Citadel of Fear

by Francis Stevens

  With Boots on his feet again, the situation changed, and it was a pity for the jailer’s sake that he could not know this. Nine times had he approached that door, done his benevolent duty and departed unmolested, but on this tenth visit he met a different reception.

  Playing second part willingly for once, Kennedy received his instructions, and around ten o’clock the unsuspecting one came slapping along, the alley on sandaled feet.

  Setting down his basket he slid back the great bolt of solid copper, gave a warning rap, and pushed in the door to the length of the restraining links.

  As was his custom, before taking the fresh provisions Kennedy thrust out the containers of the previous day, and this time he began with a water-jug, large and heavy, which he started to place in the waiting hands outside just as the groping fingers touched it, Kennedy let go. It was very neatly done. The jar, insecurely grasped, slipped, and instinctively the hands made a downward dive to catch it.

  As the guard stooped, a long arm shot out, an elbow crooked about his lowered neck, and for one astonished moment he was helpless.

  But Boots had got his wish. He had an adversary of no contemptible proportions, and that cramped grip through the doorway did not, could not hold. Even more quickly than Boots had expected the man broke away, but meantime Kennedy’s part was accomplished.

  Their hope had been set on the fastening of that chain. If it locked, failure was certain. It did not. The end was a great hook, caught over a ring-bolt in the wall. Kennedy’s arm flashed out at the same moment with his ally’s, felt along the links, found the hook-the ring-his finger-tips barely reached it-and just as the enemy jerked free with an angry grunt, the chain rattled and fell.

  When an Irishman charges he flings himself, muscle and mind and spirit, in one furious projectile.

  The guard had scarcely straightened when his towering form crashed back, clean to the wall behind.

  It was all in the dark, of course. Whether he thought himself attacked by a man or a raging demon cannot be known, but though the breath had been knocked from his body by Boots’ first rush, he rallied magnificently.

  The Irishman found himself caught in a clinch that was like the grip of a grizzly bear, and though his ribs were not pasteboard they felt that awful pressure. His right forearm came up beneath the other’s chin, jolting it back, and he tore himself free by main force. When the other giant lunged after him, he was caught in a cross-buttock that sent him crashing down on the bricks.

  But he was up with a resilience that Boots envied. For all his boast, the scarcely healed wounds he bore, coupled with nine days of inaction, had left the Irishman a good deal less than fit. And this jailer of theirs was a vast, dim, silent, forceful creature-a pale shadow that, chest to chest, overtopped him by a good two inches; a terribly solid shadow, of iron-hard muscles and a spirit as great as his own.

  For almost the first time in his life, Boots tried to dodge an adversary’s rush. That grip on his ribs had warned him.

  It was too dark for good foot-work. Tripping over the basket of fruit, he fell, and straightway an avalanche of human flesh descended upon him. Over and over they rolled, amid squelching oranges and bursting melons. Welded as in one figure, they rose and fell to rise again.

  Boots’ ribs were cracking, and his breath came in hoarse gasps.

  Then one braced foot of the man he fought slipped in the mess of smashed fruit, and the slide of it flung him sideways. He recovered instantly, but no longer erect.

  Boots’ left arm was locked tight around the small of his back, the right was beneath his chin. Gasping, choking, his back curved in an ever-increasing arc, he yielded to that relentless pressure on his throat. Back and back, sweat poured down the Irishman’s face, and the blood from opened wounds ran over his body, but he had his foe now where he knew that nothing could save him.

  Bent almost double at last, the huge form suddenly relaxed. It was that or a broken back. A second later, Boots’ knees were crushing the jailer’s chest, his hands squeezing the last gasp out of his windpipe.

  “That’s the way, boy! Kill him-kill him-kill him!”

  The whispered snarl at his shoulder brought the Irishman to his senses like a douche of cold water. There was something about it so base-so bestial-as if the very lowest depths of himself, the depths that a real man treads under and keeps there, had been suddenly externalized and had spoken with the voice of Kennedy.

