“Stop!” Klaneth spoke. “It is the slave! Look again!”
Trembling, the officer studied Kenton’s face, lifted the cap veils; swore.
“Gods!” he exclaimed, “but I thought he was—”
“And he is not,” interposed Klaneth smoothly. His eyes gloated over Kenton. He reached down into his belt, drew from it the sword of Nabu.
“Hold!” the officer quietly took it from him. “This man is my prisoner until I deliver him to the king. And till then I keep his sword.”
The feral light in the pupils of the black priest glowed.
“He goes to Nergal’s House,” he rumbled. “Best beware, captain, how you cross Klaneth.”
“Cross or no cross,” replied the officer, “I am the king’s man. His orders I obey. And you know as well as I do that he has commanded all prisoners to be brought before him first—no matter what even high priests may say. Besides,” he added slyly, “there is that matter of the reward. Best to get this capture a matter of record. The king is a just man.”
The black priest stood silent, fingering his mouth. The officer laughed.
“March!” he snapped. “To the temple. If this man escapes—all your lives for his!”
In a triple ring of the soldiers walked Kenton. On one side of him strode the officers; on the other the black priest, gloating gaze never leaving him; Klaneth, licking his merciless lips.
Thus they passed through the wooded park, out into the street and at last through a high archway, and were swallowed up within a gateway of the temple.
CHAPTER 19
The Lord of the Two Deaths
The King of Emakhtila, Lord of the Two Deaths, sat, legs crooked, on a high divan. He was very like Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme, even to that monarch’s rubicund jollity, his apple-round, pippin-red cheeks. Merriment shone in his somewhat watery blue eyes. He wore one loose robe of scarlet. His long, white beard, stained here and there with drops of red and purple and yellow wine, wagged roguishly.
The judgment chamber of the King of Emakhtila was some hundred feet square. His divan rested on a platform five feet high that stretched from side to side like a stage. The chequered floor raised in a sharp concave curve to build it. The curved front was cut through by a broad flight of low wide steps ascending from the lower floor and ending about five feet from the divan of the king.
Two and ten archers in belted kirtles of silver and scarlet stood on the lowest step, shoulder to shoulder, bows at stand, arrows at strings, ready on the instant to be raised to ears and loosed. Four and twenty archers knelt at their feet. Six and thirty shafts of death were leveled at Kenton, black priest and the captain.
Out from each side of the steps and along the curved wall to where it met the sides of the chamber another file of bowmen stretched, scarlet and silver, shoulder to shoulder, arrows alert. The twinkling eyes of the king could see the backs of the heads ranged over the edge of his stage like footlights.
Along the other three walls, shoulder to shoulder, arrows at strings, eyes fixed on the King of Emakhtila, ran an unbroken silver and scarlet frieze of archers. They stood silent; tense as automatons tightly wound and waiting for touch upon some hidden spring.
The chamber was windowless. Pale blue tapestries covered all its walls. A hundred lamps lighted it with still, yellow flames.
Twice a tall man’s height away from the king’s left hand a veiled shape stood, motionless as the bowmen. Even through its thick veils came subtle hints of beauty.
At the same distance from the king’s right hand another veiled shape stood. Nor could its veils check hint of horror seeping forth from what they covered.
One shape set the pulses leaping.
One shape checked them.
On the floor, at the king’s feet, crouched a giant Chinese with a curved and crimson sword.
Close to each end of the divan stood girls, fair and young and naked to their waists. Six to this side—six to that. They held ewers filled with wine. At their feet were great bowls of wine, red and purple and yellow, in larger bowls of snow.
At the right hand of the Lord of the Two Deaths knelt a girl with golden cup on outstretched palms. At his left hand another knelt, a golden flagon on her palms. And the king to drink used equally well his left hand and his right, raising cup or flagon, setting them to his lips, putting them back. Whereupon at once they were refilled.
Through many passages the captain and the black priest had hurried Kenton to this place. And now the king drank deep, set down his cup and clapped his hands.
