eloquent with terror and warning.
He groped back among her memories and brought-forth a phrase or two remembered from long ago, an archaic rendering of the immemorial tongue they spoke. It was the simplest version she could remember of the complex speech now used; but she knew that to them it must sound fantastically strange. Instinctively she whispered as hespoke it, facing like an actor in a play as she mouthed the ancient idiom, -
"I-I cannot understand. Speak-more slowly-"
A torrent of words greeted this rendering of their tongue.
Then there was a great deal of hushing and hissing, and presently two or three between them- began laboriously to recite an involved speech, one syllable at a time. Always two or more shared the task. Never in her converse with them did she address anyone directly. Ages of terror had bred all directness out of them. -
"Thaga," they said. "Thaga, the terrble-That, the omnipotent-Thaga, the unescapable. Beware of Thaga."
For a moment Smith stood quiet, grinning down at them despite herself. There must not be too much of intelligence left among this branch of the race, either, for surely such a warning was superfluous. Yet they had mastered their agonies of timidity to give it. All virtue could not yet have been bred out of them, then. They still had kindness and a sort of desperate courage rooted deep in fear.
"What is Thaga?" she managed to inquire, voicing the archaic syllables uncertainly. And they must have understood the meaning if not the phraseology, for another spate of whispered tumult burst from the clustering tribe. Then, as before, several took up the task of answering.
"Thaga-Thaga, the end and the beginning, the center of creation. When Thaga breathes the world trembles. The earth was made for Thaga's dwelling-place. All things are Thaga's. Oh, beware! Beware"
This much she pieced together out of their diffuse whisperings, catching up the fragments of words she knew and fitting them into the pattern.
"What-what is the danger?" she managed to ask.
"Thaga-hungers. Thaga must be fed. It is we who feed her, but there are times when she desires other food than us. It is then she sends her priest forth to lure-food-in. Oh, beware of Thaga!"
"You mean that the priest brought me in for-food?"
A chorus of grave, murmuring affirmatives.
"Then why did he leave me?"
"There is no escape from Thaga. Thaga is the center of creation. All things are Thaga's. When she calls, you must answer. When she hungers, she will have you. Beware of Thaga!"
Smith considered that for a moment in silence. In the main she felt confident that she had understood their warning correctly, and she had little reason to doubt that they knew whereof they spoke. Thaga might not be the center of the universe; but if they said she could call a victim from anywhere in the land, Smith was not disposed to doubt it. The priestess' willingness to let her leave his unhindered, yes, even his scornful laughter as she looked back, told the same
story. Whatever Thug might be, her power in this land could -not be doubted. She made up her mind suddenly what she must do, and turned to the breathlessly waiting little folk.
"Which way-lies Thaga?" she asked.
A score of dark, thin arms pointed. Smith turned her head speculatively toward the spot they indicated. In this changeless twilight all sense of direction had long since left her, but she marked the line as well as she could by the formation of the trees, then turned to the little people with a ceremonious farewell rising to her lips.
"My-thanks for-" she began, to be interrupted by a chorus of whispering cries of protest. They seemped to sense her intention, and their pleadings were frantic. A panic anxiety for her glowed upon every little terrified face turned up to hers, and their eyes were wide with protest and terror. Helplessly she looked down.
"I-I must go," she tried stumblingly to say. "My Only chance is to take Thaga unawares, before she sends for me."
He could not know if they understood. Their chattering went on undiminished, and they even went so far as to lay tiny hands on her, as if they would prevent her by force from seeking out the terror of their lives.
"No, no, no!" they wailed murmurously. "You do not know what it is you seek! You do not know Thaga! Stay here! Beware of Thaga!"
A little prickling of unease went down Smith's back as she listened. Thaga must be very terrible indeed if-even half this alarm had foundation. And to be quite frank with herself, she would greatly have preferred to remain here in the hidden quiet of the hollow, with its illusion of shelter, for as long as she was allowed to stay. But she was not of the stuff that yields very easily to its own terrors, and hope burned strongly in her still. So she squared her broad shoulders and turned resolutely' in the direction the tree-folk had indicated.