  He snatched his hands from the helpless throat. He rose, swift and silent. For one moment Kennedy was as near death as a man has a right to be, who whispers murder in a victor’s ear.

  Then Boots remembered the poor thing Archer Kennedy was, and his great hands dropped.

  “Get back in the cell,” he said quietly. “Two men have been fighting here, and the airs not safe for the likes of you to breathe Go!”

  And Kennedy went.

  Again the grass pallet in the corner was filled by a giant, bandaged figure. This time, however, the mouth too was swathed, and the coarse, strong strips bound arms and legs in a manner to preclude any possibility of movement. A stifled groan rasped through the dark, but no one was there to hear.

  Beside the dim white wall outside, two other forms walked cautiously along.

  “It’s a scanty outfit of garments I got from that lad,” grumbled a deep voice. “I’d feel more decent to be strolling with a blanket to my back, as was my original intention.”

  A grunt was the only comment elicited.

  “Feathers,” continued Boots, “are fine in their place. For the decorating of hats, and for dusters, and for the wing of the bird they grew on, there’s nothing more appropriate than feathers. But to string a few of them together and hang them here and there on a person of good proportions, like myself-why, to cell it a complete costume is no less than exaggeration!

  “Here’s an end to our going, unless-yes, a gate there is, and praise be, no lock on it, either. Now for your city of tombs and ruins. A pity it’s so dark we won’t see them,” Boots finished.

  The alley, which had run straight between two high walls, ended in another as high. However, as Boots’ words indicated, there was a gateway. The door that filled it, though not fastened, was astonishingly heavy. He had to put the strength of his shoulders to the pull before it swung slowly inward.

  “Good heavens!” breathed Kennedy.

  Boots said nothing at all. He was entirely occupied with gazing.

  In the very first moment, he knew that it was Kennedy’s dead city of tombs and ruins which had been the dream; Tlapallan, living and wonderful, the reality.

  But-a city! Surely, here was the strangest city that ever mortal eyes beheld.

  They had expected to emerge from that gate on or near the floor of a valley. Instead, a straight drop of some hundred feet was below them. They had come out on a railed balcony, from whose built-up stairs of stone slanted down the face of an immense facade of sheer, black cliff.

  They had thought to find night close and dark about them. But their view for miles was clear, and the base of the cliff was lapped by the pale ripples of a lake of light.

  Wide and far extended that strange white sea. Its waters, if waters they could be called, were set with scores of islands. About it, like the rounded, enormous shoulders of sleeping giants, loomed the somber hills.

  The light of the lake was not glaring It was more as if, when night swallowed the sun, Tlapallan had held the day imprisoned in its depths. Every painted temple and palace of its islands, every gorgeous, many-oared barge and galley gliding across its surface, showed clear and distinct of hue as though the hour were high noon, instead of close to midnight.

  Clear and strange. For one thing, there were no reflections. For another, the shadows were wrong. It was the under side of things that was brightest, the upper that melted into shade. The light was upside down. The sky, as it were, was beneath instead of above.

  Over all brooded that great stillness which they had felt in their cell, and interpreted as the
silence of desolation. And yet it was not quite the perfect stillness they had thought, for a low murmur came up through it, like the rustle of leaves in a distant forest, or the murmur of waves on a far-off shore.

  On the many islands, amid gardens and beneath flowering trees, moved the forms of Tlapallan’s people. But no separate voice raised in speech or song floated up toward the watchers on the cliff.

  The vessels of its traffic went to and fro, rowed by striped white oarsmen, who labored in an endless quiet. What lading did they bear, across an inverted sky, between islands as splendidly colored as sunset clouds?

  A midnight traffic in dreams, one-would think, through the floating city of a vision.

  Kennedy turned from the rail. Far up on the cliff there, they stood in a kind of spectral twilight. He saw his companion but dimly, a grotesque, gigantic figure, its huge limbs sketchily draped in a mantle made of strings of parrot feathers, that hid them none the better for having been through a wrestling match. Its height was increased by a helmet, shaped like the head of an enormous parrot and standing well out over the face. The golden beak of it curved down over the forehead, gaping, duel, lending its sinister shadow to the face behind.

