The Waking of Sharane

Chapter Thirty

The tempest had struck. Kenton, climbing, heard thunderings like the clashing of armied shields; clanging of countless cymbals; tintamarre of millions of gongs of brass. Ever louder grew the clangor as he ascended; with it mingled now the diapason of mighty winds, staccato of cataracts of rain.

The stairway climbed the sheer wall of the buttress as a vine a tower. It was not wide—three men might march abreast up it; no more. Up it went, dizzily. Five sharp angled flights of forty steps, four lesser angled flights of fifteen steps, he trod before he reached its top. Guarding the outer edge was only a thick rope of twisted gold supported by pillars five feet apart.

So high was it that when Kenton neared its end and looked down he saw Bel’s House only as a place of golden mists—as though he looked from some high mountain ledge upon a valley whose cloudy coverlet had just been touched by rays of morning sun.

The clinging stairway’s last step was a slab some ten feet long and six wide. Upon it a doorway opened—a narrow arched portal barely wide enough for two men to pass within it side by side. The doorway looked out, over the little platform, into the misty space of the inner temple. The hidden chamber into which it led rested upon the head of the gigantic buttress.

What a place to guard, thought Kenton. One man might hold that stair end against hundreds!

The doorway was closed by a single fold of golden curtains as heavy and metallic as those which had covered the portal of the Moon God’s Silver House. Involuntarily he shrank back from parting them—remembering what the parting of those argent hangings had revealed to him. He mastered that fear; drew a corner of them aside.

He looked into a quadrangular chamber, perhaps thirty feet square, filled with the dancing peacock plumes of the lightnings. He knew it for his goal—Bel’s place of pleasance where his love waited, fettered by dream. He glimpsed the priest crouched against the further wall, rapt upon a white veiled woman standing, arms stretched wide, beside a deep window close to the chamber’s right hand corner. The window was closed by one wide, clear crystal pane on which the rain beat and the wind lashed. With thousands of brushes dipped in little irised flame the lightnings limned the loves of Bel broidered on hangings on the walls.

In the chamber were a table and two stools of gold; a massive, ivoried wooden couch. Beside the couch was a wide bellied brazier and a censer shaped like a great hour glass. From the brazier arose a tall yellow flame. Upon the table were small cakes, saffron colored, in plates of yellow amber and golden flagons filled with wine. Around the walls were twenty little lamps and under each lamp a ewer filled with fragrant oil for their filling.

Kenton waited, motionless. Danger was gathering below him like a storm cloud with Klaneth stirring it in wizard’s caldron. Perforce he waited, knowing that he must fathom this dream of Sharane’s—must measure the fantasy in which she moved, mind asleep before he could awaken her. The blue priest had so told him.

To him came her voice, sweet and dreaming:

“Who has seen the beatings of his wings? Who has heard the tramplings of his feet like the sound of many chariots setting forth for battle? What woman has looked into the brightness of his eyes?”

There was a searing flash, a clashing of thunder—within the chamber itself it seemed. When his own sight had cleared he saw Sharane, hands over eyes, groping from the window.

And in front of the window stood a shape, looming gigantic against the flickering radiance, and helmed and bucklered all in blazing gold—a godlike shape!

Bel-Merodach himself who had leaped there from his steeds of storm and still streaming with his lightnings!

So Kenton for one awed instant thought—then knew that shape to be the Priest of Bel in the stolen garments of his god!

The white figure, that was Sharane, slowly drew hands from eyes; slowly let them fall, eyes upon that shining form. Half she dropped to her knees, then raised herself proudly; she searched the partly hidden face with her wide, green dreaming eyes.

“Bel!” she whispered, and again: “Lord Bel!”

The priest spoke: “O beautiful one—for whom await you?”

She answered: “For whom but thee, Lord of the Lightnings!”

“But why await you—me?” the priest asked, nor took step toward her. Kenton, poised to leap and strike, drew back at the question. What was in the mind of the Priest of Bel that he thus temporized?

Sharane spoke, perplexed, half-shamed:

“This is thy house, Bel. Should there not be a woman here to await thee? I—I am a king’s daughter. And I have long awaited thee!”

