Moon of Skulls Page 15

  “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, reckoned 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 eerie 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 bloodstained, 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.

  Then Kane spoke: “Keep silent, Nakari, or you die!”

  The queen seemed numbed and struck speechless by the sudden apparition. Kane stepped from among the tapestries and slowly approached her.

  “You!” she found her voice at last. “You must be he of whom the guardsmen spake! There are not two other white men in Negari! They said you fell to your death! How then —”

  “Silence!” Kane’s voice cut in harshly on her amazed babblings; he knew that the pistol meant nothing to her, but she sensed the threat of the long blade in his left hand. “Marylin,” still unconsciously speaking in the river-tribes’ language, “take cords from the hangings and bind her —”

  He was about the middle of the chamber now. Nakari’s face had lost much of its helpless bewilderment and into her blazing eyes stole a crafty gleam. She deliberately let her dagger fall as in token of surrender, then suddenly her hands shot high above her head and gripped another thick cord. Kane heard Marylin scream but before he could take another step, before he could pull the trigger or even think, the floor fell beneath his feet and he shot down into abysmal blackness. He did not fall far and he landed on his feet; but the force of the fall sent him to his knees and even as he went down, sensing a presence in the darkness beside him, something crashed against his skull and he dropped into a yet blacker abyss of unconsciousness.

  4. Dreams of Empire

  “For Rome was given to rule the world

  And gat of it little joy —

  But we, we shall enjoy the world,

  The whole huge world a toy.”

  — Chesterton.

  Slowly Kane drifted back from the dim realms where the unseen assailant’s bludgeon had hurled him. Something hindered the motion of his hands and there was a metallic clanking when he sought to raise them to his aching, throbbing head.

  He lay in utter darkness but he could not determine whether this was absence of light, or whether he was still blinded by the blow. He dazedly collected his scattered faculties and realized that he was lying on a damp stone floor, shackled by wrist and ankle with heavy iron chains which were rough and
rusty to the touch.

  How long he lay there, he never knew. The silence was broken only by the drumming pulse in his own aching head and the scamper and chattering of rats. At last a red glow sprang up in the darkness and grew before his eyes. Framed in the grisly radiance rose the sinister and sardonic face of Nakari. Kane shook his head, striving to rid himself of the illusion. But the light grew and as his eyes accustomed themselves to it, he saw that it emanated from a torch borne in the hand of the queen.

  In the illumination he now saw that he lay in a small dank cell whose walls, ceiling and floor were of stone. The heavy chains which held him captive were made fast to metal rings set deep in the wall. There was but one door, which was apparently of bronze.

  Nakari set the torch in a niche near the door, and coming forward, stood over her captive, gazing down at him in a manner rather speculating than mocking.

  “You are he who fought the men on the cliff.” The remark was an assertion rather than a question. “They said you fell into the abyss — did they lie? Did you bribe them to lie? Or how did you escape? Are you a magician and did you fly to the bottom of the chasm and then fly to my palace? Speak!”

  Kane remained silent. Nakari cursed.

  “Speak or I will have your eyes torn out! I will cut your fingers off and burn your feet!”

  She kicked him viciously, but Kane lay silent, his deep somber eyes boring up into her face, until the feral gleam faded from her eyes to be replaced by an avid interest and wonder.

  She seated herself on a stone bench, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands.

  “I never saw a white man before,” she said, “Are all white men like you? Bah! That cannot be! Most men are fools, black or white. I know most black men are fools, and white men are not gods, as the river tribes say — they are only men. I, who know all the ancient mysteries, say they are only men.

  “But white men have strange mysteries too, they tell me — the wanderers of the river tribes, and Mara. They have war clubs that make a noise like thunder and kill afar off — that thing which you held in your right hand, was that one of those clubs?”

  Kane permitted himself a grim smile.

  “Nakari, if you know all mysteries, how can I tell you aught that you know not already?”

  “How deep and cold and strange your eyes are!” the queen said as if he had not spoken. “How strange your whole appearance is — and you have the bearing of a king! You do not fear me — I never met a man who neither loved nor feared me. You would never fear me, but you could learn to love me. Look at me, white man — am I not beautiful?”

  “You are beautiful,” answered Kane.

  Nakari smiled and then frowned. “The way you say that, it is no compliment. You hate me, do you not?”

  “As a man hates a serpent,” Kane replied bluntly.

  Nakari’s eyes blazed with almost insane fury. Her hands clenched until the long nails sank into the palms; then as quickly as her anger had arisen, it ebbed away.

  “You have the heart of a king,” she said calmly, “else you would fear me. Are you a king in your land?”

  “I am only a landless wanderer.”

  “You might be a king here,” Nakari said slowly.

  Kane laughed grimly. “Do you offer me my life?”

  “I offer you more than that!” Kane’s eyes narrowed as the queen leaned toward him, vibrant with suppressed excitement. “White man, what is it that you want more than anything else in the world?”

  “To take the white girl you call Mara, and go.”

  Nakari sank back with an impatient exclamation.

  “You cannot have her; she is the promised bride of the Master. Even I could not save her, even if I wished. Forget her. I will help you forget her. Listen, white man, listen to the words of Nakari, queen of Negari! You say you are a landless man — I will make you a king! I will give you the world for a toy!

