‘I appreciate that. But you’re probably right that her attitude depends on how deep she has got herself in. She is a witch, of course, but there are witches and witches. The majority of the poor old women who were burnt at the stake were innocent, and seized upon only because they lived alone, were ugly and kept a white mouse in a cage. Most of the others were capable of no more than blighting the crops of neighbours who had behaved badly towards them, or putting a murrain on their cattle, or causing their wives to miscarry. But there were a number who acted as midwives. They stole foetuses, resulting from premature births and unbaptised infants, then ate parts of them and used others as ingredients in revolting brews that could have a most potent effect on those who partook of them. They aided gangs of wreckers by raising hurricanes that drove ships on to the rocks, could influence people at a distance and brought death to their victims by melting wax images before a slow fire. How far do you suppose that Silvia has gone, in her desire for excitement, along this path of evil?’
Rex sighed. ‘It’s hard to say. Maybe she didn’t take me into her full confidence because she has cast spells she knew I wouldn’t approve of. But I’ve known her perform magics that you could class as bringing punishment on those who deserved it.
‘One time a young maid of hers was driven out into the country and raped. Silvia managed to get hold of a pair of the man’s socks and did her stuff on them. A few days later he contracted galloping syphilis and, within six weeks, his genitals rotted away.
‘Certainly not the type of enchantments one would expect from a woman associated with the Prince and the Baron,’ de Richleau commented. ‘Either would have regarded the raping of the maid as deeds inspired by an elemental, and approved of them. I think we can take it as proof that Silvia has not yet crossed the Abyss and become fully committed to the Left-Hand Path.’
‘She has always said that she went into the game because it offered a new form of interest and excitement. She has much too happy a nature to be evil, and I doubt if she has ever seriously considered what the Black Power movement may ultimately lead to. But she enjoys the power that being a witch gives her.’
‘ “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”,’ de Richleau quoted. ‘It seems to me that she is now standing on the brink. Since she enjoys power, they will give it to her—at a price. It is always so with those who dabble in the Black Art. It can be only a matter of time before she becomes corrupted, and as evil as the rest of them. In my opinion it is only because they have found her very useful in other ways that they have not so far lured her into taking the fatal step.’
‘I guess you’re right. Same as with myself. They thought me to be too valuable to them as a foreign exchange expert to press me to do things they knew I wouldn’t do willingly.’
‘How far have your own studies of the occult brought you?’
‘Oh, I’m still only a neophyte, just coming up for the second grade. I’m capable of only small-time stuff. In secret, I concentrated on a friend of mine and succeeded in curing him of arthritis. For fun, one day I caused that old stick-in-the-mud, Harold Haag, the manager of our bank in Buenos Aires, to make a hopeless mess of his accounts. I can make cold water become tepid, but not to boil as yet. I’m getting on well as a clairvoyant, and I’ve made a beginning at thought transference with Silvia.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the Duke. ‘There we have something. Could you manage to get into touch with her, and find out how she is disposed towards us?’
‘No, I don’t think I could do that. I can send thoughts out, but not receive them. At least, only now and then in a garbled version, and sometimes I have put quite a wrong interpretation on them.’
‘To send her a message is the more important. Let her know that we have great cause to fear what may become of us. Ask her to aid us if she possibly can. Tell her that if she knows of any way in which we might escape we should be forever grateful if she would give us guidance to it.’
O.K. I’ll do that.’ Rex got down on the floor and arranged himself in the traditional cross-legged position, then bowed his head. The Duke looked round at the others and said:
There is no need to leave your seats, but all of you must remain silent and pray for Rex’s success.’
For the best part of an hour they sat there. Rex appeared to have gone to sleep, but at last he raised his head and shook it. ‘Maybe she got the message, maybe not, There was no response at all, so it’s impossible to say.’
Soon afterwards two of the green-clad servitors appeared and brought them a meal, but it consisted only of a peasant fare, coarse bread and a basin each of maize mush, which made it clear that the Prince did not intend them to derive any enjoyment from their nourishment.
By the time they had finished the evening was well advanced, so they began to make preparations for the night. After they had visited the washrooms, the Duke had them arrange all the cushions from the easy chairs in one group on the pavement near the edge of the pool. The five of them then sat down on the cushions back to back, and he said:
‘None of us must leave the others in any circumstance. Not only is union strength, but anyone who failed to remain in physical contact with the rest would be overcome much more easily. If an attack develops, whatever form it takes we must get up, form a line with clasped hands as quickly as we can; then, when I give the word, scramble into the shallow end of the pool here.’
Suddenly, to their consternation, the radiance that lit the swimming pool was switched off. The only light now came through the open panel of the Hall of Divination. They watched it anxiously, fearing that it, too, would go out. It remained on, but as it was over eighty feet away, it was no more than a bright patch faintly illuminating the gloom between it and them.
Looking uneasily about them, they began to imagine that the shadows thrown by pillars and buttresses were solidifying into strange forms and gruesome shapes that menaced them. The eerie half-light played havoc with their nerves and strung them up nearly to breaking point.
