Title:      The Ship of Ishtar
Author:     Abraham Merritt
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Title:      The Ship of Ishtar
Author:     Abraham Merritt





PART I The Coming of the Ship



1

A tendril of the strange fragrance spiralled up from the great stone
block. Kenton felt it caress his face like a coaxing hand.

He had been aware of that fragrance--an alien perfume, subtly troubling,
evocative of fleeting unfamiliar images, of thought-wisps that were gone
before the mind could grasp them--ever since he had unsheathed from its
coverings the thing Forsyth, the old archaeologist, had sent him from
the sand shrouds of ages-dead Babylon.

Once again his eyes measured the block--four feet long, a little more
than that in height, a trifle less in width. A faded yellow, its
centuries hung about it like a half visible garment. On one face only
was there inscription, a dozen parallel lines of archaic cuneiform;
carved there, if Forsyth were right in his deductions, in the reign of
Sargon of Akkad, sixty centuries ago. The surface of the stone was
scarred and pitted and the wedge-shaped symbols mutilated, half
obliterated.

Kenton leaned closer over it, and closer around him wound the scented
spirals clinging like scores of tendrils, clinging like little fingers,
wistful, supplicating, pleading--

Pleading for release! What nonsense was this he was dreaming? Kenton
drew himself up. A hammer lay close at hand; he lifted it and struck the
block, impatiently.

The block answered the blow!

It murmured; the murmuring grew louder; louder still, with faint bell
tones like distant carillons of jade. The murmurings ceased, now they
were only high, sweet chimings; clearer, ever more clear they rang,
drawing closer, winging up through endless corridors of time.

There was a sharp crackling. The block split. From the break pulsed a
radiance as of rosy pearls and with it wave after wave of the
fragrance--no longer questing, no longer wistful nor supplicating.

Jubilant now! Triumphant!

Something was inside the block! Something that had lain hidden there
since Sargon of Akkad, six thousand years go!

The carillons of jade rang out again. Sharply they pealed, then turned
and fled back the endless corridors up which they had come. They died
away; and as they died the block collapsed; it disintegrated; it became
a swirling, slowly settling cloud of sparkling dust.

The cloud whirled, a vortex of glittering mist. It vanished like a
curtain plucked away.

Where the block had been stood--a ship!

It floated high on a base of curving waves cut from lapis lazuli and
foam-crested with milky rock crystals. Its hull was of crystal, creamy
and faintly luminous. Its prow was shaped like a slender scimitar, bent
backward. Under the incurved tip was a cabin whose seaward sides were
formed, galleon fashion, by the upward thrust of the bows. Where the
hull drew up to form this cabin, a faint flush warmed and cloudy
crystal; it deepened as the sides lifted; it gleamed at last with a
radiance that turned the cabin into a rosy jewel.

In the center of the ship, taking up a third of its length, was a pit;
down from the bow to its railed edge sloped a deck of ivory. The deck
that sloped similarly from the stern was jet black. Another cabin rested
there, larger than that at the bow, but squat and ebon. Both decks
continued in wide platforms on each side of the pit. At the middle of
the ship the ivory and black decks met with an odd suggestion of
contending forces. They did not fade into each other. They ended there
abruptly, edge to edge; hostile.

Out of the pit arose a rail mast: tapering and green as the core of an
immense emerald. From its cross-sticks a wide sail stretched..
shimmering like silk spun from fire opals: from mast and yards fell
stays of twisted dull gold.

Out from each side of the ship swept a single bank of seven great oars,
their scarlet blades dipped deep within the pearl-crested lapis of the
waves.

And the jewelled craft was manned! Why, Kenton wondered, had he not
noticed the tiny figures before?

It was as though they had just arisen from the deck...a woman had
slipped out of the rosy cabin's door, an arm was still outstretched in
its closing...and there were other women shapes upon the ivory deck,
three of them, crouching...their heads were bent low; two clasped harps
and the third held a double flute...

Little figures, not more than two inches high...

Toys!

Odd that he could not distinguish their faces, nor the details of their
dress. The boys were indistinct, blurred, as though a veil covered them.
Kenton told himself that the blurring was the fault of his eyes; he
closed them for a moment.

Opening them he looked down upon the black cabin and stared with
deepening perplexity. The black deck had been empty when first the ship
had appeared--that he could have sworn.

Now four manikins were clustered there--close to the edge of the pit!

And the baffling haze around the toys was denser. Of course it must be
his eyes--what else? He would lie down for a while and rest them. He
turned, reluctantly; he walked slowly to the door; he paused there,
uncertainly, to look back at the shining mystery--

All the room beyond the ship was hidden by the haze!

Kenton heard a shrilling as of armies of storm; a roaring as of myriads
or tempests; a shrieking chaos as though down upon him swept cataracts
of mighty winds.

The room split into thousands of fragments; dissolved. Clear through the
clamor came the sound of a bell--one--two--thr--

He knew that bell. It was his clock ringing out the hour of six. The
third note was cut in twain.

The solid floor on which he stood melted away. He felt himself suspended
in space, a space filled with mists of silver.

The mists melted.

Kenton caught a glimpse of a vast blue wave-crested ocean--another of
the deck of a ship flashing by a dozen feet below him.

He felt a sudden numbing shock, a blow upon his right temple. Splintered
lightnings veined a blackness that wiped out sight of sea and ship.



2 The First Adventure

KENTON lay listening to a soft whispering, persistent and continuous. It
was like the breaking crests of sleepy waves. The sound was all about
him; a rippling susurration becoming steadily more insistent. A light
beat through his closed lids. He felt motion under him, a gentle,
cradling lift and fall. He opened his eyes.

He was on a ship; lying on a narrow deck, his head against the bulwarks.
In front of him was a mast rising out of a pit. Inside the pit were
chained men straining at great oars. The mast seemed to be of wood
covered with translucent, emerald lacquer. It stirred reluctant
memories.

Where had he seen such a mast before?

His gaze crept up the mast. There was a wide sail; a sail made of opaled
silk. Low overhead hung a sky that was all a soft mist of silver.

He heard a woman's voice, deep toned, liquidly golden. Kenton sat up,
dizzily. At his right was a cabin nestling under the curved tip of a
scimitared prow; it gleamed rosily. A balcony ran round its top; little
trees blossomed on that balcony; doves with feet and bills crimson as
though dipped in wine of rubies fluttered snowy wings among the
branches.

At the cabin's door stood a woman, tall, willow-lithe, staring beyond
him. At her feet crouched three girls. Two of them clasped harps, the
other held to her lips a double flute. Again the reluctant memories
stirred and fled and were forgotten as Kenton's gaze fastened upon the
woman.

Her wide eyes were green as depths of forest glens, and like them they
were filled with drifting shadows. Her head was small; the features
fine; the red mouth delicately amorous. In the hollow of her throat a
dimple lay; a chalice for kisses and empty of them and eager to be
filled. Above her brows was set a silver crescent, slim as a newborn
moon. Over each horn of the crescent poured a flood of red-gold hair,
framing the lovely face; the flood streamed over and was parted by her
tilted breasts; it fell in ringlets almost to her sandalled feet.

As young as Spring, she seemed--yet wise as Autumn; Primavera of some
archaic Botticelli--but Mona Lisa too; if virginal in body, certainly
not in soul.

He followed her gaze. It led him across the pit of the oarsmen. Four men
stood there. One was taller by a head than Kenton, and built massively.
His pale eyes stared unwinkingly at the woman; menacing; malignant. His
face was beardless and pallid. His huge and flattened head was shaven;
his nose vulture-beaked; from his shoulders black robes fell, shrouding
him to feet. Two shaven heads were at his left, wiry, wolfish,
black-robed; each of them held a brazen, conch-shaped horn.

On the last of the group Kenton's eyes lingered, fascinated. This man
squatted, his pointed chin resting on a tall drum whose curved sides
glittered scarlet and jet with the polished scales of some great snake.
His legs were sturdy but dwarfed--his torso that of a giant, knotted and
gnarled, prodigiously powerful. His ape-like arms were wound around the
barrelled tambour; spider-like were the long fingers standing on their
tips upon the drum head.

It was his face that held Kenton. Sardonic and malicious--there was in
it none of the evil concentrate in the others. The wide slit of his
mouth was frog-like and humor was on the thin lips. His deep set,
twinkling black eyes dwelt upon the crescented woman with frank
admiration. From the lobes of his outstanding ears hung disks of
hammered gold.

The woman paced swiftly down toward Kenton. When she halted he could
have reached out a hand and touched her. Yet she did not seem to see
him.

"Ho--Klaneth!" she cried. "I hear the voice of Ishtar. She is coming to
her ship. Are you ready to do her homage, Slime of Nergal?"

A flicker of hate passed over the massive man's pallid face like a
little wave from hell.

"This is Ishtar's Ship," he answered, "yet my Dread Lord has claim upon
it too, Sharane? The House of the Goddess brims with light--but tell me,
does not Nergal's shadow darken behind me?"

And Kenton saw that the deck on which were these men was black as
polished jet and again memory strove to make itself heard.

A sudden wind smote the ship, like an open hand, heeling it. From the
doves within the trees of the rosy cabin broke a tumult of cries; they
flew up like a white cloud flecked with crimson; they fluttered around
the woman.

The ape-like arms of the drummer unwrapped, his spidery fingers poised
over the head of the snake drum. Darkness deepened about him and hid
him; darkness cloaked all the ship's stern.

Kenton felt the gathering of unknown forces. He slid down, upon his
haunches, pressed himself against the bulwarks.

From the deck of the rosy cabin blared a golden trumpeting; defiant;
inhuman. He turned his head, and on it the hair lifted and prickled.

Resting on the rosy cabin was a great orb, an orb like the moon at full;
but not, like the moon, white and cold--an orb alive with pulsing
roseate candescence. Over the ship it poured its rays and where the
woman called Sharane had been was now--no woman!

Bathed in the orb's rays she loomed gigantic. The lids of her eyes were
closed, yet through those closed lids eyes glared! Plainly Kenton saw
them--eyes hard as jade, glaring through the closed lids as though those
lids had been gossamer! The slender crescent upon her brows was an arc
of living fire, and all about it the masses of her red-gold hair beat
and tossed.

Round and round, in clamorous rings above the ship, wheeled the cloud of
doves, snowy wings beating, red beaks open; screaming.


Within the blackness of the ship's stern roared the thunder of the
serpent drum.

