Taramis, queen of Khauran, awakened from a dream-haunted slumber to a
silence that seemed more like the stillness of nighted catacombs than
the normal quiet of a sleeping palace. She lay staring into the darkness,
wondering why the candles in their golden candelabra had gone out. A
flecking of stars marked a gold-barred casement that lent no
illumination to the interior of the chamber. But as Taramis lay there,
she became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before
her. She watched, puzzled. It grew and its intensity deepened as it
expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark
velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramis caught her breath,
starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that
circle of light--_a human head_.
In a sudden panic the queen opened her lips to cry out for her maids;
then she checked herself. The glow was more lurid, the head more vividly
limned. It was a woman's head, small, delicately molded, superbly
poised, with a high-piled mass of lustrous black hair. The face grew
distinct as she stared--and it was the sight of this face which froze
the cry in Taramis's throat. The features were her own! She might have
been looking into a mirror which subtly altered her reflection, lending
it a tigerish gleam of eye, a vindictive curl of lip.
'Ishtar!' gasped Taramis. 'I am bewitched!'
Appallingly, the apparition spoke, and its voice was like honeyed venom.
'Bewitched? No, sweet sister! Here is no sorcery.'
'Sister?' stammered the bewildered girl. 'I have no sister.'
'You never had a sister?' came the sweet, poisonously mocking voice.
'Never a twin sister whose flesh was as soft as yours to caress or
hurt?'
'Why, once I had a sister,' answered Taramis, still convinced that she
was in the grip of some sort of nightmare. 'But she died.'
The beautiful face in the disk was convulsed with the aspect of a fury;
so hellish became its expression that Taramis, cowering back, half
expected to see snaky locks writhe hissing about the ivory brow.
'You lie!' The accusation was spat from between the snarling red lips.
'She did not die! Fool! Oh, enough of this mummery! Look--and let your
sight be blasted!'
Light ran suddenly along the hangings like flaming serpents, and
incredibly the candles in the golden sticks flared up again. Taramis
crouched on her velvet couch, her lithe legs flexed beneath her, staring
wide-eyed at the pantherish figure which posed mockingly before her. It
was as if she gazed upon another Taramis, identical with herself in
every contour of feature and limb, yet animated by an alien and evil
personality. The face of this stranger waif reflected the opposite of
every characteristic the countenance of the queen denoted. Lust and
mystery sparkled in her scintillant eyes, cruelty lurked in the curl of
her full red lips. Each movement of her supple body was subtly
suggestive. Her coiffure imitated that of the queen's, on her feet were
gilded sandals such as Taramis wore in her boudoir. The sleeveless,
low-necked silk tunic, girdled at the waist with a cloth-of-gold
cincture, was a duplicate of the queen's night-garment.
'Who are you?' gasped Taramis, an icy chill she could not explain
creeping along her spine. 'Explain your presence before I call my
ladies-in-waiting to summon the guard!'
'Scream until the roof beams crack,' callously answered the stranger.
'Your sluts will not wake till dawn, though the palace spring into
flames about them. Your guardsmen will not hear your squeals; they have
been sent out of this wing of the palace.'
'What!' exclaimed Taramis, stiffening with outraged majesty. 'Who dared
give my guardsmen such a command?'
'I did, sweet sister,' sneered the other girl. 'A little while ago,
before I entered. They thought it was their darling adored queen. Ha!
How beautifully I acted the part! With what imperious dignity, softened
by womanly sweetness, did I address the great louts who knelt in their
armor and plumed helmets!'
Taramis felt as if a stifling net of bewilderment were being drawn about
her.
'Who are you?' she cried desperately. 'What madness is this? Why do you
come here?'
'Who am I?' There was the spite of a she-cobra's hiss in the soft
response. The girl stepped to the edge of the couch, grasped the queen's
white shoulders with fierce fingers, and bent to glare full into the
startled eyes of Taramis. And under the spell of that hypnotic glare,
the queen forgot to resent the unprecedented outrage of violent hands
laid on regal flesh.
'Fool!' gritted the girl between her teeth. 'Can you ask? Can you
wonder? I am Salome!'
'Salome!' Taramis breathed the word, and the hairs prickled on her scalp
as she realized the incredible, numbing truth of the statement. 'I
thought you died within the hour of your birth,' she said feebly.
'So thought many,' answered the woman who called herself Salome. 'They
carried me into the desert to die, damn them! I, a mewing, puling babe
whose life was so young it was scarcely the flicker of a candle. And do
you know why they bore me forth to die?'
'I--I have heard the story--' faltered Taramis.
Salome laughed fiercely, and slapped her bosom. The low-necked tunic
left the upper parts of her firm breasts bare, and between them there
shone a curious mark--a crescent, red as blood.
'The mark of the witch!' cried Taramis, recoiling.
