed to me that he had become
incredibly younger, transformed; his eyes were no longer hopeless,
agonized; they were filled with eagerness. He arose from his chair, and
sat me in it.

"Dwayanu," he said, "what do you remember?"

I shook my head, puzzled; it was an echo of the Uighur's remark at the
camp.

"What should I remember?" I asked.

His gaze withdrew from me, sought the faces of the others,
questioningly; as though he had spoken to them, they looked at one
another, then nodded. He shut the jade case and thrust it into his
breast. He took my hand, twisted the bezel of the ring behind my thumb
and closed my hand on it.

"Do you remember--" his voice sank to the faintest of
whispers--"Khalk'ru?"

Again the stillness dropped upon the great chamber--this time like a
tangible thing. I sat, considering. There was something familiar about
that name. I had an irritated feeling that I ought to know it; that if
I tried hard enough, I could remember it; that memory of it wasfirst
over the border of consciousness. Also I had the feeling that it meant
something rather dreadful. Something better forgotten. I felt vague
stirrings of repulsion, coupled with sharp resentment.

"No," I answered.

I heard the sound of sharply exhaled breaths. The old priest walked
behind me and placed his hands over my eyes.

"Do you remember--this?"

My mind seemed to blur, and then I saw a picture as clearly as though I
were looking at it with my open eyes. I was galloping through the oasis
straight to the great doorway in the mountain. Only now it was no
oasis. It was a city with gardens, and a river ran sparkling through
it. The ranges were not barren red sandstone, but green with trees.
There were others with me, galloping behind me--men and women like
myself, fair and strong. Now I was close to the doorway. There were
immense square stone columns flanking it...and now I had dismounted
from my horse...a great black stallion...I was entering...

I would not enter! If I entered, I would remember--Khalk'ru! I thrust
myself back...and out...I felt hands over my eyes...I reached
and tore them away...the old priest's hands. I jumped from the
chair, quivering with anger. I faced him. His face was benign, his
voice gentle.

"Soon," he said, "you will remember more!"

I did not answer, struggling to control my inexplicable rage. Of
course, the old priest had tried to hypnotize me; what I had seen was
what he had willed me to see. Not without reason had the priests of the
Uighurs gained their reputation as sorcerers. But it was not that which
had stirred this wrath that took all my will to keep from turning
berserk. No, it had been something about that name of Khalk'ru.
Something that lay behind the doorway in the mountain through which I
had almost been forced.

"Are you hungry?" The abrupt transition to the practical in the old
priest's question brought me back to normal. I laughed outright, and
told him that I was, indeed. And getting sleepy. I had feared that such
an important personage as I had apparently become would have to dine
with the high priest. I was relieved when he gave me in charge of the
Uighur captain. The Uighur followed me out like a dog, he kept his eyes
upon me like a dog upon its master, and he waited on me like a servant
while I ate. I told him I would rather sleep in a tent than in one of
the stone houses. His eyes flashed at that, and for the first time he
spoke other than in respectful monosyllables.

"Still a warrior!" he grunted approvingly. A tent was set up for me.
Before I went to sleep I peered through the flap. The Uighur leader was
squatting at the opening, and a double ring of spearsmen stood shoulder
to shoulder on guard.

Early next morning, a delegation of the lesser priests called for me.
We went into the same building, but to a much smaller room, bare of all
furnishings. The high priest and the rest of the lesser priests were
awaiting me. I had expected many questions. He asked me none; he had,
apparently, no curiosity as to my origin, where I had come from, nor
how I had happened to be in Mongolia. It seemed to be enough that they
had proved me to be who they had hoped me to be--whoever that was.
Furthermore, I had the strongest impression that they were anxious to
hasten on to the consummation of a plan that had begun with my lessons.
The high priest west straight to the point.

"Dwayanu," he said, "we would recall to your memory a certain ritual.
Listen carefully, watch carefully, repeat faithfully each inflection,
each gesture."

"To what purpose?" I asked.

"That you shall learn--" he began, then interrupted himself fiercely.
"No! I will tell you now! So that this which is desert shall once more
become fertile. That the Uighurs shall recover their greatness. That
the ancient sacrilege against Khalk'ru, whose fruit was the desert,
shall be expiated!"

"What have I, a stranger, to do with all this?" I asked.

"We to whom you have come," he answered, "have not enough of the
ancient blood to bring this about. You are no stranger. You are
Dwayanu--the Releaser. You are of the pure blood. Because of that, only
you--Dwayanu--can lift the doom."

I thought how delighted Barr would be to hear that explanation; how he
would crow over Fairchild. I bowed to the old priest, and told him I
was ready. He took from my thumb the ring, lifted the chain and its
pendent jade from his neck, and told me to strip. While I was doing so,
he divested himself of his own robes, and the others followed suit. A
priest carried the things away, quickly returning. I looked at the
shrunken shapes of the old men standing mother-naked round me, and
suddenly lost all desire to laugh. The proceedings were being touched
by the sinister. The lesson began.

It was not a ritual; it was an invocation--rather, it was an evocation
of a Being, Power, Force, named Khalk'ru. It was exceedingly curious,
and so were the gestures that accompanied it. It was clearly couched in
the archaic form of the Uighur. There were many words I did not
understand. Obviously, it had been passed down from high priest to high
priest from remote antiquity. Even an indifferent churchman would have
considered it blasphemous to the point of damnation. I was too much
interested to think much of that phase of it. I had the same odd sense
of familiarity with it that I had felt at the first naming of Khalk'ru.
I felt none of the repulsion, however. I felt strongly in earnest. How
much this was due to the force of the united wills of the twelve
priests who never took their eyes off me, I do not know.

I won't repeat it, except to give the gist of it. Khalk'ru was the
Beginning-without-Beginning, as he would be the End-without-End. He was
the Lightless Timeless Void. The Destroyer. The Eater-up of Life. The
Annihilator. The Dissolver. He was not Death--Death was only a part of
him. He was alive, very much so, but his quality of living was the
antithesis of Life as we know it. Life was an invader, troubling
Khalk'ru's ageless calm. Gods and man, animals and birds and all
creatures, vegetation and water and air and fire, sun and stars and
moon--all were his to dissolve into Himself, the Living Nothingness, if
he so willed. But let them go on a little longer. Why should Khalk'ru
care when in the end there would be only--Khalk'ru! Let him withdraw
from the barren places so life could enter and cause them to blossom
again; let him touch only those who were the enemies of his
worshippers, so that his worshippers would be great and powerful,
evidence that Khalk'ru was the All in All. It was only for a breath in
the span of his eternity. Let Khalk'ru make himself manifest in the
form of his symbol and take what was offered him as evidence he had
listened and consented.

There was more, much more, but that was the gist of it. A dreadful
prayer, but I felt no dread--then.

Three times, and I was letter-perfect. The high priest gave me one more
rehearsal and nodded to the priest who had taken away the clothing. He
went out and returned with the robes--but not my clothes. Instead, he
produced a long white mantle and a pair of sandals. I asked for my own
clothes and was told by the old priest that I no longer needed them,
that hereafter I would be dressed as befitted me. I agreed that this
was desirable, but said I would like to have them so I could look at
them once in a while. To this he acquiesced.

They took me to another room. Faded, ragged tapestries hung on its
walls. They were threaded with scenes of the hunt and of war. There
were oddly shaped stools and chairs of some metal that might have been
copper but also might have been gold, a wide and low divan, in one
corner spears, a bow and two swords, a shield and a cap-shaped bronze
helmet. Everything, except the rugs spread over the stone floor, had
the appearance of great antiquity. Here I was washed and carefully
shaved and my long hair trimmed--a ceremonial cleansing accompanied by
rites of purification which, at times, were somewhat startling.

These ended, I was given a cotton undergarment which sheathed me from
toes to neck. After this, a pair of long, loose, girdled trousers that
seemed spun of threads of gold reduced by some process to the softness
of silk. I noticed with amusement that they had been carefully repaired
and patched. I wondered how many centuries the man who had first worn
them had been dead. There was a long, blouse-like coat of the same
material, and my feet were slipped into cothurms, or high buskins,
whose elaborate embroidery was a bit ragged.

The old priest placed the ring on my thumb, and stood back, staring at
me raptly. Quite evidently he saw nothing of the ravages of time upon
my garments.

I was to him the splendid figure from the past that he thought me.

"So did you appear when our race was great," he said. "And soon, when
it has recovered a little of its greatness, we shall bring back those
who still dwell in the Shadow-land."

"The Shadow-land?" I asked.

"It is far to the East, over the Great Water," he said. "But we know
they dwell there, those of Khalk'ru who fled at the time of the great
sacrilege which changed fecund Uighuriand into desert. They will be of
the pure blood like yourself, Dwayanu, and you shall find mates among
the women. And in time, we of the thinned blood shall pass away, and
Uighuriand again be peopled by its ancient race."

He walked abruptly away, the lesser priests following. At the door he
turned.

"Wait here," he said, "until the word comes from me."




CHAPTER IV.



TENTACLE OF KHALK'RU


I waited for an hour, examining the curious contents of the room, and
amusing myself with shadow-fencing with the two swords. I swung round
to find the Uighur captain watching me from the doorway, pale eyes
glowing.

"By Zarda!" he said. "Whatever you have forgotten, it is not your sword
play! A warrior you left us, a warrior you have returned!"

He dropped upon a knee, bent his head: "Pardon, Dwayanu! I have been
sent for you. It is time to go."

A heady exaltation began to take me. I dropped the swords, and clapped
him on the shoulder. He took it like an accolade. We passed through the
corridor of the spearsmen and over the threshold of the great doorway.
There was a thunderous shout.

"Dwayanu!"

