"Where is she now?" interrupted Olfan, looking round.
"We do not know; last night she vanished as our other servants have vanished."
"Perhaps Nam knows, and if so you may see her again soon. Proceed, Queen."
"After the Deliverer and I were married, Soa, who had been my nurse for many years, told us of the Great People her brethren, among whom she wished to die."
"May her desire be gratified!" put in Otter.
"And said that if we would escort her thither we could buy many such stones as that upon my brow, which she had brought with her from this country and given to me. Then it was that I, desiring the playthings, tormented my husband till he consented to lead me hither, though his own heart spoke against it. So we came, and the journey was long and terrible, but at last we reached the cliff yonder which borders the Land of Mist, and it was then for the first time, when it was too late to go back, that Soa told us the tale of the gods of your people, and showed us that either we must do sacrilege and feign to be those gods come back, as the prophecy promised, or perish miserably. Indeed this was her plot, to set up false gods over you, having first told the secret to the priests that she might gain honour with them and save herself alive.
"And now, Olfan, that is all the tale. We have played the game and we have lost, or so it seems--that is, unless you help us;" and she clasped her hands and looked upon him pleadingly.
The king dropped his eyes as though he were not willing to contemplate the loveliness which, as he now learned, belonged to the white stranger at Juanna's side.
"Have I not said that my power is little, Queen?" he answered somewhat sullenly. "Also, why should I help those who came to this land to trick us, and who have brought the anger of the gods upon its children?"
"Because we saved your life, Olfan, and you swore to be loyal to us."
"Had it not been for you, Queen, my life would not have been in danger; moreover, I swore fealty to gods, and now the gods are mortals, upon whom the true gods will be avenged. Why then should I help you?"
"Because we have been friends, Olfan. You shall help us for my sake."
"For your sake, Queen," he said bitterly, "for your sake, who tell me that you are this man's wife and that you love him to the death. Nay, this is much to ask. Had it been otherwise, had you been unwed and willing to look upon me, the king of this land, with favour, then doubtless I had died for your sake if there were need. But now--! Have you then no better reasons to show why I should risk my life for you and for these men?"
"I have two more reasons, King, and if they are not enough, then leave us to our fate, and let us, who must prepare to die, waste no more breath in words. The first is that we are your friends and have trusted you, saving your life at the danger of our own and telling you this tale of our own free will. Therefore in the name of friendship, which you should hold sacred, who are no common man but a king, we demand your help, we who have put our lives in the hollow of your hand, knowing that you are of noble mind and will not betray us.
"The second is that our interest is your interest: we strive against Nam and the priests, and so do you. If Nam conquers us to-day, to-morrow it will be your turn, and the Snake, whose fangs we must feel, shall in days to come feed upon you also. Now is the hour of destiny for you and your descendants: cling to us and break the yoke of Nam and the priests, or desert us and bind that yoke upon your shoulders to your doom. I have spoken--choose."
Olfan thought awhile and answered:
"Truly your mind is great, Queen, and sees far into the darkness of things such as our women have no knowledge of. You should have ruled this country and not I, for then by now Nam, who is my master, would have begged his daily bread at the gates of your palace, and the priests his servants had become the hewers of your wood and the drawers of your water. But I will not talk to you of policy, for time is short. Nay, I will deal with your first reason and that alone.
"You have conjured me in the name of friendship and of my oath, and by the memory of service done, and not in vain. I am a man different from that race of men of whom you are, a wild chief of a wild tribe, having little wisdom; yet I have learned these things--never to break a promise, never to desert a friend, and never to forget a service. Therefore, because I swore fealty to you, because you are my friend, and because you saved my life, I will protect you to the last, though it may well chance that I can do nothing except die for you. For, Queen, although you can be nought to me while yonder man lives, still I am ready to give my life for you. As for the others I will say this only, that I will not harm them or betray them.
"Now I go to speak with certain of the great men who are friends to me and hate the priest, so that when this matter comes on for judgment they may lift up their voices in your favour, for nothing can be done except by policy--that is, not now. Shortly I will return to lead you to the temple. Till then, farewell," and he bowed and was gone.
When the curtain had swung to behind Olfan, Juanna sank back in her chair and sighed, but Leonard sprang up and said:
"Juanna, that savage is right, you should have been a queen. I know what it must have cost you to say what you did."
"Pray, to what do you refer, Leonard?" she said, interrupting him coldly.
"I mean about our being married and the rest."
"Oh! yes. Well, you see it is sometimes necessary to tell white lies, and I think that after to-night I am entitled to a prize for general proficiency in this respect. Of course," she added, dropping her sarcastic tone, "you will not misinterpret anything that I was forced to say to Olfan with reference to yourself, because you know that those statements were the biggest fibs of all. Just then, had it been needful, I should have been prepared to swear that I was married to Otter and deeply attached to him, or even to the king himself, who, by the way, strikes me as the most satisfactory savage that I have ever come across--in short, as a gentleman."
