CHAPTER XII.

THE SATANIC EMPRESS.

“Tad! Raise us up! Are you going to land on the fortress? Get us away from here!”

We skimmed over the fortress. The gray figures gazed up at us. We swung down the slope of the mound, close over the city streets and roofs. The houses seemed, most of them, from six to ten feet high. I saw, on the level area just beyond the foot of the mound slope, the house upon which Arturo and Tad intended to land--a broad, flat roof. There was a dim light on it; in the glow, a figure of a man stood waiting to receive us.

We settled down and came to rest. The roof was oval, fully fifty feet across. It had small flowering shrubs, paths, and a sort of lawn on which we landed--a moldy brown turf. Off at one end, bathed in the dim light, was a pergola with seats and banks of blossoms. The man stood off there. He came hastening forward as we settled.

“Fen!” Arturo called to him. “Here we are, Fen! We got him. Did you know they tried to attack the Castle? It was discovered. She saw them--in the white glare.”

It was Nereid’s father. He came and held Nereid in a close embrace, then shook hands with the rest of us. He was an old man, sixty, or eighty, I could not have said which. White of skin, with tawny hair long to his shoulders--a wavy mass of hair, grown dull and dead looking with his age. But he was a sturdy vigorous old fellow, no taller than Entt, slight of build, erect and straight for all his years. And dignified; his loose, dark robe fell to his knees; a girdle bound his slim waist; on his chest was an ornament in beaten white metal of strange device. I recognized it--the device Arturo, and later myself, had used on our flash lights as a signal.

He stood me off and regarded me. “So this--you call ‘Jeff’?” He gestured to me apologetically. “I cannot talk the language of yours--the young learn--I am old.” His gaze swept me from head to foot. “Strange dress--he is so big, Arturo, as you said it.”

“But it’s too late for that,” Arturo rejoined swiftly. He added to me: “They worship size, these Gian women. I had planned, Jeff, to send you to the Empress Rhana--you are so tall and strong--taller than any man here. She would have liked you.”

So that was it. I began vaguely to understand. But only vaguely; it was still all so strange.

They were all talking at once. Partly in my own language; partly in this other, which was wholly unintelligible. Fen, like them all, was plainly agitated. I grasped a few details, mostly from Tad’s swift explanations. There were two races--one small, white-skinned; the other larger--the gray women and their men, who were the ruling class. They were called the Gians. Tad explained: “They have a word _dgie_--it means large. Nereid’s people are the _Mdj_. You can’t pronounce it, but it suggests Middge--we call them that.”

The Middge were the workers--oppressed, downtrodden. They had been for months upon the verge of a revolt. Fen was helping its secret organization; weapons secretly were being manufactured in the underground fire caverns where the Middge worked. But the news of the oncoming water had suddenly stirred the Middge public here to panic; this abortive mob attack on the fortress was the result. The whole City of the Mound was in a turmoil. It could do nothing but harm to the Middge cause.

Such fragments I gleaned. Fen knew that the Gians had opened the great gates to drain our upper oceans. He knew of the demonstration against the Castle, but was powerless to stop it. He had stayed at home to await our coming. His eyes were not affected; he had been indoors, and had escaped the light.

But Entt and Nereid, even now, were almost blinded. They sat together for the few moments while this swift talk proceeded. Our roof was so low that in a bound I could have leaped its parapet and vaulted to the ground. The city lay upward on the slope of the mound near at hand; in the gloom its dull winking lights were visible. The cries of the mob still sounded loudly.

* * * * *

It was decided that we should make our way on foot to the summit and see what was transpiring. Fen was afraid that the thoughtless leaders of the mob might make threats which would warn the Gians and divulge that an intelligent, armed revolution was being organized. He wanted to stop that if he could, and pacify the mob; quell this disturbance.

They took me down into the house. Its oval stone rooms were furnished in strange but obviously luxurious fashion; each had a tiny hooded light. The ceilings were so low that I had to stoop a trifle. They gave me a black suit, like those of Arturo and Tad. Abroad in the city I would thus attract less attention. For my feet there were flexible hide sandals, with thongs to bind them on.

We gathered in a room with an outer doorway. It had all been done swiftly; not more than ten minutes had passed since we landed on the roof.