  And it stood so oddly motionless, that figure.

  Kennedy’s glance traveled to the unearthly scene below and back again. He was swept by a horrible sense of unreality, of doubt.

  Was this his homely, tiresomely light-humored mate of the camp and trail? Or was it the thing it seemed the specter of some old Toltec warrior, massive, terrible, with folded, gory arms, gazing out to the fabled home of its blood-stained gods?

  The broad chest heaved in a sigh that sent a menacing quiver to the golden beak. From the shadow of the parrot-head there issued a solemn voice.

  “Priests, did I say, and processions, and the poor commonplace of gilt idols? To the devil with them all! Here’s a sight worth owning two eyes for! Why, Shan McManus never saw the like o’ this, when he spent twelve months in Blake Hill with the Little People!”

  “Boots!” exclaimed the other, with a rather curious emphasis.

  “Well?”

  “Oh, nothing. I wish you’d shed that helmet, though. It’s absurd.”

  “I will not,” answered Boots firmly. “I do not know what it looks like, having seen it only in the dark, but I feel that it lends me an air of becoming dignity, and moreover it is a part of me in disguise. Would you have us embark in one of those elegant boats we see, and myself with me bare red head shouting ‘Irish’ to every beholder?

  “Ask what you like, but not for one string of these feathers I was slandering, and which I now perceive will enable me to move in the ranks of fashion. Dye see that boatload yonder? Not a gentleman passenger but is feathered like a bird o’ the jungle. You’ll notice, though, that the oarsmen are less particular. If you can’t get a feather suit for yourself, Mr. Kennedy, you can shed what you’ve got and row.”

  “Are you actually insane enough to propose our hailing one of those vessels? Why, you great fool, they’d find you out in an instant. You can’t even speak the language:”

  “I can shut me mouth,” was the placid answer. “I’ve all the right plumage of a citizen. Should they discover me true identity, I’ll grant you that a shindy may follow. But what of that? Come or stay here, Mr. Kennedy. ‘Tis a matter of indifference to myself.”

  A glance of mingled anger and despair was the sole reply, and when Boots set foot on the long stairs slanting lakeward, the older man made no motion to follow him.

  CHAPTER V. Gold

  ARCHER KENNEDY had two good reasons for failing to accompany Boots on his hare-brained expedition. One was the perfectly rational objection he had advanced that they would be found out and recaptured almost instantly.

  The other, though less rational was far more powerful. It dragged him back through the gate before Boots had half accomplished his downward journey.

  Kennedy was afraid. He was afraid as he had never been afraid in his life before, though he had experienced a warning thrill of it when Biornson visited their cell and spoke of the gods and Tlapallan.

  A mythical city, set in a lake of cold fire, where fantom galleys moved in majestic silence, had no place in his conception of the universe. He had no curiosity about it. He desired no more intimate knowledge. It was simply without a place. He was seized with a desperate desire to escape, not only from Tlapallan, but from the very idea of Tlapallan.

  As he plunged back through the valley, even the desert seemed a preferable memory to what he had just seen. Somehow he must make his way back to the ravine. Somehow he must provide himself with food, water, and a means to carry them, reach the gorge and, by no matter how painful a journey, return to a sane and credible world.

  Coming to the cell of their recent confinement, he paused only to make sure by faint sounds through the window that the jailer was still a prisoner, then hurried on. In this direction also, he found that the alley terminated in a wall and gate. The latter he opened with some difficulty, to find himself in a covered passage, dark as the pit and coldly dank as a cellar. As it extended in only one direction, at right angles to the alley, he had no trouble in choosing his way.

  Presently his foot shuck on what proved to be the first step of a flight of stone stairs. This was encouraging. On that first night he had been led down many stairs.

  Very softly he crept up them, for silence could no longer deceive him with the assurance of being alone. He reached the top. It was blocked by a door-a wooden door, that opened easily at a touch.

  Beyond it there was a light. Stepping through, he came into a bare, rectangular chamber, paved and walled with stone, empty, and opening through an arch to some place from which light blazed, warm and golden, though from where Kennedy stood he could not see its source.

