9. PHORENICE, GODDESS
Now the passage, though its entrance had been cunningly hidden by man'sartifice, was one of those veins in which the fiery blood of our mother,the Earth, had aforetime coursed. Long years had passed since it carriedlava streams, but the air in it was still warm and sulphurous, and therewas no inducement to linger in transit. I lit me a lamp which I foundin an appointed niche, and walked briskly along my ways, coughing, andwishing heartily I had some of those simples which ease a throat thathas a tendency to catarrh. But, alas! all that packet of drugs whichwere my sole spoil from the vice-royalty of Yucatan were lost in thesea-fight with Dason's navy, and since landing in Atlantis there hadbeen little enough time to think for the refinements of medicine.
The network of earth-veins branched prodigiously, and if any but one ofus Seven Priests had found a way into its recesses by chance, he wouldhave perished hopelessly in the windings, or have fallen into one ofthose pits which lead to the boil below. But I carried the chart of thetrue course clearly in my head, remembering it from that old initiationof twenty years back, when, as an appointed viceroy, I was raised to thehighest degree but one known to our Clan, and was given its secrets andworking implements.
The way was long, the floor was monstrous uneven, and the air, as I havesaid, bad; and I knew that day would be far advanced before the signstold me that I had passed beneath the walls, and was well withinthe precincts of the city. And here the vow of the Seven hampered myprogress; for it is ordained that under no circumstances, whatever thestress, shall egress be made from this passage before mortal eye. Onebranch after another did I try, but always found loiterers near theexits. I had hoped to make my emergence by that path which came insidethe royal pyramid. But there was no chance of coming up unobserved here;the place was humming like a hive. And so, too, with each of thefive next outlets that I visited. The city was agog with some strangeexcitement.
But I came at last to a temple of one of the lesser Gods, and stoodbehind the image for a while making observation. The place was empty;nay, from the dust which robed all the floors and the seats of theworshippers, it had been empty long enough; so I moved all that wasneedful, stepped out, and closed all entry behind me. A broom layunnoticed on one of the pews, and with this I soon disguised all routeof footmark, and took my way to the temple door. It was shut, and priestthough I was, the secret of its opening was beyond me.
Here was a pretty pass. No one but the attendant priests of the templecould move the mechanism which closed and opened the massive stone whichfilled the doorway; and if all had gone out to attend this spectacle,whatever it might be, that was stirring the city, why there I should beno nearer enlargement than before.
There was no sound of life within the temple precincts; there wereevidences of decay and disuse spread broadcast on every hand; butaccording to the ancient law there should be eternally one at least onwatch in the priests' dwellings, so down the passages which led to themI made my way. It would have surprised me little to have found eventhese deserted. That the old order was changed I knew, but I was onlythen beginning to realise the ruthlessness with which it had been sweptaway, and how much it had given place to the new.
However, there can be some faithful men remaining even in an age ofgeneral apostasy, and on making my way to the door of the dwelling(which lay in the roof of the temple) I gave the call, and presently itwas opened to me. The man who stood before me, peering dully throughthe gloom, had at least remained constant to his vows, and I made thesalutation before him with a feeling of respect.
His name was Ro, and I remembered him well. We had passed through thesacred college together, and always he had been known as the dullard.He had capacity for learning little of the cult of the Gods, less ofthe arts of ruling, less still of the handling of arms; and he had beenappointed to some lowly office in this obscure temple, and had risen tobeing its second priest and one of its two custodians merely through thedesertion of all his colleagues. But it was not pleasant to think that afool should remain true where cleverer men abandoned the old beliefs.
Ro did before me the greater obeisance. He wore his beard curled in theprevailing fashion, but it was badly done. His clothing was ill-fittingand unbrushed. He always had been a slovenly fellow. "The temple dooris shut," he said, "and I only have the secret of its opening. My lordcomes here, therefore, by the secret way, and as one of the Seven. I ammy lord's servant."
"Then I ask this small service of you. Tell me, what stirs the city?"
"That impious Phorenice has declared herself Goddess, and declares thatshe will light the sacrifice with her own divine fire. She will do it,too. She does everything. But I wish the flames may burn her when shecalls them down. This new Empress is the bane of our Clan, Deucalion,these latter days. The people neglect us; they bring no offerings; andnow, since these rebels have been hammering at the walls, I might havegone hungry if I had not some small store of my own. Oh, I tell you, thecult of the true Gods is well-nigh oozed quite out of the land."
"My brother, it comes to my mind that the Priests of our Clan have beenlimp in their service to let these things come to pass."
