The Face in the Abyss, novelette/Chapter 7

OW llama and crawling men had reached the camp. The elfin horn notes were still. Graydon’s muscles suddenly relaxed; power of movement returned to him.

With a little cry of pity Surra ran to the white llama’s side; caressed it, strove to stanch its blood.

Graydon bent down over the three men. They had collapsed as they had come within the circle of the camp fire. They lay now, huddled, breathing heavily, eyes fast closed. Their clothes had been ripped to ribbons.

And over all their faces, their breasts, their bodies, were scores of small punctures, not deep, their edges clean cut, as though they had been pecked out. Some were still bleeding; in others the blood had dried.

He ran to the rushing brook. Suarra was beside her tent, the llama’s head in her arms. He stopped, unbuckled the panniers; let them slip away; probed the animal’s wound. The bullet had plowed through the upper left flank without touching the bone, and had come out. He went back to his own camp, drew forth from his bags some medical supplies, returned and bathed and dressed the wound as best he could. He did it all silently, and Suarra was silent, too.

Her eyes were eloquent enough.

This finished, he went again to the other camp. The three men were lying as he left them. They seemed to be in a stupor. He washed their faces of the blood, bathed their stained bodies. He spread blankets and dragged the three up on them. They did not awaken. He wondered at their sleep—or was it coma?

The strange punctures were bad enough, of course, yet it did not seem to him that these could account for the condition of the men. Certainly they had not lost enough blood to cause unconsciousness. Nor had any arteries been opened, nor was one of the wounds deep enough to have disturbed any vital organ.

He gave up conjecturing, wearily. After all, what was it but one more of the mysteries among which he had been moving. And he had done all he could for the three of them.

Graydon walked away from the fire, threw himself down on the edge of the white sands. There was a foreboding upon him, a sense of doom.

And as he sat there, fighting against the blackness gathering around his spirit, he heard light footsteps and Suarra sank beside him. Her cloudy hair caressed his cheek, her rounded shoulder touched his own. His hand dropped upon hers, covering it. And after a shy moment her fingers moved, then interlaced with his.

“It is the last night—Graydon,” she whispered, tremulously. “The last night! And so—they—have let me talk with you a while.”

“No!” he caught her to him—fiercely. “There is nothing that can keep me from you now, Suarra, except—death.”

“Yes,” she said, and thrust him gently away. “Yes—it is the last night. There was a promise—Graydon. A promise that I made. I said that I would save you if I could. I asked the Two Lords. They were amused. They told me that if you could conquer the Face you would be allowed to go. I told them that you would conquer it. And I promised them that after that you would go. And they were more amused, asking me what manner of man you were who had made me believe you could conquer the Face.”

“The Face?” questioned Graydon.

“The great Face,” she said. “The Face in the Abyss. But of that I may say no more. You must—meet it.”

“And these men, too?” he asked. “The men who lie there?”

“They are as already dead,” she answered, indifferently. “Dead—and worse. They are already eaten!”

“Eaten!” he cried incredulously.

“Eaten,” she repeated. “Eaten—body and soul!”

For a moment she was silent.

“I do not think,” she began again. “I did not really think—that even you could conquer the Face. So I went to the Snake Mother—and she, too, laughed. But at the end, as woman to woman—since, after all, she is woman—she promised me to aid you. And then I knew you would be saved, since the Snake Mother far excels the Two Lords in craft and guile. And she promised me—as woman to woman. The Two Lords know nothing of that,” she added naïvely.

Of this, Graydon, remembering the youthful eyes in the old, old faces that had weighed him in the temple of the shifting rays, had his doubts.

“So,” she said, “was the bargain made. And so its terms must be fulfilled. You shall escape the Face—Graydon. But you must go”

To that he answered nothing. And after another silence she spoke again, wistfully:

“Is there any maid who loves you—or whom you love—in your own land, Graydon?”

“There is none, Suarra,” he answered.

“I believe you,” she said simply. “And I would go away with you—if I might. But—they—would not allow it. And if I tried—they would slay you. Yes, even if we should escape—they—would slay you and bring me back. So it cannot be.”

He thrilled to that, innocently self-revelant as it was.

“I am weary of Yu-Atlanchi,” she went on somberly. “Yes, I am weary of its ancient wisdom and of its treasures and its people who are eternal—eternal at least as the world. I am one of them—and yet I long to go out into the new world—the world where there are babes, and many of them, and the laughter of children, and where life streams passionately, strong and shouting and swiftly—even though it is through the opened doors of Death that it flows. In Yu-Atlanchi those doors are closed—except to those who choose to open them. And life is a still stream, without movement. And there are few babes—and of the laughter of children—little.”

“What are your people, Suarra?” he asked.

