CHAPTER III
Eos sat beside Feronia and watched the great, writhing two-headedDionaea, and waited. After a time the flowing golden bands ofLife-energy entered, focusing subtly all about her, so that she seemedto Dionaea truly to be the Mother of All, and the greatest of AllGoddesses anywhere.
At the entrance of the golden energy Eos smiled with relief, for now shehad a power that she had not thought to use against Diana before. For toEos this aversion to all men of the Goddess Diana spelled out themessage of her weakness, and this energy of the life pole was going topierce that weakness.
Day dragged after day, and the weird scene there in the banquet hall ofthe stone men of the past became to Druga a tense place of waiting forhis own demise and change into a similar relic to decorate this hall ofdeath. For Eos would not tell him what she planned for fear he wouldgive her away in the tense moments that were to come when Diana at lastrejoined her Dionaea in their strange dual existence.
The inducted energies of the female pole had a most disturbing effectupon the mingled male and female of the Amphis-Baena.
Baena, driven half mad by the increased female qualities of the head ofDionaea, made inadvertent love to her, caressing her face with his longforked tongue, and combing at her tangled hair with his fangs, alwaysBaena was distraught with her attraction. This attention drove the womannear frantic, strained as she was in her unnatural condition, and shecould not afford to anger the beast whose body she had been graftedupon. For even a serpent has been known to swallow its tail, and Dionaeahad no desire to know if Baena could do that trick.
Eos, sitting quietly and watching the bound serpent, smiled at thiscontinual by-play, and offered to release Dionaea for revealing herknowledge of Diana, so that some chink in her armor might be found. Notthat Eos now needed any such thing, but she was kind-hearted, and wantedBaena at least on her side. For she could see into the dual life andthought of the two-headed monster, and knew that if Baena chose to sethis will against Diana when she was within the body and mind ofDionaea--it would help her in what she planned.
"Baena," Eos at last said, "if you can find a way to help me againstthis unnatural mistress of your mistress, I will repay you by giving youanything you may ask of me."
Baena looked at Dionaea's head with the reptilian love-light glowingfrustrate in his great green-and-gold eyes.
"If you will promise to give me what is in my mind that I desire, whythen when the time comes I will see what I can do. I am weary of beingthe tail when I was meant to be the head, and if I had it to do over,this unnatural and self-willed appendage would remain in her properplace."
Now Eos knew that Baena could not help desiring Dionaea as a mate, forshe seemed most reptilian in the strange snake-growth that had come overher, and knowingly she nodded at Baena, so that he knew that she knewwhat he wanted, but Dionaea did not know, for it never occurred to her.To Eos, what the future might bring to Dionaea as the mate of a snakeseemed a proper revenge for what she had done in aiding Diana, and forother cruelties of which Druga had told her. She planned accordingly.
* * * * *
Came that day which was the time appointed by Diana Triformis for hervisit to Dionaea. Much as she detested the need for entering the malebody of Baena to interview Dionaea, still Dionaea had been a valuableally, and Diana did intend in time to release her and give her again ahuman body.
To this end she had made some inquiries as to how this might be done.For in truth the method of doing so had evaded her mind in theexcitement and rage of finding what had happened, and in the task of thespell she had created to turn Feronia into a stone image. For Diana knewthat what Baena had accomplished she could accomplish, certainly, andthe shame of forgetting how it might be done before the wise Baena'scritical eyes made her neglect to mention her intentions to either ofthe two heads of the snake.
As the swirl of ethereal force that was Diana's traveling form settledwithin the golden-moted atmosphere of the great chamber of thedisk-mansion, Eos stood up, and dropped from her body her insulatingblue robe of shimmering magic, so that her supercharged beauty shoneeverywhere in blinding, awful attraction.
Druga, who had been sitting disconsolately talking to himself, rose tohis feet like an automaton and walked toward that more than mortalbeauty, his eyes blinded and his senses wholly submerged in ecstasy atthe sight of the glory of Eos unveiled. As he reached the Goddess he putout his arms like a sleepwalker to take her to him, but she avoided him,seizing him by a wrist and turning him about, hissing in his ear,imperatively:
"Now prove to me that you are truly a mighty man of his word, withcourage and strength, and in spite of this body of mine go out of thischamber and wait till I call without once letting your attention turntoward me or noting anything that goes on, else are we both lost!"
Like a man weighted down with lead on his feet, Druga strove to obeyher, moving inch by slow inch away from that vast flood of energeticattraction.
Eos watched him move slowly away from her, every muscle standing out onhis body and his neck corded with effort to keep his head turned away,and a vast admiration for him rose in her throat and choked her. Itseemed to her that the statue of Feronia moved and that the stone facechanged, suffused for an instant with admiration also.
