by Don Wilcox
The friendly Firemaker added in an impressive voice, “Of course we will believe him. We have no other choice. Listen! I can almost hear the King whispering to him myself.”
“Yes, O King!” Gandl murmured softly. “I will tell them that you have performed your last acts of service. . .. You have killed a Firemaker who would have refused to believe . . . Yes, I understand. Your service is done. You are destroying yourself . . . Farewell, O King!”
I waited until the murdered body was discovered, to make sure the circumstantial evidence was accepted. This, I knew, would be the supreme test of the Firemakers’ faith in their own superstitions.
They were horrified, shocked; but unsuspecting.
I was satisfied. The evidence was scanty, and details couldn’t be observed under the dim light. But Gandl, still lost in his dreamy trance, was behaving so perfectly that the observers were forced to listen to him. They were convinced that he was echoing the words of the King.
But now the King was only a scattered pile of bones.
No wonder, then, that Gandl kept calling for the King to come back and tell him more.
The alarming presence of the murdered Firemaker served to reinforce their superstitions rather than shake them.
“That’s what comes of doubting,” whispered the friendliest of the Firemakers, and the others listened to him respectfully. “This man, our Firemaker brother, remained here intending to supervise the conference of dreams. His doubt of Gandl, the Rebel, was likewise a doubt of the King. In fact, he hoped to discredit Gandl’s report. And so—the King has spoken with the dagger.”
There were murmurs of approval. A spell of awe held the group in a frigid grip. Any shaky faiths became solid on the spot.
And there I had my answer. Were the Firemakers sincere in their belief that this heap of dry bones held power over life and death? Indeed they were, if the King was in a mood to stab them for insincerity.
The bony hand still clung to the dagger, and several Firemakers kept watching for fear it might move.
Gradually these listeners pieced together the low mumblings of Gandl, and they realized what a tremendous event had taken place. The King had performed his last official act and had gone into a final death voluntarily.
CHAPTER XXIII
The Queen is Interrupted
“Our poor bereaved Queen!” the Firemakers began to whisper. “How can she endure this great sorrow?”
That was when I discreetly removed myself from the scene. I was a trembling mass of nerves, with just enough self-control to keep myself hidden. I couldn’t stand to hear any more. I had bet on superstition and won. I had murdered and got away with it. But when these men began overflowing with condolences for Veeva because a rattly old skeleton had been knocked to pieces—when they referred to it as her dear husband—well, it was all I could do to hold back an outburst of wild, taunting nervous laughter.
I slipped along through the dark corridors and hid myself whenever there was danger of meeting a group of boys or a stray workman. For once the thought of being locked securely in a cell was very appealing.
I found an icy spring of water back in a remote branch of the cavern, and there I bathed my wounds. My neck had scarcely bled, but I had gone to no end of trouble to avoid leaving blood tracks from my ripped hand.
I remained in hiding, and whiled the hours away in rest and troubled dreams. All the literary gems I had ever read about murder marched through my mind in a gruesome procession.
Four errand boys discovered me, finally, and demanded to know what I was doing here. I convinced them that I had lost my way.
“We carry words from your friend,” one of them said.
Out of their broken English I was made to understand that Steve and Lord Lorruth—the latter in disguise—had made the perilous trip out over the ice with a party of workers—“To take big furs to some woman on ship. Much mad woman.”
“How much mad?” I asked.
“Big much mad. Want more big furs.”
“Did Steve and Lord Lorruth tell her they would bring her some more?”
“Tell her nothing. Lay furs on ice near ship. Hurry back. Woman yell at them, mad like falling stones.”
“Then Steve and Lord Lorruth came back here?” I asked.
“Yes. Now in big Red Room to hear Queen make speech.”
There were several thousand persons on hand, I found, listening to the pronouncements of Veeva the Queen. By borrowing a suit of furs from some native who didn’t happen to be at home, I was able to edge my way into the vast assembly without attracting any attention whatsoever.
The honors for the departed King had already been sung. The Firemaker had been buried with a few guarded words of praise, I learned, and with some well-placed warnings about the dangers of trifling with authority.
So this part of the meeting was a public expression of sympathy for Veeva.
As much of it as I could understand burned me up with disgust. The absurdity of it! Veeva must be persuaded to choose a new King at once, to forget her awful grief!
Grief for that dusty pile of bones! What would she choose for her new King? Another skeleton? I hoped she would pick a bright and shiny one, one that she could at least see in the eternal darkness of that round room of dreams.
The girl was speaking now.
My sarcastic thoughts melted away at the sound of her voice. What magical beauty was hers! She was mounting a stairway that had been hewn in the side of the wall, and the glow of colored light sifted over her lovely face and form.
Whitey the Tiger was with her. It would bound a few steps ahead. But whenever she paused to speak, it would stand motionless, attentive.
The stairs led to a little balcony carved in the wall. Here, thirty feet above the crowd, Veeva and the white tiger were highlighted by a glow of pink light from the surrounding wall.
My worshipful trance was interrupted by a low-whispered conversation of a group of natives close at hand. One of the Firemakers was among them.
