Again he saw the white flames within the hearts of those two—untroubled, serene, indifferent to gods or angry goddess! Bending toward each other, unquenchable, immutable, indifferent to wrath of gods or their punishments!
That picture wavered, faded. Now upon the floor of that radiant chamber he saw priest and priestess, Sharane and Klaneth and around them the bodies of many women and men. There was a high altar half hidden by a cloud of sparkling azure mist. Within the mist, upon that altar, a wondrous ship was being built by unseen hands.
And ever as that ship grew Kenton saw, far beyond it as though it were its shadow cast into another dimension, another ship growing; a ship that seemed to build itself out of a turquoise sea in a world of silver clouds! Step by step that shadow ship followed the building of the puppet ship upon the altar.
He knew that the shadow was the real—the toy being shaped upon the altar was the symbol.
Knew, too, that symbol and reality were one; things linked by an ancient wisdom; things created by ancient powers, of which the fate and fortune of one must be the fate and fortune of the other.
Duoform! One a puppet and one real! And each the same!
Now the unseen hands within the mists of azure had finished the ship. They reached down and touched, one by one, the bodies of Ishtar’s priestess and Nergal’s priest, Sharane and Klaneth and all who lay around them. And as they touched, those still forms vanished. The unseen hands lifted and placed, one by one, little puppets on the puppet ship.
Upon the decks of the shadow ship on the turquoise sea in the world of silver clouds bodies lay—one by one they appeared there as the toys were set in place upon the toy ship on the altar!
At last there were no more still forms upon the floor of the council chamber of the gods. The ship was made and manned!
A beam shot out from the radiance that veiled Ishtar and touched the ship’s bow. A tendril of darkness uncoiled from the blackness in which brooded the Lord of the Dead and this darkness touched the ship’s stern. That picture wavered and fled,
There appeared another chamber; small, almost a crypt. In it stood a single altar. Over the altar hung a lamp nimbused by an aureole of azure; and the altar was of lapis lazuli and turquoise and studded with sapphires of clearest blue. And Kenton knew that this was some secret shrine of Nabu, Lord of Wisdom. On the altar rested the ship. As Kenton looked upon it, it was borne to him again that this jeweled toy, a gleaming symbol, was linked inseparably with that other; ship sailing in another space, another dimension; sailing on strange seas in an unknown world—
The ship on which he sailed!
And that as the toy fared, so fared the Ship of Ishtar; and as the Ship of Ishtar fared, so fared the toy; each threatened when one was threatened; sharing each the other’s fate.
That picture faded. He looked upon a walled city out of which towered a high temple, a terraced temple, a ziggurat. A host besieged city; its walls were covered with its defenders. He knew that the city was ancient Uruk and the high temple that in which the ships had been built. And as he looked, the besiegers broke through the walls; overwhelmed the defenders. He had a glimpse of red carnage—that picture fled.
Again he saw the crypt of Nabu. There were two priests there now. The ship rested upon the floor of a lattice of silvery metal. Over the altar hovered a little shining blue cloud. It came to him that the two priests were obeying a voice in that cloud; saving the ship and those who sailed on it from the invaders. They poured over it from huge basins a fine mortar that was like powder of ivory flecked with dust of pearls. It covered and hid the toy. Where the puppet ship had been was now a block of stone. The cloud vanished. Other priests entered; dragged the block out, through corridors and into the court of the temple. There they left it.
Into the court swarmed the victors, looting and slaying. But ever, unheeding, they passed the rough block by.
Now he looked upon another walled city, great and beautiful. He knew it for Babylon in the full moon of its power. Another ziggurat took its place. That melted and Kenton looked upon another secret shrine of Nabu. The block lay within it.
Flickered thereafter before him fleeting pictures of battles and of triumphs; pageant and disasters; quick, broken scenes of temple and city lost and won and lost once more; destroyed only to be built again in greater grandeur—
Then fallen—abandoned by the gods. Then crumbling—abandoned by man; the desert creeping on it; at the last covering it.
Then—forgotten!
