A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

THE SMOKING LAND naked rock, until we had gone down to such a depth that the température in- creased perceptibly, and a warm reek of moisture was standing out on the walls, and the lantern light gleamed weirdly along the corridors. Finally we reached a great vaulted room in which there were a dozen soldiers, scantily clad because of the heat. They made a scampering to cover them- selves when the priestess came in, but her straightforward eyes did not so much as glance at them. To a gtay-headed man whose gleaming sword hilt seemed to pronounce him a gentleman, she said: “There is one comes who would look at the Fountain of Life, and the way that , goes beside it. Therefore, let the door be opened !”’ The gray beard gave me a long, be- wildered look, and then he bowed to Sylvia and said that the thing should be done. He declared, though, that it was a bad time. He had no sooner said it, than we heard an explosion that shook the floor under us, a vast and muffled sound that roared behind the thick walls of stone. poe gray beard, who had turned away, came back and asked if Sylvia still wanted the thing done. And she smiled at him gently. “Thou knowest well,” said she,! “in whose name I come.” “T know well,” said he, solemnly. Gos ing back to a corner of the room, he pulled on a lever that thrust up out of the floor. I heard a click and a grinding, as though great bolts were drawing. He pulled several more levers, and now I saw a great ‘section of the wall yawning outward, turn- ing on a pivot. _ A gap perhaps ten feet high allowed a tide of hot air to pour out at us. And I could gaze into an enormous enclosure, where the red of firelight played, waver- ing up and down. It was like lookirig into a furnace where the fires have been banked. “There is the Fountain of Life,” said Sylvia, pointing. And, as she spoke, looking far down into the abyss I saw a white fountain of fire rise, atid stand trembling, throwing _ off incredible floods of light before it broke 57 at the neck and fell in a brilliant rushing of luminous drops. A faint groan came from the other men in the room, I wanted to groan, myself, but my voice was frozen in the bottom of my throat, and my hair was lifting on my head. “There is the way,” said Sylvia, who was totally unperturbed. “There is the way—tunning to the right, along the cliff. You tay follow its winding with your eye, from this point. And when you come to the sharp turn, then you will see it extending futther, toward another por- tal, like this, with what seem to be great columns standing before it. This is the entrance to the dwelling of the men of the mountain, the seers and the wise ones who govern the land under the will of the goddess. Beside it is a metal shield, stink in the rock. Strike against this, and the door will presently be opened, and admit you. Go, therefore, my friend, while the way is open!” went on to the doorway, and one step through it along the path which she had pointed out, but there my feet stuck to the rock and would not budge, for looking down, I saw such a sight as stag- gered my mind, — Imagine a caldron a thousand feet deep, scummed over with the dross of lead, but churned from beneath, and writhing and twisting as the liquid that fills it boils, and now and again, where the scum is broken, there is the red glow of molten metal, or the white gleam of intense fire! That was what I was looking down into, and a horrible, almost irresistible desire took me by the throat to leap from the vergé of the cliff and throw myself into that boiling pot. I knew well enough what it was. I had comé to the Smoking Land, and here was the source of the smoke! It was literally the bowels of the volcano that I was look- ing itito; and the reeking fumes of phos- phorus and sulphur filled the air, and wotild have stifled ime, except that they had ovethead a free outlet, and were expelled upward by a mighty draft of heat. For I could see the lips of the crater high up, sometimes lost in the clouds of vapor, and sometimes revealed as the fires broke from the surface of the caldron, I could not go forward along that £9 Bg DAE Sy Wy es oa a ED ae) ed Pa A, Parr Pas Fa fe ENY PSA OTTO HS ee : EFL og ee Re a Cen CU oe eee a ae