“The ancient people,” she told him. “The most ancient. Ages upon ages ago they came down from the north where they had dwelt for other ages still. They were driven away by the great cold. One day the earth rocked and swung. It was then the great cold came down and the darkness and icy tempests and even the warm seas began to freeze. Their cities, so the legends run, are hidden now under mountains of ice. They journeyed south in their ships, bearing with them the Serpent people who had taught them most of their wisdom—and the Snake Mother is the last daughter of that people. They came to rest here. At that time the sea was close and the mountains had not yet been born. They found here hordes of the Xinli. They were larger, far larger than now. My people subdued them and tamed and bred them to their uses. And here for another age they practiced their arts and their wisdom—and learned more.

“Then there were great earth shakings and the mountains began to lift. Although all their wisdom was not great enough to keep the mountains from being born, it could control their growth around that ancient city, and its plain that were Yu-Atlanchi. Slowly, steadily through another age the mountains arose. Until at last they girdled Yu-Atlanchi like a vast wall—a wall that could never be scaled. Nor did my people care; indeed, it gladdened them, since by then they had closed the doors of death and-cared no more to go into the outer world. And so they have dwelt—for other ages more.”

Again she was silent, musing. Graydon struggled against his incredulity. A people who had conquered death? A people so old that their birthplace was buried deep beneath eternal ice? And yet, as to the last, at least—why not? Did not science teach that the frozen poles had once basked beneath a tropical sun? Expeditions had found at both of them the fossil forms of gigantic palms, strange animals, a flora and a fauna that could only have lived under tropical conditions.

And did not science believe that long, long ago the earth had tipped and that thus the frozen poles had come to be?

An inexplicable irritation filled him—instinctive revolt of the young against the very old.

“If your people are so wise,” he questioned, “why do they not come forth and rule this world?”

“But why should they?” she asked in turn. “They have nothing more to learn. If they came forth what could they do but build the rest of the earth into likeness of that part in which they dwell? What use in that, Graydon? None. So they let the years stream by while they dream—the most of them. For they have conquered dream. Through dream they create their own worlds; do therein as they will; live life upon life as they will it. In their dreams they shape world upon world upon world—and each of their worlds is a real world to them. And so they let the years stream by while they live in dream! Why should they go out into this one world when they can create myriads of their own at will?”

Again she was silent.

“But they are barren—the dream makers,” she whispered. “Barren! That is why there are few babes and little laughter of children in Yu-Atlanchi. Why should they mate with their kind—these women and men who have lived so long that they have grown weary of all their kind can give them? Why should they mate with their kind when they can create new lovers in dream, new loves and hates! Yea, new emotions, and forms utterly unknown to earth, each as he or she may will. And so they are—barren. Not alone the doors of death, but the doors of life are closed to them—the dream makers!”

“But you—” he began.

“I?” She turned a wistful face to him.

“Did I not say that when they closed the doors of death the doors of life closed, too. For these are not really two, but only the two sides of the one door. Some there are always who elect to keep that door open, to live the life that is their own, to have no dealing with—dreams. My father and mother were of these. They took the hazard of death that they might love—

“Ancient arts—ancient wisdom,” she went on. “Wisdom that perhaps you have rediscovered and call new. Wisdom you yet may gain. Wisdom that may never be yours—and thank whatever gods you worship that you have not; pray to them that you never may have.

“Such wisdom as shaped the—weaver?” he asked.

“That! He was child’s play,” she answered. “A useful toy. There are far, far stranger things than the weaver in Yu-Atlanchi, Graydon.”

“Suarra,” he asked abruptly. “Why do you want to save me?”

A moment she hesitated; then:

“Because you make me feel as I have never felt before!” she whispered slowly. “Because you make me happy—because you make me sorrowful. When I think of you it is like warm wine in my veins. I want both to sing-—and to weep. I want your touch—to be close to you. When you go—the world will be darkened—life will be drab.”

“Suarra!” he cried—and drew her, unresisting now, to him. His lips sought hers and her lips clung to his. A flame leaped through him. She quivered in his arms; was still.

“I will come back,” he whispered. “I will come back, Suarra!”

“Come!” she sobbed. “Come back—Graydon!”

She thrust him from her—leaped to her feet.

“No! No!” she cried. “No—Graydon. I am wicked! No—it would be death for you!”

“As God lives, Suarra,” he said, “I will come back to you!”

She trembled; leaned forward, pressed her lips to his, slipped through his arms and ran to the silken pavilion. For an instant she paused there—stretched wistful arms to him; entered and was hidden within its folds.

There seemed to come to him, faintly, heard only by heart—

“Come back! Come back to me!”

He threw himself down where their hands had clasped—where their lips had met. Hour after hour he lay there—thinking, thinking. His head dropped forward at last.

He carried her into his dreams.