"The Ship Of Ishtar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt Abraham)

THE SHIP OF ISHTAR
A. A. Merritt

Copyright 1924 by The Frank A. Munsey Company.


PART I
1. The Coming of the Ship

A TENDRIL of the strange fragrance spiralled up from the great stone block. Kenton felt it caress his face like a coaxing hand.
He had been aware of that fragrance-an alien perfume, subtly troubling, evocative of fleeting unfamiliar images, of thought-wisps that were gone before the mind could grasp them-ever since he had unsheathed from its coverings the thing Forsyth, the old archaeologist, had sent him from the sand shrouds of ages-dead Babylon.
Once again his eyes measured the block-four feet long,a little more than that in height, a trifle less in width. A faded yellow, its centuries hung about it like a half visible garment. On one face only was there inscription, a dozen parallel lines of archaic cuneiform; carved there, if Forsyth were right in his deductions, in the reign of Sargon of Akkad, sixty centuries ago. The surface of thestone was scarred and pitted and the wedge shaped symbols mutilated, half obliterated.
Kenton leaned closer over it, and closer around himwound the scented spirals clinging like scores of tendrils, clinging like little fingers, wistful, supplicating, pleading-- Pleading for release! What nonsense was this he was dreaming? Kenton drew himself up. A hammer lay close at hand; he lifted it and struck the block, impatiently.
The block answered the blow! It murmured; the murmuring grew louder; louder still,with faint bell tones like distant carillons of jade. The murmurings ceased, now they were only high, sweet chimings; clearer, ever more clear they rang, drawing closer, winging up through endless corridors of time.
There was a sharp crackling. The block split. From the break pulsed a radiance as of rosy pearls and with it wave after wave of the fragrance-no longer questing, no longer wistful nor supplicating.
Jubilant now! Triumphant! Something was inside the block! Something that had lain hidden there since Sargon of Akkad, six thousand years go! The carillons of jade rang out again. Sharply they pealed, then turned and fled back the endless corridors upwhich they had come. They died away; and as they died the block collapsed; it disintegrated; it became a swirling, slowly settling cloud of sparkling dust.
The cloud whirled, a vortex of glittering mist. It vanished like a curtain plucked away.
Where the block had been stood-a ship! It floated high on a base of curving waves cut from lapis lazuli and foam-crested with milky rock crystals. Its hull was of crystal, creamy and faintly luminous. Its prow was shaped like a slender scimitar, bent backward. Under the incurved tip was a cabin whose seaward sides were formed, galleon fashion, by the upward thrust of the bows. Where the hull drew up to form this cabin, a faint flush warmed and cloudy crystal; it deepened as the side slifted; it gleamed at last with a radiance that turned the cabin into a rosy jewel.
In the center of the ship, taking up a third of its length, was a pit; down from the bow to its railed edge sloped a deck of ivory. The deck that sloped similarly from the stern was jet black. Another cabin rested there, larger than that at the bow, but squat and ebon. Both deckscontinued in wide platforms on each side of the pit. Atthe middle of the ship the ivory and black decks met withan odd suggestion of contending forces. They did not fade into each other. They ended there abruptly, edge to edge; hostile.
Out of the pit arose a rail mast: tapering and green asthe core of an immense emerald. From its cross-sticks awide sail stretched, shimmering like silk spun from fireopals: from mast and yards fell stays of twisted dull gold.
Out from each side of the ship swept a single bank ofseven great oars, their scarlet blades dipped deep withinthe pearl crested lapis of the waves, And the jewelled craft was manned! Why, Kenton won-dered, had he not noticed the tiny figures before? It was as though they had just arisen from the deck . . .a woman had slipped out of the rosy cabin's door, an armwas still outstretched in its closing . . . and there wereother women shapes upon the ivory deck, three of them,crouching . . . their heads were bent low; two clasped harpsand the third held a double flute. . . Little figures, not more than two inches high. . . Toys! Odd that he could not distinguish their faces, nor thedetails of their dress. The boys were indistinct, blurred, asthough a veil covered them. Kenton told himself that the blurring was the fault of his eyes; he closed them. for a moment.
Opening them he looked down upon the black cabinand stared with deepening perplexity. The black deck had been empty when first the ship had appeared-that he could have sworn.
Now four manikins were clustered there-close to the edge of the pit! And the baffling haze around the toys was denser. Ofcourse it must be his eyes-what else? He would liedown for a while and rest them. He turned, reluctantly; he walked slowly to the door; he paused there, uncer-tainly, to look back at the shining mystery- All the room beyond the ship was hidden by the haze! Kenton heard a shrilling as of armies of storm; aroaring as of myriads or tempests; a shrieking chaos asthough down upon him swept cataracts of mighty winds.
The room split into thousands of fragments; dissolved.Clear through the clamor came the sound of a bell-one-two-thr- He knew that bell. It was his clock ringing out thehour of six. The third note was cut in twain.
The solid floor on which. he stood melted away. He felt himself suspended in space, a space filled with mists ofsilver.
The mists melted.
Kenton caught a glimpse of a vast blue wave-crestedocean-another of the deck of a ship flashing by a dozenfeet below him.
He felt a sudden numbing shock, a blow upon his righttemple. Splintered lightnings veined a blackness that wipedout sight of sea and ship.


