The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “What sort of man do you want?” asked the Emperor finally. “Or, if you will—woman!” he added evilly.

  “I have already chosen a victim,” said Junga quickly. “One called Tago Titus.” The Roman clenched his fist and for a moment resentment stormed over his face. “Tago Titus is a trusted and faithful guard and knows well his duties. Choose another.”

  “There are a thousand such as Titus in the Roman Legions,” returned the barbarian coolly. “You are Master of the World. All men’s lives belong to you. Your guard Titus is my choice.”

  Caligula licked his lips in indecision, and for the first time Junga the Hun showed a sign of perturbation. His withered skin paled so that he resembled more than ever a living corpse. But in the battle of wills, the barbarian won, and with a clap of his hands the Emperor summoned a slave. He was given orders, and a short time later the unfortunate Legionary was dragged in, stripped naked. Brutal attendants of the White Chamber, long calloused to the distasteful work, shackled the former guard to the two posts facing the circle of strange mosaic patterns. The hapless victim seemed resigned to his fate, but seeing the Hun resplendent in a costly toga, leering at him, he burst into speech:

  “Heathen snake, this is your doing! May the gods of Rome curse——”

  “Silence!” thundered the Emperor.

  “My blood upon you both; may destiny bring you with me soon and——”

  “Silence!” roared Caligula again. The Legionary set his jaw firmly and relapsed into silence, but his eyes glared accusingly at his master. “You are sentenced to death,” went on Caligula coldly, “because you nearly took the life of this man Junga, when my previous instructions had been to conduct him into the portals when he arrived.”

  Titus’ eyes flared dumfoundedly, and then lowered in resignation. The Cæsar’s word was law—and truth. Then Caligula tossed his head, and all left the chamber except Junga.

  In the appalling silence that followed, broken only by the heavy breathing of the victim, Junga drew a sharp dagger from his girdle and approached the shackled man. The leer of triumph on his mummified face made the Roman soldier wince, though he had been unperturbed at sight of the shining blade.

  His face close to that of the soldier, the barbarian hissed softly like a venomous snake: “So, you insulted me, and threatened my life! You see now——”

  He jerked back with an oath, wiping from his face the material scorn of the man he had brought to his doom.

  “Come, let us get on with this,” commanded Caligula, who had watched impatiently.

  Junga waited no longer, but plunged his dagger into the bowels of the naked man, making a circle so swiftly that it was etched in a fine red line before the entrails burst forth from the body. The barbarian had leaped aside to escape being spattered with blood, and he glided like an evil wraith to the side of the seated Emperor.

  With a groan of intense pain, the Legionary’s head fell upon his chest. He gritted his teeth and not another sound came from his lips.

  “Look, Cæsar!” cried the priest of Belshewawar solemnly. “Look! The shadow of blood creeps toward the Magic Circle! When it reaches the mystic symbols and flows around them, I shall read what portends of importance in the empire.” He pointed a scrawny finger at the huge-patterned ring on the snowy marble floor.

  CALIGULA looked alternately at the creeping blood and the mosaic of intricate and mysterious figures. There were the age-old symbols of the planets and stars, interspersed with crude outlines of human beings, and the writhing shapes of cabalistic signs. Wavy lines ran through and about the area, connecting one to another with great complexity.

  Long the two waited, while the miserable victim prayed silently for a quick death. Gradually the shadow of blood, a darkly red reflection from the vaulted ceiling above, crept on its way to the Holy Circle. Two heartless pairs of eyes followed the moving red reflections, unmindful of the tortured man waiting for an end to his death-agony, and of the revolting mess at his feet, from which flowed the scarlet stain that filled the chamber with a fearful ruby glow.

  Suddenly Junga leaped from his perch beside the Cæsar’s couch. The long crimson shadow of blood had reached the circle, and because of the mosaic’s intricate pattern, it began to form a gruesome design. The barbarian knelt down beside the circle. After minutes of silent contemplation, he arose with a look of intense excitement on his face, and cried: “Look, Cæsar, and mark my words well. The Magic Circle has brought you great news. It tells that the Roman Legions in the north have won a great victory against the barbarians, and the frontiers of the empire are secure. Oh, Cæsar, thus speaks the Magic Circle of Belshewawar!” And Junga the oracle sank with his face upon the marble floor in proper respect for the man before him.