The priest said: “You are fair!” His eyes burned upon her—“Yes—many men must have found you fair. Yet I—am a god!”

“I was fairest among the princesses of Babylon. Who but the fairest should wait for thee in thy house? I am fairest of all—” So Sharane, all tranced passion.

When again the priest spoke, his bitterness made Kenton once more wonder what it was within his mind that forced him to these questionings—held him back from that possession of Sharane for which he had defied his god.

“Princess, how has it been with these men who thought you fair? Say—did not your beauty slay them like swift, sweet poison?”

“Have I thought of men?” she asked, tremulously.

He answered, sternly: “Yet many men must have thought of you—king’s daughter. And poison, be it swift and sweet, must still bear pain. I am—a god! Yet I know that!”

There was a silence; abruptly he asked: “How have you awaited me?”

She said: “I have kept the lamps filled with oil; I have prepared cakes for thee and set out the wine. I have been handmaiden to thee.”

The priest said: “Many women have done all this—for men, king’s daughter—I am a god!”

She murmured: “I am most beautiful. The princes and the kings have desired me. See—O Great One!”

The irised lightnings caressed the silver wonder of her body, hardly hidden in the nets of her red gold hair unbound and fallen free. The priest leaped from the window. Kenton, mad with jealousy that another should behold that white beauty, darted through the curtains to strike him down. Halfway he stopped short, understanding, even pity for the Priest of Bel holding him back.

For the priest’s soul stood forth naked before his inner sight—and that soul was even as his own would have been, he knew, had he been priest and the priest been Kenton.

“No!” cried Bel’s priest, and tore the golden helm of his god from his head, hurled sword away, ripped off buckler and cloak—“No! Not one kiss for Bel! Not one heartbeat for Bel! What—shall I pander for Bel? No! It is the man you shall kiss—I! It is a man’s heart that shall beat against yours—mine! I—I! No god shall have you!”

He caught her in his arms, set burning lips to hers.

Kenton was upon him.

He thrust an arm under the priest’s chin; bent back the head until the neck cracked. The priest’s eyes glared up into his; his hands left Sharane and battered up at Kenton’s face; he twisted to break the latter’s grip. Then his body became limp; awe and terror visibly swept away his blind rage. For now the priest’s consciousness had taken in Kenton’s face—saw it as his own!

His own face looking down upon him and promising him—death!

The god he had defied, betrayed—had struck! Kenton read his thoughts as accurately as though they had been spoken. He shifted grip, half lifted, half swung the priest high above the floor and hurled him against a wall. He struck; crashed down; lay there twitching.

Sharane crouched—veils caught up, held fast to her by rigid hands—on the edge of the ivoried couch. She stared at him, piteously; her wide eyes clung to his, bewildered; deep within her he sensed grapple of awakening will against the webs of dream. One great throb of love and pity for her pulsed through him; in it no passion; to him at that moment she was no more than child, bewildered, forsaken, piteous.

“Sharane!” he whispered, and took her in his arms. “Sharane—Beloved! It is I—Jonkenton! Beloved—awaken!”

He kissed her on the cold lips, the frightened eyes.

“Jonkenton!” she murmured. “Jonkenton!”—and then so low he could barely hear—“Ah—yes—I remember—Jonkenton! He was lord of me—ages—ages ago!”

“Wake, Sharane!” cried Kenton, and again his lips met and clung to hers. And now her lips warmed and clung to his!

“Jonkenton!” she whispered. “Dear lord—of me!” She drew back, thrust into his arms fingers that clutched like ten slow closing fingers of steel; in her eyes he saw the dream breaking as break the last storm clouds before the sun; in her eyes the dream lightened and darkened; lightened—became but cloudy, racing wisps.

“Beloved!” cried Sharane, and all awake, freed from all dream, threw arms around his neck, pressed lips all alive to his: “Beloved one! Jonkenton!”

“Sharane! Sharane!” he whispered, the veils of her hair covering him as she drew his face to her cheeks, her throat, her breast.

“Oh, where have you been, Jonkenton?” she sobbed. “What have they done to me, Jonkenton? And where is the ship—and where have they taken me? Yet—what does it matter since you are with me!”

