Books: Ardath

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He spoke wildly as though possessed by a sort of frenzy,--his
unknown companion heard him with an air of mild and pitying
patience.

"Peace--peace! Blaspheme not the Most High, my son!" he said
gently, yet reproachfully. "Distraught as thou dost seem with some
strange misery, and sick with fears, forbear thine ignorant fury
against Him who hath for love's dear sake alone created thee.
Control thy soul in patience!--surely thou art afflicted by thine
own vain and false imaginings, which for a time contort and darken
the clear light of truth. Why dost thou thus disquiet thyself
concerning the end of life, seeing that verily it hath NO end? ...
and that what we men call death is not a conclusion but merely a
new beginning? Waste not thy pity on these skeleton forms,--the
empty dwellings of martial spirits long since fled, . . as well weep
over fallen husks of corn from which the blossoms have sprung
right joyously upward! This world is but our roadside hostelry,
wherein we heaven-bound sojourners tarry for one brief, restless
night,--why regret the loss of the poor refreshment offered thee
here, when there are a thousand better feasts awaiting thee
elsewhere on thy way? Come,--let me lead thee hence, . . this place
is known as the Passage of the Tombs,--and communicates with the
Inner Court of the Sacred Temple,--and if, as I fear, thou art a
stray fugitive from the accursed Lysia's band of lovers, thou
mayest be tracked hither and quickly slain. Come,--I will show
thee a secret labyrinth by which thou canst gain the embankment of
the river, and from thence betake thyself speedily home, . . if thou
hast a home..." here he paused, and a keen, questioning glance
flashed in his dark eyes. "But,--notwithstanding thy fluency of
speech and fashion of attire, methinks thou hast the lost and
solitary air of one who is a stranger in the city of Al-Kyris?"

Theos sighed.

"A stranger I am indeed!" he said drearily--"A stranger to my very
self and all my former belongings! Ask me no questions, good
father, for, as I live, I cannot answer them! I am oppressed by a
nameless and mysterious suffering, . . my brain is darkened,--my
thoughts but half-formed and never wholly uttered, and I,--I who
once deemed human intelligence and reason all-supreme, all-clear,
all-absolute, am now compelled to use that reason reasonlessly,
and to work with that intelligence in helpless ignorance as to
what end my mental toil shall serve! Woeful and strange it is!--
yet true; . . I am as a broken straw in a whirlwind,--or the pale
ghost of my own identity groping for things forgotten in a land of
shadows; . . I know not whence I came, nor whither I go! Nay, do
not fear me,--I am not mad: I am conscious of my life, my
strength, and physical well-being,--and though I may speak wildly,
I harbor no ill-intent toward any man--my quarrel is with God
alone!"

He paused,--then resumed in calmer accents,--"You judge rightly,
reverend sir,--I am a stranger in Al-Kyris. I entered the city-
gates this morning when the sun was high,--and ere noon I found
courteous welcome and princely shelter,--I am the guest of the
poet Sah-luma."

The old man looked at him half compassionately.

"Ah, Sah-luma is thine host?" he said with a touch of melancholy
surprise in his tone--"Then wherefore art thou here? ... here in
this dark abode where none may linger and escape with life? ...
how earnest thou within the bounds of Lysid's fatal pleasaunce!
... Has the Laureate's friendship thus misguided thee?"

Theos hesitated before replying. He was again moved by that
curious instinctive dread of hearing Sah-luma's name associated
with any sort of reproach,--and his voice had a somewhat defiant
ring as he answered:

"Nay, surely I am neither child nor woman that I should weakly
yield to guidance or misleading! Some trifling matter of free-will
remains to me in spite of mine affliction,--and that I have supped
with Sah-luma at the Palace of the High Priestess, has been as
much my choice as his example. Who among men would turn aside from
high feasting and mirthful company? ... not I, believe me! ... and
Sah-luma's desires herein were but the reflex of mine own. We came
together through the woodland, and parted but a moment since..."