For a long while they hoped that Silvia would come to them, but at length they reconciled themselves to the belief that either she had not received Rex’s message, or was in the enemy camp and had no intention of aiding them even if it was possible for her to do so.
At about eleven o’clock, they all jerked erect. They had caught the sound of footsteps on stone. Anxiously they peered in the direction of the ante-room, hoping that, after all, Silvia was coming to them. Holding their breath, they craned forward, only to release it in bitter disappointment a moment later. It was Singra, the Pakistani. He did not even glance through the opening into the almost dark swimming pool, but turned in the opposite direction and went into the temple. Having presumably performed some duty there after some ten minutes he came out again, recrossed the circular antechamber and disappeared.
Utter silence fell again. Another hour dragged by. Nothing happened. Suddenly Richard burst out, ‘I can’t stand this much longer. Let’s have a sing-song.’
‘Excellent idea,’ agreed the Duke. ‘I ought to have thought of that myself.’ Spontaneously Rex started ‘Rock of Ages’, and they all joined in. ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ followed; but none of them was sure of the words of even these best-known hymns, so they fell back on old popular numbers: ‘Roll out the Barrel’, ‘If you were the only girl in the world’, ‘Keep the home fires burning’, ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, and so on.
As they sang, they never ceased to keep an uneasy watch for some evil thing to materialise out of the shadows. But still the attack they expected failed to develop. After singing for two hours, they were so hoarse that the sound of their voices made a travesty of the tunes. At about two o’clock in the morning they fell silenr. All of them felt utterly played out. By then they had ceased, except occasionally, even to throw apprehensive glances into the shadows. Still leaning back to back, their heads dropped on their chests. All of them except de Richleau fell asleep.
Without warning the dim lights of the swimming
pool went on. As they roused, the Duke glanced at his watch and saw that it was morning. He told the others that while they had slept there had been no disturbances, and they felt that, for the time being, the danger was past.
They breakfasted off the remaining biscuits and nuts, then settled themselves again in the lounge chairs. De Richleau dropped off into a doze, while the others again speculated fruitlessly on what the Prince intended to do with them. As they had killed four of his principal lieutenants, they had no illusions that he would show them mercy, and could only suppose chat his having left them in peace during the night meant that he intended to play a cat and mouse game with them.
Soon after they had eaten, the white pilot Dubecq and the half-Spanish Cervantes, both of whom they had glimpsed in the bar on their first arrival at the fortress, came down for a swim. Neither of them took any notice of the prisoners, so it could be assumed that the Prince had given orders that they were not to be interfered with.
After that nothing happened until about half past ten. Their attention was then caught by a new sound: that of high heels tapping on the stone floor of the ante-room. A moment later Silvia appeared. She was wearing a white Grecian robe, with gold embroidery at the neck and wrists. They all sat forward eagerly but, without giving them a glance, she let the robe fall to her feet, kicked off her mules and, naked, dived into the pool.
‘By Jove! She’s a dish, isn’t she?’ Richard murmured. ‘I’ve never seen a girl with such splendid shoulders and so slim a waist.’
‘Woman,’ the Duke corrected him. ‘We know her to be close on fifty. Obviously she’s taken great care of herself; but latterly, I don’t doubt, she has used her occult powers to renew her youth. The old beldames of whom we were talking last night were not in a class that knew the spells needed to make themselves physically attractive. But really potent witches always appear young and beautiful.’
Meanwhile Rex had stood up and was stripping off his clothes. It had been his custom to swim nude with Silvia, and he did not want her to think that he had suddenly become prudish; so, ignoring Miranda’s presence, he dived in without a stitch on.
The onlookers watched them eagerly, but Rex and Silvia did not greet each other. At times they crossed each other’s path, but anyone observing them would have taken them for complete strangers. After about ten minutes Silvia climbed out of the pool, dried herself on a towel she had brought with her and, without any indication that she was aware of the presence of the prisoners, walked away through the ante-room.
Standing in the shallow end of the pool, Rex said to his friends in a low voice, ‘The Prince may be overlooking us, so we didn’t dare exchange more than a few sentences, and those only because we were in the water. I did get through to her last night. She had no excuse to come down here then; but nearly every morning when she’s here she has a swim, and the Prince hasn’t said that while we are being kept prisoner she is not to.
‘He is so furious about our having killed von Thumm and the others that he can’t make up his mind what would be the most painful death to inflict on us. As we hoped might be the case, she would help us to get away if she could. You see, she’s got it on her conscience that it is her fault that we have all been drawn into this. But there’s nix that she can do. If the Prince even suspected that she had qualms about us, he’d blast her where she stood. So she can only play along with him.’
Their hope that Silvia would be able to aid them had been a very slender one, so they were not unduly cast down to learn that she was powerless to do so. But they were pleased, particularly Rex, to know that her mind was not entirely dominated by the Prince.
Later in the morning the skull-headed Mazambi came down to bathe. Then, at midday, the prisoners were brought the same unappetising meal that they had been given the previous evening.