“The King of Emakhtila judges!” intoned the Chinese, sonorously.
“He judges!” whispered the bowmen ranged along the walls.
Kenton, black priest and captain stepped forward until their breasts touched the foremost arrow points. The king leaned, merry eyes twinkling on Kenton.
“What jest is this, Klaneth?” he cried in a high, thin treble. “Or have the Houses of Bel and Nergal declared war upon each other?”
“They are not at war, lord,” answered Klaneth. “This is the slave for whom I have offered great reward and whom I now claim since I have taken—”
“Since I have taken, Mighty One,” interrupted the captain, kneeling as he spoke. “And so have earned Klaneth’s reward, O Just One!”
“You lie, Klaneth!” chuckled the king. “If you are not at war why have you trussed up—”
“Look again, lord,” interrupted Klaneth. “I do not lie.”
The watery eyes peered closer at Kenton.
“No!” laughed the king. “You are right. He is what the other man would be were he half as much a man. Well well—”
He raised the flagon; before he had half lifted it to his lips he paused and looked into it.
“Half full!” giggled the king. “Only half full!”
He glanced from the flagon to the girl who stood closest to the kneeling girl at his left. His round face beamed on her.
“Insect!” chuckled the king. “You forgot to fill my flagon!”
He raised a finger.
A bow string sang along the left wall, an arrow shrilled. It struck the trembling girl in the shoulder on the right side. She swayed, eyes closed.
“Bad!” the king cried merrily, and again held up a finger.
From the frieze along the right wall another bow string sang; an arrow whittled across the room. The shaft cleft the heart of the first archer. Before his body touched the floor the same bow sang once more.
A second shaft leaped into sight deep within the left side of the wounded girl.
“Good!” laughed the king.
“Our lord has granted death!” chanted the Chinese. “Praise him!”
“Praise him!” echoed the bowmen and the cup maidens.
But Kenton, mad with swift rage at that heartless killing, leaped forward. Instantly the bow strings of the six and thirty archers before him were drawn taut, arrow shafts touched ears. Black priest and captain caught him, threw him down.
The Chinese drew a small hammer and struck the blade of his sword. It rang like a bell. Two slaves came out on the dais and carried the dead girl away. Another girl took her place. The slaves dragged off the dead archer. Another slipped through the curtains and stood where he had been.
“Let him up,” crowed the king—and drained his filled flagon.
“Lord—he is my slave.” All the black priest’s will could not keep the arrogant impatience out of his voice. “He has been brought before you in obedience to your general command. You have seen him. Now I claim my right to take him to his place of punishment.”
“Oh-ho!” the king set down his cup, beamed at Klaneth. “Oh-ho! Sh-so you won’t let him up? And you will take him away? Oh-ho!
“Toe nail of a rotting flea!” he shrilled. “Am I King of Emakhtila or am I not? Answer me!”
From all around the chamber came the sigh of tight drawn bow strings. Every arrow of the silver and scarlet frieze of bowmen was pointed at the black priest’s great b
ody. The captain threw himself down beside Kenton.
“Gods!” muttered that shoulder. “Hell take you and the reward. Why did I ever see you!”
The black priest spoke, voice strangled between rage and fear—
“King of Emakhtila you are!”
He knelt. The king waved his hand. The bow strings dropped loose.
“Stand up!” cried the king. The three arose. The King of Emakhtila shook a finger at Kenton.
“Why were you so angered,” he chuckled, “by my boon of death to those two? Man—how many times, think you, will you beseech death to come, and pray for my swift archers before Klaneth is done with you?”
“It was slaughter,” said Kenton, eyes steady on the watery ones.
“My cup must be kept filled,” answered the king gently. “The girl knew the penalty. She broke my law. She was slain. I am just.”
“Our lord is just!” chanted the Chinese.
“He is just!” echoed the archers and the cup maidens.
“The bowman made her suffer when I meant painless death for her. Therefore he was slain,” said the king. “I am merciful.”