He stopped abruptly, startled by a sudden clash as of steel and
the tramp-tramp of approaching feet. His aged companion caught him
by the arm...

"Hush!" he whispered.. "Not a word more.. not a breath! ... or thy
life must pay the penalty! Quick,--follow me close! ... step
softly! ... there is a hiding-place near at hand where we may
couch unseen till these dread visitants pass by."

Moving stealthily and with anxious precaution, he led the way to a
niche hollowed deeply out in the thickness of the wall, and
turning his lamp aside so that not the faintest glimmer of it
could be perceived, he took Theos by the hand, and drew him into
what seemed to be a huge cavernous recess, utterly dark and icy
cold.

Here, crouching low in the furthest gloom, they both waited
silently,--Theos ignorant as to the cause of the sudden alarm, and
wondering vaguely what strange new circumstance was about to
happen. The measured tramp-tramp of feet came nearer and nearer,
and in another moment the flare of smoking torches illumined the
vaulted passage, casting many a ruddy flicker and flash on the
ivory-gleaming whiteness of the vast skeleton army that stood with
such grim and pallid patience as though waiting for a marching
signal.

Presently there appeared a number of half-naked men, carrying
short axes stained with blood,--coarse, savage, cruel-looking
brutes all, whose lowering faces bore the marks of a thousand
unrepented crimes,--these were followed by four tall personages
clad in flowing white robes and closely masked,--and finally there
came a band of black slaves clothed in vivid scarlet, dragging
between them two writhing, bleeding creatures,--one a man, the
other a girl in her earliest youth, both convulsed by the evident
last agonies of death.

Arrived at the centre of that part of the vault where the skeleton
crowd was thickest, this horrible cortege halted, while one of the
masked personages undid from his girdle a large bunch of keys. And
now Theos, watching everything with dreadful interest from the
obscure corner where he was, thanks to his unknown friend,
successfully concealed, perceived for the first time a low, iron
door, heavily barred, and surmounted by sharp spikes as long as
drawn daggers. When this dreary portal was, with many a jarring
groan and clang, slowly opened, such an awful cry broke from the
lips of the tortured man as might have wrung compassion from the
most hardened tyrant. Wresting himself fiercely out of the grasp
of the slaves who held him, he struggled to his feet, while the
blood poured from the cruel wounds that were inflicted all over
his body, and raising his manacled hands aloft he cried..

"Mercy! ... mercy! ... not for me, but for her! ... for her, my
love, my life, my tenderest little one! ... What is her crime, ye
fiends? ... why do ye deem love a sin and passion a dishonor? ...
Shall there be no more heart-longings because ye are cold? ...
Spare her! ... she is so young, so fond, so innocent of all
reproach save one, the shame of loving me! Spare her! ... or, if
ye will not spare, slay her at once! ... now!--now, with swift
compassionate sword, . . but cast her not alive into yon hideous
serpent's den! ... not alive! ... ah no, no,--ye gods have pity!
..."

Here his voice broke and a sudden light passed over his agonized
countenance. Gazing steadfastly at the girl, whose beautiful,
white body now lay motionless on the cold stone, with a cloud of
fair hair falling veil-like over it, his eyes seemed to strain
themselves out of their sockets in the intensity of his eager
regard, when all at once he gave vent to a wild peal of delirious
laughter and exclaimed..

"Dead.. dead! ... Thanks be to the merciless gods for this one
gift of grace at the last! Dead.. dead! ... O the blessed favor
and freedom of death! ... Sweetheart, they can torture thee no
more.. no more! ... Ah, devils that ye are!" and his voice grown
frantically loud, pierced the gloomy arches with terrible
resonance, as he saw the red-garmented slaves vainly endeavoring
to rouse, with ferocious blows and thrusts, new life in the fair,
stiffening corpse before them.. "This time ye are baffled! ...
Baffled!--and I live to see your vanquishment! Give her to me!"
and he stretched out his trembling arms ... "Give her...she is
dead--and ye cannot offer to Nagaya any lifeless thing! I will
weave her a shroud of her own gold hair--I will bury her softly
away in the darkness--I will sing to her as I used to sing in the
silent summer evenings, when we fancied our secret of forbidden
love unknown,--and with my lips on hers, I will pray.. pray for
the pardon of passion grown stronger...than...life! ..."

