The negro's gaze traveled uncertainly up and down the shimmery length
of the Englishman's sword. Then he shrugged his mighty shoulders and
let his spear point sink to the earth.
"You bear no gifts," said he; "but follow me and I will lead you to the
Terrible One, the Mistress of Doom, the Red Woman, Nakari, who rules
the land of Negari."
He stepped aside and motioned Kane to precede him, but the Englishman,
his mind on a spear-thrust in the back, shook his head.
"Who am I that I should walk in front of my brother? We be two
chiefs--let us walk side by side."
In his heart Kane railed that he should be forced to use such unsavory
diplomacy with a black savage, but he showed no sign. The giant
bowed with a certain barbaric majesty and together they went up the
hill trail, unspeaking. Kane was aware that men were stepping from
hiding-places and falling in behind them, and a surreptitious glance
over his shoulder showed him some two score black warriors trailing out
behind them in two wedge-shaped lines. The moonlight glittered on sleek
black bodies, on waving head-gears and long cruel spear blades.
"My brothers are like leopards," said Kane courteously; "they lie in
the low bushes and no eyes see them; they steal through the high grass
and no man hears their coming."
The black chief acknowledged the compliment with a courtly inclination
of his lion-like head, that set the plumes whispering.
"The mountain leopard is our brother, oh chieftain. Our feet are like
drifting smoke but our arms are like iron. When they strike, blood
drips red and men die."
Kane sensed an undercurrent of menace in the tone. There was no actual
hint of threat on which he might base his suspicions, but the sinister
minor note was there. He said no more for a space and the strange
band moved silently upward in the moonlight like a cavalcade of black
specters led by a white ghost. The trail grew steeper and more rocky,
winding in and out among crags and gigantic boulders. Suddenly a great
chasm opened before them, spanned by a natural bridge of rock, at the
foot of which the leader halted.
* * * * *
Kane stared at the abyss curiously. It was some forty feet wide,
and looking down, his gaze was swallowed by impenetrable blackness,
hundreds of feet deep, he knew. On the other side rose crags dark and
forbidding.
"Here," said the black chief, "begin the true borders of Nakari's
realm."
Kane was aware that the warriors were casually closing in on him. His
fingers instinctively tightened about the hilt of the rapier which he
had not sheathed. The air was suddenly supercharged with tension.
"Here, too," the black man said, "they who bring no gifts to
Nakari--_die!_"
The last word was a shriek, as if the thought had transformed the
speaker into a maniac, and as he screamed it, the great black arm went
back and then forward with a ripple of mighty muscles, and the long
spear leaped at Kane's breast.
Only a born fighter could have avoided that thrust. Kane's instinctive
action saved his life--the great blade grazed his ribs as he swayed
aside and returned the blow with a flashing thrust that killed a
warrior who jostled between him and the chief at that instant.
Spears flashed in the moonlight and Kane, parrying one and bending
under the thrust of another, sprang out upon the narrow bridge where
only one could come at him at a time.
None cared to be first. They stood upon the brink and thrust at him,
crowding forward when he retreated, giving back when he pressed them.
Their spears were longer than his rapier but he more than made up for
the difference and the great odds by his scintillant skill and the cold
ferocity of his attack.
They wavered back and forth and then suddenly a black giant leaped
from among his fellows and charged out upon the bridge like a wild
buffalo, shoulders hunched, spear held low, eyes gleaming with a look
not wholly sane. Kane leaped back before the onslaught, leaped back
again, striving to avoid that stabbing spear and to find an opening
for his point. He sprang to one side and found himself reeling on the
edge of the bridge with eternity gaping beneath him. The blacks yelled
in savage exultation as he swayed and fought for his balance, and the
giant on the bridge roared and plunged at the rocking white man.
Kane parried with all his strength--a feat few swordsman could have
accomplished, off balance as he was--saw the cruel spear blade flash by
his cheek--felt himself falling backward into the abyss. A desperate
effort, and he gripped the spear shaft, righted himself and ran the
spearman through the body. The black's great red cavern of a mouth
spouted blood and with a dying effort he hurled himself blindly against
his foe. Kane, with his heels over the bridge's edge, was unable to
avoid him and they toppled over together, to disappear silently into
the depths below.
So swiftly had it all happened that the warriors stood stunned. The
giant's roar of triumph had scarcely died on his lips before the two
were falling into the darkness. Now the rest of the negroes came out on
the bridge to peer down curiously, but no sound came up from the dark
void.
