This Fierce Splendor

by Iris Johansen

  Elspeth didn’t answer, her gaze was fixed in compulsive fascination on the darkness beyond the silver spray.

  “I don’t know why I should be surprised.” Dominic was tugging futilely on the lead rope. “If there’s any way to make a situation worse, a mule will find it. We’ll be lucky if we get him off his haunches by dark. I wanted to be through the pass by—” He broke off as he turned and caught a glimpse of Elspeth’s face. “What’s wrong?”

  Her gaze didn’t leave the dark entrance to the pass. She moistened her lips. “It’s real, isn’t it? It was all true.”

  Dominic let the lead rope go slack as his eyes narrowed in concern. “I thought there was no question in your mind that Kantalan existed. This is what you wanted. Why are you afraid?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “I could go on alone.”

  She shook her head. “I’m being foolish. Of course I’m going.” She urged the mare forward. “I suppose I’ve dreamed of Kantalan so long, I’m afraid of being disappointed. How do I get Nina to swim?”

  “Just follow me and hold on tight. The mare will know what to do. We’ll stop and change clothes once we’re out of the lake.” He dropped Azuquita’s rope and grabbed the burro’s lead. He turned Blanco toward the waterfall.

  “What about Azuquita?”

  “He can sit there until his tail rots off,” Dominic said grimly as he disappeared behind the falls. “I’ve had more than enough of our ‘little sugar.’ ”

  Elspeth followed him, letting Nina have her head. She gasped as the mare entered the icy water.

  A raucous bray broke the silence. Elspeth glanced back over her shoulder to see Azuquita still sitting on his haunches, glaring at them with an expression Elspeth would swear was supreme indignation.

  Then the mule was lumbering to his feet and a moment later was in the lake, swimming hurriedly after Dominic and emitting loud shrill brays.

  Elspeth began to laugh helplessly, the lilting sound rising above the roar of the waterfall and echoing off the stone ridges of the pass. “I told you Azuquita liked you,” she called to Dominic.

  Dominic looked over his shoulder to see Azuquita swimming directly behind him. “What do you mean? He just thinks he’s going to get a chance to drown me. Can’t you tell he’s cursing me?”

  Elspeth laughed again. She couldn’t deny that Azuquita’s braying held a surly note. “Perhaps you’re right. I think you’d best get out of the water quickly.”

  Her laughter faded, but she felt distinctly grateful to Azuquita for putting at rest her strange feeling of reluctance to enter the pass. Now eagerness and excitement were once more beginning to claim her. She watched Dominic’s horse begin to clamber up out of the water onto the trail and her knees unconsciously tightened, urging the mare forward.

  The Sun Child, powerful and majestic, came into view when they were still some distance down the trail. Towering two thousand feet above the mountains around it, the volcano’s upper reaches were composed entirely of gleaming gray-black lava rock while its foothills were verdant with trees and shrubs.

  Then they came to the crest of the trail and Elspeth forgot everything but the view before her.

  Kantalan.

  They stood on the summit, looking down at the city spread out before them. The strong rays of the afternoon sun streamed down, bathing the ancient buildings and pyramids in golden light.

  Elspeth gazed spellbound, scarcely breathing.

  “Are you disappointed?” Dominic asked gently.

  “No. Oh, no,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful. It’s everything I dreamed it would be.”

  Dominic’s gaze was on Elspeth, and he knew if there was not one particle of treasure in the city below them, he would still be grateful they had come to Kantalan. He would remember that expression of glowing radiance on her face until the day he died.

  “The four rivers aren’t rivers at all.” She pointed to a narrow ribbon of water seemingly emerging from the foot of the Sun Child itself. “They’re manmade canals. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “It seems to be to you,” he said with an indulgent smile. “Though I can’t understand why.”