'Aye!' Salome's laughter was dagger-edged with hate. 'The curse of the
kings of Khauran! Aye, they tell the tale in the market-places, with
wagging beards and rolling eyes, the pious fools! They tell how the
first queen of our line had traffic with a fiend of darkness and bore
him a daughter who lives in foul legendry to this day. And thereafter in
each century a girl baby was born into the Askhaurian dynasty, with a
scarlet half-moon between her breasts, that signified her destiny.
'"Every century a witch shall be born." So ran the ancient curse. And so
it has come to pass. Some were slain at birth, as they sought to slay
me. Some walked the earth as witches, proud daughters of Khauran, with
the moon of hell burning upon their ivory bosoms. Each was named Salome.
I too am Salome. It was always Salome, the witch. It will always be
Salome, the witch, even when the mountains of ice have roared down from
the pole and ground the civilizations to ruin, and a new world has risen
from the ashes and dust--even then there shall be Salomes to walk the
earth, to trap men's hearts by their sorcery, to dance before the kings
of the world, to see the heads of the wise men fall at their pleasure.'
'But--but you--' stammered Taramis.
'I?' The scintillant eyes burned like dark fires of mystery. 'They
carried me into the desert far from the city, and laid me naked on the
hot sand, under the flaming sun. And then they rode away and left me for
the jackals and the vultures and the desert wolves.
'But the life in me was stronger than the life in common folk, for it
partakes of the essence of the forces that seethe in the black gulfs
beyond mortal ken. The hours passed, and the sun slashed down like the
molten flames of hell, but I did not die--aye, something of that torment
I remember, faintly and far away, as one remembers a dim, formless
dream. Then there were camels, and yellow-skinned men who wore silk
robes and spoke in a weird tongue. Strayed from the caravan road, they
passed close by, and their leader saw me, and recognized the scarlet
crescent on my bosom. He took me up and gave me life.
'He was a magician from far Khitai, returning to his native kingdom
after a journey to Stygia. He took me with him to purple-towering
Paikang, its minarets rising amid the vine-festooned jungles of bamboo,
and there I grew to womanhood under his teaching. Age had steeped him
deep in black wisdom, not weakened his powers of evil. Many things he
taught me--'
She paused, smiling enigmatically, with wicked mystery gleaming in her
dark eyes. Then she tossed her head.
'He drove me from him at last, saying that I was but a common witch in
spite of his teachings, and not fit to command the mighty sorcery he
would have taught me. He would have made me queen of the world and ruled
the nations through me, he said, but I was only a harlot of darkness.
But what of it? I could never endure to seclude myself in a golden
tower, and spend the long hours staring into a crystal globe, mumbling
over incantations written on serpent's skin in the blood of virgins,
poring over musty volumes in forgotten languages.
'He said I was but an earthly sprite, knowing naught of the deeper gulfs
of cosmic sorcery. Well, this world contains all I desire--power, and
pomp, and glittering pageantry, handsome men and soft women for my
paramours and my slaves. He had told me who I was, of the curse and my
heritage. I have returned to take that to which I have as much right as
you. Now it is mine by right of possession.'
'What do you mean?' Taramis sprang up and faced her sister, stung out of
her bewilderment and fright. 'Do you imagine that by drugging a few of
my maids and tricking a few of my guardsmen you have established a claim
to the throne of Khauran? Do not forget that I am Queen of Khauran! I
shall give you a place of honor, as my sister, but--'
Salome laughed hatefully.
'How generous of you, dear, sweet sister! But before you begin putting
me in my place--perhaps you will tell me whose soldiers camp in the
plain outside the city walls?'
'They are the Shemitish mercenaries of Constantius, the Kothic _voivode_
of the Free Companies.'
'And what do they in Khauran?' cooed Salome.
Taramis felt that she was being subtly mocked, but she answered with an
assumption of dignity which she scarcely felt.
'Constantius asked permission to pass along the borders of Khauran on
his way to Turan. He himself is hostage for their good behavior as long
as they are within my domains.'
'And Constantius,' pursued Salome. 'Did he not ask your hand today?'
Taramis shot her a clouded glance of suspicion.
'How did you know that?'
An insolent shrug of the slim naked shoulders was the only reply.
'You refused, dear sister?'
'Certainly I refused!' exclaimed Taramis angrily. 'Do you, an Askhaurian
princess yourself, suppose that the Queen of Khauran could treat such a
proposal with anything but disdain? Wed a bloody-handed adventurer, a
man exiled from his own kingdom because of his crimes, and the leader of
organized plunderers and hired murderers?
'I should never have allowed him to bring his black-bearded slayers into
Khauran. But he is virtually a prisoner in the south tower, guarded by
my soldiers. Tomorrow I shall bid him order his troops to leave the
kingdom. He himself shall be kept captive until they are over the
border. Meantime, my soldiers man the walls of the city, and I have
warned him that he will answer for any outrages perpetrated on the
villagers or shepherds by his mercenaries.'