_2. The People of the Stalking Death_
"Their gods were sadder than the sea,
Gods of a wandering will,
Who cried for blood like beasts at night
Sadly, from hill to hill."
--_Chesterton._
As Kane fell he followed his fighting instinct, twisting in midair so
that when he struck, were it ten or a thousand feet below, he would
land on top of the man who fell with him.
The end came suddenly--much more suddenly than the Englishman had
thought for. He lay half stunned for an instant, then looking up, saw
dimly the narrow bridge banding the sky above him, and the forms of
the warriors, limned in the moonlight and grotesquely foreshortened as
they leaned over the edge. He lay still, knowing that the beams of the
moon did not pierce the deeps in which he was hidden, and that to those
watchers he was invisible. Then when they vanished from view he began
to review his present plight. The black man was dead, and only for the
fact that his corpse had cushioned the fall, Kane would have been dead
likewise, for they had fallen a considerable distance. As it was, the
white man was stiff and bruised.
He drew his sword from the negro's body, thankful that it had not been
broken, and began to grope about in the darkness. His hand encountered
the edge of what seemed a cliff. He had thought that he was on the
bottom of the chasm and that its impression of great depth had been a
delusion, but now he decided that he had fallen on a ledge, part of the
way down. He dropped a small stone over the side, and after what seemed
a very long time he heard the faint sound of its striking far below.
Somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed, he drew flint and steel from
his belt and struck them to some tinder, warily shielding the light
with his hands. The faint illumination showed a large ledge jutting out
from the side of the cliff, that is, the side next the hills, to which
he had been attempting to cross. He had fallen close to the edge and it
was only by the narrowest margin that he had escaped sliding off it,
not knowing his position.
Crouching there, his eyes seeking to accustom themselves to the abysmal
gloom, he made out what seemed to be a darker shadow in the shadows
of the wall. On closer examination he found it to be an opening large
enough to admit his body standing erect. A cavern, he assumed, and
though its appearance was dark and forbidding in the extreme, he
entered, groping his way when the tinder burned out.
Where it led to, he naturally had no idea, but any action was
preferable to sitting still until the mountain vultures plucked his
bones. For a long way the cave floor tilted upward--solid rock beneath
his feet--and Kane made his way with some difficulty up the rather
steep slant, slipping and sliding now and then. The cavern seemed a
large one, for at no time after entering it could he touch the roof,
nor could he, with a hand on one wall, reach the other.
At last the floor became level and Kane sensed that the cave was much
larger there. The air seemed better, though the darkness was just as
impenetrable. Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. From somewhere
in front of him there came a strange indescribable rustling. Without
warning something smote him in the face and slashed wildly. All about
him sounded the eery murmurings of many small wings and suddenly Kane
smiled crookedly, amused, relieved and chagrined. Bats, of course.
The cave was swarming with them. Still it was a shaky experience, and
as he went on and the wings whispered through the vasty emptiness
of the great cavern, Kane's Puritan mind found space to dally with
a bizarre thought--had he wandered into Hell by some strange means,
and were these in truth bats, or were they lost souls winging through
everlasting night?
Then, thought Solomon Kane, I will soon confront Satan himself--and
even as he thought this, his nostrils were assailed by a horrid scent
fetid and repellent. The scent grew as he went slowly on, and Kane
swore softly, though he was not a profane man. He sensed that the
smell betokened some hidden threat, some unseen malevolence, inhuman
and deathly, and his somber mind sprang at supernatural conclusions.
However, he felt perfect confidence in his ability to cope with any
fiend or demon, armored as he was in unshakable faith of creed and the
knowledge of the rightness of his cause.
What followed happened suddenly. He was groping his way along when in
front of him two narrow yellow eyes leaped up in the darkness--eyes
that were cold and expressionless, too hideously close-set for human
eyes and too high for any four-legged beast. What horror had thus
reared itself up in front of him?
This is Satan, thought Kane as the eyes swayed above him, and the next
instant he was battling for his life with the darkness that seemed to
have taken tangible form and thrown itself about his body and limbs
in great slimy coils. Those coils lapped his sword arm and rendered
it useless; with the other hand he groped for dagger or pistol, flesh
crawling as his fingers slipped from slick scales, while the hissing of
the monster filled the cavern with a cold p├Žan of terror.