  “Because it’s clear the people of Kantalan deliberately tried to recreate their home city. Atlantis had four rivers intersecting like a cross, so when the colonists came here they dug canals to mirror the landscape they had known. It’s much more significant than if the rivers had been natural.” She drew a deep breath and her words tumbled out eagerly. “You know, if Atlantis was the birthplace of civilization, then it probably also contained the Garden of Eden. All of the legends of the garden mention four rivers. The Hebrew scripture says, ‘And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.’ The Scandinavians claim their sacred Asgard was watered by four primeval rivers of milk. The Chinese Tien-Chan was irrigated by four perennial fountains and the Slavratta of the Hindus possessed ‘four primeval rivers’ that flowed north, south, east, and west.” She paused. “Like Atlantis.”

  “And Kantalan,” Dominic said. “But if these canals are manmade, you won’t find Eden here.”

  “No.” Her gaze hadn’t left the splendid city in the valley below. “But if Kantalan is a mirror of Atlantis, perhaps it’s also a mirror of Eden.” Her heels nudged Nina forward. “Come on, Dominic. I can’t wait to see more.” She was already several yards down the trail as she called back to him. “Do you suppose that large square building is the temple?”

  The grounds surrounding the imposing building she had indicated were tangled and overgrown and bore no resemblance to the lush glory of Eden. Yet even as they rode through, it was obvious this had once been a formal garden, a classical one, with pools and fountains, flower beds and paths. However, it became clear as soon as they opened a massive twelve-foot set of double doors that this was not a temple but a palace. They looked into a chamber that was unquestionably a throne room.

  A heavy layer of dust coated the white marble floors and the columns decorated with gold frieze. A double row of statues on alabaster pedestals formed a walkway leading across the vast marble expanse and up the three steps to a splendid elevated throne.

  “It’s gold,” she whispered. “That throne must be pure gold.”

  Dominic nodded. “And, if I’m not mistaken, those jewels inlaid in the back are rubies.”

  Her gaze wandered around the huge empty room. “How beautiful it must have been.” She took a step closer to one of the statues lining the approach to the throne, an elephant so exquisitely crafted, it appeared ready to raise its trunk and sound a triumphant trumpet through the cobwebbed stillness of the room. Her finger gently touched the satin smoothness of that trunk. “Ivory. Where did they get large enough quantities of ivory in this country to carve statues of this size?” She turned to him, her eyes blazing with excitement. “And this is an elephant. Elephants are found in Africa and Asia, not here. How would they be able to carve an elephant in such detail if they’d never seen one? There have been a few other cases I know about of a discovery of statuary like this. There was a wooden elephant found in the mounds in Wisconsin and similar artifacts found in the Cahokia mound in Illinois. Don’t you see? They must have brought these statues with them, though I can’t see how that would have been possible. Or it could be that the people originated in a place where they could have seen elephants.

  He nodded and started across the room toward an ornately carved door to the left of the throne. “And I’ll bet they brought more with them than a bunch of statues.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “If this is the palace, where else would the royal treasury be but here?”

  “Oh!” She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her tone. “Now?”

  He stopped and turned to look at her in surprise before smiling understandingly. “You want to find your temple and see if there’s any more evidence of similarity?”

  She nodded. “The temple is the store
house of learning in most societies. I thought perhaps I could find a tablet or—” She stopped. “But naturally you want to see if the treasure actually exists. I can wait.”

  He hesitated and then turned and walked back toward her. “So can the Kantalan treasure. What’s a few more hours after three hundred years?” He took her hand. “Which building should we try next?”

  “The pyramid in the center of the city,” she said instantly. “The shape had a mystical significance to the Egyptians, perhaps it’s the same here.” She paused. “I wouldn’t mind going alone.”

  He shook his head. The city appeared silent and deserted, but that didn’t mean there were no dangers. He wanted to be within hailing distance if Elspeth ran across a snake or other wild creature. “We’ll leave the pack animals here. These gardens seem as good a place as any to set up camp. Let’s go. You’ll want to be able to look through the temple before dark.”

