Chapter XIX
The Queen's Story
In the meantime Bertha Kircher was conducted the length of theplaza toward the largest and most pretentious of the buildingssurrounding it. This edifice covered the entire width of one endof the plaza. It was several stories in height, the main entrancebeing approached by a wide flight of stone steps, the bottom ofwhich was guarded by enormous stone lions, while at the top therewere two pedestals flanking the entrance and of the same height,upon each of which was the stone image of a large parrot. As thegirl neared these latter images she saw that the capital of eachcolumn was hewn into the semblance of a human skull upon whichthe parrots perched. Above the arched doorway and upon the wallsof the building were the figures of other parrots, of lions, andof monkeys. Some of these were carved in bas-relief; others weredelineated in mosaics, while still others appeared to have beenpainted upon the surface of the wall.
The colorings of the last were apparently much subdued by agewith the result that the general effect was soft and beautiful.The sculpturing and mosaic work were both finely executed, givingevidence of a high degree of artistic skill. Unlike the firstbuilding into which she had been conducted, the entrance to whichhad been doorless, massive doors closed the entrance which she nowapproached. In the niches formed by the columns which supportedthe door's arch, and about the base of the pedestals of the stoneparrots, as well as in various other places on the broad stairway,lolled some score of armed men. The tunics of these were all of avivid yellow and upon the breast and back of each was embroideredthe figure of a parrot.
As she was conducted up the stairway one of these yellow-coatedwarriors approached and halted her guides at the top of the steps.Here they exchanged a few words and while they were talking thegirl noticed that he who had halted them, as well as those whomshe could see of his companions, appeared to be, if possible, ofa lower mentality than her original captors.
Their coarse, bristling hair grew so low upon their foreheads as,in some instances, to almost join their eyebrows, while the iriseswere smaller, exposing more of the white of the eyeball.
After a short parley the man in charge of the doorway, for suchhe seemed to be, turned and struck upon one of the panels withthe butt of his spear, at the same time calling to several of hiscompanions, who rose and came forward at his command. Soon the greatdoors commenced slowly to swing creakingly open, and presently,as they separated, the girl saw behind them the motive force whichoperated the massive doors--to each door a half-dozen naked Negroes.
At the doorway her two guards were turned back and their places takenby a half dozen of the yellow-coated soldiery. These conducted herthrough the doorway which the blacks, pulling upon heavy chains,closed behind them. And as the girl watched them she noted withhorror that the poor creatures were chained by the neck to thedoors.
Before her led a broad hallway in the center of which was a littlepool of clear water. Here again in floor and walls was repeated innew and ever-changing combinations and designs, the parrots, themonkeys, and the lions, but now many of the figures were of whatthe girl was convinced must be gold. The walls of the corridorconsisted of a series of open archways through which, upon eitherside, other spacious apartments were visible. The hallway wasentirely unfurnished, but the rooms on either side contained benchesand tables. Glimpses of some of the walls revealed the fact thatthey were covered with hangings of some colored fabric, while uponthe floors were thick rugs of barbaric design and the skins ofblack lions and beautifully marked leopards.
The room directly to the right of the entrance was filled with menwearing the yellow tunics of her new guard while the walls were hungwith numerous spears and sabers. At the far end of the corridor alow flight of steps led to another closed doorway. Here the guardwas again halted. One of the guards at this doorway, after receivingthe report of one of those who accompanied her, passed through thedoor, leaving them standing outside. It was fully fifteen minutesbefore he returned, when the guard was again changed and the girlconducted into the chamber beyond.
Through three other chambers and past three more massive doors, ateach of which her guard was changed, the girl was conducted beforeshe was ushered into a comparatively small room, back and forthacross the floor of which paced a man in a scarlet tunic, upon thefront and back of which was embroidered an enormous parrot and uponwhose head was a barbaric headdress surmounted by a stuffed parrot.
The walls of this room were entirely hidden by hangings upon whichhundreds, even thousands, of parrots were embroidered. Inlaid inthe floor were golden parrots, while, as thickly as they could bepainted, upon the ceiling were brilliant-hued parrots with wingsoutspread as though in the act of flying.
The man himself was larger of stature than any she had yet seenwithin the city. His parchment-like skin was wrinkled with age andhe was much fatter than any other of his kind that she had seen.His bared arms, however, gave evidence of great strength and hisgait was not that of an old man. His facial expression denoted almostutter imbecility and he was quite the most repulsive creature thatever Bertha Kircher had looked upon.