There in the black dark to the accompaniment of the bats' leathery
rustlings, Kane fought like a rat in the grip of a mouse-snake, and he
could feel his ribs giving and his breath going before his frantic left
hand closed on his dagger hilt.
Then with a volcanic twist and wrench of his steel-thewed body he tore
his left arm partly free and plunged the keen blade again and again to
the hilt in the sinuous writhing terror which enveloped him, feeling at
last the quivering coils loosen and slide from his limbs to lie about
his feet like huge cables.
The mighty serpent lashed wildly in its death struggles, and Kane,
avoiding its bone-shattering blows, reeled away in the darkness,
laboring for breath. If his antagonist had not been Satan himself, it
had been Satan's nearest earthly satellite, thought Solomon, hoping
devoutly that he would not be called upon to battle another in the
darkness there.
* * * * *
It seemed to him that he had been walking through the blackness for
ages and he began to wonder if there were any end to the cave when a
glimmer of light pierced the darkness. He thought it to be an outer
entrance a great way off, and started forward swiftly, but to his
astonishment, he brought up short against a blank wall after taking a
few strides. Then he perceived that the light came through a narrow
crack in the wall, and feeling over this wall he found it to be of
different material from the rest of the cave, consisting, apparently,
of regular blocks of stone joined together with mortar of some sort--an
indubitably man-built wall.
The light streamed between two of these stones, where the mortar had
crumbled away. Kane ran his hands over the surface with an interest
beyond his present needs. The work seemed very old and very much
superior to what might be expected of a tribe of ignorant negroes.
He felt the thrill of the explorer and discoverer. Certainly no white
man had ever seen this place and lived to tell of it, for when he had
landed on the dank West Coast some months before, preparing to plunge
into the interior, he had had no hint of such a country as this. The
few white men who knew anything at all of Africa with whom he had
talked, had never even mentioned the Land of Skulls or the she-fiend
who ruled it.
Kane thrust against the wall cautiously. The structure seemed weakened
from age--a vigorous shove and it gave perceptibly. He hurled himself
against it with all his weight and a whole section of wall gave way
with a crash, precipitating him into a dimly lighted corridor amid a
heap of stone, dust and mortar.
He sprang up and looked about, expecting the noise to bring a horde
of wild spearmen. Utter silence reigned. The corridor in which he now
stood was much like a long narrow cave itself, save that it was the
work of man. It was several feet wide and the roof was many feet above
his head. Dust lay ankle-deep on the floor as if no foot had trod there
for countless centuries, and the dim light, Kane decided, filtered in
somehow through the roof or ceiling, for nowhere did he see any doors
or windows. At last he decided the source was the ceiling itself, which
was of a peculiar phosphorescent quality.
He set off down the corridor, feeling uncomfortably like a gray ghost
moving along the gray halls of death and decay. The evident antiquity
of his surroundings depressed him, making him sense vaguely the
fleeting and futile existence of mankind. That he was now on top of the
earth he believed, since light of a sort came in, but where, he could
not even offer a conjecture. This was a land of enchantment--a land of
horror and fearful mysteries, the jungle and river natives had said,
and he had gotten whispered hints of its terrors ever since he had set
his back to the Slave Coast and ventured into the hinterlands alone.
Now and then he caught a low indistinct murmur which seemed to come
through one of the walls, and he at last came to the conclusion that he
had stumbled onto a secret passage in some castle or house. The natives
who had dared speak to him of Negari, had whispered of a ju-ju city
built of stone, set high amid the grim black crags of the fetish hills.
Then, thought Kane, it may be that I have blundered upon the very thing
I sought and am in the midst of that city of terror. He halted, and
choosing a place at random, began to loosen the mortar with his dagger.
As he worked he again heard that low murmur, increasing in volume as
he bored through the wall, and presently the point pierced through,
and looking through the aperture it had made, he saw a strange and
fantastic scene.
He was looking into a great chamber, whose walls and floors were of
stone, and whose mighty roof was upheld by gigantic stone columns,
strangely carved. Ranks of feathered black warriors lined the walls
and a double column of them stood like statues before a throne set
between two stone dragons which were larger than elephants. These
men he recognized, by their bearing and general appearance, to be
tribesmen of the warriors he had fought at the chasm. But his gaze
was drawn irresistibly to the great, grotesquely ornamented throne.
