Guile of the Black Priest

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Bel should be pleased with his worship, priest!” Kenton heard the dancer say.

The priest asked, dully: “What do you mean?”

The Lady Narada drew closer to him; her hands fluttered out to him.

“Shalamu,” she whispered. “Did I dance for the god? You know I danced for—you. And whom did you worship, Shalamu? The god? No—the priestess. And whom, think you, did she worship?”

“She worshiped Bel! Our Lord Bel who has—all,” the priest answered, bitterly.

Said the dancer, mockingly: “She worshiped herself, Shalamu!”

He repeated, stubbornly, wearily: “She worshiped Bel.”

Closer came the Lady Narada, touched him with fluttering, yearning hands.

“Does any woman worship a god, Shalamu?” she asked. “Ah—no! I am a woman—and I know. This priestess would be a god’s woman—no man’s. She holds herself too high, too precious, for man. She loves herself. She worships herself. She would bow down to herself as a god’s woman. Women make gods of men and then love them. But no woman loves any god she has not made, Shalamu!”

The priest said, sullenly: “Well—I worshiped her!”

The dancer said, eagerly: “As she worshiped—herself! Shalamu—does she long to give joy to Bel? To our Lord Bel who has Ishtar? Can we give joy to the gods—to the gods who have all? The lotus rises to the sun—but is it to give joy to the sun that she rises? No! It is to give joy to herself. So the priestess! I am a woman—and I know.”

Her hands were on his shoulders; he took them in his own: “Why do you say these things to me?”

She drew a step away from him.

“Shalamu!” she murmured. “Look in my eyes. Look on my mouth—my breast. Like the priestess I am the god’s. But I give myself to you—beloved!”

He said, dreamily: “Yea—you are very beautiful!”

Her arms were round his neck, her lips close to his.

“Do I love the god?” she whispered. “When I dance is it to delight his eyes? It is for you I dance—beloved! It is for you I dare Bel’s wrath—” Softly she drew his head down on her breast—“Am I not fair? Fairer than this priestess who is Bel’s and worships herself nor will ever give herself to you? Are not my perfumes pleasing? No god possesses me—beloved!”

Dreamily he answered her again: “Yea—you are very fair.”

“I love you—Shalamu!”

He thrust her from him; his eyes were full of dream and half he chanted: “Yet her eyes are like the Pools of Peace in the Valley of Forgetfulness! When she comes near me the doves of Ishtar beat their wings above my head! She walks upon my heart!”

The Lady Narada drew back, scarlet lips pale, brows a menacing straight line, agony in her eyes.

“The priestess?”

“The priestess,” he answered. “Her hair is like the cloud that veils the sun at dusk. The wave of her robe scorches me as the wind from the desert noon scorches the palm. The wave of her robe makes me cold as the wind of the desert night makes cold the palm!”

“The priestess?” she asked again.

And as before he echoed: “The priestess!”

She said coldly, almost indifferently: “That youth was bolder far than you, priest.”

Even in the growing dark Kenton saw the red rush through the priest’s face. He caught her hands.

“What do you mean?” he snarled.

“Why did you have the youth slain?” Coldly as before came her voice.

He answered, hotly: “He did sacrilege! He—”

She stopped him, contemptuously: “Because he was bolder than you. Because he dared to tear the veils from her. Because he was brave and—wise. Because you knew yourself the coward. That is why you had him slain!”

His hands twitched to her throat: “You lie! You lie! I would dare!”

Again she laughed: “You did not even dare to slay him—yourself!”

His hands were at her throat; she thrust them carelessly aside.

“Coward!” she said. “He dared to lift the veil from what he loved. He dared the wrath both of Ishtar and of Bel!”

The priest cried, brokenly: “Would I not dare? Do I fear death? Do I fear Bel?”

Her eyes mocked him.

“Hai! You who love so greatly!” she taunted. “The priestess awaits the god—in his lonely house! Perhaps he is not in the storm! Perchance he tarries with another maid—Oh, fearless one! Bold lover—take his place!”

He shrank back from her.

“Take—his—place!” he whispered, fear, awe—and dawning hope—in face and voice.

“You know where the armor of the god is hidden. Unless you are coward—take his place. Go to her as the god!” she said.

For a long moment the priest stood, quivering. Then Kenton saw irresolution fly; decision take its place. The priest strode to the altar—down went the lanced flame; wavered; died. In the sudden dark the crouching Cherubs seemed monstrously to take wing. There came a flash of the weird, prismatic lightning. By its irised flare he saw the Priest of Bel passing swiftly along that way Sharane had come and gone; saw the Lady Narada lying huddled in her nets of jet, the sipping flocks of golden butterflies at rest upon her; heard a low, heartbroken wailing.