* * * * *
The swirling purple cloud of Diana's entrance moved nearer to Dionaea,for in the hyper-space of her travelling, the points and dimensions ofthis world were much alike, and she did not realize that Dionaea was notin her palace at Armora. Settling about the two-headed creature lashedfast to the pillars of the chamber, she moved herself within the snakebody and came to rest within the body of Baena, the snake.
Looking out of the dual heads of Dionaea and Baena now, Diana Triformis,who was no stranger to dual and triple existence even in the same body,saw with those four eyes the naked body of Eos, reflecting, emanating,giving off in vast floods the focused energies of the Pole of FemaleLife-energy, and those four eyes fastened hypnotized upon that glory,female beyond any other life in all space.
Eos moved closer and closer to the bound snake, murmuring soft words:
"Oh, Diana, wonderful one, long have I desired you, for I know yoursecret, that you are not female as your body seems, but male. So I havedecided to have you for myself, for I am weary of men, and want only theboy Diana himself for my love, forever. Come to me, Diana, and dwellwith me here at the pole of love, and never leave me. Can you not seethat the enmity that has sprung up between us is the result ofmisunderstood love!"
Now Baena, seeing his opportunity, thrust his own male personality tothe fore, trying to sway the intricate balance of sexes in the weirdself of Diana--and with his mind and his eyes upon Eos, made himself todesire that infinite female attraction, which was not hard, so as to addthat much weight to the attraction which even a God might not resistunless, as Druga had done, he turned his back upon it.
Diana could _not_ turn her back, and the whole sudden surprise offinding herself not in the palace in Armora, but here in the halls ofher erstwhile enemy, Eos of the Dawn-light, made her natural maleattributes become dominant so that she desired Eos mightily.
Trapped thus by the circumstances, the lashed serpent body of Baenawhich insisted upon gazing steadily at the vast and overwhelming beautyof the unveiled body of Eos, and by the ignorance of Dionaea as to whatwas going on, by her own masculine nature into desiring this essence ofall female attraction, Diana gazed upon Eos while the energies sent byEos' skill coursed in greater and greater ecstacy through her.
* * * * *
So it was that Diana fell in love with Eos, as Eos desired, and with theGods, love is an overmastering passion that may not be resisted.
Now Eos and the trapped spirit of Diana conversed together, and at thesubtle words of Eos and the overmastering attraction, Diana swirled outof the body of Baena and settled engrossed about the glowing glory thatwas Eos. Inward she was drawn, and mated
there in mysterious communionwith the Goddess.
"If you but had a strong male body, Diana, we could live here forever inlove and ecstasy. Why not return one of the stone men of the past intoflesh again, become a man instead of half-woman as in the past--and solearn anew to live and love differently and gloriously...."
Such were Eos' words, made potent by the golden glowing energies withinher, swaying the bemused Diana to her will. And Diana, with Eos' hands,went to the wall cabinets and set out certain magical apparatus, brewingan antidote for the stony seizure she had sent to Eos' lovers in thepast. This liquid she poured over the male of stone that Eos selected,and even as the stone man stirred and quickened into life again, herethereal self whirled out of Eos and settled into the reanimated fleshof the man.
When he arose to his feet and spoke, it was Diana herself who spoke andnot the man who had loved Eos long ago. What this desecration of herpast love meant to Eos we shall not know, for she hid it beneathlanguishing glances and subtle swayings of her body, drawing Diana toher, wrapping her arms about the reanimated being, and walking with thenew male Diana out of the room and so to her own chambers.
* * * * *
Druga, as Eos had foreseen, had been unable to contain his curiosity asto what was going on, and had at last peered from the hallway where hewaited, just in time to see the purple swirl that was Diana settle intoand seem to reanimate the ancient long-dead stone image.
The emotions natural to a man rose in him. He was not sure just what hewas seeing, but jealousy rose in him like a flame, and his passion sosteadfastly controlled and so rewarded by the fickle Eos made thisjealousy into a terrible, red rage against her who had withheld herselffrom him only to give herself to her worst enemy in the form of a man.
Druga, overcome with this jealous rage, strode out into the banquet hallof dead men, took from the side of one of the dead men a great war-axeof bronze, and hefting it in his hand as if it were a trembling featherplume, strode after the two figures like the wrath of God.
As Eos reclined sensuously upon her couch in her sleeping chamber, andDiana in the man's body stretched beside her, bending back Eos' head andplanting there a burning kiss, Druga entered, and standing over the pairlike an outraged husband, shouted in a voice he was unable to makearticulate.
