Now, my passage across the great continent of Atlantis, if tedious and
haunted by many dangers, need not be recounted in detail here. Only one
halt did I make of any duration, and that was unavoidable. I had killed
a stag one day, bringing it down after a long chase in an open savannah.
I scented the air carefully, to see if there was any other beast which
could do me harm within reach, and thinking that the place was safe,
set about cutting my meat, and making a sufficiency into a bundle for
carriage.
But underfoot amongst the grasses there was a great legged worm, a
monstrous green thing, very venomous in its bite; and presently as I
moved I brushed it with my heel, and like the dart of light it swooped
with its tiny head and struck me with its fangs in the lower thigh. With
my knife I cut through its neck and it fell to writhing and struggling
and twining its hundred legs into all manner of contortions; and then,
cleaning my blade in the ground, I stabbed with it deep all round the
wound, so that the blood might flow freely and wash the venom from its
lodgement. And then with the blood trickling healthily down from my
heel, I shouldered the meat and strode off, thankful for being so well
quit of what might have made itself a very ugly adventure.
As I walked, however, my leg began to be filled with a tightness and
throbbing which increased every hour, and presently it began to swell
also, till the skin was stretched like drawn parchment. I was taken,
too, with a sickness, that racked me violently, and if one of the
greater and more dangerous beasts had come upon me then, he would have
eaten me without a fight. With the fall of darkness I managed to haul
myself up into a tree, and there abode in the crutch of a limb, in
wakefulness and pain throughout the night.
With the dawn, when the night beasts had gone to their lairs, I
clambered down again, and leaning heavily on my spear, limped onwards
through the sombre forests along my way. The moss which grows on the
northern side of each tree was my guide, but gradually I began to note
that I was seeing moss all round the trees, and, in fact, was growing
light-headed with the pain and the swelling of the limb. But still I
pressed onwards with my journey, my last instinct being to obey the
command of the High Council, and so procure the enlargement of Nais as
had been promised.
My last memory was of being met by someone in the black forest who aided
me, and there my waking senses took wings into forgetfulness.
But after an interval, wit returned, and I found myself on a bed of
leaves in a cleft between two rocks, which was furnished with some poor
skill, and fortified with stakes and buildings against the entrance of
the larger marauding beasts. My wound was dressed with a poultice of
herbs, and at the other side of the cavern there squatted a woman,
cooking a mess of wood-grubs and honey over a fire of sticks.
“How came I here?” I asked.
“I brought you,” said she.
“And who are you?”
“A nymph, they call me, and I practise as such, collecting herbs and
curing the diseases of those that come to me, telling fortunes, and
making predictions. In return I receive what each can afford, and if
they do not pay according to their means, I clap on a curse to make them
wither. It’s a lean enough living when wars and the pestilence have left
so few poor folk to live in the land.”
“Do you visit Atlantis?”
“Not I. Phorenice would have me boiled in brine, living, if she could
lay easy hands on me. Our dainty Empress tolerates no magic but her own.
They say she is for pulling down the Priests off their Mountain now.”
“So you do get news of the city?”
“Assuredly. It is my trade to get good news, or otherwise how could I
tell fortunes to the vulgar? You see, my lord, I detected your quality
by your speech, and knowing you are not one of those that come to me for
spells, and potions, I have no fear in speaking to you plainly.”
“Tell me then: Phorenice still reigns?”
“Most vilely.”
“As a maiden?”
“As the mother of twin sons. Tatho’s her husband now, and has been these
three years.”
“Tatho! Who followed him as viceroy of Yucatan?”
“There is no Yucatan. A vast nation of little hairy men, so the tale
goes, coming from the West overran the country. They had clubs of
wood tipped with stone as their only arm, but numbers made their chief
weapon. They had no desire for plunder, or the taking of slaves, or
the conquering of cities. To eat the flesh of Atlanteans was their only
lust, and they followed it prodigiously. Their numbers were like the
bees in a swarm.