There, dwarfed by the ponderous splendor about her, a woman reclined. A
black woman she was, young and of a tigerish comeliness. She was naked
except for a beplumed helmet, armbands, anklets and a girdle of colored
ostrich feathers and she sprawled upon the silken cushions with her
limbs thrown about in voluptuous abandon.
Even at that distance Kane could make out that her features were regal
yet barbaric, haughty and imperious, yet sensual, and with a touch of
ruthless cruelty about the curl of her full red lips. Kane felt his
pulse quicken. This could be no other than she whose crimes had become
almost mythical--Nakari of Negari, demon queen of a demon city, whose
monstrous lust for blood had set half a continent shivering. At least
she seemed human enough; the tales of the fearful river tribes had lent
her a supernatural aspect. Kane had half expected to see a loathsome
semi-human monster out of some past and demoniacal age.
The Englishman gazed, fascinated though repelled. Not even in the
courts of Europe had he seen such grandeur. The chamber and all
its accouterments, from the carven serpents twined about the
bases of the pillars to the dimly seen dragons on the shadowy
ceiling, were fashioned on a gigantic scale. The splendor was
awesome--elephantine--inhumanly oversized, and almost numbing to the
mind which sought to measure and conceive the magnitude thereof. To
Kane it seemed that these things must have been the work of gods rather
than men, for this chamber alone would dwarf most of the castles he had
known in Europe.
The black people who thronged that mighty room seemed grotesquely
incongruous. They no more suited their surroundings than a band
of monkeys would have seemed at home in the council chambers of
the English king. As Kane realized this the sinister importance of
Queen Nakari dwindled. Sprawled on that august throne in the midst
of the terrific glory of another age, she seemed to assume her
true proportions--a spoiled, petulant child engaged in a game of
make-believe and using for her sport a toy discarded by her elders. And
at the same time a thought entered Kane's mind--who were these elders?
Still the child could become deadly in her game, as the Englishman soon
saw.
A tall massive black came through the ranks fronting the throne,
and after prostrating himself four times before it, remained on his
knees, evidently waiting permission to speak. The queen's air of lazy
indifference fell from her and she straightened with a quick lithe
motion that reminded Kane of a leopardess springing erect. She spoke,
and the words came faintly to him as he strained his faculties to hear.
She spoke in a language very similar to that of the river tribes.
"Speak!"
"Great and Terrible One," said the kneeling warrior, and Kane
recognized him as the chief who had first accosted him on the
plateau--the chief of the guards on the cliffs, "let not the fire of
your fury consume your slave."
The young woman's eyes narrowed viciously.
"You know why you were summoned, son of a vulture?"
"Fire of Beauty, the stranger brought no gifts."
"No gifts?" she spat out the words. "What have I to do with gifts? I
bade you slay all black men who came empty-handed--did I tell you to
slay white men?"
"Gazelle of Negari, he came climbing the crags in the night like an
assassin, with a dagger as long as a man's arm in his hand. The boulder
we hurled down missed him, and we met him upon the plateau and took
him to the Bridge-Across-the-Sky, where, as is the custom, we thought
to slay him; for it was your word that you were weary of men who came
wooing you."
"Black men, fool," she snarled; "black men!"
"Your slave did not know, Queen of Beauty. The white man fought like a
mountain leopard. Two men he slew and fell with the last one into the
chasm, and so he perished, Star of Negari."
"Aye," the queen's tone was venomous, "the first white man who ever
came to Negari! One who might have--rise, fool!"
The man got to his feet.
"Mighty Lioness, might not this one have come seeking----"
The sentence was never completed. Even as he straightened, Nakari made
a swift gesture with her hand. Two warriors plunged from the silent
ranks and two spears crossed in the chief's body before he could turn.
A gurgling scream burst from his lips, blood spurted high in the air
and the corpse fell flatly at the foot of the great throne.
The ranks never wavered, but Kane caught the sidelong flash of
strangely red eyes and the involuntary wetting of thick lips. Nakari
had half risen as the spears flashed, and now she sank back, an
expression of cruel satisfaction on her beautiful face and a strange
brooding gleam in her scintillant eyes.
An indifferent wave of her hand and the corpse was dragged away by the
heels, the dead arms trailing limply in the wide smear of blood left
by the passage of the body. Kane could see other wide stains crossing
the stone floor, some almost indistinct, others less dim. How many wild
scenes of blood and cruel frenzy had the great stone throne-dragons
looked upon with their carven eyes?
