WHERE THE ILLIA MEETS THE SEA
In the watches of the night arose a great clamor and outcry in the old
palace of Bel-Tisam. So loud was the din that it aroused Rose Emer and
the Lady Memene from their slumbers in the chamber off the ancient hall
where they were quartered. In the outer corridors they heard the clang
of feet of armored men and their hoarse shouts as they called to one
another. This grew faint and passed away, and then swelled loud and
near again, as of men who had penetrated into the lower dungeons of the
prison and returned.
Sitting up in their bed and holding each other by the hand for comfort,
the two women were afraid for what might have happened.
"Something untoward is on foot," said Memene. "Perhaps this is the
night chosen by the red man from the sea" (for so she called Oleric)
"to go forth as he did promise, although it is past the time he set
for his going."
"Do you think that they have discovered the plan, and that
he--Polaris--is taken again? I pray to God that is not so," whispered
Rose.
"Something has greatly stirred the guards," Memene replied. "But I do
not think that the mighty man of the wilderness and his red friend are
taken. Those shouts we heard but now were those of disappointed men."
As the uproar continued through the rooms of the old prison, Rose and
Memene arose and donned their garments. Sleep, for that night, had fled
them.
Presently they heard, but faint and muffled through the intervening
walls, the clatter of hoofs on the pavement of the black avenue as a
horse passed by, ridden at furious speed.
A little later the door from the corridor outside the hall of audience
was opened, and through it came that captain of the palace-guard who
was named Brunar. From Oleric, the captain had learned a few words
of the English tongue, and he now made shift with them to tell the
two fair prisoners that Polaris and Oleric, and likewise the captain,
Mordo, had gone. The escape of Zenas Wright and Everson had not been
discovered as yet. Two dead guards in the rooms of Mordo, and the
absence of the marizel from its moorings in the hidden canal near the
Temple of the Sun, accounted for part of the story. A rider on the
fleetest horse in the stables of Bel-Ar, said Brunar, had been sent to
the harbor to warn the guards there, so they might trap the fugitives.
From the manner in which his news was received, the captain was able
to guess that Rose and Memene knew something of what was on foot. But
this Brunar was a very courteous man, and he forbore to question them
closely, if indeed he had enough English to do so. In the morning he
came again, and told them of the fight at the harbor and the sailing
of the marizel; for Brunar now took up his abode in the palace of
Bel-Tisam and looked after the duties of Mordo. His two wards found
him a kindly jailer, and as indulgent as circumstances would permit
him to be, who could not set them free. Brunar was angry indeed at the
supposed treachery of Oleric and of Mordo, not knowing that the one was
a spy of Ruthar and that the other had had no will in the manner of his
going forth from Adlaz.
Report was made later in the day of the escape of Everson from the
mines, and of Zenas Wright from the household of the king, and men
marveled at the daring of the deed and the craft of it. But the two
women in their prison, or Ensign Brooks in the mines, or Minos at the
harbor, got no more news of the fugitives for many a long day.
* * * * *
With Urk, the sailor, squatting among the levers of his engine, the
marizel of Oleric swam steadily and swiftly down the western coast of
Maeronica. Under water she went, well off from the shore and showing no
lights. Oleric showed his passengers the marvelous valves in the sides
of the little vessel which were similar in construction to the mask
with which they already were familiar, and by means of which the air in
the marizel was replenished with oxygen drawn from the sea water.
Also, he told them somewhat of the land to which they were journeying,
explaining why it was that Ruthar, though smaller and more sparsely
populated by far than Maeronica, had never been conquered by the larger
power. It was a land of forests and mountains, he said, and all the
way around its ragged coastline were huge, precipitous cliffs, the
overhanging crags of which were a natural barrier to invasion. Wherever
had been a break in the cliff-line, the Rutharians, by dint of great
labors, had filled the breaks with walls, closing the gaps so that the
only places where one might land on Ruthar from the sea were certain
spots where narrow stretches of beach lay at the foot of the towering
cliffs.
At only one point could one come at the interior of the country from
the sea, Oleric said, and that was at the mouth of a river named Illia.
That place was closely guarded, and nature and the hand of man had
united to make of it a way where one man might defy a thousand.
Years before, the red captain said, the Rutharians had had a few small
ships. But they had little use for them, and with the perfection of
the fademes by the Maeronicans, nearly a century before, the Rutharian
vessels had been promptly sent to the bottom. Metals were easily mined,
and in abundance, especially gold, in Maeronica. But the materials
which produced the power for the fademes and for their terrible
destroyers were scarce and precious. Therefore, the growth of the navy
of Adlaz had been slow.
But with the fulfillment of the mighty destiny of the Children of Ad
in mind, the scientists labored unceasingly, and it was in the mind
of Bel-Ar that he was to be the man to see the accomplishment of that
destiny. He waited but the equipment of a few more fademes to send
his dreadful messengers forth to take and hold all the seas on earth,
compelling the nations of the world to bow to the power of Adlaz, as
tradition told him they once had bowed before.
"Now Ruthar, if her stars shine brightly, shall put a big stone before
his chariot-wheels and break his power," Oleric said, "repaying evil
with evil until good come of it, and the Goddess Glorian reigns from
the capes at the north to the southern seas. And in that I pray that
my part shall not be small." With a laugh he added, "This is a strange
game for me to play--Oleric the Red, loose-mouthed soldier and slayer
of men--who in Ruthar am known as Oleric the learned, a professor in
the University of Nematzin, which is hard by the hill of Flomos, on the
banks of the river Illia."