“Sharane! Sharane! Beloved!” was all he could say, over and over again, his mouth on hers.

Hands gripped his throat, strong hands, shutting off his breath. Choking, he glared up into the mad eyes of the Priest of Bel—even as the priest had glared into his when it had been Kenton’s hands at his throat. Broken, Kenton had thought him—and broken he had not been! He had recovered, crept up behind him!

“Got me!” groaned Kenton to himself. “Got me! Hell—why didn’t I kill him! Got me? Not—now!”

He threw right leg behind the priest’s; hurled himself back against the priest with all his strength. The priest fell, dragging Kenton with him. His hands relaxed just enough to let Kenton thrust one of his own between the strangling fingers and his throat. Then he twisted, broke the grip, lay with legs locked in the priest’s, pinning him down. Like a snake the priest slid from under him, threw him aside, sprang to his feet. Quick as he, Kenton leaped up. Before he could draw sword the Priest of Bel was upon him again, one arm around him prisoning his right arm, the other with elbow fending off Kenton’s left and tearing at his throat.

Far below, through the drumming of the blood in his ears, Kenton heard one faint throb of another drum, awakening, summoning, menacing—as though it had been a beat of the ziggurat’s own heart, alarmed and angry!

And far below Gigi, swinging with long apelike arms from the grapnel he has cast over the outer stairway’s edge, hears it, too; swarms with frantic speed up the rope, and with the same tremendous speed follow him first Zubran and close behind him the Viking.

“Alarm!” mutters Sigurd, and draws them under the protection of the skirting wall that they may hear him. “Pray Thor that the sentinels have not heard! Swift now!”

Hugging the wall, the three climb up and around the silver terrace of Sin, the Moon God. The lightnings have almost ceased, but the rain sweeps down in stinging sheets and the winds roar, rocking the temple; the stairway is rushing torrent half knee deep. Blackness of the great storm shrouds them.

Breasting wind and rain, stemming the torrent, they climb—the three.

About Bel’s high bower reeled Kenton and the priest, locked tight in each other’s arms, each struggling to break the other’s hold; then throttle, tear, slay. Around them circled Sharane, the priest’s stolen sword in hand, panting, seeking opening to strike; finding none, so close were the two locked, so swiftly did back of priest, back of lover, swirl before her.

“Shalamu! Shalamu!” The dancer of Bel stood at the golden curtains—whipped up through the secret shrines by love, remorse, despair! White-faced, trembling, she clung to those curtains.

“Shalamu!” shrilled the dancer. “They come for you! The Priest of Nergal leads.”

The priest’s back was toward her, Kenton facing her. The priest’s head was bent forward, straining to sink teeth in his neck, tear out the arteries; deaf, blind to all but the lust to kill, his ears were closed to Narada.

And Narada, seeing Kenton’s face in the fitful light of the brazier, thought it that of the man she loved!

Before Sharane could move she had sped across the room.

She drove her dagger to the hilt in the back of the Priest of Bel!

Huddled for shelter in an alcove cut for them in the ziggurat’s wall, the sentinels of the silver zone feel arms thrust out of the storm. Two fall with necks snapped by Gigi’s talons, two fall under swift thrust of Sigurd’s sword, two drop beneath the scimitar of the Persian. In that niche now lie only six dead men.

“Swift! Swift!” Sigurd leads the way past the silver zone; they round the orange zone of Shamash the Sun God.

Three deaths reach out of the void, and the sentinels of the orange zone lie dead behind the hurrying feet of the three.

They sense a deeper darkness at their left—the black walls of the zone of Nergal, God of the Dead—

“Swift! Swift!”

The Priest of Bel slid from Kenton’s opening arms; he dropped to his knees; he fell backward, dying eyes staring into those of the dancer.

“Narada!” he gasped, through bloody froth. “Narada—you—” The froth turned to a red stream.

The Priest of Bel was dead.

One look the dancer gave him, gave Kenton one scorching look and knew—what she had done!

“Shalamu!” she wailed—and wailing still flew at Kenton, dagger poised to strike. Before he could draw sword, before he could raise hands to beat her off, even before he could fall back, she was upon him. Down swept the blade, straight for his heart. He felt the bite of its point—

The point swerved, ripped down through the skin over his ribs. In that same instant Sharane had sprung, had caught the dancer’s hand, had wrested the dagger from it and driven it deep into Narada’s breast.