During the afternoon they dozed for a while; then, to keep their minds free from thinking of the most unpleasant forms of death and wondering which the Prince would decide on for them, they told stories, held a spelling bee and reminisced about their past adventures. Somehow they got through the dragging hours until, late in the evening, another ration of bread and mush was brought to them. Afterwards they held another sing-song; then, no longer fearful now that the Prince would send occult forces to attack them, settled down for the night.
Early next morning they all refreshed themselves by going in for a swim. In due course, Dubecq, Cervantes, and the Egyptian, Ben Yussuf, came down and swam. Then Silvia again arrived, so Rex went in to exchange a few words with her each time they passed one another in the water.
When she had gone he had the most exciting news for his friends. With a wide grin he said, ‘There’s more trouble down at the settlement. Seems those two poor guys who were in the cellar with us started something. The speeches they made at the meeting they called met with pretty wide agreement. Everyone down there is now debating whether this Black Power movement would pay off in the long run, and there is to be another meeting tonight. It’s quite on the cards that a lot of them will decide to down tools unless they are sent back to their home towns.’
‘By Jove! That really is something,’ Richard exclaimed. ‘It might wreck the whole movement.’
Rex nodded. ‘There’s still better to come. It seems there’s a limit to even the Prince’s powers. Silvia says that the binding spell he has put on us to keep us here is not operative at a distance. If he goes down to the settlement to quell this meeting tonight, as she thinks he means to, she should be able to get us out.’
‘Oh, how wonderful!’ Miranda cried. ‘I knew she was good at heart. But when he comes back and finds out what she’s done, won’t he punish her most terribly?’
‘I thought of that, and you’re right. She told me she wouldn’t dare remain here. If she did, it would cost her her life; so she will come with us.’
‘Surely the Prince would not go off leaving her in charge here?’ remarked the Duke. ‘What about Mazambie, Dubecq, Singra and the rest? How would she deal with them?’
‘She said that if von Thumm or Glasshill were still alive, that would have stymied her, because they were capable of reading her thoughts. But the rest of the bunch are not; so she’ll offer to make them a bouillabaisse for dinner from the fish and what-have-you from the lake. It’s quite a thing of hers, and very strongly flavoured, so they won’t notice the drug she means to put in it, and that will knock them all for six. About the retainers she says we don’t need to worry. Mentally they’re pretty low material, and it just wouldn’t occur to them to question anything she does.’
‘May the Lords of Light be praised for having brought her back on to the Right-Hand Path,’ murmured the Duke. But a moment later, he said anxiously, ‘We shall still have one big hurdle to get over, though. As far as we know there are still two ‘planes on the airstrip. The Prince will take one to fly himself down to the Sala; but how are we to get hold of the other? The Andean mechanics down there will jump at the chance of avenging their comrade, and I can subdue only one of them at a time. Unless Silvia has some way of dealing with them, the odds are that several of us may be shot down before we can reach the aircraft.’
Rex made a grimace. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, and it’s a nasty one. Maybe Silvia could get us weapons. If so, and we could take them by surprise, we’d be able to put them out of the game before they had a chance to shoot us up.’
The best part of two nights and a day had passed since they had been caught. During those long hours they had slept little and had been in constant fear of the unguessable, but certainly agonising, death the Prince would inflict upon them. In consequence, this sudden prospect that Silvia might save them dispelled their utter despair and cheered them all enormously. Compared with the unknown horror that had filled them with such awful foreboding, they were inclined to take lightly the physical hazard of dealing with the Andean mechanics.
Now, buoyed up with optimism, they passed the rest of the morning in an almost happy frame of mind. With midday there
arrived another unappetising meal, then in the afternoon they dozed. When, in the evening, food was brought to them again, as soon as the servitors had gone Richard said:
‘Unless everything goes wrong, as soon as we get in that ‘plane, we’ll break open its stores and enjoy some decent food, so I’m not eating any more of this muck.’
De Richleau’s spells of Yoga-induced sleep had done wonders for him. His wound was healing well and his voice was perceptibly more vigorous, as he said, ‘Let’s not count our chickens yet. You may need all your strength before morning. Think of yourself as back in the nursery and eat up your porridge like a good little boy.’
In due course the lights went out and the big chamber was plunged in darkness except at the far end, where the faint glow from the ante-room of the temple still showed.
Despite their new-found optimism, at the back of all their minds there nagged the disturbing thought that the Prince might decide to begin the torment with which he had threatened them before he flew down to the Sala; so, in order to offer the maximum resistance, they again arranged themselves sitting back to back on the cushions.
Knowing that Silvia would not be free to act until her associates had fallen into a heavy, drug-induced sleep, they thought it very unlikely that she would come to them before midnight, so they whiled away the late evening hours with such patience as they could muster.
At last midnight came and they all roused to a new alertness, listening eagerly for the least sound that might break the stillness. As time drifted by, their tension grew, but nothing occurred to relieve it. At ever more frequent intervals Rex gave a quick, nervous glance at the luminous dial of his wrist watch. One o’clock came, then two o’clock. Their suspense became almost unbearable. At last, a little before three o’clock de Richleau broke a long silence to voice the thought that, for an hour or more, had been tormenting them all and renewing their fears about their future.
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