We were ready to start. There was a sound of swift padding feet in the near-by corridor, and a man burst into the room. He seemed a family servant. He came running in, babbling with fear; and clung to Fen.

I could understand nothing that was said as they gathered for a moment around him. He seemed wholly terrorized. He was a Gian--there was no mistaking the gray look to his skin; his black hair was shaved close on a bullet head--but he was small, certainly not over five feet in height. Dressed like the rest of us in the brief black garment, his figure had a flabby, pudgy look. A fellow, I thought, outcast by his race and come now to be a servant in Fen’s household.

A broad, brown girdle bound his waist; it suggested an apron. Under his arm he had a conical hat, with a bushy animal tail like a plume on it. He clapped it on his head; it was grotesquely ornamental to the rest of him. His whining voice seemed pleading with Fen.

Tad came over to where I was standing apart. “Their servant, Bhool. He’s afraid to be left here--he says the Middge will break in and murder him.”

I could not blame him for that. But he seemed a sniveling, craven fellow. Tad was contemptuous. “He’s always been like that--afraid of everything. And a listener in doorways--curious to know everything everybody’s doing and then go into a panic over it. By the code, I’d have had him thrown out of here long ago!”

We took Bhool with us. Nereid, able to see a little now, fumbled for a dark cloak of her own. She flung it over Bhool, so that in the street he might pass unnoticed as a Gian. He was still sniveling. But he eyed me curiously, amazed evidently at my size. In my own world I could never have been termed excessively tall, though in the six-foot class--to be exact, I stood just at six feet two inches. At this time I weighed about a hundred and ninety. With my breadth of shoulder, I was still lean at this weight. The sniveling fellow Bhool gazed up at me awed, and edged away, fearful of me.

We started. The streets at the foot of the Mound were deserted; narrow, rocky streets, hemmed in by the stone walls of the low houses. It was dim; there were apparently no public lights, only the occasional glow from a house window, doorway or roof-top. We walked swiftly, Fen leading with his vigorous stride.

The air in the streets was hot, moist and oppressive. I felt that queer, different thrust of gravity upon me, but I was getting used to it now. I walked like the others, with a solid, plowing tread.

We turned a corner and were soon upon the upward slope. I had expected to find it different, walking uphill in this oppressive air. It was not; I noticed, indeed, very little difference from walking on the level ground.

* * * * *

Tad was beside me. “Listen to it, Jeff. Raising the devil up there--”

We were still some half mile from the Castle. Cries sounded, occasional screams ringing clear; and the low, blended murmur of the mob.

But the street here was empty and soundless. In our sandals we padded over its stones. There were street corners, yawning, empty and dark. Black shadows where low archways opened like tunnel mouths into the house. A woman with a baby in her arms came to a window and gazed at us. Her white face, caught by an inner light was close to me as we passed. Her eyes were stark black with fear.

At a corner a group of men went running past and swung up the hill. They were small, white-skinned folk, and they shouted at Fen. We followed.

As we advanced, the murmur of the mob up ahead sounded clearer. The streets soon were filled. We passed a man, blind and seemingly in a frenzy of fear. He staggered through the crowd. Some one caught him, fought him, led him away.

There were white forms lying in the street. The mob had evidently surged down this far in its first blind panic and many were crushed. We passed the slim white figure of a man whom some one had carried to his own doorstep and dropped. A wailing woman knelt over him; a little girl, curious, half frightened, stood beside the woman, plucking at her robe.

The servant, Bhool, kept close beside me now. His touch strangely angered me; once, I thrust him away.

We forced ourselves into the crowd. No one seemed to notice us. When we came to the palisade, Fen saw an opening in the jam.

“All of us keep together.” He forced his way forward. We found a place to climb. It was a metallic fence some six feet high. Upon impulse I put my hands on its top and tried to vault. I sailed over it with astonishing ease, and landed lightly on the other side.

The garden was crowded with people, but there was more room here than in the upper street. Small, upright shrubs stood about, some vaguely white with blossoms. In the gloom it was hard to tell them from the human forms.

We followed a gray stone path. The Castle loomed ahead, with walls some thirty feet high. They stretched out seemingly for several hundred feet--a squat, but widely spreading structure; its walls were turreted at the angles; the windows all seemed guarded with interlaced metal bars. A frowning prison of a building. A black vegetation clung to the walls. There were small doorways along the ground at intervals--black, barred openings with tiny lights in canopies over them.