He ceased, and swaying forward, fell, . . a shiver ran through his
limbs...one deep, gasping sigh...and all was over. The band of
torturers gathered round the body, uttering fierce oaths and
exclamations of dismay.

"Both dead!" said one of the individuals in white.. "'Tis a most
fatal augury!"

"Fatal indeed!" said another, and turning to the men with the
blood stained axes, he added angrily--"Ye were too swift and
lavish of your weapons--ye should have let these criminals suffer
slowly inch by inch, and yet have left them life enough wherewith
to linger on in anguish many hours."

The wretches thus addressed looked sullen and humiliated, and
approaching the two corpses, would have brutally inflicted fresh
wounds on them, had not the seeming chief of the party interfered.

"Let be.. let be!" he said austerely--"Ye cannot cause the dead to
feel, . . would that it were possible! Then might the glorious and
god like thirst of vengeance in our great High Priestess be
somewhat more appeased in this matter. For the unlawful communion
of love between a vestal virgin and an anointed priest cannot be
too utterly abhorred and condemned,--and these twain, who thus did
foully violate their vows, have perished far too easily. The
sanctity of the Temple has been outraged, . . Lysia will not be
satisfied, . . and how shall we pacify her righteous wrath,
concerning this too tranquil death of the undeserving and impure?"

Drawing all together in a close group they held a whispered
consultation, and finally, appearing to have come to some sort of
decision, they took up the dead bodies one after another, and
flung them carelessly into the dark aperture lately unclosed. As
they did this, a stealthy, rustling sound was heard, as of some
great creature moving to and fro in the far interior, but they
soon locked and barred the iron portal once more, and then took
their departure rather hurriedly, leaving the vault by the way
Theos had entered it--namely, up the stone stairway that led into
Lysia's palace-gardens. As the last echo of their retreating steps
died away and the last glimmer of their lurid torches vanished,
Theos sprang out from his hiding-place,--his venerable companion
slowly followed.

"Oh, God! Can such things be!" he cried loudly, reckless of all
possible risk for himself as his voice rang penetratingly through
the deep silence--"Were these brute-murderers actual men?--or but
the wandering, grim shadows of some long past crime? ... Nay,--
surely I do but dream!--and ghouls and demons born out of
nightmare-sleep do vex my troubled spirit! Justice! ... justice
for the innocent! ... Is there none in all Al-Kyris?"

"None!" replied the old man who stood beside him, lamp in hand,
fixing his dark, melancholy eyes upon him as he spoke--"None! ...
neither in Al-Kyris nor in any other great city on the peopled
earth! Justice? ... I who am named Zuriel the Mystic, because of
my tireless searching into things that are hidden from the
unstudious and unthinking,--I know that Justice is an idle name,--
an empty braggart-word forever on the mouths of kings and judges,
but never in their hearts! Moreover,--what is guilt? ... What is
innocence? Both must be defined according to the law of the realm
wherein we dwell,--and from that law there can be no appeal. These
men we lately saw were the chief priests and executioners of the
Sacred Temple,--they have done no wrong--they have simply
fulfilled their duty. The culprits slain deserved their fate,--
they loved where loving was forbidden,--torture and death was the
strictly ordained punishment, and herein was justice,--justice as
portioned out by the Penal Code of the High Court of Council."

Theos heard, and gave an expressive gesture of loathing and
contempt.