'He is confined in the south tower?' asked Salome.
'That is what I said. Why do you ask?'
For answer Salome clapped her hands, and lifting her voice, with a
gurgle of cruel mirth in it, called: 'The queen grants you an audience,
Falcon!'
A gold-arabesqued door opened and a tall figure entered the chamber, at
the sight of which Taramis cried out in amazement and anger.
'Constantius! You dare enter my chamber!'
'As you see, Your Majesty!' He bent his dark, hawk-like head in mock
humility.
Constantius, whom men called Falcon, was tall, broad-shouldered,
slim-waisted, lithe and strong as pliant steel. He was handsome in an
aquiline, ruthless way. His face was burnt dark by the sun, and his
hair, which grew far back from his high, narrow forehead, was black as a
raven. His dark eyes were penetrating and alert, the hardness of his
thin lips not softened by his thin black mustache. His boots were of
Kordavan leather, his hose and doublet of plain, dark silk, tarnished
with the wear of the camps and the stains of armor rust.
Twisting his mustache, he let his gaze travel up and down the shrinking
queen with an effrontery that made her wince.
'By Ishtar, Taramis,' he said silkily, 'I find you more alluring in your
night-tunic than in your queenly robes. Truly, this is an auspicious
night!'
Fear grew in the queen's dark eyes. She was no fool; she knew that
Constantius would never dare this outrage unless he was sure of himself.
'You are mad!' she said. 'If I am in your power in this chamber, you are
no less in the power of my subjects, who will rend you to pieces if you
touch me. Go at once, if you would live.'
Both laughed mockingly, and Salome made an impatient gesture.
'Enough of this farce; let us on to the next act in the comedy. Listen,
dear sister: it was I who sent Constantius here. When I decided to take
the throne of Khauran, I cast about for a man to aid me, and chose the
Falcon, because of his utter lack of all characteristics men call good.'
'I am overwhelmed, princess,' murmured Constantius sardonically, with a
profound bow.
'I sent him to Khauran, and, once his men were camped in the plain
outside, and he was in the palace, I entered the city by that small gate
in the west wall--the fools guarding it thought it was you returning
from some nocturnal adventure--'
'You hell-cat!' Taramis's cheeks flamed and her resentment got the
better of her regal reserve.
Salome smiled hardly.
'They were properly surprised and shocked, but admitted me without
question. I entered the palace the same way, and gave the order to the
surprised guards that sent them marching away, as well as the men who
guarded Constantius in the south tower. Then I came here, attending to
the ladies-in-waiting on the way.'
Taramis's fingers clenched and she paled.
'Well, what next?' she asked in a shaky voice.
'Listen!' Salome inclined her head. Faintly through the casement there
came the clank of marching men in armor; gruff voices shouted in an
alien tongue, and cries of alarm mingled with the shouts.
'The people awaken and grow fearful,' said Constantius sardonically.
'You had better go and reassure them, Salome!'
'Call me Taramis,' answered Salome. 'We must become accustomed to it.'
'What have you done?' cried Taramis. 'What have you done?'
'I have gone to the gates and ordered the soldiers to open them,'
answered Salome. 'They were astounded, but they obeyed. That is the
Falcon's army you hear, marching into the city.'
'You devil!' cried Taramis. 'You have betrayed my people, in my guise!
You have made me seem a traitor! Oh, I shall go to them--'
With a cruel laugh Salome caught her wrist and jerked her back. The
magnificent suppleness of the queen was helpless against the vindictive
strength that steeled Salome's slender limbs.
'You know how to reach the dungeons from the palace, Constantius?' said
the witch-girl. 'Good. Take this spitfire and lock her into the
strongest cell. The jailers are all sound in drugged sleep. I saw to
that. Send a man to cut their throats before they can awaken. None must
ever know what has occurred tonight. Thenceforward I am Taramis, and
Taramis is a nameless prisoner in an unknown dungeon.'
Constantius smiled with a glint of strong white teeth under his thin
mustache.
'Very good; but you would not deny me a little--ah--amusement first?'
'Not I! Tame the scornful hussy as you will.' With a wicked laugh Salome
flung her sister into the Kothian's arms, and turned away through the
door that opened into the outer corridor.
Fright widened Taramis's lovely eyes, her supple figure rigid and
straining against Constantius's embrace. She forgot the men marching in
the streets, forgot the outrage to her queenship, in the face of the
menace to her womanhood. She forgot all sensations but terror and shame
as she faced the complete cynicism of Constantius's burning, mocking
eyes, felt his hard arms crushing her writhing body.
Salome, hurrying along the corridor outside, smiled spitefully as a
scream of despair and agony rang shuddering through the palace.