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DAUGHTER OF THE NIGHT
By RICHARD S. SHAVER
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: The evil magic of the Goddess Diana turned men to stone.Would the power of the strange Eos be strong enough to turn them back toliving men?]
Like a flash of light the gleaming sword swept down]
Like a flash of light the gleaming sword swept down. A fraction of asecond later a portion of it no longer gleamed: it was crimson! AndQueen Dionaea's head bounced down the stairway into her garden of liveoaks. A few seconds of thought remained to it before it would be verydead; but her thought was confused by shock--her eyes rolleduncontrollably while she tried to remember some cantrap or rune from herlong association with the Goddess Diana. Desperately she tried to recitethe proper abracadabra to stay the swift death that was sweeping throughher mind; but it is hard for a head to chant a charm with no body todraw a breath....
Druga, his job of execution finished, sheathed his bloody sword andturning, stalked away. Thus it was that he did not see the amazing thingthat happened in the gloom of the ancient live oaks....
Baena was a serpent, a huge river of strength up to his giant head, andhe lived among the mighty branches of the oaks. Being a serpent, Baenawas far from equal to a human being in his brainpower, but even his dimperception told him that harm had come to his one and onlybenefactress--and that meant harm to him, too, for Queen Dionaea hadalways cared for the needs of his stomach. Through her he ate and lived.Without her, he would die. And so, he glided rapidly down from the trunkof his favorite tree and emerged into the paths of the garden just asDionaea's bleeding head rolled out from the base of the steps.
Baena coiled his length protectingly about Dionaea. For an instant hewas at a loss, noting her horribly desperate attempts to speak withoutbreath, her mouth opening and closing and her tongue licking snake-likein and out.
Baena realized after a moment that there was no hope for the Queen to goon living. A head must have a body.
Glancing about, Baena saw nothing but the numerous coils of _his ownbody_, and after an instant's hesitation, he took his tail in his mouthup to the tenth joint and bit it off! Shrinking along all his lengthwith the terrible necessity that faced him, Baena quickly slapped thebloody stump of his tail fast to the bleeding neck of Dionaea and saidone of the few magic spells he could remember....
* * * * *
Turning his body slowly until his severed nerves told his spine that theconnections were as accurate as could be expected, Baena waited whilethe spell slowly took effect. He lay there all night, waiting for hisown life's blood to reanimate the mind of Dionaea.
As Dionaea came back to her senses, Baena began to experience thestrange phenomena of wanting to go two ways at once, and as thephenomena became more and more troublesome, he decided that he hadbetter have an understanding with Dionaea once and for all. But whatpoor male ever won an argument with a woman?
Thus it was that Baena resigned himself to a life of traveling backward,and that was that.
As a snake, he wished only to eat and bask in his favorite tree, but asDionaea, he wanted only one thing--and that with all the fervor of hatea sorceress is capable of--a fitting revenge on the man who had visitedher execution upon her!
Day and night Dionaea plotted, and in her mind a fitting revengegrew--it would include the lovely Feronia, Druga's beloved.... Carefullyshe prepared the incantation.
It is here that my story really begins. What has happened, and how ithappened is of little consequence to what is to come--except perhaps tointroduce you to the characters. It is very simple. Dionaea was a veryevil sorceress, and Druga, most heroic of men, had long sought to bringher into his power, and to end her evil days. Armed with the white magicof Feronia, his loved one, who was also a sorceress, but one who workedher charms only for the good of mankind, he had tracked Dionaea to hercastle, and there slain her. Or he would have, had it not been forBaena, the serpent....
What is past is past. It is best not to think of it. There is much inthe past of all of us that would need a long, tiresome explanation to anewcomer, and you are newcomers. To explain all of the past to everyonewould be an impossible task. You need know only that Druga, champion ofmankind, and his lovely Feronia, face now the most awful menace of theirlives, and unknowing of it, too, for thinking their arch enemy slain!
Where do all our characters live? In Fantasia, a land far away. A landwhere wondrous things always happen. It is of one of the most wondrousadventures of all that you are about to hear now--let the past lie, coldand dead as it is, and come with me into the present, and into _danger_!
Who am I? Does it make any difference? If you must know, I am the RedDwarf, and I have seen and recorded _everything_! I was there, and ifyou can but understand, everything has happened _because_ I was there!If it were not so, how could you be sure what I tell is true? For it_is_ true....
* * * * *
It was evening. As Druga and Feronia sat talking, before retiring, thehorror fell upon them.
