Page:Weird Tales volume 31 number 02.djvu/61

Rh named Buddha. Somehow the image of Ceipe's cat-goddess had assumed the same brooding attitude of detached immobility the dimly recalled features of the god of the yellow peoples expressed.

The mercenary cautiously approached the side of the image. Tall of stature as he was, he was still at too low a level to see over the ebony spine. He examined the figure, passing from one extremity to the other, as well as he could beneath the deceptive rays of moonlight. Once he thought the stone flanks were heaving like those of an animal drawing breath. When he struck lightly at the ribs of the figure with his sword, the metal rang against what appeared to be solid rock. Ruefully, he examined the blade to see if its edge was dulled.

ounding the image, seeking for a view of the face, he encountered Thwaine and Ating. The girl was clinging to the man's arm in sheer terror; why, Rald could not understand. Certainly, there seemed to be no danger in the image even if it did exude a baleful atmosphere, probably manufactured by the impressions made on their subconsciousness after the weird calling of their names. He must discover, he reasoned, the source of the voice, for there lay the threat to their safety. Obviously, he had to accomplish this task alone, for Thwaine showed no inclination to desert the side of his warrior-mistress.

"Look!" cried Ating suddenly. "Oh, look!"

Following with his eyes the direction of her pointed finger. Rald gazed upward at the great head. The sculpturing was excellent, he thought; if he had been looking upon a head of more proportionate size he could easily have been beguiled into believing the idol a living, breathing panther. The great ears were correctly placed; tufts of hair sprouted from them, and though the upper lip was shadowed he believed he could detect traces of whiskers. The mouth was slightly open, and he could see a double row of fangs. Apparently the artist had taken pains to produce a masterpiece, for even the flat nostrils were tipped with vermilion at their extremities like those of a living beast.

And then he saw the eyes….

A cold horror, spreading through his veins from the very marrow of his bones, paralyzed his body as his brain registered the fact that the eyes were alive!

Bubaste was no myth, but a living, slaying goddess! He recalled the tales of the mangled and lacerated victims found wandering, half crazed, over the desert wastes, their stories of the massacres of entire villages by a cat-like demon who descended without warning or mercy, calling the names of those it slew with a human tongue; and he knew that what he had listened to with derision around many a forgotten campfire was hideous truth. Malevolent, gleaming with unspeakable knowledge and savage ferocity, the great yellow eyes contemplated the puny humans between her paws; there was a trace of gloating in the depths of the fixed orbs suggestive of the brooding of a cat as it awaits with tense muscles for a captured mouse to make a futile effort to escape doom.

In the face of violent danger or threat of death Rald nearly always became infuriated, even with inanimate objects such as the rocks of an engulfing landslide or the swirling waters of a deep ford; perhaps he was an atavism, a reversion to instincts in character to ancestors who had fought with tooth and nail to maintain the breath of life in a treacherous and beast-ridden world. It was with difficulty that he restrained the impulse to slash at