Master of—Sharane!

Chapter Seventeen

There came a shout from Gigi; a cry of warning echoed by the Persian. He saw Sharane’s face pale, her lips grow white. Out of the black cabin strode Sigurd the Viking, and in his arms was that dark statue of cloudy evil that had stood in Klaneth’s sinister shrine.

“Stop!” cried Gigi, and sprang toward him. But the Viking had reached the rail. Before the Ninevite could reach him he had lifted the idol and cast it over into the waves.

“The last devil gone!” shouted Sigurd.

But Gigi turned to the Persian, horror on his face. And the Persian shrugged his shoulders, walked to the rail and looked over it down where the black image had been cast.

The ship trembled—trembled as though far beneath its keel a hand had risen and was shaking it.

It stopped. Around it the waters darkened.

Deep, deep down in those darkened waters began to glow a scarlet cloud. Deep, deep beneath them the cloud moved and widened as widens the thunderhead. It vortexed into a great crimson storm cloud blotted with blacknesses. It floated up; ever growing, its scarlets deepening ever more angrily, its blacks shading ever more menacingly.

The lifting cloud swirled; from it shot out strangely ordered rays, horizontal, fan-shaped. From those slant-planed luminescences now whirling like a tremendous wheel in the abyss, immense bubbles, black and crimson, began to break. They shot up, growing swiftly in girth as they neared the surface.

Within them Kenton glimpsed figures; misty figures; bodies of crouching men clad in armor that glimmered jet and scarlet.

Men within the bubbles!

Armored men! Men who crouched with heads on knees, clothed all in glittering scales. Warriors in whose hands were misty swords, misty bows, misty javelins.

Up rushed the bubble hosts, myriad after myriad. Now they were close to sea surface. Now they broke through.

The bubbles burst!

Out of their shattered sides the warriors sprang. All in their checkered mail, pallid-faced, pupilless eyes half closed and dead, they leaned out upon the darkened blue of the sea. From crest to crest of waves they vaulted. They ran over the waters as though over a field of withered violets. Silently they poured down upon the ship!

“Men of Nergal!” wailed Sharane. “Warriors of the Black One! Ishtar! Ishtar—help us!”

“Phantoms!” cried Kenton, and held high his blood stained sword. “Phantoms!”

And instantly he knew that whatever they were—phantoms they were not! The front rank poised themselves upon the tip of a curling wave as though upon a long land barrow. They thrust down bows no longer misty. To their cheeks they drew the tips of long arrows. Came a twang of strings, a pattering as of hail against the sides of the ship. A dozen shafts quivered along the side of the mast; one fell at his feet—serpent scaled, black and crimson, its head buried deep within the deck.

“Ishtar! Lady Ishtar! Deliver us from Nergal!” wailed Sharane.

As though in answer the ship leaped as if another hand had closed upon its stern and had thrown it forward!

From the hosts still breaking through the bubbles arose a vast shouting. They raced after the now flying ship; halted. Another rain of arrows fell upon it.

“Ishtar! Lady Ishtar!” sobbed Sharane—now nothing but a frightened girl.

The hovering darkness split. For an instant out of it peered an immense orb circled with garlands of little moons. From it poured silver fire; living, throbbing, jubilant. The pulsing flood struck the sea and melted through it. The shadows closed; the orb was gone.

But the moon flames it had poured still dropped down and down. Up to meet them sparkled other great bubbles all rosy, pearl and silver, shimmering with glints and glimmerings of tenderest nacre, gleamings of mother-of-pearl, cream of roses.

In each of them Kenton sensed a form, a body—wondrous, delicate and delicious; a woman’s body from whose beauty the shining sides of the bubbles drew their glory!

Women within the bubbles!

Up rushed the spheres of glamour; they touched the surface of the wan sea. They opened.

Out of them flowed hosts of women. Unclad, save for tresses black as midnight, silvery as the moon, golden as the wheat and poppy red, they stepped from the shimmering pyxes that had borne them upward. They lifted white arms and brown arms, arms shell pink and arms pale amber, beckoning to the rushing, sea-born men-at-arms. Their eyes gleamed like little lakes of jewels—sapphires, blue, black and pale sapphires, velvet jet, sun stone yellow, witched amber; eyes gray as sword blades beneath winter moons. Round hipped and slender hipped, high breasted and virginal, they swayed upon their wave crests, beckoning, calling to Nergal’s warriors.

At their calling—dove sweet, gull plaintive, hawk eager, sweet and poignant—the scaled hosts wavered; halted. The bows that had been drawn dropped; swords splashed; javelins twirled through the deeps. Within their dead eyes a flame sprang forth. A flame of life!

They shouted. They sprang forward. To the women—the ship forgotten!

Wave crests on which mailed warriors raced met crests on which the wondrous women poised. Into the mailed arms the women were swept. For a breath, tresses brown and black, silver as the moon and golden as the wheat, swirled round mail ebon and scarlet.

Then warriors and women melted into the foam behind the racing ship; became one with the jeweled and sparkling wake of it; a wake that rolled and sighed as though it were the soul of amorous seas.

“Ishtar! Mother Beloved!” prayed the Lady Sharane. “To Ishtar—homage!”

“To Ishtar—homage!” echoed Kenton, and bent his knee.

Rising, he caught her to him.

“Sharane!” he breathed. Her soft arms wreathed his neck.

“My lord—I pray you forgiveness,” she sighed. “I pray you forgiveness! Yet how could I have known—when first you lay upon the deck and seemed afraid and fled? And then were chained—a slave! And still I loved you! Yet how could I have known how mighty a lord you are?”

Her fragrance shook him; the softness of her against his breath closed his throat.

“Sharane!” he murmured. “Sharane!”

His lips sought hers and clung; mad wine of life raced through his veins; in the sweet flames of her mouth memory of all save this moment threatened to be burned from him.

“I—give myself—to you!” she sighed.

He remembered.

“You give nothing, Sharane!” he answered her. “I—take!”

He lifted her in his arms.

The Viking came and sat beside the door of the rosy cabin, the black priest’s sword in hand. He sat, watchful, chanting low some ancient bridal lay. Upon the black deck Gigi and the Persian moved, casting the bodies of the slain into the sea; ending the pain of those not yet dead; casting them then after the others.

One dove and then another fluttered down from the balcony of the blossoming trees and strutted about the closed door. The Viking watched them, still chanting low. Quick after the first doves fluttered others, twain upon twain. They cooed and bent inquisitive heads; they billed and murmured. They formed a half ring before the closed door.

The white-breasted doves—tender, red-beaked, vermilion-footed; the murmuring, the wooing, the caressing doves—they set their white seal upon the way to Kenton and the woman he had won!

The doves of Ishtar—wedding them.

And now, their work done, Zubran and Gigi stepped over where the barrier had been, jesting with and wooing the women of Sharane.

But, unheeding, Sigurd, Trygg’s son, Sigurd the Viking, sat before that barred door, sword ready for hand, chanting under his breath his ancient lay.

And, as unheeding, the doves of Ishtar, silent now, encircled it.