He did not doubt, now, the tales told him by the river tribes. These
people were bred in rapine and horror. Their prowess had burst their
brains. They lived, like some terrible beast, only to destroy. There
were strange gleams behind their eyes which at times lit those eyes
with up-leaping flames and shadows of Hell. What had the river tribes
said of these mountain people who had ravaged them for countless
centuries? _That they were henchmen of death, who stalked among them,
and whom they worshipped._
Still the thought hovered in Kane's mind as he watched--who built this
place, and why were negroes evidently in possession? He knew this was
the work of a higher race. No black tribe had ever reached such a stage
of culture as evidenced by these carvings. Yet the river tribes had
spoken of no other men than those upon which he now looked.
* * * * *
The Englishman tore himself away from the fascination of the barbaric
scene with an effort. He had no time to waste; as long as they thought
him dead, he had more chance of eluding possible guards and seeking
what he had come to find. He turned and set off down the dim corridor.
No plan of action offered itself to his mind and one direction was
as good as another. The passage did not run straight; it turned and
twisted, following the line of the walls, Kane supposed, and found time
to wonder at the evident enormous thickness of those walls. He expected
at any moment to meet some guard or slave, but as the corridors
continued to stretch empty before him, with the dusty floors unmarked
by any footprint, he decided that either the passages were unknown to
the people of Negari or else for some reason were never used.
He kept a close lookout for secret doors, and at last found one, made
fast on the inner side with a rusty bolt set in a groove of the wall.
This he manipulated cautiously, and presently with a creaking which
seemed terrifically loud in the stillness the door swung inward.
Looking out he saw no one, and stepping warily through the opening,
he drew the door to behind him, noting that it assumed the part of
a fantastic picture painted on the wall. He scraped a mark with his
dagger at the point where he believed the hidden spring to be on the
outer side, for he knew not when he might need to use the passage again.
He was in a great hall, through which ran a maze of giant pillars much
like those of the throne chamber. Among them he felt like a child in
some great forest, yet they gave him some slight sense of security
since he believed that, gliding among them like a ghost through a
jungle, he could elude the black people in spite of their craft.
He set off, choosing his direction at random and going carefully. Once
he heard a mutter of voices, and leaping upon the base of a column,
clung there while two black women passed directly beneath him, but
besides these he encountered no one. It was an uncanny sensation,
passing through this vast hall which seemed empty of human life, but in
some other part of which Kane knew there might be throngs of people,
hidden from sight by the pillars.
At last, after what seemed an eternity of following these monstrous
mazes, he came upon a huge wall which seemed to be either a side of the
hall, or a partition, and continuing along this, he saw in front of him
a doorway before which two spearmen stood like black statues.
Kane, peering about the corner of a column base made out two windows
high in the wall, one on each side of the door, and noting the ornate
carvings which covered the walls, determined on a desperate plan. He
felt it imperative that he should see what lay within that room. The
fact that it was guarded suggested that the room beyond the door was
either a treasure chamber or a dungeon, and he felt sure that his
ultimate goal would prove to be a dungeon.
He retreated to a point out of sight of the blacks and began to scale
the wall, using the deep carvings for hand and foot holds. It proved
even easier than he had hoped, and having climbed to a point level with
the windows, he crawled cautiously along a horizontal line, feeling
like an ant on a wall.
The guards far below him never looked up, and finally he reached
the nearer window and drew himself up over the sill. He looked down
into a large room, empty of life, but equipped in a manner sensuous
and barbaric. Silken couches and velvet cushions dotted the floor in
profusion and tapestries heavy with gold work hung upon the walls. The
ceiling too was worked in gold.
Strangely incongruous, crude trinkets of ivory and ironwood,
unmistakably negroid in workmanship, littered the place, symbolic
enough of this strange kingdom where signs of barbarism vied with a
strange culture. The outer door was shut and in the wall opposite was
another door, also closed.
Kane descended from the window, sliding down the edge of a tapestry
as a sailor slides down a sail-rope, and crossed the room, his feet
sinking noiselessly into the deep fabric of the rug which covered the
floor, and which, like all the other furnishings, seemed ancient to the
point of decay.
At the door he hesitated. To step into the next room might be a
desperately hazardous thing to do; should it prove to be filled with
black men, his escape was cut off by the spearmen outside the other
door. Still, he was used to taking all sorts of wild chances, and now,
sword in hand, he flung the door open with a suddenness intended to
numb with surprize for an instant any foe who might be on the other
side.
