Similarly, too, when I got farther on, and came amongst greater towns also, I kept beyond challenge of their walls, having no mind to risk delay from the whim of any new law which might chance to be set up by their governors. My progress might be slinking, but my pride did not upbraid me very loudly; indeed, the fever of haste burned within me so hot and I had little enough carrying s.p.a.ce for other emotions.

But at last I found myself within a half-day's journey the city of Atlantis itself, with the Sacred Mountain and its ring of fires looming high beside it, and the call for caution became trebly accentuated.

Everywhere evidences showed that the country had been drained of its fighting men. Everywhere women prayed that the battles might end with the rout of the Priests or the killing of Ph.o.r.enice, so that the wretched land might have peace and time to lick its wounds.

An army was investing the sacred Mountain, and its one approach was most narrowly guarded. Even after having journeyed so far, it seemed as if I should have to sit hopelessly down without being able to carry out the orders which had been laid upon me by the High Council, and earn the reward which had been promised. Force would be useless here. I should have one good fight--a gorgeous fight--one man against an army, and my usefulness would be ended.... No; this was the occasion for guile, and I found covert in the outskirts of a wood, and lay there cudgelling my brain for a plan.

Across the plain before me lay the grim great walls of the city, with the heads of its temples, and its palaces, and its pyramids showing beyond. The step-sides of the royal pyramid held my eye. Ph.o.r.enice had expended some of her new-found store of gold in overlaying their former whiteness with sheets of shining yellow metal. But it was not that change that moved me. I was remembering that, in the square before the pyramid, there stood a throne of granite carved with the snake and the outstretched hand, and in the hollow beneath the throne was Nais, my love, asleep these eight years now because of the drug that had been given to her, but alive still, and waiting for me, if only I on my part could make a way to the place where Zaemon defied the Empress, and announce my coming.

In that covert of the woods I lay a day and a night raging with myself for not discovering some plan to get within the defences of the Sacred Mountain, but in the morning which followed, there came a man towards me running.

"You need not threaten me with your weapons," he cried. "I mean no harm.

It seems that you are Deucalion; though I should not have known you myself in those rags and skins, and behind that tangle of hair and beard. You will give me your good word I know. Believe me, I have not loitered unduly."

He was a lower priest whom I knew, and held in little esteem; his name was Ro, a greedy fellow and not overworthy of trust. "From whom do you come?" I asked.

"Zaemon laid a command on me. He came to my house, though how he got there I cannot tell, seeing that Ph.o.r.enice's army blocks all possible pa.s.sage to and from the Mountain. I told him I wished to be mixed with none of his schemings. I am a peaceful man, Deucalion, and have taken a wife who requires nourishment. I still serve in the same temple, though we have swept out the old G.o.ds by order of the Empress, and put her image in their place. The people are tidily pious nowadays, those that are left of them, and the living is consequently easy. Yes, I tell you there are far more offerings now than there were in the old days. And so I had no wish to be mixed with matters which might well make me be deprived of a snug post, and my head to boot."

"I can believe it all of you, Ro."

"But there was no denying Zaemon. He burst into one of his black furies, and while he spoke at me, I tell you I felt as good as dead. You know his powers?"

"I have seen some of them."

"Well, the G.o.ds alone know which are the true G.o.ds, and which are the others. I serve the one that gives me employment. But those that Zaemon serves give him power, and that's beyond denying. You see that right hand of mine? It is dead and paralysed from the wrist, and that is a gift of Zaemon. He bestowed it, he said, to make me collect my attention. Then he said more hard things concerning what he was pleased to term my apostasy, not letting me put up a word in my own defence of how the change was forced upon me. And finally, said he, I might either do his bidding on a certain matter to the letter, or take that punishment which my falling away from the old G.o.ds had earned. 'I shall not kill you,' said he, 'but I will cover all your limbs with a paralysis, such as you have tasted already, and when at length death reaches you in some gutter, you will welcome it.'"

"If Zaemon said those words, he meant them. So you accepted the alternative?"

"Had I, with a wife depending on me, any other choice? I asked his pleasure. It was to find you when you came in here from some distant part of the land, and deliver to you his message.

"'Then tell me where is the meeting place,' said I, 'and when.'