"Of all contemptible females, you two are the most...."
So saying, and mouthing his disgust with a tongue that frothed withrage, Druga seized the reanimated man with one hand by the shoulder andflung him half across the room, whirling up the axe to send it throughhim from curly head to gold-bossed sword belt.
Eos cried out in feigned fear and anguish, for she had expected thisdevelopment, and it was but one phase of the weapon-array she planned toovercome the powers of Diana. For she knew Druga, and that he would beable to act in no other way if he observed what was going on.
* * * * *
But the body of the man was equipped with a sword of antique but sturdylength, and Diana had time to sweep this formidable weapon from itsscabbard and turn aside the down plummeting axe, so that it struck agreat shower of sparks from the strange golden metal of the floor.
Druga, his rage unabated, only swung the axe aloft again, parryingDiana's thrust with the haft of it, and then as she ducked his nextblow, the great side of the weapon struck her alongside the head;stretching her senseless upon the floor.
Eos, on her feet, had not expected Druga so quickly to knock the goddessunconscious, and indeed the purple mist of her hyper-space body wasalready rising from the unconscious form on the floor as Eos threwherself to the wall where a switch hung open, and with her face a gloryof triumph, thrust the great handle upward into place.
As the switch closed, a tiny black vortice spun suddenly into being inthe center of the room, and within the black swirl was a tiny goldencenter. Swiftly the black vortice grew until Eos and Druga were pressedagainst the wall to avoid the clutch of the power of the whirlpool. Thepurple mist that was Diana was swept along as a whirlpool draws a straw,faster and faster, and a great scream came out of the blackness. Within,the center of the golden core seemed to give a triumphant laugh as thepurple mingled there.
For a time Eos and Druga watched the swirling gold and purple sentiencemingling and struggling at the center, and as the golden core shonestronger and stronger and at last overcame the purple swirling entitythat was Diana, Eos pulled the switch again open, and the black vorticeof space-force lessened and finally disappeared.
That intense whirlpool of black energy had taken Diana back with it intothe terrible current of space. Diana would live--but only as a mote ofdefeated consciousness whirled along forever into the depths of space byforces too great to fight.
The man on the floor raised his head, sat up, rubbed the great lump leftthere by the flat of Druga's axe--and his eyes met the flamingattraction of Eos' eyes. With a bound he was at her side, gathering herup into his arms, crooning brokenly.
"How long I sat and watched your grief and envied the other men who camefor their brief spell of life in Paradise before the black witchcraft ofyour enemy made them into stone. How long I pitied you, poor Eos! Howmany centuries have passed, and now a miracle! I am alive, and have youonce again! No other ever shall take you from me...."
Druga picked up the axe that lay disregarded on the floor.
"That may be what you wish, stranger, and though you are no enemy, if itis Eos you desire, you shall have her only over my dead body! Armyourself, and prepare to die!"
The stranger eyed Druga scornfully. With a sudden gliding motion, he hadpassed from Eos' arms and seized the sword from the floor, was drivingwith it for Druga's throat. Druga got the axe in the way of the sword,but an axe, whatever antiquarians may say, was never the best toolagainst a smart swordsman; and this man knew his way with the weapon.
He drove Druga to the wall with swift darting movements of the blade,and Druga had no time to swing the unwieldy axe, but had to keepparrying the thrusts with the axe-haft, holding it between his handslike a quarterstaff. In moments his life blood would have been spilledon the floor had not Eos cried out:
"Hold, you brawling idiots, I am for neither of you! What do you think Ihave gone through all this for, to have you two whom I love kill eachother? Now put up the weapons before I loose my own natural lightningand send you both into that doom you can only guess at!"
* * * * *
Druga peered at Eos, startled, and the reanimated statue pressed theblade to his throat, but Eos struck it up with her hand as he turned topeer at her too, and then Eos opened both her eyes quite wide upon themso that a weakness came upon them both, sending them to their knees instrange thralldom to the energies within her. So leaving them, Eoswalked out of the chamber and to the great hall.
After a time, when their reeling senses returned, the two men followedthe foot-steps that still sparkled where she had stepped, likeflickering motes of golden dust outlining her prints upon thefloor--followed the steps like men out of their wits, half staggering.
As they entered the hall, Eos was repeating the procedure so recentlygone through by Diana, preparing a great cauldron of the fluid she hadused to bring life again to the stone bodies. They leaned weakly againstthe wall, watching her as she poured the boiling, steaming liquid overone after another of the statues. The first figure so bathed was thebody of Feronia.
She came out of the stony trance like a fury, blazing one indignantglance toward Eos, then turned the torrents of her wrath upon Druga.