For several minutes after she was conducted into his presencehe appeared not to be aware that she was there but continued hisrestless pacing to and fro. Suddenly, without the slightest warning,and while he was at the far end of the room from her with his backtoward her, he wheeled and rushed madly at her. Involuntarily thegirl shrank back, extending her open palms toward the frightfulcreature as though to hold him aloof but a man upon either side ofher, the two who had conducted her into the apartment, seized andheld her.
Although he rushed violently toward her the man stopped withouttouching her. For a moment his horrid white-rimmed eyes glaredsearchingly into her face, immediately following which he burstinto maniacal laughter. For two or three minutes the creature gavehimself over to merriment and then, stopping as suddenly as hehad commenced to laugh, he fell to examining the prisoner. He feltof her hair, her skin, the texture of the garment she wore and bymeans of signs made her understand she was to open her mouth. Inthe latter he seemed much interested, calling the attention of oneof the guards to her canine teeth and then baring his own sharpfangs for the prisoner to see.
Presently he resumed pacing to and fro across the floor, and itwas fully fifteen minutes before he again noticed the prisoner, andthen it was to issue a curt order to her guards, who immediatelyconducted her from the apartment.
The guards now led the girl through a series of corridors andapartments to a narrow stone stairway which led to the floor above,finally stopping before a small door where stood a naked Negro armedwith a spear. At a word from one of her guards the Negro opened thedoor and the party passed into a low-ceiled apartment, the windowsof which immediately caught the girl's attention through the factthat they were heavily barred. The room was furnished similarly tothose that she had seen in other parts of the building, the samecarved tables and benches, the rugs upon the floor, the decorationsupon the walls, although in every respect it was simpler thananything she had seen on the floor below. In one corner was a lowcouch covered with a rug similar to those on the floor except thatit was of a lighter texture, and upon this sat a woman.
As Bertha Kircher's eyes alighted upon the occupant of the roomthe girl gave a little gasp of astonishment, for she recognizedimmediately that here was a creature more nearly of her own kindthan any she had seen within the city's walls. An old woman it waswho looked at her through faded blue eyes, sunken deep in a wrinkledand toothless face. But the eyes were those of a sane and intelligentcreature, and the wrinkled face was the face of a white woman.
At sight of the girl the woman rose and came forward, her gait sofeeble and unsteady that she was forced to support herself with along staff which she grasped in both her hands. One of the guardsspoke a few words to her and then the men turned and left theapartment. The girl stood just within the door waiting in silencefor what might next befall her.
The old woman crossed the room and stopped before her, raisingher weak a
nd watery eyes to the fresh young face of the newcomer.Then she scanned her from head to foot and once again the old eyesreturned to the girl's face. Bertha Kircher on her part was notless frank in her survey of the little old woman. It was the latterwho spoke first. In a thin, cracked voice she spoke, hesitatingly,falteringly, as though she were using unfamiliar words and speakinga strange tongue.
"You are from the outer world?" she asked in English. "God grantthat you may speak and understand this tongue."
"English?" the girl exclaimed, "Yes, of course, I speak English."
"Thank God!" cried the little old woman. "I did not know whether Imyself might speak it so that another could understand. For sixtyyears I have spoken only their accursed gibberish. For sixty yearsI have not heard a word in my native language. Poor creature! Poorcreature!" she mumbled. "What accursed misfortune threw you intotheir hands?"
"You are an English woman?" asked Bertha Kircher. "Did I understandyou aright that you are an English woman and have been here forsixty years?"
The old woman nodded her head affirmatively. "For sixty years Ihave never been outside of this palace. Come," she said, stretchingforth a bony hand. "I am very old and cannot stand long. Come andsit with me on my couch."
The girl took the proffered hand and assisted the old lady backto the opposite side of the room and when she was seated the girlsat down beside her.
"Poor child! Poor child!" moaned the old woman. "Far better to havedied than to have let them bring you here. At first I might havedestroyed myself but there was always the hope that someone wouldcome who would take me away, but none ever comes. Tell me how theygot you."
Very briefly the girl narrated the principal incidents which ledup to her capture by some of the creatures of the city.
"Then there is a man with you in the city?" asked the old woman.
"Yes," said the girl, "but I do not know where he is nor what aretheir intentions in regard to him. In fact, I do not know whattheir intentions toward me are."
"No one might even guess," said the old woman. "They do not knowthemselves from one minute to the next what their intentions are,but I think you can rest assured, my poor child, that you willnever see your friend again."