The blackness thinned. A face stared out, half veiled, bodiless,
floating in the shadow. It was the face of the man Klaneth--and yet no
more his than that which challenged it was the woman Sharane's. The pale
eyes had become twin pools of hell flames; pupilless. For a heart beat
the face hovered, framed by the darkness. The shadow dropped over it and
hid it.

Now Kenton saw that this shadow hung like a curtain over the exact
center of the ship, and that he crouched hardly ten feet distant from
where that curtain cut the craft in twain. The deck on which he lay was
pale ivory and again memory stirred but did not awaken. The radiance
from the roseate orb struck against the curtain of shadow and made upon
it a disk, wider than the ship, that was like a web of beams spun from
the rays of a rosy moon. Against this shining web the shadow pressed,
straining to break through.

From the black deck the thunder of the serpent drum redoubled; the
brazen conches shrieked. Drum-thunder and shrieking horn mingled; they
became the pulse of Abaddon, lair of the damned.

From Sharane's three women, shot storm of harpings, arpeggios like gusts
of tiny arrows and with them shrill javelin pipings from the double
flute. Arrows and javelins of sound cut through the thunder hammering of
the drum and the bellow of the horns, sapping them, beating them back.

A movement began within the shadow. It seethed. It spawned.

Over the face of the disk of radiance black shapes swarmed. Their bodies
were like monstrous larva, slugs; faceless. They tore at the web; stove
to thrust through it; flailed it.

The web gave!

Its edge held firm, but slowly the center was pushed back until the disk
was like the half of a huge hollow sphere. Within that hollow crawled
and writhed and struck the monstrous shapes. From the black deck serpent
drum and brazen horns bellowed triumph.

Again rang the golden trumpet cry from the deck of ivory. Out of the orb
streamed an incandescence intolerable. The edges of the web shot forward
and curved.

They closed upon the black spawn; within it the black spawn milled and
struggled like fish in a net. Like a net lifted by some mighty hand the
web swung high up above the ship. Its brightness grew to match that of
the orb. From netted shapes of blackness came a faint, high-pitched,
obscene wailing. They shrank, dissolved, were gone.

The net opened. Out of it drifted a little cloud of ebon dust.

The web streamed back into the orb that had sent it forth.

Then, swiftly, the orb was gone! Gone too was the shadow that had
shrouded the black deck. High above the ship the snowy doves circled,
screaming victory.

A hand touched Kenton's shoulder. He looked up into the shadowy eyes of
the woman called Sharane; no goddess now, only woman. In her eyes he
read amazement, startled disbelief.

Kenton sprang to his feet. A thrust of blinding pain shot through his
head. The deck whirled round him. He tried to master the dizziness; he
could not. Dizzily the ship spun beneath his feet; and beyond in wider
arcs dizzily spun turquoise sea and silver horizon.

Now all formed a vortex, a maelstrom, down whose pit he was
dropping--faster, ever faster. Around him was a formless blur. Again he
heard the tumult of the tempests; the shrillings of the winds of space.
The winds died away. There were three clear bell notes--

Kenton stood within his own room!

The bell had been his clock, striking the hour of six. Six o'clock? Why
the last sound of his own world before the mystic sea had swept it from
under him had been the third stroke of that hour clipped off in
mid-note.

God--what a dream! And all in half a bell stroke!

He lifted his hand and touched a throbbing bruise over his right temple.
He winced--well, that blow at least had been no dream. He stumbled over
to the jewelled ship.

He stared at it, incredulous.

The toys upon the ship had moved--new toys had appeared!

No longer were there four manikins on the black deck.

There were only two. One stood pointing toward the starboard platform
near the mast, his hand resting on the shoulder of a red-bearded, agate-eyed soldier toy clad all in glittering chain mail.

Nor was there any woman at the rosy cabin's door as there had been when
Kenton had loosed the ship from the block. At its threshold were five
slim girls with javelins in hands.

The woman was on the starboard platform, bent low beside the rail!

And the ship's oars were no longer buried in the waves of lapis lazuli.
They were lifted, poised for the downward stroke!



3 The Ship Returns

ONE BY ONE Kenton pulled at the manikins, each toy. Immovable, gem hard,
each was, seemingly part of the deck itself; no force he could exert
would move them.

Yet something had shifted them--and where were the vanished ones? From
where had the new ones come?

Nor was there any haze around the little figures, nor blurring; each
lineament stood out clean cut. The pointing toy on the black deck had
dwarfed, bowed legs; his torso was that of a giant; his bald pate
glinted and in his ears were wide discs of gold. Kenton recognized him
--the beater of the serpent drum.

There was a tiny silver crescent upon the head of the bending woman toy,
and over its tips poured flood of red-gold hair--

Sharane!

And that place at which she peered--was it not where he had lain on that
other ship of his dream?

That--other ship? He saw again its decks ebon and ivory, its rosy cabin
and its emerald mast. It had been this ship before him--no other! Dream?
Then what had moved the toys?

Kenton's wonder grew. Within it moved a sharp unease, a sharper
curiosity. He found he could not think clearly with the ship filling his
eyes; it seemed to focus all his attention upon it, to draw it taut, to
fill him with a tense expectancy. He unhooked a hanging from the wall
and threw it over the gleaming mystery. He walked from the room,
fighting with each step an imperative desire to turn his head. He
dragged himself through the doorway as though hands were gripping his
ankles, drawing him back. Head still turned away Kenton lurched
shoulders against the door; closed it; locked it.

In his bathroom he examined the bruise on his head. It was painful
enough, but nothing serious. Half an hour of cold compresses fairly well
removed all outward marks of it. He told himself that he might have
fallen upon the floor, overcome by the strange perfumes--he knew that he
had not.

Kenton dined alone, scarce heeding what was set before him, his mind
groping through perplexities. What was the history of the block from
Babylon? Who had set the ship within it--and why? Forsyth's letter had
said that he had found it in the mound called Amran, just south of the
Qser or crumbled "palace" of Nabopolasser. There was evidence, Kenton
knew, that the Amran mound was the site of E-Sagilla, the ziggurat or
terraced temple that had been the Great House of the Gods in ancient
Babylon. The block must have been held in peculiar reverence, so Forsyth
had conjectured, since only so would it have been saved from the
destruction of the city by Sennacherib and afterwards have been put back
in the re-built temple.

But why had it been held in such reverence? Why had such a miracle as
the ship been imprisoned in the stone?

The inscription might have given some clue had it not been so mutilated.
In his letter Forsyth had pointed out that the name of Ishtar, Mother
Goddess of the Babylonians--Goddess of Vengeance and Destruction as well
--appeared over and over again; that plain too were the arrowed symbols
of Nergal, God of the Babylonian Hades and Lord of the Dead; that the
symbols of Nabu, the God of Wisdom, appeared many times. These three
names had been almost the only legible words on the block. It was as
though the acid of time which had etched out the other characters had
been held back from them.

Kenton could read the cuneatic well nigh as readily as his native
English. He recalled now that in the inscription Ishtar's name had been
coupled with her wrathful aspect rather than her softer ones, and that
associated always with the symbols of Nabu had been the signs of
warning, of danger.

Forsyth had not noticed that, evidently--or if he had he had not thought
it worth mentioning. Nor, apparently had he been aware of the hidden
perfumes of the block.

Well--there was no use thinking of the inscription. It was gone forever
with the dust into which it had turned.

Kenton impatiently thrust back his chair. He knew that for the past hour
he had been out temporizing, divided between the burning desire to get
back to the room where the ship lay and the dread that when he did he
would find all that adventure had been illusion, a dream; that the
little figures had not really moved; that they were as they had been
when he had first loosed the ship; that it was only a toy manned by
toys--nothing more. He would temporize no longer.

"Don't bother about me any more to-night, Jevins," he told his butler.
"I've some important work to do. If there are any calls say that I am
away. I'm going to lock myself in and I don't want to be disturbed for
anything less than Gabriel's trumpet."

The old servant, a heritage from Kenton's father, smiled.

"Very well, Mr. John," he said. "I'll let no one bother you."

To reach the room wherein was the ship, Kenton's way led through another
in which he kept the rarest of his spoils from many a far away corner of
the world. Passing, a vivid gleam of blue caught his eye and stayed him,
like a hand. The gleam came from the hilt of a sword in one of the
cabinets, a curious weapon he had bought from a desert nomad in Arabia.
The sword hung above an ancient cloak in which it had been wrapped when
the furtive Arab had slipped into his tent. Unknown centuries had
softened the azure of that cloak, through whose web and woof great
silver serpents writhed, cabalistically entwined.

Kenton unhooked the sword. Silver serpents, counterparts of those on the
garments, twined about its hilt. From the hilt sprang a rod of bronze,
eight inches long and three thick, round as a staff. This rod flared and
flattened out into a leaf-shaped blade two feet long and full six inches
wide across its center. Set in the hilt had been one large stone of
cloudy blue.

The stone was no longer clouded. It was translucent, shining like an
immense sapphire!

Obeying some half-formed thought that linked this new enigma with the
ship's shifting toys, he drew down the cloak and threw it over his
shoulders. The sword in hand, he unlocked the further door, closed and
fastened it behind him; walked over to the shrouded ship; swept off its
covers.

Pulses leaping, Kenton drew back.

On it now were two figures only--the drummer, crouched with head in arms
upon the black deck, and on deck of ivory a girl, leaning over the rail
and looking down upon the oarsmen!

Kenton snapped out the electrics and stood waiting.

Minute after minute crept by. Fugitive gleams from the lights on the
Avenue penetrated the curtains of the windows, glimmered on the ship.
Muted but steady came the roar of the traffic, punctuated by horn
blasts, explosions through mufflers--New York's familiar voice.

Was that a halo growing round the ship...And what had become of the
traffic's roar.

The room was filling with silence as a vessel is filled with water...

Now a sound broke that silence; a sound like the lapping of little
waves, languorous, caressing. The sounds stroked his lids, slumbrously;
pressed them down. By enormous effort he half raised them.

A wide mist was opposite him, a globular silvery mist floating down upon
him. Within that mist drifted a ship, its oars motionless, its sail
half-filled. Wavelets crisped at its sickled bow, wavelets of pale
turquoise with laced edges of foam.

Half the room was lost in the ripples of that approaching sea...the part
on which he stood was many feet above the waves...so far below were they
that the deck of the ship was level with his feet.

