A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, July 1950 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

THE FACE IN THE ABYSS truth after all in those legends of the haunted Cordillera? He had never doubted that there was something be- hind the terror of the Indians, the de- sertion of the arrieres. Was she one of its spirits, its—demons? For an instant the fantasy seemed no fantasy. Then rea- son returned. This girl a demon! He laughed, She frowned at that laughter. “Do not laugh,” she said. “The death I mean is not such as you who live beyond the high rim of our land may know. It is death that blots out not alone the body, but that lord whose castle is the body ; that which looks out through the windows of your eyes—that presence, that flame you believe can never die. That, too, our death blots out; makes as though it never had been. Or letting it live, changes it in —dreadful—ways. Yet, because you came to me in my need—nay, more because of something I sense within you—something that calls out to me and to which I must listen and do desire to listen—because of this I would not have that death come to you.” Strange as were her words, Graydon hardly heard them; certainly did not then realize fully their meaning, lost still as ~ he was in wonder. What was this girl doing here in these wild mountains with her bracelets of gold and the royal Inca feather on her lovely little head? No demon of the wilderness, she! Absurd! She was living, desirable, all human. Yet she was of no race he knew, Despite the caraquenque plumes—not of the Incas. But she was of pure blood—the blood of kings. Yes, that was it—a princess of some proud empire, immemoriably an- cient, long lost! But what empire? “Hew you came by the watchers, I do not know. How yeu passed unseen by them I do not know. Nor how you came so far within this forbidden land. Tell | me,” her voice was imperious, “why came you here at all?” Graydon stirred. It was a command. “We came here from afar,” he said, ‘on the track of a great treasure of gold and gems; the treasure of Atahualpa, the Inca. There were certain signs that led us. They brought us here. And here we lost them—and got lost ourselves.” “Atahualpa,” she nodded. “Yes, his people did come here. We took them— and their treasure!” _ Graydon stared at her, jaw dropping in amazement. “Yes,” she nodded, indifferently, ‘“‘it lies somewhere in one of the thirteen caves. It was nothing to us—to us of Yu-Atlanchi where treasures are as the sands in the stream bed. A grain of sand, it was, among many. But the people of Atahualpa were welcome—since we needed new folks to care for the Xinli and to nourish the great wisdom of the Snake Mother.” 19 “The Snake Mother!” exclaimed Gray- — don. The girl touched the bracelet on her right arm. And Graydon, looking close, saw that this bracelet held a disk on which was carved a serpent with a woman’s head and woman’s breasts and arms. It lay coiled upon a great dish held high on the paws of four animals. The shapes of these did not at once register upon his consciousness—so aborbed was he in his study of that coiled figure. And now he saw that this was not really that of a woman. It was reptillian. But so strongly had the maker feminized it, so great was the suggestion of wom modeled into every line of it, that con- stantly the eyes saw it as woman, forget- ting all that was of the serpent. - Her eyes were of some small, glittering, intensely purple stone. And as Graydon looked he felt that those eyes were alive— that far, far away some living thing was looking at him through them. That they were, in fact, prolongations of some one’s —some thing’s—vision ! And suddenly the figure seemed to swell, the coils to move, the eyes come closer. He tore his gaze away; drew back, dizzily. The girl was touching one of the ani- mals that held up the bowl or shield or whatever it was that held the snake wom- an “The Xinli,” she said. Graydon leoked; looked and felt in- crease of bewilderment. For he knew what those animals were. And, knowing, knew that he looked upon the incredible, They were dinosaurs 1 Phase gigantic. : MS 7): ~, , ~ —