"And this Goddess Glorian--" asked Zenas Wright curiously. "Is she a
statue in a temple, or the good star of Ruthar, or is she merely a
name?"
For once the readiness in answer of the red captain deserted him, and
he stared at the geologist with open mouth. Then he said soberly:
"No statue in a temple is the Goddess Glorian. Good star of Ruthar she
is surely, and, in addition, she is the fairest woman on whom Shamar
ever had looked down from the skies. And now her time comes on, for
which she has waited many a hun--"
Oleric broke off suddenly and turned his eyes on Polaris with a strange
look.
"Nay," he said; "for the rest you must learn from the goddess herself.
My tongue does clack like a shepherd-wife's." Nor would he then or
thereafter tell more of Ruthar and its goddess.
Zenas Wright mused to himself, and the train of his musings ran thus:
"Oleric, you seem to keep your promises, and you are a good fighter,
for I have seen you fight. But when it comes to your tales of living
mammoths in this twentieth century, and of a goddess in the shape of
a woman who has _waited many a hundred years_--for that was what you
almost said, my friend--why, then, I can't follow you; and I think you
like to draw the long bow."
Swiftly as the marizel traveled, that night wore into dawn, and day and
darkness came, and still another dawning, ere Urk turned off his power
and filled the air-chambers which raised the vessel to the surface of
the sea. They had rounded the southern coast of Ruthar and beat up
along the eastern shores, and here, as they arose from the depths,
straight ahead of them lay the mouth of the river Illia. When the
voyagers saw it, they did not wonder that Adlaz found little fortune in
attacking Ruthar by sea.
An irregular fissure in the frowning face of the cliff discharged the
river into the sea. That rift was nearly thirty yards wide at its
bottom, and narrowed almost to nothingness far above, where the red
granite of the headlands towered many hundreds of feet in height. Down
the glen in the fissure the river Illia tripped to the sea like a lady
down a stately stairway. For the rock of the river-bed was shelving,
in strata which varied from less than a foot to nearly three feet in
height, and some of the shelves were as much as ten yards in breadth;
so that the water came down that great natural stair in a series of
broad cascades.
"Up yonder stairway lies the path into Ruthar," Oleric said, pointing,
as they stood on the deck of the marizel, and Urk laid the vessel as
near to the shelving bank below the river-mouth as he could. "Here we
must leave the marizel, and to the kindness of the waves; for there is
no harbor in which to store her."
Oleric clambered from the deck and stood up to his knees on the
lowermost step of the Illia's wide stairway. The others followed, Urk
last of all, haling before him the captain, Mordo, with his hands bound.
For Mordo had proved an unruly passenger. When the fumes of the wine
cleared from his brain, which was not for many hours, he had so cursed
and raged at Oleric, forswearing all friendship that had been between
them, that the Rutharian had lost his temper. He told Mordo roundly
that he wished that he had left him to the mercy of Bel-Ar and the
priests of Shamar.
"Better that than the company of a traitorous hound," growled Mordo out
of a soul in which no gratitude dwelt. Oleric deemed that it was best
to bind him, lest he do mischief.
Ascent of the river-stair was not difficult at first, for the steps
were broad, and at that season of the year the volume of water coming
down them was not so strong but that a man might keep his footing if he
used care.
Hardly were the climbers well within the shadow of the glen when there
arose from the foot of the stair a mighty shouting and splashing.
Oleric spun round with a curse on his lips.
* * * * *
Quickly as they had come from Adlaz town, their destination had been
guessed, and others had come almost as quickly. As the fugitives
turned, they saw a Maeronican fademe swing alongside the lowermost step
of the ascent, her fore and after decks crowded with men, who swarmed
off her onto the rock and ran up the stairway. Foremost among them,
gorgeous in his golden armor, was the Captain Daelo, and he matched the
curse of Oleric with another as he shook his gauntleted fist at his
enemy.
"Haste! Haste!" Oleric cried, then pursed his lips and sent a long
whistle skirling up the glen. As he did so he lost his footing, clawed
wildly at the air and the rocks, and went down.
Though the push of the down-rushing waters of the Illia was not strong
enough to sweep a man from his feet if he were cautious, it was yet
of sufficient power to keep him going once he fell. From shelf to
shelf down the great stairway Oleric went, his armor clanging. More
than that, he swept Mordo and the sturdy Urk from their footing, also;
and all three of them slid straight into the hands of Daelo's men,
outstretched to receive them.
As the soldiers seized Oleric and stood him upright, he wrenched free
one arm and waved it at his companion.
"Tarry not for me!" he shouted. "Go on! There be friends waiting at the
top--" A soldier smote him on the mouth and silenced him.
On the step where he stood Polaris halted. He bent, and with his strong
fingers snapped the strings of his shoes and removed them--for he still
wore his own clothing in which he had been dragged from the sea. With
his feet bared, he had a better grip on the slippery rock. He snatched
the sword of Everson from its sheath and went down the river-path, all
unarmored as he was, to meet the swordsmen of Daelo. On they clambered,
cursing and shouting; but the way was difficult for their mailed feet,
and the son of the snows leaped down at them like an avalanche. With
him, breast-deep in the current, went Rombar.