"But they haven't slain you," the girl reminded her, "and you havebeen their prisoner, you say, for sixty years."
"No," replied her companion, "they have not killed me, nor willthey kill you, though God knows before you have lived long in thishorrible place you will beg them to kill you."
"Who are they--" asked Bertha Kircher, "what kind of people? Theydiffer from any that I ever have seen. And tell me, too, how youcame here."
"It was long ago," said the old woman, rocking back and forth onthe couch. "It was long ago. Oh, how long it was! I was only twentythen. Think of it, child! Look at me. I have no mirror other thanmy bath, I cannot see what I look like for my eyes are old, butwith my fingers I can feel my old and wrinkled face, my sunken eyes,and these flabby lips drawn in over toothless gums. I am old andbent and hideous, but then I was young and they said that I wasbeautiful. No, I will not be a hypocrite; I was beautiful. My glasstold me that.
"My father was a missionary in the interior and one day there camea band of Arabian slave raiders. They took the men and women ofthe little native village where my father labored, and they tookme, too. They did not know much about our part of the country sothey were compelled to rely upon the men of our village whom theyhad captured to guide them. They told me that they never beforehad been so far south and that they had heard there was a countryrich in ivory and slaves west of us. They wanted to go there andfrom there they would take us north, where I was to be sold intothe harem of some black sultan.
"They often discussed the price I would bring, and that that pricemight not lessen, they guarded me jealously from one another sothe journeys were made as little fatiguing for me as possible. Iwas given the best food at their command and I was not harmed.
"But after a short time, when we had reached the confines of thecountry with which the men of our village were familiar and hadentered upon a desolate and arid desert waste, the Arabs realizedat last that we were lost. But they still kept on, ever towardthe west, crossing hideous gorges and marching across the face ofa burning land beneath the pitiless sun. The poor slaves they hadcaptured were, of course, compelled to carry all the camp equipageand loot and thus heavily burdened, half starved and without water,they soon commenced to die like flies.
"We had not been in the desert land long before the Arabs wereforced to kill their horses for food, and when we reached the firstgorge, across which it would have been impossible to transport theanimals, the balance of them were slaughtered and the meat loadedupon the poor staggering blacks who still survived.
"Thus we continued for two more days and now all but a handful ofblacks were dead, and the Arabs themselves had commenced to succumbto hunger and thirst and the intense heat of the desert. As far asthe eye could reach back toward the land of plenty from whence wehad come, our route was marked by circling vultures in the sky andby the bodies of the dead who lay down in the trackless waste forthe last time. The ivory had been abandoned tusk by tusk as theblacks gave out, and along the trail of death was strewn the campequipage and the horse trappings of a hundred men.
"For some reason the Arab chief favored me to the last, possiblywith the idea that of all his other treasures I could be most easilytransported, for I was young and strong and after the horses werekilled I had walked and kept up with the best of the men. We English,you know, are great walkers, while these Arabians had never walkedsince they were old enough to ride a horse.
"I cannot tell you how much longer we kept on but at last, withour strength almost gone, a handful of us reached the bottom of adeep gorge. To scale the opposite side was out of the question andso we kept on down along the sands of what must have been the bedof an ancient river, until finally we came to a point where welooked out upon what appeared to be a beautiful valley in which wefelt assured that we would find game in plenty.
"By then there were only two of us left--the chief and myself. Ido not need to tell you what the valley was, for you found it inmuch the same way as I did. So quickly were we captured that itseemed they must have been waiting for us, and I learned later thatsuch was the case, just as they were waiting for you.
"As you came through the forest you must have seen the monkeysand parrots and since you have entered the palace, how constantlythese animals, and the lions, are used in the decorations. At homewe were all familiar with talking parrots who repeated the thingsthat they were taught to say, but these parrots are differentin that they all talk in the same language that the people of thecity use, and they say that the monkeys talk to the parrots and theparrots fly to the city and tell the people what the monkeys say.And, although it is hard to believe, I have learned that this isso, for I have lived here among them for sixty years in the palaceof their king.
"They brought me, as they brought you, directly to the palace. TheArabian chief was taken elsewhere. I never knew what became of him.Ago XXV was king then. I have seen many kings since that day. Hewas a terrible man; but then, they are all terrible."
"What is the matter with them?" asked the girl.