"'There is none appointed, nor is the day fixed,' said he. 'You must watch and search always for him. But when he comes, you will be guided to his place.' Well, Deucalion, I think I was guided, but how, I do not know. But now I have found you, and if there's such a thing as grat.i.tude, I ask you to put in your word with Zaemon that this deadness be taken away from my hand. It's an awful thing for a man to be forced to go through life like this, for no real fault of his own. And Zaemon could cure it from where he sat, if he was so minded."

"You seem still to have a very full faith in some of the old G.o.ds'

priests," I said. "But so far, I do not see that your errand is done. I have had no message yet."

"Why, the message is so simple that I do not see why he could not have got some one else to carry it. You are to make a great blaze. You may fire the gra.s.ses of the plain in front of this wood if you choose. And on the night which follows, you are to go round to that flank of the Sacred Mountain away from the city where the rocks run down sheer, and there they will lower a rope and haul you up to their hands above."

"It seems easy, and I thank you for your pains. I will ask Zaemon that your hand may be restored to you."

"You shall have my prayers if it is. And look, Deucalion, it is a small matter, and it would be less likely to slip your memory if you saw to it at once on your landing. Later, you may be disturbed. Ph.o.r.enice is bound to pull you down off your perch up there now she has made her mind to it. She never fails, once she has set her hand to a thing. Indeed, if she was no G.o.ddess at birth, she is making herself into one very rapidly. She has got all the ancient learning of our Priests, and more besides. She has discovered the Secret of Life these recent months--"

"She has found that?" I cried, fairly startled. "How? Tell me how? Only the Three know that. It is beyond our knowledge even who are members of the Seven."

"I know nothing of her means. But she has the secret, and now she is as good an immortal (so she says) as any of them. Well, Deucalion, it is dangerous for me to be missing from my temple overlong, so I will go.

You will carry that matter we spoke of in your mind? It means much to me."--His eye wandered over my ragged person--"And if you think my service is of value to you--"

"You see me poor, my man, and practically dest.i.tute."

"Some small coin," he murmured, "or even a link of bronze? I am at great expense just now buying nourishment for my wife. Well, if you have nothing, you cannot give. So I'll just bid you farewell."

He took himself off then, and I was not sorry. I had never liked Ro. But I wasted no more precious time then. The gra.s.s blazed up for a signal almost before his timorous heels were clear of it, and that night when the darkness gave me cover, I took the risk of what beasts might be prowling, and went to the place appointed. There was no rope dangling, but presently one came down the smooth cliff face like some slender snake. I made a loop, slipped it over a leg, and pulled hard as a signal. Those above began to haul, and so I went back to the Sacred Mountain after an absence of so many toilsome and warring years. There were none to disturb the ascent. Ph.o.r.enice's troops had no thought to guard that gaunt, bare, seamless precipice.

The men who hauled me up were old, and panted heavily with their task, and, until I knew the reason, I wondered why a knot of younger priests had not been appointed for the duty. But I put no question. With us of the Priests' Clan on the Sacred Mountain, it is always taken as granted that when an order is given, it is given for the best. Besides, these priests did not offer themselves to question. They took me off at once to Zaemon, and that is what I could have wished.

The old man greeted me with the royal sign. "All hail to Deucalion," he cried, "King of Atlantis, duly called thereto by the High Council of the priests."

"Is Ph.o.r.enice dead?" I asked.

"It remains for you to slay her, and take your kingdom, if, indeed, when all is done, there remains a man or a rood of land to govern. The sentence has gone out that she is to die, and it shall be carried into effect, even though we have to set loose the most dreadful powers that are stored in the Ark of the Mysteries, and wreck this continent in our effort. We have borne with her infamies all these years by command sent down by the most High G.o.ds; but now she has gone beyond endurance, and They it is who have given the word for her cutting off."

"You are one of the highest Three; I am only one of the Seven; you best know the cost."

"There can be no counting the cost now, my brother, and my king. It is an order."

"It is an order," I repeated formally, "so I obey."

"If it were not impious to do so, it would be easy to justify this decision of the G.o.ds. The woman has usurped the throne; yet she was forgiven and bidden rule on wisely. She has tampered with our holy religion; yet she was forgiven. She has killed the peoples of Atlantis in greedy useless wars, and destroyed the country's trade; yet she was forgiven. She has desecrated the old temples, and latterly has set up in them images of herself to be worshipped as a deity; yet she was forgiven. But at last her evil cleverness has discovered to her the tremendous Secret of Life and Death, and there she overstepped the boundary of the High G.o.ds' forbearance.