And then a blaring of trumpets, a mighty roll of drums and the clashing
of cymbals.

Drawn up in front of the palace was a hollow square of Uighur horsemen,
a full five hundred of them, spears glinting, pennons flying from their
shafts. Within the square, in ordered ranks, were as many more. But now
I saw that these were both men and women, clothed in garments as
ancient as those I wore, and shimmering in the strong sunlight like a
vast multicoloured rug of metal threads. Banners and bannerets, torn
and tattered and bearing strange symbols, fluttered from them. At the
far edge of the square I recognized the old priest, his lesser priests
flanking him, mounted and clad in the yellow. Above them streamed a
yellow banner, and as the wind whipped it straight, black upon it
appeared the shape of the Kraken. Beyond the square of horsemen,
hundreds of the Uighurs pressed for a glimpse of me. As I stood there,
blinking, another shout mingled with the roll of the Uighur drums.

"The King returns to his people!" Barr had said. Well, it was like
that.

A soft nose nudged me. Beside me was the black stallion. I mounted him.
The Uighur captain at my heels, we trotted down the open way between
the ordered ranks. I looked at them as I went by. All of them, men and
women, had the pale blue-grey eyes; each of them was larger than the
run of the race. I thought that these were the nobles, the pick of the
ancient families, those in whom the ancient blood was strongest. Their
tattered banners bore the markings of their clans. There was exultation
in the eyes of the men. Before I had reached the priests. I had read
terror in the eyes of many of the women.

I reached the old priest. The line of horsemen ahead of us parted. We
two rode through the gap, side by side. The lesser priests fell in
behind us. The nobles followed them. A long thin line upon each side of
the cavalcade, the Uighur horsemen trotted--with the Uighur trumpets
blaring, the Uighur kettle-drums and long-drums beating, the Uighur
cymbals crashing, in wild triumphal rhythms.

"The King returns--"

I would to heaven that something had sent me then straight upon the Uighur
spears!

We trotted through the green of the oasis. We crossed a wide bridge
which had spanned the little stream when it had been a mighty river. We
set our horses' feet upon the ancient road that led straight to the
mountain's doorway a mile or more away. The heady exultation grew
within me. I looked back at my company. And suddenly I remembered the
repairs and patches on my breeches and my blouse. And my following was
touched with the same shabbiness. It made me feel less a king, but it
also made me pitiful. I saw them as men and women driven by hungry
ghosts in their thinned blood, ghosts of strong ancestors growing weak
as the ancient blood weakened, starving at it weakened, but still
strong enough to clamour against extinction, still strong enough to
command their brains and wills and drive them toward something the
ghosts believed would feed their hunger, make them strong again.

Yes, I pitied them. It was nonsense to think I could appease the hunger
of their ghosts, but there was one thing I could do for them. I could
give them a damned good show! I went over in my mind the ritual the old
priest had taught me, rehearsed each gesture.

I looked up to find we were at the threshold of the mountain door. It
was wide enough for twenty horsemen to ride through abreast. The
squat columns I had seen, under the touch of the old priest's hands,
lay shattered beside it. I felt no repulsion, no revolt against
entering, as I then had. I was eager to be in and to be done with it.

The spearsmen trotted up, and formed a guard beside the opening. I
dismounted, and handed one of them the stallion's rein. The old priest
beside me, the lesser ones behind us, we passed over the threshold of
the mined doorway, and into the mountain. The passage, or vestibule,
was lighted by wall cressets in which burned the clear, white flame. A
hundred paces from the entrance, another passage opened, piercing
inward at an angle of about fifteen degrees to the wider one. Into this
the old priest turned. I glanced back. The nobles had not yet entered;
I could see them dismounting at the entrance. We went along this
passage in silence for perhaps a thousand feet. It opened into a small
square chamber, cut in the red sandstone, at whose side was another
door, covered with heavy tapestries. In this chamber was nothing except
a number of stone coffers of various sizes ranged along its walls.

The old priest opened one of these. Within it was a wooden box, grey
with age. He lifted its lid, and took from it two yellow garments. He
slipped one of these garments over my head. It was like a smock,
falling to my knees. I glanced down; woven within it, its tentacles
encircling me, was the black octopus.

The other he drew over his own head. It, too, bore the octopus, but
only on the breast, the tentacles did not embrace him. He bent and took
from the coffer a golden staff, across the end of which ran bars. From
these fell loops of small golden bells.

From the other coffers the lesser priests had taken drums, queerly
shaped oval instruments some three feet long, with sides of sullen red
metal. They sat, rolling the drumheads under their thumbs, tightening
them here and there while the old priest gently shook his staff of
bells, testing their chiming. They were for all the world like an
orchestra tuning up. I again felt a desire to laugh;

I did not then know how the commonplace can intensify the terrible.

There were sounds outside the tapestried doorway, rustlings. There were
three clangorous strokes like a hammer upon an anvil. Then silence. The
twelve priests walked through the doorway with their drums in their
arms. The high priest beckoned me to follow him, and we passed through
after them.

I looked out upon an immense cavern, cut from the living rock by the
hands of men dust now for thousands of years. It told its immemorial
antiquity as clearly as though the rocks had tongue. It was more than
ancient; it was primeval. It was dimly lighted, so dimly that hardly
could I see the Uighur nobles. They were standing, the banners of their
clans above them, their faces turned up to me, upon the stone floor, a
hundred yards or so away, and ten feet below me. Beyond them and behind
them the cavern extended, vanishing in darkness. I saw that in front of
them was a curving trough, wide--like the trough between two long
waves--and that like a wave it swept upward from the hither side of the
trough, curving, its lip crested, as though that wave of sculptured
stone were a gigantic comber rushing back upon them. This lip formed
the edge of the raised place on which I stood.

The high priest touched my arm. I turned my head to him, and followed
his eyes. A hundred feet away from me stood a girl. She was naked.
She had not long entered womanhood and quite plainly was soon to be
a mother. Her eyes were as blue as those of the old priest, her hair was
reddish brown, touched with gold, her skin was palest olive. The blood of
the old fair race was strong within her. For all she held herself so
bravely, there was terror in her eyes, and the rapid rise and fall of
her rounded breasts further revealed that terror.

She stood in a small hollow. Around her waist was a golden ring, and
from that ring dropped three golden chains fastened to the rock floor.
I recognized their purpose. She could not run, and if she dropped or
fell, she could not writhe away, out of the cup. But run, or writhe
away from what? Certainly not from me! I looked at her and smiled. Her
eyes searched mine. The terror suddenly fled from them. She smiled back
at me, trustingly.

God forgive me--I smiled at her and she trusted me! I looked beyond her,
from whence had come a glitter of yellow like a flash from a huge
topaz. Up from the rock a hundred yards behind the girl jutted an
immense fragment of the same yellow translucent stone that formed the
jewel in my ring. It was like the fragment of a gigantic shattered
pane. Its shape was roughly triangular. Black within it was a tentacle
of the Kraken. The tentacle swung down within the yellow stone, broken
from the monstrous body when the stone had been broken. It was all of
fifty feet long. Its inner side was turned toward me, and plain upon
all its length clustered the hideous sucking discs.

Well, it was ugly enough--but nothing to be afraid of, I thought. I
smiled again at the chained girl, and met once more her look of utter
trust.

The old priest had been watching me closely. We walked forward until we
were half-way between the edge and the girl. At the lip squatted the
twelve lesser priests, their drums on their laps.

The old priest and I faced the girl and the broken tentacle. He raised
his staff of golden bells and shook them. From the darkness of the
cavern began a low chanting, a chant upon three minor themes, repeated
and repeated, and intermingled.

It was as primeval as the cavern; it was the voice of the cavern
itself.

The girl never took her eyes from me.

The chanting ended. I raised my hands and made the curious gestures of
salutation I had been taught. I began the ritual to Khalk'ru...

With the first words, the odd feeling of recognition swept over me--with
something added. The words, the gestures, were automatic. I did not
have to exert any effort of memory; they remembered themselves. I no
longer saw the chained girl. All I saw was the black tentacle in the
shattered stone.

On swept the ritual and on...was the yellow stone dissolving from
around the tentacle...was the tentacle swaying?

Desperately I tried to halt the words, the gesturing. I could not!

Something stronger than myself possessed me, moving my muscles,
speaking from my throat. I had a sense of inhuman power. On to the
climax of the evil evocation--and how I knew how utterly evil it
was--the ritual rushed, while I seemed to stand apart, helpless to check
it.

It ended.

And the tentacle quivered...it writhed...it reached outward to the
chained girl...

There was a devil's roll of drums, rushing up fast and ever faster to a
thunderous crescendo...

The girl was still looking at me...but the trust was gone from her
eyes...her face reflected the horror stamped upon my own.

The black tentacle swung up and out!

I had a swift vision of a vast cloudy body from which other cloudy
tentacles writhed. A breath that had in it the cold of outer space
touched me.

The black tentacle coiled round the girl...

She screamed--inhumanly...she faded...she dissolved...her
screaming faded...her screaming became a small shrill agonized
piping...a sigh.

I heard the dash of metal from where the girl had stood. The clashing
of the golden chains and girdle that had held her, falling empty on the
rock.

The girl was gone!

I stood, nightmare horror such as I had never known in worst of
nightmares paralysing me--

The child had trusted me...I had smiled at her, and she had trusted
me...and I had summoned the Kraken to destroy her!

Searing remorse, white hot rage, broke the chains that held me. I saw
the fragment of yellow stone in its place, the black tentacle inert
within it. At my feet lay the old priest, flat on his face, his
withered body shaking; his withered hands clawing at the rock. Beside
their drums lay the lesser priests, and flat upon the floor of the
cavern were the nobles--prostrate, abased, blind and deaf in stunned
worship of that dread Thing I had summoned.