First man to meet the descending danger was Daelo, and he paid the
penalty of his temerity with his life. Polaris, striking from above,
smote him from his foothold, a blow that shore away half of his golden
helm and split the skull within it, and the Captain Daelo pitched
backward into the sea.
Another bound and a stroke so bitter that it hewed off the arm of a
steel-clad soldier, severing it between wrist and elbow, and the son of
the snows had freed Oleric from the hands that held him. Straightway
the red captain drew sword and took up the tale. Daelo's men, of whom
there were nearly a score, faltered, staggering and slipping on the
rocky shelves. Almost their courage was broken, when Polaris caught
his naked foot in a crevice in the rock and tripped. Before he could
recover, a heavy sword-blade fell upon his unprotected head from
behind. He let fall his own blade and sank to his knees and then to his
face on the steps of Illia.
Short-lived was the triumph of the Maeronicans. The cry of exultation
which greeted the fall of their dreaded enemy was turned into a howl of
dismay as half a hundred fierce-eyed fighting men of Ruthar poured down
the glen, waving their bared swords and shouting:
"For the Goddess Glorian! Slay the Maeronican dogs!"
That tide overwhelmed the company of Daelo to the last man, and with
them died black Mordo. Less by one more fademe was the navy of King
Bel-Ar.
When the warriors of the forests turned up the stair once more, they
found Oleric kneeling in the water, supporting Polaris's head on his
arm, while old Zenas and Everson bound with strips torn from their
clothing the gaping wound which the sword-blade had left at the back of
his head. Beside the group, Rombar, standing nearly to his neck in the
wash of the river, lifted up his head and howled dolefully.
Six strong men took up the limp form of the fair-haired giant and bore
it away up the river staircase.
So Polaris came at last to Ruthar.
* * * * *
Up the rocky shelves of Illia the Rutharians trudged and splashed, the
chasm becoming ever narrower and more gloomy. With the narrowing of the
rift, the water became deeper and its current stronger. Then one of the
party uncoiled a long rope from his shoulder, and the party marched on
in single file, each clinging to the rope like Alpine climbers.
Oleric urged haste and more haste.
Presently the water was too deep for Rombar, and the current set so
strongly that the dog could not swim against it. At an order from
Oleric, two Rutharian hunters seized the brute by the collar, and
though one of them got a gashed hand for his pains, they bound Rombar's
jaws and feet with ropes and carried him on their shoulders--a task
which neither they nor Rombar found pleasant.
At a point in the ascent where further progress against the deepening
stream was impossible, the party left the bed of the river and
clambered to the right, where a flight of steep and narrow steps had
been cut in the rock along a fissure which branched from the main
gorge. Up nearly two hundred of those steps they toiled, until Zenas
Wright and Everson, unused to such exertions, nearly fainted with
exhaustion. At the top of the stairs they emerged into a forest of tall
trees, oak and pine and chestnut, which grew almost to the edge of the
cliffs.
No sooner had he stepped from the rock stairway than Oleric knelt and
kissed the black earth.
"This, my friends, is Ruthar," he said as he arose and faced the two
Americans.
From among the trees came a tall, white-bearded chieftain, who was
armored from head to heel in a wonderful suit of chain mail, links of
steel that shone like silver. At his back swung a two-handed sword
which was nearly the length of a man.
He advanced to Oleric and laid his hands on the captain's shoulders.
"You are Oleric the Red, and no other," he said. "Well do I remember
you. Once I was your pupil. But that was more than three times ten
years ago." He shook his head wonderingly. "You serve Ruthar well," he
added.
Now, had Zenas Wright been able to understand the speech of Ruthar, he
certainly would have set this chieftain down as a hoary-headed liar.
For how could he have been a pupil to Oleric the Red more than thirty
years before, when it was plain for any one to see that the captain
must at that time have been a babe in his mother's arms?
"Aye, Jastla, it is the old red fox come back to his hole again,"
Oleric answered, striking the old chief fondly across his broad
shoulders.
"Which of these with you is the man--the hope of Ruthar?" questioned
Jastla. His eyes passed the stubby form of Zenas Wright by and rested
inquiringly on the square and soldierly Everson.
Oleric's ruddy face went sober. His voice choked as he answered:
"Nay, Jastla, neither of these. He comes yonder--and I fear that he is
sorely smitten."
As he spoke the six Rutharians who bore Polaris Janess came over the
brink of the stair and laid their burden down.
Jastla strode to the side of Polaris and looked down at him.
"A mighty man, with golden hair--and comely, as was written in the
prophecy," he muttered into his beard. "What has befallen him?" he
asked of Oleric.
While the captain told of the fight at the river-mouth, Zenas Wright
knelt at Polaris's head and rearranged the bandages, which had become
loosened in the rough journey through the gorge. Rombar, who had been
that moment untrussed, pushed growling through the group of men and
crouched and licked at his master's face.
"Will he live, Father Zenas? Will he live?" Oleric asked. "Tell us,
you, who are skilled."
"God knows," groaned Zenas. The hand which he laid on the steel cheek
of Polaris shook so that he snatched it away and hid it. "God only
knows. There is a little life in him yet."
