Citadel of Fear

by Francis Stevens

  Like members of that gild the world over, the men of medicine were a pleasant lot, with a goodly collection of amusing jests and tales at their tongue-tips. Under his breath Marcazuma cursed his superior for shoving all the drudgery onto his shoulders so that he had little time for pleasure.

  He cursed again and more earnestly when the staff of the standard-like insignia he bore caught behind the golden claw-foot of a throne, and wrenched the standard fairly out of his hand.

  Such an accident in the temple’s very sanctum was an omen of direst import. As the standard clattered to the pavement, a shudder and muttering ran the length of the plumed line behind him, and as if in sympathy the hounds of the marsh, silent hitherto, set up a low, concerted howling.

  With a nervous glance for them, Marcazuma recovered his standard. To his increased dismay the white and black feathers at its tip had dipped in the mire of the marsh, and become seriously draggled. They were sacred feathers, not to be touched by bare human fingers, and he had to carry them on as they were, dripping slow black drops that ran down on his hand and arm.

  He resumed his dignified pacing toward the shrine, but with thoughts effectually distracted from the banquet. He was a very young man to have reached the position he held, and Topiltzen had of late showed a disposition to find fault on that score, and because of a certain impediment in his assistant’s speech, two defects which Marcazuma certainly could not help.

  But when his chief heard of this night’s carelessness, he guessed what might happen. Sidewise, he glanced at the hounds again-and shivered.

  The clatter of the standard, however, had brought dismay to another heart than his.

  It woke Kennedy as from a dream. He started, looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse through the mist of nodding plumes. Fear came back with a rush, reason roused, and all his brief content was gone in an instant.

  Not only were the people almost upon him, but he realized that he had been perceiving without light. The walls of his universe shook again at a thought, and though still drawn by the face he was also unutterably afraid of it.

  He actually considered diving head foremost among the reeds and hiding there, in preference to the niche. But a wolflike head thrust out from between two clumps of bushes promised such instant disaster that he took the second of two bad choices, shut his eyes tight and lunged forward into the recess.

  One step-two steps-three-and his outstretched hands came in contact with other hands. They neither yielded nor grasped at him. They were cold, smooth, polished as the marble walls outside. They were clasped around two rounded, polished knees.

  A statue. The thing in the niche was only a statue! He opened his eyes and discovered that he could see with them-with his eyes, not his soul. Just see! The niche was not half so dark as he had thought. What a fool he had been to let that idea of perception without light get a grip on him! This was a statue-an idol, of course-and though black, the highly polished surface had caught gleams from the marsh.

  True, the face of it was not one tenth as clear to him now as it had been, but doubtless that could be laid to the change in their relative positions.

  Outside the feet were still coming on, slow, ominous, inevitable as the tread of Fate, but Kennedy found himself smiling. He felt the relief of one who has snatched victory from defeat. Having been deceived into thinking he saw a demon by its own dark light why might not the other apparently irreconcilable ideas he had of this place its people turn out to be equally deceptive?

  Finding a narrow space behind the statue, he slid hastily into it and crouched there.

  “Good old idol!” he muttered, and patted Nacoc-Yaotl’s adamantine, polished shoulder.

  Into his range of vision very slowly there stalked a tall figure, plumed headdress nodding to each step. Its feather mantle was long and gorgeous. It bore a staff crowned with a human skull, above which a bedraggled spray of feathers dripped miry water into the skull’s hollow sockets.

  The face of the standard-bearer was more hideous than the skull, for it was extravagantly beast-like and striped with bars of white, black, and gold. But again the hidden man smiled. He had seen devil masks like that before. They were common enough at every Indian ceremony. This leading figure he placed easily in his universe-a priest of the sacrifice. An Indian priest. He must remember that and never let fancy play tricks on his keen intelligence.

  Now the priest halted and set up his standard in a socket prepared for that purpose in the floor by the central font. Kennedy, peering over the idol’s shoulder, observed that not once did the man so much as glance into the niche, but kept his back consistently toward it.