I ran to the tapestried doorway. I had but one desire--to get out of the
temple of Khalk'ru. Out of the lair of the Kraken. To get far and far
away from it. To get back...back to the camp-home. I ran through
the little room, through the passages and, still running, reached the
entrance to the temple. I stood there for an instant, dazzled by the
sunlight.

There was a roaring shout from hundreds of throats--then silence. My
sight cleared. They lay there, in the dust, prostrate before me--the
troops of the Uighur spearsmen.

I looked for the black stallion. He was close beside me. I sprang upon
his back, gave him the reins. He shot forward like a black thunderbolt
through the prostrate ranks, and down the road to the oasis. We raced
through the oasis. I had vague glimpses of running crowds, shouting.
None tried to stop me. None could have stayed the rush of that great
horse.

And now I was close to the inner gates of the stone fort through which
we had passed on the yesterday. They were open. Their guards stood
gaping at me. Drums began to beat, peremptorily, from the temple. I
looked back. There was a confusion at its entrance, a chaotic milling.
The Uighur spearsmen were streaming down the wide road.

The gates began to close. I shot the stallion forward, bowling over the
guards, and was inside the fort. I reached the further gates. They were
closed. Louder beat the drums, threatening, commanding.

Something of sanity returned to me. I ordered the guards to open. They
stood, trembling, staring at me. But they did not obey. I leaped from
the stallion and ran to them. I raised my hand. The ring of Khalk'ru
glittered. They threw themselves on the ground before me--but they did
not open the gates.

I saw upon the wall goatskins full of water. I snatched one of these
and a sack of grain. Upon the floor was a huge slab of stone. I lifted
it as though it had been a pebble, and hurled it at the gates where the
two halves met. They burst asunder. I threw the skin of water and sack
of grain over the high saddle, and rode through the broken gates.

The great horse skimmed through the ravine like a swallow. And now we
were over the crumbling bridge and thundering down the ancient road.

We came to the end of the far ravine. I knew it by the fall of rock. I
looked back. There was no sign of pursuit. But I could hear the faint
throb of the drums.

It was now well past mid-afternoon. We picked our way through the
ravine and came out at the edge of the sandstone range. It was cruel to
force the stallion, but I could not afford to spare him. By nightfall
we had readied semi-arid country. The stallion was reeking with sweat,
and tired. Never once had he slackened or turned surly. He had a great
heart, that horse. I made up my mind that he should rest, come what
might.

I found a sheltered place behind some high boulders. Suddenly I
realized that I was still wearing the yellow ceremonial smock. I tore
it off with sick loathing. I rubbed the horse down with it. I watered
him and gave him some of the grain. I realized, too, that I was
ravenously hungry and had eaten nothing since morning. I chewed some of
the grain and washed it down with the tepid water. As yet, there were
no signs of pursuit, and the drums were silent. I wondered uneasily
whether the Uighurs knew of a shorter road and were outflanking me. I
threw the smock over the stallion and stretched myself on the ground. I
did not intend to sleep. But I did go to sleep.

I awakened abruptly. Dawn was breaking. Looking down upon me were the
old priest and the cold-eyed Uighur captain. My hiding place was ringed
with spearsmen. The old priest spoke, gently.

"We mean you no harm, Dwayanu. If it is your will to leave us, we
cannot stay you. He whose call Khalk'ru has answered has nothing to
fear from us. His will is our will."

I did not answer. Looking at him, I saw again--could only see--that
which I had seen in the cavern. He sighed.

"It is your will to leave us! So shall it be!"

The Uighur captain did not speak.

"We have brought your clothing, Dwayanu, thinking that you might wish
to go from us as you came," said the old priest.

I stripped and dressed in my old clothes. The old priest took my faded
finery. He lifted the octopus robe from the stallion. The captain spoke:

"Why do you leave us, Dwayanu? You have made our peace with Khalk'ru.
You have unlocked the gates. Soon the desert will blossom as of old.
Why will you not remain and lead us on our march to greatness?"

I shook my head. The old priest sighed again.

"It is his will! So shall it be! But remember, Dwayanu--he whose call
Khalk'ru has answered must answer when Khalk'ru calls him. And soon or
late--Khalk'ru will call him!"

He touched my hair with his trembling old hands, touched my heart, and
turned. A troop of spearsmen wheeled round him. They rode away.

The Uighur captain said:

"We wait to guard Dwayanu on his journey."

I mounted the stallion. We reached the expedition's new camp. It was
deserted. We rode on, toward the old camp. Late that afternoon we saw
ahead of us a caravan. As we came nearer they halted, made hasty
preparations for defence. It was the expedition--still on the march. I
waved my hands to them and shouted.

I dropped off the black stallion, and handed the reins to the Uighur.

"Take him," I said. His face lost its sombre sternness, brightened.

"He shall be ready for you when you return to us, Dwayanu. He or his
sons," he said. He touched my hand to his forehead, knelt. "So shall we
all be, Dwayanu--ready for you, we or our sons. When you return."

He mounted his horse. He faced me with his troop. They raised their
spears. There was one crashing shout--

"Dwayanu!"

They raced away.

I walked to where Fairchild and the others awaited me.

As soon as I could arrange it, I was on my way back to America. I
wanted only one thing--to put as many miles as possible between myself
and Khalk'ru's temple.

I stopped. Involuntarily my hand sought the buckskin bag on my
breast.

"But now," I said, "it appears that it is not so easy to escape him. By
anvil stroke, by chant and drums--Khalk'ru calls me '"




CHAPTER V.



THE MIRAGE


Jim had sat silent, watching me, but now and again I had seen the
Indian stoicism drop from his face. He leaned over and put a hand on my
shoulder.

"Leif," he said quietly, "how could I have known? For the first time, I
saw you afraid--it hurt me. I did not know..."

From Tsantawu, the Cherokee, this was much. "It's all right, Indian.
Snap back," I said roughly. He sat for a while not speaking, throwing
little twigs on the fire.

"What did you friend Barr say about it?" he asked abruptly.

"He gave me hell," I said. "He gave me hell with the tears streaming
down his cheeks. He said that never had anyone betrayed science as I
had since Judas kissed Christ. He was keen on mixed metaphors that got
under your skin. That went deep under mine, for it was precisely what
I was thinking of myself--not as to science but as to the girl. I had
given her the kiss of Judas all right. Barr said that I had been handed
the finest opportunity man ever had given him. I could have solved the
whole mystery of the Gobi and its lost civilization. I had run away
like a child from a bugaboo. I was not only atavistic in body, I was
atavistic in brain. I was a blond savage cowering before my
mumbo-jumbos. He said that if he had been given my chance he would have
let himself be crucified to have learned the truth. He would have, too.
He was not lying."

"Admirably scientific," said Jim. "But what did he say about what you
saw?"

"That is was nothing but hypnotic suggestion by the old priest. I had
seen what he had willed me to see--just as before, under his will, I
had seen myself riding to the temple. The girl hadn't dissolved. She
had probably been standing in the wings laughing at me. But if
everything that my ignorant mind had accepted as true had been true
then my conduct was even more unforgivable. I should have remained,
studied the phenomena and brought back the results for science to
examine. What I had told him of the ritual of Khalk'ru was nothing but
the second law of thermo-dynamics expressed in terms of
anthropomorphism. Life was an intrusion upon Chaos, using that word to
describe the unformed, primal state of the universe. An invasion. An
accident. In time all energy would be changed to static heat, impotent
to give birth to any life whatsoever. The dead universes would float
lifelessly in the illimitable void. The void was eternal, life was not.
Therefore the void would absorb it. Suns, worlds, gods, men, an things
animate, would return to the void. Go back to Chaos. Back to
Nothingness. Back to Khalk'ru. Or if my atavistic brain preferred the
term--back to the Kraken. He was bitter."

"But the others saw the girl taken, you say. How did he explain that?"

"Oh, easily. That was mass hypnotism--like the Angels of Mons, the
ghostly bowmen of Crecy and other collective hallucinations of the War.
I had been a catalyzer. My likeness to the traditional ancient race,
my completeness as a throwback, my mastery at Khalk'ru's ritual, the
faith the Uighurs had in me--all this had been the necessary element in
bringing about the collective hallucination of the tentacle. Obviously
the priests had long been trying to make work a drug in which an essential
chemical was lacking. I, for some reason, was the missing chemical--the
catalyzer. That was all." Again he sat thinking, breaking the little
twigs.

"It's a reasonable explanation. But you weren't convinced?"

"No, I wasn't convinced--I saw the girl's face when the tentacle touched
her." He arose, stood staring toward the north.

"Leif," he asked suddenly, "what did you do with the ring?"

I drew out the little buckskin pouch, opened it and handed the ring to
him. He examined it closely, returned it to me.

"Why did you keep it, Leif?"

"I don't know." I slipped the ring over my thumb. "I didn't give it
back to the old priest; he didn't ask for it. Oh, hell--I'll tell you
why I kept it--for the same reason Coleridge's Ancient Mariner had the
albatross tied round his neck. So I couldn't forget I'm a murderer."

I put the ring back in the buckskin bag, and dropped it down my neck.
Faintly from the north came a roll of drums. It did not seem to travel
with the wind this time. It seemed to travel underground, and died out
deep beneath us.

"Khalk'ru!" I said.

"Well. don't let's keep the old gentleman waiting," said Jim cheerfully.

He busied himself with the packs, whistling. Suddenly he turned to me.

"Listen, Leif. Barr's theories sound good to me. I'm not saying that if
I'd been in your place I would have accepted them. Maybe you're right.
But I'm with Barr--until events, if-when-and-how they occur, prove him
wrong."