"O narrow jurisdiction! ... O short-sighted, false equity!" he
exclaimed passionately. "Are there different laws for high and
low? ... Must the weak and defenceless be condemned to death for
the self-same sin committed openly by their more powerful brethren
who yet escape scot-free? What of the High Priestess then? ... If
these poor lover-victims merited their doom, why is not Lysia
slain? ... Is not SHE a willingly violated vestal? ... doth SHE
not count her lovers by the score? ... are not her vows long since
broken? ... is not her life a life of wanton luxury and open
shame? ... Why doth the Law, beholding these things, remain in her
case dumb and ineffectual?"

"Hush, hush, my son!" said the aged Zuriel anxiously--"These stone
walls hear thee far too loudly,--who knows but they may echo forth
thy words to unsuspected listeners! Peace--peace! ... Lysia is as
much Queen, as Zephoranim is King of Al-Kyris; and surely thou
knowest that the sins of tyrants are accounted virtues, so long as
they retain their ruling powers? The public voice pronounces Lysia
chaste, and Zephoranim faithful; who then shall dare to disprove
the verdict?--'Tis the same in all countries, near and far,--the
law serves the strong, while professing to defend the weak. The
rich man gains his cause,--the beggar loses it,--how can it be
otherwise, while lust of gold prevails? Gold is the moving-force
of this our era,--without it kings and ministers are impotent, and
armies starve, . . with it, all things can be accomplished even to
the concealment of the foulest crimes. Come, come! ..." and he
laid one hand kindly on Theos's arm, "Thou hast a generous and
fiery spirit, but thou shouldst never have been born into this
planet if thou seekest such a thing as Justice! No man will ever
deal true justice to his fellow man on earth, unless perhaps in
ages to come, when the old creeds are swept away for a new, and a
grander, wider, purer form of faith is accepted by the people. For
religion in Al-Kyris to-day is a hollow mockery,--a sham, kept up
partly from fear,--partly from motives of policy,--but every
thinker is an atheist at heart, . . our splendid civilization is
tottering towards its fall, . . and should the fore-doomed
destruction of this city come to pass, vast ages of progress,
discovery, and invention will be swept away as though they had
never been!"

He paused and sighed,--then continued sorrowfully--"There is,
there must be something wrong in the mechanism of life,--some
little hitch that stops the even wheels,--some curious perpetual
mischance that crosses us at every turn,--but I doubt not all is
for the best, and will prove most truly so hereafter!"

"Hereafter!" echoes Theos bitterly ... "Thinkest thou that even
God, repenting of the evil He hath done, will ever be able to
compensate us by any future bliss, for all the needless anguish of
the Present?"

Zuriel looked at him with a strange, almost spectral expression of
mingled pity, fear, and misgiving, but he offered no reply to this
home-thrust of a question. In grave silence and with slow,
majestic tread he began to lead the way along through the dismal
labyrinth of black, winding arches, holding his blue lamp aloft as
he went, the better to lighten the dense gloom.

Theos followed him, silent also, and wrapped in stern, and
mournful musings of his own, . . musings through which faint threads
of pale recollection connected with his past glimmered hazily from
time to time, perplexing rather than enlightening his bewildered
brain.

Presently he found himself in a low, narrow vestibule illumined by
the bright yet soft radiance of a suspended Star,--and here,
coming close up with his guide and observing his dress and manner
more attentively, he suddenly perceived a shining SOMETHING which
the old man wore hanging from his neck and which flashed against
the sable hue of his garment like a wandering moonbeam.

Stopping abruptly, he examined this ornament with straining,
wistful gaze, . . and slowly, very slowly, recognized its fashion of
construction,--it was a plain silver Cross--nothing more. Yet at
sight of the sacred, strange, yet familiar Symbol, a chord seemed
to snap in his brain,--tears rushed to his tired eyes, and with a
sharp cry he fell on his knees, grasping his companion's robe
wildly, as a drowning man grasps at a floating spar,--while the
venerable Zuriel, startled at his action, stared down upon him in
evident amazement and terror.

