A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, December 1949 — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. ws an a a Ne i ee ee ee ee Oe ee <5 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY __ «+. and in the green tapestries the shifting ~ ae N \ Pra Pe Me ei eek aw M ip SATE, Cito pee A Speed A: - ‘ ’ iié leg. #* . Ps z i . + ” i. er LF. ye Sees uy } ma A e # Y mye f a + eB ves / ya? v 5, & SRN Uy SOD ye ee Bett f 4 4 ay ; a ~~ * : %, 4 } e ny 1 b LDA BY ad 4 “ wey - ? tail i wa se His MIS CG ey x ‘ ee) OI \ Vues i) ee : eh tae oN ' ’ i i 4 7 ¥ ei% 7 ie , : oe colors became the surge and withdrawal of great waves, and the shadow singing became the murmuring of waves, and then their song, and then a clamorous shouting. Again Dahut spoke the name. The shadows sprang out of the tapestries and ringed me .. . closer and closer. The shouting of the waves became the roaring of a tempest, beating me down and down —out and out. CHAPTER 9 In Dahut’s Tower—Ys URRICANE roaring and clamor of the sea dwindled into the or- dered beat of great waves break- ing against some barrier. I was standing at a window in some high place looking out over a white-capped, stormy sea. The sunset was red and sullen. It made a wide path of blood across the waters. I leaned out the window, eyes strain- ing to the right to find something that ought still to be visible in the gathering dusk. I found it, A vast plain covered with immense upright stones; hundreds of them, marching from every side to a squat, rock-built temple like the hub of a gigantic wheel of which the monoliths were the spokes. They were so far away that they looked like boulders, then sud- denly by some trick of mirage they quiv- ered and swam close. The rays of the _ dying sun painted them and they seemed splashed with blood and the squat temple to drip blood. _ I knew that this was a Caranac, of which I was the Lord. And that the squat tempel was the Alkar-Az where the Gatherer in the Cairn came at the evoca- tion of Dahut the White and the evil priests. And that I was in ancient Ys. Then the mirage quivered again and was gone. The dusk blotted out Caranac. I looked down upon Cyclopean walls against which long combers broke, shout- ing. They were enormously thick and high here, these walls; jutting out into the ocean like the prow of some ship of stone. They lessened as they fell back toward the mainland through shallows which were bare and rippled sands when the tides ebbed. I knew the city well. A fair city. Tem- ples and palaces of sculptured stone with tiled and painted roofs, red and orange and blue and green, adorning it, and dwellings of lacquered wood utterly un- like the rude homes of my clan. It was filled with hidden gardens where foun- tains whispered and strange flowers bloomed. It was clustered, this city, be- tween the wave-beaten walls as though the land upon which it stood was a deck of a ship and the walls the bulwarks. They had built it on a peninsula that stretched far out into the sea. The sea menaced it always, and always was held at bay by the walls, and by scorceries of Ys. Out of the city ran a wide road, straight over the sands to the mainland, and straight to the evil heart of the circling monoliths— where my people were sacrificed. They who had built Ys were not my people. It was not they who had raised the stones of Caranac. Our grandmothers had said their grandmothers had told that long and long ago the people who built Ys had come sailing in strangely shaped ships, fortified the neck of the peninsula and settled there; and now we were in thrall to them; and they had taken Caranac and on the trunk of its dark ritual had grafted branches that bore the fruit of unnameable evil. I had come to Ys to lop those branches. And if I lived there- after to put ax to trunk. Bitterly did I hate these people of Ys, sorcerers and sorceresses all, and I had a plan to destroy them, one and all; to end the dreadful rites of the Alkar-Az and rid the temple forever of That which came in the wake of torment and death to my own people at the summoning of Dahut and the priests of Ys. I thought all that — while knowing at one and the same time I was the Lord of Caranac and also Alan ¥ Caranac who had allowed himself to be a caught by the wiles of the Demoiselle de Keradel, and was seeing only what she — was willing him to see. At least, Alan Caranac knew that, but the Lord of Cara- nac did not. 4 Suddenly I heard the, sweetness of a lute touched lightly; heard laughter like — little heartless waves, and a voice—the ~ oO comichbooks (se 7