We tried to keep together. Arturo stayed always close by Nereid, fending her off from the milling crowd. It was a threatening mob, here in the garden. Aimless, apparently without a leader. It milled and struggled, men and women brandishing implements of the field, or huge sticks, and shouting aimless threats. There were many, recovered of the blindness, who fought to press forward. There were others, still blind and in terror, who strove to run away, or sat upon the ground in huddled fright. And still others, lying inert, wholly unnoticed by their fellows.

I whispered to Tad: “Where are we going?”

“Up closer. I don’t know.”

Bhool whiningly suggested: “This way, masters--”

We faced a broad front entrance to the Castle. A low flight of stone steps led ten feet up to it. Gray figures of women stood in the shadows up there, like guards. There seemed no more than four or five of them. They stood in the entrance way; vaguely to be seen in its shadows--stood silent and motionless. There was about them, these motionless figures, something queerly sinister, as though they held a power that made them impregnable to all this threatening crowd. The Castle itself had that sinister aspect. Its grim silence; its inactivity. It stood, here in the gloom, silently confident. I felt, too, as I gazed at it, an inward sense of fear. A revulsion. As though within these darkly brooding walls fearsome things must have transpired.

* * * * *

The more courageous of the mob had surged toward the entrance steps which now we were facing. They stood in a ring near the bottom of the steps. But there seemed a deadline beyond which none dared pass; the ground twenty feet out from the front of the steps was all clear. The mob stood calling imprecations and brandishing weapons, but not advancing. Waiting for a leader, perhaps. Occasionally some one would rush forward, or be thrust forward by those behind. But after a step or two, the would-be leader always retreated. And up in the entrance way the gray Gian women never moved.

Fen--with Bhool urging him sidewise--led us toward the steps; the crowd was so dense we were soon struggling to advance. I was literally wading through these little people; their bodies felt frail and slight as I roughly thrust them aside. I called: “Arturo, let me over there.” I joined him, to guard Nereid in the jam.

Around us a man’s cry arose--a cry of triumph. Others took it up. There was a surge of people toward me; behind me I saw them following like a wave. Calling at me in friendly triumph. My height, head and shoulders above them all; my white skin, clear to them in the darkness--they suddenly saw in me their needed leader. They surged triumphantly around me.

But Fen, with vehement words, scattered them. We forced our way to the open space, beyond which was the Castle entrance. We were at one side, not far from the side edge of the steps. I felt hands clinging to me. That accursed, sniveling Bhool; I cast him off.

I had been aware all this time, of a radiance on the castle roof-top. Women’s figures were up there in a dull purple glow. We stopped and gathered around Fen. I gazed upward. The gray figure of a man stood prominent on the parapet. He was standing like a grim silent statue. He suddenly whirled, leaped down, and in a moment reappeared. A woman was with him. A group of men came running on the roof with a small bank of steps. The man helped the woman mount them. She came up with a slow regal majesty, the men deferentially helping her. She stood on the broad parapet top, and the man crouched at her feet.

“Rhana!”

A wave of it went over the crowd, followed by a sudden hushed murmur of awe. Then the hush broke; there was a screaming of threats; a violent surging on the mob. But I noticed that no one advanced; and the cries presently died away again into a fear-struck silence.

The woman on the parapet waited serene and motionless. She was no more than fifty feet from me; the purple sheen of light etched her vividly. A woman six feet tall; full-breasted, slim of hip. A flexible heart-shaped shield bound her torso; her gray limbs were free. The shield gleamed purple in the light like smooth polished metal, thin-beaten to mold itself like a sheath about her body.

She stood with figure drawn to its full height. Her head, poised upon a slim neck, was crowned with black hair wound in coils, with a black metallic headdress. Against the night, her profile showed; slim neck and upheld chin--a nose high-bridged, hawklike.

She raised her arms as the mob in the garden fell silent. Broad bracelets of metal were on her wrists, and from them heavy gleaming white chains dangled. Abruptly she struck with her arm; the white chain swished and lashed upon the naked gray back of the man crouching at her feet. He cringed, slid off the parapet and vanished to the roof-top. She stood smiling.