"Rescue! ... rescue!" he cried, ... "O thou blessed among men!--
thou dost wear the Sign of Eternal Safety! ... the Sign of the
Way, the Truth, and the Life! ... 'without the Way, there is no
going, without the Truth there is no knowing, without the Life
there is no living'! Now do I know thee for a saint in Al-Kyris,--
for thou dost openly avow thyself a follower of the Divine Faith
that fools despise, and selfish souls repudiate, . . ah, I do
beseech thee, thou good and holy man, absolve me of my sin of
Unbelief! Teach me! ... help me! ... and I will hear thy counsels
with the meekness of a listening child! ..See you, I kneel! ... I
pray! ... I, even I, am humiliated to the very dust of shame! I
have no pride, . . I seek no glory, ... I do entreat, even as I once
rejected the blessing of the Cross, whereby I shall regain my lost
love,--my despised pardon,--my vanished peace!"

And, with pathetic earnestness, he raised his hands toward the
silver emblem, and touched it tenderly, reverently, ... then as
though unworthy, he bent his head low, and waited eagerly for a
Name, . . a Name that he himself could not remember, . . a Name
suggested by the Cross, but not declared. If that Name were once
spoken in the form of a benediction, he felt instinctively that he
would straightway be released from the mysterious spell of misery
that bound his intelligence in such a grievous thrall. But not a
word of consolation did his companion utter, . . on the contrary, he
seemed agitated by the strangest surprise and alarm.

"Now may all the gods in Heaven defend thee, thou unhappy,
desperate, distracted soul!" he said in trembling, affrighted
accents. "Thou dost implore the blessing of a Faith unknown! ... a
Mystery predicted but not yet fulfilled...a Creed that shall not
be declared to men for full FIVE THOUSAND YEARS!"

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CRIMSON RIVER.

At these unexpected words Theos sprang wildly to his feet. An
awful darkness seemed to close in upon him,--and a chaotic
confusion of memories began to whirl and drift through his mind
like flotsam and jetsam tossed upon a storm-swept sea. The aged
and shadowy-looking Zuriel stood motionless, watching him with
something of timid pity and mild patience.

"FIVE THOUSAND YEARS!" he muttered hoarsely, pressing his hands
into his aching brows, while his eyes again fixed themselves
yearningly on the Cross.. "Five thousand years before. ... before
WHAT?"

He caught the old man's arm, and in spite of himself, a laugh,
wild, discordant, and out of all keeping with his inward emotions,
broke from his parched lips,--"Thou doting fool!" he cried almost
furiously,--"Why dost thou mock me then with this false image of a
hope unrealized? ... Who gave thee leave to add more fuel to my
flame of torment? ... What means this symbol to thine eyes?
Speak.. speak! What admonition does it hold for thee? ... what
promise? ... what menace? ... what warning? ... what love? ...
Speak.. speak! O, shall I force confession from thy throat, or
must I die unsatisfied and slain by speechless longing! What didst
thou say? ... FIVE THOUSAND YEARS? ... Nay, by the gods, thou
liest!"--and he pointed excitedly to the sacred Emblem,--"I tell
thee that Holy Sign is as familiar to my suffering soul as the
chiming of bells at sunset! ... as well known to my sight as the
unfolding of flowers in the fields of spring! ... What shall be
done or said of it, in. five thousand years, that has not already
been said and done?"

Zuriel regarded him more compassionately than ever, with a
penetrating, mournful expression in his serious dark eyes.

