The A. Merritt Megapack
Page 74
“I do not know—” Gigi paused doubtfully. “It seems to me to be better. That idea of sacrifice—it grows stronger.”
“There is little sense in what you say,” said Kenton stubbornly.
“No?” mused Gigi. “Yet many men must have seen that bracelet of yours that time you fought the black priest’s men and lost Sharane. Klaneth must have seen it. Something whispers to me that token is more perilous than the rings in my ears.”
“Well, nothing whispers to me,” said Kenton, shortly, He led the way into what had been Klaneth’s cabin and began stripping to clothe himself in the sailors’ gear they had taken from the captured galley. He slipped on a loose shirt of finely tanned, thin leather whose loose sleeves fastened around his wrists.
“You see,” he said to Gigi, “the bracelet is hidden.”
Next came loose hose of the same material drawn tight by a girdle around the waist. He drew on high, laced buskins. Over the shirt he fastened a sleeveless tunic of mail. On his head he placed a conical metal covered cap from whose padded sides dropped, shoulder deep, folds of heavy oiled silk.
The others dressed with him in similar garments. Only the Persian would not leave off his own linked mail. He knew its strength, he said, and the others were new to him It was an old friend, often tried and always faithful he said he would not cast it off for new ones whose loyalty was still untried. But over it he drew one of the shirts and a tunic. And Gigi, after he had set the cap upon his head, drew close the folds of silk so that they hid his ears and their pendants. Also he fastened around his neck another long fold of silk, binding the others fast and hiding his mouth.
And when they had covered themselves with the long cloaks they scanned each other with lightened hearts. The Viking and the Persian were true changelings. Little fear of recognition there. Changed enough by his new garb, it seemed to them, was Kenton. The cloak hid Gigi’s stumpy legs and the cloths around his face, the close fitting, conical cap altered it curiously into one not easily recognzable.
“It is good!” murmured the Viking.
“It is very good!” echoed Kenton.
They belted themselves and thrust into the belts both their own swords and short ones of Sigurd’s forging. Only Gigi would take neither that nine-foot blade the Norseman had made for him nor the great mace. The latter was too well known; the other too cumbersome for their journey; impossible, like the mace, to hide. He took two swords of average length. Last he picked up a long, thin piece of rope, swiftly spliced to it a small grappling hook. He coiled the rope around his waist, hanging the grapple to his belt.
“Lead, Sigurd,” said Kenton.
One by one they dropped over the ship’s bow, waded through shallow water and stood upon the shore while Sigurd cast about for his bearings. The mists had grown thicker. The golden leaves, the panicles of crimson and yellow blooms were etched against them as though upon some ancient Chinese screen. In the mists Sigurd moved, shadowy.
“Come,” the Viking joined them. “I have found the way.”
Silently they followed him through the mists, under the silver shadows of the trees.
PART IV
In the Sorcerers’ City
CHAPTER 18
There was a hidden way, in truth. How Sigurd followed it in the glimmering fog, by what signs led, Kenton could not tell. But the Viking walked along, unhesitant.
Between high rocks covered with the golden ferns the narrow road ran, and through thickets where the still air was languorous with the scent of myriads of strange blossoms; through dense clumps of slender trunks which were like bamboo stems all lacquered scarlet, and through groves where trees grew primly in park-like precision and under which the tarnished silver shadows were thick. Their steps made no sound on the soft moss. They had long lost the murmur of the sea. Sound of any kind around them there was none.
At the skirt of one of the ordered groves the Viking paused.
“The place of sacrifice,” he whispered. “I go to see if any of Nergal’s black dogs are about. Wait for me here.”
He melted into the mists. They waited, silent. Each felt that something evil lay sleeping within those trees and if they spoke or moved it would awaken, draw them to it. And out of it, as though the sleeping evil breathed, pulsed the sickly sweet and charnel odor that had hung in Klaneth’s cabin.
Silently as he had gone, Sigurd returned.