Leonard turned pale with anger.
"Really, Juanna," he said, "I think that you might wait until I seek to take some advantage of our friendship and accidental relations before you rebuke me as you think fit to do. It is little short of an insult, and were we in any civilised country I would never speak to you again."
"Don't get angry, Leonard," she said appealingly, for Juanna seemed to have every mood at her command and ready to be assumed at a moment's notice. Perhaps this gift was one of the secrets of her charm, since monotony is a thing to be avoided by women who seek to rule, even the monotony of sweetness. "It is very unkind of you," she went on, "to speak crossly to me when I am so tired with talking to that savage and we may all be dead and buried in a few hours," and she looked as though she were going to cry.
Leonard collapsed instantly, for Juanna's plaintive mood was the one that he could resist the least of any.
"You would make me angry if I were on my death-bed," he said, "that is, when you talk like that. But there it is, I cannot change you, so let us change the subject. Have you any of that poison to spare? If so, you might serve us out a little; we may want it before the evening is over."
Juanna put her hand to her hair and after some manipulation produced a tiny skin bag, from which she extracted a brown ball of about the size of a rifle bullet.
"I can afford to be generous," she said with a little laugh; "there is enough here to kill twenty of us."
Then Leonard took a knife and chipped off three fragments from the ball, taking one himself and presenting the other two to Francisco and Otter. The priest received it doubtfully, but the dwarf would have none of it.
"Keep it for yourself, Baas," he said, "keep it for yourself. Whatever way I die it shall not be thus. I do not love a medicine that causes men to tie themselves into knots and then turns them green. No, no; first I will face the jaws of the Snake."
So Leonard took that piece also.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE TRIAL OF THE GODS
Juanna had scarcely restored the remainder of her deadly medicine to its hiding-place, wh
en the curtains were drawn and Nam entered. After his customary salutations, which on this occasion were more copious than usual, he remarked blandly that the moon had risen in a clear sky.
"Which means, I suppose, that it is time for us to start," said Leonard gruffly.
Then they set out, Juanna in her monk-like robe, and Otter in his red fringe and a goat-skin cape which he insisted upon wearing.
"I may as well die warm as cold, Baas," he explained, "for of cold I shall know enough when I am dead."
At the palace gate Olfan and a guard were waiting, but they found no opportunity of speaking with him. Here also were gathered a great number of priests, who preceded and followed them.
The procession being formed, they were led solemnly to a different gate of the temple from that by which they had entered it on their previous visits. On this occasion the secret passages were avoided, and they passed up a broad avenue though the centre of the amphitheatre, to seats that had been prepared for them on that side of the pool which was furthest from the colossal idol. As before, the temple was crowded with human beings, and their advance through it was very impressive, for the priests chanted as they walked, while the multitude preserved an ominous silence.
At first Leonard was at a loss to know why they were placed on the hither side of the pool, but presently he saw the reason. In front of the chairs to be occupied by Juanna and Otter, an open space of rock was left, semicircular in shape, on which were set other seats to the number of thirty or more. These seats were allotted to elders of the people, who, as Leonard guessed rightly, had been chosen to act as their judges. The position was selected for the convenience of these elders, and in order that the words they spoke might be heard by a larger proportion of their vast audience.
When Juanna and Otter were seated, and Leonard and Francisco had taken their places behind them, Nam came forward to address the Council and the multitude beyond.
"Elders of the People of the Mist," he said, "I have conveyed your wishes to the holy gods, who but lately have deigned to put on the flesh of men to visit us their people; namely, that they should meet you here and talk with you of the trouble which has come upon the land. And now the gracious gods have assented to your wish, and behold, they are face to face with you and with this great company of their children. Be pleased therefore to make known what you desire to the gods, that they may answer you, either with their own mouths or by the voice of me, their servant."
He ceased, and after a pause, during which the people murmured angrily, an elder rose and said:
"We would know of you how it is, O Aca and O Jal, that the summer has deserted the land. Now our strait is very sorry, for famine will come upon us with the winter snows. A while ago, O Aca and O Jal, you changed the worship of this people, forbidding the victims who had been prepared to be offered up at the spring festival, and lo! there has been no spring. Therefore we ask a word of you on this matter, for the people have consulted together, and say by our voice that they will have no gods who kill the spring. Speak, O ye gods, and you, Nam, speak also, for we would learn the reason of these evils; and from you, O Nam, we would learn how it comes that you have proclaimed gods in the land whose breath has destroyed the sunshine."