There came a whirlpool of images, grey and indistinct in the swiftness of their passing. They steadied. He saw men working in the sands that were Babylon’s shroud. He recognized among them—Forsyth! He saw the block unearthed; borne away by tall Arabs; saw it crated into a primitive cart drawn by patient little rough-coated ponies; watched it tossing in the hold of a ship that sailed a sea he knew; watched it carried into his own house—-He saw himself as he freed the ship! He looked again into the shadowy eyes. “Judge!” sighed the harp strings. “Not yet!” whispered the still voice. Kenton looked again into that immeasurable space wherein he had first seen radiant power and dark. But now he saw within it countless flames like those which had burned in the breasts of Ishtar’s priestess and the Lord of Death’s priest; saw infinity flecked and flaming with them. They burned deep down through the shadows, and by their light up from the darkness came groping multitude upon multitude of other flames that had been shrouded by the darkness. He saw that without those flames the radiance itself would be but a darkness!
He saw the ship as though it floated in that same space. As he gazed a deeper shadow flitted from the soul of the blackness and brooded over it. Instantly something of the soul of the radiance rayed out and met it. They strove, one against the other. The ship was a focus of hatred and of wrath from which, visibly, waves swung out in ever widening circles. As the waves circled outward from the ship the shadow lines that ran from the core of darkness grew darker, thicker, as though they sucked strength from those waves. But under their beat the radiance dulled and the countless flames flickered and swayed, and were troubled.
“Judge!” whispered the cold tones of Nabu. Now Kenton in this dream of his—if dream it was—faced dilemma; hesitated. No trivial matter was it to indict this power—Ishtar, goddess or whatever that power might be in this alien world where, certainly, it was powerful indeed. Besides, had he not prayed to Ishtar and had she not answered his prayer? Yes, but he had prayed to Nabu, too, and Nabu was Lord of Truth—
His thoughts shaped themselves into words of his own tongue, his familiar idioms.
“If I were a god,” he said, simply enough, “and had made things with life, things with lives to live, men and women or whatever they might be, I would not make them imperfect, so that they must, perforce through their imperfections, break my laws. Not if I were all powerful and all wise, as I have gathered gods—and goddesses—are supposed to be. Unless, of course, I had made them only for toys, to play with. And if I found that I had made them imperfect and that therefore they did wrong, I would think that it was I who was responsible for their sinning—since being all powerful and all wise I could have made them perfect but did not. And if I had made them for my toys I surely would not heap upon their heartbreak and misery, pain and sorrow—no punishments, O Ishtar—not if they were toys that could feel these things. For what would they be but puppets dancing through their day as I had fashioned them to do?”
“Of course,” said Kenton naively, and with no ironic intention, “I am no god—and most certainly could not be a goddess—nor until I came into this world have I had any conscious experience with either. Yet, speaking as a man, even if I had punished any one who had broken my laws I would not let my anger run on and hurt any number of people who had nothing whatever to do with the original cause of my anger. Yet that, if what I have just beheld was true, is what this strife for the ship seems to bring about.
“No,” said Kenton, very earnestly, and quite forgetting the vague face
s hovering about him. “I can’t see any justice in the torment of that priest and priestess, and if the struggle for the ship does the damage it appears to, I certainly would stop it if I could. For one thing I would be afraid that the shadow might get too thick some time and put all the little flames out. And for another—if I had spoken a word in anger that made all that misery I wouldn’t let that word be stronger than myself. I wouldn’t as a man. And if I were a god or goddess—very certainly, indeed, I would not!”
There was a silence; then—
“The man has judged!” whispered the still voice.
“He has judged!” the vast ripple of the harp strings was almost as cold as that other. “I will recall my word! Let the strife end!”
The two faces vanished. Kenton raised his head and saw around him the familiar walls of the rosy cabin. Had it been all a dream? Not all—those scenes he had beheld had been too clear cut, too consecutive, too convincing.
Beside him Sharane stirred, turned his face to hers.
“What are you dreaming, Jonkenton?” she asked. “You were murmuring and muttering—strange words that I could not understand.”