"They are a race of maniacs," replied the old woman. "Had you notguessed it? Among them are excellent craftsmen and good farmersand a certain amount of law and order, such as it is.
"They reverence all birds, but the parrot is their chief deity.There is one who is held here in the palace in a very beautifulapartment. He is their god of gods. He is a very old bird. If whatAgo told me when I came is true, he must be nearly three hundredyears old by now. Their religious rites are revolting in theextreme, and I believe that it may be the practice of these ritesthrough ages that has brought the race to its present condition ofimbecility.
"And yet, as I said, they are not without some redeeming qualities.If legend may be credited, their forebears--a little handful ofmen and women who came from somewhere out of t
he north and becamelost in the wilderness of central Africa--found here only a barrendesert valley. To my own knowledge rain seldom, if ever, fallshere, and yet you have seen a great forest and luxuriant vegetationoutside of the city as well as within. This miracle is accomplishedby the utilization of natural springs which their ancestors developed,and upon which they have improved to such an extent that the entirevalley receives an adequate amount of moisture at all times.
"Ago told me that many generations before his time the forest wasirrigated by changing the course of the streams which carried thespring water to the city but that when the trees had sent theirroots down to the natural moisture of the soil and required nofurther irrigation, the course of the stream was changed and othertrees were planted. And so the forest grew until today it coversalmost the entire floor of the valley except for the open spacewhere the city stands. I do not know that this is true. It may bethat the forest has always been here, but it is one of their legendsand it is borne out by the fact that there is not sufficient rainfallhere to support vegetation.
"They are peculiar people in many respects, not only in their formof worship and religious rites but also in that they breed lionsas other people breed cattle. You have seen how they use some ofthese lions but the majority of them they fatten and eat. At first,I imagine, they ate lion meat as a part of their religious ceremonybut after many generations they came to crave it so that now it ispractically the only flesh they eat. They would, of course, ratherdie than eat the flesh of a bird, nor will they eat monkey's meat,while the herbivorous animals they raise only for milk, hides,and flesh for the lions. Upon the south side of the city are thecorrals and pastures where the herbivorous animals are raised.Boar, deer, and antelope are used principally for the lions, whilegoats are kept for milk for the human inhabitants of the city."
"And you have lived here all these years," exclaimed the girl,"without ever seeing one of your own kind?"
The old woman nodded affirmatively.
"For sixty years you have lived here," continued Bertha Kircher,"and they have not harmed you!"
"I did not say they had not harmed me," said the old woman, "theydid not kill me, that is all."
"What"--the girl hesitated--"what," she continued at last, "wasyour position among them? Pardon me," she added quickly, "I thinkI know but I should like to hear from your own lips, for whateveryour position was, mine will doubtless be the same."
The old woman nodded. "Yes," she said, "doubtless; if they can keepyou away from the women."
"What do you mean?" asked the girl.
"For sixty years I have never been allowed near a woman. They wouldkill me, even now, if they could reach me. The men are frightful,God knows they are frightful! But heaven keep you from the women!"
"You mean," asked the girl, "that the men will not harm me?"
"Ago XXV made me his queen," said the old woman. "But he had manyother queens, nor were they all human. He was not murdered for tenyears after I came here. Then the next king took me, and so it hasbeen always. I am the oldest queen now. Very few of their women liveto a great age. Not only are they constantly liable to assassinationbut, owing to their subnormal mentalities, they are subject toperiods of depression during which they are very likely to destroythemselves."
She turned suddenly and pointed to the barred windows. "You seethis room," she said, "with the black eunuch outside? Whereveryou see these you will know that there are women, for with veryfew exceptions they are never allowed out of captivity. They areconsidered and really are more violent than the men."
For several minutes the two sat in silence, and then the youngerwoman turned to the older.
"Is there no way to escape?" she asked.
The old woman pointed again to the barred windows and then to thedoor, saying: "And there is the armed eunuch. And if you shouldpass him, how could you reach the street? And if you reached thestreet, how could you pass through the city to the outer wall? Andeven if, by some miracle, you should gain the outer wall, and, byanother miracle, you should be permitted to pass through the gate,could you ever hope to traverse the forest where the great blacklions roam and feed upon men? No!" she exclaimed, answering herown question, "there is no escape, for after one had escaped fromthe palace and the city and the forest it would be but to invitedeath in the frightful desert land beyond.
"In sixty years you are the first to find this buried city. Ina thousand no denizen of this valley has ever left it, and withinthe memory of man, or even in their legends, none had found themprior to my coming other than a single warlike giant, the story ofwhom has been handed down from father to son.