“Our lord is merciful!” chanted the Chinese. “He is merciful!” echoed the bowmen and the cup maidens.
“Death!” the king’s face wrinkled jovially. “Why, man—death is the first of boons. It is the one thing out of which the gods cannot cheat us. It is the one thing that is stronger than the fickleness of the gods. It is the only thing that is man’s own. Above the gods, heedless of the gods, stronger than the gods—since even gods in their due time must die!
“Ah!” sighed the king—and for a fleeting instant all King Cole jocundity was gone. “Ah! There was a poet in Chaldea when I dwelt there—a man who knew death and how to write of it. Maldronah, his name. None here knows him—”
And then softly:
“’Tis better be dead than alive, he said—But best is never to be!”
Kenton listened, interest in this strange personality banishing his anger. He too knew Maldronah of ancient Ur; had run across that very poem from which the king had quoted while going through some of the inscribed clay tablets recovered by Heilprecht in the sands of Nineveh—back in that old life, half forgotten. And involuntarily he spoke the beginning of the last macabresque stanza:
“Life is a game, he said; Its end we know not—nor care, And we yawn ere we come to its end—”
“What!” the king cried. “You know Maldronah! You—”
Old King Cole again, he shook with laughter. “Go on!” he ordered. Kenton felt the bulk of Klaneth beside him tremble with wrath. And Kenton laughed, too—meeting the twinkling eyes of the king; and while the Lord of the Two Deaths beat time with cup and flagon he finished Maldronah’s verse, with its curious jigging lilt entangled in slow measure of marche funerale:
“Yet it pleases to play with the snare, To skirt the pit, and the peril dare, And lightly the gains to spend; There’s a door that has opened, he said, A space where ye may tread— But the things ye have seen and the things ye have done, What are these things when the race is run—
And ye pause at the farthest door? As though they never had been, he said— Utterly passed as the pulse of the dead! Then tread on lightly with nothing to mourn! Shall he who had nothing fear for the score? Ah—better be dead than alive, he said— But best is ne’er to be born!”
Long sat the king in silence. At last he stirred, raised his flagon and beckoned one of the maidens.
“He drinks with me!” he said, pointing to Kenton.
The archers parted; let the cup maiden pass. She stood before Kenton; held the flagon to his lips. He drank deep; lifted head and bowed thanks.
“Klaneth,” said the king, “no man who knows Maldronah of Ur is a slave.”
“Lord,” answered the black priest, stubbornly. “Yet this man is my slave.”
The king again sat silent, drinking now from cup and now from flagon; eyes now on Kenton, now at Klaneth.
“Come here,” he ordered at last—and pointed with one finger at Kenton, with another at the side of the Chinese.
“Lord!” said Klaneth, more uneasily yet as stubbornly. “My slave stays beside me.”
“Does he?” laughed the king. “Ulcer on a gnat’s belly! Does he?”
All around the chamber the bow strings sighed.
“Lord,” panted Klaneth, with bowed head. “He goes to you.”
As he passed him, Kenton heard the black priest’s teeth grate; heard him sob as does a man after a long race. And Kenton, grinning, stepped through the opened space of archers; stood before the king.
“Man who knows Maldronah,” smiled the king. “You wonder how I, alone, have greater power than these priests and all their gods? Well—it is because in all Emakhtila I am the only one who has neither gods nor superstitions. I am the one man who knows there are only three realities. Wine—which up to a certain point makes man see more clearly than the gods. Power—which being combined with man’s cunning makes him superior to the gods. Death—which no god can abolish and which I deal at will.”
“Wine! Power! Death!” chanted the Chinese.
“These priests have many gods—each of them jealous of all the others. Ho! Ho!” laughed the king. “I have no gods. Therefore I am just to all. The just judge must be without prejudice; without belief.”