"Fine!" I said heartily, and entirely without sarcasm.

"May your optimism endure until we get back to New York--if-when-and-how."

We shouldered the packs, and took up our rifles and started northward.

It was not hard going, but it was an almost constant climb. The country
sloped upward, sometimes at a breathtaking pitch. The forest,
unusually thick and high for the latitude, began to thin. It grew
steadily cooler. After we had covered about fifteen miles we entered a
region of sparse and stunted trees. Five miles ahead was a
thousand-feet-high range of bare rocks. Beyond this range was a jumble
of mountains four to five thousand feet higher, treeless, their peaks
covered with snow and ice, and cut by numerous ravines which stood out
glistening white like miniature glaciers. Between us and the nearer
range stretched a plain, all grown over with dwarfed thickets of wild
roses, blueberries and squawbemes, and dressed in the brilliant reds
and blues and greens of the brief Alaskan summer.

"If we camp at the base of those hills, we'll be out of that wind,"
said Jim. "It's five o'clock. We ought to make it in an hour."

We set off. Bursts of willow ptarmigans shot up around us from the
berry thickets like brown rockets; golden plovers and curlews were
whistling on all sides; within rifle shot a small herd of caribou was
feeding, and the little brown cranes were stalking everywhere. No
one could starve in that country, and after we had set up camp we dined
very well.

There were no sounds that night--or if there were we slept too deeply to
hear them.

The next morning we debated our trail. The low range stood directly in
our path north. It continued, increasing in height, both east and west.
It presented no great difficulties from where we were, at least so far
as we could see. We determined to climb it, taking it leisurely. It was
more difficult than it had appeared; it took us two hours to wind our
way to the top.

We tramped across the top toward a line of huge boulders that stretched
like a wall before us. We squeezed between two of these, and drew
hastily back. We were standing at the edge of a precipice that dropped
hundreds of feet sheer to the floor of a singular valley. The jumble of
snow-and-ice-mantled mountains clustered around it. At its far end,
perhaps twenty miles away, was a pyramidal-shaped peak.

Down its centre, from tip to the floor of the valley, ran a glittering
white streak, without question a glacier filling a chasm which split
the mountain as evenly as though it had been made by a single sword
stroke. The valley was not wide, not more than five miles, I estimated,
at its widest point. A long and narrow valley, its far end
stoppered by the glacier-cleft giant, its sides the walls of the other
mountains, dropping, except here and there where there had been falls
of rock, as precipitously into it as the cliff under us.

But it was the floor of the valley itself that riveted our attention.
It seemed nothing but a tremendous level field covered with rocky
rubble. At the far end, the glacier ran through this rubble for half
the length of the valley. There was no trace of vegetation among the
littered rocks. There was no hint of green upon the surrounding
mountains; only the bare black cliffs with their ice and snow-filled
gashes. It was a valley of desolation.

"It's cold here, Leif." Jim shivered.

It was cold--a cold of a curious quality, a still and breathless cold.
It seemed to press out upon us from the valley, as though to force us
away.

"It's going to be a job getting down there," I said.

"And hard going when we do," said Jim. "Where the hell did all those rocks
come from, and what spread them out so flat?"

"Probably dropped by that glacier when it shrunk," I said. "It looks
like a terminal moraine. In fact this whole place looks as though it
had been scooped out by the ice."

"Hold on to my feet, Leif, I'll take a look." He lay on his belly and
wriggled his body over the edge. In a minute or two I heard him call,
and pulled him back.

"There's a slide about a quarter of a mile over there to the left," he
said. "I couldn't tell whether it goes all the way to the top. We'll go
see. Leif, how far down do you think that valley is?"

"Oh, a few hundred feet."

"It's all of a thousand if it's an inch. The cliff goes down and down.
I don't understand what makes the bottom seem so much closer here. It's
a queer place, this."

We picked up the packs and marched off behind the wall--like rim of
boulders. In a little while we came across a big gouge in the top,
running far back. Here frost and ice had bitten out the rock along some
fault. The shattered debris ran down the middle of the gouge like giant
stepping-stones clear to the floor of the valley.

"We'll have to take the packs off to negotiate that," said Jim. "What
shall be do--leave them here while we explore, or drop them along with
us as we go?"

"Take them with us. There must be an outlet off there at the base of
the big mountain."

We began the descent. I was scrambling over one of the rocks about a
third of the way when I heard his sharp exclamation.

Gone was the glacier that had thrust its white tongue in among the
rubble. Gone was the rubble. Toward its far end, the valley's floor
was covered with scores of pyramidal black stones, each marked down its
centre with a streak of glistening white. They stood in ranks, spaced
regularly, like the dolmens of the Druids. They marched half-down the
valley. Here and there between them arose wisps of white steam, like
smokes of sacrifices.

Between them and us, lapping at the black cliffs, was a blue and
rippling lake! It filled the lower valley from side to side. It rippled
over the edges of the shattered rocks still far below us.

Then something about the marshalled ranks of black stones struck me.

"Jim! Those pyramid-shaped rocks. Each and every one of them is a tiny
duplicate of the mountain behind them! Even to the white streak!"

As I spoke, the blue lake quivered. It flowed among the black pyramids,
half-submerging them, quenching the sacrificial smokes. It covered the
pyramids. Again it quivered. It was gone. Where the lake had been was
once more the rubble-covered floor of the valley.

There had been an odd touch of legerdemain about the transformations,
like the swift work of a master magician. And it had been magic--of a
kind. But I had watched nature perform that magic before.

"Hell!" I said. "It's a mirage!"

Jim did not answer. He was staring at the valley with a singular
expression.

"What's the matter with you, Tsantawu? Listening to the ancestors
again? It's only a mirage."

"Yes?" he said. "But which one? The lake--or the rocks?"

I studied the valley's floor. It looked real enough. The theory of a
glacial moraine accounted for its oddly level appearance--that and our
height above it. When we reached it we would find that distribution of
boulders uncomfortably uneven enough, I would swear.

"Why, the lake of course."

"No," he said, "I think the stones are the mirage."

"Nonsense. There's a layer of warm air down there. The stones radiate
the sun's heat. This cold air presses on it. It's one of the conditions
that produces mirages, and it has just done it for us. That's all."

"No," he said, "it isn't all."

He leaned against the rock.

"Leif, the ancestors had a few things more to say last night than I
told you."

"I know damned well they did."

"They spoke of Ataga'hi. Does that mean anything to you."

"Not a thing."

"It didn't to me--then. It does now. Ataga'hi was an enchanted lake, in
the wildest part of the Great Smokies, westward from the headwaters of
the Ocana-luftee. It was the medicine lake of the animals and birds.
All the Cherokee knew it was there, though few had seen it. If a stray
hunter came close, all he saw was a stony flat, without blade of grass,
forbidding. But by prayer and fasting and an all-night vigil, he could
sharpen his spiritual sight. He would then behold at daybreak a wide
shallow sheet of purple water, fed by springs, spouting from the high
cliffs around. And in the water all kinds of fish and reptiles, flocks
of ducks and geese and other birds flying about, and around the lake
the tracks of animals. They came to Ataga'hi to be cured of wounds or
sickness. The Great Spirit had placed an island in the middle of the
lake. The wounded, the sick animals and birds swam to it. When they
had reached it--the waters of Ataga'hi had cured them. They came up on
its shores--whole once more. Over Ataga'hi ruled the peace of God. All
creatures were friends."

"Listen, Indian, are you trying to tell me this is your medicine lake?"

"I didn't say that at all. I said the name of Ataga'hi kept coming into
my mind. It was a place that appeared to be a stony flat, without blade of
grass, forbidding. So does this place. But under that illusion was--a
lake. We saw a lake. It's a queer coincidence, that's all. Perhaps the
stony flat of Ataga'hi was a mirage--" He hesitated: "Well, if some other
things the ancestors mentioned turn up, I'll shift sides and take your
version of that Gobi affair."

"That lake was the mirage. I'm telling you."

He shook his head, stubbornly.

"Maybe. But maybe what we see down there now is mirage, too. Maybe both
are mirage. And if so, then, how deep is the real floor, and can we
make our way over it?"

He stood staring silently at the valley. He shivered, and again I was
aware of the curiously intense quality of the cold. I stooped and
caught hold of my pack. My hands were numb.

"Well, whatever it is--let's find out."

A quiver ran through the valley floor. Abruptly it became again the
shimmering blue lake. And as abruptly turned again to nibbled rock.

But not before I had seemed to see within that lake of illusion--if
illusion it were--a gigantic shadowy shape, huge black tentacles
stretching out from a vast and nebulous body...a body which seemed to
vanish back into immeasurable distances...vanishing into the
void... as the Kraken of the Gobi cavern had seemed to vanish into the
void... into that void which was--Khalk'ru!

We crept between, scrambled over and slid down the huge broken
fragments. The further down we went, the more intense became the cold.
It had a still and creeping quality that seeped into the marrow.
Sometimes we dropped the packs ahead of us, sometimes dragged them
after us. And ever more savagely the cold bit into our bones.

By the frequent glimpses of the valley floor, I was more and more
assured of its reality. Every mirage I had ever beheld--and in Mongolia
I had seen many--had retreated, changed form, or vanished as I drew
near. The valley floor did none of these things. It was true that the
stones seemed to be squatter as we came closer; but I attributed that to
the different angle of vision.

We were about a hundred feet above the end of the slide when I began to
be less sure. The travelling had become peculiarly difficult. The slide
had narrowed. At our left the rock was clean swept, stretching down to
the valley as smoothly as though it had been brushed by some titantic
broom. Probably an immense fragment had broken loose at this point,
shattering into the boulders that lay heaped at its termination. We
veered to the right, where there was a ridge of rocks, pushed to the
side by that same besom of stone. Down this ridge we picked our way.

