Page:Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1951-03).djvu/108

 the Snake, so that he would remember that too.

He covered three sheets with the purple ink, while time stood still in the silence of the enchanted castle. Not until he had nearly finished did an obvious thought occur to him.

"Why should you stay here?" he asked her, striking the quill back into its box of purple-stained sand. "Why not come back with me?"

She shook her gold-crowned head. "Finish," she said. "Fold up the parchment, and put it in the pomander, because that is the only thing you brought here and the only thing you can take away. No, I can't go with you. I belong here. I would die in the Shaking Lands. Nothing can leave this world, and nothing can live here very long except the Snake and me." Her sigh shook the golden collar about her shoulders.

Argyle, crackling the parchment sheets, looked up sharply. He had caught a flashing thought, keener than her own, in the quiet air of the room.

"The Snake?" he said. The girl straightened, her eyes going unfocused and faraway. Then she nodded.

"Soon," she said. "You will come back, though? Presently perhaps it will sleep again, after you have gone. And I shall be lonely. You will not forget?"

"I promise," said Argyle. "I'll come back. But—"

Sharp and keen through the quiet the thought of murder flashed. A bright crimson thought, so that Argyle could almost see the color in the air. It was time to go. Time to go fast! He stuffed the crackling sheets into the pomander.

"Show me the way," he said. And she obeyed, moving swiftly in her stiff golden skirts. Her fingers clung to his almost desperately, and her unhappy little face looked up at his so that she stumbled as she pulled him out of the room and down the hall to the door. And then they were running across the grass, with danger making the air electric behind them from the forest.

The shining flowers flashed past underfoot. The Shaking Lands loomed up dim before them, grey air wavering in a wall beyond the sunshine, and the earth shifting beneath it. The girl pressed his hands hard around the pomander. Tiptoeing, she laid her arms about his neck, brushing his mouth with hers.

"Please come back. Please remember me!"

Beyond her, he caught one bright and terrifying glimpse of a scarlet shape gliding out from among the trees. A shape of dreadful beauty, colored like blood and of so pure and clear a tint that the redness quivered like life itself. He could scarcely take his eyes away from it.

"Run!" called the girl. "And—remember!"

But Argyle was in no hurry to run. He was remembering what she had told him of the Shaking Lands, and the possibility of victory over the Snake suddenly dazzled him. If he could lure it out here into the dizziness and the dimness of this border limbo, perhaps

It came writhing toward him as he stood waiting in the shadow, its crimson like the flow of fresh blood over the green grass. It was beautiful as the Serpent in Eden must have been beautiful, and as dangerous as that first Snake. It lifted its lovely shining head and hissed at him soundlessly, and the murder in its mindless brain shook him so that he turned to run.

And it followed. Its terrible, single-minded purpose was like lightning in the dim air around him, flashing the voice of its thought into his brain. And that alone was frightening enough, without those great sliding coils following, following as he ran. The unstable earth shook beneath his slipping feet. He clutched the pomander and stumbled on, glancing back now and then to see the scarlet blur following purposefully behind, closer every time he looked.

From far away the girl's voice echoed in his brain, "John Argyle—come back to me! Remember me, John Argyle!"

But it was a very distant voice, more a memory than a thought, and already he