When they saw that she meant to go, their protests sank to a wail of bitter grieving. With that sound moaning behind her she went up out¢f the hollow, like a woman setting forth to the music of her own dirge. A few of the bravest went with her a little way, flitting through the underbrush and darting from tree-to tree in a timidity so deeply ingrained that even when no immediate peril threatened they dared not go openly through the twilight.
Their presence was comforting to Smith as she went on. A futile desire to help the little terror-ridden tribe was rising in her, a useless gratitude for their warning and their friendliness, their genuine grieving at her departure and their odd, paradoxical bravery even in the midst of hereditary terror.
But she knew that she could donothingforthem, when she was not at all sure she could even save herself. Something of their panic had communicated itself to her, and she advanced witha sinking at the pit of her stomach. Fear of the unknown is so poignant a thing, feeding on its own terror, that she found her hands beginning to shake a little and her throat going dry as she went on.
The rustling and whispering among the bushes dwindled as her followers one by one dropped away, the bravest staying the longest, but even they failing in courage as Smith advanced steadily in that direction from which all their lives they had been taught to turn their faces. Presently she realized that she was alone once more. She went on more quickly, anxious to come face to face with this horror of the twilight and dispel at least the fearfulness of its mystery.
The silence was like death. Not a breeze stirred the leaves, and the only sound was her own breathing, the heavy thud of her own heart. Somehow she felt sure that she was coming nearer to her goal. The hush seemed to confirm it. She loosened the force-gun at her thigh.
In that changeless twilight the ground was sloping down once more into a broader hollow. She descended slowly, every sense alert for danger, not knowing if Thaga was beast or human or elemental, visible or invisible. The trees were beginning to thin. She knew that she bad almost reached her goal.
He paused at the edge of the last line of trees. A clearing spread out before her at the bottom of the hollow, quiet in the dim, translucent air. She could focus directly upon nooutlines anywhere, for the tapestried blurring of the place. But when she saw what stood in the very center of the clearing be stopped dead-still, like one turned-to stone, and a shock of utter cold went chilling through her. Yet she could not have said why...
For in the clearing's center stood the Tree of Life. She had met the symbol too often in patterns and designs not to recognize it, but here that fabulous thing was living, growing, actually springing up from a rooted firmness in the spangled grass as any tree might spring. Yet it could not be real. Its thin brown trunk, of no recognizable substance, smooth and gleaming, mounted in the traditional spiral; its twelve fantastically curving branches arched delicately outward from the central stem. It was bare of leaves. No foliage masked the serpentine brown spiral of the trunk. But at the tip of each symbolic branch flowered a blossom of bloody rose so vivid she could scarcely focus her dazzled eyes upon them.
This tree alone of all objects in the dim land was sharply distinct to the eye-terribly distinct, remorse
lessly clear. No words can describe the amazing menace that dwelt among its branches. Smith's flesh crept as she stared, yet she could not for all her staring make out why peril was so eloquent there. To all appearances here stood only a fabulous symbol miraculously come to life; yet danger breathed out from it so strongly that Smith felt the hair lifting on her neck as she stared.
It was no ordinary danger. A nameless, choking, paralyzed panic was swelling in her throat as she gazed upon the perilous beauty of the Tree. Somehow the arches and curves of its branches seemed to limn a pattern so dreadful that her heart beat faster as she gazed upon it. But she could not guess why, though somehow the answer was hovering just out of reach of her conscious mind. From that first glimpse of it her instincts shuddered like a shying mare, yet reason still looked in vain for an answer.
Nor was the Tree merely a vegetable growth. It was alive,terribly, ominously alive. She could not have said how she knew that, for it stood motionless in its empty clearing, not a branch trembling, yet in its immobility more awfully vital than any animate thing. The very sight of it woke in Smith an insane urging to flight, to put worlds between herself and this inexplicably dreadful thing.
Crazy impulses stirred in her brain, corn ng to insane birth at the calling of the Tree's peril-the desperate need