by Don Wilcox
Often Veeva’s eyes would sparkle squarely at me, and once she quickly glanced at her hand as if she hadn’t forgotten that I had tried to kiss it.
The Firemakers were full of noisy talk. Much of it was in our own language. Gradually we began to gather the threads of superstition which prevailed.
These people had believed for many, many years that some strange dangers awaited them. I tried to gauge the time which their fear had encompassed. This was impossible. When I talked in terms of Viking days, I learned that such times were recent to them.
These superstitions were a part of the fabric of their lives. It is hard to believe that people could believe in mortal fear year after year. Especially when no actual dangers beset them. But this fear had become engrained in their whole routine of life.
Where had it come from? How could it be dispelled?
Professor Peterson picked up a clue.
“What did you say,” he asked, “about the coming of darkness?”
The Firemaker replied. “The darkness is a proof that our enemy is waiting,” he said. “We must stay underground until all darkness is banished.”
The professor gave me a funny look.
This was incomprehensible. After all, there are no people in the world who are not accustomed to a certain regularity of darkness and light. Whether it is made of simple day and night, twelve hours each, as is the case on all continents toward the equator, or whether it is made of six months light or six months darkness as is the case on either pole, the inevitable succession of these phenomena is universal.
The professor checked this point with a few telling questions. Yes, this was their belief that the coming of the arctic night was in itself a proof that the enemies were still at hand waiting to demolish them.
Peterson whispered to me, “Do you suppose there are any books or records in this world? Can we trace it down, Jim? This freak notion has had a beginning. They haven’t made it out of thin air.”
“It’s amazing,” I admitted, growing more curious every minute. “These people seem to have lived here for centuries.”
Now it came our time to offer our bows of obeisance, and I felt extremely awkward.
Peterson set the pace by bowing to the floor. He actually placed his face against the surface of stone. There he waited until Veeva sang her little song with the, jumbled words.
The wholehearted manner in which he carried out his gesture of respect was a lesson to me. I felt that Shorty and I were a pair of sentimental boobs, hopelessly in love, but missing all the tricks that really counted with a queen.
But Professor Peterson had been a student; he knew the ways of many races and tribes, and his knowledge was serving him in good stead.
Now Veeva invited us to speak our piece to the Firemakers if there was anything we wanted to say. Peterson responded with the utmost of suavity.
“I’m pleased with this hospitality. I bring you greetings from the world above. With your permission I would like to convey our greetings directly to the King himself.”
This speech pleased the Firemakers, and the tallest of them arose to make a dignified response.
“After the feast is finished,” he said, “you will be conducted into the presence of the King. In fact, the King will desire to pronounce his judgment upon the three of you.”
This ominous forecast gave my heart a sudden jump. I said to myself, for once Professor Peterson overdid it. If he hadn’t asked to see the king, we might have lived on long enough to figure out a loophole in this prison, and there would have been time for a break. But no, Peterson wanted his execution served up right away, and so we were off to see the king.
CHAPTER XIX
A Rebel Returns
Our procession was interrupted near a stairway by an excited clamor of voices.
A swarm of boys came down, rolling, tumbling, fighting, yelling. They had a prisoner—Gandl.
They forced him across the room toward us. Some guards shouted orders, and it was apparent that the Firemakers were amazed. Our reception had been mild compared to this.
Gandl broke away. The boys chased after him. They caught him and dragged him down. They were regular little savage demons. They fought like a pack of wolves.
Gandl, for all his strength, was no match for them.
I didn’t know what it was all about but I couldn’t see Gandl whipped. When the fight tumbled around in our direction I couldn’t restrain myself. I jumped right into the fray and started jerking the boys off Gandl’s back. There were twenty or more of them. It was a regular free-for-all. Peterson and Shorty both got into it. I heard Shorty yell for help and discovered that he was being tossed about by one small group of savages who threatened to tear him apart.
The guards pitched in too, before the fight was over. They had stone weapons—long tomahawk affairs with bone handles and stone mallets. It would have been unwise to resist.
Gandl had a tough fighting face, but there was always that mysterious something in his eyes, keen and intelligent. They dragged him to a table and there we all gathered around for the strangest conference I have ever attended.
At last we began to discover what Gandl’s place was in all this affair. He was a runaway. He was a rebel. He was a fighter and a doubter. In every way he was a thorn in the flesh of these Firemakers.
Their questions to him brought out his story of runaway experiences. He had left for the first time five years ago. That was after he had talked with Lord Lorruth. Gandl’s passion for exploring the outside world had run away with him. He had wandered southward.
From Greenland he had found a passage to the United States and now after all these years of knocking around the world he was returning to his native land of ice.
But as we sailors knew, he had not walked in expecting a glorious welcome. He had hung back to hide, to watch and listen from a distance, realizing it would be unsafe to show his face. For he had violated the traditions of loyalty and had deserted an important office.
This came out in our present conference. One of the Firemakers addressed him as “Gandl, the King’s Advisor.” But the tallest Firemaker sharply cancelled the title.
“Gandl is no longer the King’s Advisor. He has renounced his right to that title.”
