CHAPTER XVIII
THE HOODED DEATH
The causeway down which the horsemen of forgotten kings of Khandawarhad clattered forth to war, in its age-old desuetude had come to decay.Between its great paving blocks grass sprouted, and here and therecreepers and even trees had taken root and in the slow immutableprocess of their growth had displaced considerable masses of stone; sothat there were pitfalls to be avoided. Otherwise a litter of rubblemade the walking anything but good. Amber picked his way with caution,grumbling.
The grade was rather more steep than it had seemed to be from theplain. Now and then he stopped to regain his breath and scrub ahandkerchief over his forehead, on which sweat had started despite thecold. At such times his gaze would seek inevitably and involuntarily,the lotus-pointed pinnacle whereon the Eye was poised, blazing. Itsbaleful emerald glare coloured his mood unpleasantly. He had a fancythat the thing was actually watching him. The sensation was creepy.
For that matter, nothing that met his eye was calculated to instilcheer into his heart. Desolation worked with silence sensibly upon histhoughts, so that he presently made the alarming discovery that thebottom had dropped completely out of his stock of scepticism, leavinghim seriously in danger of becoming afraid of the dark. Scowling overthis, he stumbled on, telling himself that he was a fool: a conclusionso patent that neither then nor thereafter at any time did he findreason to dispute it.
After some three-quarters of an hour of hard climbing he came to thewooden bridge, and halted, surveying it with mistrust. Doubtless in theolden time a substantial but movable structure, strong enough tosustain a troop of warriors but light enough to be easily drawn up, hadextended across the chasm, rendering the city impregnable from captureby assault. If so, it had long since been replaced by an airy andwell-ventilated latticework of boards and timbers, none of which seemedto the wary eye any too sound. Amber selected the most solid-looking ofthe lot and gingerly advanced a pace or two along it. With a softcrackling a portion of the timber crumbled to dust beneath his feet. Heretreated hastily to the causeway, and swore, and noticed that the Eyewas watching him with malevolent interest, and swore some more.Entirely on impulse he heaved a bit of rock, possibly twenty pounds inweight, to the middle of the structure. There followed a splinteringcrash and the contraption dissolved like a magic-lantern effect,leaving a solitary beam about a foot in width and six or eight inchesthick, spanning a flight of twenty and a drop of sixty feet. The riverreceived the rubbish with several successive splashes, distinctlydisconcerting, and Amber sat down on a boulder to think it over.
"Clever invention," he mused; "one'd think that, after taking all thistrouble to get me here, they'd changed their minds about wanting me.I've a notion to change mine." He looked up at the cusped andbattlemented gateway opposite him, shifted his regard to the Eye, andshook his fist vindictively at the latter. "If ever I get hold of thechap that invented you...!" An ingenious imagination failing to suggestany form of torture commensurate with the crime, he relapsed intogloomy meditation.
There seemed to be no possibility of turning back at that stage,however. Kuttarpur was rather far away, and, moreover, he doubted if hewould be permitted to return. Having come thus far, he must go on.Moreover, Sophia Farrell was on the other side of that SwordwideBridge, and such being the case, cross it he would though he were tofind the next world at its end. Finally he considered that he waspresently to undergo an Ordeal of some unknown nature, probablyextremely unpleasant, and that this matter of the vanishing bridge musthave been arranged in order to put him in a properly subdued andtractable frame of mind.
He got up and tested the remaining girder with circumspection andincredulity; but it seemed firm enough, solidly embedded in thestonework of the causeway and immovable at the city end. So hestraddled it and, averting his eyes from the scenery beneath him,hitched ingloriously across, collecting splinters and a very distinctimpression that, as a vocation, knight-errantry was not without itsdrawbacks.
When again he stood on his feet he was in the shadow of the outergateway, the curtain of the second wall confronting him. The stillnessremained unbroken but the moonlight illuminated with startlingdistinctness the frescoes, half obliterated by time, and they weremonstrous, revolting and obscene, from a Western point of view. Abastion of the third wall hid the Eye, however; he was grateful forthat.