He bent and kissed her.
“I greatly fear, heart of mine, that I have offended that goddess of yours,” he said.
“Oh—Jonkenton—but no! How!” Sharane’s eyes were terrified.
“By telling her the truth,” answered Kenton; then unveiled to Sharane all of his vision.
“I forgot she is—a woman!” he ended.
“Oh—but beloved, she is all women!” cried Sharane.
“Well—that makes it all the worse then!” said Kenton, ruefully.
He leaped up; threw his cloak about him and went out to talk to Gigi.
But Sharane sat thinking, long after he had gone, with troubled eyes; at last walked to the empty shrine; threw herself before it, prostrate; praying.
CHAPTER 29
How the Strife Was Ended
“What began on the ship must end on the ship!” said Gigi, nodding bald head wisely when Kenton had told him also of that vision of the two faces. “Nor do I think we shall have long to wait before we see that end.”
“And after?” asked Kenton.
“Who knows?” Gigi shrugged broad shoulders. “No rest for us. Wolf, while Klaneth lives. Nay—I think I know What this darkening of shadows on black deck means. By those shadows Klaneth watches us. They are the thread by which he follows us. Also my skin is sensitive, and it tells me the black priest is not so far away. When he comes—well, we conquer him or he conquers us, that is all. Also, I do not think that you can count on any help from Ishtar. Remember that in your vision she promised only that the strife of the Wrathful One and the Dark One should end. She made no promises, I gather, as to Sharane or you—or the rest of us.”
“That will be well,” said Kenton cheerfully. “As long as I am given chance to stand fairly, face to face with that swine bred from hell swill Klaneth, I am content.”
“But I think you gathered that she was not mightily pleased with what you had to say to her,” grinned Gigi slyly.
“That is no reason for her punishing Sharane,” answered Kenton, harking back to his old thought.
“How else could she punish you?” asked Gigi, maliciously—then suddenly grew serious, all impishness gone. “Nay, Wolf,” he said and laid paw on Kenton’s shoulder; “there is little chance for us. And yet—if all your vision were true, and the little flames you saw were real—what matters it…
“Only,” said Gigi, wistfully, “when those flames that were you and Sharane journey forth into space and another flame comes to you that once was Gigi of Nineveh—will you let it journey with you?”
“Gigi!” there were tears in Kenton’s eyes. “Where ever we go in this place or any other, no matter what may happen—you go with us as long as you will.”
“Good!” muttered Gigi.
Sigurd shouted at the rudder; he pointed over the ship’s bow. To Sharane’s door they sped and with her through the cabin of the maids and out beneath the sickled prow. Across the horizon ran a far flung line of towers and minarets, turrets and spires and steeples, skyscrapers and mosques; a huge chevaux-de-frise. From where they stood, the outlines of this bristling barrier seemed too regular, too smoothly shaped, to be other than the work of man.
Was it another city—the refuge they had sought? A place where they might stay, safe from Klaneth and his pack until they could sally forth to meet that pack and its master on more equal terms?
Yet if a city—what giants were they who had reared it?
The oars dipped faster; the ship sped; closer came the barrier—-It was no city!
Up from the depths of the turquoise sea thrust thousands of rocks. Rocks blue and yellow, rocks striped crimson and vivid malachite; rocks all glowing ochre and rocks steeped in the scarlet of autumn sunsets; a polychrome Venice of a lost people of stone, sculptured by stone Titans. Here a slender minaret arose two hundred feet in air yet hardly more than ten in thickness; here a pyramid as great as Cheops’, its four sides as accurately faced—by thousands, far as eye could reach, the rocks arose in fantasies of multi-colored cone and peak, aiguille and minaret and obelisk, campanile and tower.
Straight up from the depths they lifted, and between them the sea flowed in a maze of channels both narrow and broad; in some of the channels smoothly, in others with swift eddies and whirlpools and racing torrents; and in others the sea lay like placid lakes.
There came another shout from the Viking, urgent, summoning—and with it the clangor of his sword beating upon the shield.