2. The First Adventure

KENTON lay listening to a soft whispering, persistentand continuous. It was like the breaking crests of sleepywaves. The sound was all about him; a rippling susurra-tion becoming steadily more insistent. A light beat throughhis closed lids. He felt motion under him, a gentle, cra-dling lift and fall. He opened his eyes.
He was on a ship; lying on a narrow deck, his headagainst the bulwarks. In front of him was a mast risingout of a pit. Inside the pit were chained men strainingat great oars. The mast seemed to be of wood coveredwith translucent, emerald lacquer. It stirred reluctant mem-ories.
Where had he seen such a mast before? His gaze crept up the mast. There was a wide sail; a sailmade of opaled silk. Low overhead hung a sky that was alla soft mist of silver.
He heard a woman's voice, deep toned, liquidly golden.Kenton sat up, dizzily. At his right was a cabin nestlingunder the curved tip of a scimitared prow; it gleamedrosily. A balcony ran round its top; little trees blossomedon that balcony; doves with feet and bills crimson asthough dipped in wine of rubies fluttered snowy wingsamong the branches.
At the cabin's door stood a woman, tall, willow-lithe,staring beyond him. At her feet crouched three girls. Two of them clasped harps, the other held to her lips adouble flute. Again the reluctant memories stirred andfled and were forgotten as Kenton's gaze fastened uponthe woman.
Her wide eyes were green as depths of forest glens,and like them they were filled with drifting shadows. Herhead was small; the features fine; the red mouth deli-cately amorous. In the hollow of her throat a dimplelay; a chalice for kisses and empty of them and eager tobe filled. Above her brows was set a silver crescent, slimas a newborn moon. Over each horn of the crescentpoured a flood of red-gold hair, framing the lovely face; the flood streamed over and was parted by her tiltedbreasts; it fell in ringlets almost to her sandalled feet.
As young as Spring, she seemed-yet wise as Au-tumn; Primavera of some archaic Botticelli-but MonaLisa too; if virginal in body, certainly not in soul.
He followed her gaze. It led him across the pit of theoarsmen. Four men stood there. One was taller by a headthan Kenton, and built massively. His pale eyes staredunwinkingly at the woman; menacing; malignant. His facewas beardless and pallid. His huge and flattened headwas shaven; his nose vulture beaked; from his shouldersblack robes fell, shrouding him to feet. Two shavenheads were at his left, wiry, wolfish, black-robed; each ofthem held a brazen, conch-shaped horn.
On the last of the group Kenton's eyes lingered, fas-cinated. This man squatted, his pointed chin resting on atall drum whose curved sides glittered scarlet and jet withthe polished scales of some great snake. His legs weresturdy but dwarfed-his torso that of a giant, knottedand gnarled, prodigiously powerful. His ape-like armswere wound around the barrelled tambour; spider-likewere the long fingers standing on their tips upon thedrum head.
It was his face that held Kenton. Sardonic and malicious-there was in it none of the evil concentrate in theothers. The wide slit of his mouth was frog-like andhumor was on the thin lips. His deep set, twinkling blackeyes dwelt upon the crescented woman with frank ad-miration. From the lobes of his outstanding ears hungdisks of hammered gold.
The woman paced swiftly down toward Kenton. When she halted he could have reached out a hand and touchedher. Yet she did not seem to see him.
"Ho-Klaneth!" she cried. "I hear the voice of Ishtar.She is coming to her ship. Are you ready to do her hom-age, Slime of Nergal?" A flicker of hate passed over the massive man's pallidface like a little wave from hell.
"This is Ishtar's Ship," he answered, "yet my DreadLord has claim upon it too, Sharane? The House of theGoddess brims with light-but tell me, does not Nergal'sshadow darken behind me?" And Kenton saw that the deck on which were thesemen was black as polished jet and again memory stroveto make itself heard.
A sudden wind smote the ship, like an open hand,heeling it. From the doves within the trees of the rosycabin broke a tumult of cries; they flew up like a whitecloud flecked with crimson; they fluttered around thewoman.
The ape-like arms of the drummer unwrapped, his spi-dery fingers poised over the head of the snake drum. Dark-ness deepened about him and hid him; darkness cloakedall the ship's stern.
Kenton felt the gathering of unknown forces. He sliddown, upon his haunches, pressed himself against thebulwarks.
From the deck of the rosy cabin blared a goldentrumpeting; defiant; inhuman. He turned his head, andon it the hair lifted and prickled.
Resting on the rosy cabin was a great orb, an orb likethe moon at full; but not, like the moon, white and cold-an orb alive with pulsing roseate candescence. Overthe ship it poured its rays and where the woman calledSharane had been was now-no woman! Bathed in the orb's rays she loomed gigantic. The lidsof her eyes were closed, yet through those closed lidseyes glared! Plainly Kenton saw them-eyes hard as jade,glaring through the closed lids as though those lids hadbeen gossamer! The slender crescent upon her brows wasan arc of living fire, and all about it the masses of herred-gold hair beat and tossed.