  Caligula sat in silence, speechless. At the words of the other his hands had gripped the arms of the chair until the knuckles glared white. News of such magnitude and importance astounded him. For many days he had worried over the matter, for the Legions of Rome had been beaten back time and time again until it seemed the very frontiers of the empire must succumb before the barbarians. He had shifted generals and military leaders ceaselessly in an effort to find one who might turn the long and doubtful campaign into victory.

  The Emperor leaped to his feet, both anger and a mad joy intermingled on his face. Pointing a long finger at the sorcerer, he shouted loudly: “Priest of Belshewawar, you have spoken. This shall prove to me the truth or untruth of your supposed powers. In a few days there will come a courier from the north. If he has other tidings than yours for my ears, your doom is sealed. I shall then know you for a liar.”

  Caligula strode from the chamber.

  Junga, still kneeling on the floor, fairly laughed to himself. His schemes had been crowned with utter success. An adept in the dark art of anthropomancy, he had come to the key city of the world to make use of his evil profession. It had struck him, while pursuing an obscure life as a much-feared sorcerer in a barbaric land, that his powers entitled him to greater honor and fame. He had come to the Cæsar, therewith, intent upon advancing his own interests. The Sorceress of Belshewawar, supposedly his patroness, was but the figure of an impressive myth. Junga had come of his own will.

  And how well it had all gone! He had taken a great risk, facing the mad butcher of Rome in his own stronghold and speaking to his own face of his atrocities. But he had cunningly played on the depraved instincts of the Emperor, knowing that would overshadow any audacity on his part.

  Junga rose to his feet. Already engrossed with plans for a glorious future as Caligula’s honored soothsayer, he straightened the folds of his toga and stepped toward the doorway. But a low sound brought him to a pause, startled. It had been Titus, the guard, moaning in his death-agony. The barbarian glanced at his mutilated victim, shrugged disdainfully, and made for the doorway, suddenly aware of the stench of freshly spilled blood.

  “Junga! Junga of the Huns!”

  The barbarian stopped and turned half fearfully in his victim’s direction. Titus, with the shadows of death in his eyes, had raised his head from his chest. Those eyes, sharp and accusing, focused till they met those of the heartless man of the north.

  “Junga of the Huns! Do you hear me?”

  Perspiration started from the sorcerer’s forehead and he tried to break away from the sudden spell that seemed to have bound his feet—tried to escape the accusing tones of the agony-ridden voice of the man he had murdered.

  “You have done evil, Junga,” came from the pain-twisted lips of the dying Roman. Soft though the tones were, the words rang through the vaulted room like funeral chimes. “Your evil shall live after you—but before that it shall compass your own doom!”

  The barbarian stared speechless in terror and saw the eyes of the suffering man turn to the mosaic ring between them. What could he be seeing there? Why did those eyes, swiftly glazing in the mists of death, light up as though having seen something in the configurations on the marble floor?

  “Look!”<
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  The word came almost sharply from the disemboweled victim. “My blood—see? It seeps into the Holy Circle. It is forming a design—a portent of the future. I can read that sign! It says—that you—fiendish slayer of—innocent men are—warned of your black gods—that you—Caligula—doom——”

  The agonizing voice ceased and the great head of Titus the Legionary dropped to his chest. Junga the Hun fled from the room with hands to his ears, vainly trying to shut from them the words he had heard.

  IT HAD happened that several days before, there had come to the ears of Caligula the tale of a ravishingly beautiful female captive of Egypt, who was in the hands of one of his generals in Rome. He had forthwith decided to see her and perhaps take her for his own. The fair creature was brought to his villa, and by chance, it fell upon the day after the courier from the north, coming with news of victory for Rome, vindicated the sorcery of Junga.