  “No, no! Keep silent until I have finished,” she rushed on, her words tumbling over each other in her eagerness. Her eyes blazed, her whole body quivered with dynamic intensity. “I have talked to travelers, to captives and slaves, men from far countries. I know that this land of mountains and rivers and jungle is not all the world. There are far-off nations and cities, and kings and queens to be crushed and broken.

  “Negari is fading, her might is crumbling, but a strong man beside her queen might build it up again — might restore all her vanishing glory. Listen, white man! Sit by me on the throne of Negari! Send afar to your people for the thunder-clubs to arm my warriors! My nation is still lord of central Africa; together we will band the conquered tribes — call back the days when the realm of ancient Negari spanned the land from sea to sea! We will subjugate all the tribes of the river, the plain and the seashore, and instead of slaying them all, we will make one mighty army of them! And then, when all Africa is under our heel, we will sweep forth upon the world like a hungry lion to rend and tear and destroy!”

  Solomon’s brain reeled. Perhaps it was the woman’s fierce magnetic personality, the dynamic power she instilled in her fiery words, but at the moment her wild plan seemed not at all wild and impossible. Lurid and chaotic visions flamed through the Puritan’s brain — Europe torn by civil and religious strife, divided against herself, betrayed by her rulers, tottering — aye, Europe was in desperate straits now, and might prove an easy victim for some strong savage race of conquerors. What man can say truthfully that in his heart there lurks not a yearning for power and conquest? For a moment the Devil sorely tempted Solomon Kane; then before his mind’s eye rose the wistful sad face of Marylin Taferal, and Solomon cursed.

  “Out on ye, daughter of Satan! Avaunt! Am I a beast of the forest to lead your black devils against mine own race? Nay, no beast ever did so. Begone! If you wish my friendship, set me free and let me go with the girl.”

  Nakari leaped like a tiger-cat to her feet, her eyes flaming now with passionate fury. A dagger gleamed in her hand and she raised it high above Kane’s breast with a feline scream of hate. A moment she hovered like a shadow of death above him; then her arm sank and she laughed.

  “Freedom? She will find her freedom when the Moon of Skulls leers down on the black altar. As for you, you shall rot in this dungeon. You are a fool; Africa’s greatest queen has offered you her love and the empire of the world — and you revile her! You love the white girl, perhaps? Until the Moon of Skulls she is mine and I leave you to think about this: that she shall be punished as I have punished her before — hung up by her wrists, naked, and whipped until she swoons!”

  Nakari laughed as Kane tore savagely at his shackles. She crossed to the door, opened it, then hesitated and turned back for another word.

  “This is a foul place, white man, and maybe you hate me the more for chaining you here. Maybe in Nakari’s beautiful throneroom, with wealth and luxury spread before you, you will look upon her with more favor. Very soon I shall send for you, but first I will leave you here awhile to reflect. Remember — love Nakari and the kingdom of the world is yours; hate her — this cell is your realm.”

  The bronze door clanged sullenly, but more hateful to the imprisoned Englishman was the venomous, silvery laugh of Nakari.

  Time passed slowly in the darkness. After what seemed a long time the door opened again, this time to admit a huge black who brought food and a sort of thin wine. Kane ate and drank ravenously and afterward slept. The strain of the last few days had worn him greatly, mentally and physically, but when he awoke he felt fresh and strong.

  Again the door opened and two great black warriors entered. In the light of the torches they bore, Kane saw that they were giants, clad in loincloths and ostrich plume headgear, and bearing long spears in their hands.

  “Nakari wishes you to come to her, white man,” was all they said, as they took off his shackles. He arose, exultant in even brief freedom, his keen brain working fiercely for a way of escape.

  Evidently the fame of his prowess had spread, for the two war
riors showed great respect for him. They motioned him to precede them, and walked carefully behind him, the points of their spears boring into his back. Though they were two to one, and he was unarmed, they were taking no chances. The gazes they directed at him were full of awe and suspicion, and Kane decided that Nakari had told the truth when she had said that he was the first white man to come to Negari.

  Down a long dark corridor they went, his captors guiding him with light prods of their spears, up a narrow winding stair, down another passageway, up another stair, and then they emerged into the vast maze of gigantic pillars into which Kane had first come. As they started down this huge hall, Kane’s eyes suddenly fell on a strange and fantastic picture painted on the wall ahead of him. His heart gave a sudden leap as he recognized it. It was some distance in front of him and he edged imperceptibly toward the wall until he and his guards were walking along very close to it. Now he was almost abreast of the picture and could even make out the mark his dagger had made upon it.

  The warriors following Kane were amazed to hear him gasp suddenly like a man struck by a spear. He wavered in his stride and began clutching at the air for support. They eyed each other doubtfully and prodded him, but he cried out like a dying man, and slowly crumpled to the floor, where he lay in a strange unnatural position, one leg doubled back under him and one arm half-supporting his lolling body. The blacks looked at him fearfully. To all appearances he was dying, but there was no wound upon him. They threatened him with their spears but he paid no heed. Then they lowered their weapons uncertainly and one of them bent over him.