make good corn cakes. The Indians had a use for her. The other woman
with her babe was missing. They also had a use for her. Ulric hoped the
child would live. He did not think that Gualzine would be carried off
without a struggle, yet, search as he would, he could find no shred's
of her cotton clothing. What if she had died before the cliff dwelling
was attacked? In times of siege it was the custom to bury the dead
beneath the floor. He hastily searched through the house but he found
no sign of a recent excavation.
The next morning he renewed the hunt. He found that a number of bodies
had been thrown over the cliff. Hopeful, yet dreading, he made the
precipitous descent. Her remains were not there, although he felt
rewarded for the climb, for there were several bodies of the Lamanites.
The Nephites had clutched their antagonists and locked in their
embrace, and leaped over the cliff with them to destruction.
II.
Alone.
At first, overwhelmed with the disaster, Ulric did not realize his
condition. He spent a number of days burying the dead beneath the
floor. He placed their implements of war with them, and at the head he
put an olla, containing a little of the corn that was left; over all he
put a layer of charcoal and covered it up with earth. Merari's head he
placed upon a shelf, saying, "You stay there old fellow, and help me.
You and I are great pals. You are the only friend I've got left."
In the after days he realized his utter desolation. At first he clung
to life and he bounded over the rocks like a hunted thing. One night a
party of Lamanite robbers passed through the valley and he watched them
from the cliffs. He looked hungrily down into their camp, but dared not
move, for fear that they would shoot. Later, when he got frightened
of the solitude, he would have gladly given himself up. He became
a perfect coward. Most scared of all was he of the stillness. The
mountains made him infinitely lonely; he felt as if the peaks weighed
down on his chest and he could not get his breath. He foresaw that he
would go insane, which gave rise to a new fear. What would happen to
him there among the hills if he lost his reason? He could not journey
to his own people, for he knew not if any of them were alive.
It was not so bad when he could get out and hunt, but one day he
slipped and sprained his ankle. It swelled up and pained so he could
not walk. After that he crawled down to the stream to get his water. A
new horror developed. The corn was almost gone. Already he could see
the bottom of the big olla in which it was kept. Since he could not get
out and hunt food he must surely die.
He began to prepare for the end. He would write his story on the wall
in red and blue and yellow hieroglyphics. Future generations should
know how he, Ulric, had outlived his compeers. He picked up a chisel.
As he struck the wall with it, it resounded hollow. He remembered the
limestone cave back of it. Funny he hadn't thought of it before! He
grasped his bludgeon, and with what was left of his remaining strength,
hit the wall. It took many of his weak blows to cave it in, but he
also went down with the earth. Staring straight at him was Gualzine.
She sat upon a stone dais. Her body had been preserved by the peculiar
atmosphere of the cave. On her shrunken form the cotton cloth hung limp.
Slowly the realization forced itself on Ulric. The queer little men of
the caves, determined that the daughter of their High Priest should
not fall into the hands of the enemy, had walled her up there when
threatened with attack. She was alive when they took her there; perhaps
she lived when he returned. He had let her be slowly asphyxiated.
Ulric threw himself at her feet with all the grief that his warped
nature would allow. That marked the beginning of the fever. Starvation
had prepared him for it, for he had got down to counting the kernels of
corn. Perhaps the rotting skull had been a friend indeed and lent its
malignant aid.
Alone, with parched lips burning with thirst, with no human being to
speed the parting soul, Ulric died.
* * * * * * * * * * *
One of an alien race, exploring the cave, found there the skeleton of
a man lying along the wall, a crumbling skull on a ledge above, and a
mummy seated on a dais.
He pondered, "What a tale those blackened lips might tell if they could
only speak!"
[Illustration: STAIRS THAT LEAD TO THE SUMMIT OF THE PYRAMID]
[Illustration: PYRAMID OF THE SUN, MEXICO]
[Illustration: JARED WAS MURDERED AS HE DESCENDED FROM HIS THRONE]
THE CONQUEST OF AIDA.
I.
THE PLOT.
Jared, as he reclined on the roof-garden, looked out over the city
basking in the afternoon light. Although it was yet warm, he had
stumbled out into the open air from his siesta couch where he had
smothered and tried in vain to sleep during the sultry afternoon.