“They came to each of the cities of Yucatan in turn, and though
the colonists slew them in thousands, the weight of numbers always
prevailed. They ate clean each city they took, and left it to the beasts
of the forest, and went on to the next. And so in time they reached the
coast towns, and Tatho and the few that survived took ship, and
sailed home. They even ate Tatho’s wife for him. They must be curious
persevering things, these little hairy men. The Gods send they do not
get across the seas to Atlantis, or they would be worse plague to the
poor country than Phorenice.”
Now I had heard of these little hairy creatures before, and though
indeed I had never seen them, I had gathered that they were a little
less than human and a little more than bestial; a link so to speak
between the two orders; and specially held in check by the Gods in
certain forest solitudes. Also I had learned that on occasion, when
punishment was needful, they could be set loose as a devastating army
upon men, devouring all before them. But I said nothing of this to the
nymph, she being but a vulgar woman, and indeed half silly, as is always
the case with these self-styled sorceresses who gull the ignorant,
common folk. But within myself I was bitterly grieved at the fate of
that fine colony of Yucatan, in which I had expended such an infinity of
pains to do my share of the building.
But it did not suit my purpose to have my name and quality blazoned
abroad till the time was full, and so I said nothing to the nymph about
Yucatan, but let the talk continue upon other matters. “What about
Egypt?” I asked.
“In its accustomed darkness, so they say. Who cares for Egypt these
latter years? Who cares for anyone or anything for that matter except
for himself and his own proper estate? Time was when the country folk
and the hunters hereabouts brought me offerings to this cave for sheer
piety’s sake. But now they never come near unless they see a way of
getting good value in return for their gifts. And, by result, instead
of living fat and hearty, I make lean meals off honey and grubs. It’s
a poor life, a nymph’s, in these latter years I tell you, my lord. It’s
the fashion for all classes to believe in no kind of mystery now.”
“What manner of pestilence is this you spoke of?”
“I have not seen it. Thank the Gods it has not come this way. But they
do say that it has grown from the folk Phorenice has slain, and whose
bodies remain unburied. She is always slaying, and so the bodies lie
thicker than the birds and beasts can eat them. For which of our sins,
I wonder, did the Gods let Phorenice come to reign? I wish that she and
her twins were boiled alive in brine before they came between an honest
nymph of the forest and her living.
“They say she has put an image of herself in all the temples of the
city now, and has ordered prayers and sacrifices to be made night
and morning. She has decreed all other Gods inferior to herself
and forbidden their worship, and those of the people that are not
sufficiently devout for her taste, have their hamstrings slit by their
tormentors to aid them constantly into a devotional attitude.--Will you
eat of my grubs and honey? There is nothing else. Your back was bloody
with carrying meat when I met you, but you had lost your load. You must
either taste this mess of mine now, or go without.”
I harboured with that nymph in cave six days, she using her drugs and
charms to cure my leg the while, and when I was recovered, I hunted the
plains and killed her a fat cloven-hoofed horse as payment, and then
went along my ways.
The country from there onwards had at one time carried a sturdy
population which held its own firmly, and, as its numbers grew, took in
more ground, and built more homesteads farther afield. The houses were
perched in trees for the most part, as there they were out of reach
of cave-bear and cave-tiger and the other more dangerous beasts. But
others, and these were the better ones, were built on the ground, of
logs so ponderous and so firmly clamped and dovetailed that the beasts
could not pull them down, and once inside a house of this fashion
its owners were safe, and could progue at any attackers through the
interstices between the logs, and often wound, sometimes make a kill.