Casting about, he discovered the second gateway at some distance to theleft, and started toward it, forcing a way through a tangle of scrubbyundergrowth, weeds, and thorny acacia, but had taken few steps ere aheavy splash in the river below brought him up standing, with athumping heart. After an irresolute moment he turned back to see forhimself, and found his apprehension only too well grounded; theSwordwide Bridge was gone, displaced by an agency which had been promptto seek cover--though he confessed himself unable to suggest where thatcover had been found. There was no one visible on the causeway, andnobody skulked in the shadows of the bastions of the main gate.Furthermore it seemed hardly possible that in so scant a space of timehuman hands could have worked that heavy beam out of its sockets. Andif the hands had been human (of course any other hypothesis wereridiculous) what had become of their owners?
He gave it up, considering that it were futile to badger his wits forthe how and the wherefore. The important fact remained that he was aprisoner in dead Kathiapur, his retreat cut off, and--Here he made asecond discovery, infinitely more shocking: his pistol was gone.
Amber remembered distinctly examining the weapon in Dulla Dad's boat,since when he had found no occasion to think of it. Now either it hadjolted out of his pocket in that wild ride from Kuttarpur, or elseNaraini had managed deftly to abstract it while in his arms by thesummer palace, or when, later, she had shrunk against him in real oraffected terror of the Eye. Of the two explanations his reason favouredthe second. But he made no audible comment, though his thoughts were asblack as his brow and as grimly fashioned as the set of his jaw.
Turning back at length he made his way to the second gateway and fromit to the third, under the lewdly sculptured arch of which he stoppedand gasped, forgetting himself as for the first time Kathiapur theFallen was revealed to him in all the awful beauty of its nakeddesolation.
A wide and stately avenue stretched away from the portals, between rowsof dwellings, palaces of marble and stone, tombs and mausoleums, withmeaner houses of sun-dried brick and rubble, roofless all anddisintegrating in the slow, terrible process of the years. Here a wallhad caved in, there an arch had fallen out. The thoroughfare was strewnwith fallen lintels, broken marble screens, blocks of red sandstone,bricks, and in between them the fig and pipal nourished with thebebel-thorn, the ak, the mimosa, the insidious convolvulus twiningeverywhere. At the far end of the street a yawning black arch rose inthe white, beautiful facade of a marble temple on whose uppermostpinnacle the Eye hovered, staring horridly.
As Amber moved forward small, alert ghosts rose from the undergrowthand scurried silently thence: a circumstance which made him veryunhappy. Even a brilliant chorus of sharp barks from an adjacent streetfailed to convince him that he had merely disturbed a pack of jackals,after all, and not the disconsolate brooding wraiths of those who haddied and been buried in the imposing ruined tombs, what time Kathiapurboasted ten thousand swords and elephants by the herd.
The way was difficult and Amber tired. After a while, having seennothing but the jackals, an owl or two, several thousand bats and acrawling thing which had lurched along in the shadow of a wall somedistance away, giving an admirable imitation of a badly wounded manpulling himself over the ground, and making strange gutteralnoises--Amber concluded to wait for the guide Naraini had promised him.He turned aside and seated himself upon the edge of a broken sandstonetomb. The silence was appalling and for relief he took refuge in cheapirreverence. "Home," he observed aloud, "never was like this."
A heart-rending sigh from the tomb behind him was followed by a rattleof dislodged rubbish. Amber found himself unexpectedly in the middle ofthe street and, wit
hout stopping to debate the method of his gettingthere with such unprecedented rapidity, looked back hopefully to thetomb. At the same moment a black-shrouded figure swept out of it andmoved a few paces down the street, then paused and beckoned him with agaunt arm. "I wish," said Amber earnestly, "I had that gun."
The figure was apparently that of a native swathed in black from hishead to his heels and seemed the more strikingly peculiar in view ofthe fact that, as far as Amber could determine, he had neither eyes norfeatures although his head was without any sort of covering. He gulpedover the proposition for an instant, then stepped forward.
"Evidently my appointed cicerone," he considered. "Unquestionably thisghost-dance is excellently stage-managed.... Though, of course, I _had_to pick out that particular tomb."