Kane took a swift step within, ready for anything--then halted
suddenly, struck speechless and motionless for a second. He had come
thousands of miles in search of something and there before him lay the
object of his search.
_3. Lilith_
"Lady of mystery, what is thy history?"
--Viereck.
A couch stood in the middle of the room and on its silken surface lay
a woman--a woman whose skin was white and whose reddish gold hair
fell about her bare shoulders. She now sprang erect, fright flooding
her fine gray eyes, lips parted to utter a cry which she as suddenly
checked.
"You!" she exclaimed. "How did you----?"
Solomon Kane closed the door behind him and came toward her, a rare
smile on his dark face.
"You remember me, do you not, Marylin?"
The fear had already faded from her eyes even before he spoke, to be
replaced by a look of incredible wonder and dazed bewilderment.
"Captain Kane! I can not understand--it seemed no one would ever
come----"
She drew a small hand wearily across her white brow, swaying suddenly.
Kane caught her in his arms--she was only a girl, little more than a
child--and laid her gently on the couch. There, chafing her wrists
gently, he talked in a low hurried monotone, keeping an eye on the door
all the time--which door, by the way, seemed to be the only entrance
or egress from the room. While he talked he mechanically took in the
chamber, noting that it was almost a duplicate of the outer room, as
regards hangings and general furnishings.
"First," said he, "before we go into any other matters, tell me, are
you closely guarded?"
"Very closely, sir," she murmured hopelessly; "I know not how you came
here, but we can never escape."
"Let me tell you swiftly how I came to be here, and mayhap you will be
more hopeful when I tell you of the difficulties already overcome. Lie
still now, Marylin, and I will tell you how I came to seek an English
heiress in the devil city of Negari.
"I killed Sir John Taferal in a duel. As to the reason, 'tis neither
here nor there, but slander and a black lie lay behind it. Ere he died
he confessed that he had committed a foul crime some years agone. You
remember, of course, the affection cherished for you by your cousin,
old Lord Hildred Taferal, Sir John's uncle. Sir John feared that the
old lord, dying without issue, might leave the great Taferal estates to
you.
"Years ago you disappeared and Sir John spread the rumor that you had
drowned. Yet when he lay dying with my rapier through his body, he
gasped out that he had kidnapped you and sold you to a Barbary rover,
whom he named--a bloody pirate whose name has not been unknown on
England's coasts aforetime. So I came seeking you, and a long weary
trail it has been, stretching into long leagues and bitter years.
"First I sailed the seas searching El Gar, the Barbary corsair named
by Sir John. I found him in the crash and roar of an ocean battle;
he died, but even as he lay dying he told me that he had sold you in
turn to a merchant out of Stamboul. So to the Levant I went and there
by chance came upon a Greek sailor whom the Moors had crucified on the
shore for piracy. I cut him down and asked him the question I asked
all men--if he had in his wanderings seen a captive English girl-child
with yellow curls. I learned that he had been one of the crew of the
Stamboul merchants, and that she had, on her homeward voyage, been set
upon by a Portuguese slaver and sunk--this renegade Greek and the child
being among the few who were taken aboard the slaver.
"This slaver then, cruising south for black ivory, had been ambushed
in a small bay on the African West Coast, and of your further fate
the Greek knew nothing, for he had escaped the general massacre, and
taking to sea in an open boat, had been taken up by a ship of Genoese
freebooters.
"To the West Coast, then, I came, on the slim chance that you still
lived, and there heard among the natives that some years ago a white
child had been taken from a ship whose crew had been slain, and sent
inland as a part of the tribute the shore tribes paid to the upper
river chiefs.
"Then all traces ceased. For months I wandered without a clue as to
your whereabouts, nay, without a hint that you even lived. Then I
chanced to hear among the river tribes of the demon city of Negari and
the black queen who kept a white woman for a slave. I came here."
Kane's matter-of-fact tone, his unfurbished narration, gave no hint
of the full meaning of that tale--of what lay behind those calm
and measured words--the sea-fights and the land fights--the years
of privation and heart-breaking toil, the ceaseless danger, the
everlasting wandering through hostile and unknown lands, the tedious
and deadening labor of ferreting out the information he wished from
ignorant, sullen and unfriendly savages, black and white.