"Ye ask me, O People of the Mist," answered Juanna, "why it is that the winter stretches out his hand over the slumber of the spring, forbidding her to awake, and I will answer you in few words and short. It is because of your disobedience and the hardness of your hearts, O ye rebellious children. Did ye not do sacrifice when we forbade you to take the blood of men? Ay, and have not our servants been stolen secretly away and put to death to satisfy your lust for slaughter? It is for this reason, because of your disobedience, that the heavens have grown hard as your own hearts and will not bless you with their sunshine and their gentle rain. I have answered you."
Then again the spokesman of the elders rose and said:
"We have heard your words, O Aca, and they are words of little comfort, for to sacrifice is the custom of the land, and hitherto no evil has befallen us because of that ancient custom. Yet if there has been offence, it is not we who have offended, but rather the priests in whose hands these matters lie; and as for your servants, we know nothing of them, or of their fate. Now, Nam, make answer to the charges of the gods, and to the questions of the people, for you are the chief of their servants and you have proclaimed them to be true gods and set them over us to rule us."
Thus adjured, Nam stood forward, and his mien was humble and anxious, for he saw well that his accusers were not to be trifled with, and that his life, or at least his power, was at stake, together with those of the gods.
"Children of the Mist," he began, "your words are sharp, yet I do not complain of them, for, as ye shall learn, my fault has been grievous. Truly, I am the chief of the servants of the gods, and I am also the servant of the people, and now it would seem that I have betrayed both gods and people, though not of my own will.
"Listen: ye know the legend that has come down to us, that Aca and Jal should reappear in the land, wearing the shapes of a fair white maiden and of a black dwarf. Ye know also how they came as had been promised, and how I showed them to you here in this temple, and ye accepted them. Ye remember that then they put away the ancient law and forbade the sacrifices, and by the hand of their servant who is named Deliverer, they destroyed two of the priests, my brethren, in a strange and terrible fashion.
"Then I murmured, though they threatened me with death, but ye overruled my words and accepted the new law, and from that hour all things have gone ill. Now I took counsel with my heart, for it seemed wonderful to me that the gods should discard their ancient worship, and I said to my heart: Can these be true gods, or have I perchance been duped? Thenceforward I held my peace, and set myself to watch, and now after much watching--alas! I must say it to my shame--I have discovered that they are no true gods, but wicked liars who have sought to usurp the places of the gods."
He paused, and a roar of rage and astonishment went up from the assembled thousands.
"It has come at last," whispered Leonard into Juanna's ear.
"Yes, it has come," she answered. "Well, I expected it, and now we must face it out."
When the tumult had subsided, the spokesman of the elders addressed Nam, saying:
"These are heavy words, O Nam, and having uttered them you must prove them, for until they are proved we will not believe readily that there are human beings so wicked that they dare to name themselves as gods. When you proclaimed these strangers to be Aca and Jal, we accepted them, perhaps too easily and after too short a search. Now you denounce them as liars, but we will not disclaim them whom we have once received till we are sure that there is no room for error. It may chance, Nam, that it would please you well to cast aside those gods who have threatened you with death and do not love you."
"I should be bold indeed," answered Nam, "if I dared to speak as I have spoken lacking testimony to establish a charge so dreadful as that which I bring against these wanderers. Nor should I seek to publish my own shame and folly were I not forced thereto by knowledge that, did I conceal it, would make me a partner of their crime. Listen, this is the tale of those whom we have worshipped: the fair woman, as she herself told us, is named Shepherdess of the Heavens, and she is the wife of the white man who is named Deliverer, and the dwarf Dweller in the Waters is their servant, together with the second white man and the others.
"Dwelling in a far country, these men and women chanced to learn the story of our people--how, I shall show you presently--and also that we find in the earth and use in the ceremonies of our temple certain red and blue stones which among the white people are of priceless value. These they determined to steal, being adventurers who seek after wealth. To this end the Shepherdess learned our language, also she learned how to play the part of Aca, while the dwarf, dog that he is, dared to take the holy name of Jal. I will be short: they accomplished their journey, and the rest you know. But, as it happened, none of the
stones they covert have come into their hands, except that gem which the Shepherdess wears upon her forehead, and this she brought with her.
"Now, People of the Mist, when doubts of these gods had entered into me I made a plan: I set spies to watch them in the palace yonder, those spies being the wife who was given to the dwarf and her handmaidens. Also, I caused their black servants to be seized and thrown to the Snake, one or two of them at a time, for of this I was sure, that if they had the power they would protect their servants. But, as the Snake knows, those men were not protected. Meanwhile reports came to me from the women, and more especially from Saga, the granddaughter of my brother, who was given as a bride to Jal. And this was their report: that the dwarf behaved himself like a cur of low birth, and that when he was in liquor, which was often, he babbled of his doings with the Deliverer in other lands, though all that he said they could not tell me because even now he has little knowledge of our tongue.
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