  Two torch-bearers, dressed like the first-comer, but a bit less splendidly, were next to appear. They, too, presented only their backs to the shrine, and having lighted the ten candles before it they passed on out of sight. Marcazuma knew, what Kennedy could not, that they went to take their places on two of the thrones. All the thrones must be filled before the ceremony might proceed, but Marcazuma was no longer impatient.

  Another pair of his followers advanced, escorting the captive. That unfortunate, whose naked brown hide was marked with scarcely healed wounds very similar to those borne by Kennedy’s trail-mate, was then lifted, laid in the basin of the central font, and secured there with ropes of agave fiber.

  Marcazuma watched through the eye-holes of his wooden mask. When the Yaqui writhed, moaning through his gag, the young priest shivered with sympathy. The sympathy was for himself, not the Yaqui. His prophetic eye saw the form of Marcazuma lying in that identical basin. Topiltzen was not a tolerant chief, and when he learned of that very bad omen —

  The captive’s escort had left him and gone on. Several pairs of figures stalked solemnly past the niche without stopping. Then one lone acolyte, a boy by his stature, clothed in white and wearing a white mask, came and took his stand opposite to the officiating priest. With that the procession ceased to march, for all the others who formed it had enthroned themselves, and the circle being complete, Marcazuma might take up his duties.

  Of all the ceremonies that Kennedy had ever witnessed, and he had seen quite a number, that was the strangest. In the first place there was none of the singing, chanting or dancing inseparably connected with barbaric ritual elsewhere.

  In the second, the thrones being out of Kennedy’s range, the only audience visible to him was formed of the marshhounds. All told there were probably a dozen of the great white dogs, and they came out of their radiant jungle to the curb’s very edge. Eyes fixed on the central font, they crouched with quivering flanks, in an eagerness which to Kennedy seemed well understandable.

  “Here,” he thought, “we learn how the hounds of Tlapallan are fed,” and he was very glad to crouch safely behind the old black idol.

  Well-trained brutes, those dogs, though. Man-eaters, he was sure now, they had allowed a possible dinner in his own person to pass them safely. Having their masters’ command, doubtless, to stay within the marsh’s boundaries, there they had remained, hungry or not.

  The body of the little Yaqui would hardly go round among that ravenous-looking dozen. He wondered if it would be tossed to them living, or slain first. He recalled that in the Aztecs’ time of glory, when human sacrifices were made by thousands, the victim’s living heart was invariably cut out with an obsidian knife and offered to the god.

  So far, however, save in the matter of costume, nothing of the present ceremony conformed to those old customs. The fonts themselves did not remotely resemble the curved sacrificial stone over which a victim was bent conveniently backward, exposing his chest to the knife.

  Having stood motionless for at least five minutes, the priest and his young acolyte stirred at last. The smaller figure sidled backward toward the presiding eidolon. Because of the candles, the niche was by no means so dark as it had been and Kennedy promptly ducked out of sight. For several minutes he dared not peer out again. He heard a low mumbling voice, that blurred the musical accents of the native lan
guage rather as if the speaker had no teeth. It mumbled on and on, till at last Kennedy peered cautiously round Nacoc-Yaotl’s protruding marble ribs.

  He needn’t have hidden. The acolyte had barely crossed the dividing line between black floor and white ledge, his back was still turned and he stood with arms rigidly outstretched like a human cross. He gave an odd impression of being set there as a guard-as a guard to withhold something from coming out of that niche.

  But the black god never stirred-how may stone move of its own volition? — and the man behind it smiled sneeringly. He wasn’t afraid of the old black thing. He patted its ribs. The high polish of them felt almost like live skin that writhed a little under his fingers, but he could never be deceived again. Stone was stone.

  Peering under the acolytes outstretched arm he could see the officiating priest, who stood before the font with its captive and was speaking across it. His mumbled remarks might have been addressed to the attentive canine audience in the marsh, but more likely he was speaking to no one in particular-just going through some silly, empty ritual.