There was a discontented look in his eyes as his gaze wandered over
the vast extent of the roofs, the palms silhouetted against a pastel
sky, to the crystalline peaks in the distance crowned with eternal
snow. The nearby stone mansions were resplendent in red-tiled roofs,
sun-burnished walls, and purple shadows, while an occasional opening
afforded a glimpse of a green courtyard or paved street. Nor could the
beauty of his own aerial gardens, a riot of color, with subtile perfume
of violets and verbenas, win him from his trouble. The laughter of
girls floated up from the pool below, where his daughter Aida with
her women, was disporting herself in the water. Unlike less active
women, who let an indented pillow in a hammock tell the story of the
afternoon's exertions, she preferred violent swimming in the humid
plunge.
Wearily he leaned back, as if he found the cushions hard for his
emaciated limbs. Jared had once been ruler over this vast domain, and
he who has tasted power cannot soon forget the flavor. Lusting for the
kingdom, he had dispossessed his old father, King Omer, but his younger
brothers had risen up and wrested it from his greedy grasp. They
defeated him in open battle, took him captive, and Jared only bought
his freedom with the promise that he would never go to war again. After
that he found life, shorn of its glory, but a worthless thing.
Evening is unknown in the tropics, for night descends swiftly,
shrouding the earth in a black pall. Tonight, for a transitory
period, a crescent moon hung in a sapphire sky, a breeze sprang up
from the sea, and the city shook off its lethargy. A hum arose as its
inhabitants prepared for the traffic and activity of the night. Lights
sprang out. A step on the stair and a rustling of the leaves made the
man turn to behold the laughing face of Aida, like a lily on its stem
above a bed of narcissus.
"Come here to me, daughter," he said fondly, his face lighting up.
She shook out her mane of black hair, which was still wet, and
went toward him. Her shoulders and arms emerged like snow from her
loose-fitting, black gown, and the dead pallor of her face was relieved
only by the scarlet streak of her lips. Her gray eyes were so heavily
shrouded that they appeared black. As she knelt before him, her father
leaned forward and touched her forehead with his lips.
"Father," she murmured, "it is eating my heart out to see you always so
sad."
"I fear I am but a broken shell from which the life has departed," he
lamented.
"Can't you shake this depression off?"
"I have tried," he sighed.
"I know it. You will never be yourself again until you are restored to
your old place. The throne is yours by right. You are a younger man
than Omer, and can manage the affairs of the nation better. You must be
king."
"How?" he raised his eyebrows.
As she had watched her father waste away, gnawed by festering ambition,
Aida had realized that something must be done or he would die. So she
had evolved a plan.
"Listen," she glanced hastily around and lowered her voice. "There is
only one thing between you and your lawful right to the throne."
"My father!"
"Then remove it," she hissed.
"You mean kill the king!" He started as if she had surprised his own
guilty thought.
"Why not?"
"It is not for a son to spill his father's blood."
"Get someone else to do it."
"And who, in all the realm of the Jaredites would dare?"
"Only one that I know of. The dark and moody Akish could if he wanted
to, for he controls the secret societies."
"True," he ruminated, "but he is a friend of Omer's."
"Every man has his price."
"What would his be?" he shrugged his shoulders. "The coffers of Akish
are bursting with gold now."
"Tempt him with something else."
Jared scowled. What office in the kingdom could he offer for such a
crime?
Aida broke in on his reflections. "Send for him here, and I will dance
before him, and when he covets me, say, 'Bring hither the head of Omer,
the king, and I will give you my daughter for wife.'"
Fond father that he was Jared never doubted but what Akish would want
Aida, but the thoughts of bartering her shot a pang through his heart.
He would sacrifice his aged father for his soul's desire, but to give
up his daughter, that was another thing.
After a silence, he said gently, "Have you thought, my child, that
after this is accomplished there must come a day of reckoning?"
"What of it?"
"You are willing to pay the price?"
"Certainly," then hurriedly as the color crept into her face, "I am
sick of these effeminate nobles with their perfumed locks, and if I am
to have a master it must be one worth obeying. Akish is such a man."