"I myself went to carry a final warning, and once more faced her in the great banqueting-hall. Solemnly I recited to her the edict, and she chose to take it as a challenge. She would live on eternally herself and she would share her knowledge with those that pleased her. Tatho that was her husband should also be immortal. Indeed, if she thought fit, she would cry the secret aloud so that even the common people might know it, and death from mere age would become a legend.

"She cared no wit how she might upset the laws of Nature. She was Ph.o.r.enice, and was the highest law of all. And finally she defied me there in that banqueting-hall and defied also the High G.o.ds that stood behind my mouth. 'My magic is as strong as yours, you pompous fool,'

she cried, 'and presently you shall see the two stand side by side upon their trial.'

"She began to collect an army from that moment, and we on our part made our preparations. It was discovered by our arts that you still lived, and King of Atlantis you were made by solemn election. How you were summoned, you know as nearly as it is lawful that one of your degree should know; how you came, you understand best yourself; but here you are, my brother, and being King now, you must order all things as you see best for the preservation of your high estate, and we others live only to give you obedience."

"Then being King, I can speak without seeming to make use of a threat.

I must have my Queen first, or I am not strong enough to give my whole mind to this ruling."

"She shall be brought here."

"So! Then I will be a General now, and see to the defences of this place, and view the men who are here to stand behind them."

I went out of the dwelling then, Zaemon giving place and following me.

It was night still but there is no darkness on the upper part of the Sacred Mountain. A ring of fires, fed eternally from the earth-breath which wells up from below, burns round one-half of the crest, lighting it always as bright as day, and in fact forming no small part of its fortification. Indeed, it is said that, in the early dawn of history, men first came to the Mountain as a stronghold because of the natural defence which the fires offered.

There is no bridging these flames or smothering them. On either side of their line for a hundred paces the ground glows with heat, and a man would be turned to ash who tried to cross it. Round full one-half the mountain slopes the fires make a rampart unbreakable, and on the other side the rock runs in one sheer precipice from the crest to the plain which spreads beyond its foot. But it is on this farther side that there is the only entrance way which gives pa.s.sage to the crest of the Sacred Mountain from below. Running diagonally up the steep face of the cliff is a gigantic fissure, which succeeding ages (as man has grown more luxurious) have made more easy to climb.

Looking at the additions, in the ancient days, I can well imagine that none but the most daring could have made the ascent. But one generation has thrown a bridge over a bad gap here, and another has cut into the living stone and widened a ledge there, till in these latter years there is a path with cut steps and carved bal.u.s.trade such as the feeblest or most giddy might traverse with little effort or exertion. But always when these improvers made smooth the obstacles, they were careful to weaken in no possible way the natural defences but rather to add to them.

Eight gates of stone there were cutting the pathway, each commanding a straight, steep piece of the ascent, and overhanging each gate was a gallery secure from arrow-shot, yet so contrived that great stones could be hurled through holes in the floor of it, in such a manner that they must irretrievably smash to a pulp any men advancing against it from below. And in caves dug out from the rock on either hand was a great h.o.a.rd of these stones, so that no enemy through sheer expenditure of troops could hope to storm a gate by exhausting its ammunition.

But though there were eight of these granite gates in the series, we had the whole number to depend on no longer. The lowest gate was held by a garrison of Ph.o.r.enice's troops, who had built a wall above them to protect their occupation. The gate had been gained by no brilliant feat of arms--it had been won by threats, bribery, and promises; or, in other words, it had been given up by the blackest treachery.

And here lay the keynote of the weakness in our defence. The most perfect ramparts that brain can invent are useless without men to line them, and it was men we lacked. Of students entering into the colleges of the Sacred Mountain, there had been none now for many a year. The younger generation thought little of the older G.o.ds. Of the men that had grown up amongst the sacred groves, and filled offices there, many had become lukewarm in their faith and remained on only through habit, and because an easy living stayed near them there; and these, when the siege began, quickly made their way over to the other side.

Ph.o.r.enice was no fool to fight against unnecessary strength. Her heralds made proclamation that peace and a good subsistence would be given to those who chose to come out to her willingly; and as an alternative she would kill by torture and mutilation those she caught in the place when she took it by storm, as she most a.s.suredly would do before she had finished with it. And so great was the prestige of her name, that quite one-half of these that remained on the mountain took themselves away from the defence.