The Red Witch holds her Revel
It may have been hours or days. I do not fix the space of my captivity.
A man in my state,—may it be reckoned with heavy reckoning against this
son of darkness, this foul priest of Hed,—a man, as I say, in my
condition of mind and body notes not the flight of time. Neither do I
deny that I may perchance have dreamed somewhat. That witch’s cave
wherein at length I came again to life was a likely enough nest for the
hatching of nightmares, aye! and worse things to follow. But this I
hold,—upon my honor as an honest man and a God-fearing gentleman, and to
defend the truth of the same, I will do violence to him who doubts me,—I
saw, and saw with waking eyes, and waking brain, the things I now relate
to you who read these pages.
So, defending if need be every jot and tittle of my tale, I will set
forth in plain unvarnished words what fate set me to see of the red
witch and her revel.
The last thing I remember was the fall of some heavy substance above my
head, as half-carried by Lah, the Queen, I was let down into that dark
hole, beyond which lay the moment’s safety, and perchance escape.
Then came a swift rushing and surging as of mighty waters about and
above me; fiery darts shot through my brain and danced before my eyes.
Then distant voices, and figures passing and repassing, but ever afar
off. Lastly, a glimmer of light, and the touch of cooling bandages bound
tight about my head. After a time the darkness wholly passed; I lay on a
couch of skins, and a bowl full of some evil-smelling mixture was
pressed against my lips.
At this, I remember I was wroth, and would have smote the unseen nurse
that teased me, but my hand, when I tried to raise it, fell, heavy as
lead, by my side. I heard a hoarse cackling laugh, and against my will I
drank of the cup held out to me.
Nor, save for a slightly bitter flavor, was the draught nauseous.
Indeed, it warmed like wine. I felt new strength run tingling from limb
to limb, and I opened my eyes, my own man once more, a little weak and
stiff in the joints still, yet whole and sound again and ready for the
morrow and its burden.
Looking about me I found that I lay in a corner of a cave barely six
feet high, whose end was lost in darkness. This cavern was lighted from
above, by torches stuck in rude brackets here and there in the rocky
wall. I saw, too, that the earth of the floor had been pounded hard and
smooth, and was covered over with intermingling lines of black and
white, red, blue, and yellow.
I followed these lines with my eyes, and I beheld, without understanding
it, that the network had a meaning. Sometimes a line would end abruptly
with a star, sometimes it was cut clean across, often other lines met
the first, so that the colors ran thickly together; but at all times
there was a certain order like the lines of a map, or a puzzle in
geometry.
After a time I grew giddy watching this never-ending maze, and I turned
upon my side that I might better see the other portion of my prison
house. A fire smouldered in a distant corner, and a leaping flame showed
the edge of a great cauldron that stood in the cave’s centre, from which
came the quick shimmer and sparkle of precious metal and of gems. A dark
mass near by uncoiled itself slowly, and two unwinking, lidless, fiery
eyes looked straight at me and beyond. The thing slipped away without
noise into the farther darkness, and I sat up. A draught of air played
about my head. It was damp, and pleasantly cool in this underground
retreat, and save for the crackling of the fire all was silent.
I am not, I trust, a coward, but I tell this as it happened, leaving out
nothing, altering nothing. For all I knew I was alone, safe and alone,
but on a sudden my heart began to beat thickly, my hair stood erect, and
my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. Cold sweat stood in beads upon
my body, and some inner force compelled me to look where I would not.
And there, crouching by the fire, I saw the bent figure of a woman,
hardly larger than a child, but old beyond man’s counting.
She swayed backward and forward. She was perfectly bald, and her face
was a mass of wrinkles, though the ashen, parchment-like skin was drawn
tight over the bones.
I saw that the creature was wrapped in a red mantle. She turned her head
and opened her eyes full upon me. Such eyes! Two sparks of living fire,
deep set, that ate through bone and muscle, flesh and sinew, and laid
bare the soul. I shrank back, and the head of the red witch dropped down
once more between her shoulders. I felt the terror that had seized me
pass, but I had lost all wish to move. So I waited, in patience and
unsurprised, the pleasure of the shrivelled hag, to whose lair the Queen
had brought me.
For a space the red witch sat still as some carven image. As the
firelight fell on the wizened, peering face, the peaked features took on
new shapes of ugliness; the lips writhed in a terrible smile, yet
stirred not, and I drew back into the shadows and waited for that which
was to come. As I did so, the hag arose. For an instant I feared that
she was about to approach my couch, but she passed into the outer
darkness with never a backward glance.
