Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Even if she did not understand all he said, she at least read something in his smiling, countenance — something which reassured her. “I do not fear you,” she said; “though I do not understand all that you say even though you speak my own tongue and use words that I know. But as for escaping” — she sighed— “alas, how can it be done?”

  “I escaped from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls,” Bradley reminded her. “Come!” And he turned toward the shaft and the ladder that he had ascended from the river. “We cannot waste time here.”

  The girl followed him; but at the doorway both drew back, for from below came the sound of some one ascending.

  Bradley tiptoed to the door and peered cautiously into the well; then he stepped back beside the girl. “There are half a dozen of them coming up; but possibly they will pass this room.”

  “No,” she said, “they will pass directly through this room — they are on their way to Him Who Speaks for Luata. We may be able to hide in the next room — there are skins there beneath which we may crawl. They will not stop in that room; but they may stop in this one for a short time — the other room is blue.”

  “What’s that go to do with it?” demanded the Englishman.

  “They fear blue,” she replied. “In every room where murder has been done you will find blue — a certain amount for each murder. When the room is all blue, they shun it. This room has much blue; but evidently they kill mostly in the next room, which is now all blue.”

  “But there is blue on the outside of every house I have seen,” said Bradley.

  “Yes, “ assented the girl, “and there are blue rooms in each of those houses — when all the rooms are blue then the whole outside of the house will be blue as is the Blue Place of Seven Skulls. There are many such here.”

  “And the skulls with blue upon them?” inquired Bradley. “Did they belong to murderers?”

  “They were murdered — some of them; those with only a small amount of blue were murderers — known murderers. All Wieroos are murderers. When they have committed a certain number of murders without being caught at it, they confess to Him Who Speaks for Luata and are advanced, after which they wear robes with a slash of some color — I think yellow comes first. When they reach a point where the entire robe is of yellow, they discard it for a white robe with a red slash; and when one wins a complete red robe, he carries such a long, curved knife as you have in your hand; after that comes the blue slash on a white robe, and then, I suppose, an all blue robe. I have never seen such a one.”

  As they talked in low tones they had moved from the room of the death shaft into an all blue room adjoining, where they sat down together in a corner with their backs against a wall and drew a pile of hides over themselves. A moment later they heard a number of Wieroos enter the chamber. They were talking together as they crossed the floor, or the two could not have heard them. Halfway across the chamber they halted as the door toward which they were advancing opened and a dozen others of their kind entered the apartment.

  Bradley could guess all this by the increased volume of sound and the dismal greetings; but the sudden silence that almost immediately ensued he could not fathom, for he could not know that from beneath one of the hides that covered him protruded one of his heavy army shoes, or that some eighteen large Wieroos with robes either solid red or slashed with red or blue were standing gazing at it. Nor could he hear their stealthy approach.

  The first intimation he had that he had been discovered was when his foot was suddenly seized, and he was yanked violently from beneath the hides to find himself surrounded by menacing blades. They would have slain him on the spot had not one clothed all in red held them back, saying that He Who Speaks for Luata desired to see this strange creature.

  As they led Bradley away, he caught an opportunity to glance back toward the hides to see what had become of the girl, and, to his gratification, he discovered that she still lay concealed beneath the hides. He wondered if she would have the nerve to attempt the river trip alone and regretted that now he could not accompany her. He felt rather all in, himself, more so than he had at any time since he had been captured by the Wieroo, for there appeared not the slightest cause for hope in his present predicament. He had dropped the curved blade beneath the hides when he had been jerked so violently from their fancied security. It was almost in a spirit of resigned hopelessness that he quietly accompanied his captors through various chambers and corridors toward the heart of the temple.

  CHAPTER 4

  The farther the group progressed, the more barbaric and the more sumptuous became the decorations. Hides of leopard and tiger predominated, apparently because of their more beautiful markings, and decorative skulls became more and more numerous. Many of the latter were mounted in precious metals and set with colored stones and priceless gems, while thick upon the hides that covered the walls were golden ornaments similar to those worn by the girl and those which had filled the chests he had examined in the storeroom of Fosh-bal-soj, leading the Englishman to the conviction that all such were spoils of war or theft, since each piece seemed made for personal adornment, while in so far as he had seen, no Wieroo wore ornaments of any sort.

  And also as they advanced the more numerous became the Wieroos moving hither and thither within the temple. Many now were the solid red robes and those that were slashed with blue — a veritable hive of murderers.

  At last the party halted in a room in which were many Wieroos who gathered about Bradley questioning his captors and examining him and his apparel. One of the party accompanying the Englishman spoke to a Wieroo that stood beside a door leading from the room. “Tell Him Who Speaks for Luata,” he said, “that Fosh-bal-soj we could not find; but that in returning we found this creature within the temple, hiding. It must be the same that Fosh-bal-soj captured in the Sto-lu country during the last darkness. Doubtless He Who Speaks for Luata would wish to see and question this strange thing.”