He followed in the wake of the figure, which sped on with a singularmotion, something between a walk and a glide, conscious that hisequanimity had been restored rather than shaken by the incident. "Youwouldn't think," he reflected, "that a man like Salig Singh would lendhimself to anything so childish. Still, I'm not through with it yet."He conceived a scheme to steal up behind his guide and strip him of hismasquerade, but though he mended his pace he got no nearer, andeventually abandoned it on the consideration that it was probably mostinadvisable. After all, he had to remember that he was there for apurpose, and a very serious one, and that properly to further thatpurpose he must comport himself with dignity, submissively, accepting,at least with a show of ease, each new development of the affair alongits prearranged lines. And so he held on in pursuit of the blackshadow, passing forsaken temples and lordly pleasure-houses, all marbletracery and fretwork, standing apart in what had once been noblegardens, sunken tanks all weed-grown and rank with slime, humblerdooryards and cots on whose hearthstones the fires for centuries hadbeen cold--his destination evidently the temple of the unspeakable Eye.
As they drew nearer the leading shadow forsook the shade of the wallswhich he had seemed to favour, sweeping hastily across a plaza whitewith moonglare and without pause on into the black, gaping hole beyondthe marble arch.
Here for the first time Amber hung back, stopping a score of feet fromthe door, his nerves a-jangle. He did not falter in his purpose; he wasgoing to enter the inky portal, but ... would he ever leave it? And theworld was still sweet to him. His quick, darting gaze registered adozen impressions in as many seconds: of the silver splendour spilledso lavishly upon the soulless corpse of the city, of the high, brightsky, of dead black shadows sharp-edged against the radiance, of thefleet flitting spectre that was really a flying-fox....
Afar a hyena laughed with a sardonic intonation wholly uncalled-for--itwas blood-curdling, besides. And down the street a melancholy airbreathed gently, sighing like a soul astray.
"This won't do," he told himself; "it can't be worse inside than outhere."
He took firm hold of his reason and went on across the dark threshold,took three uncertain strides into the limitless unknown, and pulled upshort, hearing nothing, unable to see a yard before him. Then with aterrific crash like a thunder-clap the great doors swung to behind him.He whirled about with a stifled cry, conscious of a mad desire to findthe doors again, took a step or two toward them, paused to wonder if hewere moving in the right direction, moved a little to the left, halfturned, and was lost. Reverberating, the echoes of the crash rolled faraway and back again, diminishing in volume, dying until they were nomore than as a whisper adrift in the silence, until that was gone....
Profound night enveloped him, vast, breathless, without dimensions. Onecan endure the blackness that abides within four well-kenned walls; butnight unrelieved by the least gleam of light, night without bounds ormeasurements, enfolding one like a stifling blanket and instilling intothe brain the fear of nameless things, quickening the respiration andoppressing the heart--that is another thing entirely, and that is whatAmber found in the Temple of the Bell. Darkness swam visibly before hiseyes, like a fluid. The sound of his constrained breathing seemed mostloud and unnatural. He could hear his heart rumbling like a distantdrum.
Digging his nails into his palms, he waited; and in the suspense ofdread began to count the seconds.
One minute ... two ... three ... four....
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other....
Seven ...
He passed a hand across his face and brought it away wet withperspiration....
Nine ...
In some remote spot a bell began to toll; at first slowly--_clang_!..._clang_!... _clang_!--then more quickly, until the roar of itssonorous, gong-like tones seemed to fill all the world and to set ita-tremble. Then, insensibly, the tempo became more sedate, the fierceclamour of it moderated, and Amber abruptly was alive to the fact thatthe bell was _speaking_--that its voice, deep, clear, sound, metallic,was rolling forth again and again a question couched in purestSanskrit:
"_Who is there_?... _Who is there_?... _Who is there_?..."
The hair lifted on his scalp and he swallowed hard in the effort toanswer; but the lie stuck in his throat: he was not Rutton and ... andit is very hard to lie effectively when you stand in stark darknesswith a mouth dry as dust and your hair stirring at the roots because ofthe intensely impersonal and aloof accents of an inhuman Bell-voice,tolling away out of Nowhere.