“Our lord is without prejudice!” chanted the Chinese. “He has no beliefs!” intoned the bowmen. “I am on one side of the scales,” nodded the king. “On the other side are many gods and priests. There are only three things that I am sure are real. Wine, power, death! Those who try to outweigh me have beliefs many times three. Therefore I outweigh them. If there were but one god, one belief opposite me—lo, I would be outweighed! Yea—three to one! That is paradox—also it is truth.”
“The Lord of Emakhtila speaks truth!” whispered the bowmen.
“Better three straight arrows in your quiver than threescore crooked ones. And if there should arise one man in Emakhtila with but one arrow and that arrow straighter than my three—that man would soon rule in my place,” beamed the king.
“Archers—hear ye the king!” chanted the Chinese. “And so,” the king said, briskly, “since all the gods and all the priests are jealous of each other, they make me-who gives not a curse for any god or priest—king of Emakhtila—to keep peace among them and hold them back from destroying each other! And this, since I now have ten bowmen to every one of theirs, and twenty swordsmen to each swordman of the priests, I do very well. Ho! Ho!” laughed the king. “That is power.”
“Our lord has power!” cried the Chinese.
“And having power I can get drunk at will,” chuckled the king.
“Our lord is drunken!” whispered the archers, all around the chamber.
“Drunken or sober—I am King of the Two Deaths!” tittered the ruler of Emakhtila.
“The Two Deaths!” whispered the archers, nodding to each other.
“To you—man who knows Maldronah—I unveil them,” said the king.
“Bowmen at sides and back—bend your heads!” shouted the Chinese. The heads of the archers along three sides of the living frieze dropped immediately upon their breasts.
The veils fell from the shape upon the left hand of the king.
There, looking at Kenton with deep eyes in which were tenderness of the mother, shyness of the maid, passion of the beloved mistress, stood a woman. Her naked body was flawless. In it, harmonies of mother, maid and mistress flowed in one compelling chord. From her breathed all springtides that ever caressed earth. She was the doorway to enchanted worlds, the symbol of everything that life could offer both of beauty and of joy. She was all the sweetnesses of life, its promises, its ecstasies, its lure and its reason. Looking on her Kenton knew that life was something to be held fast. That it was dear and filled with wonders. Exquisite—not to be let go!
And that death was very dreadful!
He had no desire toward her. But she fanned to roaring
flame desire for life in full continuance.
In her right hand she held a strangely shaped instrument, long, with sharp fangs and rows of tearing claws.
“To her,” chuckled the king, “I give only those whom I greatly dislike. She kills them slowly. Looking upon her, they cling to life; fiercely, terribly they cling to it. Each moment of life that she draws from them with those claws and teeth is an eternity through which they battle against death. Slowly she draws them out of life—wailing, clinging to it, turning stubborn faces from death! And now—look!”
The veils fell from the shape at his right hand.
There crouched a black dwarf, misshapen, warped, hideous. He stared at Kenton out of dull eyes that held every sorrow and sadness and disillusionment of life; held all of life’s uselessness, its weariness, its empty labor. And looking at him, Kenton forgot that other shape—knew that life was dreadful, not to be borne.
And that death was the one good thing!
In his right hand the dwarf held a slender sword, rapier thin, needle pointed. Kenton fought increasing desire to hurl himself upon that point—die upon it!
“To him,” laughed the king, “I give those who have greatly pleased me. Swift is their death and a sweet cup to their lips.”
“You there—” the king pointed to the captain who had trapped Kenton. “Not too pleased am I with you for taking this man who knows Maldronah, even if he be Klaneth’s slave. Go up before my left hand death!”
Face bloodless white, the captain marched to the steps; rigid he marched through the archers, marched without pause until he stood before the woman. The Chinese struck his sword. Two slaves entered, heads bent low, carrying a lattice of metal. They stripped the captain of his armor, strapped him naked to the grate. The woman leaned over him, tenderness, love, all life’s promise in her wondrous face. She thrust the fanged instrument against his breast—so lovingly!
From his lips came a shrieking, anguished, despairing; prayers and curses; the wailing of the newly damned.
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 75