Like a young tree at the ax’s last blow the dancer stood for a heartbeat, shuddering, then down she dropped, prone upon the priest. She moaned and with the last flare of life flung arms around his head, laid lips to his.

Dead lips now on lips of the dead!

They stared at each other—Sharane with red blade in hand and Kenton with red runes on chest written by that blade—they stared down at the Priest of Bel and at Bel’s dancer; there was pity in Kenton’s eyes; there was no pity in Sharane’s.

“She would have killed you!” she whispered, and again: “She would have killed you!”

A blinding flash filled the chamber; fast on its heels chaotic shatterings. The lightnings had begun afresh. Kenton ran to the doorway; parted the curtains; listened. Below him the House of Bel seemed to lie tranquil in its misty aureate glow. He heard nothing—and yet, had there been sound could he have heard it in the tumult of the thunderings? He saw nothing, heard nothing—and yet—

He sensed that danger was close; torment and death stealing up to them; perhaps even now creeping up the zigzags of those steps whose base was hidden. Torment and death for Sharane and for him—creeping, stealing, ever closer.

He ran back to the window. Gigi—Sigurd—Zubran! Where were they? Had they failed to make the outer stairway? Had they, too, been caught? Or were they marching up to him, cutting their way through the sentries? Were close?

Could they not meet them—Sharane and he?

The window was deep. Three feet of masonry stretched between the inner sill and the yard wide, single pane that closed it. He drew himself in; saw that the pane was thick, transparent crystal held by a circle of metal. It was kept shut by levers thrust into niches within the casement of stone. One by one he lifted the levers. Suddenly the window flew open; he was half pushed, half washed back into the chamber by the wind and rain volleying through. He battled forward against them; looked down over the outer sill—

The steps of the great stairway were full forty feet below him!

Between the window and the steps fell an almost perpendicular wall, streaming with storm, impossible to descend, equally as impossible to be scaled. He peered on each side and above him. The bower of Bel was a huge cube set on the top of the conical temple. The window through which he peered was close to the edge of a side of this cube. Not more than a yard from his right hand was a corner of that cube; for twenty feet to his left its black wall stretched; its top was twenty feet above him.

He felt Sharane beside him; knew that she was trying to tell him something; could not hear her in the shrieking of the tempest.

Set within the breast of a lightning flare the sentinels of Nergal see three silhouettes of doom spring out of the blackness. Swords bite among them. One shrieks and tries to flee. His cry is torn to tatters by the roaring gale; he is caught by long arms, long talons snap his neck; he goes whirling with the wind over the stairway’s wall.

Now the red zone’s sentries are dead within their niche.

Now the three pass by the blue zone of Nabu, the God of Wisdom, and find no guards to challenge them; nor are there sentries before Ishtar’s white house; and none outside the golden zone of Bel.

And here the curving stairway abruptly ends!

Now they take counsel there, the three, scanning the smooth masonry rising above them without break. A wail that not even the tempest can still shudders past them—the heartbroken, mad wailing of Bel’s dancer as she hurls herself on Kenton.

“That cry came from there!” Thus Sigurd, pointing outward where the window of Bel’s bower, hidden to them, faces the lightnings. And now they see that the wall of the great stairway merges into the side of the topping structure close to its corner. But the wall’s slope is such that none may stand upon it to peer round that corner; nor can one standing on the highest step see round that corner’s edge.

“Use for your long arms, Gigi,” grunts the Viking. “Stand close as you can to stair wall end. Here! Grip me by knees and thrust me outward. My back is strong and I can twist round that corner.”

Gigi takes him by the knees, lifts him; throws one muscle gnarled dwarf leg over the wall for balance; thrusts Sigurd out with mighty arms.

And Sigurd, held against the side by the wind like a leaf, looks straight into the face of Kenton little more than a foot from him!

“Wait there!” howls the Viking, and signals Gigi with kick of foot to draw him back.