  The creature addressed turned and slipped through the doorway, closing the door after it, but first depositing its curved blade upon the floor without. Its post was immediately taken by another and Bradley now saw that at least twenty such guards loitered in the immediate vicinity. The doorkeeper was gone but for a moment, and when he returned, he signified that Bradley’s party was to enter the next chamber; but first each of the Wieroos removed his curved weapon and laid it upon the floor. The door was swung open, and the party, now reduced to Bradley and five Wieroos, was ushered across the threshold into a large, irregularly shaped room in which a single, giant Wieroo whose robe was solid blue sat upon a raised dais.

  The creature’s face was white with the whiteness of a corpse, its dead eyes entirely expressionless, its cruel, thin lips tight-drawn against yellow teeth in a perpetual grimace. Upon either side of it lay an enormous, curved sword, similar to those with which some of the other Wieroos had been armed, but larger and heavier. Constantly its clawlike fingers played with one or the other of these weapons.

  The walls of the chamber as well as the floor were entirely hidden by skins and woven fabrics. Blue predominated in all the colorations. Fastened against the hides were many pairs of Wieroo wings, mounted so that they resembled long, black shields. Upon the ceiling were painted in blue characters a bewildering series of hieroglyphics and upon pedestals set against the walls or standing out well within the room were many human skulls.

  As the Wieroos approached the figure upon the dais, they leaned far forward, raising their wings above their heads and stretching their necks as though offering them to the sharp swords of the grim and hideous creature.

  “O Thou Who Speakest for Luata!” exclaimed one of the party. “We bring you the strange creature that Fosh-bal-soj captured and brought thither at thy command.”

  So this then was the godlike figure that spoke for divinity! This arch- murderer was the Caspakian representative of God on Earth! His blue robe announced him the one and the seeming humility of his minions the other. For a long minute he g
lared at Bradley. Then he began to question him — from whence he came and how, the name and description of his native country, and a hundred other queries.

  “Are you cos-ata-lu?” the creature asked.

  Bradley replied that he was and that all his kind were, as well as every living thing in his part of the world.

  “Can you tell me the secret?” asked the creature.

  Bradley hesitated and then, thinking to gain time, replied in the affirmative.

  “What is it?” demanded the Wieroo, leaning far forward and exhibiting every evidence of excited interest.

  Bradley leaned forward and whispered: “It is for your ears alone; I will not divulge it to others, and then only on condition that you carry me and the girl I saw in the place of the yellow door near to that of Fosh-bal-soj back to her own country.”

  The thing rose in wrath, holding one of its swords above its head.

  “Who are you to make terms for Him Who Speaks for Luata?” it shrilled. “Tell me the secret or die where you stand!”

  “And if I die now, the secret goes with me,” Bradley reminded him. “Never again will you get the opportunity to question another of my kind who knows the secret.” Anything to gain time, to get the rest of the Wieroos from the room, that he might plan some scheme for escape and put it into effect.

  The creature turned upon the leader of the party that had brought Bradley.

  “Is the thing with weapons?” it asked.

  “No,” was the response.

  “Then go; but tell the guard to remain close by,” commanded the high one.

  The Wieroos salaamed and withdrew, closing the door behind them. He Who Speaks for Luata grasped a sword nervously in his right hand. At his left side lay the second weapon. It was evident that he lived in constant dread of being assassinated. The fact that he permitted none with weapons within his presence and that he always kept two swords at his side pointed to this.

  Bradley was racking his brain to find some suggestion of a plan whereby he might turn the situation to his own account. His eyes wandered past the weird figure before him; they played about the walls of the apartment as though hoping to draw inspiration from the dead skulls and the hides and the wings, and then they came back to the face of the Wieroo god, now working in anger.

  “Quick!” screamed the thing. “The secret!”

  “Will you give me and the girl our freedom?” insisted Bradley.

  For an instant the thing hesitated, and then it grumbled “Yes.” At the same instant Bradley saw two hides upon the wall directly back of the dais separate and a face appear in the opening. No change of expression upon the Englishman’s countenance betrayed that he had seen aught to surprise him, though surprised he was for the face in the aperture was that of the girl he had but just left hidden beneath the hides in another chamber. A white and shapely arm now pushed past the face into the room, and in the hand, tightly clutched, was the curved blade, smeared with blood, that Bradley had dropped beneath the hides at the moment he had been discovered and drawn from his concealment.

  “Listen, then,” said Bradley in a low voice to the Wieroo. “You shall know the secret of cos-ata-lu as well as do I; but none other may hear it. Lean close — I will whisper it into your ear.”

  He moved forward and stepped upon the dais. The creature raised its sword ready to strike at the first indication of treachery, and Bradley stooped beneath the blade and put his ear close to the gruesome face. As he did so, he rested his weight upon his hands, one upon either side of the Wieroo’s body, his right hand upon the hilt of the spare sword lying at the left of Him Who Speaks for Luata.

  “This then is the secret of both life and death,” he whispered, and at the same instant he grasped the Wieroo by the right wrist and with his own right hand swung the extra blade in a sudden vicious blow against the creature’s neck before the thing could give even a single cry of alarm; then without waiting an instant Bradley leaped past the dead god and vanished behind the hides that had hidden the girl.