“No black robes there,” he said. “Yet—something of their dark god dwells in that grove always. Eager am I to pass this place. Go softly and quickly.”
They pushed on. At last Sigurd paused, exhaled a vast sigh of relief.
“We have passed,” he told them.
He led them with increased speed. And now the way began to climb steeply. They passed through a long and deep ravine in which the glimmering, misty light was hardly strong enough for them to pick their way over the boulders that strewed it.
They passed out of it between two huge monoliths—and halted. Abruptly the silence that had enveloped them had been broken. Before them was nothing but the wall of the mists, but from them and far, far below came a murmuring, a humming of a great city, the creaking of masts, the rattle of gear, the splashing of oars and now and then a shouting, darting up like a kite from the vague clamor.
“The harbor,” said Sigurd, and pointed downward to the right. “Emakhtila lies beneath us—close. And there,”—he pointed again downward and a little to the left—“there is the temple of the Seven Zones.”
Kenton followed the pointing finger. A mighty mass loomed darkly in the silvery haze, its nebulous outlines cone-shaped, its top flattened. His heart quickened.
Down they went, and down. The murmuring of the city came to them ever louder and louder. Ever the great bulk of the temple grew plainer, climbing higher and higher into the heavens as they descended. And ever the mists hid this city from them.
They came to a high stone wall. Here Sigurd turned and led them into a grove of trees, thick, heavily shadowed. Through the trees they slipped, following the Viking who now went on with greater caution.
At last he peered out from behind an enormous trunk, beckoned them. Beyond the trees was a deep rutted, broad roadway.
“A road into the city,” he said. “A free road on which we can walk without fear.”
They clambered down a high bank and took that road, walking now side by side. Soon the trees cave way to fields, cultivated as far as the mists would let them see; fields filled with high plants whose leaves were shaped like those of the corn, but saffron yellow instead of green and instead of ears long panicles of gleaming white grains; rows of bushes on whose branches shone berries green as emeralds: strange fruits; three-stemmed vines from which fell star-shaped gourds.
They saw houses, two-storied; block-like with smaller cubes for wings like those a child makes. They were painted startlingly—both in colors and patterns; facades striped with alternate vertical, yard-wide bands of blue, and yellow facades of dull blue through which darted scarlet zigzags like the conventionalized lightning bolt; broad horizontal bands of crimson barred with stripes of green.
The road narrowed, became a thoroughfare paved with blocks. The painted houses became thicker. Men and women passed them, brown faced and black, clad alike in one sleeveless white garment cut short just below the knees. On the right wrist of each of these was a bronze ring from which fell a half dozen links of chain. They carried burdens—jugs, baskets of the fruits and gourds, loaves of bread colored ruddy brown, flat cakes a foot across. They glanced at the four curiously as they passed.
“Slaves,” said Sigurd.
Now the painted houses stood solidly, side by side. These were galleried and on the galleries were flowering trees and plants like those upon the rosy cabin of the ship. From some of them women leaned and called out to them as they went by.
They passed out of this street into a roaring avenue thronged with people. And here Kenton halted in sheer amazement.
At its far end loomed the hu
ge bulk of the terraced temple. Its sides were lined with shops. At their doors stood men crying out their wares. Banners fell from them on which in woven silk ran the cuneiform letters that told their goods.
Past him walked Assyrians, men of Nineveh and Babylon with curled heads and ringleted beards; hook-nosed, fierce-eyed Phoenicians; sloe-eyed, muslin-skirted Egyptians; Ethiopians with great golden circles in their ears, almond-lidded, smiling yellow men. Soldiers in cuirasses of linked mail, archers with quivers on back and bows in hand strode by; priests in robes of black and crimson and blue. There stood in front of him for an instant a ruddy-skinned, smooth-muscled warrior who carried upon one shoulder the double-bladed ax of ancient Crete. Over his other shoulder lay the white arm of a sandalled woman in oddly modern pleated and patterned skirt, snake-girdled and with high, white breasts peeping from her opened and as oddly modern blouse. A Minoan and his mate he knew the pair to be, two who had perhaps watched youths and maids who were Athen’s tribute to the Minotaur go through the door of the labyrinth to the lair where the monstrous man-bull awaited them.