“The wolf!” he tells them. “There—in a window so close he can draw me through to him! Lift me again, Gigi. When I kick—let me go! Then let Zubran follow by the same road. Stay you here, Gigi—for without you to draw us back there will be no return. Stay where you are with arms outstretched, ready to bear in to you whatever you touch. Quick now!”

Again he is swung outward; his wrists are caught in Kenton’s grip. Gigi loosens him. For an instant he swings in space and then is drawn up to the sill and over.

“Zubran comes!” he shouts to Kenton, and runs to the doorway where Sharane stands, sword in hand.

And now the Persian, held by Gigi’s long arms, swings round the bower’s edge, is caught by Kenton; stands beside him.

Fanned by the gale rushing through the open window the brazier flamed like a torch; the heavy golden curtains were bellying; the little lights along the wall all blown out. The Persian leaned back, found the levers and snapped enough of them down to hold the window shut. He gave Kenton’s hand one swift clasp; looked curiously at the bodies of priest and dancer.

“Gigi!” cried Kenton. “Is he safe there? Did none follow you?”

“None,” answered the Persian, grimly. “Or if they did—their hands are too shadowy to hold swords, wolf. Gigi is safe enough. He waits to swing us to him as we crawl from the window—all except one of us,” he added, under his breath.

Kenton, thoughts on Gigi, the way to freedom, did not hear that last odd phrase. He leaped to the door on one side of which stood watchful Sharane, on the other tense Sigurd. He drew her to him in fierce caress; loosed her and peered through the curtains. Far below him were dull gleamings, reflection from armored caps and coats of mail, glints of swords. A quarter of the way up the angled stair that led from Bel’s House to his bower; they were—soldiers, moving slowly, cautiously, silently; creeping to surprise, as they thought, Bel’s priest in dreaming Sharane’s arms!

There was time, minutes still, for him to put in action the plan swift born within his brain. He set the golden helm of Bel on his head, fastened buckler, threw the scarlet threaded mantle over his shoulders.

“Sigurd!” he whispered—“Zubran! Those who come must believe that here are only Sharane and—that man who lies there. Else before we could pass the middle terrace they will have given the alarm, soldiers will be pouring up the outer stairway and—we are done! Therefore when those below are close upon the door Sharane and I will leap out on them with swords. They will not try to slay us—only capture us. They will be confused—fall back. Then take Sharane swiftly and pass her out to Gigi. We will follow—”

A swift glance had passed between the Persian and Sigurd, laden with meaning.

“The first part of the plan is good, wolf,” interrupted the Persian, smoothly. “But not the last. Nay—one must remain here until the others are safely away from the temple. Else, when they have entered here, quickly will the black priest’s wit tell him what has happened. And there will be a ring around the place through which a regiment could not break. Nay—one must remain; stay behind for—a time, wolf!”

“I will stay,” said Kenton.

“Beloved!” whispered Sharane. “You go with me—or I go not at all!”

“Sharane—” began Kenton.

“Dear lord of mine—” she stayed him, serenely. “Do you think that ever again I will let you go from me—be parted from you? Never! In life or death—never!”

“Nay, wolf—I stay,” said the Persian. “Why, listen! Sharane will not go without you. So that bars you—since go she must. Gigi cannot well remain—since he cannot get here to remain. That you will admit? Good! And Sigurd must go to show us the road back, since none but him knows it. Who is left? Zubran! The gods have spoken. Their argument is unanswerable.”

“But how will you get away? How find us?” groaned Kenton. “You say yourself that without Gigi’s help you cannot swing from the window!”

“No,” answered Zubran. “But I can make me a rope out of these bed coverings and the hangings. I can slip down that rope to the steps I glimpsed beneath me. And one may escape where five could not. I remember the road through the city and that road we took when we came out of the trees. Wait you there for me.”

“They are very close, Jonkenton!” called Sharane, softly.

Kenton ran to the doorway. A dozen steps below crept the soldiers, a score of them, treading noiselessly two by two, small shields ready, swords in hands; behind them a little knot of priests, yellow robed and black robed and among the black robes—Klaneth.

Crouched against the wall at Sharane’s right was Sigurd, hidden but set for swift guarding of her. The Persian dropped at Kenton’s right, pressed close to the wall where those who came forward might not see him.