But not one in ten of these outlying settlers remained. The houses were
silent when I reached them, the fire-hearth before the door weed-grown,
and the patch of vegetables taken back by the greedy fingers of the
forest into mere scrub and jungle. And farther on, when villages began
to appear, strongly-walled as the custom is, to ward off the attacks of
beasts, the logs which aforetime had barred the gateway lay strewn in
a sprouting undergrowth, and naught but the kitchen middens remained to
prove that once they had sheltered human tenants. Phorenice’s influence
seemed to have spread as though it were some horrid blight over the
whole face of what was once a smiling and an easy-living land.
So far I had met with little enough interference from any men I had come
across. Many had fled with their women into the depths of the forest at
the bare sight of me; some stood their ground with a threatening face,
but made no offer to attack, seeing that I did not offer them insult
first; and a few, a very few, offered me shelter and provision. But as
I neared the city, and began to come upon muddy beaten paths, I passed
through governments that were more thickly populated, and here appeared
strong chance of delay. The watcher in the tower which is set above each
village would spy me and cry: “Here is a masterless man,” and then the
people that were within would rush out with intent to spoil me of my
weapons, and afterwards to appoint me as a labourer.
I had no desire to slay these wretched folk, being filled with pity at
the state to which they had fallen; and often words served me to make
them stand aside from the path, and stare wonderingly at my fierceness,
and let me go my ways. And when at other times words had no avail, I
strove to strike as lightly as could be, my object being to get forward
with my journey and leave no unnecessary dead behind me. Indeed, having
found the modern way of these villages, it grew to be my custom to turn
off into the forest, and make a circuit whenever I came within smell of
their garbage.
Similarly, too, when I got farther on, and came amongst greater towns
also, I kept beyond challenge of their walls, having no mind to risk
delay from the whim of any new law which might chance to be set up by
their governors. My progress might be slinking, but my pride did not
upbraid me very loudly; indeed, the fever of haste burned within me so
hot and I had little enough carrying space for other emotions.
But at last I found myself within a half-day’s journey the city of
Atlantis itself, with the Sacred Mountain and its ring of fires looming
high beside it, and the call for caution became trebly accentuated.
Everywhere evidences showed that the country had been drained of its
fighting men. Everywhere women prayed that the battles might end
with the rout of the Priests or the killing of Phorenice, so that the
wretched land might have peace and time to lick its wounds.
An army was investing the Sacred Mountain, and its one approach was most
narrowly guarded. Even after having journeyed so far, it seemed as if I
should have to sit hopelessly down without being able to carry out the
orders which had been laid upon me by the High Council, and earn the
reward which had been promised. Force would be useless here. I should
have one good fight--a gorgeous fight--one man against an army, and my
usefulness would be ended.... No; this was the occasion for guile, and
I found covert in the outskirts of a wood, and lay there cudgelling my
brain for a plan.
Across the plain before me lay the grim great walls of the city, with
the heads of its temples, and its palaces, and its pyramids showing
beyond. The step-sides of the royal pyramid held my eye. Phorenice had
expended some of her new-found store of gold in overlaying their former
whiteness with sheets of shining yellow metal. But it was not that
change that moved me. I was remembering that, in the square before the
pyramid, there stood a throne of granite carved with the snake and the
outstretched hand, and in the hollow beneath the throne was Nais, my
love, asleep these eight years now because of the drug that had been
given to her, but alive still, and waiting for me, if only I on my
part could make a way to the place where Zaemon defied the Empress, and
announce my coming.
In that covert of the woods I lay a day and a night raging with myself
for not discovering some plan to get within the defences of the Sacred
Mountain, but in the morning which followed, there came a man towards me
running.
“You need not threaten me with your weapons,” he cried. “I mean no harm.
It seems that you are Deucalion; though I should not have known you
myself in those rags and skins, and behind that tangle of hair and
beard. You will give me your good word I know. Believe me, I have not
loitered unduly.”
He was a lower priest whom I knew, and held in little esteem; his name
was Ro, a greedy fellow and not overworthy of trust. “From whom do you
come?” I asked.