Because of my greater strength, I was carrying both our rifles, swung
by a thong over my left shoulder. Also I was handling the heavier pack.
We came upon an extremely awkward place. The stone upon which I was
standing suddenly tipped beneath my weight. It threw me sideways. The
pack slipped from my hands, toppled, and fell over on the smooth rock.
Automatically I threw myself forward, catching at it. The thong holding
the two rifles broke. They went slithering after the escaping pack.

It was one of those combinations of circumstances that makes one
believe in a God of Mischance. The thing might have happened anywhere
else on our journey without any result whatever. And even at that
moment I didn't think it mattered.

"Well," I said, cheerfully, "that saves me carrying them. We can pick
them up when we get to the bottom."

"That is," said Jim, "if there is a bottom."

I cocked my eye down the slide. The rifles had caught up with the pack
and the three were now moving fast.

"There they stop," I said. They were almost on the rubble at the end.

"The hell they do," said Jim. "There they go!"

I rubbed my eyes, and looked and looked again. The pack and the pushing
rifles should have been checked by that barrier at the slide's end. But
they had not been. They had vanished.




CHAPTER VI.



THE SHADOWED-LAND


There had been a queer quivering when rifles and pack had touched the
upthrust of rock. Then they had seemed to melt into it.

"I'd say they dropped into the lake," said Jim.

"There's no lake. They dropped into some break in the rock. Come on--"

He gripped my shoulder.

"Wait, Leif. Go slow."

I followed his pointing finger. The barrier of stones had vanished.
Where they had been, the slide ran, a smooth tongue of stone, far out
into the valley.

"Come on," I said.

We went down, testing every step. With each halt, the nibbled plain
became flatter and flatter, the boulders squatted lower and lower. A
cloud drifted over the sun. There were no boulders. The valley floor
stretched below us, a level slate-grey waste!

The slide ended abruptly at the edge of this waste. The rocks ended as
abruptly, about fifty feet ahead. They stood at the edge with the queer
effect of stones set in place when the edge had been viscous. Nor did
the waste appear solid; it, too, gave the impression of viscosity;
through it ran a slight but constant tremor, like waves of heat over a
sun-baked road--yet with every step downward the bitter, still cold
increased until it was scarcely to be borne.

There was a narrow passage between the shattered rocks and the cliff at
our right. We crept through it. We stood upon an immense flat stone at
the very edge of the strange plain. It was neither water nor rock;
more than anything, it had the appearance of a thin opaque liquid
glass, or a gas that had been turned semi-liquid.

I stretched myself out on the slab, and reached out to touch it. I did
touch it--there was no resistance; I felt nothing. I let my hand sink
slowly in. I saw my hand for a moment as though reflected in a
distorting mirror, and then I could not see it at all. But it was
pleasantly warm down there where my hand had disappeared. The chilled
blood began to tingle in my numbed fingers. I leaned far over the stone
and plunged both arms in almost to the shoulders. It felt damned good.

Jim dropped beside me and thrust in his arms.

"It's air," he said.

"Feels like it--" I began, and then a sudden realization came to me--"the
rifles and the pack! If we don't get them we're out of luck!"

He said: "If Khalk'ru is--guns aren't going to get us away from him."

"You think this--" I stopped, memory of the shadowy shape in the lake of
illusion coming back to me.

"Usunhi'yi, the Darkening-land. The Shadowed-land your old priest
called it, didn't he? I'd say this fits either description."

I lay quiet; no matter what the certainty of a coming ordeal a man may
carry in his soul, he can't help a certain shrinking when he knows
his foot is at the threshold of it. And now quite clearly and certainly
I knew just that. All the long trail between Khalk'ru's Gobi temple and
this place of mirage was wiped out. I was stepping from that focus of
Khalk'ru's power into this one--where what had been begun in the Gobi
must be ended. The old haunting horror began to creep over me. I fought
it.

I would take up the challenge. Nothing on earth could stop me now from
going on. And with that determination, I felt the horror sullenly
retreat, leave me. For the first time in years I was wholly free of it.

"I'm going to see what's down there." Jim drew up his arms. "Hold on to
my feet, Leif, and I'll slip over the edge of the stone. I felt along
its edge and it seems to go on a bit further."

"I'll go first." I said. "After all, it's my party."

"And a fine chance I'd have to pull you up if you fell over, you human
elephant. Here goes--catch hold."

I had just time to grip his ankles as he wriggled over the stone, and
his head and shoulders passed from sight. On he went, slowly writhing
along the slanting rock until my hands and arms were hidden to the
shoulders. He paused--and then from the mysterious opacity in which he
had vanished came a roar of crazy laughter.

I felt him twist and try to jerk his feet away from me. I pulled him,
fighting against me every inch of the way, out upon the stone. He came
out roaring that same mad laughter. His face was red, and his eyes were
shining drunkenly; he had in fact all the symptoms of a laughing
drunk. But the rapidity of his respiration told me what had happened.

"Breathe slowly," I shouted in his ear. "Breathe slowly, I tell you."

And then, as his laughter continued and his struggles to tear loose did
not abate, I held him down with one arm and closed his nose and mouth
with my hand. In a moment or two he relaxed. I released him; and he sat
up groggily.

"Funniest things," he said, thickly. "Saw funniest faces..."

He shook his head, took a deep breath or two, and lay back on the stone.

"What the hell happened to me, Leif?"

"You had an oxygen burn, Indian," I said. "A nice cheap jag on air
loaded with carbon-dioxide. And that explains a lot of things about
this place. You came up breathing three to the second, which is what
carbon-dioxide does to you. Works on the respiratory centres of the
brain and speeds up respiration. You took in more oxygen than you could
use, and you got drunk on it. What did you see before the world became
so funny?"

"I saw you," he said. "And the sky. It was like looking up out of
water. I looked down and around. A little below me was something like a
floor of pale green mist. I couldn't see through it. It's warm in
there, good and plenty warm, and it smells like trees and flowers.
That's all I managed to grasp before I went goofy. Oh, yes, this rock
fall keeps right on going down. Maybe we can get to the bottom of it--if
we don't laugh ourselves off. I'm going right out and sit in that
mirage up to my neck--my God, Leif, I'm freezing!"

I looked at him with concern. His lips were blue, his teeth chattering.
The transition from the warmth to the bitter cold was having its
effect, and a dangerous one.

"All right," I said, rising. "I'll go first. Breathe slowly, take deep,
long breaths as slowly as you can, and breathe out just as slowly.
You'll soon get used to it. Come on."

I slung the remaining pack over my back, craw-fished over the side of
the stone, felt solid rock under my feet, and drew myself down within
the mirage.

It was warm enough; almost as warm as the steam-room of a Turkish
bath. I looked up and saw the sky above me like a circle of blue, misty
at its edges. Then I saw Jim's legs dropping down toward me, his body
bent back from them at an impossible angle. I was seeing him, in fact,
about as a fish does an angler wading in its pool. His body seemed to
telescope and he was squatting beside me.

"God, but this feels good!"

"Don't talk," I told him. "Just sit here and practise that slow
breathing. Watch me."

We sat there, silently, for all of half an hour. No sound broke the
stillness around us. It smelled of the jungle, of fast-growing vigorous
green life, and green life falling as swiftly into decay; and there
were elusive, alien fragrances. All I could see was the circle of blue
sky above, and perhaps a hundred feet below us the pale green mist of
which Jim had spoken. It was like a level floor of cloud, impenetrable
to the vision. The rock-fall entered it and was lost to sight. I felt
no discomfort, but both of us were dripping with sweat. I watched with
satisfaction Jim's deep, unhurried breathing.

"Having any trouble?" I asked at last.

"Not much. Now and then I have to put the pedal down. But I think I'm
getting the trick."

"All right," I said. "Soon we'll be moving. I don't believe it will get
any worse as we go down."

"You talk like an old-timer. What's your idea of this place anyway,
Leif?"

"Simple enough. Although the combination hasn't a chance in millions to
be duplicated. Here is a wide, deep valley entirely hemmed in by
precipitous cliffs. It is, in effect, a pit. The mountains enclosing it
are seamed with glaciers and ice streams and there is a constant flow
of cold air into this pit, even in summer. There is probably volcanic
activity close beneath the valley's floor, boiling springs and the
like. It may be a miniature of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes over
to the west. All this produces an excess of carbon-dioxide. There is
most probably a lush vegetation which adds to the product. What we
are going into is likely to be a little left-over fragment of the
Carboniferous Age--about ten million years out of its time. The warm,
heavy air fills the pit until it reaches the layer of cold air we've
just come from. The mirage is produced where the two meet, by
approximately the same causes which produce every mirage. How long
it's been this way, God alone knows. Parts of Alaska never had a
Glacial Age--the ice for some reason or another didn't cover them.
When what is New York was under a thousand feet of ice, the Yukon
Flats were an oasis filled with all sorts of animal and plant life.
If this valley existed then, we're due to see some strange survivals.
If it's comparatively recent, we'll probably run across some equally
interesting adaptations. That's about all, except there must be
an outlet of some kind somewhere at about this level, otherwise
the warm air would fill the whole valley to the top, as gas does a tank.
Let's be going."

"I begin to hope we find the guns," said Jim, thoughtfully.

"As you pointed out, they'd be no good against Khalk'ru--what, who, if
and where he is," I said. "But they'd be handy against his attendant
devils. Keep an eye out for them--I mean the guns."

