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"I was not afraid. I was exhilarated beyond my wildest dreams. I was
not going to die as simply as I had imagined. I was descending to a
mystery that was infinitely more interesting than I had ever thought it
would be.
"But when I reached the bottom of the narrow steps and stood in the
small stone chamber there, I was terrified by what I saw-terrified and
repelled by it, the loathing and fear so immediate that I felt a lump
rising to suffocate me or make me uncontrollably sick.
"A creature sat on a stone bench opposite the foot of the stairway,
and in the full light of the torch I saw that it had the face and limbs of
a man. But it was burnt black all over, horribly burnt, its skin
shriveled to its very bones. In fact it appeared a yellow-eyed skeleton
coated in pitch, only its flowing main of white hair untouched. It
opened its mouth to speak and I saw its white teeth, its fang teeth, and
I gripped the torch firmly, trying not to scream like a fool.
" `Do not come too close to me,' it said. `Stand there where I may
really see you, not as they see you, but as my eyes can still see.'
"I swallowed, tried to breathe easily. No human being could have
been burnt like that and survived. And yet the thing lived-naked and
shrunken and black. And its voice was low and beautiful. It rose, and
then moved slowly across the chamber.
"It pointed its finger at me, and the yellow eyes widened slightly,
revealing a blood red tinge in the light.
"`What do you want of me?' I whispered before I could stop myself.
`Why have I been brought here?'
" `Calamity,' he said in the same voice, colored with genuine feeling-
not the rasping sound I had expected from such a thing. `I will give
you my power. Marius, I will make you a god and you will be
immortal. But you must leave here when it is finished. You must
somehow escape our faithful worshipers, and you must go down into
Egypt to find why this . . . this . . . has befallen me.'
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"He appeared to be floating in the darkness, his hair a mop of white
straw around him, his jaws stretching the blackened leathery skin that
clung to his skull as he spoke.
" `You see, we are the enemies of light, we gods of darkness, we serve
the Holy Mother and we live and rule only by the light of the moon.
But our enemy, the sun, has escaped his natural path and sought us
out in darkness. All over the north country where we worshiped, in
the sacred groves from the lands of snow and ice, down into this
fruitful country, and to the east, the sun has found its way into the
sanctuary by day or the world by night and burned the gods alive. The
youngest of these perished utterly, some exploding like comets before
their worshipers! Others died in such heat that the sacred tree itself
became a funeral pyre. Only the old ones-the ones who have long
served the Great Mother-continued to walk and to talk as I do, but in
agony, affrighting the faithful worshipers when they appeared.
" `There must be a new god, Marius, strong and beautiful as I was,
the lover of the Great Mother, but more truly there must be one strong
enough to escape the worshipers, to get out of the oak somehow, and
to go down into Egypt and seek out the old gods and find why this
calamity has occurred. You must go to Egypt, Marius, you must go
into Alexandria and into the older cities, and you must summon the
gods with the silent voice that you will have after I make you, and you
must find who lives still and who walks still, and why this calamity has
occurred.'
"It closed its eyes now. It stood still, its light frame wavering
uncontrollably as if it were a thing made of black paper, and I saw
suddenly, unaccountably, a spill of violent images-these gods of the
grove bursting into flame. I heard their screams. My mind, being
rational, being Roman, resisted these images. It tried to memorize and
contain them, rather than yield to them, but the maker of the images-
this thing-was patient and the images went on. I saw the country that
could only be Egypt, the burnt yellow look to all things, the sand that
overlies everything and soils it and dusts it to the same color, and I saw
more stairways into the earth and I saw sanctuaries . . .
"`Find them,' he said. `Find why and how this has come to pass. See
to it that it never comes to pass again. Use your powers in the streets
of Alexandria until you find the old ones. Pray the old ones are there
as I am still here.'
"I was too shocked to answer, too humbled by the mystery. And
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