CHAPTER II
Eos led him into a great feasting chamber, and Druga saw there a greathost of men sitting, as to a feast, side by side.
Each one of them was of solid black stone. The fact struck Druga's mindwith a terrible impact. With a face like thunder he said:
"So it was you who turned my Feronia to stone, to drag me here to you byyour spells, and then when you tire of me to turn me likewise intostone?"
The woman recoiled from his murderous rage, crying out in a shockedvoice, a voice of virtue unjustly accused:
"Surely you don't think that I had anything to do with this? These menare the curse an enemy has put upon me; and every creature that I everloved she has turned into stone soon or late and left me here aloneforever. There is no cruelty like the cruelty of Diana Triformis."
The rage passed slowly from Druga, and left him weak and glad that hishands had not found their way to that glorious throat, as they hadseemed about to do. For here was a woman who had suffered the same lossas he.
"Eos, we must take thought together, for it seems we have a commonenemy. My own Feronia, a woman such as was only created by the Gods oncein all Time, was turned into similar black stone before my eyes not longago. We have a common enemy, and we must find a remedy for this curseshe puts upon us. Else I will go through life as you have gone, witheverything pleasant removed from it."
The artful eyes of Eos softened, and that mystery living in their depthslightened, her arms became soft pillars of the temple of her beauty asshe lowered herself into the big chair at the head of that gloomyfeasting board of death. Druga picked up the big body of one of thestone figures, carried it lightly to the side of the hall, and set itthere on a bench. Then he took the vacant place at the board beside thequeen of the palace of the dead.
Druga related to Eos all the events that had transpired since thelopping off of Dionaea's head. She surmised, as did he, that this deedwas the one that had led Diana to turn the spell of the black stoneloose upon Druga as upon Eos.
"There must be found a way of turning the spells of this Goddess intoharmless attempts," said Druga. "We cannot sit here and wait for hercruelty to work us greater harm. What can we do?"
"I have had long long years to plan a revenge upon her, but nothing Ihave been able to do has had any effect," Eos said.
* * * * *
The desire that Druga could no more help than he could help breathing,looking upon the pole of all desire that shone its energies through theflesh of Eos, now spoke, and Druga said with a tongue that was thick:
"Then, Eos, the very next time that Diana happens to think of you, I toowill become stone, and if we are to have joy of each other, we hadbetter have it soon, before I become as these others you have loved."
Eos looked at him sadly, her lips glistening with an unearthly dew andher eyes shining like chained lightnings.
"It was that thought that betrayed me every time, Druga. Each of thosemen said much those same words to me when he learned the fate thatawaited him, and for each of them my heart turned to water and we spentour time in dalliance instead of spending our energies trying toovercome the work of my enemy.
"For each of them I tried to give all there was of pleasure while theyyet had breath, as one tries to give water to a man about to die offever. I was only that much more hurt by their death--for such giving ofthe self opens one to the deepest pangs of parting.
"That is the agony Diana designed for me, and she has done this to mesince that time I brought a young man to her island that was sacred toher only. This time, Druga, there will be none of that for us; we willtry some other medicine than love for each other against this evil.Work, we will try!"
"There speaks my dead Feronia," murmured Druga, sadly. And for thoughtof her he forgot to feel the denial of his desire for the body of thiswoman, a body filled with the energies of the whole Universal Pole offemale magnetism. That he should lose that glory was nothing beside thepang he felt at thought of Feronia; and the wise Eos smiled to note thatthis man had not forgotten his love even in the face of her infiniteattraction.
"If we went back to Feronia's home, might it not be that her work wouldgive you some inkling of how Diana might be overcome?" Druga wasthoughtful.
"I can only try," Eos answered him. "We will go there. I will examineher work and her notes, and you will show me her laboratories that Ihave heard of even here. Together, we might get an answer."
* * * * *
Eos got up from the board, and went to a small chamber at the edge ofthe disk. There her hands sent the disk slanting upward into the sky. Asthey left the center of the pole of animal magnetism, Eos' body and facechanged subtly. Druga was released from the power of the pole'sattraction, and whether that was a good thing or not he could not say,except that every atom of his body wanted to return there to that placeand remain.
"How is it, Eos, that the pole does not repel your female nature as itattracts the male? Would it not repel an ordinary woman so that shecould not approach it?"
"In that you are wrong, Druga. The nature of this life-energy is not thesame as ordinary iron magnetism. Like poles do not repel, but areunaffected. It is in fact only invigorating to me, making me stronger.So it would be if you were at the other end of the universe. At the malepole you would be vastly invigorated, not repelled. Do you understand?"
"It is only sad that the poles lie at opposite ends of the universe,"murmured Druga, looking askance at Eos.
"Whatever might you be thinking, Druga? If such power arced between manand woman they would be consumed!"
"But what a death, what a death," murmured Druga. Her sudden laughterrang through the hall of death incongruously, and at the sound they fellsilent again and did not speak for thinking of the corpses waiting therefor what would never come.
