A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 46: what you’re looking at

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

46 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY carts, drawn by three or sometimes five musk-oxen. I paid not so much attention to these, however. I was thinking about some- thing else—what White Beard had said about burning. Presently I said to one of my guards, “Friend, what'd the old grandfather mean when he talked of burning?” This fellow turned a round, a rosy face on me and said, “But what else should betide, stranger, to one who profanes the sacred herd? Art thou such a famous enchanter, and hast thou walked so many thousand leagues upon the frozen sea, and the waves thereof, and yet thou knowest not the goddess ?”’ I looked fairly at him; I looked deeply at him. His face, I thought, was as round as a dumpling, and as red as an apple. There was neither thought nor deceit in him, and if he had any more wit than a potato, I was willing to eat anybody’s hat, even a fur one. And he thought that there was nothing else ahead of me except a burning! That was his idea of the clearest out for me! My heart chilled. There began to be 1 trembly churning way down inside of me. Now we came up a gradual grade and toward what seemed to be a gate that opened into the side of a hill, and that worried me again. I had had enough of the insides of hills. I preferred the open air, for that day in my life. But on we went, while the gates grew taller and taller, and pretty soon I could see that those gates were about a hundred feet high, and on each side of the gate lay a sculptured dog, or lion, or some such thing. We walked on between them, but now our way was blocked by a portcullis. There it was before us, plain as day— great bars of steel or of glimmering iron that dropped all across the entrance to the cave, and inside the entrance a voice bawled out: “What goes there?” “Even a friend—Jenkin, son of Smith,” said the chief. “Advance, Jenkin, son of Smith,” said the warder, “and speak the word that should be spoken.” Jenkin, son of Smith, walked close to the bars. “Hail to the goddess, the golden one, to her eye which sees all, and to her ear that hears all, and to her breath, which is the wind for fortune, good and evil.” “It is spoken,” says the warder. “And what wouldst thou, Jenkin, son of Smith ?”’ Jenkin told him. What he told him had to do with me, and I must say that he gave me a bad report. No police sergeant who knows that the suspected man really should go free ever tried to poison the mind of a judge with a hotter speech than Jenkin made about me. I was an infer- nal enchanter. That was clear, he said, because by my arts and craft, though as I confessed I came from a far land over the seas, I had learned the very language which was current in the land. I could almost pass for an Englishmen, even as they ! Pass for an Englishman—even as they! English? And what the devil were Eng- lishmen doing living. up there close to the Ice Pole? There was. something comforting about that word English. It stands for fair play, throughout the world. It stands for a system of laws, and decent justice that cannot be bought. It stands for honor and truth, and a lot of other things that a fellow under arrest appreciates a lot, believe me! The huge portcullis rose, and with a faint, whining noise that meant electricity, or else I was willing to eat another fur hat, and then I was marched into the jaws of the mountain. HE hall we entered was a whale. It was all set about with banners, and odds and ends to deck it out, and among other things, I saw a squad of about afty soldiers, wearing shining steel armor—no question about that bluish sheen of it—and they had basket-hilted swords at their sides, and big daggers to balance them on the opposite hip, and they carried in their hands a thing that looked like what you see in dictionaries under the word partisan, or halberd—spears, with heavy shafts, and with axes hitched onto the spearhead ! They were dressed in jerkins and doub- lets, and above their cuirasses, they had big ruffs standing out around their necks, and the ruff of the captain of the guard was made of lace—real lace, and hand made. Delt COMmicaoo® C@