Closer drew the ship. He wondered why he heard no rushing winds, no
clamoring tempests; no sound save the faint whispering of the
foam-tipped waves.

Retreating, he felt his back press against the farther wall. Before him
drifted that misty world, the ship upon its breast.

Kenton leaped, straight for the deck.

The winds roared about him now; vast winds howled and shrieked--again he
heard but felt them not at all. And suddenly the clamor died.

Kenton's feet struck solid surface.

He stood upon an ivory deck, facing a rosy cabin whose little blossoming
trees were filled with cooing crimson billed, vermilion footed, doves.
Between him and the cabin's door was a girl, her soft brown eyes filled
with wonder and that same startled disbelief he had seen in those of
Sharane when first her gaze had fallen upon him at the foot of the
emerald mast.

"Are you Lord Nabu' that you came thus out of the air and in his cloak
of wisdom, his serpents twining within it?" she whispered. "Nay that
cannot be--for Nabu is very old--and you are young. Are you his
messenger?"

She dropped to her knees; crossed her hands, palms outward, over her
forehead. She leaped to her feet; ran to the closed door of the cabin.

"Kadishtu!" she struck it with clenched hands. "Holy One--a messenger
from Nabu!"

The door of the cabin was flung open. Upon its threshold stood the woman
called Sharane. Her glance swept him; then darted to the black deck. He
followed it. The beater of the serpent drum squatted there; he seemed to
sleep.

"Watch, Satalu!" breathed Sharane to the girl.

She caught Kenton's hand; she drew him through the door. Two girls were
there who stared at him. She thrust them forward.

"Out!" she whispered. "Out and watch with Satalu."

They slipped from the cabin. She ran to an inner door; dropped a bar
across it.

She turned, back against it; then stepped slowly to Kenton. She
stretched out slim fingers; with them touched his eyes, his mouth, his
heart--as though to assure herself that he was real.

She cupped his hands in hers, and bowed, and set her brows against his
wrists; the waves of her hair bathed them. At her touch desire ran
through him, swift and flaming. Her hair was a silken net to which his
heart flew, eager to be trapped.

He steadied himself; he drew his hands from hers; he braced himself
against her lure.

She lifted her head; regarded him.

"What has the Lord Nabu to say to me?" her voice rocked Kenton with
perilous sweetnesses, subtle provocations. "What is his word to me,
messenger? Surely will I listen--for in his wisdom has not the Lord of
Wisdom sent one to whom to listen ought not be--difficult?"

There was a flash of coquetry like the flirt of a roguish fan in the
misty eyes turned for an instant to his.

Thrilling to her closeness, groping for some firm ground, Kenton sought
for words to answer her. Playing for time, he looked about the cabined
space. There was an altar at the far end. It was sown with luminous
gems, with pearls and pale moonstones and curdled, milky crystals. From
seven crystal basins set before it arose still silvery flames. There was
an alcove behind the altar, but the glow of the seven lights hid
whatever was within. He had a swift sense of tenancy of that flame
veiled alcove--something dwelt there.

At the far side was a low, wide divan of ivory inlaid with the milky
crystals and patterned with golden arabesques. Silken tapestries fell
from the walls, multicolored, flower woven. Soft deep silken rugs
covered the cabin's floor, and piles of cushions. At back, at left, two
wide low windows opened; through them streamed silver light.

A bird flew upon the sill of one; a snowy bird with scarlet beak and
feet; it scanned him, it preened itself, it cooed and flew away--

Soft hands touched him; Sharane's face was close, eyes now with doubt
more deeply shadowed.

"You--do come from Nabu?" she asked, and waited for reply; and still he
found no words to answer her. "Messenger you must be," she faltered,
"else--how could you board the Ship of Ishtar?...And you are clad in
Nabu's cloak...and wear his sword...many times have I seen them in his
shrine at Uruk...and I am weary of the Ship," she whispered. "I would
see Babylon again! Ah dearly, do I long for Babylon."

Now words came to Kenton.

"Sharane," he said boldly. "I do bear a message for you. It is the
truth, and our Lord Nabu is Lord of Truth--therefore it must be from
him. But before I give it to you, tell me--what is this ship?"

"What is the Ship!" she drew back from him, doubt enough now in her
face--"But if you come indeed from Nabu--you must know that!"

"I do not know," he told her, "I do not even know the meaning of the
message I carry--it is for you to interpret. Yet here am I, upon the
ship, before you. And in my ears I hear command--whispered it may be by
Nabu himself--that I must not speak until you have told me--what is this
ship."

For a long moment she stood, scanning him, studying him.

"The ways of the gods are strange," she sighed at last. "They are hard
to understand. Yet--I obey."




PART II The Sin of Zarpanit

4

SHE slipped down upon the divan and beckoned him beside her. She laid a
hand lightly upon his heart. His heart leaped beneath the touch; she
felt it, too, and moved a little from him, smiling, watching him through
downcast, curving lashes. She drew her slender, sandaled feet beneath
her; mused with white hands clasped between rounded knees. When she
spoke her voice was low, words half intoned.

"The sin of Zarpanit; the tale of her sin against Ishtar; Ishtar the
Mighty Goddess; Mother of the Gods and of men; Lady of the Heavens and
of Earth--who loved her!"

"High Priestess of Ishtar at her Great House in Uruk was Zarpanit.
Kadishtu, Holy One, was she. And I, Sharane, who come from Babylon, was
closest to her; her priestess; loved by her even as she was loved by
Ishtar. Through Zarpanit the Goddess counseled and warned, rewarded and
punished. Kings and men. Into the body of Zarpanit the Goddess came as
to a shrine, seeing through her eyes, speaking with her lips.

"Now the temple in which we dwelt was named the House of the Seven
Zones. In it was the sanctuary of Sin, God of Gods, who lives in the
Moon; of Shamash his son; whose home is the Sun, of Nabu, the Lord of
Wisdom; of Ninib, the Lord of War; of Nergal, the Dark Hornless one,
Ruler of the Dead; and of Bel-Merodach, the Mighty Lord. Yet most of all
was it the House of Ishtar, who dwelt there of his own right--temple
themselves within her holy home.

"From Cuthaw in the north, from the temple there which Dark Nergal ruled
as Ishtar ruled at Uruk, came a priest to sit over the Zone of Nergal in
the House of the Seven Zones. His name was Alusar--and close as was
Zarpanit to Ishtar as close was he to the Lord of the Dead. Nergal made
himself manifest through Alusar, spoke through him and dwelt at times
within him even as did Ishtar within her Priestess Zarpanit. With Alusar
came retinue of priests, and among them that spawn of Nergal's
slime--Klaneth. And Klaneth was close to Alusar as I to Zarpanit."

She raised her head and looked at Kenton through, narrowed lids.

"I know you now," she cried. "A while ago you lay upon the ship and
watched my strife with Klaneth! Now I know you--although then you had no
cloak nor sword; and vanished as I looked upon you!"

Kenton smiled at her.

"You lay with frightened face," she said. "And stared at me with fearful
eyes--and fled!"

She half arose; he saw suspicion sweep her anew; the scorn in her voice
lashed him into quick, hot rage. He drew her down beside him.

"I was that man," he said. "Nor was it fault of mine that then I went
away--I who have returned as quickly as I could? And your own eyes lied
to you. Nor ever think again that mine hold fear of you! Look into
them!" he bade her, fiercely.

She looked--long; sighed and bent away, sighed again and swayed toward
him, languorously. His arms gripped her.

"Enough," she thrust him away. "I read no hasty script in new eyes. Yet
I retract--you were not fearful. You did not flee! And when you speak I
shall no doubt understand. Let be!

"Between Ishtar and Nergal," she took up the interrupted tale, "is and
ever must be unending hatred and strife. For Ishtar is Bestower of Life
and Nergal is Taker of Life; she is the Lover of Good and he is the
Lover of Evil. And how shall ever Heaven and Hell be linked; or life and
death; or good and evil?

"Yet she, Zarpanit, Kadishtu, the Holy One of Ishtar, her best beloved,
did link all these. For where she should have turned away--she looked
with desire; and where she should have hated--she loved!

"Yea--the Priestess of the Lady of Life loved Alusar the Priest of the
Lord of Death! Her love was a strong flame by whose light she could see
only him--and him only. Had Zarpanit been Ishtar she would have gone to
the Dwelling Place of the Lost for Alusar, even as did the Goddess for
her lover Tammuz--to draw him forth or to dwell there with him.

"Yea--even to dwell with him there in the cold darkness where the dead
creep feebly, calling with the weak voices of birds. In the cold of
Nergal's domain, in the famine of Nergal's abode, in the blackness of
his city where the deepest shade of earth would be a ray of sunlight,
Zarpanit would have been happy--knowing that she was with Alusar.

"So greatly did she love!

"I helped her in her love--for love of her," she whispered. "But Klaneth
crept ever behind Alusar waiting for chance to betray him and to take
his place. Yet Alusar trusted him. There came a night--"

She paused, her face drawn with memoried terror.

"There came...a night when Alusar lay with Zarpanit...within her
chamber. His arms were about her...hers around his neck...their lips
together...

"And that night down came Ishtar from her Heavens and entered and
possessed her!...

"While at the same instant from his dark city came Nergal...and passed
into Alusar...

"And in each others arms, looking into each other's eyes, caught in the
fire of mortal love...were...Ishtar and Nergal...Heaven and Hell...the
Soul of Life mated to the Soul of Death!"

She quivered and wept and long minutes went slowly by before again she
spoke.

"Straightway those two who clasped were torn from each other. We were
buffeted as by hurricanes, blinded by lightnings; scourged and thrown
broken to the walls. And when we knew consciousness the priests and
priestesses of all the Seven Zones had us. All the sin was known!

"Yea, even though Ishtar and Nergal had not...met...that night still
would the sinning of Zarpanit and Alusar have been known. For Klaneth,
whom we had thought on guard, had betrayed them and brought down upon
them the pack!

"Let Klaneth be cursed!" Sharane raised arms high, and the pulse of her
hate beat upon Kenton like a hammer of flame. "Let Klaneth crawl blind
and undying in the cold blackness of Nergal's abode! But Goddess Ishtar!
Wrathful Ishtar! Give him to me first that I may send him there as I
would have him go!"



5 How The Gods Judged

"FOR A TIME," she said, "we lay in darkness, Zarpanit and I
together--and Alusar we knew not where. Great had been the sin of those
two, and in it I had shared. Not quickly was our punishment to be
decided. I comforted her as best I might, loving her, caring naught for
myself--for her heart was close to breaking, knowing not what they did
with him she loved.