"I suppose we have done our best. At least, we did as we were taught.But if the people will not come to hear your exhortations, and neglectto adore the God, what hold have you over their religion? But I tellyou, Deucalion, that the High Gods try our own faith hard. Come into thedwelling here. Look there on my bed."
I saw the shape of a man, untidily swathed in reddened bandages.
"This is all that is left of the poor priest that was my immediatesuperior in this cure. It was his turn yesterday to celebrate the weeklysacrifice to our Lord the Sun with the circle of His great stones.Faugh! Deucalion, you should have seen how he was mangled when theybrought him back to me here."
"Did the people rise on him? Has it come to that?"
"The people stayed passive," said Ro bitterly, "what few of them hadinterest to attend; but our Lord the Sun saw fit to try His ministersomewhat harshly. The wood was laid; the sacrifice was disposed upon itaccording to the prescribed rites; the procession had been formed roundthe altar, and the drums and the trumpets were speaking forth, to letall men know that presently the smoke of their prayer would be waftedup towards Those that sit in the great places in the heavens. But then,above the noise of the ceremonial, there came the rushing sound ofwings, and from out of the sky there flew one of those great featherlessman-eating birds, of a bigness such as seldom before has been seen."
"An arrow shot in the eye, or a long-shafted spear receives them best."
"Oh, all men know what they were taught as children, Deucalion; butthese priests were unarmed, according to the rubric, which ordains thatthey shall intrust themselves completely to the guardianship of theHigh Gods during the hours of sacrifice. The great bird swooped down,settling on the wood pyre, and attacked the sacrifice with beak andtalon. My poor superior here, still strong in his faith, called loudlyon our Lord the Sun to lend power to his arm, and sprang up on the altarwith naught but his teeth and his bare arms for weapons. It may bethat he expected a miracle--he has not spoke since, poor soul, inexplanation--but all he met were blows from leathery wings, and rakingsfrom talons which went near to disembowelling him. The bird brushed himaway as easily as we could sweep aside a fly, and there he lay bleedingon the pavement beside the altar, whilst the sacrifice was torn andeaten in the presence of all the people. And then, when the bird wasglutted, it flew away again to the mountains."
"And the people gave no help?"
"They cried out that the thing was a portent, that our Lord the Sunwas a God no longer if He had not power or thought to guard His ownsacrifice; and some cried that there was no God remaining now, andothers would have it that there was a new God come to weigh on thecountry, which had chosen to take the form of a common man-eating bird.But a few began to shout that Phorenice stood for all the Gods now inAtlantis, and that cry was taken up till the stones of the greatcircle rang with it. Some may have made proclamat
ions because they wereconvinced; many because the cry was new, and pleased them; but I am surethere were not a few who joined in because it was dangerous to leavesuch an outburst unwelcomed. The Empress can be hard enough to those whoneglect to give her adulation."
"The Empress is Empress," I said formally, "and her name carriesrespect. It is not for us to question her doings."
"I am a priest," said Ro, "and I speak as I have been taught, and defendthe Faith as I have been commanded. Whether there is a Faith any longer,I am beginning to doubt. But, anyway, it yields a poor enough livelihoodnowadays. There have been no offerings at this temple this five monthspast, and if I had not a few jars of corn put by, I might have starvedfor anything the pious of this city cared. And I do not think that theaffair of that sacrifice is likely to put new enthusiasm into our coldvotaries."
"When did it happen?"
"Twenty hours ago. To-day Phorenice conducts the sacrifice herself.That has caused the stir you spoke about. The city is in the throes ofgetting ready one of her pageants."
"Then I must ask you to open the temple doors and give me passage. Imust go and see this thing for myself."
"It is not for me to offer advice to one of the Seven," said Rodoubtfully.
"It is not."
"But they say that the Empress is not overpleased at your absence," hemumbled. "I should not like harm to come in your way, Deucalion," hesaid aloud.
"The future is in the hands of the most High Gods, Ro, and I at leastbelieve that They will deal out our fates to each of us as They in Theirinfinite wisdom see best, though you seem to have lost your faith. Andnow I must be your debtor for a passage out through the doors. Plagues!man, it is no use your holding out your hand to me. I do not own a coinin all the world."
He mumbled something about "force of habit" as he led the way downtowards the door, and I responded tartly enough about the unpleasantnessof his begging customs. "If it were not for your sort and your customs,the Priests' Clan would not be facing this crisis to-day."
"One must live," he grumbled, as he pressed his levers, and the massivestone in the doorway swung ajar.
"If you had been a more capable man, I might have seen the necessity,"said I, and passed into the open and left him. I could never bringmyself to like Ro.