“The falling ice from three rooms beyond? No, it was nothing serious,” he assured them. “I regret that I left the King’s dream to investigate it.”
“But some are saying that more breaks are coming in a straight path toward this hall.”
“We’ve been patching breaks for thousands of years,” said the Firemaker. “Any King worthy of our beautiful queen will protect us.”
The whispered talk was lost to me, for I was crowding forward to be nearer Veeva.
The bumping within my heart was like the pounding sea. A new daring had filled me. For Gandl and I had done murder. What act of boldness was I not capable of—for myself?
As I crowded forward I wondered whether Steve and the rest of the party were searching for me. Now that the furs had been recovered for Lady Lucille, would she not demand that we set sail for home the minute the winter ice began to break?
Undoubtedly Steve and Lord Lorruth had returned only to round up Peterson and Shorty and me. Well, I wasn’t ready to go. Not just yet. My eyes were feasting on the most gorgeous object of art that I ever hoped to see, and a new fire was leaping within me.
Veeva’s words flowed on like music. Most of the talk I couldn’t understand. But the crowd was liking it, and their admiration for such a queen was wonderful to see.
She looked down at me and for an instant her words stopped, and she smiled faintly. Whitey leaped up to place his forepaws on the rail. Veeva recovered her broken sentence and went on, and Whitey relaxed.
In that moment I was saying to myself, “Before I leave this place I’m going to tell her. She may laugh, she may pity me, she may have me imprisoned in ice, but before she has time to think about that new King, I’ll have her know I’m desperately in love—”
My thoughts broke off, for my eyes chanced to fall upon a group of dignitaries. There was Gandl among them, looking squarely at me. He may have read my thoughts. Or he may have sensed, with me, that someone’s destiny was in the balance.
At any rate I guessed, in that instant, who the next King would be. I realized that the only thing that had stood between Veeva and Gandl in the past was the trifling difference between faith and skepticism.
Now, at last, Gandl might enjoy the full favor of these people, even though he was a rebel. For had the old King not done a murder in his behalf? They thought so.
Now Veeva repeated an announcement in English, and I caught my breath.
“When I speak to you again from these stairs, I will tell you who is to be the new King. But I cannot tell you now—for I do not know.”
She concluded with a merry laugh, and the crowd laughed with her.
It was a welcome note of gaiety, the first that I had heard for many hours. But it was cut short.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Queen Recalls
A half-ton slab of ice, bulging from a crack in the vertical wall, dropped. The crowd surged back as the ice struck with a crash and a spray of splinters.
There was a momentary vibration underfoot. The earth was trembling. A spider-web of cracks appeared in the wall. Suddenly a section of the narrow stone stairs was falling.
Screams rang above the rumble of falling stones. The crowd became a flowing tide racing out of the path of danger.
But there was no general avalanche. The massive luminous walls defied the shudder. Only the fragile structures felt the shock—the wall ornaments, the carved shelves, the arcades and the ceremonial stairs. And there was Veeva—
“Kroff! Kroff!” The cry rang through the big room. It was the native word for “jump!”
Just as the upper-stairs and tiny balcony rattled and cracked and broke loose, Veeva acted.
She leaped to the back of Whitey and slapped him on the neck. He pushed off with his paws and flew for the floor.
In that split second I saw a stray rock bounce from the wall and strike Veeva on the side of the head. That was why she fell. The crowd screamed. They couldn’t understand it—Veeva the Queen falling from her mount in midair.
The tiger, I was later told, made a most graceful landing, and whirled about in surprise to see what had.happened to its burden.
But I did not see. I was one of the few persons close enough to help break Veeva’s fall. I rushed into the path of her descent with outstretched arms. We fell in a heap.
I was slow regaining my feet, if my memory serves me. But I was in no hurry, now, for Veeva was in my arms. Anyway I did manage to get up, and they tell me that I wouldn’t let anyone help me as I carried her to the station of a native physician.
They tell me, too, that in spite of the crowd I kept murmuring soft words to her and kissing her. Shorty was somewhere in the crowd, and I was to hear from him later about this matter.
But what I chiefly remembered was that the crowd kept swarming around, directing me to an elegant room with luminous copper-colored walls, and that everyone was clamoring to know whether Veeva was all right. Her eyes were only half open, and her long fine hair floated against my bare shoulder, and she weighed lightly in my arms. She seemed to be telling the crowd that everything was all right by waving her hand weakly.
Hours later it was a quiet little party that surrounded the Queen of the Ice, lying quietly on the couch.
Back in the corner of the elegantly carved room was Whitey, ever silent, ever attentive. If Shorty could only have been half as mannerly! He was forever wanting to talk when I wanted to talk.
But the substance of that memorable conversation was between Professor Peterson and Veeva.
Veeva was still in a sort of stupor from the blow on her head. But she was talking—talking lucidly of many things.
“I’ll want some of you to bear witness to these words,” Professor Peterson whispered to us. “We’re hearing some confession at last. She would never speak so frankly if she weren’t out of her head.”