And there went a cuirassed Roman, gripping a short sword of bronze that might have helped cut out the paths the first Caesar trod. Behind him strode a giant Gaul with twisted locks and eyes as coldly blue as Sigurd’s own.
Up and down along the center of the thoroughfare rode men and women in litters borne on the shoulders of slaves. His eyes followed a Grecian girl, long limbed and lithe, with hair as yellow as the ripened wheat. They followed, too, a hot-eyed Carthaginian lovely enough to be a bride of Baal who leaned over the side of her litter and smiled at him.
“I am hungry and I thirst,” grunted Sigurd. “Why do we stand here? Let us be going.”
And Kenton realized that this pageant of past ages could be no strange thing to these comrades who were also of that past. He nodded assent. They swung into the crowd and stopped before a place wherein men sat eating and drinking.
“Better for us to enter two by two,” said Gigi. “Klaneth seeks four men and we are four strangers. Wolf, go you in first with Sigurd. Zubran and I will follow—but do not notice us when we enter.”
The shopkeeper set food before them and high beakers of red wine. He was garrulous; he asked them when they had made harbor, if their voyage had been a good one.
“It is a good time to be off the sea,” he gossiped. “Storm comes—and a great one. I pray to the Dispenser of Waters, that he hold it until Bel’s worship is ended. I close my shop soon to see that new priestess they talk so much about.”
Kenton’s face had been bent over, his cap veils hiding it. But at this he raised it and stared full into the man’s face.
The shopkeeper blanched, faltered, stared back at him with wide eyes.
Had he been recognized? Kenton’s hand sought stealthily his sword.
“Pardon!” gasped the shopkeeper, “I knew you not—” Then he peered closer, straightened and laughed. “By Bel! I thought you were—another—Gods!”
He hurried away, Kenton looked after him. Was his departure a ruse? Had he recognized him as the man Klaneth sought? It could not be. His fright had been too real; his relief too sincere. Who was it then that Kenton so resembled to bring forth this fright and relief?
They finished their food quickly, paid from the gold they had taken from the galley; passed out into the street. Almost at once Gigi and the Persian joined them.
Two by two they passed down the street, not hurrying, like men just in from a long voyage. But as they went Kenton, with an ever growing puzzlement and apprehension, saw now one and now another glance at him, pause as though in wonder and then, averting eyes go swiftly by. The others saw it, too.
“Draw the cap cloths about your face,” said Gigi, uneasily. “I like not the way they stare.”
Briefly Kenton told him of the shopkeeper.
“That is bad,” Gigi shook his head. “Now who can it be you so resemble that those who look at you grow frightened? Well—hide your face as best you can.”
And this Kenton did, keeping his head bent as he walked. Nevertheless heads still turned.
The street entered a broad park. People were strolling over its sward, sitting on benches of stone, and gigantic roots of trees whose trunks were thick as the sequoia and whose tops were lost in the slowly thickening mists. And when they had gone a little way Sigurd turned off the highway into this park.
“Wolf,” he said. “Gigi is right. They stare at you too much. It comes to me that it will be better for all if you go no further. Sit upon this bench. Bow your head as though asleep or drunken. There are few here and they will be fewer as the temple court fills. The mists hide you from those who pass along the street. The three of us will go on to the temple and study that stairway. Then we will return to you and we will take counsel.”
Kenton knew the Viking was right. Steadily his own unease had grown. And yet—it was hard to stay behind, not to see for himself that place where Sharane lay captive, leave to others the chance of finding way to her.
“Courage, brother,” said Sigurd as they left him. “Odin has held off the storm for us. Odin will help us get your woman.”