Feronia's hair fell like a living torrent to fondle her gleamingshoulders and toy everywhere with the strangely electric invisiblevitality of her glowing skin. Her eyes were molten pools, dark andliquid as the waters of the lost caverns, and the brows above them weremystic lines of beauty left by the touch of a raven wing. Her generousmouth was smiling the wondrous lovely magic that was Feronia, red as anew-born rose, dewy and waiting for Druga. Her capable hands were softwith expecting him, and cooler than the moss beneath the fern.
Her breasts were as naked as sun-bleached coral, white as a cloud in asummer sky, white as truth, white as her own teeth laughingtantalizingly at him.
Quite suddenly, shockingly, her lovely figure became transfused with avile, interloping energy that struck at Druga's sensitivities with asickening piercingness, so that he sprang to his feet in fear.
Standing there helplessly, Druga watched the evil energy transform thestrong, deep breasted beauty of his Feronia, change her devilishly andsubtly and gradually before his suffering eyes.
The white magic of her body became transfused with dark, throbbingforce, and as she strove to rise and act, Druga saw that she could notmove her limbs in any way!
Before his eyes her skin turned black as ebony, her eyes became stonyand fixed; even the sweet curling of her hair became hard and solid, herwhole body became changed to black, hated stone.
As suddenly as the horrible pulsing had come, it went away, leavingDruga that least of all desirable women, one of virtuous stone.
So with one stroke Dionaea repaid Druga and Feronia; Druga by the lossof his best beloved, and Feronia by the retention of her faculties in abody of stone. That Feronia had to sit immovable and watch poor Druga inhis grief and loss was particularly excruciating.
Days of horror dragged by.
No matter what he proposed to do upon arising, mid-morning found himreclining before the frozen statue-like body of his beloved, and nightwould come down at last to hide the black stone of Feronia from his weteyes.
This existence became at last unbearable, and he resolved to go out intothe world and seek some means of making his days less horrible to him.That Feronia was not dead, and that he might have obtained her releaseby appealing to some greater power, did not occur to Druga in his grief.Indeed he could never become accustomed to the ways of witches and theiroverlords, nor to thinking in terms of magic at all.
He was a logicalperson, and no matter what wonders he blundered into and saw with hisown eyes, he never quite believed any of it.
It was with a heavy heart that Druga sealed up the doors of Feronia'shome and made his sad way to the stable, mounted and rode slowly away.
* * * * *
All night he rode, not choosing his way, but letting the horse do thethinking, and in the warm sun of late morning lay down to sleep wherethe horse had led him.
As the days passed in heedless wandering, the deep hurt of his losslessened, and he began to take note of the road that led ever on and onto he knew not what, except that it beckoned, as paths and highwaysalike have a way of doing to the traveler.
As his spirits became lighter, he began to take stock of the countrythrough which he passed, and to note all the strange and curious thingsthat hovered always just outside normal vision. They were not hiddenfrom Druga, who had more than ordinary vision, one of Feronia's witchgifts to him, and many a strange fact of life he picked up from thecircumambient apparent emptiness.
It was with this far-seeing sense that Druga now noticed a glowing,golden vibrance spreading an invisible, but terrifically felt glory, allacross the northern horizon. He turned the horse's head toward thatglory, no more able to avoid the decision than is a moth the flame.
What it was that he sensed he did not surely know, but his memorysupplied him with vague and haunting clues which he could not quite dragout into the light of reason. It did not stand to reason, but there itwas ahead, the lure of woman augmented by some magic into a gloryvisible as sunlight, strong as some great whirlpool of energy, drawinghim resistlessly on and on.
Many a mile later, Druga came to a point where he could see with hiseyes on ahead and into the shining core of that field of goldenvibrance.
"One of the universal poles of life!" cried Druga. In his studies Drugahad learned that just as the world has a North and South magnetic pole,so does the universe have opposite poles of life-magnetic-energy. One ofthese is female, and inducts in all life a female nature; the other ismale and inducts in all life a male nature, just as the North and Southpole induct in all iron and in kindred matter a North and South magneticpole.
"It is no wonder it draws me, it is the force which makes all lifeattractive to all other life...."
Druga knew that there was no use his trying to resist the attraction anymore than a compass could resist pointing north. So he rode onward intothe glory, musing that it was strange this universal pole of infinitespace should, in its drifting, have crossed his own path upon thisplanet.
