CHAPTER IV
THE SISTER STARS
For five long days we travelled slowly and toilfully on our way from thevalley of Cuzco to that other where Golden Star lay sleeping beside thelake. Over high plains and pleasant valleys, through deep, dark gorgesand ravines, to whose lowest depths the sun but seldom reaches, and thenbut for an hour or two, along narrow pathways cut into the living rockon the mountain side, with precipices on one hand falling thousands offeet into the dark abysses, where the torrents roared and foamed, and onthe other the great rock-walls of the mountain soaring up into the skyyet more thousands of feet above us.
I saw the mighty crests of Saljantai and Umantai rising snow-crownedfrom earth to heaven, unchanged in their eternal grandeur since thelong-distant day on which I had last beheld them. I rode with saddenedheart past the ruins of Lima Tambo, remembering how fair and stately acity it had been in the days before the plunderer and the oppressorcame. We toiled slowly over the great, sharp-ridged range which partsthe waters of the Vilcamayo from those of the Apurimac--the 'GreatSpeaker'--then, descending again by the gorge of the river which is nowcalled the Rio de la Banca, we came to the long bridge which swings inmid-air from rock to rock across the chasm through which the GreatSpeaker rolls his swift, roaring flood.
Its cables were loosened and its floorway broken, for, like all thingselse in the land, the Spaniards had suffered it to fall well nigh toruin; and, as I led Joyful Star across it by the hand, I thought of whatit had been in the olden times, when not a rope or a stick was sufferedto be out of place, and when the Son of the Sun had been borne across itin his golden travelling litter, with long processions of his adoringpeople going before and behind him, strewing his way with flowers, andwaking the echoes of these gloomy gorges with the melody of their songsand laughter.
From here we journeyed on, ever facing the setting sun, for two daysmore, still winding higher and higher up into the mountains, until atlength, on the third evening, I, riding alone many yards in front ofthe others, found the sign that I was looking for--a rock with threeseats carved on the top of it--and turned my mule from the track androde over the rough, stony ground up the side of the mountain until whatlooked from the road a single rock-built peak opened into two. Ibeckoned to the others to follow me, and when they came up I said to theprofessor,--
'Do you know where you are now? Have you ever been here before?'
He looked about him and shook his head, saying,--
'This may have been the place where we got off the road when my mulegave out, but I don't recognise it. Do you mean that we are near thevalley?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Do you not remember seeing yonder two peaks from theshore of the lake near where you found me?'
He looked at them for a moment, and then said,--
'Yes, I remember them; but they don't look the same, and I don't believeI could find my way back into the valley from here to save my life. It'svery strange how I can have forgotten it so completely.'
I smiled as he said this, knowing that I had brought them purposely manymiles out of the way by which he had found the valley by accident, forI had no desire that the way should be known to any but myself and thoseI had chosen from among the remnant of the Children of the Blood. Then Ibade them follow me again, and once more rode on alone ahead, for, asyou may well believe, I was too full of my own thoughts and hopes andfears to be in any mood for conversation, even with Joyful Star herself.They, too, talked but little, and as we rode on in the deepening gloomamid the solemn silence and the gaunt grandeur of the mountains, theirwords became fewer and fewer, till at length thought took the place ofspeech, and the silence was broken by no sound save the patter of themules' feet and the rattle of stones under their iron-shod hoofs.
Hour after hour I led them on, turning from valley to valley on the roadthat was visible only to my own eyes, and ever rising higher and highertowards the twin peaks that now stood out dark and sharp against thestarry sky. At last, when our watches were nearly marking ten o'clock, Istopped before a cliff covered with bushes and creeping grasses, andcalling Tupac to me, I bade him seek for an opening under these.
He groped about among the bushes for a while, and then suddenly, with ashort cry of surprise, he vanished, as it seemed, through the face ofthe rock itself. I dismounted and followed him, and found him standingbehind the bushes, facing a square doorway cut in the rock and linedwith masonry. Behind it, and closing it completely, was a great slab ofdressed stone. Down the sides of the doorway were two square pillars ofstone, and in the middle of one, to the left hand, three little lineshad been cut about a finger's breadth apart, but so faintly that onlyone who knew they were there could find them.