"I came here" said Kane simply, but what a world of courage and effort
was symbolized by that phrase! A long red trail, black shadows and
crimson shadows weaving a devil's dance--marked by flashing swords and
the smoke of battle--by faltering words falling like drops of blood
from the lips of dying men.
Not a consciously dramatic man, certainly, was Solomon Kane. He
told his tale in the same manner in which he had overcome terrific
obstacles--coldly, briefly and without heroics.
"You see, Marylin," he concluded gently, "I have not come this far and
done this much, to now meet with defeat. Take heart, child. We will
find a way out of this fearful place."
"Sir John took me on his saddle-bow," the girl said dazedly, and
speaking slowly as if her native language came strangely to her from
years of unuse, as she framed in halting words an English evening of
long ago: "He carried me to the sea-shore where a galley's boat waited,
filled with fierce men, dark and mustached and having simitars, and
great rings to the fingers. The captain, a Moslem with a face like a
hawk, took me, I a-weeping with fear, and bore me to his galley. Yet he
was kind to me in his way, I being little more than a baby, and at last
sold me to a Turkish merchant, as he told you. This merchant he met off
the southern coast of France, after many days of sea travel.
"This man did not use me badly, yet I feared him, for he was a man of
cruel countenance and made me understand that I was to be sold to a
black sultan of the Moors. However, in the Gates of Hercules his ship
was set upon by a Cadiz slaver and things came about as you have said.
"The captain of the slaver believed me to be the child of some wealthy
English family and intended holding me for ransom, but in a grim
darksome bay on the African coast he perished with all his men except
the Greek you have mentioned, and I was taken captive by a black
chieftain.
"I was terribly afraid and thought he would slay me, but he did me no
harm and sent me up-country with an escort, who also bore much loot
taken from the ship. This loot, together with myself, was, as you know,
intended for a powerful king of the river peoples. But it never reached
him, for a roving band of Negari fell upon the beach warriors and slew
them all. Then I was taken to this city, and have since remained, slave
to Queen Nakari.
"How I have lived through all those terrible scenes of battle and
cruelty and murder, I know not."
"A providence has watched over you, child," said Kane, "the power which
doth care for weak women and helpless children; which led me to you in
spite of all hindrances, and which shall yet lead us forth from this
place, God willing."
"My people!" she exclaimed suddenly like one awaking from a dream;
"what of them?"
"All in good health and fortune, child, save that they have sorrowed
for you through the long years. Nay, old Sir Hildred hath the gout and
doth so swear thereat that I fear for his soul at times. Yet methinks
that the sight of you, little Marylin, would mend him."
"Still, Captain Kane," said the girl, "I can not understand why you
came alone."
"Your brothers would have come with me, child, but it was not sure that
you lived, and I was loth that any other Taferal should die in a land
far from good English soil. I rid the country of an evil Taferal--'twas
but just I should restore in his place a good Taferal, if so be she
still lived--I, and I alone."
This explanation Kane himself believed. He never sought to analyze his
motives and he never wavered, once his mind was made up. Though he
always acted on impulse, he firmly believed that all his actions were
governed by cold and logical reasonings. He was a man born out of his
time--a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the
ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan, though the
last assertion would have shocked him unspeakably. An atavist of the
days of blind chivalry he was, a knight errant in the somber clothes of
a fanatic. A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right
all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right
and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in
only one respect--he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such
was Solomon Kane.
"Marylin," he now said kindly, taking her small hands in his
sword-calloused fingers, "methinks you have changed greatly in the
years. You were a rosy and chubby little maid when I used to dandle
you on my knee in old England. Now you seem drawn and pale of face,
though you are beautiful as the nymphs of the heathen books. There are
haunting ghosts in your eyes, child--do they misuse you here?"
She lay back on the couch and the blood drained slowly from her already
pallid features until she was deathly white. Kane bent over her,
startled. Her voice came in a whisper.
"Ask me not. There are deeds better hidden in the darkness of night and
forgetfulness. There are sights which blast the eyes and leave their
burning mark forever on the brain. The walls of ancient cities, recked
not of by men, have looked upon scenes not to be spoken of, even in
whispers."
Her eyes closed wearily and Kane's troubled, somber eyes unconsciously
traced the thin blue lines of her veins, prominent against the
unnatural whiteness of her skin.
"Here is some demoniacal thing," he muttered, "A mystery----"
"Aye," murmured the girl, "a mystery that was old when Egypt was young!