Another moment and she had come again, walking slowly and with evident
pain, and indeed with so much feebleness that I thought every step would
be her last.
Upheld by her skinny arms was a curious image in painted stone, the god
Hed, as I saw at once.
The weight of the thing must have been a tax on the strength of a man
even of my inches, but this strange woman now held it aloft, and without
pausing, lightly as though lifting a feather, set the god in a niche
prepared for him above and opposite the cauldron.
Then she drew from her withered bosom a small bag, and took from it a
pinch of powder. This she threw into the pot, and at once a thin blue
vapor arose from its depths.
The hag squatted beside her brew, and began a monotonous beating with
her hands upon a hollow log, across either end of which a tanned skin
had been tightly drawn.
Then she commenced to sing in a curious cracked voice, and the song had
no melody, but instead a kind of rhythm that met with the drum beats,
and stirred, I know not how or why, to frenzy him who listened.
This is a fragment of the song as near as I can remember. For reasons
that I shall tell presently I stopped my ears in horror before its end.
It was no common chanting; for even as it rose, _the thin blue smoke
took on form and substance and imaged what she sang_.
“I am Hubla the witch, and I hold in my palm the lives of men.
Blood shall flow that I may not thirst; and the white dove shall
flutter in the net at my command.
I am the ruler of the night, and the things that fly in the darkness.
And the things that crawl are mine, and jewels and gold are to me as
grains of sand.
I alone hold the flower of death, I alone read the scroll of days.
Come, hatred and strife, that Hubla may have joy.
Come, devils and men, and work my will.
Come, you fair Queen, and you white maid, you, stranger, and you,
priest of Hed.
Here by my brew I sit and sing;
Come ye and do my pleasuring.”
And here it was that as a Christian man I stopped my ears. For I come of
honest yeoman stock, and God forbid that I should so much as listen to
such foul mouthings.
That the devils the witch called were there, I doubted not, for as I
have said, even as the words passed her lips, the blue vapor from the
cauldron took shape, and I saw floating therein all those whom she had
named. But more was still to come. For presently my own image was joined
to theirs and was swept with them into a kind of evil dance. Faster and
faster the vapor figures whirled. There was despair and envy, and wrath
and sorrow and dismay, on the swift revolving faces. I could not turn my
eyes away, and my heart was as water in my breast.
Then on a sudden the lips of the hag ceased to move, and like drifted
smoke the vision passed.
I would have cried aloud in wrath against such practices, but the sound
died in my throat.
Then Hubla spoke, but not to me.
She had risen, and now stood before the hideous image of the Serpent
god, and in one hand she held a slender iron rod whose end was white
hot, and whose middle part glowed red from the flames.
“False and perjured god!” I heard her cry, and the tones struck ice to
my breast, so full were they of malice and of rage. “Between me and thee
is the struggle yet to come. Think not that Hubla fears thee. Take this,
and this, in token of thy shame and thy defeat.”
And as she spoke she smote with all her force, with the rod, the stolid
squatting figure.
Drops of foam fell from the witch’s lips, and again her shrill voice
rang through the cavern.
“I have shielded thine enemy. Out of the toils of thy priests I have
delivered him. Lo! he shall live, and the blast of thy anger shall not
smite him. Neither shall thy breath consume him. For I have thrown my
mantle about him, and he shall live to mock thee in thy courts.”
Then once more, with all her might she smote, and the stone image fell
with a crash from its narrow ledge, and lay prone in the glowing embers
beneath the cauldron.
Peal after peal of shrill laughter came from the shrivelled figure, and
straightway the witch began to dance,—a strange heathenish dance, in
which she flung about her withered arms, and took grotesque steps with
bare feet that trod upon the smouldering logs strewn about her fallen
enemy.
Then at length she threw upon the flames another powder. A deafening
report followed; the cavern shook, and a column of red flame shot up to
the ceiling. The heat was intolerable, and the place was crimsoned as
with blood.
I gasped for breath, and shielded my face as well as I might from the
awful scorch of that fiery pillar, nor, I think, could my mortal body
have withstood the flame; but after a moment’s space Hubla clapped her
hands, and on the instant the fire died down.
Save from the flickering light from the torches, all was darkness; the
red witch crouched as before, motionless, before the embers.
For a little she sat thus; then once more those fiery points that lay
behind her eyelids glowed on me, and I saw the skinny hand beckon.
“Rise, son,” said the red witch. “Thy hour is come. Go boldly forward.
Death lies waiting with open maw, but Hubla bids you fear him not. Rise!
the treasures of the ages await thee.”