"How many men has Diana and her friends killed through the years? Enoughto populate a couple of planets, I should say?"
"Diana? With her bow and arrows alone she used to account for a goodmany; and later, as she learned more evil arts, there was no recordkept. She has been a most evil goddess, yet men worship her."
"Why? A goddess that kills a man for seeing her is a fiend! And hermaidens may not see a man, either. It is a strange life she leads, for atrue woman. She must be other than female."
"That could be, Druga," murmured Eos.
* * * * *
The morning sun glittered from the streams and from the little glassfoot-bridge that shimmered magically across and up in a great arc to thedoor in the side of the cliff. Eos sighed at the beauty.
"This wife of yours was a housekeeper, I note, with an eye for art."
"Her art and her work were always first, Eos. She was an uncommon hardwoman to get used to, but she made a man of me."
"That I can see," agreed Eos, and Druga looked at her twice to know whatshe meant. "You owe everything to Feronia, according to you, and nothingto yourself."
"Very little, Goddess. But I do not exaggerate, she was...."
"Well, never mind it now. I grow weary of Feronia this and Feronia that.I will judge for myself whether she understood you or no."
"She was extremely understanding," said Druga.
* * * * *
Days passed, and much hard work, Eos studying the laboratory notes ofFeronia, and Druga himself reading them over and trying to think of someway he himself might strike back at their mutual enemy.
"Nothing that she has developed can be used directly against Dianawithout her surviving to fight back. This would have been fatal toDionaea, but after all, as you have said--she is dead."
"She ought to be dead, I cut her head off!"
"That usually does the trick."
They decided to leave the laboratory the next morning, and that eveningDruga picked up the stone statue of his Feronia and carried it carefullyaboard the disk, placing her there--one woman among the thousand-odddead heroes o
f the long dead past. Druga sadly made a place for her atthe head of the board. He did not think of it, but Feronia now sat whereEos herself had spent many a sad hour, sitting and gazing at her deadlovers.
With the stone Feronia gone, the vast and multiplex-walled chambers ofmystery and magic assumed a new atmosphere, and Druga found himselftalking to Eos that night as if he was not a man whose heart was dead.
She sat in the place from which he had removed the black stone body ofFeronia, and Druga could not help but compare the glowing life of herwith the dead thing that had sat there.
The hammered sunlight of her hair made curls and waves of beauty aboutthe white shores of her shoulders. She had let the robe of insulativeblue drop from her, exposing the very heart of her beauty he had fearedto see when she was herself filled with the flow of the Pole of LifeEnergy. And Druga wondered a little whether she were not still somehowthe center and pivot of the energy, for his senses reeled with looking,and his will crumbled into forgotten ashes. He sank to the silken couchbeside her, and his eyes burned with flashing energies like meteorsplunging into the Northern lights.
Eos held her breath, and her eyes burned into his with greater andgreater force, for she had been dreaming and weeping and waiting thereat the Pole-of-all-Life for so many cold empty years--waiting for thecurse to be lifted so that she could begin to live again.
* * * * *
With the last shred of her own will Eos murmured: "Let us go into thedisk and leave at once for Armora, and think no more of each other orsurely we will sink into the raptures we desire and forget to fight.Then I will awake and find you too turned into stone, and myself againalone against her. I have been unable to fight alone."
"If that is your will, do not fail to shield your beauty with that robeyou wear. For I cannot resist the power in your loveliness any more thana straw in the wind!"
Eos closed the robe against his gaze, and like two people weighted downwith lead in every limb, they got up and went out of the darkenedchambers, and Druga closed the great doors and locked them. Silently,not touching each other, they walked down the bridge of glass.
They entered the mansion on the disk, and Eos sent it sharply upward.There was blood on her lower lip where she had bit it, and Druga's nailshad bitten into his palms.
Druga noted that the great golden glow in the sky had approached near tothe valley that Feronia had made her home, and he said:
"This pole of life seems to follow you about! Is there some relationbetween you and it, so that you cannot be apart?"
Eos looked at him, smiling sadly, her eyes far-off with other thoughts.
"I have been taught, in the far past, that there was a Mother of Life, areal woman, mighty and majestic beyond thinking, who lived there at thepole and ordered life to be as it should be. That she is my ancestor,and that there is some relation between the life energies and myself,may be true, Druga. Whether the pole follows me, or whether coincidenceis governed by some magic so that we are never far apart, I know not.Knowledge is a thing now lost from life, as we know it, Druga. We canonly guess at these truths, and never learn them surely."
"Now you are not telling me all you know, Eos."
"I would not tell you what I only guess, Druga. And I do not surely knowanything, any more. I have spent so much time brooding and alone."
"Forgive me, Eos. An eagle cannot fly with crows, and I will never againput myself forward. When you have need of me, I will be here, and whenyou need only your own thoughts, why then go apart; I will not seek youout. I forget who and what you are, for my senses are strained beyondendurance with the power of you."