"Alas, alas, my son! thou art most grievously distraught!" he said
in troubled tones. "Thy words but prove the dark disorder of thy
wits,--may Heaven soon heal thee of thy mental wound! Restrain thy
wild and wandering fancies? ... for surely thou canst not be
familiar, as thou sayest with this silver Symbol, seeing that it
is but the Talisman [Footnote: The Cross was held in singular
veneration in the Temple of Serapis, and by many tribes in the
East, ages before the coming of Christ] or Badge of the Mystic
Brethren of Al-Kyris, and has no signification whatsoever save for
the Elect. It was designed some twenty years ago by the inspired
Chief of our Order, Khosrul, and such as are still his faithful
disciples wear it as a record and constant reminder of his famous
Prophecy."

Theos heard, and a dull apathy stole over him,--his recent
excitement died out under a chilling weight of vague yet bitter
disappointment.

"And this Prophecy?" he asked listlessly.. "What is its nature and
whom doth it concern?"

"Nay, in very truth it is a strange and marvellous thing!" replied
Zuriel, his calm voice thrilling with a mellow touch of fervor..
"Khosrul, 'tis said, has heard the angels whispering in Heaven,
and his attentive ears have caught the echo of their distant
speech.

"Thus spiritually instructed, he doth powerfully predict Salvation
for the human race,--and doth announce, that in five thousand
years or more, a God shall be moved by wondrous mercy to descend
from Heaven, and take the form of Man, wherein, unknown, despised,
rejected, he will live our life from commencement to finish,
teaching, praying, and sanctifying by His Divine Presence the
whole sin-burdened Earth. This done, He will consent to suffer a
most cruel death, . . and the manner of His death will be that He
shall hang, nailed hands and feet to a Cross, as though He were a
common criminal, . . His holy brows shall be bound about with
thorns,--and after hours of agony He, innocent of every sin, shall
perish miserably--friendless, unpitied, and alone. But afterward,
... and mark you! this is the chiefest glory of all! ... He will
rise again triumphant from the grave to prove his God-head, and to
convince Mankind beyond all doubt an question, that there is
indeed an immortal Hereafter,--an actual, free Eternity of Life,
compared with which this our transient existence is a mere brief
breathing-space of pause and probation, . . and then for evermore
His sacred Name shall dominate and civilize the world..."

"What Name?".. interrupted Theos, with eager abruptness ... "Canst
thou pronounce it?"

Zuriel shook his head.

"Not I, my son"--he answered gravely.. "Not even Khosrul can
penetrate thus far! The Name of Him who is to come, is hidden deep
among God's unfathomed silences! It should suffice thee that thou
knowest now the sum and substance of the Prophecy. Would I might
live to see the days when all shall be fulfilled! ... but alas, my
remaining years are few upon the earth, and Heaven's time is not
ours!"

He sighed,--and resumed his slow pacing onwards,--Theos walked
beside him as a man may walk in sleep, uncertainly and with
unseeing eyes, his heart beating loudly, and a sick sense of
suffocation in his throat. What did it all mean? ... Had his life
gone back in some strange way? ... or had he merely DREAMED of a
former existence different to this one? He remembered now what
Sah-luma had told him respecting Khosrul's "new" theory of a
future religion,--a theory that to him had seemed so old, so old!
--so utterly exhausted and worn threadbare! In what a cruel problem
was he hopelessly involved!--what a useless, perplexed, confused
being he had become! ... he who would once to have staked his life
on the unflinching strength and capabilities of human reason!
After a pause, . .

"Forgive me!" he said in a low tone, and speaking with some
effort.. "forgive me and have patience with my laggard
comprehension, . . I am perplexed at heart and slow of thought; wilt
thou assure me faithfully, that this God-Man thou speakest of is
not yet born on earth?"

The faintest shadow of a wondering smile flickered over the old
man's wrinkled countenance, like the reflection of a passing
taper-flame on a faded picture.

"My son, my son!" he murmured with compassionate tolerance--"Have
I not told thee that five thousand years and more must pass away
ere the prediction be accomplished? ... I marvel that so plain a
truth should thus disquiet thee! Now, by my soul, thou lookest
pallid as the dead! ... Come, let us hasten on more rapidly,--thy
fainting spirits will revive in fresher air."