  Dominic was sitting on the stone steps and stood up as Elspeth came out of the temple and hurried toward him. She was carrying two large but very thin stone tablets in her arms, and he could tell by the excitement on her face that the question he was going to ask was completely unnecessary. “You found what you were looking for?”

  “I think so. The hieroglyphics on these tablets are completely unfamiliar. It may take years to decipher them, but there’s a chance the entire story may be here.” She crossed the road to where Nina was tethered and unfastened the thong of her saddlebag and took out the MacGregor plaid. She wrapped the tablets carefully and put them into the saddlebag. “The lodestone is in the big room in the center of the temple. At least I think that’s what it is. I wonder what they used it for.” She whirled to face him. “Oh, Dominic, you should have gone in with me. There was so much to see, so many strange and wonderful things to discover.”

  He shook his head. “This was your treasure. You waited a long time for your dream to come true. It was right that you experienced it first by yourself.”

  Another gift. She gazed at him, loving him with all her being. “Thank you.”

  He inclined his head. “My pleasure, Madame Delaney.” His gaze narrowed on the sky feathered pink and gold above the mountains to the west. “Do you want to go back inside? You have about fifteen minutes until sunset.”

  She shook her head. “I think I’d like to walk back to the palace. I want to see everything. I want to walk down some of the sides streets and try to imagine the people who lived in those beautiful stately houses. Could we do that?”

  He took her hand. “Why not? I’ll come back for the horses later.”

  Stillness. The only sound in the entire city seemed to be the click of their boots on the cobbled streets. The houses and public buildings were in amazingly good condition, Elspeth noticed. They could have been built yesterday and yet had an air of timelessness about them. She had noticed that same strange quality in the pyramids of Egypt.

  “Where did everybody go?” she asked softly. “There should be bones or something, shouldn’t there? Do you suppose they heeded Sayan’s warning and left Kantalan after all?”

  “Perhaps,” Dominic answered. “Even after all this time there should still be some remains. I took a good look around while you were in the temple and found a few skeletons on some of the back streets. Dogs and horses, I think. But nothing in any of the houses but dust and broken pottery.”

  “But if they did escape, why didn’t they come back?”

  Dominic shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t want to chance the same thing happening again. If I came back and found all the livestock dead, I might have second thoughts about—” He broke off in mid-sentence.”

  Elspeth had stopped dead still in the middle of the street. She was pale, her gaze fixed on the upper story of a large house just ahead. It was an imposing stone house with an upper balcony overlooking the street.

  “Elspeth?”

  “They didn’t leave.” The words were so low that he had to bend his head to hear them. “The people climbed to the first plateau of the Sun Child to give sacrifices that night. They never left that plateau. They never came back to the city.”

  “How do you know?” His gaze slowly followed her own to the balcony. A heavy filigree curtain fashioned of a metal blackened by time and the elements veiled the interior of the house. “What are you looking at?”

  “They’re there. Dalkar and Sayan. They’re there beyond that silver curtain.”

  A shiver ran down his spine. There was absolute certainty in her voice. “How do you know?”

  “How do you know Torres is still following us? I tell you, they’re there.”

  “Do you want to go inside?”

  “No.” She closed her eyes and two tears brimmed and then ran slowly down her cheeks. “Only their bodies are there. What they were and are and ever will be moved on when the Sun Child destroyed the people of Kantalan.” Her eyes opened and she started to walk swiftly down the street, past the house of Sayan, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Perhaps it’s only my imagination. I want to make camp and eat something, and then …” She wanted to do all the mundane things that made up the ordinary routines of life. She didn’t want to think about Sayan and the love that had tortured and destroyed her. She didn’t want to think about death.

  Dominic was beside her, taking her hand again. “Wait for me,” he said. “I’m going with you, remember?”

  She drew a tremulous breath. “But how far?”

  “All the way,” he said gravely. “I thought you knew that.”