“Zaemon laid a command on me. He came to my house, though how he got
there I cannot tell, seeing that Phorenice’s army blocks all possible
passage to and from the Mountain. I told him I wished to be mixed with
none of his schemings. I am a peaceful man, Deucalion, and have taken a
wife who requires nourishment. I still serve in the same temple, though
we have swept out the old Gods by order of the Empress, and put her
image in their place. The people are tidily pious nowadays, those that
are left of them, and the living is consequently easy. Yes, I tell you
there are far more offerings now than there were in the old days. And
so I had no wish to be mixed with matters which might well make me be
deprived of a snug post, and my head to boot.”
“I can believe it all of you, Ro.”
“But there was no denying Zaemon. He burst into one of his black furies,
and while he spoke at me, I tell you I felt as good as dead. You know
his powers?”
“I have seen some of them.”
“Well, the Gods alone know which are the true Gods, and which are the
others. I serve the one that gives me employment. But those that Zaemon
serves give him power, and that’s beyond denying. You see that right
hand of mine? It is dead and paralysed from the wrist, and that is
a gift of Zaemon. He bestowed it, he said, to make me collect my
attention. Then he said more hard things concerning what he was pleased
to term my apostasy, not letting me put up a word in my own defence of
how the change was forced upon me. And finally, said he, I might
either do his bidding on a certain matter to the letter, or take that
punishment which my falling away from the old Gods had earned. ‘I
shall not kill you,’ said he, ‘but I will cover all your limbs with a
paralysis, such as you have tasted already, and when at length death
reaches you in some gutter, you will welcome it.’”
“If Zaemon said those words, he meant them. So you accepted the
alternative?”
“Had I, with a wife depending on me, any other choice? I asked his
pleasure. It was to find you when you came in here from some distant
part of the land, and deliver to you his message.
“‘Then tell me where is the meeting place,’ said I, ‘and when.’
“‘There is none appointed, nor is the day fixed,’ said he. ‘You must
watch and search always for him. But when he comes, you will be guided
to his place.’ Well, Deucalion, I think I was guided, but how, I do
not know. But now I have found you, and if there’s such a thing as
gratitude, I ask you to put in your word with Zaemon that this deadness
be taken away from my hand. It’s an awful thing for a man to be forced
to go through life like this, for no real fault of his own. And Zaemon
could cure it from where he sat, if he was so minded.”
“You seem still to have a very full faith in some of the old Gods’
priests,” I said. “But so far, I do not see that your errand is done. I
have had no message yet.”
“Why, the message is so simple that I do not see why he could not have
got some one else to carry it. You are to make a great blaze. You may
fire the grasses of the plain in front of this wood if you choose. And
on the night which follows, you are to go round to that flank of the
Sacred Mountain away from the city where the rocks run down sheer, and
there they will lower a rope and haul you up to their hands above.”
“It seems easy, and I thank you for your pains. I will ask Zaemon that
your hand may be restored to you.”
“You shall have my prayers if it is. And look, Deucalion, it is a small
matter, and it would be less likely to slip your memory if you saw to it
at once on your landing. Later, you may be disturbed. Phorenice is bound
to pull you down off your perch up there now she has made her mind to
it. She never fails, once she has set her hand to a thing. Indeed,
if she was no Goddess at birth, she is making herself into one very
rapidly. She has got all the ancient learning of our Priests, and more
besides. She has discovered the Secret of Life these recent months--”
“She has found that?” I cried, fairly startled. “How? Tell me how? Only
the Three know that. It is beyond our knowledge even who are members of
the Seven.”
“I know nothing of her means. But she has the secret, and now she is as
good an immortal (so she says) as any of them. Well, Deucalion, it is
dangerous for me to be missing from my temple overlong, so I will go.
You will carry that matter we spoke of in your mind? It means much
to me.”--His eye wandered over my ragged person--“And if you think my
service is of value to you--”
“You see me poor, my man, and practically destitute.”