"He plucked me from the sea," said Oleric wildly. "That was fated of
the gods. Twice has he fought at my side. This day perchance he has
given his life for me; and that was of his own strong spirit. I tell
you, Father Zenas, that if it would do my brother any good, here would
Oleric fall upon his sword and render up his soul unto those that sent
it forth." Then he controlled himself. "Can he be moved? Can you keep
the vital spark within him for a little space, good father? We must
haste and get him to the Goddess Glorian. If his soul be not sped when
he reaches her, she can hold it back, if any on earth can. Say, Father
Zenas, can you do it?"
"I will try," answered Zenas. "If I had a little wine, now--"
"Wine!" Oleric shouted. "Bring wine, some one of you, and haste, though
your lungs burst. And slay a kid, so that we may have broth."
A fleet-footed Rutharian lad set off through the forest, running with
the speed of a deer.
"Now, Jastla, see you to a horse-litter. Two gentle beasts, mind you,
but speedy. For we must travel fast and far. I take my brother to the
Hill of Flomos. And send on a swift messenger to the Goddess Glorian,
to tell her that the hope of Ruthar lies wounded in the forests and is
near to death. Haste, Jastla; haste!"
Wine was brought, and it was good wine; for the grapes that grow in
the valleys of Ruthar are the finest in all the world. Zenas Wright
forced apart the set jaws of the stricken man, using a sword-point
to do it, and even as Dr. Marsey, who was dead, had done for Oleric,
poured the purple wine and a little broth into Polaris's mouth. The
kindly old geologist could only pray that some of it penetrated to the
man's stomach, for most of it was spilled out again when they moved him.
* * * * *
Chief Jastla brought a horse-litter. In it, between two powerful
beasts, Polaris was slung. The Rutharians wrapped him closely with
blankets and furs. The sun had turned to his northward journey, and in
the forests of Ruthar the air was keen with the tang of approaching
winter--felt there in the uplands long before it reached to the plains
and valleys of Maeronica.
Horses were fetched for Oleric, Wright and Everson, and they set off at
once along the mountain trails skirting the mighty cañon of the Illia.
An escort of half a score of Rutharian hunters rode with them.
All that day and night and until sunset of the next day they rode with
only brief stops at small Rutharian hamlets, where they ate hurriedly
and changed horses. Word had been sent on before of their coming, and
fresh horses were always in waiting. Sleep they did not, save in their
saddles, and the two Americans felt that they might die from sheer
weariness.
Oleric did not sleep at all, though of all the party his vitality
seemed the least impaired by that racking journey. His face grew
haggard and gaunt, and his eyes red-rimmed, but a wonderful
determination seemed to sustain his body. He spoke seldom, and then to
urge his faltering companions to renewed efforts.
Rombar ran with the horses until he was utterly done up. Then Oleric
left the dog at one of the mountain villages, to be brought on later.
In the morning of the second day the party swung to the right, away
from the gorge of the Illia, to come to it again about noon and cross
it on a bridge of steel and stone that spanned it three hundred feet up
from the torrent's course.
Everson, looking at those piles and trusses, judged the building of
that bridge to be the feat of no mean engineer. Though there had been a
waste of material, the structure would have stood comparison with many
a bridge in Europe or America.
Throughout the long ride, Polaris lay like a log in the litter.
Occasionally, at the stopping places, the scientist redressed the
wound, smearing it with a healing balsam which an old woman in one of
the villages had given him. It was a fearsome gash, and Zenas shook his
head over it whenever he saw it. The point of the sword had laid open
the scalp at the back of Polaris's head for a matter of inches, then
had glanced from the bone beneath and bitten deeply into the neck near
the spinal column.
Wright sheared the hair away from the wound and stitched it as neatly
as he could. Despite his care the edges of the cut turned blue, as
is the way with such hurts if they have not expert attention. In the
afternoon of that second day's ride he found that Polaris's hands and
feet were becoming cold, and that the geologist deemed the worst sign
of all.
Shortly after they had crossed the bridge the contour of the country
became less wild. They emerged from among the crags and peaks of the
mountains into the foot-hills, where the forests were not so dense as
above, and from time to time they came upon large spaces of cleared
lands with tilled fields and many vineyards.
In one of the forest glades the party passed a spot where a number
of fair-sized trees had been uprooted and partly stripped of their
branches and bark. Others, still standing, were mere distorted stubs of
trees, their trunks scored and twisted and their foliage gone.
"I hope such storms as the one that did this damage are not frequent
hereabouts," said Zenas, pointing out the wrecks to Everson.
Oleric heard the remark.
"'Storms,' say you, Father Zenas?" he said. "The storm that went
through here walked on four feet. When we of Ruthar see such a sight in
the forest, we know that an amaloc has breakfasted there. I forget the
high-sounding name you call him by."
"That lad should have been a writer of fiction," said Zenas to himself
when the captain had ridden on. "He almost makes me believe in him."
"Gorry-me," Zenas groaned, easing himself in his saddle, "I wish we
were at the end of this ride, wherever it is. I do not think that I
shall ever be able to walk again. You," he said to Everson, "you ride
along there in your golden armor like--what is it?--a paladin of old,
and never a word out of you. Well, I'd sooner stand it, at that,
than to go back to that roasting-spit I was put to tend in the King's
kitchen." Zenas grunted as recollection stung him.
