Avon Fantasy Reader No. 7 — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

AS ie > ae ae WHEN OLD GODS WAKE : 95 eyes were intent upon the wall behind the altar. A painting once had covered that wall. The fingers of time, working patiently through the centuries, had plucked away most of the stucco that had carried it. But above the altar, as though protected by its shadow, a large. and irregular fragment remained. Upon it, colors still vivid, were the head and shoulders of Kukulkan, God of the Air of the ancient Mayans—and much more than that. The Feathered Serpent, his symbol and his avatar, floated over him, fanged jaws agape, plumed wings spread wide. The face of Kukulkan was the conventionalized one of the-New Empire; the nose grotesquely lengthened like that of a tapir, lips thick and protruding, prognathous-jawed, bat-eared; the ears ringed and = , % a the labret through the nostrils; head plumed with the sacred panacho. The painted gaze of the god seemed fixed as intently upon the girl as hers-upon him. | | The pedestal against which Joan leaned was covered with carved figures of ce priests of Kukulkan who had served him when ruined Tuloom had been one of the great cities of the Mayans, and this its holiest temple. On these figures the colors were also bright. Into them Joan’s copper hair melted, merged with their reds and ochres so that for an instant Barry had the illu- sion that her face was all of her. A disembodied face peering out of the stone and holding communion with the god like a summoned priestess. . Impatiently Barry arose and walked over to her. She did not look up. She whispered, eyes still absorbed by the painted god: “Don't break the silence, Barry! It’s like the silence that wraps the City of Jade . . . where the thousand sages of T’zan T’zao sit holding fast to the thought that created the world . . . and that the ghost of a ghost of a sound “would destroy ... and with it the world...” - He felt increase of revolt against the fantasies gathering about him. He shook his shoulders and laughed. He said, loudly: : “The silence is broken, Joan—and the world still spins.” It was true. The silence was broken. It was retreating from the chamber, slowly . . . marching away as it had marched in. Faintly came the swish of the-waves, growing ever stronger. The silence was marching out of the chamber toward the shattered stairway up which it had come. Joan arose, slowly . . .it was odd, Barry thought, how every movement of hers in rising kept to the rhythm, kept to the beat, of the unseen and unheard feet of the - retreating silence. | COMIC OO KSx6©) im