"_Who is there_?"
Again he failed to answer. Somewhere near him he heard a slight noiseas of a man moving impatiently; and then a whisper: "Respond, thoufool!"
"Art thou come, O Chosen of the Gateway?" the Bell-voice rang.
"I ... I am come," Amber managed to reply. And so still and smallsounded his own voice in the huge spaces of the place that he wassurprised to find he had been heard.
"Hear ye!" rang the Bell. "Hear ye, O Lords and Rulers in Medhyama! OChildren of my Gateway, hear ye well! He is come! He stands upon thethreshold of the Gateway!"
Resonant, the echoes of those awe-inspiring tones died upon thestillness, and in response a faint sighing rose and, momentarilygrowing in volume, became as the roaring of a mighty wind; and suddenlyit was abrupted, leaving only a ringing in the ears.
A great drum roared like the crack of Doom; and Amber's jaw dropped.For in the high roof of the temple a six-foot slab had been noiselesslywithdrawn, and through it a cold shaft of moonlight fell, cutting thegloom like a gigantic rapier, and smote with its immaculate radiancethe true Gateway of Swords.
Not six paces from him it leaped out of the darkness in an iridescentsheen: an arch a scant ten feet in height, and in span double the widthof a big man's shoulders, woven across like a weaver's frame withribbons of pale fire. But the ribbons were of steel--steel blades,sharp, bright, gleaming: a countless array of curved tulwars andcrescent scimetars, broad jataghans, short and ugly kukurees, longkutars with straight ends, slender deadly patas, snake-like bichwas;swords with jewelled hilts and engraved and damascened blades; sabreswith channels cut from point to guard wherein small pearls ran singing;khands built for service and for parade; swords of every style andperiod in all the history of India. With their pommels cunninglyaffixed so that their points touched and interlaced, yet swung free,they lined the piers of the arch from base to span and all the gracefulsweep of the intrados, a curtain of shimmering, trembling steel,barring the way to the Mystery beyond. Which was--darkness.
"O ye Swords!" belled the Voice.... "O ye Swords that have known nodishonour! O ye Swords that have sung in the grasp of my greatest!Swords of Jehangar, Akbar, Alamgir! Swords of Alludin, Humayun, ShahJehan! Swords of Timur-Leng, Arungzeb, Rao Rutton!..."
The invocation seemed interminable. Amber recognised almost every namenoted in the annals and legends of Hindustan....
"Hearken, O my Swords! He, thy Chosen, prayeth for entry! What is thywelcome?"
One by one the blades began to shiver, clashing their neighbours, untilthe curtain of steel glimmered and glistened like phosphorescence in asummer sea, and the place was filled with the music of their contact;and through their clamour boomed the Bell:
/> "O my Chosen!" Amber started and held himself firmly in hand. "Lookwell, look well! Here is thy portal to kingship and glory!"
He frowned and took a step forward as if he would throw himself throughthe archway; for he had suddenly remembered with compelling vividnessthat Sophia Farrell was to be won only by that passage. But as he movedthe swords clattered afresh and swung outwards, presenting a bristle ofpoints. And he stopped, while the Voice, indifferent and remote asalways, continued to harangue him.
"If thy heart, O my Chosen, be clean, unsullied with fear and guile; ifthy faith be the faith of thy fathers and thy honour rooted in love ofthy land; if thou hast faith in the strength of thy hands to hold thereins of Empire ... enter, having no fear."
"Trick-work," he told himself. He set his teeth with determination."Hope they don't see fit to cut me to pieces on suspicion. Here goes."He moved forward with a firm step until his bosom all but touched thepoints.