"You philandering booby! I made you what you are and you repay me byrunning off from me in my greatest need and taking up with this--this--"
"She released you from your stony prison, Feronia!" Druga said hastily,fearing she would anger Eos with whatever word she thought of todescribe her rival--and Feronia was clever enough to avoid saying whatshe was about to say, but went on with her abuse of Druga.
"Never mind what or who she is, it is you
that has shown yourself theingrate, for she owed me nothing. You couldn't go to Mors, Daughter ofthe Night, and get this thing properly taken care of at once, knowingshe was friendly to me, no! You had to wander off on your old greyhorse, never thinking of Mors, and get yourself wrapped up with thefirst woman that you come to, and wind your affections all around theplanet in pursuit of her. You couldn't even remember me for one littlemonth! You--you--oh, Druga!"
With which outburst her voice broke, and weeping and saying his nameover and over Feronia went into his arms and wept there on his breastfor a long time. And after her tears were stopped Druga knew thatFeronia would never mention the affair again.
Druga held the dear form of his loved one close and let her weep,stroking the raven black hair, within him the soft well of affection forher filling and filling with all the memories of her dear, mad,competent, unpredictable, tyrannical ways. Over the curling sweep of herdear hair he watched Eos reviving one by one the dead loves of her past,and thought to himself that at least with Feronia he did not have allthose rivals to contend with. The slight line across his throat whereEos' magic had stopped the sword of one rival from letting out his lifereminded him too that with Eos as she was now, there would be no daypass that some of these warriors would not try to get rid of some of therest. Druga decided that after all, Feronia loved him alone, while withEos there was no knowing what rivals he would have.
Now Eos got a great snake out of the forest, a female, cunningly markedwith little emerald markings, and striped with many colors, mostvenomous and snake-charming in its appearance.
This snake she quickly separated from its head, and placed upon itscunning female body the head of Dionaea, doing all that was needfulsuccessfully to incorporate the two into one life.
Baena's tail, which caused him great pain at the separation, she healedby applying a salve, assuring him that he would in time grow a new tailto take the place of the old, as is the way with snakes the world over.
* * * * *
When Dionaea awoke and found herself with a female snake's body, andBaena mooning over her like a lovesick coil of ship's hawser, she letout strings of oaths such as no ship's hawser had heard since thebeginning of time. All of which seemed strikingly snake-charming toBaena, who only kissed Dionaea lovingly with his pointed tongue andassured her she would get used to him or he would devour her and seek anew mate elsewhere. With which assurance Dionaea ceased to curse andbegan to fawn upon Baena, saying:
"Why, how can you think it is your noble self I object to, Baena? It isjust that I did not expect this development! I have grown so used to youthat there is really very little difference, after all."
So conversing, the now lowly Dionaea and the now lordly Baena glidedfrom the chamber and made their way down the ruby ladder of strangecrystal, and out into the world. For it is only so that a male can leavethe pole of the universal life force of the female principle, in thecompany of a female good enough to keep his mind from obeying theinfluence of the magnetic field.
Feronia, watching the scene, decided it was time for bed, and mentallytaking Druga by the ear, led him out and down the ruby ladder and acrossthe rainbow bridge of fragile glass into her own halls.
"Eos will handle her difficulties much the better without our presence,Druga. Besides we must get to bed, for in the morning there will be muchwork to attend to...."
"What you have in mind?"
"Well, first we have to practice the magical performance we have justwatched Eos go through, so that if we ever need it we too can release afigure from that stony curse of petrifaction. It is a most uncomfortablestate. Then we have to return to Eos' disk palace and from her getcertain information, such as the whirlpool she used to suck up thestrength of Diana and cast it out into a current of force flowingthrough hyper-space--for we might need it sometime in the future."
"Which I devoutly pray you will not manage," murmured Druga, yawning. "Iam too tired to even think about such a thing tonight."
With which words Druga stretched himself across the bed and straightwaybegan to snore, and Feronia, who had expected a warmer welcome home than_that_, looked at him exasperated beyond measure. But then sheinsinuated her own witch's perceptions into his mind, looked over thesomewhat shriveled memories of her that remained to him, and resolved torecreate his love entire before she strained it again with herimpatience.
Outside, the great glowing magnetic field of female attraction pulsedand glowed and reached its strange streamers across the sky. The diskwith its ancient, quaint, pillared and beautiful mansion, trembled inthe current of the energy flow of the pole of life. In Feronia's hall adark, small witch bent to her knees and prayed a prayer, with tearsstreaking her too-determined face, that this great sleeping man of herswould return his heart where it belonged.
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