"There fell another night when the priests came to us. They drew us from
our cell and bore us in silence to the portal of the Du-azzaga, the
Brilliant Chamber, the Council Room of the Gods. There stood other
priests with Alusar. They opened the portal, fearfully, and thrust us
three within.

"Now in truth my spirit shrank and was afraid, and beside mine I felt
the shuddering soul of Zarpanit.

"For the Du-azzaga was filled with light, and in the places of the Gods
sat not their images but the Gods themselves! Hidden each behind a
sparkling cloud the Gods looked at us. In the place of Nergal was a
fiery darkness.

"Out of the shining azure mist before the Shrine of Nabu came the voice
of the Lord of Wisdom.

"'So great is your sin, woman,' it said, 'and yours, priest, that it has
troubled even us the Gods! Now what have you to say before we punish?’

"The voice of Nabu was cold and passionless as the light of far flung
stars--yet in it was understanding.

"And suddenly my love for Zarpanit swelled, and I held fast to it and it
gave me strength; while beside me I felt her soul stand erect, defiant,
her love flinging itself before her as a shield. She did not
answer--only held out her arms to Alusar. His love stood forth unafraid
even as hers. He clasped her.

"Their lips met--and the judging Gods were forgotten!

"Then Nabu spoke again:

"'These two bear a flame that none but Ishtar can quench--and it may be
not even she!'

"At this Zarpanit drew from her lover's arms; came close to the glory in
which hid Ishtar; did homage and addressed her:

"'Yea, O Mother, are you not the mother of that fire we call love? Did
you not create it and set it as a torch above Chaos? And having made it,
did you not know how mighty was the thing you made? It was that love of
which you are the mother, O Holy Ishtar, that came uncalled into this
temple of my body which was yours, and still is yours though you have
abandoned it. Is it my fault that so strong was love that it broke the
doors of your temple, or my fault that its light blinded me to all save
him on whom it shone? You are the creator of love, O Ishtar; and if you
did not mean it to conquer then why made you it so mighty? Or if love be
grown stronger than you who made it can we--a man and woman--be blamed
that we could not overcome it? And if love be not stronger than you,
still did you make it stronger than man. Therefore punish love, your
child, O Ishtar--not us!'

"It was the Lord Nabu who broke the silence of the Gods:

"'Truth is in what she says. The flame they bear is one whose ways you
know, O Ishtar, far better than do we. Therefore it is for you to answer
her.'

"'From the glory veiling the Goddess a voice came, sweet but small with
bitter anger:

"'There is truth in what you say Zarpanit, whom once I called daughter.
Now because of that truth I will temper my anger. You have asked me
whether love is stronger than I who created it. We shall learn! You and
your lover shall dwell in a certain place that shall be opened to you.
Ever together shall you be. You may look upon each other, your eyes may
meet--but never lips nor hands! You may speak to each other--but never
of this flame called love! For when it leaps and draws you together then
I, Ishtar, will enter you, Zarpanit, and give it battle! Nor shall it be
the Ishtar you have known. Nay, that Sister-Self of mine whom men name
the Wrathful, the Destroyer--she shall possess you. And so it shall be
until the flame within you conquers her, or that flame perishes!'

"The voice of Ishtar was still. The gods sat, silent. Then out of the
fiery blackness of Nergal's shrine bellowed the voice of the Lord of
Death!

"'So say you, Ishtar! Then I, Nergal, tell you this--I stand with this
man who is my priest! Nor am I much displeased with him, since it was by
him that I looked so closely into your eyes, O Mother of Life!'--the
Blackness shook with laughter--'I shall be with him, and I will meet
you, Ishtar the Destroyer! Yea, with craft to match yours and strength
to grapple with you--until I, not you, have blown out that flame. For in
my abode is no such fire--and I would quench it in them that my darkness
be not affrighted when at last these two come to me!'

"And again the laughter shook the ebon cloud, while the glory that
covered the Goddess quivered with her wrath.

"But the three of us listened with despair--for ill as it had gone with
us, far worse was it to hear this jesting of the Dark Hornless One with
the Mother of the Heavens.

"Came Ishtar's voice, smaller still:

"'Be it so, O Nergal!'

"There was silence for a little time among the other gods; and I thought
that behind their veils they looked at each other askance. Came at last
the passionless voice of Nabu:

"'What of this other woman--?

"The voice of Ishtar, impatient:

"'Let her fate be bound with Zarpanit's. Let Zarpanit have her retinue
in that place to which she goes.'

"Then Nabu again:

"'The priest Klaneth--is he to go free?'

"'What! Shall not my Alusar have his retinue as well?' mocked Nergal.
'Nay, set Klaneth and others beside him to minister to him.'

"'Again I thought that the Gods looked at each other askance; then Nabu
asked:

"'Shall it be so, O Ishtar?'

"And Ishtar answered:

"'Let it be so!'

"The Du-azwsa faded; I was one with the nothingness.

"When we awoke we were on this haunted ship, on this strange sea, in
this strange world and all the gods had decreed in the Du-azzaga had
come to pass. With Zarpanit was I and half a score of the temple girls
she had loved. And with Alusar was Klaneth and a pack of his black
acolytes. They had given us oarsmen, sturdy temple slaves--a twain for
each oar. They had made the ship beautiful, and they had seen to it that
we lacked nothing."

A flame of anger pulsed for an instant through her eyes.

"Yea," she said, "the kindly gods did all for our comfort--and then they
launched the ship on this strange sea in this strange world as
battleground for Love and Hate, arena for Wrathful Ishtar and Dark
Nergal, torture chamber for their priestess and priest.

"It was in this cabin that Zarpanit awakened--with the name of Alusar
upon her lips. Then straightway she ran out the door, and from the black
cabin came Alusar calling her name. I saw her reach that line where
black deck meets this--and, lo, she was hurled back as though by thrust
of arms. For there is a barrier there, messenger--a barrier built by the
gods over which none of us upon the ship may pass--but then we knew
nothing of that. And Alusar, too, was hurled back.

"Then as they arose, calling, stretching hands, striving to touch finger
to finger, straightway into Zarpanit poured that Sister-Self of Ishtar,
the Angry One, the Destroyer, while around Alusar black shadows deepened
and hid him. At last--the shadows parted--and what had been the face of
Alusar peered from them and it was the face of Nergal, Lord of the Dead!

"So it was--even as the gods had decreed. And that immortal twain within
the bodies of those mortal two who loved each other so--battled and
flung their hates like brands against each other, while the slaves
chained to their oars in the pit cowered and raved or fell senseless
under the terrors loosed above them. And the temple girls cast
themselves upon the deck or ran screaming into the cabin that they might
not see. Only I did not cry out or flee--who, since I had faced the gods
in the Du-azzaga, could never again feel fear.

"And so it fared; how long, how long I do not know, in this place where
time seems not to be, since there is neither night nor day as we knew
them in Babylon.

"Yet ever Zarpanit and Alusar strove to meet, and ever Wrathful Ishtar
and Dark Nergal thrust them apart. Many are the wiles of the Lord of the
Shades and countless are his weapons. Many are the arts of Ishtar, and
is not her quiver always full? Messenger, how long the pair endured I
know not. Yet always they strove to break that barrier through, driven
by their love. And always--

"The flames within them burned on," she whispered. "Nergal nor Ishtar
could dim them. Their love did but grow stronger. There came a day--

"It was in mid-battle. Ishtar had taken possession of Zarpanit and stood
where this deck touches the pit of the oarsmen. Nergal had poured
himself into Alusar and hurled his evil spawn across the pit against the
goddess's lightnings.

"And as I crouched, watching, at this cabin's door, I saw the radiance
that covered Ishtar tremble and dull. I saw the face of Ishtar waver and
fade--the face of Zarpanit look out from where the face of Ishtar had
been.

"The darkness that shrouded the Lord of the Dead lightened as though a
strong flame had shot up within it!

"Then Ishtar took one step--and another and another--toward the barrier
between black deck and this. But it came to me that not by her will did
she so move. No! She went haltingly, reluctantly, as though something
stronger than herself pushed her on. And as she moved, so moved Nergal
within his shadows to meet her!

"Closer they came and closer. And ever the radiance of Ishtar would wax
and wane. Ever the shadows clothing Nergal would lighten, darken,
lighten again. Yet ever-slowly, unwillingly, but inexorably they drew
closer and closer to each other. I could see the face of Alusar, the
priest, thrusting itself into sight, stripping itself of Nergal's mask.

"Slowly, slowly the white feet of Zarpanit carried Ishtar to the
barrier; and slowly, slowly, ever matching her tread, came Alusar to
meet her. And they met!

"They touched hands, touched lips, clasped--ere conquered god and
goddess could withdraw from them.

"They kissed and clasped. They fell upon the deck--dead. Dead--in each
other's arms.

"Nor Ishtar nor Nergal had conquered! Nay! Love of man and love of
woman--these had conquered. Victors over god and goddess--the flames
were free!

"The priest had fallen on the hither side of the barrier. We did not
unclasp their arms. We set them adrift, alock, face to face--their
bodies.

"Then I ran forth to slay Klaneth. But I had forgotten that neither
Ishtar nor Nergal had conquered one the other. Lo, into me poured the
goddess, and into Klaneth returned Nergal! As of old these two powers
battled. And again as of old the unseen barrier was strong, holding back
from each other those on ivory deck and black.

"Yet I was happy--for by this I knew that Zarpanit and Alusar had been
forgotten by them. It came to me that the strife had gone beyond those
two who had escaped. That now it mattered not either to Wrathful Ishtar
or to Nergal that priestess and priest had gone--since in my body and in
Klaneth's they could still strive against each other for possession of
the ship...

"And so we sail--and fight, and sail--and fight... How long, I do not
know. Many, many years must have passed since we faced the gods in
Uruk--but see, I am still as young as then and as fair! Or so my mirror
tells me," she sighed.



6 "Am I Not--Woman!"

KENTON sat silent, unanswering Young and fair she was indeed--and Uruk
and Babylon mounds of timeworn sands these thousands of years!

"Tell me, Lord"--her voice roused him; "tell me, has the Temple at Uruk
great honor among the nations still? And is Babylon proud in her
supremacy?"

He did not speak, belief that he had been thrust into some alien,
reality wrestling with outraged revolt of reason.