And nameless evil more ancient than dark Babylon--that spawned in
terrible black cities when the world was young and strange."
Kane frowned, troubled. At the girl's strange words he felt an eery
crawling fear at the back of his brain, as if dim racial memories
stirred in the eon-deep gulfs, conjuring up grim chaotic visions,
illusive and nightmarish.
Suddenly Marylin sat erect, her eyes flaring wide with fright. Kane
heard a door open somewhere.
"Nakari!" whispered the girl urgently. "Swift! She must not find you
here! Hide quickly, and"--as Kane turned--"keep silent, whatever may
chance!"
* * * * *
She lay back on the couch, feigning slumber as Kane crossed the room
and concealed himself behind some tapestries which, hanging upon the
wall, hid a niche that might have once held a statue of some sort.
He had scarcely done so when the single door of the room opened and a
strange barbaric figure stood framed in it. Nakari, queen of Negari,
had come to her slave.
The black woman was clad as she had been when he had seen her on the
throne, and the colored armlets and anklets clanked as she closed
the door behind her and came into the room. She moved with the easy
sinuousness of a she-leopard and in spite of himself the watcher was
struck with admiration for her lithe beauty. Yet at the same time a
shudder of repulsion shook him, for her eyes gleamed with vibrant and
magnetic evil, older than the world.
"Lilith!" thought Kane. "She is beautiful and terrible as Purgatory.
She is Lilith--that foul, lovely woman of ancient legend."
Nakari halted by the couch, stood looking down upon her captive for
a moment, then with an enigmatic smile, bent and shook her. Marylin
opened her eyes, sat up, then slipped from her couch and knelt before
her black mistress--an act which caused Kane to curse beneath his
breath. The queen laughed and seating herself upon the couch, motioned
the girl to rise, and then put an arm about her waist and drew her
upon her lap. Kane watched, puzzled, while Nakari caressed the white
girl in a lazy, amused manner. This might be affection, but to Kane it
seemed more like a sated leopard teasing its victim. There was an air
of mockery and studied cruelty about the whole affair.
"You are very soft and pretty, Mara," Nakari murmured lazily, "much
prettier than the black girls who serve me. The time approaches, little
one, for your nuptial. And a fairer bride has never been borne up the
Black Stairs."
Marylin began to tremble and Kane thought she was going to faint.
Nakari's eyes gleamed strangely beneath her long-lashed drooping lids,
and her full red lips curved in a faint tantalizing smile. Her every
action seemed fraught with some sinister meaning. Kane began to sweat
profusely.
"Mara," said the black queen, "you are honored above all other girls,
yet you are not content. Think how the girls of Negari will envy you,
Mara, when the priests sing the nuptial song and the Moon of Skulls
looks over the black crest of the Tower of Death. Think, little
bride-of-the-Master, how many girls have given their lives to be his
bride!"
And Nakari laughed in her hateful musical way, as at a rare jest. And
then suddenly she stopped short. Her eyes narrowed to slits as they
swept the room, and her whole body tensed. Her hand went to her girdle
and came away with a long thin dagger. Kane sighted along the barrel
of his pistol, finger against the trigger. Only a natural hesitancy
against shooting a woman kept him from sending death into the black
heart of Nakari, for he believed that she was about to murder the girl.
Then with a lithe cat-like motion she thrust the girl from her knees
and bounded back across the room, her eyes fixed with blazing intensity
on the tapestry behind which Kane stood. Had those keen eyes discovered
him? He quickly learned.
"Who is there?" she rapped out fiercely. "Who hides behind those
hangings? I do not see you nor hear you, but I know someone is there!"
Kane remained silent. Nakari's wild beast instinct had betrayed him and
he was uncertain as to what course to follow. His next actions depended
on the queen.
"Mara!" Nakari's voice slashed like a whip, "who is behind those
hangings? Answer me! Shall I give you a taste of the whip again?"
The girl seemed incapable of speech. She cowered where she had fallen,
her beautiful eyes full of terror. Nakari, her blazing gaze never
wavering, reached behind her with her free hand and gripped a cord
hanging from the wall. She jerked viciously. Kane felt the tapestries
whip back on either side of him and he stood revealed.
For a moment the strange tableau held--the gaunt white man in his
blood-stained, tattered garments, the long pistol gripped in his right
hand--across the room the black queen in her savage finery, one arm
still lifted to the cord, the other hand holding the dagger in front of
her--the white girl cowering on the floor.