Gandl’s eyes shone as he listened to these secret revelations. Part of the time Lord Lorruth and Steve Pound were present. And Shorty and I never missed a word.
“If you are still grieving over the loss of the King,” said Professor Peterson to the girl, “I hope you will accept our sympathy.”
“Most of all I am worried,” said Veeva, “about the woman on the ship. I have feelings that she means to harm me . . . But I am not shaken by the loss of the King.”
She talked on slowly, and her soft eyes seemed to be seeing pictures on the copper-hued ceiling. “I am grieving only for the people who trusted the King and believed in him.”
“But aren’t you grieving as a wife?”
“Why should I? Was he ever a husband to me? Have I ever heard his voice? Has he been anything but a symbol during all these past generations?”
“Then you have never been in love with him?” I asked. “Even when you married him?”
“That marriage,” said Veeva, “is something I could never really understand. Did I ever tell you that I remembered a marriage ceremony?”
“You said it happened thousands of years ago, but—”
Shorty interrupted me. “But how could it?”
“That was an earlier me—an earlier Queen Veeva—one that I do not remember at all. I have only been told that it was me.”
“Then you are not thousands of years old?” I asked.
“No.”
“Betcha you’re not a day over eighteen,” said Shorty.
“I am supposed to be twenty-two thousand years old,” said Veeva. “That was what the Firemakers told me when I was a little girl. They said I had been the Queen of the Ice all that time, and I would go on being Queen for thousands more years. But I know that this body of mine will die someday. And then—”
“You will keep on living?” Shorty asked.
“I’ll be dead—as dead as anyone—all except my name. Some other little girl will become Queen Veeva, and the Firemakers will give her Whitey and teach her to ride, and she will learn to defend herself—”
“And to change voices into ice prisons?” Professor Peterson asked.
“That is not my doing,” said Veeva. “It is one of Whitey’s secrets. The other is his magical warmth. He is like these colorful walls that send out rays of light. But Whitey does not make light, he makes warmth—”
“Electrical,” the professor interpolated.
“And when he wants to he can make voices freeze. I do not know how.”
Lord Lorruth added his comment. He was not sure that anyone would ever know just how Whitey achieved this special miracle, but he was convinced that the tiger put the talent to good use. It was the rogues of his own party who had failed to heed warnings and had brought an icy death over themselves trying to take advantage of Veeva.
“Is the tiger thousands of years old?” Shorty asked.
“No, he is simply the last of a strain,” said Veeva.
Gandl nodded. When he was a small boy there were three such tigers, and there were stables for many more. He believed that this particular species had come down through the ages as friends of his own race, adapting to the ice the same as the people had adapted.
“That ‘is true,” said Veeva. “We have had them for our pets all these twenty-two thousand years. That is a part of the Queen Veeva memory that has been told to me.”
Her eyelids wavered and fell closed. “She wants to sleep,” I whispered. “We’d better leave her.”
We drifted out to the great spacious corridor beyond the entrance. Shorty tried to be the last one out, but I herded him along to make sure he didn’t linger. Then—
“Jim,” Veeva called softly. “There’s something I want to say to you.”
My heart leaped, and my voice was gone. I returned to her bedside. It was almost the only moment I had ever been alone with her.
Well, once she had helped me up a snowy mountainside, and once she had stood at the door of my prison cell—
“I just wanted to thank you for—for catching me . . . I might have been killed. . . It’s all coming back now. You carried me in here, didn’t you?”
“With all my heart,” I said, and I was suddenly bending down whispering to her, looking into her eyes, holding her lovely face in my hands. “I’ve a thousand things to tell you, Veeva—”
“I have ten thousand years to listen, Jim,” she said with a taunting laugh, “but your voice won’t last that long.”
Why did she have to say that? She seemed to be telling me: “I am the Queen, with all the power, and you are one of these fickle males who try to make love to me. But you are my passing amusement, a thing of the moment. My life will go on for thousands of years.”
Yes, she was herself again, and all those honest revelations she had made while out of her head were forced into hiding.
“All right, live on for ten thousand years,” I said almost angrily. “Live a million years! Every minute of it I’ll be madly in love with you.”
I lifted her into my arms and kissed her. I have no way of describing just how I kissed her, except to say I meant this to be a moment she wouldn’t forget in a million years.
“You’d better go, Jim,” she said.
As I walked away she was not laughing.
CHAPTER XXV
A King is Chosen
The thousands of people who made up this kingdom were as interested as any public is in the affairs of its government and its leading personalities.
This world was agog with excitement over the cashing in of the old King, as I have noted. At first this overshadowed the other phase of the double-barrelled explosion—the strange execution of the tall Firemaker.
But whereas the whole upheaval seemed to have been buried and covered over for keeps under the soft blanket of the memorial rituals, there was something under cover that wouldn’t stay down. Namely, the personal convictions and ideals of one rebel named Gandl.
Yes, all his mutterings in his sleep, planted there by my suggestions, had been accepted. Those sleepy words had been just coherent enough to explain why the King was scattered all over the floor and why his hand bones clung to a dagger that the dead Firemaker wore in his heart.