A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

70 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY impose on your sight two beasts that ap- peared to guard the bridge—impose it for a little while. Thousands on thousands believed in Sekhmet, willed her to being, and since my single could bring those shapes to being for your sight, what must be the power and: reality of one shaped by a thousand wills? A priest remains— Sekhmet 2s!’ “No goddess, but a fiend from hell,’”’ he said. “And what else are more than half the old dieties of human belief?” she ques- tioned in reply. “That may be,” he said, “but this Saleh —whatever he may be. When I asked you, you told me he was neither young nor old. Which means—what?” “When I answered that question, you faced me as an enemy,” she said. “Saleh comes of a family of fellahin near Luxor, one of the very, very few families of pure Egyptian blood. They were great people once, though now they live in squalid ‘poverty, and some spark of old ambition stirred in this Saleh, Nahor’s son—drew him out from his hut by the shadoof and set him on a way that crossed miné. Be- cause he was apt I taught him—some few things.” Frank though the answer sounded, he heard in it reserve, a complete withdrawal of herself from him, that marked a vast change in her since he had entered the room with her. This was not Kefra who had told him she was one with him and time, but Cleo Kefra as he had first seen her. He felt doubt, now, of all that she had told him, and felt, too, a little trepidant in facing this strange, amber-eyed woman. For she -had grown strange. “Ves, taught him how to evoke beasts when he wanted to frighten away anyone he didn’t wish to remain in this place.” “Taught him more than was wise,’’ she ‘said somberly. ‘‘Say rather that I renewed in him knowledge that had been his in past lives, so that in some things the pupil outran the teacher. But—”’ she stood up, and he too rose to face her—“no more —I will tell you no more. You must go— leave me.”’ “You mean it, Kefra?” | “For your own sake—go now,” she bade. “Remember—against all that holds s me as you see me now I force myself to call it back to your mind—TI said, no harm should come to you. Thus, you must go now.” He wanted to speak, but could net. There was. that in the gaze of her amber eyes, with no more than points of dark- ness for pupils, that which compelled his silence. After a long pause he turned away and went to the door, to look back for a moment and see her immobile before the fire, no more than a tall, slender, graceful outline. Then he went out and closed the door between himself and her, to take up his coat and hat in the entrance hall and let himself out of the house. In his mind the sentence: “So that is that—” repeated itself over and over, foolishly, until he asked himself: “That was what? What was that?” There was no answer to the question, but—were there two Kefras in the one shape? For surely this one who had bid- den him go and reminded him that no harm should come to him was not the Kefta who had compelled him to believe in such a tale as n6 woman ever told be- fore. ink The moon, near the full, was hidden by the cloud-curtain that masked. all the sky, but enough light was over the earth to silver it to gray indistinctness in place of darkness. Getting into the car, Gees switched on the ignition and pressed the starter, to hear the instant, purring re- sponse of the engine. He gazed past the edge of his wind- screen, toward the stretch of moat on the south side of the house and grounds. There was—yes, it must be a reek rising from the water. Nothing but a faint mist rising, but to his sight or fancy it wreathed into shapes that went slinking, crouching, pantherwise through the dim grayness of night, It was the purring of the engine that caused him to think that he was seeing such things. Purring, purring. ..he reached out and switched off, and for nearly a minute the purring went on! - 7 With a shudder, he started his engine again and drove away, toward the Rest And Be Thankful at Hedlington, EGomicbooks (e(0)