And Sharane, raising her eyes to his troubled face, stared at him with
ever growing doubt. She leaped from beside him, stood quivering like a
blade of wrath in a sweetly flowered sheath.

"Have you word for me?" she cried. "Speak--and quickly!"

Dream woman or woman meshed in ancient sorceries, there was but one
answer for Sharane--the truth.

And tell her truth Kenton did, beginning from the arrival of the block
from Babylon into his house; glossing no detail that might make all
plain to her. She listened, her gaze steadfast upon him, drinking in his
words--amazement alternating with stark disbelief; and these in turn
replaced by horror, by despair.

"For even the site of ancient Uruk is well-nigh lost," he ended. "The
House of the Seven Zones is a windswept heap of desert sand. And
Babylon, mighty Babylon, has been level with the wastes for thousands of
years!"

She leaped to her feet--leaped and rushed upon him, eyes blazing,
red-gold hair streaming.

"Liar!" she shrieked. "Liar! Now I know you--you phantom of Nergal!"

A dagger flashed in her hand; he caught the wrist just in time;
struggled with her; bore her down upon the couch.

She relaxed, hung half fainting in his arms.

"Uruk dust!" she whimpered. "The House of Ishtar dust! Babylon a desert!
And Sargon of Akkad dead six thousand years ago, you said--six thousand
years ago!" She shuddered, sprang from his embrace. "But if that is so,
then what am I?" she whispered, white lipped. "What--am I? Six thousand
years and more gone since I was born--and I alive! Then what am I?"

Panic overpowered her; her eyes dulled; she clutched at the cushions. He
bent over her; she threw white arms around him.

"I am alive?" she cried. "I am--human? I am--woman?"

Her soft lips clung to his, supplicating; the perfumed tent of her hair
covered him. She held him, her lithe body pressed tight, imperatively
desperate. Against his racing heart he felt the frightened pulse of
hers. And ever between her kisses she whispered: "Am I not a woman--and
alive? Tell me--am I not alive?"

Desire filled him; he gave her kiss for kiss; tempering the flame of his
desire was clear recognition that neither swift love for him nor passion
had swept her into his arms.

It was terror that lay behind her caresses. She was afraid--appalled by
that six-thousand-year-wide abyss between the life she had known and
his. Clinging to him she fought for assurance. She had been driven back
to woman's last intrenchment--the primal assertion of the
woman-self--the certainty of her womanhood and its unconquerable lure.

No, it was not to convince him that her kisses burned his lips--it was
to convince herself.

He did not care. She was in his arms. He gave her kiss for kiss.

She thrust him from her; sprang to her feet.

"I am a woman, then?" she cried triumphantly. "A woman--and alive?"

"A woman!" he answered thickly, his whole body quivering toward her.
"Alive! God--yes!"

She closed her eyes; a great sigh shook her.

"And that is truth," she cried, "and it is the one truth you have
spoken. Nay--be silent!" she checked him. "If I am a woman and alive, it
follows that all else you have told me are lies--since I could be
neither were Babylon dust and it six thousand years since first I saw
the ship. You lying dog!" she shrilled, and with one ringed hand struck
Kenton across the lips.

The rings cut deep. As he fell back, dazed both by blow and sudden shift
of fortune, she threw open the inner door.

"Luarda! Athnal! All!" wrathfully she summoned. "Quick! Bind me this
dog! Bind him--but slay him not!"

Streamed from the cabin seven warrior maids, short kirtled, bare to
their waists, in their hands light javelins. They flung themselves upon
him. And as they wound about him Sharane darted in and tore the sword of
Nabu from his hand.

And now young, fragrant bodies crushed him in rings of woman flesh,
soft, yet inexorable as steel. The blue cloak was thrown over his head,
twisted around his neck. Kenton awoke from his stupor--awoke roaring
with rage. He tore himself loose, hurled the cloak from him, leaped
toward Sharane. Quicker than he, the lithe bodies of the maids screened
her from his rush. They thrust him with their javelins, pricking him as
do the matadors to turn a charging bull. Back and back they drove him,
ripping his clothing, bringing blood now here, now there.

Through his torment he heard her laughter.

"Liar!" she mocked. "Liar, coward and fool! Tool of Nergal, sent to me
with a lying tale to sap my courage! Back to Nergal you go with another
tale!"

The warrior maids dropped their javelins, surged forward as one. They
clung to him; twined legs and arms around him, dragged him down.
Cursing, flailing with his fists, kicking--caring no longer that they
were women--Kenton fought them. Berserk, he staggered to his feet. His
foot struck the lintel of the rosy cabin's door. Down he plunged,
dragging his wildcat burden with him. Falling they drove against the
door. Open it flew, and out through it they rolled, battling down the
ivoried deck.

There was a shouting close behind him, a shrill cry of warning from
Sharane--some urgent command, for grip of arms and legs relaxed;
clutching hands were withdrawn.

Sobbing with rage, Kenton swung to his feet. He saw that he was almost
astride the line between ivoried deck and black. It came to him that
this was why Sharane had whistled her furies from him; that he had
dragged them too close to its mysterious menace.

Again her laughter lashed him. She stood upon the gallery of little
blossoming trees, her doves winging about her. The sword of Nabu was in
her hand; derisively she lifted it.

"Ho, lying messenger!" mocked Sharane. "Ho, dog beaten by women! Come,
get your sword!"

"I'll come, damn you!" he shouted, and leaped forward.

The ship pitched. Thrown off his balance, Kenton staggered back, reeled
to the line where black and ivory decks met.

Reeled over it--unhurt!

Something deeper than his consciousness registered that fact; registered
it as of paramount importance. Whatever the power of the barrier, to it
Kenton was immune. He poised himself to leap back to the ivory deck.

"Stop him!" came the voice of Klaneth.

In mid-spring long, sinewy fingers gripped his shoulder, swung him
round. He looked into the face of the beater of the serpent drum. The
drummer's talons lifted him and cast Kenton like a puppy behind him.

And panting like some outraged puppy, Kenton swayed up on his feet. A
ring of black-robed men was closing in upon him, black-robed men whose
faces were dead white, impassive; black-robed men closing in upon him
with clutching hands. Beyond the ring stood the mailed warrior with the
red beard and the pale agate eyes; and beside him the Black Priest.

Naught cared Kenton for any or all of them. He rushed. The black robes
curled over him, overwhelming him, pinned him down.

Again the ship lurched, this time more violently. Kenton, swept off his
feet, slid sidewise. A wave swished over him. The hands that clutched
him were washed away. Another wave lifted him, flung him up and out.
Deep he sank; fought his way upward; dashed the water from his eyes and
looked for the ship.

A roaring wind had risen. Under it the ship was scudding--a hundred
yards away. He shouted; swam toward her. Down went the sail, down dipped
the oars, straining to keep her before the wind. Faster, faster flew the
ship before the blast.

She was lost in the silvery mists.

Kenton ceased his efforts; floated, abandoned in an unknown world.

A wave smote him; he came up behind it, choking. The spindrift whipped
him. He heard the booming surf, the hiss of combers thrown back by
ramparts of rock. Another wave caught him. Struggling on its crest he
saw just ahead of him a pinnacle of yellow stone rising from a nest of
immense boulders upon which the billows broke in fountains of spume.

He was lifted by a gigantic comber; dashed straight against the yellow
pillar.

The shock of his impact was no greater than that of breaking through
thick cobweb. For infinite distances it seemed to him he rushed on and
on through a soft thick darkness. With him went the shrieking clamor of
vast tempests. Abruptly his motion ended, the noise of the tempests
ceased.

He lay prone; his fingers clenched some coarse fabric that crumpled
stubbornly in his grip. He rolled over, hands thrust out; one of them
gripped cool, polished wood. He sat up--

He was back in his own room!

Kenton dragged himself to his feet, stood swaying, dazed.

What was that darkening the rug at his feet? It was water--water that
was dripping from him, strangely colored water--crimsoned water.

He realized that he was wet to the skin, drenched. He licked his
lips--there was salt upon them. His clothing was ripped and torn, the
salt water dripped from it.

And from a score of wounds his blood mingled with the water!

He stumbled over to the jewelled ship. On the black deck was a little
group of manikins, leaning and looking over the rail.

Upon the gallery of the rosy cabin one tiny figure stood--

Sharane!

He touched her--jewel hard, jewel cold, a toy!

And yet--Sharane!

Like returning wave his berserk rage swept him. Echoes of her laughter
in his ears, Kenton, cursing, sought for something to shatter the
shining ship. Never again should Sharane mock him!

He caught a heavy chair by the legs, swung it high overhead, poised for
an instant to send it crashing down--

And suddenly beneath the salt upon his lips Kenton tasted the honey musk
of her kisses--the kisses of Sharane!

The chair fell from his hands.

"Ishtar! Nabu!" he whispered, and dropped upon his knees. "Set me again
upon the ship! Ishtar! Do with me as you will--only set me again upon
your ship!"



7 Slave Of The Ship

SWIFT was his answer. He heard far away a bellowing roar as of countless
combers battering against a rock-ribbed coast. Louder it grew.

With a thunder of vast waters the outward wall of his room disappeared.
Where wall had been was the crest of an enormous leaping wave. The wave
curled down over Kenton, lifted him up, rolled him far under it; shot
him at last, gasping for breath up and up through it.

He was afloat again upon the turquoise sea!

The ship was close. Close! Its scimitared bow was striking down by his
head; was flying past him. A golden chain hung from it, skittering over
the crests. Kenton clutched at it--missed it.

Back he fell. Swift raced the shining side of the ship past him. Again
he threw himself high. There was another chain; a black one spattering
over the wave tips and hanging from the stem.

He gripped it. The sea tore at his thighs, his legs, his feet. Grimly he
held fast. Hand over hand, cautiously, he drew himself up. Now he was
just below the rail. Slowly he raised his head to peer over.

Long arms swept down upon him; long hands gripped his shoulders, lifted
him, hurled him down upon the deck, pinned him there. A thong was drawn
round his ankles, his arms were pinioned to his sides.

He looked into the face of the frog-mouthed beater of the serpent drum.
And over one of the drummer's enormous shoulders stared the white face
of Klaneth. He heard his voice:

"Carry him in, Gigi."

He felt himself lifted by the drummer as easily as though he had been a
babe; and cradled in the huge hands he was carried through the black
cabin's door.

