The Blue Priest

Chapter Twenty-Five

They took Kenton to a narrow, windowless room. Its heavy door was solid bronze. Around its sides ran stone benches. In its center was another bench shaped like a sarcophagus. The bowmen sat him on it, tied his ankles with leathern thongs, threw cloaks on its top and pressed him down upon them. They seated themselves two by two on three sides of the room, eyes fixed on black priest and captain, bows ready.

The captain tapped the black priest on the shoulder.

“My reward?” he asked. “When do I get it?”

“When the slave is in my hands and not before,” answered Klaneth, savagely. “If you had been—wiser, you would have had it by now.”

“Yes—and much good it would be doing me, with an arrow through my heart or—” he shuddered—“wailing even now at the feet of the king’s death!”

The black priest looked at Kenton evilly; bent over him.

“Put no hope in the king’s favor,” he muttered. “It was his drunkenness that was speaking. When he awakens he will have forgotten. Give you to me without question. No hope there—you dog!”

“No?” sneered Kenton, meeting the dead malignant eyes steadily. “Yet twice have I beaten you—you black swine.”

“But not a third time,” spat Klaneth. “And when the king awakens I will have not only you but that temple drab you love! Ho!” rumbled the black priest as Kenton winced, “that touches you, does it? Yes, I will have you both. And together you shall die—slowly, ah, so slowly, watching each other’s agonies. Side by side—side by side until slowly, slowly, my torturers have destroyed the last of your bodies. Nay, the last of your spirits! Never before has man or woman died as you two shall!”

“You cannot harm Sharane,” answered Kenton. “Carrion eater whose filthy mouth drips lies! She is Bel’s priestess and safe from you.”

“Ho!” grunted Klaneth; then bent, whispering close in Kenton’s ear so softly that no one but him could hear. “Listen—here is a sweet thought to carry you while I am away. Only if the priestess is faithful to the god is she beyond my reach. Now listen—listen—Before the king awakes your Sharane shall have taken another lover! Yea!”—devilish mockery was in the whisper—“Your love shall lie in arms of earthly lover! And he will not be—you!”

Kenton writhed helplessly, striving to break his bonds, tear at the evil face.

“Sweet Sharane!” whispered Klaneth, leering. “Holy Vase of Joy! And mine to break as I will—before the king awakes!”

He stepped back to the soldier who had taken Kenton.

“I go to await the king’s awakening,” he said. “Come.”

“Not I,” answered the soldier, hastily. “By the gods, I prefer this company. Also, if I lose sight of this man, priest—I might forever lose sight of that reward you owe me for him.”

“Give me his sword,” ordered Klaneth, reaching toward the blade of Nabu which the officer had retained.

“The sword goes with the man,” answered the officer, setting it behind him.

“That is true,” the bowmen nodded to each other. “Priest, you cannot have the sword.”

Klaneth snarled; his hands flew out to clutch. Six bows bent, six arrows pointed at his heart. Without word, but with hell stamped deep on his brow, the black priest strode out of the cell. An archer arose, dropped into place a bar, sealing the door. A silence fell. The soldier brooded; now and then he shivered as though cold, and Kenton knew he was thinking of that death who with smiling, tender eyes had pressed teeth of torture in his breast. The six bowmen watched him unwinkingly.

And at last Kenton closed his own eyes—fighting to keep back the terror of Klaneth’s last threat against his beloved; fighting against despair. What evil plot had the black priest set going against her, what trap had he laid, to make him so sure that soon he would have her in his hands—to break! And where were Gigi and Sigurd and Zubran? Did they know he was taken? A great loneliness swept over him.

How long his eyes were closed, or whether he had slept—he never could tell. But he heard as though from infinite distances away a still, passionless voice.

“Arise!” it bade him.

He opened his lids; lifted his head. A priest stood beside him, a priest whose long blue robes covered him from head to foot. Nothing could he see of that priest’s face.

Suddenly he knew that his arms and ankles were free. He sat up. Ropes and thongs lay on the floor. On the stone benches the bowmen leaned one against the other asleep. The officer was asleep.

The bar on the door was still in place!

Then how had the blue priest entered? He got upon his feet, tried to look beneath the hood. The priest pointed to his sword, the sword of Nabu lying across the sleeping soldier’s knees. He took it. The priest pointed to the bar that held the door. Kenton lifted it and swung the door open. The blue priest glided through the doorway, Kenton close behind. Again the priest pointed to the door and now he saw that on the outer side was a similar bar, fastening the cell from without. Softly Kenton dropped it into place.

The blue priest nodded, beckoned. Quickly he drifted along the corridor for a hundred paces or so and then pressed against what, to Kenton’s sight, was black wall. A panel opened. Through it went the priest with Kenton following. Now they stood in a long corridor, dimly lighted—but how lighted he could not tell, since no lamps nor other lights were there. Along it they went, in a great curve. It came to Kenton that this hidden passage followed the huge arcs of the temple, that it must run close behind the temple’s outer wall.

Now a massive bronze door closed the way. The blue priest seemed only to touch it. Yet it swung open; closed behind them.

Kenton stood in a crypt some ten feet square. At one end was the massive door through which he had come; at the other was a similar one. At his left was a ten-foot slab of smooth, pallid stone. And now the blue priest spoke—if indeed it were he speaking, since the passionless, still voice Kenton heard seemed, like that which had bidden him arise, to come from infinite distance.

“The mind of the woman you love—sleeps!” it said. “Remember that. She is a woman walking in dream—moving among dreams that other minds have made for her. Evil creeps upon her. It is not well to let that evil conquer—since should it, an ancient feud will surely blaze afresh consuming ere it ends, it may well be, both gods and men. Greater far is the issue here than the lives of this woman and of you. Yet that issue rests on you—on your wisdom, your strength, your courage. Now when your wisdom tells you it is the time—open that farther door. Your way lies through it. And remember—her mind sleeps. You must awaken it—before the evil leaps upon her.”

Something tinkled on the floor. At Kenton’s feet lay a little wedge shaped key. He stooped to pick it up. As he raised his head he saw the blue priest beside the far door.

“Father,” he said, and humbly. “Father! Strength I have and courage. But whether enough of wisdom—ah, that I do not know. But my heart is filled with thankfulness to you who have so helped me. May I not know whom to thank?”

He bent his head. There was a silence. Then—

“Nabu!” sighed the faraway voice.

Nabu—God of Wisdom! He had freed him, counseled him! Kenton raised his head, bent knee—

The blue priest seemed but a wisp of winddrawn smoke that, even as he looked, faded through the great bronze door and vanished!