As he neared the center of the increasing ecstasy, Druga's mind and bodybecame cleaned of all desires but one, and that was to reach the exactcenter and there remain. Along with others, his affection for Feroniawas burned away, leaving him helpless in the grip of this emotiongreater by far than any other.
Glory, golden ecstatic glory, poured through him in a titanic flood, andnearer and nearer he came to the shining central core of the mightyfield of universal energy.
* * * * *
As he came at last to clear vision of the core, he saw floating there avast, circular disk of golden hue, and upon the disk a tremendousmansion. Beneath the disk was only the shining golden air, and it cameto Druga that this mansion must be a singularly pleasant place to live.He cast about for some means of lifting himself across the space ofnothingness that separated the dull earth and the shining plane of thedisk. So near to the delightful power that drew, and yet so impossibleto get nearer because of the nothingness between him and the disk, Drugaat last rode on beneath and on to the very center of the shiningdarkness beneath the great disk.
Now he was truly at the pole and dynamic source of female magneticattraction! Shaking in every fibre with the blasting force of theterrific center of this universal power, Druga stood, a moth caught upin a whirlpool too great to understand or withstand; and he would havedied there after a time, unable to move from the spot.
But overhead the great disk suddenly showed a light, a beam of ruby redthat laddered down to him through the golden murk of energy, and abovethat beam of ruby light he made out a shining form that beckoned to him.Trying to answer the invitation, Druga put out a hand to the red beaconand found it solid to his touch, a rod of crystal, thick as a man's bodyand with hand-holds and foot-steps hewn into it. He got off the horseand ascended the weird ladder toward the shining being who beckoned.
A woman divinely tall and with hair like ripened wheat, modelled ofhammered sunlight, her glowing flesh surcharged with the infinite femaleenergies of the Universal Pole, met him at the topmost step of theladder.
He stepped out into the halls of the mansion by her side, unable tospeak with the ecstasy that poured from her. For such was the nature ofthat disk, that it concentrated the magnetic flow of the Pole field sothat it emanated solely from the body of this woman.
She drew a robe of the purest blue about her glowing body, to insulateand screen off the terrific irresistible force. His mind speculatedconstantly and intriguingly on what would happen to him if she shoulddesire him and cast off this protective robe?
* * * * *
So thinking, Druga walked beside her vital beauty, noting the deeplagoons of her eyes upon him, curious, blue as the sea, shaded by longlashes of dusky amber shielding from him some deep wisdom that she mustkeep from him just yet. Try as he might he could not plumb the swirlingdepths within her mind. Reach as he would he could find there nothing toread but pictured vastnesses of strange beauty and violent passionsstrongly withheld, nooks and crannies of mysterious, unreadable thoughtfar beyond his understanding to interpret. His senses turned away fromthe inner mysterious glory of her mind, and his eyes came to rest on herlips, crimson arches riper than tropic flowers, moist as with desire,wide and capable and smiling upon him with a woman's will to captivatetwinkling all along the crimson outline of her smile. Behind her lipsher teeth gleamed, almost avid, parted in a hunger that he did not thencare to understand. Her breasts were ripe and full, beneath the blue,shielding robe, her waist a column of cunningly tapered ivory roundinginto hips and thighs of masterful curves, moving with mysterious womanmagic beneath the vaguely transparent shimmer of her robe.
Druga stared into the blue lagoons of her eyes, and at last asked whatwas closest to his heart.
"Who and what are you, who lives here at the summit of female attractionin all the universe?"
"In ancient times, many were the men who were alive enough to sense thispole and come questing to me as the moth to the flame. But in thesetimes, who are you to sense the mighty energy of the Universal Pole andbe drawn here to me?"
"I am Druga, and I am sad and bereft, and I wander seeking death as muchas life. If the name tells you anything, you are welcome to theinformation. I am no immortal. Are you then one of those who do notdie?"
"I have been called by many names in the past, but men sometimesremember me as Aurora. Others have called me Eos."
"A fool is easily convinced, immortal Eos. But though I have not livedlong, I have learned that appearances are deceiving and not to betrusted. How do I know that I am not out of my mind, and this place andyourself but delusions?"
"You _are_ in a state, aren't you? You must tell me all about it; therewill be plenty of time. For there is no way for a man to leave here ofhis own will."
"What became of all those visitors you tell me came here in the oldtime?"
Eos laughed loudly, a clear ringing laugh.
"Perhaps you had better worry about that, Druga! What do you supposecould have happened to them?"