“And he passes!
“For lo! Since ever man was, the altars of Ninib have been fed with the fruits of man’s desire!”
Upon the fourth stairway he set his feet; ascended steps that ran from the vermilion of licking flame to the clear serene blue of untroubled skies, stood within a chamber all filled with calm, azure light. Closer now seemed the voice.
“The House of Nabu! Lord of Wisdom! Bearer of the Staff! Mighty One of the Waters! Lord of the Fields Who Openeth up the Subterranean Streams! The Proclaimer! He who Openeth the Ears of Understanding! Whose Color is Blue and Whose House is the Fifth of the Zones!
“The altars of Nabu are of blue sapphire and of emerald and from them shine clear amethysts! The flames that burn on the altars of Nabu are blue fires in whose light only the truth has shadow! And the flames of Nabu are cold flames nor is there any scent over his altars! He passes by the altars of sapphire and of emerald and their cold fires! He passes the fishes of Nabu which have women’s breasts but silent mouths! He passes the seeing eyes of Nabu which look forth from behind his altars and he touches not the staff of Nabu which holdeth up with wisdom the feet!
“Yea—he passes!
“For lo!—when did Wisdom stand before man’s desire!”
Up from the blue of Nabu’s House went the priest, and behind him on a stairway that merged from sapphire into rosy pearl and ivory climbed Kenton. Little, caressing tendrils of incense reached out to him as he went and all about him beat little languorous, linked notes of amorous sound; coaxing, calling, infinitely alluring, perilously sweet. Slowly, slowly Kenton followed him, listening to the voice, yet half heeding it, half forgetful of his quest, struggling with a vast desire to heed the calling, linked and amorous music; surrender to the spirit of this ensorcelled chamber—go no further—forget—Sharane!
“The House of Ishtar!” came the voice. “Mother of the Gods and of Men! The Great Goddess! Lady of the Morning and of the Evening! Full Bosomed! The Producer! She who Hearkeneth to Petition! The Mighty Weapon of the Gods! She who Slays and She Who Creates Love! Whose Color is Rose—pearl. And the House of Ishtar is the Sixth of the Zones!
“He passes through the House of Ishtar! Of white marble and of rose coral are her altars and the white marble is streaked with blue like a woman’s breast! Upon her altars burn ever myrrh and frankincense, attar and ambergris! And the altars of Ishtar are set with pearls both white and rose, with hyacinths and with turquoise and with beryls!
“He goes by the altars of Ishtar, and, like the pink palms of maidens desirous, the rose wreaths of the incense steal toward him. The white doves of Ishtar beat their wings about his eyes! He hears the sound of the meeting of lips, the throbbing of hearts, the sighs of women, and the tread of white feet!
“Yet he passes!
“For lo! Whenever did Love stand before man’s desire!”
From that chamber of amorous witcheries the stairway climbed, reluctant; shifting from its rosy pearl to flaming, flashing gold. And scaling it he stood within another vast place radiant as though it were the heart of the sun. Faster and faster the priest of Bel moved onward as though here all his terrors were concentrated, were crowding upon his hurrying heels!
“The House of Bel!” Rang the voice. “Merodach! Ruler of the Four Regions, Lord of the Lands! Child of the Day! Bull Necked! Elephant Thewed! Mighty One! Conqueror of Tiamat! Lord of the Igigi! King of Heavens and Earth! Bringer of Things to Completeness. Lover of Ishtar.
“Bel-Merodach, Whose House is the Seventh of the Zones, and Whose Color is Golden! Swiftly he passes through the House of Bel!
“The altars of Bel are of gold and rayed like the sun! On them burn the golden fires of the summer lightnings and the smoke of the incense hangs over them like the clouds of the thunderstorm! The Kerubs whose bodies are lions and whose heads are eagle heads, and the Kerubs whose bodies are bulls and whose heads are the heads of men guard the golden altars of Bel, and both are winged with mighty wings! And the altars of Bel are reared upon thews of elephants and are held upon the necks of buijs and the paws of lions!
“He goes by them! He sees the fires of the lightnings sink and the altar shake! In his ears is the sound of worlds crushed by the fist of Bel; of worlds breaking beneath the smiting of Bel!