"Why, do you know, one day I was figuring out a bit of calculus in my
head, just for practise, and I let the meat scorch; and the head cook
actually laid a dog-whip across my back. Yes, sir; me, a fellow in the
National Geographic Society, whipped across a kitchen by a greasy-faced
dough-slinger who doesn't know gneiss from rotten-stone!"
Wright grunted again at the memory of that indignity, and then rambled
on:
"But we've got to stand it all for the boy here, and for the folks we
left behind. God knows I'm willing to for their sakes, and worse yet,
if it's to come. But I must grumble once in a while, and I can't help
it. Say, Everson, do you believe any of that chaff of our red-headed
friend about the mammoths?"
The lieutenant did not answer, and Wright, peering into his face, saw
that he was asleep in the saddle.
Well down upon his course was the sun, and the shadows of the trees
were lengthening eastward, when the travelers, who for some time had
been following a smooth, straight road through rolling hills, came to
an old Rutharian villa, which stood among its gardens a considerable
distance back from the highway. A low wall bordered the grounds at the
front along the roadway, a wall with a pillared gateway, where a drive
led in from the road. At the foot of each of the pillars, sitting his
horse like a statue, was a Rutharian gentleman.
* * * * *
As the weary cavalcade came down the road the two riders left their
posts and advanced to meet it, parleying with Oleric. Scarcely half a
dozen words passed back and forth when the red captain set up a joyful
shout. When he reached the gateway he turned his horse in, bidding the
others to follow.
"Here's hoping that some one will introduce me to a bed before I clean
forget what one feels like," said Zenas.
At the side of the ancient house the riders dismounted, Everson reeling
from his horse like a drunken man and throwing himself face downward on
the grass.
Oleric superintended the removal of Polaris from the litter.
The geologist was bending over his charge as the hunters bore him along
when he became aware of the tall figure of a woman that came down from
the porch of the mansion and hastened along the walk. She had thrown a
long, dark red cloak about her shoulders. In the dusk of the garden the
scientist could not distinguish her features, but he saw that her hair
was dark, or seemed to be, and that she was taller than most women and
splendidly formed.
"The Goddess Glorian!" Oleric cried aloud. "Oh, by the stars of Ruthar,
but you are welcome!"
Down on one knee sank the captain and kissed her hand.
"Oh, goddess, after all these years I have brought you the hope of
Ruthar. But he is sorely wounded--dying--and you alone can save him. We
were bringing him to Flomos with all the speed we might, and thought
not to find you here."
"Where else should Glorian be, but on the way to meet this man?" she
answered simply. "Jastla's messenger reached Flomos this morning. He
rode four horses to their deaths upon his way. You have done well,
Oleric the Learned."
When he heard the silvery cadences of that voice, though he understood
not a word save the name of the captain, a thrill passed through Zenas
Wright, old as he was, and through his aged veins he felt the blood
course faster. The woman came nearer. He smelled the warm perfume of
her hair as she bent and touched the cheek of Polaris with her hand.
"Bring him within, Oleric," she said, "and, oh, haste, for--" Her
glorious voice broke. "For he is nearly gone."
Swinging the still form of Polaris shoulder high, the Rutharian hunters
passed on and into the mansion, leaving Zenas behind.
"Now, what do you know about that?" gasped the scientist as he sank
wearily to the ground beside Everson. "Goddess, indeed! What, I want
to know, will Rose Emer say when she learns of this young person? Well,
I hope she saves the lad; but she'll need to be a doctor of parts, or
I'm a donkey. Poor boy! Poor boy!"
In a few moments came Oleric to show Wright and Everson to their
quarters for the night in the rear of the house. And a rare time he had
to arouse the lieutenant sufficiently to lead him to bed.
White and still, Polaris Janess lay on a bed in an upper chamber of the
old house. By the light from a mitzl globe--trophy of some Rutharian
chieftain in a foray over the Kimbrian Wall--the Goddess Glorian bent
above him and studied his pale features.
"My friend, my poor friend," she said brokenly. "How often through the
weary years I have seen you in my dreams--and now to find you--only to
lose you."
Hot tears ran down her cheeks and fell on the stricken man's face.
"Oh! It shall not be!" she said fiercely. "You shall not die--not if
Glorian must give her soul to hold you back from the gates of darkness."
Throwing aside her cloak, she drew a chair to the bedside. With her
fingers she lifted Polaris's eyelids and held them open. She gazed deep
into the tawny eyes, now, alas, so dull and lifeless. For hours she sat
there, with no more apparent movement than the man she watched over.
The whole strength of her being seemed concentrated in some inward,
unyielding struggle.
And as the long hours passed a change came over the sick man. He did
not stir. He scarcely seemed to breathe. But his face became less gray
and haggard, and the icy chill of death was driven from his hands and
feet.
Long after midnight it was when the Goddess Glorian stood up from that
bedside and in her heart said wildly, "I have won!"
Summoning her women, who waited without the door, she bade them dress
anew the now festering wound and pour a little wine and broth into his
throat.
All night long the Goddess Glorian sat and watched him.
In the morning, when Oleric came to the door in answer to her summons,
she looked up at him with a wan smile.
"Fear no longer," she said. "The man will live."