As he watched her with half-closed lids, her father thought that it
must be a strong trainer indeed to hold such a splendid tigress in
leash; but when he thought of the cruel Akish, his heart was full of
misgiving.
II.
AIDA DANCES BEFORE AKISH.
Akish stood at the gate of the gardens of Jared on the night of the
banquet. In crimson tunic he leaned a vivid patch against the gray
stone arch. A nearby torch illumined his figure, lean, brown and
muscular. Black-eyed, hawk-beaked and cruel-lipped, he conveyed a
suggestion of power that was felt in the magnetic personality of the
man. A band of dull gold hung low over his brow, sheathing his glossy,
black hair. Collar and sandals of the same material were the only
ornaments he wore. As he surveyed the scene, a gleam came into his eyes
for it was well calculated to stir a more sluggish soul than his.
Cruets of burning oil filled the gardens with soft radiance and
changeful shade. Interspersed with these were braziers of incense whose
aromatic smoke curved upwards in spirals. In the fountain the figure
of a sea-nymph upheld a conch shell from which the water trickled. It
ran into the swimming pool of blue-veined marble which in turn emptied
itself into a miniature lake covered with lotus leaves and yellow
water lilies. The lagoon was not entirely given over to white-necked
swans and pink-legged flamingoes, for a dainty shallop lay moored to
the shore as if inviting one to a trip to fairyland among the floating
gardens of the lake. One tiny isle grew purple hyacinths, another
yellow daffodils, a third flaunted gaudy tulips. In the somber green
of the grove was caught the occasional gleam of the white magnolia and
pomegranate blooms.
To one side was the aviary, filled with the strange and gorgeous-hued
birds of the tropics; beyond, causing an instinctive shudder, were the
many species of Central American snakes. The cages of the wild animals
were still farther removed so the roars of their inmates would not
disturb the ears of the diners. The banquet table was spread on the
terrace which was gained by a magnificent sweep of stairs.
The stone glowed yellow, while the supporting columns were of marble,
shot with amethyst. Even as Akish devoured the scene, the portals were
thrown wide, and the guests thronged out upon the terrace. Throwing the
loose end of his tunic across his shoulder, he strode forward.
The table groaned under its golden service, many of its dishes designed
in grotesque forms of birds and animals. Overhead stretched a net from
which roses fell upon the board. Akish found himself seated next to
Aida whose presence he felt intuitively, before he looked at her. She
wore a loose-fitting, white robe from which her bare arms emerged like
alabaster. No ornament marred the purity of the throat, nor the poise
of the head crowned with living night. The jade bangles which dangled
from her ears only heightened the pallor of her skin.
"So I have met you at last," he murmured.
"I have known Akish long, by reputation," she flattered subtly.
"Three times have I seen you before, but ever failed to make your
acquaintance."
"Three times? Twice only do I remember. Once as you rode by, leading
your troops to battle, I thought that your eyes rested on me for a
moment. Again in a little park in Heth you passed me with a group of
gray-beards."
"But first I saw you bathing one morning in the pool at Ether's house
in Heth. I noticed that you were the best swimmer among the women. I
went back that afternoon and enquired of their guests only to find that
you had left that day. As for the night in the park--after I went to
the council with the old men, I excused myself, and hurried back to the
park but you had gone."
"After you had passed I went home," she confessed.
He replied with a burning glance, and she saw her father watching them
with furtive eyes from across the table.
A troupe of acrobats, assisted by deformed mountebanks, performed. A
group of dancing girls, garlanded with flowers, went through a series
of figures for the guests, while ever roses fell from above. Everyone
did as he pleased as the banquet progressed. Some of the diners were
stupid from gormandizing, others had partaken too freely of the
intoxicating juice of the maguey. Aida tasted little of the rich meats
before her, but Akish seemed possessed of a burning thirst which goblet
after goblet of frothy mead failed to quench. His veins were on fire,
and as he whispered in Aida's ear, he suddenly swooped to cool his hot
lips on the clear expanse of her shoulder. But even as he clutched
her she eluded his grasp and slipped away, leaving him with distended
nostrils like blood-hound thwarted in pursuit.