Instantaneously, with another clash as of cymbals, the blades weredeflected and returned to their first position, closing the way. Hehesitated. Then, "That shan't stop me!" he said through his teeth, andpushed forward, heart in mouth. He breasted the curtain and felt itgive; the blades yielded jealously, closing round his body like coldcaressing arms; he felt their chill kisses on his cheeks and hands,even through his clothing he was conscious of their clinging, deadlytouch. Abruptly they swung entirely away, leaving the entrance clear,and he was drawing a free breath when the moon glare showed him theswords returned to position with the speed of light. He jumped for hislife and escaped being slashed to pieces by the barest inch. They swungto behind him; and again the drum roared, while afar there arose afurious, eldritch wailing of conches. Overhead the opening disappearedand the light was shut out. In darkness as of the Hall of Eblis theconches were stilled and the echoes ebbed into a silence that held swayfor many minutes ere again the Bell spoke.
"Stretch forth thy hand."
Somewhat shaken, Amber held out an open palm before him. A second timethe gusty sighing arose and breathed through the night, increasinguntil the very earth beneath him seemed to rock with the magnitude ofthe sound, until, at its highest, it ceased and was as if it had notbeen; not even an echo sang its passing. Then out of nothingnesssomething plopped into Amber's hand and his fingers closed convulsivelyabout it. It was a hand, very small, small as a child's, gnarled andhard as steel and cold as ice.
Amber sunk his teeth into his lower lip and subdued an almostuncontrollable impulse to scream and fling the thing away; for hissense of touch told him that the hand was dead. And yet he becamesensible that it was tugging at his own, and he yielded to itspersuasion, permitting himself to be led on for so long a journey thathis fingers clasping the little hand grew numb with cold ere it wasover. He could by no means say whither he was being conducted, but wasconscious of a long, gradual descent. Many times he swept his free armout round him, but touched nothing.
Abruptly the guiding hand was twisted away. He stopped incontinently,and possessed himself with what patience he could muster throughoutanother long wait tempered by strange sibilant whisperings andrustlings in the void all about him.
Without any forewarning two heavy hands gripped him, one on eithershoulder, and he was forced to his knees. At the same instant, with asnapping crackle a spurt of blue flame shot down from the zenith, andwhere it fell with a thunderclap a dazzling glare of emerald light shotup breasthigh.
To his half-blinded eyes it seemed, for a time, to dance suspended inthe air before him. A vapour swirled up from it, a thin cloud,luminous. By degrees he made out its source, a small, brazen bowl on atripod.
A confusion of hushed voices swelled as had the sound of that mighty,rushing, impalpable wind, and died more slowly.
Conscious that his features were in strong light, he strove to exhibitan impassiveness that belied his temper; then glancing round beneathlowered eyelids he sought to determine something of the nature of hissurroundings, but could see little. The hands had left his shouldersthe minute his knees touched the floor; he knelt utterly alone in themiddle of what seemed to be a vast hall, or cavern, of which the sizewas but faintly suggested. As his eyes became accustomed to thechiaroscuro he became aware of monstrous images of stone that appearedto advance from and retreat to the far walls on either hand as thegreen light flared and fell, and of a great silent and motionlessconcourse of people grouped about the massive pedestals--a crowd ascontained and impassive as the gods that towered above its heads,blending into the gloom that shrouded the high roof of the place.
In front of him he could see nothing beyond the noiselessly waveringflame. But presently a hand appeared, as if by magic, above the bowl--ahand, bony, brown, and long of finger, that seemed attached tonothing--and cast something like a powder into the fire. There followeda fizz and puff of vapour, and a strong and heady gust of incense waswafted into Amber's face. Again and again the hand appeared, sprinklingpowder in the brazier, until the smoke clouded the atmosphere with itsfluent, eddying coils.
The gooseflesh that had pricked out on Amber's skin subsided, and hisqualms went with it. "Greek fire burning in a bowl," he explained thephenomenon; "and a native with his arm wrapped to the wrist in black isfeeding it. Not a bad effect, though."
It was, perhaps, as well that he had not been deceived, for there was ahorror to come that required all his strength to face. He becameconscious that something was moving between him and thebrazier--something which he had incuriously assumed to be a piece ofdirty cloth left there carelessly. But now he saw it stir, squirm, andupend, unfolding itself and lifting its head to the leaping flame: animmense cobra, sleek and white as ivory, its swelling hood as large asa man's two hands, with a binocular mark on it as yellow as topaz, andwith vicious eyes glowing like twin rubies in its vile little head.