The drummer set Kenton on his feet, regarding him with curious,
half-amused eyes. Agate eyes of the red-bearded warrior and pale eyes of
Klaneth dwelt upon him as curiously.

Kenton took stock of the three. First the black priest--massive, elephant
thewed; flesh pallid and dead as though the blood flowed through veins
too deeply imbedded to reveal the creep of its slow tide; the face of
Nero remodelled from cold clay by numbed hands.

Then Gigi--the drummer. His froglike face with the pointed ears; his
stunted and bowed legs; his giant's body above the hips; the gigantic
shoulders whence swung the long and sinewy and apish arms whose strength
Kenton had felt; the slit of a mouth in whose corners a malicious humor
dwelt. Something of old earth gods about him; a touch of Pan.


Red beard--a Persian out of that time when Persia's hordes were to the
world what later the Roman legions were to be. Or so Kenton judged him
by his tunic of linked light mail, the silken-sheathed legs, the high
buskins and the curved daggers and the scimitar in his jewelled belt.
And human as Kenton himself. About him was none of the charnel flavor of
Klaneth nor the grotesqueness of Gigi. The full red lips beneath the
carefully trimmed beard were sensual, life loving; the body was burly
and muscular; the face whiter than Kenton's own. But it was sullen and
stamped deep with a half-resigned, half-desperate boredom that even his
lively and frank curiosity about Kenton lightened little.

In front of him was a wide slab of bloodstone. Six priests knelt upon
it, worshipping something that stood within a niche just above the slab.
What it was he could not tell--except that it breathed out evil. A
little larger than a man, the thing within the niche was black and
formless as though made of curdling shadows. It quivered, pulsated--as
though the shadows that were its substance thickened constantly about
it, passed within it and were replaced swiftly by others.

Dark was that cabin, the walls somber as dull black marble. Other
shadows clung to the dark walls and clustered in the corners; shadows
that seemed only to await command to deepen into substance.

Unholy shadows--like those that clothed the thing within the niche.

Beyond, as in the cabin of Sharane, was another chamber, and crowding at
the door between were a dozen or more of the black-robed, white-faced
priests.

"Go to your places," Klaneth turned to them, breaking the silence. They
slipped away. The black priest closed the door upon them. He touched the
nearest of the kneeling priests with his foot.

"Our Lord Nergal has had enough of worship," he said. "See--he has
swallowed your prayers!"

Kenton looked at the thing within the niche. It was no longer misty,
shadowed. It stood out, clear cut. Its body was that of a man and its
face was that same awesome visage of evil into which he had seen the
black priest's turn on that first adventure of his upon the ship.

The face of Nergal--Lord of the Dead!

What had been the curdled, quivering shades enveloping the statue?

He felt the eyes of Klaneth searching him, covertly. A trick! A trick to
frighten him. He met the black priest's gaze squarely; smiled.

The Persian laughed.

"Hai, Klaneth," he said. "There was a bolt that fell short. Mayhap this
stranger has seen such things before. Mayhap he is a sorcerer himself
and can do better things. Change your play, Klaneth."

He yawned and seated himself upon a low settle. The black priest's face
grew grimmer.

"Best be silent, Zubran," he said. "Else it may be that Nergal will
change his play for you in a way to banish forever your disbelief."

"Disbelief?" echoed the Persian. "Oh, Nergal is real enough. It is not
disbelief that irks me. It is the eternal monotony. Can you do nothing
new, Klaneth? Can Nergal do nothing new? Change his play for me, eh? By
Ahriman--that is just what I wish he would do, if he can."

He yawned again, ostentatiously. The black priest growled; turned to the
six worshippers.

"Go," he ordered, "and send Zachel to me."

They filed through the outer door. The black priest dropped upon another
settle, studying Kenton; the drummer squatted, also watching him; the
Persian muttered to himself, playing with his dagger hilts. The door
opened and into the cabin stepped a priest who held in one hand a long
whip whose snaky lash, metal topped, was curled many times around his
forearm. He bowed before Klaneth.

Kenton recognized him. When he had lain on the deck close to the mast he
had seen this man sitting on a high platform at the foot of that mast.
Overseer of the galley slaves, the oarsmen, was Zachel, and that long
lash was measured to flick the furtherest of them if they lagged.

"Is this he whom you saw upon the deck some sleeps ago?" asked Klaneth.
"He who lay there and, you say, vanished when the drab of Ishtar yonder
bent over to touch him?"

"He is the same, master," answered the overseer, coming close to Kenton
and scanning him.

"Where went he then?" asked Klaneth, more to himself than to the other.
"To Sharane's cabin? But if so, why did she drive him out, her cats
clawing him? And whence came that sword she waved and bade him come
retake? I know that sword--"

"He did not go into her cabin at that time, master," interrupted Zachel.
"I saw her seek for him. She went back to her place alone. He had
vanished."

"And his driving forth," mused Klaneth, "that was two sleeps ago. And
the ship has sailed far since then. We saw him struggling in the waves
far behind us. Yet here he is upon the ship again--and with his wounds
still fresh, still bleeding as though it had been but a moment gone. And
how passed he the barrier? Yea--how passed he the barrier?"

"Ah, at last you have stumbled on a real question," cried the Persian.
"Let him but tell me that--and, by the Nine Hells, not long will you
have me for companion, Klaneth."

Kenton saw the drummer make a covert warning gesture to Zuhran; saw the
black priest's eyes narrow.

"Ho! Ho!" laughed Gigi. "Zubran jests. Would he not find life there as
tiresome as he pretends to find it with us? Is it not so, Zubran?"

Again he made the fleet, warning sigh. And the Persian heeded it.

"Yes, I suppose that is so," he answered grudgingly. "At any rate--am I
not sworn to Nergal? Nevertheless," he muttered, "the gods gave women
one art that has not grown tiresome since first they made the world."

"They lose that art in Nergal's abode," said the black priest, grimly.
"Best remember that and curb that tongue of yours lest you find yourself
in a worse place than here--where at least you have your body."

"May I speak, master?" asked Zachel; and Kenton felt threat in the
glance the overseer shot at him.

The black priest nodded.

"I think he passed the barrier because he knows naught of our Lord,"
said Zachel. "Indeed--may be an enemy of our Lord. If not--why was he
able to shake off the hands of your priests, vanish in the sea--and
return?"

"Enemy of Nergal!" Klaneth muttered.

"But it does not follow that he is friend of Ishtar," put in the
drummer, smoothly. "True if he were sworn to the Dark One he could not
pass the barrier. But true is it also that were he sworn to Ishtar
equally would that have been impossible."

"True!" Klaneth's face cleared. "And I know that sword--Nabu's own
blade."

He was silent for a moment; thoughtful. When he spoke there was courtesy
in the thick voice.

"Stranger," he said, "if we have used you roughly, forgive us. Visitors
are rare upon this craft. You--let me say--startled us out of our
manners. Zachel, loose his bonds."

The overseer bent and sullenly set Kenton free of his thongs.

"If, as I think, you come from Nabu," went on the black priest, "I tell
you that I have no quarrel with the Wise One or his people. Nor is my
Master, the Lord of Death, ever at odds with the Lord of Wisdom. How
could he be when one carries the keys of knowledge of this life, and the
other the key that unlocks the door of the ultimate knowledge? Nay,
there is no quarrel there. Are you a favored one of Nabu? Did he set you
on the ship? And--why?"

Silent was Kenton, searching desperately for some way to answer the
black priest. Temporize with him as he had with Sharane, he knew he
could not. Nor, he knew, was it of any use to tell him the truth as he
had told her--and been driven out like a hunted rat for it. Here was
danger; peril, greater than he had faced in the rosy cabin. Klaneth's
voice cut in:

"But favored of Nabu as you may be, it seems that could not save you
from losing his sword, nor from the javelins of Ishtar's women. And if
that is so--can it save you from my whip, my chains?"

And as Kenton stood, still silent, wolf light flared in the dead pupils
and the black priest leaped to his feet crying:

"Answer me!"

"Answer Klaneth!" roared Gigi. "Has fear of him killed your tongue?"

Under the apparent anger of the drummer's voice Kenton sensed a warning;
friendliness.

"If that favor could have saved me, at least it did not," he said
sullenly.

The black priest dropped back upon the settle, chuckling.

"Nor could it save you if I decreed your death," he said.

"Death--if he decrees it," croaked Gigi. "Whoever you are," went on the
black priest, "whence you come, or how--one thing seems true. You have
power to break a chain that irks me. Nay, Zachel, stay," he spoke to the
overseer who had made a move to go. "Your counsel is also good. Stay!"

"There is a slave dead at the oars," said the overseer. "I would loose
his chains and cast him over."

"Dead," there was new interest in Klaneth's voice. "Which was he? How
did he die?"

"Who knows?" Zachel shrugged his shoulders. "Of weariness, maybe. He was
one of those who first set sail with us. He who sat beside the
yellow-haired slave from the North whom we bought at Emakhtila."

"Well--he had served long," said the black priest. "Nergal has him. Let
his body bear his chains a little longer. Stay with me."

He spoke again to Kenton, deliberately, finally:

"I offer you freedom. I will give you honors and wealth in Emakhtila,
where we shall sail as soon as you have done my bidding. There you shall
have priesthood and a temple if you want them. Gold and women and
rank--if you will do what I desire."

"What must I do to win me all this?" asked Kenton. The black priest
arose and bent his head so that his eyes looked straight into Kenton's
own. "Slay Sharane!" he said.

"Little meat in that, Klaneth," the Persian spoke, mockingly. "Did you
not see her girls beat him? As well send to conquer a lioness a man who
has already been whipped by her cubs."

"Nay," said Klaneth, "I did not mean for him to pass over the open deck
where surely her watchers would see him. He can clamber round the ship's
hull--from chain, ledge to ledge. There is a window behind the cabin
wherein she sleeps. He can creep up and through it."

"Best swear him to Nergal before he takes that road, master," Zachel
interrupted. "Else we may never have him back again."

"Fool!" Gigi spoke. "If he makes his vows to Nergal perhaps he cannot go
at all. How do we know that then the barrier will not be closed to him
as it is to us who are sworn to the Dark One, even as it is to those who
are sworn to Ishtar?"

"True," nodded the black priest. "We dare not risk that. Well spoken,
Gigi."

"Why should Sharane be slain?" asked Kenton. "Let me take her for slave
that I may repay her for her mockery and her blows. Give her to me--and
you may keep all the riches and honors you have offered."