“I had a more important service to perform,” said Gandl.
“No service,” said the Firemaker, “could be any more important than being the Advisor to the King. You have betrayed our whole nation. You have brought shame upon us by doubting our age-old beliefs.”
“I not only doubt them,” said Gandl stoutly, “but I bring back proofs that they are false.”
This blasphemy so horrified the Firemakers and various officers that sat with us, I thought murder would be on the spot. I looked to Veeva, but apparently it was not her turn to speak. She tossed her head and walked away, leaving the situation in the hands of these stony elders.
For a minute the only words were the fearful whispers which passed among the members of the council. The tallest Firemaker glared at Gandl and tried to look him down. The tall gaunt man’s fingers were trembling. His lips were white. With an attitude of tremendous power, he placed his great arms at the side of the table and shouted.
“Gandl! I defy you to say one more word that would weaken our state against the enemies. Have they converted you? Have they filled your blood with poison? Have they shouted threats in your ears that you should come back to sell us into their hands?”
“There is no enemy,” Gandl retorted in a voice as cold as ice. He leaned across the table to return the Firemaker’s fierce stare. He beat his fists. He shouted, “You’re fools, living down here in this frozen hell. You don’t know what world lies beyond because you’re afraid. There is no enemy! There has been no enemy for countless centuries.”
“It’s a lie!” the tall Firemaker screamed.
“It’s the truth.” Gandl’s dark eyes blazed hot fire. “I challenge you to follow me, to go over the path where I have gone, to see the free people�
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The tall Firemaker couldn’t stand it.
In one furious leap he bounded to the stone table. A second leap and he threw his whole weight against Gandl. The two of them went rolling on the floor, snarling like a pair of bloodthirsty beasts. They tore at each other’s throats. They cursed and snarled and fought with unabated fury. The tall Firemaker’s fingernails slashed long red lines down Gandl’s arm.
The other Firemakers gathered in upon them closely, eagerly. They were sure this would be the end of Gandl. But suddenly a shrill cry came from the lips of Veeva.
“Gee-olo-fro-goff!”
It was a language that I didn’t understand—but a language so forceful that her utterance sent chills leaping through my spine.
Everyone turned. Veeva, the Queen, was standing beside her polar tiger. The big jaws of the beast were wide open, the teeth gleaming. Instantly, the conflict came to a dead stop.
The tall Firemaker drew himself up to full height and began to back away. The other Firemakers grouped around him and the boy servants lined up on either side of them.
The action had stopped, but not the emotional tension. We were lined up now like two armies. The Firemakers were fighting to hang on to their age-old traditions but Gandl had come home filled with new knowledge. His very eyes blazed treason.
This was all wrong—this life of theirs—and Gandl had come to tell them so. Naturally the professor and Shorty and I were with him one hundred percent. I only wish that Steve and Lord Lorruth had been with us—but they had evidently gone their own way hours ago.
Here between the two warring camps stood Veeva herself, with one arm around the throat of the ferocious white beast. She was the balance of power. If she favored one side more than the other she concealed it. And now as so often before she applied her most potent weapon. She laughed.
No one else could laugh. The rest of us were too weak, too much partisans of this struggle. Her laughter was her power and she made us feel ridiculous.
Then suddenly she whipped out a brisk speech, aimed squarely at the Firemakers.
“You clumsy polar bears. Are you trying to amuse me with your wrestling match?” She ruffled the tiger’s ears. “On my left I have Whitey. On my right I have my sword. I promise death to the first man who threatens Gandl without my permission.”
No one was quicker to pretend recovery than the tall Firemaker. He and the other dignitaries bowed low and, assured the queen that they were her most humble and loyal of servants. What would she command?
“Sit down. Place yourselves at the table and listen to me.”
They obeyed.
She told them that they must listen to Gandl’s report. But they would not have the privilege of deciding his fate until the King himself had been consuIted.
The tall Firemaker answered with a slight tone of sarcasm.
“Do you intend to wait until the King has awakened?”
“You know the answer to that one,” said Veeva sharply. “When have we ever waited for the King to awaken before we consult him on matters of importance?”
“But you know the rules. Only the King’s Advisor can consult him through a mingling of their dreams.”
There was considerable discussion about this point. I gathered that the King had been sleeping for a very long time. It seemed, however, that these people believed his opinions could be learned by his Advisor, even though both were sleeping. That is, the King’s Advisor held his special office by virtue of being able to enter into the King’s own dreams. Then, upon awakening the Advisor could tell the Firemakers what the sleeping King wished.
“But how can we enter into his dream when we have no loyal Advisor?” the Firemakers protested. “Gandl has turned traitor. He is no longer qualified to receive the King’s dream.”
But Veeva quickly topped this argument. “Whether he is a traitor or not is for the King to decide. Have you Firemakers lost your power? Can’t you still whisper your questions to the King as you have always done?”
All the Firemakers nodded in the affirmative. This was their special power.
“Very well,” said Veeva. “You will hold a whispering ceremony at once. You will tell the King that we are questioning the loyalty of his Advisor.”