Amber's breath clicked in his throat and he shrank back, rising; butthis instinctive move had been provided against and before his kneeswere fairly off the rocky floor he was forced down again by the handson his shoulders. He was unable to take his eyes from the monster, andthough terror such as man is heir to lay cold upon his heart, he didnot again attempt to stir.
There was now no sound. Alone and undisturbed the bleached viper warmedto its dance with the pulsing flame, turning and twisting, weaving andwrithing in its infernal glare....
"Hear ye, O my peoples!"
Amber jumped. The Voice had seemed to ring out from a point directlyoverhead.
He looked up and discovered above him, vague in the obscurity, theoutlines of a gigantic bell, hanging motionless. The green glare,shining on its rim and partly illumining its empty hollow (he saw noclapper) revealed the sheen of the bronze of which it was fashioned.
Out of its immense bowl, the Voice rolled like thunder:
"Hear ye, O my peoples!"
A responsive murmur ascended from the company round the walls:
"We hear! We hear, O Medhyama!"
"Mark well this man, O Children of my Gateway! Mark well! Out of ye allhave I chosen him to lead thee in the work of healing; for I thyMother, I Medhyama, I Bharuta, I the Body from which ye are sprung,call me by whatever name ye know me--I am laid low with a greatsickness.... Yea, I am stricken and laid low with a sickness."
A great and bitter wailing arose from the multitude.
"Yea, I am overcome with a faintness, and my strength is gone out fromme, and my limbs are as water; I am sick with a fever and languish; inmy veins runs the Evil like fire and like poison; and I burn and amstricken; I toss in my torment and murmur, and the sound of my Voicehas come to thine ears. Ye have heard me and answered. The tale of mysufferings is known to ye. Say, shall I perish?"
In the brazier the flame leaped high and subsided, and with it thecobra leaped and sank low upon its coils. From the people a mightyshout of negation went up, so that the walls rang with it, and theechoes were bandied back and forth, insensibly decreasing through manyminutes. When all was still the Voice began to chant again, and theflames blazed higher and b
righter, while the cobra resumed its mysticdance.
Amber knelt on in a semi-stupor, staring glassily at the light and theserpent.
"I, thine old Mother, have called ye together to help in my healing.From my feet to my head I am eaten with pestilence; yea, I am devouredand possessed by the Evil. Even of old was it thus with thy Mother;long since she complained of the Plague that is Scarlet--moaned andcried out and turned in her misery.... But ye failed me. Then mypeoples were weaklings and their hearts all were craven; the ScarletEvil dismayed them; they fled from its power and left it to batten onme in my sickness."
A deep groan welled in uncounted throats and resounded through thecavern.
"Will ye fail me again, O my Children?"
"Nay, nay, O our Mother!"
"Too long have I suffered and been patient in silence. Now must I becleansed and made whole as of old time; yea, I must be purgedaltogether and the Evil cast out from me. It is time.... Ye have heard,ye have answered; make ready, for the day of the cleansing approacheth.Whet thy swords for the days of the healing, for my cleansing can bebut by steel. Yea, thy swords shall do away with the Evil, and the landshall run red with the blood of Bharuta, the blood of thy Mother; itshall run to the sea as a river, bearing with it the Red Evil. So andno otherwise shall I, thine old Mother, be healed and made wholeagain."
"Aye, aye, O our Mother!"
The flames, dying, rose once more, and the Voice continued, but with achange of temper. It was now a clarion call, stirring the blood likemartial music.
"Ye shall show me your swords for a token.... Swords of the North, areye ready?"
"We are ready, old Mother!"
With a singing shiver of steel, all around the walls, in knots andclusters, naked blades leaped up, flashing.
"Swords of the East, are ye loyal?"
"Aye, old Mother!"
And the tally of swords was doubled.
"Swords of the South, are ye thirsty?"
A third time the crashing response shattered the echoes.
"Swords of the West, do ye love me?"