“Some small coin,” he murmured, “or even a link of bronze? I am at
great expense just now buying nourishment for my wife. Well, if you have
nothing, you cannot give. So I’ll just bid you farewell.”
He took himself off then, and I was not sorry. I had never liked Ro. But
I wasted no more precious time then. The grass blazed up for a signal
almost before his timorous heels were clear of it, and that night when
the darkness gave me cover, I took the risk of what beasts might be
prowling, and went to the place appointed. There was no rope dangling,
but presently one came down the smooth cliff face like some slender
snake. I made a loop, slipped it over a leg, and pulled hard as a
signal. Those above began to haul, and so I went back to the Sacred
Mountain after an absence of so many toilsome and warring years. There
were none to disturb the ascent. Phorenice’s troops had no thought to
guard that gaunt, bare, seamless precipice.
The men who hauled me up were old, and panted heavily with their task,
and, until I knew the reason, I wondered why a knot of younger priests
had not been appointed for the duty. But I put no question. With us of
the Priests’ Clan on the Sacred Mountain, it is always taken as granted
that when an order is given, it is given for the best. Besides, these
priests did not offer themselves to question. They took me off at once
to Zaemon, and that is what I could have wished.
The old man greeted me with the royal sign. “All hail to Deucalion,” he
cried, “King of Atlantis, duly called thereto by the High Council of the
priests.”
“Is Phorenice dead?” I asked.
“It remains for you to slay her, and take your kingdom, if, indeed,
when all is done, there remains a man or a rood of land to govern. The
sentence has gone out that she is to die, and it shall be carried into
effect, even though we have to set loose the most dreadful powers that
are stored in the Ark of the Mysteries, and wreck this continent in our
effort. We have borne with her infamies all these years by command sent
down by the most High Gods; but now she has gone beyond endurance, and
They it is who have given the word for her cutting off.”
“You are one of the highest Three; I am only one of the Seven; you best
know the cost.”
“There can be no counting the cost now, my brother, and my king. It is
an order.”
“It is an order,” I repeated formally, “so I obey.”
“If it were not impious to do so, it would be easy to justify this
decision of the Gods. The woman has usurped the throne; yet she was
forgiven and bidden rule on wisely. She has tampered with our holy
religion; yet she was forgiven. She has killed the peoples of Atlantis
in greedy useless wars, and destroyed the country’s trade; yet she was
forgiven. She has desecrated the old temples, and latterly has set up
in them images of herself to be worshipped as a deity; yet she was
forgiven. But at last her evil cleverness has discovered to her the
tremendous Secret of Life and Death, and there she overstepped the
boundary of the High Gods’ forbearance.
“I myself went to carry a final warning, and once more faced her in
the great banqueting-hall. Solemnly I recited to her the edict, and she
chose to take it as a challenge. She would live on eternally herself and
she would share her knowledge with those that pleased her. Tatho that
was her husband should also be immortal. Indeed, if she thought fit, she
would cry the secret aloud so that even the common people might know it,
and death from mere age would become a legend.
“She cared no wit how she might upset the laws of Nature. She was
Phorenice, and was the highest law of all. And finally she defied me
there in that banqueting-hall and defied also the High Gods that stood
behind my mouth. ‘My magic is as strong as yours, you pompous fool,’
she cried, ‘and presently you shall see the two stand side by side upon
their trial.’
“She began to collect an army from that moment, and we on our part made
our preparations. It was discovered by our arts that you still lived,
and King of Atlantis you were made by solemn election. How you were
summoned, you know as nearly as it is lawful that one of your degree
should know; how you came, you understand best yourself; but here you
are, my brother, and being King now, you must order all things as you
see best for the preservation of your high estate, and we others live
only to give you obedience.”
“Then being King, I can speak without seeming to make use of a threat.
I must have my Queen first, or I am not strong enough to give my whole
mind to this ruling.”
“She shall be brought here.”