A motley crowd filled the street which ran past the front of thisobscure temple, and all were hurrying one way. With what I had beentold, it did not take much art to guess that the great stone circle ofour Lord the Sun was their mark, and it grieved me to think of how manyvenerable centuries that great fane had upreared before the weather andthe earth tremors, without such profanation as it would witness to-day.And also the thought occurred to me, "Was our Great Lord above drawingthis woman on to her destruction? Would He take some vast and final actof vengeance when she consummated her final sacrilege?"
But the crowd pressed on, thrilled and excited, and thinking little(as is a crowd's wont) on the deeper matters which lay beneath the barespectacle. From one quarter of the city walls the din of an attack fromthe besiegers made itself clearly heard from over the house, and thetemples and the palaces intervening, but no one heeded it. They hadgrown callous, these townsfolk, to the battering of rams, and the flightof fire-darts, and the other emotions of a bombardment. Their nerves,their hunger, their desperation, were strung to such a pitch that littleshort of an actual storm could stir them into new excitement over thesiege.
All were weaponed. The naked carried arms in the hopes of meeting someone whom they could overcome and rob; those that had a possession walkedready to do a battle for its ownership. There was no security, no trust;the lesson of civilisation had dropped away from these common people asmud is washed from the feet by rain, and in their new habits and theirthoughts they had gone back to the grade from which savages like thoseof Europe have never yet emerged. It was a grim commentary on thesuccess of Phorenice's rule.
The crowd merged me into their ranks without question, and with them Ipressed forward down the winding streets, once so clean and trim, now sofoul and mud-strewn. Men and women had died of hunger in these streetsthese latter years, and rotted where they lay, and we trod their bonesunderfoot as we walked. Yet rising out of this squalor and this miserywere great pyramids and palaces, the like of which for splendour andmagnificence had never been seen before. It was a jarring admixture.
In time we came to the open space in the centre of the city, which evenPhorenice had not dared to encroach upon with her ambitious buildingschemes, and stood on the secular ground which surrounds the mostancient, the most grand, and the breast of all this world's temples.
Since the beginning of time, when man first emerged amongst the beasts,our Lord the Sun has always been his chiefest God, and legend says thatHe raised this circle of stones Himself to be a place where votariesshould offer Him worship. It is the fashion amongst us moderns not totake these old tales in a too literal sense, but for myself, this onesatisfies me. By our wits we can lift blocks weighing six hundred men,and set them as the capstones of our pyramids. But to uprear the stonesof that great circle would be beyond all our art, and much more wouldit be impossible to-day, to transport them from their distant quarriesacross the rugged mountains.
There were nine-and-forty of the stones, alternating with spaces, andset in an accurate circle, and across the tops of them other stones wereset, equally huge. The stones were undressed and rugged; but the hugemassiveness of them impressed the eye more than all the temples anddaintily tooled pyramids of our wondrous city. And in the centre of thecircle was that still greater stone which formed the altar, and roundwhich was carved, in the rude chiselling of the ancients, the snake andthe outstretched hand.
The crowd which bore me on came to a standstill before the circle ofstones. To trespass beyond this is death for the common people; and formyself, although I had the right of entrance, I chose to stay where Iwas for the present, unnoticed amongst the mob, and wait upon events.
For long enough we stood there, our Lord the Sun burning high andfiercely from the clear blue sky above our heads. The din of the rebels'attack upon the walls came to us clearly, even above the gabble of themultitude, but no one gave attention to it. Excitement about what was tobefall in the circle mastered every other emotion.
I learned afterways that so pressing was the rebels' attack, and sodestructive the battering of their new war engines, that Phorenice hadgone off to the walls first to lend awhile her brilliant skill for itsrepulse, and to put heart into the defenders. But as it was, the day hadburned out to its middle and scorched us intolerably, before the noiseof the drums and horns gave advertisement that the pageant had formed inprocession; and of those who waited in the crowd, many had fainted withexhaustion and the heat, and not a few had died. But life was cheap inthe city of Atlantis now, and no one heeded the fallen.
Nearer and nearer drew the drums and the braying of the other music,and presently the head of a glittering procession began to arrive anddispose itself in the space which had been set apart. Many a thousandpoor starving wretches sighed when they saw the wanton splendour of it.But these lords and these courtiers of this new Atlantis had no concernbeyond their own bellies and their own backs, except for their one alienregard--their simpering affection for Phorenice.
I think, though, their loyalty for the Empress was real enough, andit was not to be wondered at, since everything they had came from herlavish hands. Indeed, the woman had a charm that cannot be denied, forwhen she appeared, riding in the golden castle (where I also had ridden)on the back of her monstrous shaggy mammoth, the starved sullen facesof the crowd brightened as though a meal and sudden prosperity had beenbestowed upon them; and without a word of command, without a trace ofcompulsion, they burst into spontaneous shouts of welcome.