  Ending at last, he stooped to a great golden vessel and withdrew from its depths several smaller vessels, also of gold. One of them was flask-shaped, carved all over with writhing, lizard-like forms, and fitted with a crystal stopper. The others were small jars of plain gold.

  The officiating priest set them out on a kind of ledge that projected behind the font’s basin. Then he stood motionless, hands stretched above the captive as if in blessing or consecration.

  Silence settled in the rotunda, so that Kennedy could hear his own heart beating, and also a faint gasping sound that came from the gagged victim.

  Then the priest’s hands dropped with startling suddenness, he wheeled-made one lightning-swift genuflection toward the niche and had his back to it again before Kennedy could even think of dodging from sight.

  When was this mummery to be done with?

  Immediately, it appeared. With the air of a man who gets down to business at last, the priest drew on a gauntleted glove he had carried in his girdle-a glove that gleamed yellow as flexible, soft gold-opened one of the golden jars, sniffed its contents testingly, dipped his gloved fingers in the stuff, whatever it was, and began swiftly anointing the Yaqui’s naked body. The man writhed in his bonds, but whether from pain or fright Kennedy had no means of knowing-and, to do him justice, did not particularly care.

  The priest worked swiftly. He might be too young, as Topiltzen hinted; he might be possessed of faulty vocal organs, and of a not quite pleasant personal appearance; but none could deny him a deftness unequalled by any man of the gild. Would Topiltzen consider that? He set the empty jar aside and took up the flask.

  As at a signal, the dogs that watched him pointed their noses straight upward and once more a long, doleful howl ascended to the opal-lined dome and was echoed dully back.

  Marcazuma started nervously. Twice now had the white hounds howled-the white, silent hounds, whose loudest utterance had ever been a low snarling, and that only in heat of combat. Unlucky indeed was the night! Flask in hand, he hesitated, wondering if Topiltzen would blame him more for continuing the ceremony, or breaking off in the middle. Then he shrugged. In either case, as he saw it, his doom was sealed. Two such omens, in one night!

  He tugged at the flask’s stopper, which stuck; but it always did, so that could hardly be counted as a third sign. He got it out at last and without further pause poured forth the contents in a glittering stream over the writhing form of the living man in the font.

  It was a violet-tinted liquid, with a strong odor like bitter almonds, and as it touched the Yaqui’s quivering skin it spread out thinly. It spread as oil does on water, swiftly, almost, one would have said, intelligently, so that in less than a minute the Indian’s brown hide was entirely coated with a thin, purplish film.

  This seemed a novel way of preparing a man to be torn in pieces by beasts. Kennedy watched intently.

  The ceremony proceeded

  Omens or no omens, Marcazuma was an expert at this task and he carried it through unfalteringly, without a slip from start to finish.

  But near the rite’s completion a scandalous interruption occurred, for a man-a gasping, pallid, fear-sick wreck of a man-plunged shudderingly out of the niche with its hidden god, brushed the acolyte aside, and began to run staggeringly along the curved edge of the marsh.

  He was caught and held by the astonished occupant of the first throne he tried to pass, while for the third time that night the white hounds howled dolefully. But Marcazuma, startled beyond measure, nevertheless sent up a silent prayer of gratitude.

  No wonder that there had been signs and omens in the temple!

  Even Topiltzen could hardly blame him now. The mystery of mystery had been spied upon, the very shrine desecrated, and-Marcazuma almost swelled visibly with the story that he had for Topiltzen’s ear!

  But Archer Kennedy, who had for once done a fellow-being a very good turn, would have scarcely appreciated the fact had he known it.

  A sign and an omen there had been indeed for him that night!

  He had seen the thing that Biornson, in the first days of his captivity, had prayed God to make not so, or at least to let him forget. Kennedy did not pray, but had his captors slain him forthwith he would have welcomed the stroke.

  The walls of his universe had crashed down at last, and when, with blows and curses, he was dragged from the rotunda, he cared not at all whither they were taking him, just so it was away from that which now lay quivering in the font before Nacoc-Yaotl’s somber den.