Presently Jared, arising from his seat, announced, "My daughter has
consented to dance for us." The guests crowded forward and waited
expectantly, but then they were not prepared for the sight that greeted
their eyes. Aida slowly made her way to the center of the terrace. As
she emerged into the light, the spectators uttered an exclamation of
horror, and Akish swore under his breath, for wrapped around her body
were the thick coils of a snake.
A snood fastened over her brow made her head resemble that of the
serpent, and her form, sheathed in green, writhed so with the monster
that the watchers could scarce tell where one ended and the other
began. Slowly the undulations of the snake-dance started. The onlookers
watched fascinated, much as the shivering little monkeys are hypnotized
by the dance of Kaa, the rock python, before they are devoured by him.
Akish, with bulging eyeballs, crept nearer under the spell. The woman
and the serpent swayed together; then out darted a white arm, followed
by the glistening writhe of the snake. At times it seemed almost a
battle between the two, and again it seemed as if the monster would
hug her to death in its embrace. Finally, at a signal, two attendants
rushed forward and helped disengage the python which seemed loath
to leave its fair prey. As it was coaxed off, the audience heaved a
sigh of relief. As the snake sheds its skin, so Aida threw off her
outer robe, and emerged in roseate gauze of dawn-like hue. The music
crashed into gayer strains. First the dancer depicted the awakening of
love,--joy, bliss, rising to the delirium of ecstasy,--then languor,
and when it seemed that she had fairly swooned away, her muscles became
taut, and she arose to show the fury of love scorned. Snatching a
dagger from her belt she brandished it in the air. Wildly she struck,
faster and faster resounded the music, more passionate became her
motion, until she was fury incarnate. She seemed a harlequin of the
desert, as she struck right and left. Akish did not realize how near
he was until she plunged the blade at him and he drew back with a cold
sweat on his brow. Her vengeance seemed to rise to the height of black
hate. Centering her strength she drove the dagger into her imaginary
enemy, and the knife went clattering down on the pavement.
The dance was ended. The spectators broke into wild applause. Aida
staggered toward the shade of the orange trees, and not realizing what
he did, Akish plunged after her. He reached her just as she swayed and
fell, with utter exhaustion, on his outstretched arm.
III.
FRUITION.
Lured on by the bait of Aida, Akish called the secret societies
together and started his diabolical machinations, but the Lord warned
Omer, in a dream, of his impending danger, with the result that the
old king gathered his household together and departed secretly to the
land of Ablom, where he pitched his tents by the sea-shore. Jared was
anointed king by the hand of wickedness, and at the same time Akish was
wedded to Aida.
If Jared loved power, Akish did more so, and his vaulting ambition led
to the throne itself. He fretted inwardly; and, because such a nature
must be active in evil, he began to lay his subtle plans to consummate
his end. He must get Jared out of the way. By reason of his control
of the secret organizations, whose members were bound by dread oaths,
he was already a more influential man than the king. His marriage to
Jared's daughter strengthened his position. Strangely enough, the
thing that should have deterred him from the murder, consideration for
his wife, confirmed his dire decision. Akish loved Aida as much as a
nature of his kind is capable of, but mingled with it was a desire to
domineer. He derived pleasure from torturing the beloved object. During
their brief married life, he had been afforded some rare flashes of
her temper, and he now saw a chance to quell the rebellion in her, and
crush it with one blow.
The arch conspirator sent out his band of assassins to kill King Jared
as he sat upon the throne, and as they departed he called after the
bullies, "That I may know that you have done your work well, bring me
a token, bring me the head of the king," and he smiled grimly to think
that the same fate that Jared had decreed for his father, should now be
meted out to him.
Akish did not know what fear was, but he could ill brook delay. He sat
in his great stone chamber and essayed a dozen tasks only to throw them
aside and listen impatiently, as the afternoon lengthened into night.
When the heavy tread of his accomplices resounded in the corridor, he
could have shouted with relief.
"How goes it?" he questioned sharply, as the men filed into the room.
"It is done," answered Simon.
"How?"
"With twenty wounds, Chief," broke in one of the followers.
"We went in and mingled with the people as he sat high upon his throne,
and when the petitioners for justice had all gone, and he started to
descend, we stabbed him. Our men watched the entrances so we would not
be interrupted in our work."
"And the proof?"