We started down the rock-fall, toward the floor of green mist. The
going was not very difficult. We reached the mist without having seen
anything of rifles or packs. The mist looked like a heavy fog. We
entered it, and that was precisely what it was. It closed around us,
thick and warm. The rocks were reeking wet and slippery, and we had to
feel for every foot of the way. Twice I thought our numbers were up.
How deep that mist was, I could not tell, perhaps two or three hundred
feet--a condensation brought about by the peculiar atmospheric
conditions that produced the mirage.

The mist began to lighten. It maintained its curious green tint, but I
had the idea that this was due to reflection from below. Suddenly it
thinned to nothing. We came out of it upon a breast where the falling
rocks had met some obstruction and had piled up into a barrier about
thrice my height. We climbed that barrier.

We looked upon the valley beneath the mirage.

It lay a full thousand feet beneath us. It was filled with pale green
light like that in a deep forest glade. That light was both lucent and
vaporous, lucent where we stood, but hiding the distance with misty
curtains of pallid emerald. To the north and on each side as far as I
could see, and melting into the vaporous emerald curtains, was a vast
carpet of trees. Their breath came pulsing up to me, jungle-strong,
laden with the unfamiliar fragrances. At left and right, the black
cliffs fell sheer to the forest edge.

"Listen!" Jim caught my arm.

At first only a faint tapping, then louder and louder, we heard from
far away the beating of drums, scores of drums, in a strange staccato
rhythm--shrill, mocking, jeering! But they were no drums of Khalk'ru! In
them was nothing of that dreadful trampling of racing feet upon a
hollow world.

They ceased. As though in answer, and from an entirely different
direction, there was a fanfarade of trumpets, menacing, warlike. If
brazen notes could curse, these did. Again the drums broke forth,
still mocking, taunting, defiant.

"Little drums," Jim was whispering. "Drums of--" He dropped down from
the rocks, and I followed. The barrier led to the east, dipping
steadily downward. We followed its base. It stood like a great wall
between us and the valley, barring our vision. We heard the drums no
more. We descended five hundred feet at least before the barrier ended.
At its end was another rock slide like that down which the rifles and
pack had fallen.

We stood studying it. It descended at an angle of about forty-five
degrees, and while not so smooth as the other, it had few enough
foot-holds.

The air had steadily grown warmer. It was not an uncomfortable heat;
there was a queer tingling life about it, an exhalation of the crowding
forest or of the valley itself, I thought. It gave me a feeling of
rampant, reckless life, a heady exaltation. The pack had grown tiresome.
If we were to negotiate the slide, and there seemed nothing else
to do, I couldn't very well carry it. I unslung it.

"Letter of introduction" I said, and sent it slithering down the rock.

"Breathe deep and slow, you poor ass," said Jim, and laughed.

His eyes were bright; he looked happy, like a man from whom some burden
of fear and doubt has fallen. He looked, in fact, as I had felt when I
had taken up that challenge of the unknown not so long before. And I
wondered.

The slithering pack gave a little leap, and dropped completely out of
sight. Evidently the slide did not go all the way to the valley floor,
or, if so, it continued at a sharper angle at the point of the pack's
disappearance.

I let myself over cautiously, and began to worm down the slide flat on
my belly, Jim following. We had negotiated about three-quarters of it
when I heard him shout. Then his falling body struck me. I caught him
with one hand, but it broke my own precarious hold. We went rolling
down the slide and dropped into space. I felt a jarring shock, and
abruptly went completely out.




CHAPTER VII.



THE LITTLE PEOPLE


I came to myself to find Jim pumping the breath back into me. I was
lying on something soft. I moved my legs gingerly, and sat up. I looked
around. We were on a bank of moss--in it, rather, for the tops of the
moss were a foot or more above my head. It was an exceedingly overgrown
moss, I thought, staring at it stupidly. I had never seen moss as big
as this. Had I shrunk, or was it really so overgrown? Above me was a
hundred feet of almost sheer cliff. Said Jim:

"Well, we're here."

"How did we get here?" I asked, dazed. He pointed
to the cliff.

"We fell down that. We struck a ledge. You did, rather. I was on top.
It bumped us right out on this nice big moss mattress. I was still on
top. That's why I've been pumping breath back into you for the last
five minutes. Sorry, Leif, but if it had been the other way about,
you'd certainly have had to proceed on your pilgrimage alone. I haven't
your resilience."

He laughed. I stood up, and looked about us. The bed of giant moss on
which we had landed formed a mound between us and the forest. At the
base of the cliff was piled the debris of the fall that had made the
slide. I looked at these rocks and shivered. If we had struck them we
would have been a jumble of broken bones and mangled flesh. I felt
myself over. I was intact.

"Everything, Indian," I said piously, "is always for the best."

"God, Leif! You had me worried for awhile!" He turned abruptly. "Look
at the forest."

The mound of moss was a huge and high oval, hemmed almost to the base
of the cliffs by gigantic trees. They were somewhat like the sequoias
of California, and quite as high. Their crowns towered; their enormous
boles were columns carved by Titans. Beneath them grew graceful ferns,
tall as palm trees, and curious conifers with trunks thin as bamboos,
scaled red and yellow. Over them, hanging from the boles and branches
of the trees, were vines and dusters of flowers of every shape and
colour; there were cressets of orchids, and chandeliers of lilies;
strange symmetrical trees, the tips of whose leafless branches held up
flower cups as though they were candelabra; chimes of flower bells
swayed from boughs and there were long ropes and garlands of small
starry flowers, white and crimson and in all the blues of the tropic
seas. Bees dipped into them. There was a constant flashing of great
dragon-flies all in lacquered mail of green and scarlet. And
mysterious shadows drifted through the forest, like the shadows of the
wings of hovering unseen guardians.

It was no forest of the Carboniferous Age, at least none such as I had
ever seen reconstructed by science. It was a forest of enchantment. Out
of it came heady fragrances. Nor was it, for all its strangeness, in
the least sinister, or forbidding. It was very beautiful. 

Jim said: 

"The woods of the gods! Anything might live in a place like that.
Anything that is lovely--"

Ah, Tsantawu, my brother--had that but been true!

All I said was:

 "It's going to be damned hard to get through."

"I was thinking that," he answered. "Maybe the best thing is to skirt
the cliffs. We may run across easier going farther on. Which way--right
or left?"

We tossed a coin. The coin spun right. I saw the pack not far away, and
walked over to retrieve it. The moss was as unsteady as a double
spring-mattress. I wondered how it came to be there; thought that
probably a few of the giant trees had been felled by the rock fall
and the moss had fed upon their decay. I slung the pack over my
shoulders, and we tramped, waist-deep in the spongy growth, to the
cliffs.

We skirted the cliffs for about a mile. Sometimes the forest pressed so
closely that we had trouble clinging to the rock. Then it began to
change. The giant trees retreated. We entered a brake of the immense
ferns. Except for the bees and the lacquered dragon-flies, there was no
sign of life amid the riotous vegetation. We passed out of the ferns
and into a most singular small meadow. It was almost like a clearing.
At each side were the ferns; the forest formed a palisade at one end;
at the other was a sheer cliff whose black face was spangled with large
cup-shaped white flowers which hung from short, reddish, rather
repellantly snake-like vines whose roots I supposed were fixed in
crevices in the rock.

No trees or ferns of any kind grew in the meadow. It was carpeted by a
lacy grass upon whose tips were minute blue flowerlets. From the base
of the cliff arose a thin veil of steam which streamed up softly high
in the air, bathing the cup-shaped white blossoms.

A boiling spring, we decided. We drew closer to examine it.

We heard a wailing--despairing, agonized...Like the wail of a
heart-broken, tortured child, yet neither quite human nor quite animal.
It had come from the cliff, from somewhere behind the veils of steam.
We stopped short, listening. The wailing began again, within it
something that stirred the very depths of pity, and it did not cease.
We ran toward the cliff. The steam curtain at its base was dense. We
skirted it and reached its farther end.

At the base of the cliff was a long and narrow pool, like a small closed
stream. Its water was black and bubbling, and from these bubbles came
the steam. From end to end of the boiling pool, across the face of the
black rock, ran a yard-wide ledge. Above it, spaced at regular
intervals, were niches cut within the cliff, small as cradles.

In two of these niches, half-within them and half-upon the ledge, lay
what at first glance seemed two children. They were outstretched upon
their backs, their tiny hands and feet fastened to the stone by staples
of bronze. Their hair streamed down their sides; their bodies were
stark naked.

And now I saw that they were not children. They were mature--a little
man and a little woman. The woman had twisted her head and was staring
at the other pygmy. It was she who was wailing. She did not see us. Her
eyes were intent upon him. He lay rigid, his eyes closed. Upon his
breast, over his heart, was a black corrosion, as though acid had
been dropped upon it.

There was a movement on the cliff above him. One of the cup-shaped
white flowers was there. Could it have been that which had moved? It
hung a foot above the little man's breast, and on its scarlet pistils
was a slowly gathering drop which I took for nectar.

It had been the flower whose movement had caught my eye! As I looked
the reddish vine trembled. It writhed like a sluggish worm an inch down
the rock. The flower shook its cup as though it were a mouth trying to
shake loose the gathering drop. And the flower mouth was directly over
the little man's heart and the black corrosion on his breast.

I stepped out upon the narrow path, reached up and grasped the vine and
tore it loose. It squirmed in my hand like a snake. Its roots dug to
my fingers, and like a snake's head the flower raised itself as though
to strike. Its rim was thick and fleshy, like a round white mouth.
The drop of nectar fell upon my hand and a fiery agony bit into it,
running up my arm like a flame. I hurled the squirming thing into the
boiling pool.