  CHAPTER IX. Maxatla Speaks

  THOUGH unobserved by Boots, when the canoe was dragged to the galley’s side, two other events took place simultaneously with its capture.

  Far away at the end of the black cliff a boat rushed out of some invisible harbor, propelled by six oarsmen of such unusual muscle that the heavy vessel seemed fairly to leap from the water at every stroke.

  And nearer at hand another galley, heading leisurely toward Tonathiutl, suddenly diverted its course and swept down toward the master priest’s craft.

  The prow of this second galley bore a strange figurehead-the reared body of a gigantic serpent, crested with feathers like a heron, a collar of plumes about its golden neck.

  Boots looked straight up into Topiltzen’s leering face. The lesser priestlings had left their postures of adoration and crowded to the side, threatening hands outstretched to drag on board the insulters of their chief.

  The Irishman did not wait to be dragged. A kneeling position in a light canoe is impossible to spring from, but, reaching up, he got handhold on some massive carving under the galley’s bulwark. That was enough. He came over the side, agile as a sailor, leaving the girl in a madly rocking but uncapsized canoe.

  Topiltzen, confronted by an unexpectedly aggressive foe, tried to retreat, tripped over his own flowing mantle, and a moment later was clasped tight to Boots’ breast. It had all happened too quickly for interference. But now the under-priests closed in, and down the vessel’s length the stalwart rowers dropped their blades and came surging toward the bow in a jostling mob.

  Boots swung the fat, kicking little man in his arms toward the side. A stout girdle held the white and black emblem about Topiltzen’s middle and it offered a grip.

  The master priest of Nacoc-Yaotl suddenly found himself dangling in mid-air above the silver flood, while a great voice shattered the hushed quiet of Tlapallan:

  “Get back! Get back, the whole pack of you-or down he goes!”

  Even to those who could not understand the words, Boots’ meaning was unmistakable. It brought them all to a stand.

  Topiltzen squeaked like a rabbit. Though the girdle had cut off his wind, he prayed that it might hold. Swimming was little good to a man when Tonathiu charged the waters with heatless fire.

  “Cast off that iron!” Boots indicated the canoe with a bob of his parrot-crested head. The man who grasped the light cable attached to the g
rappling iron hesitated and looked toward the priests for orders. One of them shook his head slightly.

  “Cast off!” roared Boots, and lowered his captive a foot nearer the water.

  The threat should have been effective, but it wasn’t. Not a man stirred or spoke, and Boots had a sudden creepy doubt that he had been shouting at fantoms. The shadows were all wrong-the sky was under him-he faced a throng of weird, silent, feather-decked ghosts and threatened to drop the chief of them into the sky! No, that was no ghost in his hands-it was too heavy. But why did none of them move or answer him? Boots blinked and cast a wild glance outward, seeking the solidity of the hills to restore his mental balance.

  Then the loop of a rope dropped over his head and shoulders.

  That little event had been what they were waiting for. No bodiless fantoms ever rushed in on a victim with such a weight of flesh and strength of brawn.

  Unfortunately for Topiltzen, however, the caster of that rope had miscalculated. He had meant to jerk the stranger so suddenly inboard that the master priest would come with him; but quick though a man may be, it is easier to relax muscles than to flex them.

  As the rope touched his chest, Boots let go, and with one gurgling cry the priest splashed and vanished in the light beneath.

  But on the quarterdeck poor Boots was hopelessly outnumbered. Underman to start with, his arms encumbered by the rope, he had not the shadow of a chance, and at the end of a brief struggle he rose, a bound and battered prisoner, grasped on either side by one of the stalwart crew.

  Worse still, as the press cleared away from about him, he saw a bedraggled figure hauled over the bulwark by a dozen solicitous hands. It was Topiltzen, and though he promptly subsided on the deck, he was unquestionably alive.

  In the midst of defeat, Boots grinned. He knew from personal experience that the master priest had at least endured a punishment he would not forget in a hurry.