“Cover the brazier,” whispered Kenton. “Put it out. Best have no light behind us.”

The Persian took it, but he did not touch the cover that would have killed the fires within. Instead, he shook it, covered the flame with embers, set it in a corner where the faint glow of the coals could be seen.

The feet of the first pair of soldiers were almost on the top step, their hands reached out to draw aside the coverings of the narrow door.

“Now!” breathed Kenton to Sharane; took fleet, proud note of her fearlessness. He tore the curtains down. They stood, she in her white robes of priestess, he in the golden panoply of the god, confronting the soldiers. And they, paralyzed by that unexpected apparition, halted like automatons, gaped at the twain.

Before they could recover from surprise Sharane’s blade flashed, Kenton’s sword struck like bolt of thin blue lightning. Down went the two leaders. Ere the man he had slain could fall, Kenton had snatched the shield from his arm, passed it to Sharane; slashed down again at the warriors behind.

“For Ishtar!” he heard Sharane cry—and saw her sword bite deep.

“The woman! The priest! Take them!” came the roar of Klaneth.

Down bent Kenton, raised a fallen soldier in his arms and hurled him straight into the pack. The body flailed them—as though alive! Down they went before it—rolling, cursing, down the flight they fell, soldiers and priests. Some there were who crashed into the slender railing, tore gaps in it, dropped and plunged like plummets through the mists to be broken on the floor of Bel’s House so far below.

Back Kenton leaped; caught Sharane in his arms, pressed lips brutally, possessingly on hers; tossed her to Sigurd.

“To the window!” he bade. “Give her to Gigi!”

He darted before them; opened the pane. Far away now the lightnings glimmered; blackness had given way to darkest twilight; the rain still hissed in sheets driven by the howling wind. In that dark twilight he saw the dripping arms of Gigi stretched out round the bower’s corner. He dropped back. The Viking slid past him, Sharane in his grip. For an instant she hung in air; she was caught by Gigi. She was drawn from sight.

There came a shouting from the inner stairway. The soldiers had rallied; were rushing up. Kenton saw Sigurd and the Persian lifting the heavy couch, throwing off its coverings, tilting it. They rocked it to the doorway, shoved it through, sent it crashing down the steps. Came another shouting, cries of agony, groaning. The bed had swept the men before it as a well hurled ball does the wooden pins. It had swept and crushed them—had swung across the stairway at turn of the highest lesser angled ledge and had jammed there against the golden roped rail—a barricade.

“Go, Sigurd,” cried Kenton. “Wait for us by the woods. I fight here with Zubran.”

The Persian looked at him, a light of affection such as Kenton had never before seen there softening the agate eyes. He nodded to Sigurd. As though it had been a signal prearranged, the Viking’s arms were instantly around Kenton. Strong as he had grown he could not break their grip. And Zubran whisked the golden helm of Bel from his head and set it on his own; tore loose the golden buckler, dropped his own coat of mail and fastened it in its place; took the scarlet threaded mantle of the god and wrapped it half round his mouth, hiding his beard. Then Kenton was carried like a struggling child to the window by the Viking; was thrust out of it; was caught by Gigi and dropped beside the weeping Sharane.

The Viking turned and folded the Persian in his arms.

“No waiting, Northman! No sentiment now!” Zubran snapped, breaking away. “There can be no escape for me—you know that, Sigurd. The rope? Words—to satisfy the wolf. I love him. The rope? Why, they would slide down it behind me like snakes. Am I a trembling hare to lead the hounds to the hiding places of my kind? Not I! Now go, Sigurd—and when you have gotten clear of the city tell them. And quickly as you can make for the ship.”

Said the Viking, solemn: “Shield maidens are close! Odin takes the hero, no matter what his race! You sup with Odin All-Father in Valhalla soon, Persian!”

“May he have better cooked dishes then than I have ever tasted,” laughed the Persian. “Out of the window, Norseman!”

And Zubran holding his knees, the Viking crawled out, was caught by Gigi. Then down the terraces, Sigurd leading, Sharane covered by Gigi’s great cloak, Kenton cursing still, flew the four of them.