  Wide-eyed and panting the girl seized his arm. “Oh, what have you done?” she cried. “He Who Speaks for Luata will be avenged by Luata. Now indeed must you die. There is no escape, for even though we reached my own country Luata can find you out.”

  “Bosh!” exclaimed Bradley, and then: “But you were going to knife him yourself.”

  “Then I alone should have died,” she replied.

  Bradley scratched his head. “Neither of us is going to die,” he said; “at least not at the hands of any god. If we don’t get out of here though, we’ll die right enough. Can you find your way back to the room where I first came upon you in the temple?”

  “I know the way,” replied the girl; “but I doubt if we can go back without being seen. I came hither because I only met Wieroos who knew that I am supposed now to be in the temple; but you could go elsewhere without being discovered.”

  Bradley’s ingenuity had come up against a stone wall. There seemed no possibility of escape. He looked about him. They were in a small room where lay a litter of rubbish — torn bits of cloth, old hides, pieces of fiber rope. In the center of the room was a cylindrical shaft with an opening in its face. Bradley knew it for what it was. Here the arch-fiend dragged his victims and cast their bodies into the river of death far below. The floor about the opening in the shaft and the sides of the shaft were clotted thick with a dried, dark brown substance that the Englishman knew had once been blood. The place had the appearance of having been a veritable shambles. An odor of decaying flesh permeated the air.

  The Englishman crossed to the shaft and peered into the opening. All below was dark as pitch; but at the bottom he knew was the river. Suddenly an inspiration and a bold scheme leaped to his mind. Turning quickly he hunted about the room until he found what he sought — a quantity of the rope that lay strewn here and there. With rapid fingers he unsnarled the different lengths, the girl helping him, and then he tied the ends together until he had three ropes about seventy-five feet in length. He fastened these together at each end and without a word secured one of the ends about the girl’s body beneath her arms.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said at length, as he led her toward the opening in the shaft. “I’m going to lower you to the river, and then I’m coming down after you. When you are safe below, give two quick jerks upon the rope. If there is danger there and you want me to draw you up into the shaft, jerk once. Don’t be afraid — it is the only way.”

  “I am not afraid,” replied the girl, rather haughtily Bradley thought, and herself climbed through the aperture and hung by her hands waiting for Bradley to lower her.

  As rapidly as was consistent with safety, the man paid out the rope. When it was about half out, he heard loud cries and wails suddenly arise within the room they had just quitted. The slaying of their god had been discovered by the Wieroos. A search for the slayer would begin at once.

  Lord! Would the girl never reach the river? At last, just as he was positive that searchers were already entering the room behind him, there came two quick tugs at the rope. Instantly Bradley made the rest of the strands fast about the shaft, slipped into the black tube and began a hurried descent toward the river. An instant later he stood waist deep in water beside the girl. Impulsively she reached toward him and grasped his arm. A strange thrill ran through him at the contact; but he only cut the rope from about her body and lifted her to the little shelf at the river’s side.

  “How can we leave here?” she asked.

  “By the river,” he replied; “but first I must go back to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls and get the poor devil I left there. I’ll have to wait until after dark, though, as I cannot pass through the open stretch of river in the temple gardens by day.”

  “There is another way,” said the girl. “I have never seen it; but often I have heard them speak of it — a corridor that runs beside the river from one end of the city to the other. Through the gardens it is below ground. If we could find an entrance to it
, we could leave here at once. It is not safe here, for they will search every inch of the temple and the grounds.”

  “Come,” said Bradley. “We’ll have a look for it, anyway.” And so saying he approached one of the doors that opened onto the skull-paved shelf.

  They found the corridor easily, for it paralleled the river, separated from it only by a single wall. It took them beneath the gardens and the city, always through inky darkness. After they had reached the other side of the gardens, Bradley counted his steps until he had retraced as many as he had taken coming down the stream; but though they had to grope their way along, it was a much more rapid trip than the former.

  When he thought he was about opposite the point at which he had descended from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls, he sought and found a doorway leading out onto the river; and then, still in the blackest darkness, he lowered himself into the stream and felt up and down upon the opposite side for the little shelf and the ladder. Ten yards from where he had emerged he found them, while the girl waited upon the opposite side.

  To ascend to the secret panel was the work of but a minute. Here he paused and listened lest a Wieroo might be visiting the prison in search of him or the other inmate; but no sound came from the gloomy interior. Bradley could not but muse upon the joy of the man on the opposite side when he should drop down to him with food and a new hope for escape. Then he opened the panel and looked into the room. The faint light from the grating above revealed the pile of rags in one corner; but the man lay beneath them, he made no response to Bradley’s low greeting.

  The Englishman lowered himself to the floor of the room and approached the rags. Stooping he lifted a corner of them. Yes, there was the man asleep. Bradley shook him — there was no response. He stooped lower and in the dim light examined An-Tak; then he stood up with a sigh. A rat leaped from beneath the coverings and scurried away. “Poor devil!” muttered Bradley.