“Yet he passes!
“For lo! Not even the Might of God may crush the desire of man!”
The voice ceased, it seemed to retreat to those far regions whence it had come. In its withdrawal Kenton sensed finality; knew it would sound no more for him there; that now he was thrown on his own wit and strength; must captain his own way henceforward.
Out from one side of the House of Bel jutted a squared buttress, perpendicular, fifty feet or more wide. It thrust itself into this temple within a temple like the gigantic pier of a bridge. Its top was hidden.
Down its smooth facade darted a broad and angled streak of gold that Kenton for an instant took to be a colossal ornament, a symboling of the darting lightning bolt of Bel. Closer he came to it, following the priest. And now he saw that the golden streak was no ornament. It was a stairway, fashioned to represent the leaping levin but—a stairway. A stepped stairway of sharply angled flights that, clinging to the mighty buttress wall, climbed from the floor of the House of Bel up to—what?
At the foot the priest of Bel faltered; for the first time he looked behind him; seemed half moved to retreat. Then with the same despairing gesture of defiance with which he had turned from the altar, he began to creep cautiously, silently up the angled stairs.
And Kenton, waiting again, until he was but a shadow in the shining mists, followed.
CHAPTER 25
In the Bower of Bel
The tempest had struck. Kenton, climbing, heard thunderings like the clashing of armied shields; clanging of countless cymbals, tintamarre of millions of gongs of brass. Ever louder grew the clangor as he ascended; with it mingled now the diapason of mighty winds, staccato of cataracts of rain.
The stairway climbed the sheer wall of the buttress as a vine a tower. It was not wide—three men might march abreast up it; no more. Up it went, dizzily. Five sharp-angled flights of forty steps, four lesser-angled flights of fifteen steps he trod before he reached its top. Guarding the outer edge was only a thick rope of twisted gold supported by pillars five feet apart.
So high was it that when Kenton neared its end and looked down he saw Bel’s house only as a place of golden mists—as though he looked from some high mountain ledge upon a valley whose cloudy coverlet had just been touched by rays of morning sun.
The clinging stairway’s last step was a slab some ten feet long and six wide. Upon it a doorway opened—a narrow arched portal barely wide enough for two men to pass within it side by side. The doorway looked out, over the little platform, into the misty space of the inner temple.
The hidden chamber into which it led rested upon the head of the gigantic buttress.
One man might hold that stair end against hundreds. The doorway was closed by a single fold of golden curtains as heavy and metallic as those which had covered the portal of the Moon God’s Silver House. Involuntarily he shrank back from parting them—remembering what the parting of those argent hangings had revealed to him.
He mastered that fear; drew a corner of them aside.
He looked into a quadrangular chamber, perhaps thirty feet square, filled with the dancing peacock plumes of the lightnings. He knew it for his goal—Bel’s place of pleasance where Kenton’s love waited, fettered by dream.
He glimpsed the priest crouched against the further wall, rapt upon a white veiled woman standing, arms stretched wide, beside a deep window close to the chamber’s right hand corner. The window was closed by one wide, clear crystal pane on which the rain beat and the wind lashed. With thousands of brushes dipped in little irised flame the lightnings limned the loves of Bel broidered on hangings on the walls.
In the chamber were a table and two stools of gold; a massive, ivoried wooded couch.
Beside the couch was a wide bellied brazier and a censer shaped like a great hour glass. From the brazier arose a tall yellow flame. Upon the table were small cakes, saffron colored, in plates of yellow amber and golden flagons filled with wine. Around the walls were little lamps and under each lamp a ewer filled with fragrant oil for their filling.
Kenton waited, motionless. Danger was gathering below him like a storm cloud with Klaneth stirring it in wizard’s caldron. Perforce he waited, knowing that he must fathom this dream of Sharane’s—must measure the fantasy in which she moved, mind asleep, before he could awaken her. The blue priest had so told him.
To him came her voice:
“Who has seen the beatings of his wings? Who has heard the tramplings of his feet like the sound of many chariots setting forth for battle? What woman has looked into the brightness of his eyes?”