  In his mind he cursed it. Man or beast, your fugitive fears light, as its revealing enemy.

  Yet behind him there lay only the cell, with its outraged and doubtless furious occupant-and that lakeward gateway which he longed to forget.

  Treading softly, he crossed the flagstones and crept along the wall. Very cautiously he thrust forward till his eyes just cleared the edge of the arch.

  Then indeed did he forget the uncomfortable weirdness of Tlapallan. With his soul in his eyes Kennedy gazed and gazed. Here was that which might wipe out a thousand unadjustable memories. Here was that which Kennedy understood and loved with a great and passionate affection.

  Here was gold.

  Tons of it. Though the worshipped metal was cast and carved in many shapes, it was not the workmanship that appealed to Kennedy. It was the stuff itself-the delightful, yellow-orange surface, the rich look of weight and body, the feeling of warmth behind the eyes that reveled in it.

  Transcendent boldness welled up in Kennedy’s heart, and Boot’s himself could have crossed that threshold with no greater a carelessness for danger.

  The room was lighted by four lamps, themselves suspended by massive yellow links, and beneath their radiance the place was one of splendor and glory polished metal. The walls themselves were sheeted wit beaten plates of it.

  Ranged on a stone shelf; running clear around the chamber, stood dozens of urns, vessels and vases of massive size and crude but effective design. Set about the floor were various larger objects-a thing like a baptismal font, where the basin, as long as the body of a man; was supported on the back of three nearly life-size cougars; a throne-like chair; two or three chests, of various shapes and sizes; some half-dozen five-branched candelabra, each one taller than a man and weighing more than any man could carry.

  All of gold. All of the metal itself, pure, divine, beautiful, without alloy, so soft in its purity that Kennedy could mar the stuff with a reverent finger-nail.

  There was a curious lack of care in the arrangement of these treasures. They were set about anywhere, anyhow, and the worn stone flags of the floor, the unbarred road he had come by, seemed to show that the chamber which held them was common thoroughfar
e for any feet that chose to pass.

  It was like the lumber-room of some public edifice, into which furnishings not in use are carelessly thrust till required. A lumber-room-for gold!

  Kennedy’s eyes glistened. Such cavalier treatment of the world’s desire argued an astounding wealth behind it.

  At one end of the room was a second doorway. Before it there hung two curtains, black, straight, made of heavy cotton stuff without ornament, austere in their splendid setting as the cassock of a Trappist monk at the court of a king.

  What lay beyond? What manner of building was this that stood on the cliff, high and far from the island palaces of the lake? A storehouse, perhaps? It seemed possible-probable. And this was only one room, and an outer room at that.

  What wealth-what incredible stores of jewels might the other rooms reveal! More gold, of course-and jewels —

  There was no sound anywhere. The curtains fascinated him.

  On venturous tiptoes, Kennedy reached them, parted them, hesitated a moment only-and passed through.

  Behind him the curtains fell together and hung straight as before, black and shabbily sinister-austere in their splendid setting as the robe of some inquisitor of old Spain.

  The confident security in his borrowed plumage displayed by Boots was more jest than earnest. Before quitting their prison he had washed and rebound two deep gashes which the combat had opened in thigh and shoulder. But since, barring helmet and mantle, the only garment worn by the jailer had been a sort of kilt, made from soft cloth woven of cotton and feather-down, the white bandages, not to mention his other scars, seemed perilously conspicuous. Strings of parrot plumage were an inadequate concealment.

  Of course, there might be other wounded heroes mingling with the society of Tlapallan. But Boots had a dark suspicion that gentlemen of his exact complexion and appearance were scarce enough there to arouse dangerous comment.

  For these reasons he meant to take a long and careful survey of the scene before attracting attention from any of the boatmen. Beside the larger vessels, a few small craft were visible, canoes of one or more occupants, which darted and dodged here and there across the silver flood. A lone canoe-man, now, should be more easily deceived-or overcome-than a whole bargeload.