I stretched a string across from the middle one of these to theright-hand pillar, and where the string ended in the centre of thepillar I felt with my finger-tips and found a little circle about as biground as an English two-shilling piece. Tupac had in his hand the ironrod that I had used on the Rodadero. I took it from him, and, pressingthe end against the circle, told him to push with me, and, to hiswonder, the rod sank, seemingly, into the solid stone, forcing out abolt which had been fitted so cunningly into the pillar that the end ofit looked no more than a circle traced on the face of it.
When we had pushed the rod in about six inches I bade Tupac help me topull it round towards the door. The pillar turned on a central hinge aswe did so, and the great stone slab swung back by its own weight, whichwe had thus released, opening the entrance to a tunnel high enough for aman to walk through erect. This tunnel sloped somewhat sharply upwards,and looking up it I could see, shining in the clear sky beyond the upperentrance, the stars that I knew were reflected in the still waters ofthe little lake by which Golden Star was sleeping the sleep out of whichwe had come to wake her.
As the passage was not large enough for the mules to go through withtheir burdens, I bade my men unload them and carry their loads throughinto the valley. Then we followed, leading our own animals by thebridle, and after us the cargo-mules were driven through. The load ofone of them was a long, narrow case of wood like that in which theprofessor had taken my own dead body to London, but this was thickly andsoftly padded inside with wool, and lined with white linen, and at oneend was a little pillow of the softest down, on which the head of GoldenStar would soon be resting.
As soon as we were all standing outside the upper mouth of the tunnel Ilooked at Joyful Star and said,--
'Is not this a fitting resting-place even for the daughter of kings? Arenot the stars bright in the heavens and on the bosom of the lake? Arenot the mountains great, and strong, and silent? Do they not guard hercouch well, and does not the snowy peak of Umantai yonder point thestraight way to the Mansions of the Sun, where the soul of Golden Staris even now waiting for the arts of your brother to call it back toearth as he called mine?'
'Yes,' she said, looking about her, first at the stars and then at thevast shapes of the mountains which loomed huge and dim on every side.'Yes, Vilcaroya, it is a good place for sleep, but--is not the worldbeyond a good place to wake in? Have _you_ not found it so?'
I caught the gleam of her eyes in the starlight as she looked towards mesaying this, and, by the glory of the Sun, had we stood alone where wewere, I might have forgotten all save the knowledge that I was thelawful lord of all this land, and that she was there in the midst of itwith me. For the instant I had gone back to my old life, with all itsold-world thoughts and customs, and then, before I could answer her, mydreaming soul was called back to the present by the cold, quiet voice ofher brother saying,--
'I don't think that very many would find the world an unpleasant placeto wake in, either for the first or second time, if they could also wakeup lord of illimitable treasures as Vilcaroya here has done. But come,Your Highness, and you, professor, it is getting late. Don't you thinkit is time to be thinking about camping?'
The matter-of-fact words scattered my dreams in an instant, and I wokefrom them into the present. I bade Tupac have the animals tethered a
ndfed, and the tents we had brought with us pitched in the most shelteredplace he could find; and while they were doing this, and Djama and theothers were busy seeing that the work was done to their satisfaction, Iwent to Ruth and said--my words, which I strove so hard to keep steady,trembling with I know not how many mingled passions,--
'Will Joyful Star come with me and see the place where her sister andmine is lying, waiting to come forth and greet her?'