"I think from the description that he must have been a Spaniard,a giant of a man in buckler and helmet, who fought his way throughthe terrible forest to the city gate, who fell upon those who weresent out to capture him and slew them with his mighty sword. Andwhen he had eaten of the vegetables from the gardens, and the fruitfrom the trees and drank of the water from the stream, he turnedabout and fought his way back through the forest to the mouth ofthe gorge. But though he escaped the city and the forest he didnot escape the desert. For a legend runs that the king, fearfulthat he would bring others to attack them, sent a party after himto slay him.
"For three weeks they did not find him, for they went in the wrongdirection, but at last they came upon his bones picked clean bythe vultures, lying a day's march up the same gorge through whichyou and I entered the valley. I do not know," continued the oldwoman, "that this is true. It is just one of their many legends."
"Yes," said the girl, "it is true. I am sure it is true, for I haveseen the skeleton and the corroded armor of this great giant."
At this juncture the door was thrown open without ceremony and aNegro entered bearing two flat vessels in which were several smallerones. These he set down on one of the tables near the women, and,without a word, turned and left. With the entrance of the manwith the vessels, a delightful odor of cooked food had aroused therealization in the girl's mind that she was very hungry, and ata word from the old woman she walked to the table to examine theviands. The larger vessels which contained the smaller ones wereof pottery while those within them were quite evidently of hammeredgold. To her intense surprise she found lying between the smallervessels a spoon and a fork, which, while of quaint design, were quiteas serviceable as any she had seen in more civilized communities.The tines of the fork were quite evidently of iron or steel, thegirl did not know which, while the handle and the spoon were ofthe same material as the smaller vessels.
There was a highly seasoned stew with meat and vegetables, a dishof fresh fruit, and a bowl of milk beside which was a little jugcontaining something which resembled marmalade. So ravenous was shethat she did not even wait for her companion to reach the table,and as she ate she could have sworn that never before had she tastedmore palatable food. The old woman came slowly and sat down on oneof the benches opposite her.
As she removed the smaller vessels from the larger and arrangedthem before her on the table a crooked smile twisted her lips asshe watched the younger woman eat.
"Hunger is a great leveler," she said with a laugh.
"What do you mean?" asked the girl.
"I venture to say that a few weeks ago you would have been nauseatedat the idea of eating cat."
"Cat?" exclaimed the girl.
"Yes," said the old woman. "What is the difference--a lion is acat."
"You mean I am eating lion now?"
"Yes," said the old woman, "and as they prepare it, it is verypalatable. You will grow very fond of it."
Bertha Kircher smiled a trifle dubiously. "I could not tell it,"she said, "from lamb or veal."
"No," said the woman, "it tastes as good to me. But these lionsare very carefully kept and very carefully fed and their flesh isso seasoned and prepared that it might be anything so far as tasteis concerned."
And so Bertha Kircher broke her long fast upon strange fruits, lionmeat, and goat's milk.
Scarcely had she
finished when again the door opened and thereentered a yellow-coated soldier. He spoke to the old woman.
"The king," she said, "has commanded that you be prepared and broughtto him. You are to share these apartments with me. The king knowsthat I am not like his other women. He never would have dared toput you with them. Herog XVI has occasional lucid intervals. Youmust have been brought to him during one of these. Like the restof them he thinks that he alone of all the community is sane, butmore than once I have thought that the various men with whom I havecome in contact here, including the kings themselves, looked uponme as, at least, less mad than the others. Yet how I have retainedmy senses all these years is beyond me."
"What do you mean by prepare?" asked Bertha Kircher. "You saidthat the king had commanded I be prepared and brought to him."
"You will be bathed and furnished with a robe similar to that whichI wear."
"Is there no escape?" asked the girl. "Is there no way even inwhich I can kill myself?"
The woman handed her the fork. "This is the only way," she said,"and you will notice that the tines are very short and blunt."
The girl shuddered and the old woman laid a hand gently upon hershoulder. "He may only look at you and send you away," she said."Ago XXV sent for me once, tried to talk with me, discoveredthat I could not understand him and that he could not understandme, ordered that I be taught the language of his people, and thenapparently forgot me for a year. Sometimes I do not see the kingfor a long period. There was one king who ruled for five yearswhom I never saw. There is always hope; even I whose very memoryhas doubtless been forgotten beyond these palace walls still hope,though none knows better how futilely."
