A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

4 48 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY me a shave. I did look more civilized. Then they gave me a shirt of coarse wool, and they threw over my shoulders a cloak or robe of the same stuff, unbleached and undyed, and I stepped into clumsy slippers. When this was finished, they brought me back to the captain, and he wrinkled his nose at me, and laughed, and said that I looked less enchanter and mofe man now, and not such a handsome one at that! We passed along through another great hall, and another, and so on into one of the craziest, biggest rooms that I ever laid eyes on. The light here was dimmer than in the others through which I -had passed; here we came into a holy gloom, so to speak. In the center of that great hall burned a fire on a sort of raised hearth which I presently saw was merely the lap of a ' gigantic idol, the most grisly thing that anybody ever conceived, It was the image of a woman in a great robe, and her body seemed to be carved out of white stone, and her robe of black; her face was the face of a sleek, smiling devil. Around the side of the hall were great pilasters and from these sprang up im- mense Gothic arches that vaulted across the ceiling. It was something like the interior of a cathedral—not the cold, gray places that one sees today, but such a eathedral as one might have seen centuries ago, all crimson, and gold, and blue, and shining green, though dim, of course, under this light. We marched past the fire that burned in the central hearth, on the lap of the veges and as we went by, I looked o that fire and saw things that no man should see. On the rims of the ash were little, ghastly piles of half-blackened, half- charred remnants of bones—not of beef or fowl or goat, but just about the right size for human bones. And in the air, I whiffed a scent that would have done eredit to a slaughterhouse. My guards, as they walked by, saluted the fire and the goddess with their hal- berds, and fetched me onward to a great recessed niche of apse at the end of the room where a smaller fire burned; behind the fire sat a robed, living woman. She was jie the goddesa, dressed in white and robed in black, but I saw little of the clothes, for the firelight went upward, flickering, against her face and the mass of golden hair that poured down over her shoulders, I tried to immagine what she might be wearing. The girl behind the fire lifted her low- ered head a little, and she said, “Where- fore art thou come, soldiers of the god- dess, and what malefactor has thou brought hither? What evil has he brought with him to this land?” A pair of halberdiers got me on the end of their partizans, so to speak, and pushed me forward. I went with a jump, as though I had been lifted. And then I heard the captain’s voice, but so changed that I jerked my head around and looked at him. And I was astonished to see him on his knees. I could not have imagined: him kneeling to anything but his love for himself. One of his hands pressed against the floor; all of them were down like that except two of the halberdiers, who wore black masks, and were standing ready at hand, now, to have at me with the axes on the ends of their spears. The captain of the guard was saying in a very low steady voice: “Chosen one, stern and pure maiden, in whose heart the wisdom of the goddess flows, and from whose eyes the goddess beholds us, I have brought to thee one who has desecrated the herd of the god- dess herself, and who has destroyed one of the sacred dogs that guard the herd. An enchanter he is, and has come from the south, walking over the ice and the waves of the frozen seas, and so great is his magic that it has taught him something of our language, though imperfectly, as thou thyself, dread priestess, shalt behr presently if it be that thou permittest him to speak.” And she said, in a voice that ran like the music of golden, deep strings upon my soul: “Speak he shall, and have justice, even the justice of the goddess, Thou who standest here, open thy lips, and speak in thy defense unless miserable guilt over- whelms thee, and thou throwest thysélf upon the judgment and the mercy of the nameless name! But surely, thou must ‘cComicbooks.com)