'Your sister, Vilcaroya?' she said, turning her face up to me so thatthe starlight shone upon its fairness and lost itself in the lustrousdepths of her eyes. 'Do you mean your sister only--not--your--'
'No,' I said, 'not my wife, for I have thought upon your words andpondered them deeply; and though they wounded me sorely at first, yetnow I see that they were wise and just, like all the other words thatJoyful Star has spoken to me. I have learned that lesson, like manyothers which you have taught me. That bridal of ours is already to me adream of the long-lost past, the vision of a time that is dead and apeople that is no more. When Golden Star wakes, if she ever does, I willgreet her as a sister and a friend, as one of my own people who hascome back to me out of my own times, and she shall help me in the workthat I swore with her to do--but that is all; and I will find others ofthe Blood who shall sit upon the restored throne of my ancestors, and bethe parents of the generations of Incas that shall come after me.'
'What do you mean, Vilcaroya?' she said, in a voice that was half angryand half fearful. 'Do you mean--no, I cannot say it--for I am sure youdo not mean that.'
'How could that be?' I answered, guessing her meaning. 'Is it not _you_who have taught me the ways and thoughts of the world into which I havecome back? No, what I mean is that I am not the only one now alive inwhose veins the old blood of the Incas flows. Tupac, yonder, is the sonof the son of the son of that Tupac-Amaru who died torn asunder in thesquare of Cuzco, because he had dared to raise the Rainbow Banner in theLand of the Four Regions, and called the Children of the Sun to revoltagainst their oppressors. He, more blessed than I who am his lord, hasboth wife and child, and if the prophecy is to be fulfiled, and I am toreign in the City of the Sun, then I will take his firstborn andinstruct him in all the lore of our people and the duties of theirruler, and if he proves worthy he shall wear the Llautu after me.'
She looked up at me again as I ceased speaking, just one swift, brightglance that seemed to pierce to the most secret depths of my soul, andread the unuttered thoughts that were hidden there, thoughts which I didnot dare to speak even to myself in the loneliest hour of my musings.Then she looked down again, and side by side we walked in silence roundthe shore of the lake until I stopped in front of a great black cliffthat jutted out from the mountain side and hung impending over the dark,still waters of the lake. I pointed into the black shadows in which itsbase was hidden, and said,--
'There lies Golden Star, and there I lay beside her through all the longyears that were to pass from the night when I pledged my troth with herbefore the Altar of the Sun until this night when I stand with you,Joyful Star, a new being in a new world, before her resting-place.'
'Is it really true?' she said, stopping as she spoke, and staringstraight before her into the darkness. 'Is it really true that you, whoare standing alive and strong here beside me, lay there under that greatrock for all those years, while ten generations of men and women wereborn, and lived and died, and the whole world changed again and again?And is the Golden Star lying in there now really the Golden Star youhave told me so much of, and I have thought about until she seems to memore like some living friend that I have known and loved, than a deadbody that has been in the grave for more than three hundred years? Is itreally true, Vilcaroya, or have we all only been dreaming some wilddream, like that Frankenstein story that I was telling you the otherday?'
As she spoke she laid her hand for a moment upon my arm, as though tosatisfy herself that I was really made of human flesh and blood, and nota phantom standing beside her in the starlit darkness.
Scarce knowing what I did, I laid my own hand, warm and strong and firm,upon hers. For an instant I felt it tremble beneath mine. I would havegiven all the boundless wealth that I knew was mine for the courage toclose upon it a grasp that it could not have escaped if it would. Myheart seemed to swell as though it would burst in my breast, my tinglingblood ran fire, and wild words rose choking to my lips. Then her handslipped away from under mine. Once more I saw her eyes shine in thestarlight, and then I knew that I had learned the last and greatestlesson that Joyful Star could teach me.
I knew now why to think of Golden Star as my wife and my queen, filledme with the same untold horror which I had heard that night thrill inthe tones of her who stood beside me, for now I--the son of a lost raceand a long-past age--loved this daughter of the new time. For good orevil, for hope or despair, I was hers until I went again, and for thelast time, into the shadows through which I had already passed, andthen--yes, there he was, this tall, stalwart, golden-haired son of herown race and her own time, whose eyes I had seen looking love into hers!