“So! Then I will be a General now, and see to the defences of this
place, and view the men who are here to stand behind them.”
I went out of the dwelling then, Zaemon giving place and following me.
It was night still but there is no darkness on the upper part of the
Sacred Mountain. A ring of fires, fed eternally from the earth-breath
which wells up from below, burns round one-half of the crest, lighting
it always as bright as day, and in fact forming no small part of its
fortification. Indeed, it is said that, in the early dawn of history,
men first came to the Mountain as a stronghold because of the natural
defence which the fires offered.
There is no bridging these flames or smothering them. On either side
of their line for a hundred paces the ground glows with heat, and a man
would be turned to ash who tried to cross it. Round full one-half the
mountain slopes the fires make a rampart unbreakable, and on the other
side the rock runs in one sheer precipice from the crest to the plain
which spreads beyond its foot. But it is on this farther side that there
is the only entrance way which gives passage to the crest of the Sacred
Mountain from below. Running diagonally up the steep face of the cliff
is a gigantic fissure, which succeeding ages (as man has grown more
luxurious) have made more easy to climb.
Looking at the additions, in the ancient days, I can well imagine that
none but the most daring could have made the ascent. But one generation
has thrown a bridge over a bad gap here, and another has cut into the
living stone and widened a ledge there, till in these latter years there
is a path with cut steps and carved balustrade such as the feeblest or
most giddy might traverse with little effort or exertion. But always
when these improvers made smooth the obstacles, they were careful to
weaken in no possible way the natural defences but rather to add to
them.
Eight gates of stone there were cutting the pathway, each commanding
a straight, steep piece of the ascent, and overhanging each gate was a
gallery secure from arrow-shot, yet so contrived that great stones could
be hurled through holes in the floor of it, in such a manner that they
must irretrievably smash to a pulp any men advancing against it from
below. And in caves dug out from the rock on either hand was a great
hoard of these stones, so that no enemy through sheer expenditure of
troops could hope to storm a gate by exhausting its ammunition.
But though there were eight of these granite gates in the series, we had
the whole number to depend on no longer. The lowest gate was held by
a garrison of Phorenice’s troops, who had built a wall above them to
protect their occupation. The gate had been gained by no brilliant feat
of arms--it had been won by threats, bribery, and promises; or, in other
words, it had been given up by the blackest treachery.
And here lay the keynote of the weakness in our defence. The most
perfect ramparts that brain can invent are useless without men to line
them, and it was men we lacked. Of students entering into the colleges
of the Sacred Mountain, there had been none now for many a year. The
younger generation thought little of the older Gods. Of the men that had
grown up amongst the sacred groves, and filled offices there, many had
become lukewarm in their faith and remained on only through habit, and
because an easy living stayed near them there; and these, when the siege
began, quickly made their way over to the other side.
Phorenice was no fool to fight against unnecessary strength. Her heralds
made proclamation that peace and a good subsistence would be given to
those who chose to come out to her willingly; and as an alternative she
would kill by torture and mutilation those she caught in the place when
she took it by storm, as she most assuredly would do before she had
finished with it. And so great was the prestige of her name, that quite
one-half of these that remained on the mountain took themselves away
from the defence.
There was no attempt to hold back these sorry priests, nor was there any
punishing them as they went. Zaemon, indeed, was minded (so he told me
with grim meaning himself) to give them some memento of their apostasy
to carry away which would not wear out, but the others of the High
Council made him stay his vengeful hand. And so when I came to the place
the garrison numbered no more than eighty, counting even feeble old
dotards who could barely walk; and of men not past their prime I could
barely command a score.
Still, seeing the narrowness of the passages which led to each of the
gates, up which in no place could more than two men advance together, we
were by no means in desperate straits for the defence as yet; and if my
new-given kingdom was so far small, consisting as it did in effect of
the Sacred Mountain and no other part of Atlantis, at any rate there
seemed little danger of its being further contracted.