The Persian did not close the window after them; let the wind stream through. He swaggered back through Bel’s bower.

“By all the Daevas!” swore Zubran, “never have I known such feeling of freedom as now! Lo—I am all alone—the last man in the world! None can help me, none can counsel me, none weary me! Life is simple at last—all there is to it is for me to slay until I am slain. By Ormuzd—how my spirit stands on tiptoe—”

He peered around the doorway.

“Never has that couch given men such trouble to mount!” he chuckled as he watched the soldiers below working to clear away the barrier. Turning, he piled in a heap the silken clothes torn from the bed; he ripped down wall hangings and with them built the pile higher. One by one he took the lamps and emptied them on the pyre; the oil in the ewers beneath them he poured upon it.

“That old world of mine,” mused the Persian as he worked, “how it wearied me! And if the wolf’s tale be true, the world that replaced it would weary me even more. And this world has well wearied me—by the Flame of Sacrifice, but it has!”

He stooped, picked up the body of the Priest of Bel, carried it to the window.

“It will puzzle the black priest more to find you without than to find you here,” he grinned, and slid him out.

He walked and stood over the dancer.

“So beautiful!” whispered the Persian, and touched her lips, her breast. “I wonder how you died—and why? It must have been amusing—that! I had no time to ask the wolf. Well—you shall sleep with me. And perhaps, when we both awaken—if we do—you shall tell me!”

He laid the body of the dancer on the oil-soaked pile. He took the smoking brazier and placed it close beside her.

There came a roaring from below; a trampling of feet on the steps. Up streamed the soldiers, stronger now by scores. An instant the Persian showed himself, mantle held before his face.

“The priest! The priest!” they cried—and Klaneth’s voice over all—

“Slay him!”

The Persian stepped back to the cover of the wall, smiling. He picked up the shield Sharane had dropped. Through the narrow doorway a soldier leaped, a second close on his heels. The scimitar hissed twice, struck twice—swift as swiftest snake. The stricken men fell under the feet of those pressing on from behind, tripping them, confusing them. And now up and down, parrying, thrusting, slashing, flew the Persian’s keen edge until its red bath dyed his arm to shoulder.

“They should be off the outer wall by now and well away,” mused Zubran. He flexed the weary muscles of his arm; peered out at the soldiers clustered on the landing below in angry argument with the priests; and stretching down from that knot as far as he could see, the steps glittered with other warriors, packed close.

They mustered; they rushed up the steps like a great serpent; they pushed through the door, clambering over the pile of the dead. The red drip of the scimitar became a steady running rivulet—

An agony bit deep into his side, above the hip. A falling swordsman had raised himself on knees, thrust blade upward. And the Persian knew his wound was mortal! He cut down at the grinning face, leaped upon the dead, cleared the doorway with rain of stroke. He leaped back, seized the table. Holding it before him he sprang upon the dead, thrust it like a battering ram into the faces of those rising behind them. Again they rolled back, encumbered by their own numbers; pitched off the railless edge and hurtled down through the mists, clutching at empty air.

For twenty steps the stairway was clear.

An arrow whistled. It cut through the twisted mantle around his neck; pierced him where gorget and helm met. He felt the blood pouring down his throat choking him.

The Persian staggered to the silken pile on which lay Narada. He caught a leg of the brazier and overturned its coals upon the oil soaked cloths.

Thin flames arose.

Giddiness took him; he dropped to his knees. On his knees he crawled up the pile, its flames roaring now in the wind blast from the window. He crawled up through those fires, fell beside the body of the dancer.

“A clean death!” smiled the Persian. “At the last—like all men—I go back to the—gods of my fathers! A clean death! O Fire Immortal—take me!”

As though in answer to that prayer a high and fragrant flame shot up beside him. It shot up, hovered, then bent over the Persian. The tip of the flame broadened. It became a cup of fire filled with a wine of flames!

And into that flaming cup the Persian dipped his face; drank of its wine of fire; breathed in its fire as though it had been incense!

His head fell back, unmarred; the dead face smiling. His head dropped upon the soft breast of the dancer.

The flames made a canopy over them; they licked them with their little, clean, red tongues; ate them with their clean, crimson teeth!