"No!" The black priest leaned closer, searching more intently his eyes.
"She must be slain. While she lives the Goddess has a vial into which to
pour herself. Sharane dead--Ishtar has none on this ship through whom
she may make herself manifest. This, I, Klaneth, know. Sharane dead,
Nergal rules--through me! Nergal wins--through me!"

In Kenton's mind a plan had formed. He would promise to do this--to slay
Sharane. He would creep into her cabin, tell her of the black priest's
plot. Some way, somehow, make her believe him.

Too late he saw by the black priest's face that Klaneth had caught his
thought! Too late remembered that the sharp eyes of the overseer had
been watching him, losing no fleeting change of expression;
interpreting.

"Look, master!" Zachel snarled. "Look! Can you not read his thought,
even as I? He cannot be trusted. You have held me here for counsel and
have called my counsel good--then let me speak what is in my mind. I
thought that this man had vanished from beside the mast, even as I told
you. But did he? The gods come and go upon the ship as they will. But no
man does. We thought we saw him struggling in the waves far behind the
ship. But did we? By sorcery he may have lain all this while, hid in
Sharane's cabin. Out of her cabin we saw him come--"

"But driven forth by her women, Zachel," broke in the drummer. "Cast
out. Beaten. Remember that. There was no friendship there, Klaneth. They
were at his throat like hounds tearing down a deer."

"A play!" cried Zachel. "A play to trick you, master. They could have
killed him. Why did they not? His wounds are but pin pricks. They drove
him, yes, but where? Over to us! Sharane knew he could cross the
barrier. Would she have made gift to us of new strength unless--she had
a purpose? And what could that purpose have been, master? Only one. To
place him here to slay you--even as you now plan to send him to slay
her!

"He is a strong man--and lets himself be beaten by girls! He had a
sword, a sharp blade and a holy one--and he lets a woman take it. Ho!
Ho!" laughed Zachel. "Do you believe all this, master? Well--I do not!"

"By Nergal!" Klaneth swore, livid. "Now by Nergal--!"

He gripped Kenton by the shoulders, hurled him through the cabin door
and out upon the deck. Swiftly he followed him.

"Sharane!" he howled. "Sharane!"

Kenton raised his head, dizzily; saw her standing beside the cabin door,
arms around the slim waists of two of her damsels.

"Nergal and Ishtar are busy elsewhere," mocked the black priest. "Life
on the ship grows dull. There is a slave under my feet. A lying slave.
Do you know him, Sharane?"

He bent and lifted Kenton high, as a man a child. Her face, cold,
contemptuous, did not change.

"He is nothing to me--Worm," she answered.

"Nothing to you, eh?" roared Klaneth. "Yet it was by your will that he
came to me. Well--he has a lying tongue, Sharane. By the old law of the
slaves shall he be punished for it. I will pit four of my men against
him. If he master them I shall keep him for awhile--to amuse us further.
But if they master him--then shall his lying tongue be torn from him.
And I will give it to you as a token of my love--O, Sacred Vessel of
Ishtar!"

"Ho! Ho!" laughed the black priest as Sharane shrank, paling. "A test
for your sorceries, Sharane. To make that tongue speak! Make it--" the
thick voice purred--"make it whisper of love to you. Tell you how
beautiful you are, Sharane. How wonderful--ah, sweet Sharane! Reproach
you a little, too, perhaps for sending it to me to be torn out!"

"Ho! Ho!" laughed Klaneth; then as though he spat the words, "You temple
slut!"

He thrust a light whip in Kenton's hands. "Now fight, slave!" he
snarled, "fight for your lying tongue!"

Four of the priests leaped forward, drawing from beneath their robes
thongs tipped with metal. They circled, and before Kenton could gather
his strength they were upon him. They darted about him like four lank
wolves; slashing at him with their whips. Blows flailed upon his head,
his naked shoulders. Awkwardly he tried to parry to return them. The
metal tips bit deep. From shoulders, chest, back, a slow rain of blood
began to drip.

A thong caught him across the face, half blinding him.

Far away, he heard the golden voice of Sharane, shrill with scorn.

"Slave--can you not even fight?"

Cursing, he dropped his useless whip. Close before him was the grinning
face of the priest who had struck him. Ere his lash could be raised
again the fist of Kenton had smashed squarely on the leering mouth. He
felt beneath his knuckles the bones of the nose crumble, the teeth
shatter. The priest crashed back; went rolling to the rail.

Instantly the other three were upon him; tearing at his throat, clawing
him, striving to drag him down. He broke loose. The three held back for
an instant; then rushed. One there was a little in front of the others.
Kenton. caught him by an arm, twisted that arm over his shoulder, set
hip to prisoned flank, heaved and hurled the priest through air against
the pair poised to strike. Out flung the body; fell short. The head
crashed against the deck. There was a sharp snap, like a breaking
faggot. For a moment the body stood, shoulders touching deck, legs
writhing as though in grotesque mid-somersault. Then crumpled and lay
still.

"Well thrown!" he heard the Persian shout.

Long fingers clutched his ankles; his feet flew from beneath him. As he
fell he caught glimpse of a face staring up at him, a face that was but
one red smear; the face of the first priest he had battered down.
Falling, Kenton swept out his arms. Claws clutched his throat. There
flashed into Kenton's mind a dreadful thing he had seen done in another
unequal combat upon a battlefield in France. Up swept his right hand,
the first two fingers extended. They found place in the eye sockets of
the throttler; pressed there cruelly; pressed there relentlessly. He
heard a howl of agony; tears of blood spurted over his hands; the
choking fingers dropped from his throat. Where eyes had been were now
two raw red sockets with dreadful pendants.

Kenton leaped to his feet. He stamped upon the crimson smeared face
looking up at him stamped once, twice, thrice--and the grip about his
ankles was gone.


He caught a glimpse of Sharane, white-faced, wide-eyed; realized that
the laughter of the black priest was stilled.

At him rushed the fourth acolyte, a broad-leafed knife gleaming in his
grip. Kenton bent his head, rushed to meet him. He caught the hand that
held the blade; bent the arm back; heard the bone snap. The fourth
priest shrieked and fell.

He saw Klaneth, mouth loose, staring at him.

Straight for the black priest's throat he leaped, right fist swinging
upward to the jaw as he sprang. But the black priest thrust out his
arms, caught him in mid-leap; lifted him high, over his head; balanced
him to dash him down upon the deck.

Kenton closed his eyes--this, then, was the end.

He heard the voice of the Persian, urgent:

"Hai, Klaneth! Hai! Kill him not! By Ishak of the Hollow Hell--kill him
not. Klaneth! Save him to fight again!"

Then the drummer--

"Nay, Klaneth! Nay!" He felt the talons of Gigi catch him; hold him
tight in double grasp. "Nay, Klaneth! He fought fairly and well. He
would be a rare one to have with us. Mayhap he will change his
mind--with discipline. Remember, Klaneth--he can pass the barrier."

The great bulk of the black priest trembled. Slowly his hands began to
lower Kenton.

"Discipline? Ha!" it was the snarling voice of the overseer. "Give him
to me, master, in the place of the slave who died at the oar. I will
teach him--discipline."

The black priest dropped Kenton on the deck; stood over him for a
moment. Then he nodded, turned and stalked into his cabin. Kenton,
reaction seizing him, huddled; hands clasping knees.

"Unchain the dead slave and cast him over, Zachel," he heard Gigi say.
"I will watch this man till you return."

Kenton heard the overseer patter away. The drummer bent over him.

"Well fought, wolf cub," he whispered. "Well fought! Now to your chains.
Obey. Your chance shall come. Do as I say, wolf cub--and I will do what
I may."

He walked away. Kenton, wondering, raised his head. He saw the drummer
stoop, lift the body of the priest with the broken neck and with one
sweep of his long arm send it whirling over the ship's rail. Bending
again he sent after it the body of him upon whose face Kenton had
stamped.

He paused speculatively before the wailing, empty-socketed horror
stumbling and falling about the deck. Then. grinning cheerfully, he
lifted it by the knees and tossed it overboard.

"Three less to worry about hereafter," muttered Gigi,

A tremor shook Kenton; his teeth chattered; he sobbed. The drummer
looked down on him with amused wonder.

"You fought well, wolf cub," he said. "Then why do you quiver like a
whipped hound whose half-chewed bone has been cast away?"

He laid both hands on Kenton's bleeding shoulders. Under their touch he
steadied. It was as though through Gigi's hands flowed some current of
strength of which his soul drank. As though he had tapped some ancient
spring, some still pool of archaic indifference both to life and death,
the current ran through him.

"Good!" said Gigi, and stood up. "Now Zachel comes for you."

The overseer was beside Kenton; he touched his shoulder; pointed down a
short flight of steps that led from the black deck to the galley-pit.
Zachel behind him, Kenton groped down those steps into the half darkness
of the pit. He stumbled along a narrow passage-way; was brought to halt
at a great oar over whose shank a head, golden-haired, long-haired as
any woman's, bent from muscle-gnarled shoulders. This golden-haired
oarsman slept. Around his waist was a thick bronze ring. From this ring
a strong chain swung, its end fastened to a staple sunk deep in the back
of the bench on which he sat. His wrists were manacled. The oar on which
his head rested was manacled, too. Between manacled wrists and manacled
oar two other strong chains stretched.

There was an empty chained circlet at the sleeper's left side; on the
oar at his left two empty manacles hung from chains.

Zachel pushed Kenton down on the bench beside the sleeping oarsman;
girdled his waist with the empty bronze circlet; snapped it close;
locked it.

He thrust Kenton's unresisting hands through the manacles dangling from
the oar; closed them on him; locked them.

And suddenly Kenton felt warmth of eyes upon him: looked behind him; saw
leaning over the rail the face of Sharane. There was pity in her face;
and dawning of something that set his heart to beating wildly.

"I'll discipline you--never fear!" said Zachel.

Kenton looked behind him again.

Sharane was gone.

He bent over his oar beside the sleeping giant.

Bent over his oar--

Chained to it.

Slave of the ship!



8 The Tale Of Sigurd

KENTON awakened to the shrilling of a whistle. Something flicked his
shoulder like the touch of a hot iron. He jerked his head up from the
bed of his arms; looked stupidly at the chained wrists. Again the flick
upon the shoulder, biting into the flesh.

"Up, slave!" he heard a snarling voice say--a voice he knew and
struggled with deep drugged mind to place. "Up! Stand to your oar!"