  She experienced a showerburst of joy that took her breath away and banished the melancholy that had claimed her. It was immediately followed by intense exasperation. “How would I know?” she asked tartly. “When you never saw fit to tell me. For all I knew, you meant to leave me and go back to Hell’s Bluff or to perdition or to—”

  His fingers were on her lips. “Hush,” he said softly. “How could I leave you when I can’t trust you out of my sight? If I turn my back, you’re likely to fall down a mountain or take off for El Dorado.” His words were teasing but his eyes were saying something … beautiful.

  Her breath caught in her throat. “That’s not a very good reason for staying with a person. If you have something to say to me, I wish you’d speak out. I’m no mystic who can read your feelings in the flames. I’m not Sayan, for goodness’ sake.”

  “Aren’t you?” he asked with a curious smile. “If you want a declaration, love, I’ll try to accommodate you. I love you. I love you more than my family, Killara, or my life. I think you are my life now. Is that enough for you, Elspeth?”

  “Oh, yes.” She blinked rapidly to keep back the tears. “Quite enough.” She suddenly hurled herself at him, hugging him with all her strength. “But you certainly took your time about it.”

  He laughed helplessly. “Elspeth, you’re like no one else.” He kissed her with a tenderness that caused her throat to tighten. “And I’ll thank God for that fact for the rest of my life.” His smile faded. “I guess I was afraid it would be bad luck to tell you. Everything I’ve ever really wanted seems to have slipped away from me. I couldn’t take a chance on losing you too.”

  She swallowed. “Then why tell me now?”

  “I thought you needed to hear it,” he said simply. “I didn’t have the right to protect myself if it was going to keep you from having anything you need or want.”

  She gazed at him, something inside her melting helplessly. “Daft. Completely daft, Dominic Delaney.”

  “Oh, yes, more daft every day, love.” He pushed her away. “Now, let’s get back to the palace and set up camp. Declarations are all very well, but I never was very good with words.” His eyes were twinkling as he slipped his arm around his waist and turned her toward the palace. “I’m much better with action.”

  23

  Something cold and metallic was slipped over her head and then arranged carefully to encircle her naked breasts.

  Elspeth open
ed her eyes to see Dominic smiling down at her. His light eyes were glittering with excitement and seemed to hold all the beauty in the world.

  She smiled back at him drowsily. “Again?”

  He laughed. “I’d be delighted, but not until you tell me how much you like your necklace. It’s the first time I’ve ever given a lady jewels worth a king’s ransom, and I expect at least a polite thank-you.”

  Her hand went to her chest and her gaze followed it. “Dominic!” She wore a long chain of diamonds interspersed with large square-cut emeralds. Facets of the diamonds caught the firelight and turned it into a dazzling array of brilliant hues that cascaded down her body. “Where did you get it?”

  He nodded toward the palace across the garden. “The royal treasury. That necklace is only a small sample. The room is overflowing with chests of jewels and gold.” His index finger tapped one of the emeralds. “Just one of those stones would buy another Killara. Do you know what I can do with such an enormous fortune?”

  “Create the Delaney Kingdom.” A tiny smile touched Elspeth’s lips. “Long live the king.”

  “You can laugh, but that’s what a treasure like this can buy.” He pulled the necklace taut, twisting the diamond chain beneath her breasts to lift them into prominence. “I thought the emeralds would match your eyes, but maybe rubies would be better.” His head bent to nibble teasingly at her rosy-pink nipple. When he lifted his mouth, the nipple was no longer pink but cherry red and distended with arousal. “Do you fancy rubies, Queen Elspeth?”

  “I fancy King Dominic.” She took his hand and held it to her breast so that he could feel the erratic pounding of her heart. “See?”

  His hand closed on her breast, his thumb gently flicking the nipple he had brought to fiery attention. “I don’t think you’d be so unappreciative if I brought you another of those damn clay tablets with that hen-scratching on it.”

  “I didn’t say I was unappreciative,” she protested. “I merely appreciate you more.” She lowered her eyes demurely. “As a proper wife should.”