There was a searing flash, a clashing of thunder—within the chamber itself it seemed. When his own sight had cleared he saw Sharane, hands over eyes, groping from the window.
And in front of the window stood a shape, looming gigantic against the nickering radiance, and helmed and bucklered all in blazing gold—a god-like shape!
Bel-Merodach himself who had leaped there from his steeds of storm and still streaming with his lightnings!
So Kenton for one awed instant thought—then knew it to be the Priest of Bel in the stolen garments of his god.
The white figure, that was Sharane, slowly drew hands from eyes; as slowly let them fall, eyes upon that shining form. Half she dropped to her knees, then raised herself proudly; she searched the partly hidden face with her wide, green dreaming eyes.
“Bel!” she whispered, and again: “Lord Bel!”
The priest spoke: “O beautiful one—for whom await you?”
She answered: “For whom but thee, Lord of the Lightnings!”
“But why await you—me?” the priest asked, nor took step toward her. Kenton, poised to leap and strike, drew back at the question. What was in the mind of the Priest of Bel that he thus temporized?
Sharane spoke, perplexed, half-shamed:
“This is thy house, Bel. Should there not be a woman here to await thee? I—I am a king’s daughter. And I have long awaited thee!”
The priest said: “You are fair!” His eyes burned upon her—“Yes—many men must have found you fair. Yet I—am a god!”
“I was fairest among the princesses of Babylon. Who but the fairest should wait for thee in thy house? I am fairest of all—” So Sharane, all tranced passion.
Again the priest spoke:
“Princess, how has it been with those men who thought you fair? Say—did not your beauty slay them like swift, sweet poison?”
“Have I thought of men?” she asked, tremulously.
He answered, sternly. “Yet many men must have thought of you—king’s daughter. And poison, be it swift and sweet, must still bear pain. I am—a god! Yet I know that!”
There was a silence; abruptly he asked: “How have you awaited me?”
She said: “I have kept the lamps filled with oil; I have prepared cakes for thee and set out the wine. I have been handmaiden to thee.”
The priest said: “Many women have done all this—for men, king’s daughter—I am a god!”
She murmured: “I am most beautiful. The princes and the kings have desired me. See—O Great One!”
The irised lightnings caressed the silver wonder of her body, hardly hidden in the nets of her red gold hair unbound and fallen free.
The priest leaped from the window. Kenton, mad with jealousy that another should behold that white beauty, darted through the curtains to strike him down. Halfway he stopped short, understanding, even pity for the priest of Bel holding him back.
For the priest’s soul stood forth naked before his inner sight—and that soul was even as his own would have been he knew, had he been priest and the priest been Kenton.
“No!” cried Bel’s priest, and tore the golden helm of his god from his head, hurled sword away, ripped off buckler and cloak—
“No! Not one kiss for Bel! Not one heart beat for Bel!”
“What—shall I pander for Bel? No! It is the man you shall kiss—I! It is a man’s heart that shall beat against yours—mine! I—I! No god shall have you.”
He caught her in his arms, set burning lips to hers.
Kenton was upon him.
He thrust an arm under the priest’s chin; bent back the head until the neck cracked. The priest’s eyes glared up into his; his hands left Sharane and battered up at Kenton’s face; he twisted to break the latter’s grip. Then his body became limp; awe and terror visibly swept away his blind rage. For now the priest’s consciousness had taken in Kenton’s face—saw it as his own!
His own face was looking down upon him and promising him—death!
The god he had defied, betrayed—had struck! Kenton read his thoughts as accurately as though they had been spoken. He shifted grip, half lifted, half swung the priest high above the floor and hurled him against a wall. He struck; crashed down; lay there twitching.
Sharane crouched—veils caught up, held fast to her by rigid hands—on the edge of the ivoried couch. She stared at him, piteously; her wide eyes clung to his, bewildered; deep within her he sensed grapple of awakening will against the webs of dream.
One great throb of love and pity for her pulsed through him; in it no passion; to him at that moment she was no more than child, bewildered, forsaken, piteous.
“Sharane!” he whispered, and took her in his arms. “Sharane—beloved! Beloved—awaken!”
