Avon Fantasy Reader No. 14 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

moved like a dream, whose silence was broken only by the low rippling of the long, slim, golden-worked oars through the water. The stars flecked the deep blue gulf of the lake with silver points. I looked back and saw the great dark bulk of the temple loom against the stars. The naked black mutes pulled the shining oars and the silent warriors sat before and behind us with their apears, helms and shields. It was like the dream of some fabulous city of Haroun-al-Raschid’s time, or of Sulieman-ben-Daoud’s, and -I thought how blooming incongruous Conrad and I looked in that setting, with our boots and dingy, tattered khakis. “We landed on the island and I saw it was girdled with masonry—built up from the water’s edge in broad flights of steps which circled the entire island. The whole seemed older, even, than the city—the Sumerians must have built wz when they first found the valley, before they began on the city itself. “We went up the steps, that were worn deep by countless feet, to a huge set of iron doors in the temple, and here Gorat laid down his spear and shield, dropped on his belly and knocked his helmed head on the great sill. Some one must have been watching from a loophole, for from the top of the tower sounded one deep golden note and the doors swung silently open to disclose a dim, torch-lighted entrance. Gorat rose and led the way, we following with those confounded spears pricking our backs. “We mounted a flight of stairs and came onto a series of galleries built on the inside of each tier and winding around and up. Looking up, it seemed much higher and bigger than it had seemed from without, and the vague, half-lighted gloom, the silence and the mystery gave me the shudders. Con- rad’s face gleamed white in the semi-darkness. The shadows of past ages crowded in upon us, chaotic and horrific, and I felt as though the ghosts of all the priests and victims who had walked those galleries for four thousand years were keeping pace with us. The vast wings of dark, forgotten gods hovered over that hideous pile of antiquity. “We came out on the highest tier. There were three circles of tall colurnns, one inside the other—and I want to say that for columns built of sun-dried brick, these were curiously symmetrical. But there was none of the grace and open beauty of, say, Greek architecture. This was grim, sullen, monstrous— something like the Egyptian, not quite so massive but even more formidable in starkness—an architecture symbolizing an age when men were still in the dawn-shadows of Creation and dreamed of monstrous gods, “Over the inner circle ot columns was a curving roof—almost a dome. How they built it, or how they came to anticipate the Roman builders by so many ages, I can’t say, for it was a startling departure from the rest of their architectural style, but there it was. And from this domelike roof hung a great round shining thing that caught the starlight in a silver net. I knew then what we had been following for so many mad miles! It was a great gong— the voice of El-lil, Ir looked like jade but I’m not sure to this day. But what- ever it was, it was the symbol on which the faith and cult of the Sumerians hung—the symbol of the god-head itself. And I know Naluna was right when she told us that her ancestors brought it with them on that long, gruelling trek, ages ago, when they fled before Sargon’s wild riders. And how many 12 comiclsooks.com