* * * * *
On the third day after his arrival at the old Rutharian mansion,
Polaris left it. But he knew nothing of that going. He still lay in
the heavy stupor which was to hold him thrall for many days. Zenas
Wright doubted much the wisdom of moving a man so ill. The scientist
himself, after two days' rest, felt scarcely equal to the journey, and
the thought of again bestriding a horse made him shudder. Still, he
reasoned that it was by a miracle that Janess lived at all, and if she
who had wrought that miracle, the Goddess Glorian, said he might be
moved in safety, why, doubtless she knew what she was about.
A low, four-wheeled car was brought. Across the box of it the hunters
lashed light and springy poles and on them piled robes and blankets,
making a soft and easy bed for the sick man. At the head of that couch
rode the Goddess Glorian, cloaked and hooded, and at its foot crouched
black Rombar, who had been brought in from the village where he had
been left, and who seemed little the worse for his long jaunt. Wright
and the lieutenant occupied another smaller car in the rear, and in
a third vehicle rode a number of the women of Glorian's household.
Oleric, mounted and aglitter in chain armor of steel--for he had
discarded as soon as might be the hated golden livery of Bel-Ar--rode
at the side of the first car. For escort the party had the company of
nearly a score of young Rutharian zinds--zind was the only title of
nobility in Ruthar.
So they set out for Flomos, traveling by easy stages and with many
rests. The roads were smooth and the country more even than that they
had left behind. All along the way, be the time of day what it might,
they rode between two long lines of people--people silent for the most
part, who stood with bowed heads as the cars and the riders passed by.
Far and wide throughout the land had gone the word that the man who
had come to be known as the hope of Ruthar was journeying to Flomos,
and the circumstances of that journey. These who lined the road were
gathered there to do him silent homage. Satisfied were they if they
only caught a fleeting glimpse of his still face on its pillow of furs.
Over all of Ruthar went up a many-voiced and ceaseless prayer for his
welfare.
"H'm, Everson, folks will never stand like that for us, living or
dead," said Zenas Wright to the lieutenant, when Oleric had told them
the meaning of the silent lines of people. Despite his banter, the old
geologist was deeply touched.
Two days and part of a third they traveled--for they did not
hurry--stopping for the nights at the homes of Rutharian gentlemen
along the road. It was nearly afternoon of the third day when they
followed the winding of the highway around the last low hills of the
mountain range and came out upon a plateau-plain of wide extent, in
the center of which was a wooded eminence, and on its crest the white
pillars of a temple shone in the sunlight.
The road stretched straight across the plain through a broad expanse
of tilled lands and gardens, which ringed a city that stood at the
foot of the hill. It was scarcely a fifth the proportions of Adlaz,
this ancient town of Ruthar, which was called Zele-omaz, or City by
the River; but it was a pretty place of broad streets shaded by many
trees, gardens and low-built, pleasant homes, with here and there the
statelier dwellings of some zind or wealthy man.
Here, too, was the Illia, rock-bound no longer, but a fair and gentle
stream, winding through the town and spanned by many bridges.
Skirting the city at the right, the travelers followed a sloping path
that led up the hill to where the temple stood.
"Yonder," Oleric said, pointing down to where a group of low buildings
of gray stone rambled at the waterside under spreading yew trees, "is
the University of Nematzin, of which I am a professor. And there is the
laboratory of which I spoke, where we shall make the thunder-dust to
shake down the Kimbrian Wall."
"One more day's rest, and I will be fit for anything," answered Everson.
"What do you teach in this university, friend?" Zenas queried.
"A little of the science of the stars, Father Zenas--or I did, for it
is many years since I have sat among my pupils--somewhat of history and
of language," replied the red captain.
"Humph; you must have been a young teacher," said Zenas Wright, and he
ran his fingers through the sprouting stubble of his beard, as he had a
habit of doing when things vexed him. Suddenly he jumped in his seat,
though the wrench to his sore flesh cost him a wry face.
"Hey! Everson! Look at that, and then tell me if I'm dreaming."
The "that" was a gateway through which the car was about to pass.
Oleric followed with a glance the direction in which the geologist
pointed and then rode on with a smile.
It was a very curious gate, so curious that, if it still stands, and
it doubtless does, for it was built to endure, there is none other
just like it in the world. At each side of the roadway was a section
of black stone wall, extending along the path a matter of a dozen feet
and some ten feet high. At intervals along the tops of the two walls
were set round, squat pillars, also of stone. Those had been hollowed
out and served as bases for enormous ivory tusks, which were embedded
in cement in the hollowed pillars, and from them curved up to meet over
the center of the roadway, where their tips were made fast with double
sockets of bronze.
Ivory the tusks were; there was no doubting that; weather-checked and
stained yellow by age and the elements, but still ivory. But the size
of them! No elephant that ever walked the earth bore ivories of such
proportions. For they were as large around at their bases as the chest
of an average man; and from base to tapering tip there was none of them
that did not measure eleven feet. Seven pair of them there were, and
all splendidly matched.
* * * * *
Zenas stared back at that marvelous arch--for it was more an archway
than a gate--as hard as he could stare. Not until a turn of the road
hid it, did he relax into his seat.
"Maybe he isn't so great a liar, after all," he said, and he meant
Oleric. "Everson, those are mammoth's tusks--sure's I'm a sinner."