“And how will we know his answer?”
“You will tell him,” said Veeva, “that Gandl is ready to lie down on the stone near his bed, to dream with him. If Gandl is no longer loyal, the King is to strike him dead.”
CHAPTER XX
The King’s Prolonged Nap
Before the Firemakers could recover their tongues, Veeva pressed on with her swift challenge.
“Do you understand me?” she snapped. “If the King does not strike Gandl dead that proves he is loyal. Accordingly, we may believe the dream which Gandl receives.”
I saw a faint smile on Professor Peterson’s lips. It was indeed a most intriguing plan. I didn’t know whether Veeva had conceived it in innocence or whether she realized her stroke of cleverness. I wondered—
But my own thoughts became a turmoil. Up to this point I had assumed that all this talk of dreams was someone’s fight of fancy. But when I stopped to take stock of the strange things that had already occurred I dared not be too skeptical. My complacency gave way to fear. Perhaps this agreement would spell tragedy for Gandl.
Might the King actually have the power to deal death even while he was sleeping? So far as I knew he might.
We were taken back to our cells. There was a long period of waiting. We saw only the guards for many hours. Work had ceased. The chattering boys had taken themselves to their separate homes, which consisted of branches of the cavern off the main stream.
Professor Peterson was highly excited.. He kept talking in terms of faraway races and cultures. He was very curious about these superstitions, and wondered if they, like many of the artifacts of this region, were related to those of the early European cavemen.
He compared their tools, their weapons, and their art, and declared these people must have a definite kinship with the Cro-Magnon cultures of a few thousand years ago.
Now I was impatient with Peterson. I wanted to get out. I felt sure that Steve had escaped or would, soon.
But could I get Professor Peterson to help us lay a plan for escape? It was next to impossible. You would think he was a treasure hunter who bad already come into his caveful of precious gems, from the way he was talking.
“Those dots, along the wall—did you notice them, Jim?” he asked.
“Fancy ornaments, all right,” I said, “but how does that help us get away?”
“Those dots came to an end right there in the middle of the Red Room,” Shorty recalled.
“But why should they? Why didn’t the artist carry them on along the whole wall? There must be some reason. And their stone dishes. Have you studied, them carefully, Jim? I never saw any like them outside a museum. Once when I was in Heidelberg looking over the old .Cro-Magnon relics—”
Shorty broke in with a troublesome topic that had been bothering me all along.
“This business of the King that don’t do nothing but sleep—I don’t get it. What makes him sleep so much?”
“I don’t know,” said Peterson. “That’s another thing I’d like to find out before we leave.”
“What gets me,” said Shorty, “is that Veeva is married to such a lazy goof. You’d think a girl like her wouldn’t stand for it.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Peterson.
Shorty pursued this point. “Gosh, just think of it. Here she’s been all gone all these weeks and when she comes back and they have a celebration for her and everything what does the King do? He keeps right on sleeping.”
The professor said, “If you boys weren’t in such a hurry to get away, we might pick up some of the most colorful ethnological data ever discovered. Don’t you see what we have here—a rich vein of primitive culture. Somehow it has escaped the erosions of time. The modern age hasn’t touched it. It’s pure and una
dulterated and beautiful in its simplicity. It may hold for science the answer to thousands of mysteries.”
Shortly blinked his bugging eyes. “Could you say that over?”
“I mean,” said Peterson, “that, if we learned about these ceremonies, we might go back to the big universities of Europe and America. They would like to know about these things. This ritual of dreams is the most innocent artifice I’ve ever run across.”
“The thing that’s got me going round and round,” I said, “is their talk about time. You’d think that they’d lived here for ages.”
“Perhaps they have.”
“But these folks haven’t. You know this girl Veeva can’t be more than twenty or twenty-two years old.”
“My guess is eighteen,” said Shorty.
“Anyway,” I persisted, “she talks like she’d lived a thousand years.”
There was a long silence.
“I wonder where Steve and Lord Lorruth are?” Shorty murmured drowsily.
“Under a mound of ice somewhere, frozen to death,” I offered out of a growing mental gloom.
“I wonder if Lady Lucille is plumb crazy for keeps.”
“She’s probably chasing the Frabbel brothers with a knife.”
“It’d serve ‘em right,” Shorty grunted. “I wonder . . . I wonder if the King and Veeva were happy together before he went to sleep . . . I wonder if he could ride a trick mule.”
“It’s a curious pattern,” Professor Peterson resumed presently, as if he had wakened up the middle of a half-completed lecture, “but as you gentlemen doubtless know, primitive people are the most frightened people in the world. They live by their fears. They build up their whole religion over some peculiar obsession. The slightest incident may be magnified into a powerful taboo. And it’s happened here undoubtedly.”
“You mean their fear of enemy?” I asked.
“That’s it,” said Peterson. “Somehow they have associated the six month darkness with the approaching of dangers. It may have started ages ago but now look what a silly belief they are nurturing. Each time the year’s sunlight disappears they insist that the enemy is again upon them. They are waiting for the time that a permanent light will come.”