She acknowledged it with a smile of thanks. Her cheeks were a littleflushed, her movements quick, her manner high-strung, as all wellmight be, seeing the horrible sacrilege she had in mind. But she wasundeniably lovely; yes, more adorably beautiful than ever wit
h herpresent thrill of excitement; and when the stair was brought, and shewalked down from the mammoth's back to the ground, those near fellto their knees and gave her worship, out of sheer fascination for herbeauty and charm.
Ylga, the fan-girl, alone of all that vast multitude round the Suntemple contained herself with her formal paces and duties. She lookedpained and troubled. It was plain to see, even from the distance whereI stood, that she carried a heavy heart under the jewels of her robe.It was fitting, too, that this should be so. Though she had been longenough divorced from his care and fostered by the Empress, Ylga wasa daughter of Zaemon, and he was the chiefest of our Lord the Sun'sministers here on earth. She could not forget her upbringing now atthis supreme moment when the highest of the old Gods was to be formallydefied. And perhaps also (having a kindness for Phorenice) she was not alittle dreadful of the consequences.
But the Empress had no eye for one sad look amongst all that sea ofglowing faces. Boldly and proudly she strode out into the circle, asthough she had been the duly appointed priest for the sacrifice. Andafter her came a knot of men, dressed as priests, and bearing thevictim. Some of these were creatures of her own, and it was easy toforgive mere ignorant laymen, won over by the glamour of Phorenice'spresence. But some, to their shame, were men born in the Priests' Clan,and brought up in the groves and colleges of the Sacred Mountain, andfor their apostasy there could be no palliation.
The wood had already been stacked on the altar-stone in the due formrequired by the ancient symbolism, and the Empress stood aside whilstthose who followed did what was needful. As they opened out, I saw thatthe victim was one of the small, cloven-hoofed horses that roam theplains--a most acceptable sacrifice. They bound its feet with metalgyves, and put it on the pyre, where, for a while, it lay neighing. Thenthey stepped aside, and left it living. Here was an innovation.
The false priests went back to the farther side of the circle, andPhorenice stood alone before the altar. She lifted up her voice, sweet,tuneful, and carrying, and though the din of the siege still came fromover the city, no ear there lost a word of what was spoken.
She raised her glance aloft, and all other eyes followed it. The heavenwas clear as the deep sea, a gorgeous blue. But as the words came fromher, so a small mist was born in the sky, wheeling and circling like aball, although the day was windless, and rapidly growing darker and morecompact. So dense had it become, that presently it threw a shadow onpart of the sacred circle and soothed it into twilight, though allwithout where the people stood was still garish day. And in the ball ofmist were little quick stabs and splashes of noiseless flame.
She spoke, not in the priests' sacred tongue--though such was her wickedcleverness, that she may very well have learned it--but in the commonspeech of the people, so that all who heard might understand; and shetold of her wondrous birth (as she chose to name it), and of thedirect aid of the most High Gods, which had enabled her to work so manymarvels. And in the end she lifted both of her fair white arms towardsthe blackness above, and with her lovely face set with the strain ofwill, she uttered her final cry:
"O my high Father, the Sun, I pray You now to acknowledge me as Yourvery daughter. Give this people a sign that I am indeed a child of theGods and no frail mortal. Here is sacrifice unlit, where mortal priestswith their puny fires had weekly, since the foundation of this land,sent savoury smoke towards the sky. I pray You send down the heavenlyfire to burn this beast here offered, in token that though You stillrule on high, You have given me Atlantis to be my kingdom, and thepeople of the Earth to be my worshippers."
She broke off and strained towards the sky. Her face was contorted. Herlimbs shook. "O mighty Father," she cried, "who hast made me a God andan equal, hear me! Hear me!"
Out of the black cloud overhead there came a blinding flash of light,which spat downwards on to the altar. The cloven-hoofed horse gave oneshrill neigh, and one convulsion, and fell back dead. Flames crackledout from the wood pile, and the air became rich with the smell ofburning flesh. And lo! in another moment the cloud above had melted intonothingness, and the flames burnt pale, and the smoke went up in a thinblue spiral towards the deeper blueness of the sky.
Phorenice, the Empress, stood there before the great stone, and beforethe snake and the outstretched hand of life which were inscribed uponit, flushed, exultant, and once more radiantly lovely; and the knot ofpriests within the circle, and the great mob of people without, fell tothe ground adoring.
"Phorenice, Goddess!" they cried. "Phorenice, Goddess of all Atlantis!"
But for myself I did not kneel. I would have no part in this apostasy,so I stood there awaiting fate.