The old woman led Bertha Kircher to an adjoining apartment inthe floor of which was a pool of water. Here the girl bathed andafterward her companion brought her one of the clinging garmentsof the native women and adjusted it about her figure. The materialof the robe was of a gauzy fabric which accentuated the roundedbeauty of the girlish form.
"There," said the old woman, as she gave a final pat to one of thefolds of the garment, "you are a queen indeed!"
The girl looked down at her naked breasts and but half-concealedlimbs in horror. "They are going to lead me into the presence ofmen in this half-nude condition!" she exclaimed.
The old woman smiled her crooked smile. "It is nothing," she said."You will become accustomed to it as did I who was brought up inthe home of a minister of the gospel, where it was considered littleshort of a crime for a woman to expose her stockinged ankle. Bycomparison with what you will doubtless see and the things thatyou may be called upon to undergo, this is but a trifle."
For what seemed hours to the distraught girl she paced the floorof her apartment, awaiting the final summons to the presence of themad king. Darkness had fallen and the oil flares within the palacehad been lighted long before two messengers appeared with instructionsthat Herog demanded her immediate presence and that the old woman,whom they called Xanila, was to accompany her. The girl felt someslight relief when she discovered that she was to have at leastone friend with her, however powerless to assist her the old womanmight be.
The messengers conducted the two to a small apartment on the floorbelow. Xanila explained that this was one of the anterooms offthe main throneroom in which the king was accustomed to hold courtwith his entire retinue. A number of yellow-tunicked warriors satabout upon the benches within the room. For the most part theireyes were bent upon the floor and their attitudes that of moodydejection. As the two women entered several glanced indifferentlyat them, but for the most part no attention was paid to them.
While they were waiting in the anteroom there entered from anotherapartment a young man uniformed similarly to the others with theexception that upon his head was a fillet of gold, in the front ofwhich a single parrot feather rose erectly above his forehead. Ashe entered, the other soldiers in the room rose to their feet.
"That is Metak, one of the king's sons," Xanila whispered to thegirl.
The prince was crossing the room toward the audience chamber whenhis glance happened to fall upon Bertha Kircher. He halted in histracks and stood looking at her for a full minute without speaking.The girl, embarrassed by his bold stare and her scant attire, flushedand, dropping her gaze to the floor, turned away. Metak suddenlycommenced to tremble from head to foot and then, without warningother than a loud, hoarse scream he sprang forward and seized thegirl in his arms.
Instantly pandemonium ensued. The two messengers who had been chargedwith the duty of conducting the girl to the king's presence danced,shrieking, about the prince, waving their arms and gesticulatingwildly as though they would force him to relinquish her, thewhile they dared not lay hands upon royalty. The other guardsmen,as though suffering in sympathy the madness of their prince, ranforward screaming and brandishing their sabers.
The girl fought to release herself from the horrid embrace of themaniac, but with his left arm about her he held her as easily asthough she had been but a babe, while with his free hand he drewhis saber and struck viciously at those nearest him.
One of the messengers was the first to feel the keen edge ofMetak's blade. With a single fierce cut the prince drove throughthe fellow's collar bone and downward to the center of his chest.With a shrill shriek that rose above the screaming of the otherguardsmen the man dropped to the floor, and as the blood gushedfrom the frightful wound he struggled to rise once more to his feetand then sank back again and died in a great pool of his own blood.
In the meantime Metak, still clinging desperately to the girl,had backed toward the opposite door. At the sight of the blood twoof the guardsmen, as though suddenly aroused to maniacal frenzy,dropped their sabers to the floor and fell upon each other withnails and teeth, while some sought to reach the prince and someto defend him. In a corner of the room sat one of the guardsmenlaughing uproariously and just as Metak succeeded in reaching thedoor and taking the girl through, she thought that she saw anotherof the men spring upon the corpse of the dead messenger and buryhis teeth in its flesh.
During the orgy of madness Xanila had kept closely at the girl'sside but at the door of the room Metak had seen her and, wheelingsuddenly, cut viciously at her. Fortunately for Xanila she washalfway through the door at the time, so that Metak's blade butdented itself upon the stone arch of the portal, and then Xanila,guided doubtless by the wisdom of sixty years of similar experiences,fled down the corridor as fast as her old and tottering legs wouldcarry her.
Metak, once outside the door, returned his saber to its scabbardand lifting the girl bodily from the ground carried her off in theopposite direction from that taken by Xanila.