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DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE
by A. E. Merritt
BOOK OF KHALK'RU
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
 
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE
BOOK OF KHALK'RU
CHAPTER I
SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
I RAISED my head, listening,—not only with my ears
but with every square inch of my skin, waiting for
recurrence of the sound that had awakened me. There
was silence, utter silence. No soughing in the boughs of
the spruces clustered around the little camp. No stirring
of furtive life in the underbrush. Through the spires of
the spruces the stars shone wanly in the short sunset to
sunrise twilight of the early Alaskan summer.
A sudden wind bent the spruce tops, carrying again
the sound—the clangour of a beaten anvil.
 
I slipped out of my blanket, and round the dim
embers of the fire toward Jim. His voice halted me.
"All right, Leif. I hear it."
The wind sighed and died, and with it died the hum-
ming aftertones of the anvil stroke. Before we could
speak, the wind arose. It bore the after-hum of the anvil
stroke—faint and far away. And again the wind died,
and with it the sound.
"An anvil, Leif!"
"Listen!"
A stronger gust swayed the spruces. It carried a
distant chanting; voices of many women and men sing-
ing a strange, minor theme. The chant ended on a
wailing chord, archaic, dissonant.
There was a long roll of drums, rising in a swift cres-
cendo, ending abruptly. After it a thin and clamorous
confusion.
 
It was smothered by a low, sustained rumbling, like
thunder, muted by miles. In it defiance, challenge.
We waited, listening. The spruces were motionless.
The wind did not return.
"Queer sort of sounds, Jim." I tried to speak casually,
He sat up. A stick flared up in the dying fire. Its
light etched his face against the darkness—thin, and
brown and hawk-profiled. He did not look at me.
"Every feathered forefather for the last twenty
centuries is awake and shouting! Better call me Tsantawu, Leif.
Tsi' Tsa'lagi—I am a Cherokee! Right
now—all Indian."
He smiled, but still he did not look at me, and I was
glad of that.
"It was an anvil," I said. "A hell of a big anvil.
And hundreds of people singing . . . and how could
that be in this wilderness . . , they didn't sound
like Indians. . . ."
"The drums weren't Indian." He squatted by the
fire, staring into it. "When they turned loose, something
 
played a pizzicato with icicles up and down my back."
"They got me, too—those drums!" I thought my
voice was steady, but he looked up at me sharply; and
now it was I who averted my eyes and stared at the
embers. "They reminded me of something I heard . . .
and thought I saw ... inMongolia . So did the
singing. Damn it, Jim, why do you look at me like that ?"
I threw a stick on the fire. For the life of me I couldn't
help searching the shadows as the stick flamed. Then
I met his gaze squarely.
"Pretty bad place, was it, Leif ?" he asked, quietly.
I said nothing. Jim got up and walked over to the
packs. He came back with Some water and threw it over
the fire. He kicked earth on the hissing coals. If he saw
me wince as the shadows rushed in upon us, he did not
show it.
"That wind came from the north," he said. "So that's
the way the sounds came. Therefore, whatever made
the sounds is north of us. That being so—which way do
we travel to-morrow ?"
 

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