He kissed her on the cold lips, the frightened eyes.
“Kenton!” she murmured. “Kenton!”—and then so low he could barely hear—“Ah yes—I remember—you were lord of me—ages—ages—ago!”
“Wake, Sharane!” cried Kenton, and again his lips met and clung to hers. And now her lips warmed and clung to his!
“Kenton!” she whispered. “Dear lord—of me!”
She drew back, thrust into his arms little fingers that clutched like ten slow closing fingers of steel; in her eyes he saw the dream breaking as break the last storm clouds before the sun; in her eyes the dream lightened and darkened; lightened—became but cloudy, racing wisps.
“Beloved!” cried Sharane, and all awake, freed from all dream, threw arms around his neck, pressed lips all alive to his: “Beloved one! Kenton!”
“Sharane! Sharane!” he whispered, the veils of her hair covering him as she drew his face to her cheeks, her throat, her breast.
“Oh, where have you been, Kenton?” she sobbed. “What have they done to me? And where is the ship—and where have they taken me? Yet—what does it matter since you are with me!”
“Sharane! Sharane! Beloved!” was all he could say, over and over again, his mouth on hers.
Hands gripped his throat, strong hands, shutting off his breath. Choking, he glared into the mad eyes of the Priest of Bel. Broken, Kenton had thought him—and broken he had not been!
He threw right leg behind the priest’s; hurled himself back against the priest with all his strength. The priest fell, dragging Kenton with him. His hands relaxed just enough to let Kenton thrust one of his own between the strangling fingers and his throat. Like a snake the priest slid from under him, threw him aside, sprang to his feet. Quick as he, Kenton leaped up. Before he could draw sword the Priest of Bel was upon him again, one arm around him prisoning his right arm, the other with the elbow fending off Kenton’s left arm and tearing at his throat.
Far below, through the drumming of the blood in his ears, Kenton heard the faint throb of another drum, awakening, summoning, menacing—as though it had been a beat of the ziggurat’s own heart, alarmed and angry!
And far below Gigi, swinging with long apelike arms from the grapnel he had cast over the outer stairway’s edge, hears it, too; swarms with frantic speed up the rope, and with the same tremendous speed follow him first Zubran and close behind him the Viking.
“Alarm!” mutters Sigurd, and draws them under the protection of the skirting wall that they may hear him. “Pray Thor that the sentinels have not heard! Swift now!”
Hugging the wall, the three climb up and around the silver terrace of Sin, the Moon God. The lightnings have almost ceased, but the rain sweeps down in stinging sheets and the winds roar. The stairway is a rushing torrent half knee deep. Blackness of the great storms shrouds them.
Breasting wind and rain, stemming the torrent, they climb—the three.
About Bel’s high bower reeled Kenton and the priest, locked tight in each other’s arms, each struggling to break the other’s hold. Around them circled Sharane, the priest’s stolen sword in hand, panting, seeking opening to strike; finding none, so close were the two locked, so swiftly did back of priest, back of lover swirl before her.
“Shalamu! Shalamu!” the dancer of Bel stood at the golden curtains—whipped up through the terrors of the secret shrines by love, remorse, despair! white-faced, trembling, she clung to those curtains.
“Shalamu!” shrilled the dancer. “They come for you! The Priest of Nergal leads.”
The priest’s back was toward her, Kenton facing her. The priest’s head was bent forward, straining to sink teeth in his neck, tear out the arteries; deaf; blind to all but the lust to kill, his ears were closed to Narada.
And Narada, seeing Kenton’s face in the fitful light of the brazier, thought it that of the man she loved.
Before Sharane could move she had sped across the room.
She drove her dagger to the hilt in the back of the Priest of Bel!
Huddled for shelter in an alcove cut for them in the ziggurat’s wall, the sentinels of the silver zone feel arms thrust out of the storm. Two fall with necks snapped by Gigi’s talons, two fall under swift thrusts of Sigurd’s sword, two drop beneath the scimitar of the Persian, in that niche now lie only six dead men.
“Swift! Swift!” Sigurd leads the way past the silver zone. They round the orange zone of Shamash the Sun God.
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 79