Now for a time, a long, long time, it seemed to him, he sat upon that bench with face covered by hands. Stronger and stronger grew that desire to see for himself Sharane’s prison, study its weaknesses. After all, his comrades were not as interested as he; their eyes not sharpened by love. He might succeed where they would fail; his eyes see what theirs would miss. And at last the desire mastered him. He arose from the bench, made his way back to the thronged street. When it was a few steps away, he turned and went along through the park, paralleling the street but not going out on it.
And in a short while he came to the end of the park and stood, half hidden, looking out.
Directly before him, not fifty yards away, arose the immense bulk of the Temple of the Seven Zones.
It blocked his vision like a Cyclopean cone. The great stairway coiled round it like a serpent. For a hundred feet up from its base the temple shone like burnished silver. There a circular terrace bit into the cone. Above that terrace for another hundred feet the surface was covered with some metal of red gold color, rich orange. Another terrace and above that a facade of jet black, dull and dead. Again a terrace. The mists hid the walls above this last, but he thought that through them he could see a glint of flaming scarlet and over it a blue shadow.
His eyes followed the girdling stairway. He stepped forward that he might see a little better. Broad steps led up from its base to a wide platform on which stood many men on armor. That, he realized, was the garrison which they must either trick or overcome. His heart sank as he counted the soldiers that guarded it.
He looked beyond them. The rise of the stairway from the platform of the guards was gradual. About five thousand feet away the park came close to the side of the temple. There was a clump of high trees whose branches almost touched the stairway at that point.
Gigi’s rope and grapple! Ah, wise had been the Ninevite, anticipating some such chance. Kenton was lightest of the four—he could climb those trees, drop to the stairway, or if that were not possible, cast the grapple over the wall of it, swing in and climb up the rope and over!
Then he could drop that rope for the three to swarm it. It could be done! And if in such a storm as Sigurd prophesied, with certainty of giving no alarm to the garrison below.
Suddenly he had the sense of being watched. He saw that the space between him and the temple was empty of people; saw an officer of the garrison standing at the base of the steps staring.
Kenton turned; swiftly skirted the street until he was back to the bench. He seated himself on it as he had been before—bent over, face in hands.
And as he sat there some one dropped down beside him.
“What is the matter, sailor?” came a voice, roughly kind. “If you are sick why not go home?”
Kenton spoke huskily, keeping his face covered.
“Too much of Emakhtila w
ine,” he answered. “Leave me be. It will pass.”
“Ho!” laughed the other, and gripped an arm about the elbow. “Look up. Better seek home before the tempest breaks.”
“No, no,” said Kenton, thickly. “Never mind the tempest. Water will help me.”
The hand dropped from his arm. For a time, whoever it was beside him, was silent. Then he arose.
“Right, sailor,” he said heartily. “Stay here. Stretch out on the bench and sleep a little. The gods be with you!”
“And with you,” muttered Kenton. He heard the footsteps of that brief companionship retreating. Cautiously he turned his head, looked in their direction. There were several figures walking there among the trees. One was an old man in a long blue cloak; another an officer dressed like the one who had watched him from the base of the great stairway; a sailor; a hurrying citizen. Which had it been?
The man who had sat beside him had gripped his arm, gripped it where Sharane’s bracelet was bound! And that officer—the watching soldier of the garrison! Had it been he? Had he been followed?
He sat bolt upright, clapped his right hand on the sleeve of the leather shirt. His hand touched—the bracelet! The sleeve had been slit by a knife to reveal it!
Kenton leaped to his feet—to run. Before he could take a step there was a rustling behind him, a trampling. A heavy cloth was thrown over his head like a bag. Hands clutched his throat. Other hands wound strand after strand of rope around his arms, pinioning them to his sides.
“Take that cloth off his face—but keep your hands around his throat,” said a cold dead voice.
His head was freed. He looked straight into the pale eyes of Klaneth!
Then from the double ring of soldiers around him came a gasp of amazement, a movement of terror. An officer stepped forward, stared at him incredulously.
“Mother of the Gods!” he groaned, and knelt at Kenton’s feet. “Lord—I did not know—” He leaped up, set knife to his bonds.