Close above the little woman was another of the crawling vines. I tore
it loose as I had the other. It, too, strove to strike me with its head
of flower, but either there was none of that dreadful nectar in its
cup, or it missed me. I threw it after the other.

I bent over the little man. His eyes were open; he was glaring up at
me. Like his skin, his eyes were yellow, tilted, Mongolian. They seemed
to have no pupils, and they were not wholly human; no more than had
been the wailing of his woman. There was agony in them, and there was
bitter hatred. His gaze wandered to my hair, and I saw amazement banish
the hatred.

The flaming torment of my hand and arm was almost intolerable. By it, I
knew what the pygmy must be suffering. I tore away the staples that
fettered him. I lifted the little man, and passed him over to Jim. He
weighed no more than a baby.

I snapped the staples from the slab on which lay the little woman.
There was no fear nor hatred in her eyes. They were filled with wonder
and unmistakable gratitude. I carried her over and set her beside her
man.

I looked back, up the face of the black cliff. There was movement all
over it; the reddish ropes of the vines writhing, the white flowers
swaying, raising and lowering their cups.

It was rather hideous...

The little man lay quietly, yellow eyes turning from me to Jim and
back to me again. The woman spoke, in trilling, bird-like syllables.
She darted away across the meadow, into the forest.

Jim was staring down upon the golden pygmy like a man in a dream. I
heard him whisper:

"The Yunwi Tsundi! The Little People! It was all true then! All true!"

The little woman came running out of the fern brake. Her hands were
full of thick, heavily veined leaves. She darted a look at me, as of
apology. She bent over her man. She squeezed some of the leaves over
his breast. A milky sap streamed through her fingers and dropped upon
the black, corroded spot. It spread over the spot like a film. The
little man stiffened and groaned, relaxed and lay still.

The little woman took my hand. Where the nectar had touched, the skin
had turned black. She squeezed the juice of the leaves upon it. A pang,
to which all the torment that had gone before was nothing, ran through
hand and arm. Then, almost instantly, there was no pain.

I looked at the little man's breast. The black corrosion had
disappeared. There was a wound like an old burn, red and normal. I
looked at my hand. It was inflamed, but the blackness was no longer
there.

The little woman bowed before me. The little man arose. He looked at my
eyes and ran his gaze along my bulk. I watched suspicion grow, and the
return of bitter hate. He spoke to his woman. She answered at some
length, pointing to the cliff, to my inflamed hand, and to the ankles
and wrists of both of them. The little man beckoned to me; by gesture
asked me to bend down to him. I did, and he touched my yellow hair; he
ran it through his tiny fingers. He laid his hand on my heart...
then laid his head on my heart, listening to its beat.

He struck me with his small hand across my mouth. It was no blow; I
knew it for a caress.

The little man smiled at me, and trilled. I could not understand, and
shook my head helplessly. He looked up at Jim and trilled another
question. Jim tried him in the Cherokee. This time it was the little
man who shook his head. He spoke again to his woman. Clearly I caught
the word ev-ah-lee in the bird-like sounds. She nodded.

Motioning us to follow, they ran across the meadow, toward the further
brake of fern. How little they were--hardly to my thighs. They were
beautifully formed. Their long hair was chestnut brown, fine and silky.
Their hair floated behind them like cobwebs.

They ran like small deer. We were hard put to keep up with them. They
entered the fern brake toward which we had been heading, and here they
slowed their pace. On and on we went through the giant ferns. I could
see no path, but the golden pygmies knew their way.

We came out of the ferns. Before us was a wide sward covered with the
flowerets whose blue carpet ran to the banks of a wide river, to the
banks of a strange river, a river all milky white, over whose placid
surface hovered swirls of opalescent mist. Through the swirls I caught
glimpses of green, level plains upon the white river's further side,
and of green scarps.

The little man halted. He bent his ear to the ground. He leaped back
into the brake, motioning us to follow. In a few minutes we came across
a half-ruined watch tower. Its entrance gaped open. The pygmies slipped
within it, beckoning.

Inside the tower was a crumbling flight of stones leading to its top.
The little man and woman danced up them, with us close behind them.
There was a small chamber at the tower's top through the chinks of
whose stones the green light streamed. I peered through one of the
crevices, down upon the blue sward and the white river. I heard the faint
trampling of horses' feet and the low chanting of women; closer they drew,
and closer.

A woman came riding down the blue sward. She was astride a great black
mare. She wore, like a hood, the head of a white wolf. Its pelt covered
her shoulders and back. Over that silvery pelt her hair fell in two
thick braids of flaming red. Her high, round breasts were bare, and
beneath them the paws of the white wolf were clasped like a girdle. Her
eyes were blue as the cornflower and set wide apart under a broad,
low forehead. Her skin was milky-white flushed with soft rose. Her
mouth was full-lipped, crimson, and both amorous and cruel.

She was a strong woman, tall almost as I. She was like a Valkyrie,
and like those messengers of Odin she carried on her saddle before her,
held by one arm, a body. But it was no soul of a slain warrior snatched
up for flight to Valhalla. It was a girl. A girl whose arms were bound
to her sides by stout thongs, with head bent hopelessly on her breast.
I could not see her face; it was hidden under the veil of her hair. But
the hair was russet red and her skin as fair as that of the woman who
held her.

Over the Wolf-woman's head flew a snow-white falcon, dipping and
circling and keeping pace with her as she rode.

Behind her rode a half-score other women, young and strong-thewed,
pink-skinned and blue-eyed, their hair of copper-red, rust-red,
bronzy-red, plaited around their heads or hanging in long braids down
their shoulders. They were bare-breasted, kirtled and buskined. They
carried long, slender spears and small round targes. And they, too,
were like Valkyries, each of them a shield-maiden of the Aesir. As
they rode, they sang, softly, muted, a strange chant.

The Wolf-woman and her captive passed around a bend of the sward and
out of sight. The chanting women followed and were hidden.

There was a gleam of silver from the white falcon's wing as it circled
and dropped, circled and dropped. Then it, too, was gone.




CHAPTER VIII.



EVALIE


The golden pygmies hissed; their yellow eyes were molten with hatred.

The little man touched my hand, talking in the rapid trilling
syllables, and pointing over the white river. Clearly he was telling me
we must cross it. He stopped, listening. The little woman ran down the
broken stairs. The little man twittered angrily, darted to Jim, beat at
his legs with his fists as though to arouse him, then shot after the
woman.

"Snap out of it, Indian!" I said, impatiently. "They want us to hurry."

He shook his head, like a man shaking away the last cobwebs of some dream.

We sped down the broken steps. The little man was waiting for us; or at
least he had not run away, for, if waiting for us, he was doing so, in
a most singular manner. He was dancing in a small circle, waving his
arms and hands oddly, and trilling a weird melody upon four notes,
repeated over and over in varying progressions. The woman was nowhere
in sight.

A wolf howled. It was answered by other wolves farther away in the
flowered forest--like a hunting pack whose leader has found the scent.

The little woman came racing through the fern brake; the little man stopped
dancing. Her hands were filled with small purplish fruits resembling
fox-grapes. The little man pointed toward the white river, and they set
off through the screening brake of ferns. We followed.

We came out of the brake, crossed the blue sward and stood on the bank
of the river.

The howl of the wolf sounded again, answered by the others, and closer.

The little man leaped upon me, twittering frantically; he twined his legs
about my waist and strove to tear my shirt from me. The woman was trilling
at Jim, waving in her hands the bunches of purple fruit.

"They want us to take off our clothes," said Jim. "They want us to be
quick about it."

We stripped, hastily. There was a crevice in the bank into which I
pushed the pack. Quickly we rolled up our clothes and boots, and threw
a strap around them and slung them over our shoulders.

The little woman threw a handful of the purple fruit to her man. She
motioned Jim to bend, and as he did so she squeezed the berries over
his head and hands, his breasts and thighs and feet. The little man was
doing the same for me. The fruit had an oddly pungent odour that made
my eyes water.

I straightened up and looked out over the white river.

The head of a serpent broke through its milky surface; then
another and another. Their heads were as large as those of the
anaconda, and were scaled in vivid emerald. They were crested by
brilliant green spines which continued along their backs and were
revealed as they swirled and twisted in the white water. Quite
definitely, I did not like plunging into that water, but now I thought
I knew the purpose of our anointing, and that most certainly the
golden pygmies intended us no harm. And just as certainly, I assumed,
they knew what they were about.

The howling of the wolves came once more, not only much nearer, but
from the direction along which had gone the troop of women.

The little man dived into the water, motioning me to follow. I obeyed,
and heard the small splash of the woman and the louder one of Jim. The
little man glanced back at me, nodded, and began to swim across like an
eel, at a speed that I found difficult to emulate.

The crested serpents did not molest us. Once I felt the slither of
scales across my loins; once I shook the water from my eyes to find one
of them swimming beside me, matching in play my speed, or so it seemed;
racing me.

The water was warm, as warm as the milk it resembled, and curiously
buoyant. The river at this point was about a thousand feet wide. I had
covered half of it when I heard a shrill shriek and felt the buffeting
of wings about my head. I rolled over, beating up with my hands to
drive off whatever it was that had attacked me.

It was the white falcon of the Wolf-woman, hovering, dropping, rising
again, threshing me with its pinions!

I heard a cry from the bank, a bell-like contralto, vibrant,
imperious--in archaic Uighur:

"Come back! Come back. Yellow-hair!"

I swung round to see. The falcon ceased its bufferings. Upon the
farther bank was the Wolf-woman upon her great black mare, the captive
girl still clasped in her ann. The Wolf-woman's eyes were like sapphire
stars, her free hand was raised in summons.

And all around her, heads lowered, glaring at me with eyes as green as
hers were blue, was a pack of snow-white wolves!