  The northern wizard saw the coming of her litter from the window of his room. Attracted by her manner and poise even from that distance, as she stepped gracefully from the vehicle in the courtyard, Junga contrived to be in the hall as the retinue conducted her to the presence of the Emperor. Stunned by her beauty, so perfect in contrast to the gnarled, unshapely women of his own hardy, northern race, Junga silently vowed then and there that Caligula should not have her, but he himself. Already he counted himself an authority in the villa, to whom nothing was impossible. Knowing he must work fast if he would be the first to have her, as was his fierce desire from the moment he saw her, the barbarian dispatched a slave to the Cæsar with a message.

  An hour later, in the early evening, a summons called him to the Emperor’s reception room, but not before Junga had seen the beautiful slave conducted to the guarded quarters in the rear of the villa where Caligula’s loves of the day were kept in luxury and idleness.

  Junga bowed low before the Cæsar, who gave him permission to speak. “August Cæsar, we must again watch the shadows of blood creep over the lineaments of the Holy Circle of Belshewawar. But an hour ago in my room there came to me a message borne by certain spirits from my patroness, saying we must read the first of the portents that shall bring you knowledge of ‘Rome’s greatest hour’.”

  “So be it,” said Caligula. “Tomorrow evening——”

  “Nay, but it must be this very evening,” cut in Junga softly.

  Caligula waved an imperious hand. “Tomorrow evening, I say. I have just laid eyes upon the most beautiful creature ever to draw breath in the land of Egypt, and tonight——”

  “And tonight,” again interrupted Junga, “must you forego your carnal pleasure to hear the prophecies of Belshewawar.” Caligula leaped to his feet angrily. “But it is my will,” he fairly roared, “that tonight the fair Egyptian——”

  “And who knows?—the Holy Circle of Belshewawar may have something to say about this most gorgeous captive! It is best, Cæsar, that you listen to the wisdom of the sorceress who sent me, before you do in folly those things you contemplate without regard to the future.”

  The firm, quiet voice of the barbarian, delivered in sepulchral tones, played upon the superstitions of the Emperor. As a result, later in the evening, they again met in the White Chamber.

  The same gruesome rite that had taken place a week before was enacted, the victim a guard accused of having fallen asleep on watch. Not quite as stoical as his predecessor, this man screamed aloud as the plunging knife searched his vitals. His powerful body writhed and knotted in the grip of the gyves, and each throb of agony brought piteous groans to his lips.

  But the two archfiends who had brought him to that ghastly end showed little interest or compassion in his suffering, except that Caligula turned scornful eyes upon him and said that most men died with far more pain in the infamous White Chamber. The Cæsar then turned his undivided attention to the winy reflection from the vaults above that slowly crept upon the Magic Circle of Belshewawar.

  Apparently in a semi-trance while deciphering the symbols of the mosaic, Junga the Hun, mumbling in a strange cadence, stared with beady eyes at the mystic signs, and suddenly leaped to his feet.

  “Alas, Cæsar! It is not always that the Holy Circle tells that which the heart desires. For it reveals now that you should not have this fair creature from the south!”

  Caligula rose from his couch, enraged. “Do you dare to command a Cæsar what and what not to crave? By the throne of Jove, you go too far. I will have the Egyptian girl, whatever your Holy Circle says.”

  As Junga stood silent and arrogant in his total lack of fear at a Cæsar’s mighty wrath, Caligula calmed down, asking: “And why, Priest of Belshewawar, must I deny myself the possession of a mere woman?”

  “Harken, Cæsar,” answered Junga quietly. “The Egyptian maid you so desire, the magic of Belshewawar tells me, is tainted—tainted with leprosy!”

  Caligula turned ashy and fairly staggered back to his seat. The barbarian continued, his eyes narrowing craftily: “No one knows it, as the disease is in that stage where outward signs are hardly detectable, but none the less, it is there. If you will dispatch your physician to her to conduct a close examination, he will confirm my prediction.”

  The Emperor nodded, too stunned to speak, and they parted.

  A CLOSELY muffled figure stood in the shadow of a tethering-post in the courtyard, nervous and impatient. At times it peered carefully beyond the post where the moonlight flooded the flagstones, and as often it would turn its head backward where a darker shadow seemed inked into the gloom-ridden corner beside the little-used stable entrance of the villa.

