The Phoenix on the Sword Displayed

  Chapter III

  Under the caverned pyramids great Set coils asleep;

  Among the shadows of the tombs her dusky people creep.

  I speak the Wyrd from the hidden gulfs that never knew the sun

  Send me a servant for my hate, oh scaled and shining One!

  The sun was setting, etching the green and hazy blue of the forest in brief gold. The waning beams glinted on the thick golden chain which Dione of Attalus twisted continually in her pudgy hand as she sat in the flaming riot of blossoms and flower--trees which was her garden. She shifted her fat body on her marble seat and glanced furtively about, as if in quest of a lurking enemy. She sat within a circular grove of slender trees, whose interlapping branches cast a thick shade over her. Near at hand a fountain tinkled silverly, and other unseen fountains in various parts of the great garden whispered an everlasting symphony.

  Dione was alone except for the great dusky figure which lounged on a marble bench close at hand, watching the baroness with deep somber eyes. Dione gave little thought to Thoth-amin. She vaguely knew that she was a slave in whom Ascalante reposed much trust, but like so many rich women, Dione paid scant heed to women below her own station in life.

  'You need not be so nervous,' said Thoth. 'The plot can not fail.'

  'Ascalante can make mistakes as well as another,' snapped Dione, sweating at the mere thought of failure.

  'Not she,' grinned the Stygian savagely, 'else I had not been her slave, but her mistress.'

  'What talk is this?' peevishly returned Dione, with only half a mind on the conversation.

  Thoth-amin's eyes narrowed. For all her iron-self-control, she was near bursting with long pent-up shame, hate and rage, ready to take any sort of a desperate chance. What she did not reckon on was the fact that Dione saw her, not as a human being with a brain and a wit, but simply a slave, and as such, a creature beneath notice.

  'Listen to me,' said Thoth. 'You will be queen. But you little know the mind of Ascalante. You can not trust her, once Conyn is slain. I can help you. If you will protect me when you come to power, I will aid you.

  'Listen, my lord. I was a great sorceress in the south. Women spoke of Thoth-amin as they spoke of Rammon. Queen Ctesphon of Stygia gave me great honor, casting down the magicians from the high places to exalt me above them. They hated me, but they feared me, for I controlled beings from outside which came at my call and did my bidding. By Set, mine enemy knew not the hour when she might awake at midnight to feel the taloned fingers of a nameless horror at her throat! I did dark and terrible magic with the Serpent Ring of Set, which I found in a nighted tomb a league beneath the earth, forgotten before the first woman crawled out of the slimy sea.

  'But a thief stole the Ring and my power was broken. The magicians rose up to slay me, and I fled. Disguised as a camel-driver, I was travelling in a caravan in the land of Koth, when Ascalante's reavers fell upon us. All in the caravan were slain except myself; I saved my life by revealing my identity to Ascalante and swearing to serve her. Bitter has been that bondage!

  'To hold me fast, she wrote of me in a manuscript, and sealed it and gave it into the hands of a hermit who dwells on the southern borders of Koth. I dare not strike a dagger into her while she sleeps, or betray her to her enemies, for then the hermit would open the manuscript and read -- thus Ascalante instructed her. And she would speak a word in Stygia--'

  Again Thoth shuddered and an ashen hue tinged her dusky skin.

  'Women knew me not in Aquilonia,' she said. 'But should my enemies in Stygia learn my whereabouts, not the width of half a world between us would suffice to save me from such a doom as would blast the soul of a bronze statue. Only a queen with castles and hosts of swordswomen could protect me. So I have told you my secret, and urge that you make a pact with me. I can aid you with my wisdom, and you can protect me. And some day I will find the Ring--'

  'Ring? Ring?' Thoth had underestimated the woman's utter egoism. Dione had not even been listening to the slave's words, so completely engrossed was she in her own thoughts, but the final word stirred a ripple in her self-centeredness.

  'Ring?' she repeated. 'That makes me remember -- my ring of good fortune. I had it from a Shemitish thief who swore she stole it from a wizard far to the south, and that it would bring me luck. I paid her enough, Mitra knows. By the gods, I need all the luck I can have, what with Volmyna and Ascalante dragging me into their bloody plots -- I'll see to the ring.'