Down upon the ship and little more than a mile away rushed a long line of other ships, a score or more of them both single and double banked—boats of war racing on oars that dipped and rose with swiftness of sword blade stroke. Between them and the Ship of Ishtar drove a lean and black bireme leaping the waves like a wolf.
The pack of Klaneth with the black priest in the lead!
The pack, breaking out of the mists unseen by Sigurd, eyes like the others fast upon that colossal fantasy of stone that seemed to be the end of this strange world!
“In among the rocks!” cried Kenton—“Quick!”
“A trap!” said Sigurd.
“A trap for them as well as us then,” answered Kenton. “At the least, they cannot ring us there with their boats.”
“The only chance!” grunted Gigi.
The slaves bent their backs; through a wide channel between two painted monolithic minarets they flew. Behind them they heard a shouting, a baying as of hungry hounds in sight of a deer.
Now they were within the maze and the rowers must go slowly and the Viking’s rudder-craft was needed indeed, for the currents swung them, gripping at bow and stern, and the sheer rocks menaced. Twisting, turning, on and on they went until the painted decks closed from them sight of the open sea. Yet now, too, Klaneth and his fleet were in the maze. They heard the creak of the oars, the commands of the helmsmen, searching, ferreting them out.
Abruptly as though snapped out, light vanished and darkness fell! Darkness blotted out the channel they were following, blotted out the towering rocks. From the pursuing boats came horn blasts, orders shrill with fear, outcries.
A purplish glow sprang up within the blackness.
“Nergal!” whispered Sharane. “Nergal comes!”
The whole of the black deck was blotted out as though an inky cloud had dropped upon it and out of that cloud leaped Sigurd and ran to where the others stood.
And now from every quarter of the horizon whirled pillars of darkness. Their feet were in the sullen sea, their heads lost in the pall that spread above. Ahead of them drove a charnel odor, the breath of death.
“Nergal in all his might!” shuddered Sharane.
“But Ishtar—Ishtar promised the strife should end!” groaned Kenton.
“But she did not say how it would end!” wailed Sharane. “And, O Beloved—Ishtar comes no more to me—and all my power is g
one!”
“Ishtar! Ishtar!” she cried—and caught Kenton in her arms. “Mother—my life for this man’s! My soul for his! Mother Ishtar—!”
The van of the whirling pillars was close; the circle between them and the ship swiftly narrowing. On the echo of Sharane’s cry a blinding light, pearl white and pearl rose flashed down upon them—on Sharane, the three men and the warrior maids crouched white-faced at Sharane’s feet.
High over their heads, thrice the height of the mast, a great globe of moon fire hung poised, effulgent, serene, and brighter, far brighter than a score of moons at full. From its periphery poured rays, enclosing the whole fore part of the ship as in a tent of light; a radiance that ringed them and in whose center they stood as though prisoned in a hollow cone whose top was the moon globe.
Around that radiant tent the pillared darknesses, churned, pressing for entrance; finding none.
Faint at first and far away began a keen-edged shrieking; louder it grew as though from racing hordes fresh loosed from Abaddon. The purple darkness lightened, turned to a lurid violet. It was pricked by countless points of crimson fire.
And now the myriads of fiery points were at the ship; striking like little snakes of fire at globe and sides of radiant tent, shooting at them like arrow heads of fire, thrusting like little lance tips of fire.
There was the whir and rustle of thousands of wings. Around calm globe and cone of light whirled doves of Ishtar in thousands. And as the points of fire struck and stabbed the doves darted to meet them. Like little living shields of shining silver they caught the thrusts of the fiery javelins upon their breasts.
Where were the doves coming from? Cloud upon cloud of them poured from above the moon orb yet, for each whose ashes were whirled away a score rushed in to meet the striking fires, and all the air was palpitant with the tumult of their wings.
The shrieking raised itself a full octave. The inky cloud that had leaped upon the black deck shot up towering, gigantic, into the heavens. The countless points of fire rushed together, coalesced. They became a crimson scimitar of fire that struck down upon shining orb and ship!
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 82