"Behold, my Lord," Simon threw back his cloak and held up by the hair
the ghastly trophy, but it was not this gruesome spectacle that froze
the look of horror on the face of Akish.
Instinctively he looked in the other direction to behold Aida, clad in
her night robes, in the doorway. Whether or not she had recognized the
head of her father, in the half light of the room, they could not tell,
for she turned silently, and they heard the swish of her draperies down
the hall.
Confusion fell upon the retainers, and Akish, shaking as if he had the
ague, said, "I did not mean for her to see that. Get out of my sight."
If they had any doubts they were soon dissipated, for Aida shut herself
up in her apartments, and for three days her screams resounded through
the palace. On the third day Akish commanded her to appear at a
banquet, for he dared not face her alone. She came and sat stony-faced
at the board.
During the coronation ceremonies which followed, when Akish sat in her
father's place, and she, on his right hand, was crowned queen, neither
of them ever mentioned Jared's name.
Not until her son Ether was born some months later did Aida smile
again, and somehow, because Akish was his father, the little newcomer
renewed the bond between them.
IV.
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
Beyond the initial step, Aida had taken no part in Akish's crimes. When
he attained the throne, she thought that his violence must cease, but
his increased power only offered him more opportunities to sate his
lust for wickedness. Because his honor was bound up with his queen,
as well as for her innate charm, Akish had cared more for her than he
did for anybody. But, steeped with satiety, he constantly sought new
sensations; and, as he grew more brutish, Aida's influence with him
waned. His crimes became more vicious, and he reveled in bloodshed,
until the people called him monster, and prayed for a liberator.
[Illustration: THEY BROUGHT HER BABY BOY IN DYING UPON HIS SHIELD.]
Their eyes turned naturally to the tyrant's eldest son. Ether, now
grown to splendid manhood, who through his mother, had kingly blood in
his veins. The old king saw with jealous eyes how the populace loved
his son, and despised him, and his hate knew no bounds. He incarcerated
Ether in prison, and gradually starved him to death.
His mother, who could stand no more, left the monster, and retired to
her desert castle to mourn. Nimrah, her second son, fearful that his
father's wrath would now fall on him, fled with a few followers to Omer
at Ablom.
Not to please a paramour but to punish Aida for leaving him, Akish
yielded to the importunities of one of his favorites, a vulgar, blase
woman and flaunted her openly at the palace.
It is said that the reason the criminal always gets caught is because
he stands out against organized society; nay, more than that, he is
fighting the law of the universe, progression. As soon as a man impairs
his own usefulness, or injures his fellow-men, he becomes a clog to
block her advancement, and nature is going to crush him. She has no
use for weaklings, but on the useful worker she will lavish power a
hundredfold.
The debased debauchee had become a menace, so the immutable laws
prepared to destroy him. Grief-stricken over the death of his brother,
and smarting under this latest insult offered to his mother, Gilead,
the third son, arose in wrath, and declared war against his father.
Thousands in the kingdom, who nursed grievances, rallied to his
support. So Aida saw her own flesh and blood arrayed against their
father. Deep as she had drunk of the bitter draught of sorrow, she was
destined yet to drain it to the dregs.
As befitted her mood, the queen had retired to a bleak castle, partly
in ruins and surrounded for miles by barren cacti. Bats lurked in its
turrets, and the wind claimed its ancient towers for its own. The
nation had risen in arms, and when rumors of battle reached their
retreat nothing would do but that Aida's youngest son, a boy of
fifteen, must sally forth to join his brothers on the field. In vain
did his mother plead; he was obdurate. Finally with trembling fingers
she fastened the armor on his stripling limbs, kissed him, and let him
go. After that the queen of tragedy haunted the edge of the battlefield
like a vampire, until they brought her baby boy in dying upon his
shield. Then her already tottering reason gave way, and she went stark
mad. A few hours later, when they placed the fair, slender body in the
sepulchre, his mother was a raving maniac.
All the tragedies of her life were babbled forth in the drivel of
the insane. One night, under cover of a storm, she escaped from her
keepers. The next morning they found her body in the well, but, whether
blinded by the rain, she had stumbled over the curbing and been plunged
by accident into the pit, or had sought to drown her troubles in the
Lethean waters of suicide, they did not know.