He was coming towards us round the lake with his long, easy, swingingstrides, this man who was already my friend, and who would one day bethe captain of my armies. For one blind moment of madness I thought howcompletely I had him and the others in my power; of the lonely, unknownvalley where we stood; of the men who were already my slaves, and wholooked upon me as a god. I thought, too, of the dark, deep waters of thelake, and the secrets that they held for me alone. How well they couldhide others for me, too! What if Golden Star never awoke? Would she notbe as well lying there in the peace of her endless sleep as coming backinto the world, perhaps to love in vain and to suffer as I was doomed tosuffer?
The shadowy forms of the mountains began to waver and reel around me;the stars danced up and down in the sky, and a red mist seemed to swimbefore my eyes. Then, through the hoarse, dull murmur that was soundingin my ears, I heard the sweet, low voice of Joyful Star saying,--
'Ah, Captain Hartness, I suppose you have been wondering what had becomeof us! I am afraid I have been neglecting my household duties, and youhave been attending to them for me, but really I could not resist cominghere with Vilcaroya. Look, that is where Golden Star is lying, in a caveunder that great rock down there where those dark shadows are. Doesn'tit look cold and lonely and eerie?'
'Yes,' he answered, with a laugh that did not sound to me like his own.'But I don't suppose that matters very much now to Her Highness any morethan it did to Vilcaroya. But, to descend to less romantic matters, Ihave come to tell you that the affairs of our temporary household arealready in order, supper is ready, and we are all ravenously hungry, andI suppose you are about the same. This mountain air puts an edge onone's appetite like a razor's.'
'Supper--yes, I had forgotten all about it, thinking of poor Golden Starlying there all alone in the darkness. Of course, I am desperatelyhungry, now that you remind me of it. Come, Vilcaroya, I am sure you arehungry too. Another night alone won't matter much to poor Golden Starafter all these years. You can dream of her to-night, as I suppose weall shall, and to-morrow we shall see her. Oh, how I wonder what shewill be really like!'
As Joyful Star said this in a voice that was half sad and half merry,she turned away towards Francis Hartness, and I followed her with somelight words on my lips and many heavy thoughts in my heart, and wewalked together to the tents, talking of the things that were to be doneon the morrow.
The next morning I was afoot before the stars had begun to pale in thecoming dawn. I had not slept for two hours together through the night,yet, waking and sleeping, many dreams had come to me. I had been back tothe past among my people, living again that strange old life, with allits light and colour and gaiety, which was now every day becoming moreand more like a vision that had been told to me by some other dreamer.
I had talked with Golden Star, seeking to teach her the lesson that mydear instructress of the new time had taught me, and had awakened halfmad with the perplexities of my divided
love--the love of the past thatwas dead and of the present that was alive. I had seen my sister-bridecome forth out of her tomb to greet me, clothed in her bridal robes,with the dust of the grave in her hair and on her face. I had claspedher in my longing arms and kissed the dust from her lips, and while Iyet held her in my embrace her form had grown cold and stiff again.Then, in the agony of my sorrow, I had strained her to my breast, and,under the pressure of my arms, she had crumbled in my grasp and fallen,a little heap of grey bones and dusty garments, at my feet.
Once more I had awakened with my gasping cry of horror still sounding inmy ears, and then, not daring to seek sleep again, I had risen and goneout to watch for the rest of the night before her grave under the rock.There they found me when they came from the camp at daybreak. I wentback with them, and our hasty morning meal was eaten and drunk almost insilence, for we were all too busy with our thoughts to have leisure forconversation, and my friends, knowing how much that day's work must meanto me, respected my unspoken feelings, and left me to the silent companyof my own hopes and fears.
Breakfast over, we took our lanterns and tools and went to the rock,followed by Tupac and two of my men carrying the coffin-like case inwhich Golden Star's body was to be laid. Under the rock was a long heapof loose stones which the professor had wisely piled up in front of theupright courses of masonry through which he had broken into myresting-place. He scanned them eagerly to see if they had beendisturbed since his visit, and told us that they had not. Then I badeTupac and the men clear them away, which they speedily did, laying barethe courses of stone behind them, still standing as the professor hadre-built them after taking out my body.