"Strange land, strange things," answered Everson laconically.
The home or temple of the Goddess Glorian on the hill of Flomos was a
small thing by comparison with the mighty Temple of Shamar, but in its
way was quite as beautiful. Like the temple of the sun-god, the house
of Glorian was built all of white marble. Fronting north toward the
city of Zele-omaz was a façade of four-and-twenty sixty-foot pillars.
A broad, paved porch, reached by half a hundred steps, lay at the foot
of the façade. Back of the pillars were twelve double doors of bronze,
leading into a lofty hall, the marble dome of which towered high above
the pillars and could be seen from the countryside for miles about when
the sun shone on it.
Back of the hall the structure was divided into three floors, or
stories, each of many roomy chambers and corridors. The whole was well
lighted by windows of clear glass, of which an abundance was used in
both Maeronica and Ruthar. Behind the temple, southward down the hill,
were the dwellings of Glorian's personal retainers and servants.
Well back from the center of the domed hall and near the foot of a
grand staircase which led to the second floor, was a raised dais of
marble, whereon Glorian was wont to sit and give judgment in matters of
state which were too high for the administration of the zinds who ruled
in the different cities and provinces. Once Ruthar had had its dynasty
of kings, but that was many years before. The royal line died out, and
because of certain circumstances at that time the people raised up no
more kings. At the time of the coming of the strangers the Goddess
Glorian was the absolute power in Ruthar.
On the dais in the throne-room was another wonder for Zenas Wright to
see. It was a massive, double-seated chair, constructed, even to the
pegs which held its parts together, of ivory like in the giant tusks
of the arch. An artist of surpassing skill had wrought that chair and
had carved it into the semblance of tall lily-stalks with heavy-headed,
drooping blossoms and slender fronds. All around the larger stalks were
cut the clinging tendrils of a creeping vine, a tracery as fine as lace.
* * * * *
Wright and Everson were given rooms on the second floor of the temple
at its western side. Polaris was borne to a chamber on the upper
story, where he was tended by Glorian herself and the servants of her
household. Rombar took up his quarters in that chamber also, and only
Oleric could lure the dog forth from his master's side, and then not
for long at a time.
Soon after their arrival at the hill of Flomos, and when they had
rested some of the stiffness from their joints, Everson and the
scientist went down with Oleric to the laboratories of Nematzin to
begin their work. Though the students of Ruthar were not unskilled in
chemistry of a sort, they knew nothing of explosives. So Zenas prepared
himself for a series of tests to discover the materials of which he was
in need, or, if he could not find what he desired, some combination
which would serve.
In that constructive analysis the naval lieutenant could be of little
aid. Oleric then found a task for him which was more to his liking. It
was the drilling of men.
From her center to her rock-bound coasts, Ruthar hummed with the
preparation for war.
"If we are to fight, let us first know how many men we can raise, and
how they will be disposed," said Everson. "What is the population of
this country, and how will it match up, man for man, with Maeronica?"
All told, Ruthar's people numbered something like a million and a
quarter, Oleric informed him; and in Maeronica the population was near
to three and one-half millions, at least a half a million of which
dwelt in the great city of Adlaz.
"As it is figured in the world, your army then will be made up of one
fighting man to every ten persons," the lieutenant said. "If the spirit
of the people is with us, we should be able to put at least one hundred
and twenty-five thousand men in the field--and Bel-Ar, three hundred
and fifty thousand. Those are heavy odds."
"Ruthar shall do better even than that," Oleric said with pride. "I
promise you that two hundred thousand men shall march when they hear
the war-drums--and more may be found if the need grows bitter."
"Can you equip and maintain them?" Everson asked.
"In Ruthar every man is a soldier. They will equip themselves. This day
has been awaited for long. Ruthar is ready to give all for the uses of
her warrior sons. Fear not. Besides, though I will not deny that the
men of Ad are good fighters and their country is far the richer, yet
many of them are fat city dwellers and traders, of whom two are not a
match for one of the hardy men of the mountains who will march under
the banners of the Goddess Glorian. Show them the ruins of the Kimbrian
Wall, and were the armies of Ad twice their strength, yet they should
not turn Ruthar from her purpose."
Everson nodded thoughtfully. "How will this force be divided?" he
asked. "Have you many horsemen? In such a war as this promises to be,
cavalry will be invaluable."
The red captain knit his brow in calculation.
"Forty thousand wild horsemen of the hills and mountains, who know
not fear, can I promise," he said at length. "Five thousand chariots
we can muster, each of two horses, and carrying each two fighting men
and a driver to guide the horses; twenty thousand skilled archers;
ninety thousand heavily armed men with swords and spears; ten thousand
slingers; and twenty thousand men armed with javelins--these last to
serve as skirmishers."
Everson's eyes kindled at the recital of that tale of men, and he
smiled--one of the few smiles that had lightened his face since his
ship had been lost.
"We must gather them into camps at once," he said. "The time is all too
short in which to make an enemy out of raw levies. We must drill them
all winter, and that will be a man's job."
Straightway he threw himself into the task with tireless energy. And
he vowed to himself that the men who had dared to sink a United States
cruiser should learn a lesson of tears and death, and that he would
have a hand in the teaching of the lesson.