Slowly Kenton’s hand began to slip from the lever. Now was the time to use that key, pass on where the blue priest had pointed. His hand froze upon the lever.

A shadow, blacker than the dusk without, had passed the window; stood over the dancer; a huge and unwieldy bulk—familiar—

Klaneth!

“Good!” rumbled the black priest, and touched her with his foot. “Now soon neither he nor Sharane shall trouble you more. And you have well earned the reward I promised you.”

The Lady Narada looked up at him with white and piteous face, stretched shaking hands out to him.

“If he had loved me,” she wailed, “never would he have gone. If he had loved me but a little—never would I have let him go. But he angered me—he shamed me, throwing back to me the love I offered him. Not for you, black snake, despite our bargain, did I send him to her—and to death!”

“Well,” laughed Klaneth, “whatever your reason—you sent him! He is gone. And here is your reward.”

He dropped a handful of flashing jewels into her outstretched palms. She screamed, opened fingers as though the gems burned her; they fell and rolled about the stones.

“If he had loved me! If he had loved me but a little!” sobbed the Lady Narada—and crouched again, a huddled heap, among her butterflies.

Again the black priest laughed; then hurried toward the temple.

Kenton, to him now clear all the black priest’s plot, let the lever go; raced to the farther door of bronze, thrust the wedged key into it; slipped past the slowly opening edge, and ran down the passageway it had barred. Two flames burned in him as he raced along that passage—white flame of love for his woman, black flame of hate against Klaneth. He knew that wherever the Priest of Bel was bound—there must be Sharane. The black priest’s plot had been well laid, the trap expertly baited. The end—unless Kenton could reach the Bower of Bel in time and conquer—inevitable.

It was the evil cunning of the black priest that had coached Narada. Not for an instant did he believe that the dancer’s surrender of herself to the priest had been part of the plot. She loved him—there could be no doubt of that. And if he had not tossed that surrender back to her—

But he had rejected it, and in her shame and anger she had pointed out to him the way of possession of his god’s priestess; had counseled him to the supreme sacrilege; had thrown him into the arms of Sharane for his own destruction—and hers!

Narada had repented—but too late! The black priest had gambled—and the black priest had won!

Kenton cursed as he ran. If Sharane, meshed in ensorcelled dream, saw the Priest of Bel as the god himself—still would she have taken earthly lover! Her innocence could not save her. Klaneth would see to that. He would hint of other visits—nay, without doubt would have witnesses to swear to them! And if Sharane should awaken—God! Would she not in the dawn of that awakening take the Priest of Bel for him—for Kenton!

But either way—the presence of priest and priestess in Bel’s Bower would be enough to damn them both. Yes—Klaneth would see to that!

A hope came to him—Gigi, the Viking, the Persian! Might they not even now be climbing the outer stairway, slaying the sentries as they crept up?

Might they not reach Bel’s Bower in time to save Sharane?

Also—never might they reach there! He must not let that hope take edge off his driving purpose—his fear! He himself must reach her in time. Had not the blue priest told him that the issue lay in his own hands; no others.

He crossed a traverse passage; ran blindly down a sloping corridor along whose sides glared guarding chimeræ, stopped in front of a wide portal from which hung, motionless and rigid, folds that seemed carved from solid silver. Caution whispered to him; he put out a hand, parted with a sense of profanation the metallic curtainings, peered within—

He looked into his own room!

Yes—there it lay before him, his old room in his old world! He saw the jeweled ship, glimmering, glittering—but as though he saw it through a fog; through a mist of fiery particles, half veiling it. The long mirror glinted behind that same luminous vapor. Infinitely small, in infinite numbers, the sparkling atoms hung between him and that room of his—back in New York!

And he—here in this strange world!

Misty was the room, nebulous, quivering now into plainer sight; now withdrawing into indefiniteness.

And as he stared at it, incredulous, the old bleak despair clutching him; he felt within his hands the curtains grow light as silken gauze, stiffen back into metal—alternately; slipped from his hands, strengthened within them as the room steadied in the sparkling mist, dissolved within it into phantom outlines!

Yet ever as the room swung inward clearer, swung back dimmer, the outlines of the jeweled ship hardened, crystallized, shone forth brighter—summoning him, dragging him back!