With the fourth ringing shout and showing of steel, a silence fell. Thewalls were veritably hedged with quivering blades, all a-gleam in theghastly glare of green. Over the sculptured faces of the great idolsflickering shadows played, so that they seemed to move and grimace, asif with approbation.
Amber was watching the serpent--dazed and weary as if with a great needof sleep. Even the salvos of shouts came to him as from a greatdistance. To the clangour of the Bell alone he had become abnormallysensitive; every fibre of his being shuddered, responsive to its weirdnuances.
It returned to its solemn and stately intoning.
"Out of ye all have I chosen and fixed upon one who shall lead ye.Through him shall my strength be made manifest, my Will be made knownto my peoples. Him must ye serve and obey; to him must ye bow down andbe humble. Say, are ye pleased? Will ye have him, my Children?"
Without an instant's delay a cry of ratification rang to the roof."Yea, O our Mother! Him we will serve and obey, to him bow down and behumble."
The Voice addressed itself directly to the kneeling man. He stiffenedand roused.
"Thou hast heard of the honour we confer upon thee--I Medhyama, thyMother, and these my children, thy brothers. Ye shall lead and shallrule in Bharuta. Are ye ready?"
Half hypnotised, Amber opened his mouth, but no words came. His chindropped to his breast.
"Thy strength must be known to my peoples; they must see thee put tothe proof of thy courage, that they may know thee to be the man fortheir leader.... Ye are ready?"
He was unable to move a finger.
"Stretch out thine arms!"
He shuddered and tried to obey. The Voice rang imperative.
"Stretch forth thine arms for the testing!"
Somehow, mechanically, he succeeded in raising his arms and holdingthem rigid before him. Alarmed by the movement, the cobra turned with ahiss, waving his poisonous head. But the Virginian made no offer towithdraw his hands. His eyes were wide and staring and his face livid.
A subdued murmur came from the men clustered round the idols, insemi-darkness.
The Bell boomed forth like an organ.
"O hooded Death.... O Death, who art trained to my service! Thou beforewhom all men stand affrighted! Thou who canst look into their heartsand read them as a scroll that is unrolled ... Look deep into the heartof my Chosen! Judge if he be worthy or wanting, judge if he be false ortrue ... Judge him, O Death!"
Before Amber the great serpent was oscillating like a pendulum, itslittle tongue playing like forked red lightning, its loathsome red eyesholding his own. Terror gripped his heart, and his soul curdled. Hewould have cried out, but that his tongue clave to the roof of hismouth. He could not have moved had he willed to.
"Look well, O Death, and judge him!"
The dance of the Hooded Death changed in character, grew more frenzied;the white writhing coils melted into one another in dizzying confusion;figure merged into figure like smoke.... The suspense grew intolerable.
"Hast thou judged him, O Death?"
Instantly the white cobra reared up to its utmost and remained poisedover Amber, barely moving save for the almost imperceptible throbbingof the hood and the incessant darting of the forked tongue.
"If he be loyal, then spare him ..."
The hood did not move. Amber's flesh crawled with unspeakable dread.
"If he be faithless, then ... _strike!_"
For another moment the cobra maintained the tensity. Then slowly, cruelhead waving, hood shrinking, eyes losing their deathly lustre, coil bycoil it sank.
A thick murmur ran the round of the walls, swelling into aninarticulate cry, which beat upon Amber's ears like the raving of afar-off surf. From his lips a strangled sob broke, and, every musclerelaxing, he lurched forward.
Alarmed, in a trice the cobra was up again, hood distended to thebursting point, head swinging so swiftly that the eye could not followit. In another breath would come the final thrust....
A firearm exploded behind Amber, singeing his cheek with its flame. Hefell over sideways, barely escaping the head of the cobra, which, withits hood blown to tatters, writhed in convulsions, its malignant tonguestraining forth as if in one last attempt to reach his hand.
A second shot followed the first and then a brisk, confused fusillade.Amber heard a man scream out in mortal agony, and the dull sound of aheavy body falling near him; but, coincident with the second report,the brazier had been overturned and its light extinguished as if suckedup into the air.