"You are no crow, Druga. But in me is an adult mind, and you are as achild, whom I must teach and raise up gradually to my estate. Everyparent grows impatient of ignorance in their offspring. One day, if timekeeps treading the self-same mill, we will be crushed together likegrapes and pressed clean. Until then, be my knight, and think not of me,except with pity for the broken heart that beats inside me."
Druga did not look at her more, but went in and sat at the board wherethe thousand dead stared, each stony eye broodingly centered upon thespot where he had placed Feronia. And as Druga's eye likewise centeredupon that seat that had been the scene of a thousand deaths, he felt awave of anger from the stony body of Feronia, and a sense of guilt cameover him. He felt remorse that he should forget her and desire Eos. Ifhe had known that those eyes were not dead, but seeing and rememberingall that passed before them, he would have been shivering with fear ofher anger. But Druga did not know. Yet it seemed to his senses that eachof those eyes was likewise angry with him, and he got up in haste fromthat table of dead men and one dead woman, and went and drank wine byhimself until sleep came.
* * * * *
With the first rays of morning light Eos woke him, and Druga learnedthat she had lowered the disk over the garden of live-oaks beside thepalace of Dionaea, and Druga looked out. No one was yet astir; they hadnot yet been seen. Druga and Eos descended by the ladder of ruby glass,and went side by side through the garden and Druga took the stairs heknew well up to the sleeping chamber of Dionaea. For in the many-lockedcabinets of that chamber were her many acquisitions of magicalapparatus, and if anything was there that would help them, they meant tofind it.
As they entered the room, opening the door with a pick-lock, Eos criedout in a triumphant voice:
"We are not in vain. The Queen is not dead, Druga!"
The sleepy-eyed Dionaea poked her head above the covers at the sound oftheir entry. At sight of them, she hissed like a great snake, andwrithed the long hideous body of Baena free of the encumbrance of thequilts, and Baena reared his own hideous, fanged head up besideDionaea's.
Druga stood astonished to see the fabled Amphis-Baena here in the bed ofDionaea, and with the head of Dionaea! A great laugh broke from him tosee the reptilian change the grafting had wrought in Dionaea's beauty.
Dionaea did not say anything, but Baena coiled swiftly on the bed andstruck out full length, his fangs meeting in Druga's arm. Druga felt theterrible venom, like fire in his veins, and seized the greatserpent-head in his two hands, squeezing in terrible anger. But Eosseized him.
"No, do not kill her! Carry her into the disk, and make her captive. Ihave conceived of a way of conquering Diana, and we need this creaturealive."
Druga wrapped the great body around and around his body and arm, seizingthe neck of Dionaea in one hand and the neck of Baena in the other. Soburdened, he staggered down the steps and up again into the disk, andthe trip took him a good hour, for Baena twisted loose and tried toflee, and he wrestled and fell from the ladder, and only succeeded bytying the writhing pillar of strength into a bow-knot and pulling it upinto the ship with a rope.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the people of Armora had awakened from the tumult, and crowdedeverywhere about the gardens, getting underfoot and wondering loudlywhat this was all about. Eos hurried from the bed chamber of their Queenwith a great bundle of material she had selected as of possible futureuse. They tried to stop her, but one glance of the potent magnetic powerthat flamed from her great eyes sent them all to their knees inworshipful, helpless adoration.
Druga, waiting above with the snake wound round with ropes and lashed tothe pillars, watched this evidence of her powers with awe, for he hadhimself but narrowly escaped the swords of the guards, and had beenabout to plunge down the ladder with his own sword in a futile attemptto rescue Eos.
She sent the disk spinning upward in flight, and Druga took himself fromher and went and sat by the writhing, fettered body of the Amphis-Baena,or Dionaea-Baena, or two-headed snake, saying to her as she spat venomat him:
"Listen to me, Dionaea, the best thing you can do for yourself is to tryto win the favor of Eos. She is an enemy who has suffered as greatly asyourself from the work of Diana, and would help you if you earned it, toacquire a human body again. I think the snake himself would
like thatbetter too. He is too greatly married, I would say, to relish the stateovermuch."
Baena relaxed at these words, and ceased to struggle. Then in greatsnake hisses, he made himself heard.
"Dionaea, I think too you should seize this opportunity to get out ofthis fix we are in. I gave you my tail to roost upon as a temporarymeasure, not as a permanent part of my future. Diana, whom we bothserve, could have released us if she had been so inclined, and fixed usup with separate bodies, but she chose not."
That Dionaea was considering his words was evident. She ceased to spitat him, and composed her face into thought. Druga leaned back andsmiled.
Eos brought the disk to rest again at the meadow at the foot of theglass bridge before Feronia's cliff palace, and came in to them. Shestood gazing at the two-headed creature trussed to the pillars of thechamber. Feronia gazed at them with her stone eyes, and all the mengazed at Feronia as if transfixed by her stony beauty, and the sightmade Dionaea shiver with apprehension. For she thought that these werepeople who had angered Eos and that Eos had changed them into stone. Shewondered why Eos had added Feronia to the collection.