A few minutes' more work opened a passage large enough for a man to walkin, stooping. As if by a common instinct they all stepped aside andlooked at me. I saw what they meant, and, turning the light of mylantern into the entrance, I walked back, a living man, into the gravewhere I had lain dead while ten generations of men had lived and died. Isaw the place where I had lain, for a few mouldering scraps and shredsof cloth and furs still lay where my bed had been. Then I flashed mylantern round the walls of the cavern, and on the side along which myown couch had been spread by Anda-Huillac and his brother priests Ifound what they had told me to seek while I was preparing to fulfil theoath that I had sworn with Golden Star.
It was a wedge of stone fitted in to a crevice in the wall and leftrough and jagged at its outer end, so that one who did not know its truepurpose would have taken it to be nothing more than a natural projectionin the rough side of the cavern.
With a mallet that I had brought with me I struck the end of the wedgesoftly above and below until it was loosened in its socket. Then,standing to one side, I struck it harder. It dropped from its place, andthe same instant a part of the cavern wall swayed outwards and fell witha rumbling crash across the floor.
For a moment I stood breathless and motionless on the threshold ofGolden Star's grave. Then, with trembling hands, I turned the light ofmy lantern into the inner chamber, and as the dust that the fallingstone had raised fell slowly back to the ground I saw through theparticles dancing in the lantern rays the dim outline of a human formlying on a couch of skins.
Still, not daring to set a foot within that sacred place, I stood in thedoorway and let the light fall full upon the figure. A glance showed methat so far all was well. No profaning hand had disturbed the peace andsanctity of her long slumber. She lay there as perfect in form andfeature as she had lain beside me that night in the little chamber inthe Sanctuary of the Sun.
Then I thought of Joyful Star. Hers should be the first eyes after mineto look upon that dead loveliness. So I turned and went out to wherethey were all standing round the outer entrance, and, taking no noticeof the others, replying nothing to their half-whispered questions, Iwent to Ruth and, holding out my hand for her, said,--
'Come, Joyful Star, and see the sister that the Lord of Life made longago in the image that you now wear.'
She said nothing, but, with a look of wondering question, put her handinto mine and I turned to lead her to the entrance.
Djama, with a sudden exclamation, took a step forward as though he wouldstop her, but Francis Hartness put his hand on his shoulder, saying,--
'I think you had better let them go alone. There is no fear for yoursister with all of us here so near; and if what Vilcaroya says is true,why should she not see her first?'
Djama drew back, though with no very good grace, and I went into theinner chamber, helping Ruth over the fallen stones. Then I flashed mylight on Golden Star's face and said,--
'Did I not tell you truly that the Lord of Life made her in the sameimage as yours?'
I heard her utter a little gasping cry of wonder, and then I saw herslip forward on to her knees beside Golden Star's pillow, and as thelight fell upon the two faces--the living and the dead--the likenessbetween them was so perfect, save for the golden gleam of Joyful Star'shair and the lustrous blackness of the tresses that framed my deadlove's face, that they seemed to me as sisters, one watching over theslumbers of the other.
'It is more than wonderful, and it is surely more than chance!' saidJoyful Star, in a tone that was almost a whisper, and turning towards meher white face and the eyes into which the loving tears of pity werealready springing. 'Why did you not tell me of this before, Vilcaroya?'
'Because,' I said, 'the arts of the priests might not have done for herwhat they did for me, and I might have found here that which your eyesshould never have looked upon. But now--is she not beautiful, even asyou are?'
The bright blood came swiftly back into her cheeks as I said this, and,without answering me she stooped, and with gentle hands put back thetresses from Golden Star's forehead, and, bending over her, laid herwarm, sweet lips on the cold, smooth brow that I had last seen crownedwith the marriage-garland in our bridal chamber in the Sanctuary.