Another of the wise precautions of the men of old stood us in good stead
then. In the ancient times, when grain first was grown as food, it came
to be looked upon as the acme of wealth. Tribute was always paid from
the people to their Priests, and presently, so the old histories say,
it was appointed that this should take the form of grain, as this was
a medium both dignified and fitting. And those of the people who had
it not, were forced to barter their other produce for grain before they
could pay this tribute.
On the Sacred Mountain itself vast storehouses were dug in the rock, and
here the grain was teemed in great yellow heaps, and each generation of
those that were set over it, took a pride in adding to the accumulation.
In more modern days it had been a custom amongst the younger and more
forward of the Priests to scoff at this ancient provision, and to hold
that a treasure of gold, or weapons, or jewels would have more value and
no less of dignity; and more than once it has been a close thing
lest these innovators should not be out-voted. But as it was, the old
constitution had happily been preserved, and now in these years of trial
the Clan reaped the benefit. And so with these granaries, and a series
of great tanks and cisterns which held the rainfall, there was no chance
of Phorenice reducing our stronghold by mere close investment, even
though she sat down stubbornly before it for a score of years.
But it was the paucity of men for the defence which oppressed me most.
As I took my way about the head of the Mountain, inspecting all points,
the emptiness of the place smote me like a succession of blows. The
groves, once so trim, were now shaggy and unpruned. Wind had whirled
the leaves in upon the temple floors, and they lay there unswept. The
college of youths held no more now than a musty smell to bear witness
that men had once been grown there. The homely palaces of the higher
Priests, at one time so ardently sought after, lay many of them empty,
because not even one candidate came forward now to canvass for election.
Evil thoughts surged up within me as I saw these things, that were
direct promptings from the nether Gods. “There must be something
wanting,” these tempters whispered, “in a religion from which so many of
its Priests fled at the first pinch of persecution.”
I did what I could to thrust these waverings resolutely behind me; but
they refused to be altogether ousted from my brain; and so I made a
compromise with myself: First, I would with the help that might be given
me, destroy this wanton Phorenice, and regain the kingdom which had been
given me to my own proper rule; and afterwards I would call a council
of the Seven and council of the Three, and consider without prejudice
if there was any matter in which our ancient ritual could be amended
to suit the more modern requirements. But this should not be done till
Phorenice was dead and I was firmly planted in her room. I would not be
a party, even to myself, to any plan which smacked at all of surrender.
And there as I walked through the desolate groves and beside the cold
altars, the High Gods were pleased to show their approval of my scheme,
and to give me opportunity to bind myself to it with a solemn oath and
vow. At that moment from His distant resting-place in the East, our Lord
the Sun leaped up to begin another day. For long enough from where I
stood below the crest of the Mountain, He Himself would be invisible.
But the great light of His glory spread far into the sky, and against it
the Ark of the Mysteries loomed in black outline from the highest crag
where it rested, lonely and terrible.
For anyone unauthorised to go nearer than a thousand paces to this
storehouse of the Highest Mysteries meant instant death. On that day
when I was initiated as one of the Seven, I had been permitted to go
near and once press my lips against its ample curves; and the rank of
my degree gave me the privilege to repeat that salute again once on each
day when a new year was born. But what lay inside its great interior,
and how it was entered, that was hidden from the Seven, even as it was
from the other Priests and the common people in the city below. Only
those who had been raised to the sublime elevation of the Three had a
knowledge of the dreadful powers which were stored within it.
I went down on my knees where I was, and Zaemon knelt beside me, and
together we recited the prayers which had been said by the Priests from
the beginning of time, giving thanks to our great Lord that He has
come to brighten another day. And then, with my eyes fixed on the black
outline of the Ark of Mysteries I vowed that, come what might, I at
least would be true servant of the High Gods to my life’s end, and that
my whole strength should be spent in restoring Their worship and glory.