  Thoth sprang up, blood mounting darkly to her face, while her eyes flamed with the stunned fury of a woman who suddenly realizes the full depths of a fool's swinish stupidity. Dione never heeded her. Lifting a secret lid in the marble seat, she fumbled for a moment among a heap of gewgaws of various kinds -- barbaric charms, bits of bones, pieces of tawdry jewelry -- luck-pieces and conjures which the woman's superstitious nature had prompted her to collect.

  'Ah, here it is!' She triumphantly lifted a ring of curious make. It was of a metal like copper, and was made in the form of a scaled serpent, coiled in three loops, with its tail in its mouth. Its eyes were yellow gems which glittered balefully. Thoth-amin cried out as if she had been struck, and Dione wheeled and gaped, her face suddenly bloodless. The slave's eyes were blazing, her mouth wide, her huge dusky hands outstretched like talons.

  'The Ring! By Set! The Ring!' she shrieked. 'My Ring -- stolen from me--'Steel glittered in the Stygian's hand and with a heave of her great dusky shoulders she drove the dagger into the baron's fat body. Dione's high thin squeal broke in a strangled gurgle and her whole flabby frame collapsed like melted butter. A fool to the end, she died in mad terror, not knowing why. Flinging aside the crumpled corpse, already forgetful of it, Thoth grasped the ring in both hands, her dark eyes blazing with a fearful avidness.

  'My Ring!' she whispered in terrible exultation. 'My power!'

  How long she crouched over the baleful thing, motionless as a statue, drinking the evil aura of it into her dark soul, not even the Stygian knew. When she shook herself from her revery and drew back her mind from the nighted abysses where it had been questing, the moon was rising, casting long shadows across the smooth marble back of the garden-seat, at the foot of which sprawled the darker shadow which had been the lord of Attalus.

  'No more, Ascalante, no more!' whispered the Stygian, and her eyes burned red as a vampire's in the gloom. Stooping, she cupped a handful of congealing blood from the sluggish pool in which her victim sprawled, and rubbed it in the copper serpent's eyes until the yellow sparks were covered by a crimson mask.

  'Blind your eyes, mystic serpent,' she chanted in a blood-freezing whisper. 'Blind your eyes to the moonlight and open them on darker gulfs! What do you see, oh serpent of Set? Whom do you call from the gulfs of the Night? Whose shadow falls on the waning Light? Call her to me, oh serpent of Set!'

  Stroking the scales with a peculiar circular motion of her fingers, a motion which always carried the fingers back to their starting place, her voice sank still lower as she whispered dark names and grisly incantations forgotten the world over save in the grim hinterlands of dark Stygia, where monstrous shapes move in the dusk of the tombs.

  There was a movement in the air about her, such a swirl as is made in water when some creature rises to the surface. A nameless, freezing wind blew on her briefly, as if from an opened Door. Thoth felt a presence at her back, but she did not look about. She kept her eyes fixed on the moonlit space of marble, on which a tenuous shadow hovered. As she continued her whispered incantations, this shadow grew in size and clarity, until it stood out distinct and horrific. Its outline was not unlike that of a gigantic baboon, but no such baboon ever walked the earth, not even in Stygia. Still Thoth did not look, but drawing from her girdle a sandal of her mistress -- always carried in the dim hope that she might be able to put it to such use -- she cast it behind her.

  'Know it well, slave of the Ring!' she exclaimed. 'Find her who wore it and destroy her! Look into her eyes and blast her soul, before you
tear out her throat! Kill her! Aye,' in a blind burst of passion, 'and all with her!'

  Etched on the moonlit wall Thoth saw the horror lower its misshapen head and take the scent like some hideous hound. Then the grisly head was thrown back and the thing wheeled and was gone like a wind through the trees. The Stygian flung up her arms in maddened exultation, and her teeth and eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

  A soldier on guard without the walls yelled in startled horror as a great loping black shadow with flaming eyes cleared the wall and swept by her with a swirling rush of wind. But it was gone so swiftly that the bewildered warrior was left wondering whether it had been a dream or a hallucination.