This woman, Satanic--

It was a gesture wholly cruel, unnecessary. A blow deliberate, without anger, without reason save that it pandered to the feminine vanity of her, thus to demonstrate her power. I gazed at that hawklike profile. Almost beautiful; the slim gray throat rising from that full bosom; the firm, but delicate chin; the mouth, firm-lipped, cruelly smiling now.

This woman, Satanic. Ah, there were refinements of cruelty that none but a woman--and a woman like this--could devise! The thought flashed to me, and it was not long before I had cause to remember it!

She slowly raised her arms, with the silver chains dangling. And in a moment, when the silence was complete, she began to speak. Her voice was low-pitched at first--a calm, confident voice. But there was a harsh rasp to it.

The crowd listened to that carrying voice, with the driving sense of power behind it. To every corner of the garden and to the streets beyond it rolled clear. A moment, then she was speaking faster. Fluently; the words tumbling, rising to a climax. She stopped abruptly. She was raised on tiptoe, every line of her tense. Her arms were up, palms toward the faces gazing up at her--a gesture half benign, half menacing. In her pause a faint quavering cheer arose; but under it there was the murmur of threats. She began again, quietly talking above the noise.

Entt, with his blurred sight, had stayed close by Fen. But he seemed fully recovered now. Nereid stood with her father’s arm protectingly around her. Tad was there; Arturo and I were a few feet farther away. The black edge of the fortress steps was near us; and beyond the black blob of an upstanding shrub the dark wall bulged out in a sort of turret. I whispered to Arturo:

“What does she say? Can you understand her?”

“No, not much of it.” He called cautiously, “Oh, Entt!”

Entt moved over. “Entt, what is she saying?”

* * * * *

He told us. She was assuring the Middge people there was no cause to be frightened. “She says, ‘I am going up to conquer the world of light. A beautiful region--my Gian army will conquer it. I will rule everything--prepare it up there for you to come and live so happily.’”

Arturo burst out: “But, my God, Entt--the abyss here will be flooded. You know that. If the gates break--they will break, she expects them to--we’ll all have to get out of here soon, a million or two of the Middge people. How can they get out?”

“Wait! She says now she will prepare a way of escape--soon, but just at this present time all is water up there. When the--what you call ocean--is partly down, she knows where the Middge can go and wait in safety.”

“She lies!” Arturo exclaimed. “She does not care where the people go, or how they escape!”

“Wait! I listen more--” Entt moved back to join the others.

Again I felt a soft, insistent plucking at me; Bhool cringed at my feet. “Master, look there!”

In the gloom I could see his shaking gray arm; his hand pointing toward the shrub and the bulge of the castle wall.

“What?” I demanded. “Arturo, what does he say?”

Bhool was insistent: terrorized, but insistent. “Masters, look there!”

We saw nothing. Bhool stood up; he was trembling. He took a step toward the shrub. “What is it, masters?”

Arturo strode to the shrub. He poked about it. We three were alone in this small shadowed area.

“Nothing,” whispered Arturo contemptuously. “Bhool, you’re an accursed whining--”

“Masters, not there.” We were standing at the shrub. “Over there, at the wall--a Middge man lying. He is not dead. I saw him move.”

We took another step or two. The ground sharply descended; six feet away there seemed a black opening--in the wall--and a faint movement there. It seemed, not as though some one were lying there, but more like light. I recall that I was tensed to leap backward with the premonition of danger. Arturo’s hand gripped me.

“What is it, Jeff? Can you see anything?”

We stood tense in the darkness at the brink of the small declivity. Bhool was behind us. He suddenly pushed us violently with a heave of his body. We sprawled forward. I fell to my hands and knees; Arturo was thrown partly upon me. A light was gripping us. It stung; my flesh smarted in its grip--a tangible force of something holding me. I fought with it. Arturo was fighting.

“Jeff--” His voice died in a gurgle. We were being lifted, were sliding into a yawning doorway.

I could not shout; my throat was taut, and closing. With Arturo struggling, half gripping me, we were drawn, sucked inward.

“Jeff--”

The darkness closed; the light was phosphorescent, holding us. With fading senses I slid into a blank, black silence.