  Suddenly a second figure stirred in the shadows along the one wall, and resolved itself into a man swathed from head to feet in a faded toga and tattered woolen scarf. The watcher melted to the side of the concealing post and waited silently.

  “Hsst! Bogamus! Are you there? It is I, Junga!”

  The watcher thereupon stepped from the shadow. “Be quiet, on your life! This is business that calls for more care than daring.”

  Junga the Hun, for it was he in the nondescript clothing, grunted softly, it may have been in derision or acquiescence, and came close to the other. “And the—our merchandise, it is here all right?”

  Bogamus the physician pointed to the impenetrable darkness of the stable corner and nodded. “That which you wish is there; but by the gods, now I wish——”

  “Wish what, Bogamus?”

  “——that I had not agreed to it. Caligula is a wicked man, a devil when wrathful.”

  “But he is stupid,” Junga said quickly. “Fear not, Bogamus; none but you and I know that the Egyptian girl is untainted and pure. Only we two shall know that she is yet here at the villa, accessible to me. Tomorrow Caligula shall see a veiled woman hurried from the villa to be exiled from human society. He will quickly forget the matter when the captain of the guards reports she is gone from this place.”

  Bogamus shook his head, worried and frowning. “But only the gods can save us if someone be suspicious and raise the veil to find another woman in the Egyptian’s place.”

  “What brave man will touch the veil of a leper?” Junga’s voice reflected great confidence. “But come, we waste good time in idle talk. Lead the way to my rooms. I shall carry the—merchandise.”

  Bogamus in the lead, Junga staggering behind with the limp and bound figure of a girl in his arms, they passed via the stable entrance into a dark corridor that led upward on ramps of sturdy wood. It being the hour before dawn, the villa was silent in sleep and there was none to question the two wary evil-doers.

  In the week that Junga had been at the villa, he had already cast his eyes upon the various people in the Cæsar’s service, with the possibility of contacting some of them as helpers in his nefarious operations. Bogamus the physician, gaunt and avaricious, he had quickly gathered to his evil fold with the promise of that lure that knows no honesty—gold.

  Finally a stray candle-beam lighted their feet as they gained the living-quarters
of the villa, and Bogamus parted from the barbarian after seeing him safely in his rooms. Junga the Hun laid the unconscious, drugged girl on a couch, and strode to the doorway. After listening for long minutes in the utter silence, and assured that no one had detected him and followed, he closed the door, shot home its bolt, and turned to the girl lying pale and alluring in the flicker of the candle. In his face grew a concentrated lust that transformed his natural ugliness into utter bestiality.

  IN THE week that followed, Junga and Caligula forgathered three times in the white chamber, staining the marble floor each time with the blood of innocent men, doomed by command of the Cæsar. The Priest of Belshewawar, skilled in his art, read from the Magic Circle omens and portents that related mainly to Caligula’s northern operations in extending the empire. The mad Cæsar, engrossed in his superstition, became convinced that the magic of the barbarian sorcerer would eventually lead him to “Rome’s greatest hour.”

  Junga, in turn, knew there was to be no such fantastic climax in their relationship: it was his purpose merely to lead the trusting Emperor on, and make his favor secure. But one thing bothered the cunning man of magic: try as he would he could not forget those fateful words Titus the Legionary had said with his dying breath. Had the revelations of his dark magic been able to open his eyes to his own future, the barbarian would have been yet more disturbed. . . .

  It was not many days later that a guard came to Caligula with a strange tale of what he had glimpsed in a window of Junga’s private quarters. The guard had been a close friend of the deceased Titus, and had gained his information more by design than accident. The daring fellow had climbed, at risk of life and limb, to the only vantage-point, high on a peaked gable, from which one could see into the chambers of the sorcerer. It had been well worth the while, for the information he imparted startled the Emperor not a little. Caligula spent an hour in deep thought, his black brows furrowed in a thunderous scowl. Then he called to him a trusted steward, to whom he gave certain whispered instructions, enjoining him to secrecy.