* * * * *
Oblivion, like a deep and dreamless sleep, was the portion of Polaris
Janess. It seemed that his soul had withdrawn itself to some place of
peace to wait until its racked and weary body should once more be fit
for tenancy. The wound in his neck closed and healed. Somewhat of color
crept back into his cheeks. His body began to thrive, but there was in
it seemingly little more of sentient life than in a tree which draws
its nourishment from the soil and knows not of days and nights and the
cares thereof.
"It is a blood-clot that presses somewhere on the brain," Glorian told
his friends, who stood often at his quiet bedside. "'Twill pass away
ere long, and he will be whole again."
To the surprise of Zenas and Everson, Glorian and a number of the
learned men of the college of Nematzin spoke English almost with the
facility of Oleric, from whom, indeed, they had learned it. And this
was a great source of delight to the old geologist, who liked to talk
and grumble over his labors. And what use is there in grumbling, if
there is no one to hear and understand?
Came a day when the curtain lifted from the brain of the sick man, and
memory peopled the vacant stage, as once before it had done when he lay
ill in the cabin on the ship _Felix_ on his first journey from his home
in the wilderness.
Wondering, he lay still with closed lids, as he had a trick of doing
when he waked from slumber. He began to reconstruct. The wreck of the
_Minnetonka_ passed before him, and then, like a series of pictures,
the events which had followed the sinking of the ship; the stranger
people; the judgment of the king; the parting from his love; the coming
of the red captain in the night and the flight from Adlaz; the fight at
the wharves and the farewell of Minos; the great stairway of the Illia--
There the pictures ceased. He could not then, or ever afterward, recall
the fight in the river, where he had gone down to aid Oleric and come
by his wound.
Into his nostrils was wafted a breath of faint perfume. A cool hand
was laid against his cheek. He opened his eyes. The details of a high,
arched room he saw; windows of glass at the north, where the sun shone
thinly and big flakes of snow were floating slowly down--for winter had
come to Ruthar; at his cheek a long, wonderfully shaped, white hand,
with tapering, ringless fingers; a slender wrist; beyond it a face. He
closed his lids again, with a frown of disbelief. The beauty of that
face was such as no mortal ever saw, save in a dream.
The hand stirred, and he looked again.
From the times of Helen of Troy on down through the pages of all
recorded history, those pages have been made bright by the faces of
fair women who were their nations' boast. Here, before the eyes of the
sick man, was a face that was the peer of any that ever shone in fable
or in fact. A broad, high forehead above two dark and well-defined
arches; beneath them, delicately veined lids and long dark lashes,
veiling red-brown eyes. Eyes so wonderfully alive with expression that
their change was like the bewildering melting of colors in a sunset;
between their marvelous valleys, a slenderly bridged nose with a hint
of the Roman. A rich, full-lipped mouth that was the playground of
smiles, but which showed also the quality of rare determination, a
promise sustained by the firmly rounded chin beneath it, a skin so fine
of texture that through it might be traced the ebb and flow of life, as
flames show roseate through a marble vase.
Her head had the poise of an empress, and at its shapely crown, piled
high, were lustrous coils of hair which at first glance seemed black;
but when the light struck on it, glowed as an ember glows when a breath
renews its dullness into fire.
Such was the beauty of the woman on whom Polaris looked--and as he
gazed, acknowledgment was forced within him that here was one that
surpassed in fairness even the Rose-maid whom he loved. And there was
no disloyalty in that acknowledgment. Rose Emer was a beautiful woman;
but she who sat before him, and who seemed of nearly the same age and
whose figure much resembled that of his own dear lady, she had the
beauty of unearthly things.
For a moment he stared in silence.
"Where am I, and who are you?" he asked, and smiled faintly in response
to her little exclamation of delight that his senses had come back to
him. Before she could speak, he muttered, "I had forgotten; she will
not understand."
"But I do understand, my poor friend," she said, "and can make answer
in your own tongue--if we keep to simple talk."
As the quality of that voice had thrilled old Zenas, so now it sent a
tremor through the veins of the son of the snows.
"You are in the city of Zele-omaz, and I, who have watched while you
lay wounded and ill, am a poor lady of wild Ruthar," she continued.
"'Poor' and 'wild' are words that ill beseem you, lady," replied
Polaris in the quaint expression that in the long years when his father
had been his sole companion, he had absorbed from the pages of Scott's
romantic "Ivanhoe," and which contact with modern English had not worn
away.
"I think that one Oleric has spoken oft of you, and that I can guess
the name you bear--and I find it a most fitting name."
Rose-pink the Goddess Glorian flushed, in a most mortal fashion, and
was glad that at that moment black Rombar thrust his head forward over
the edge of the bed to claim a share in the attention of his master.
Polaris stirred his hands, and then looked up wonderingly.
"I am weak," he said. "How long have I lain ill, and what misfortune
befell me to so lay me by the heels? I understand it not at all; for my
memory has tricked me."
Toying with Rombar's collar, Glorian told him what she had learned from
the others of the fight at the mouth of the Illia.
"And I do thank you for the life of my faithful captain," she said,
"as he will presently. It was a brave deed, a very brave deed. Now
you must talk no more, and no more must I weary you. You are worn with
sickness, and it will be many days before your strength comes back.
Rest and fret not. All things are going well."
She left him, and presently he slept.