A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 70: what you’re looking at

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

a. 70 A, MERRITT'S FANTASY I agreed that they must be very wise indeed, and I asked when we were to go to the trial, and then, pat, like a stage direction, there came a hang at the door, and it was opened by a sleek little youth in tights who said that ¥ was wanted at the trial of the priestess. CHAPTER 20 Judgment of the Wise Men T HE boy was not alone. With him was a squad of soldiers who guarded me to the place of the trial. And on the way, I had a glance at one of the basic industries of the Smoking Land. We came down one of those sub- terranean roads and, by the opening of a door, I heard a tremendous clangor and clattering. I looked in through the big entrance at such an underground chamber as I had never dreamed of. It must have been two hundred feet long, and the ceiling was a good fifty feet from the floor. It was supported by huge pillars, roughed out of the living rock from which the space had been hollowed. And once more I was shocked and amazed to think of the amount of labor that had been spent in making that under- ground city! This big hall was split up by barriers into small compartments, and in every compartment was a forge, and around every forge there were men at work, I think that those expert mechanics were making anything and everything from needles to plate armor, and the din of the hammers was terrific. A little later we got to the place of the trial. And that was a chamber very nearly as large as the forge room. It was still loftier, though, I’ve never seen a cathedral nave to compare with it for sheer size, and the whole floor was black with people, thousands of them. I saw that there were children with them; some of the mothers held up the little ones high on their shoul- ders to avoid the danger of having them crushed in the sway of the crowd. My guards made a way for me through this human mass. Two of them extended their long halberds so as to make a wedge, inside of which we walked. Whatever the point of the wedge touched was soon sure to move, and move with a spring. T took this opportunity to size up the faces of these strange people. There were some with faces so round and eyes so slanted that they would have passed easily among the Esquimaux around Point Bar- row. And there were others as blond as you please. But the average type was big in body, apt to be bowed in the legs— rather a feature of strength than deformi- ty, I should say. The face was broad, and rather rounded, though the nose might be decidedly acquiline. Our goal was a dais at the farther end of the room, and on it was a higher plat- form where three men sat behind a long table, with fellows who looked like clerks nearby them, On the lower part of the dais were several soldiers, and I was placed before them. I stared hard at the three at the long table. They were elderly men, two of them, and looked to be of the pure Cauca- sian type—blue-eyes, blond. And they were handsome, in a grim, inhuman way. Men of about fifty-five or sixty, I should have said, with thought in their faces, and infinite refinement expressed in their slender, tapering hands, But the third man got most of my at- tention, for it was Cleveland Darrell! e was be-wigged and be-robed like the other two, and he looked enough like them to have passed as the twin of either. I saw that he avoided my eyes; and my heart fell. Yes, every pair of eyes in the great crowd was fixed on me, the stranger, Even the two older judges seemed seri- ously interested in me; for they stared, and then murmured to one another. But my friend, Darrell, whom I had trekked so many thousand miles through a cold hell to find—he found it embarrassing, it seemed, to look at me at all! Just then the interest of the crowd switched suddenly away from me, and I heard a rumble, deep-voiced, through the crowd. “The priestess!” There she came, guarded, and two women in splendid robes beside her— Alice and another. But in spite of their greater height, their fine faces, their mag- nificient clothes, Sylvia in simple black and white, with her still, far-off look, made them look like beggars beside a queen. She was brought up onto the dais and