"Come back!" she cried again.

She was very beautiful--the Wolf-woman. It would not have been hard to
have obeyed. But no--she was not a Wolf-woman! What was she? Into my
mind came a Uighur word, an ancient word that I had not blown I knew.
She was the Salur'da--the Witch-woman. And with it came angry
resentment of her summons. Who was she--the Salur'da--to command me!
Me, Dwayanu, who in olden time long forgot would have had her whipped
with scorpions for such insolence!

I raised myself high above the white water.

"Back to your den, Salur'da!" I shouted. "Does Dwayanu come to your
call? When I summon you, then see that you obey!"

She stared at me, stark amazement in her eyes; the strong arm that held
the girl relaxed so that the captive almost dropped from the mare's
high pommel. I struck out across the water to the farther shore.

I heard the Witch-woman whistle. The falcon circling round my head
screamed, and flew. I heard the white wolves snarling; I heard the thud
of the black mare's hoofs racing over the blue sward. I reached the
bank and climbed it. Only then did I turn. Witch-woman, falcon and
white wolves--all of them were gone.

Across my wake the emerald-headed, emerald-crested serpents swam and
swirled and dived.

The golden pygmies had climbed upon the bank.

Jim asked: 

"What did you say to her?"

"The Witch-woman comes to my call--not I to hers," I answered, and
wondered as I did so what it was that compelled the words.

"Still very much--Dwayanu, aren't you, Leif? What touched the trigger on
you this time?"

"I don't know." The inexplicable resentment against the woman was still
strong, and, because I could not understand it, irritating to a degree.
"She ordered me to come back, and a little fire-cracker went off in my
brain. Then I--I seemed to know her for what she is, and that her
command was rank insolence. I told her so. She was no more surprised by
what I said than I am. It was like someone else speaking. It was like--"
I hesitated--"well, it was like when I started that cursed ritual and
couldn't stop."

He nodded, then began to put on his clothes. I followed suit. They were
soaking wet. The pygmies watched us wriggle into them with frank
amazement. I noticed that the angry red around the wound on the little
man's breast had paled, and that while the wound itself was raw, it was
not deep and had already begun to heal. I looked at my own hand; the
red had almost disappeared, and only a slight tenderness betrayed where
the nectar had touched it.

When we had laced our boots, the golden pygmies trotted off, away from
the river toward a line of cliffs about a mile ahead. The vaporous
green light half hid them, as it had wholly hidden our view to the
north when we had first looked over the valley. For half the distance
the ground was level and covered with the blue-flowered grass. Then
ferns began, steadily growing higher. We came upon a trail little wider
than a deer path which threaded into a greater brake. Into this we
turned.

We had eaten nothing since early morning, and I thought regretfully of
the pack I had left behind. However, it is my training to eat
heartily when I can, and philosophically go without when I must. So I
tightened my belt and glanced back at Jim, close upon my heels.

"Hungry?" I asked.

"No. Too busy thinking."

"Indian--what brought the red-headed beauty back?"

"The wolves. Didn't you hear them howling after her? They found our
track and gave her the signal."

"I thought so--but it's incredible! Hell--then she is a Witch-woman."

"Not because of that. You're forgetting your Mowgli and the Grey
Companions. Wolves aren't hard to train. But she's a Witch-woman,
nevertheless. Don't hold back Dwayanu when you deal with her, Leif."

The little drums again began to beat. At first only a few, then
steadily more and more until there were scores of them. This time the
cadences were lilting, gay, tapping out a dancing rhythm that lifted
all weariness. They did not seem far away. But now the ferns were high
over our heads and impenetrable to the sight, and the narrow path wove
in and out among them like a meandering stream

The pygmies hastened their pace. Suddenly the trail came out of the
ferns, and the pair halted. In front of us the ground sloped sharply
upward for three or four hundred feet. The slope, except where the path
ran, was covered from bottom to top with a tangle of thick green vines
studded along all their lengths with wicked three-inch thorns; a living
chevaux-de-frise which no living creature would penetrate. At the end
of the path was a squat tower of stone, and from this came the glint of
spear-heads.

In the tower a shrill-voiced drum chattered an unmistakable alarm.
Instantly the lilting drums were silent. The same shrill chatter was
taken up and repeated from point to point, diminishing in the far
distance; and now I saw that the slope was like an immense circular
fortification, curving far out toward the unbroken palisade of the
giant ferns, and retreating at our right toward the sheer wall of black
cliff, far away. Everywhere upon it was the thicket of thorn.

The little man twittered to his woman, and walked up the trail toward
the tower. He was met by other pygmies streaming out of it. The little
woman stayed with us, nodding and smiling and patting our knees
reassuringly.

Another drum, or a trio of them, began to beat from the tower. I
thought there were three because their burden was on three different
notes, soft, caressing, yet far-carrying. They sang a word, a name,
those drums, as plainly as though they had lips, the name I had heard
in the trilling of the pygmies...

Ev-ah-lee... Ev-ah-lee...Ev-ah-lee...Over and over and over.
The drums in the other towers were silent.

The little man beckoned us. We went forward, avoiding with difficulty
the thorns. We came to the top of the path beside the small tower. A
score of the little men stepped out and barred our way. None was taller
than the one I had saved from the white flowers. All had the same
golden skin, the same half-animal yellow eyes; like his, their hair was
long and silky, floating almost to their tiny feet, They wore twisted
loin-cloths of what appeared to be cotton; around their waists were
broad girdles of silver, pierced like lace-work in intricate designs.
Their spears were wicked weapons for all their apparent frailty,
long-handled, hafted in some black wood, and with foot-deep points of
red metal, and barbed like a muskalonge hook from tip to base. Swung on
their backs were black bows with long arrows barbed in similar manner;
and in their metal girdles were slender sickle-shaped knives of the red
metal, like scimitars of gnomes.

They stood staring at us, like small children. They made me feel as
Gulliver must have felt among the Liliputians. Also, there was that
about them which gave me no desire to tempt them to use their weapons.
They looked at Jim with curiosity and interest and with no trace of
unfriendliness. They looked at me with little faces that grew hard and
fierce. Only when their eyes roved to my yellow hair did I see wonder
and doubt lighten suspicion--but they never dropped the points of the
spears turned toward me.

Ev-ah-lee...Ev-ah-lee...Ev-ah-lee...sang the drums.

There was an answering roll from beyond, and they were silent.

I heard a sweet, low-pitched voice at the other side of the tower
trilling the bird-like syllables of the Little People--And then--I saw
Evalie.

Have you watched a willow bough swaying in spring above some clear
sylvan pool, or a slender birch dancing with the wind in a secret
woodland and covert, or the flitting green shadows in a deep forest
glade which are dryads half-tempted to reveal themselves? I thought of
them as she came toward us.

She was a dark girl, and a tall girl. Her eyes were brown under long
black lashes, the clear brown of the mountain brook in autumn; her hair
was black, the jetty hair that in a certain light has a sheen of
darkest blue. Her face was small, her features certainly neither
classic nor regular--the brows almost meeting in two level lines above
her small, straight nose; her mouth was large but finely cut, and
sensitive. Over her broad, low forehead the blue-black hair was braided
like a coronal. Her skin was clear amber. Like polished fine amber it
shone under the loose, yet clinging, garment that clothed her,
knee-long, silvery, cobweb fine and transparent. Around her hips was
the white loin-cloth of the Little People. Unlike them, her feet were
sandalled.

But it was the grace of her that made the breath catch in your throat
as you looked at her, the long flowing line from ankle to shoulder,
delicate and mobile as the curve of water flowing over some smooth
breast of rock, a liquid grace of line that changed with every movement.

It was that--and the life that burned in her like the green flame of the
virgin forest when the kisses of spring are being changed for the
warmer caresses of summer. I knew now why the old Greeks had believed
in the dryads, the naiads, the nereids--the woman souls of trees, of
brooks and waterfalls and fountains, and of the waves.

I could not tell how old she was--hers was the pagan beauty which knows
no age.

She examined me, my clothes and boots, in manifest perplexity; she
glanced at Jim, nodded, as though to say there was nothing in him to be
disturbed about; then turned back to me, studying me. The small soldiers
ringed her, their spears ready.

The little man and his woman had stepped forward. They were both
talking at once, pointing to his breast, to my hand, to my yellow hair.
The girl laughed, drew the little woman to her and covered her lips
with a hand. The little man went on trilling and twittering.

Jim had been listening with a puzzled intensity whenever the girl had
done the talking. He caught my arm.

"It's Cherokee they're speaking! Or something like it--Listen...there
was a word...it sounded like 'Yun'-wini'giski'...it means
'Man-eaters.' Literally, 'They eat people'...if that's what it
was... and look...he's showing how the vines crawled down the
cliffs..."

The girl began speaking again. I listened intently. The rapid
enunciation and the trilling made understanding difficult, but I
caught sounds that seemed familiar--and now I heard a combination that
I certainly knew.

"It's some kind of Mongolian tongue, Jim. I got a word just then that
means 'serpent-water' in a dozen different dialects."

"I know--she called the snake 'aha'nada' and the Cherokees say
'inadu'--but it's Indian, not Mongolian."

"It might be both. The Indian dialects are Mongolian. Maybe it's the
ancient mother-tongue. If we could only get her to speak slower, and
tune down on the trills."

"It might be that. The Cherokees called themselves 'the oldest people'
and their language 'the first speech'--wait--"

He stepped forward, hand upraised; he spoke the word which in the
Cherokee means, equally, friend or one who comes with good intentions.
He said it several times. Wonder and comprehension crept into the
girl's eyes. She repeated it as he had spoken it, then turned to the
py