Then another voice, close beside him, whispering, hoarse, but with
warmth of comradeship in it:

"On your feet before his whip covers your back with the blood runes."

He struggled upright; hands falling mechanically into two smooth, worn
hollows in the wooden shaft to which he was chained. Standing thus upon
the bench, his eyes looked out upon a tranquil, turquoise ocean,
waveless, within a huge inverted bowl of silver mists. In front of him
were four men, two standing, two sitting, at shanks of great oars which,
like that he clutched, thrust through the side of a ship. Beyond them
sloped a black deck--

Memory rushed upon him, banishing the last of sleep. The first voice had
been that of Zachel, and the hot touches on his skin the bite of his
whip. He turned his head. A score of other men, black and brown, sat and
stood at other great sweeps, bending and rising, sending the Ship of
Ishtar cutting through the still blue sea. And there on a platform at
the mast step was Zachel, grinning derisively, out at Kenton, flicked the
long lash once more.

"Look not back! Row!" snarled Zachel.

"I will row," whispered the second voice. "Stand and sway with the oar
till strength comes to you."

He looked down on a head fair-haired, long-haired as any woman's. But
there was nothing womanish in the face that was lifted for an instant to
his. Ice cold and ice blue were the eyes in it, though thawed now by a
rough kindliness. The skin was storm beaten, tempest tanned. Nor was
there aught womanish in the muscles that swelled on shoulders, back, and
arms as he swung the great sweep, handling it as easily as a woman a
broom.

Norseman from tip to toe; a Viking straight out of some ancient
Saga--and, like Kenton, a slave to the ship; the giant who had been
asleep over the oar when Kenton's own chains had been locked upon him.

"Sigurd, Trygg's son, I," muttered the Norseman. "What Norn of ill-luck
set you on this ship of warlocks? Speak low--bend to your oar. The devil
with the lash has sharp ears."

To the motion of the oar Kenton bent and rose, standing there on the
bench. The benumbment that had held his mind was passing: passed ever
more swiftly as his tightened grip on the oar began to send the blood
more swiftly through his veins. The man beside him grunted approval,

"No weakling, you," he whispered. "The oar wearies--yet up it flows
strength from the sea. But sip that strength slowly. Grow
strong--slowly. Then it may be that you and I together--"

He paused; shot a wary side glance at Kenton.

"By your looks, you are a man of Eirnn, of the Southern Isles," he
whispered. "No grudge bear I against them. They met us always sword to
sword and breast to breast. Many the blows we have struck between us,
and the hovering Valkyries went never empty-handed back to Valhalla
where we met the men of Eirnn. Brave men, strong men, men who died
shouting, kissing sword blade and spear point as gayly as a bride. Are
you one of these?"

Kenton thought swiftly. He must shape his answer cunningly to bind this
comradeship so plainly offered him neither bewilder by whole truth nor
be so vague as to rouse suspicion.

"Kenton, my name," he answered softly. "My fathers were of the Eirnn.
They knew well the Vikings and their ships--nor have they handed down to
me any grudge against them. I would be friend of yours, Sigurd, Trygg's
son, since for how long neither of us knows I must labor here beside
you. And since you and I--together--"

He paused meaningly, as had the Viking. The Norseman nodded, then again
shot that keen side glance at him.

"How fell this bane upon you?" he muttered. "Since they drove me aboard
this ship at Isle of Sorcerers we have entered no harbor. You were not
here when they chained me to the oar."

"Sigurd--by Odin All-Father--I do not know!" The Norseman's hand
quivered at the name of his god. "A hand that I could not see plucked me
out of my own land and set me here. That son of Hela who rules the black
deck offered me freedom--if I would do a thing of shame. I would not. I
battled with his men. Three I slew. And then they chained me to this
oar."

"You slew three!" The Viking looked up at Kenton, eyes blazing, teeth
bared. "You slew three! Skoal! Comrade! Skoal!" he shouted.

Something like a flying serpent hissed by Kenton; hissed and struck the
Norseman's back. It withdrew, blood spurting from where it had bitten.
It struck and struck again.

Zachel's voice snarled through the hissing of the lash:

"Dog! Sow spittle! Have you gone mad? Shall I flay you then!"

Under the lash the body of Sigurd, Trygg's son, shuddered. He looked up
at Kenton, bloody froth on his lips. Suddenly, Kenton knew that it was
not from the pain of the blows--that it was from the shame of them and
from rage; that the whiplash was drawing redder drops from his heart,
threatening to break it.

And Kenton, leaning over, thrust his own bare back between that lash and
the bloody shoulders; took the blows itself.

"Ha!" shouted Zachel. "You want them, do you? Jealous of my whip's
kisses, are you? Well, then--take your fill of them!"

Mercilessly the lash hissed and struck, hissed and struck. Kenton
endured its bite stoically, never shifting the shield of his body from
the Norseman; meeting each sharp agony by thought of what he would do to
repay when his time had come--

When he had mastered the ship!

"Stop!" Through pain-misted eyes he saw the drummer leaning over the
pit. "Would you kill the slave, Zachel? By Nergal, if you do I'll ask
Klaneth as gift to me to chain you to his oar for a while!"

Then Zachel, sullenly:

"Row, slave!"

Silently, half fainting, Kenton bent over the oar. The Norseman caught a
hand, held it in iron grip.

"Sigurd, Trygg's son, am I! Jarl's grandson! Master of Dragons!" His
voice was low, yet in it was a clanging echo of smiting swords; and he
spoke with eyes closed as though he stood before some altar. "Blood
brotherhood is there now between us, Kenton of the Eirnn. Blood
brothers--you and I. By the red runes upon your back written there when
you thrust it between me and the whip. I shall be your shield as you
have been mine. Our swords shall be as one sword. Your friend shall be
my friend, and your enemy my enemy. And my life for yours when need be!
This by Odin All-Father and by all the Aesir I swear--I, Sigurd, Trygg's
son! And if ever I break faith with you, then may I lie under the poison
of Hela's snakes until Yggdrasill, the Tree of Life, withers, and
Ragnarak, the Night of the Gods, has come!"

The heart of Kenton swelled and grew warm.

The grip of the Norseman tightened. He withdrew his hand and bent once
more to the oar. Nothing more said he--but Kenton knew the vow was
sealed.

The whip of the overseer cracked, a shrill whistle sounded. The four
rowers in front lifted high their oars shunted them into a niche. The
Viking raised his sweep, set it in a similar rest.

"Sit," he said. "They wash us now and feed."

A cascade of water fell over Kenton, and another. The salt of it stung
his wounds, brought tears to his eyes,

"Quiet!" warned Sigurd. "Soon the pain passes, and the salt will heal."

Then down over him swished the water. Two brown men, naked to the
waists, backs scarred, went by. In each hand they held buckets, raised
them, and poured the water over two of the men at the stroke oars. They
turned and went back along the narrow way between the benches.

Powerful were their bodies. Their faces were those of men come to life
out of some ancient Assyrian frieze, narrow, hook-nosed, full-lipped. No
mind dwelt behind those faces. Their eyes were staring, empty.

The pair came back with other buckets which they dashed over the floor
of the rowers' pit, washing it clean. And when this was done two other
slaves set upon the bench between Kenton and the Norseman a rough
platter and a bowl. On the platter were a dozen long pods and a heap of
round cakes resembling the cassava bread the tropical folk press out and
bake in the sun. The bowl was filled with a dark, thick liquid, purplish
red.

He munched the pods; they were fleshy, with a curious meaty flavor. The
round cakes tasted exactly like what they resembled--cassava bread. The
liquid was strong, pungent, a trace of fermentation in it. There was
strength in that food and drink. The Norseman smiled at him.

"No lash now, so we speak not too loudly," he said. "It is the rule. So
while we eat and drink ask what you will of me without fear, blood
brother."

"Two things I would first know of many," said Kenton. "How came you on
the ship, Sigurd? And how comes this food here?"

"From here and there comes the food," answered the Viking. "It is a ship
of warlocks and a cursed one. Not long may it stop at any place, nor at
any place is it welcome. Nay, not even at Emakhtila, which is full of
warlocks. Where it harbors they bring food and gear quickly and with
fear. Quickly do they give to speed it quickly away, lest the demons who
possess it grow angry and destroy. They have strong magic--that pale son
of Helan and the woman on the white deck. Sometimes I think her a
daughter of Loki, whom Odin chained for his wickedness. And sometimes I
think her a daughter of Freya, the Mother of Gods. But whatever she be,
she is very fair and has a great soul. I have no hatred toward her."

He lifted the bowl to his lips.

"And as for how I came here," he went on, "that is a short tale enough.
Southward I had sailed with the fleet of Kagnor Red Spear. Twelve great
dragons had we when we set forth. Southward sailed we through many seas.
raiding as we went. Then after long, with six of our twelve dragons left
us, we came to a city in the land of the Egyptians. It was a very great
city and full of temples to all the gods in the world--except our gods.

"It irked us that among all these temples Odin All-Father had none. It
irked us, and we grew wroth. So one night when we had drunk overdeep of
the Egyptian wine six of us set forth to take a temple, cast out its god
and give it to Odin for a home.

"We came to a temple and entered. It was a dark temple and full of black
robes like these on board the ship. When we told them what we meant to
do, they buzzed like bees and rushed us like a wolfpack. Many then we
slew, shouting. And we would have won that temple for Odin, the six of
us fighting in a ring, but--a horn blew!"

"Summoning too many for you?" asked Kenton.

"Not at all, blood brother," said Sigurd. "It was a warlock horn. A horn
of sleep. It blew sleep through us as the storm wind blows the spray
through a sail. It turned our bones to water, and our red swords dropped
from hands that could not longer feel their hilts. And down we all
dropped, sodden with sleep, among the slain.

"When we awoke we were in a temple. We thought it the same temple, for
it was as dark and the same black-robed priests filled it. We were in
chains, and they whipped us and made us slaves. Then we found we were no
longer in the land of the Egyptians, but in a city named Emakhtila, on
an isle of warlocks set in a sea of what I think a warlock world. Long I
slaved for the black robes, I and my comrades, till they dragged me to
this ship that had dropped anchor in Emakhtila harbor. And here ever
since I have bent over my oar, watching their wizardries and fighting to
keep my soul from being sucked from me."

"A horn that poured out sleep!" said Kenton, puzzled. "But that I do not
understand, Sigurd."

"You will, comrade," Sigurd said grimly. "Soon enough you will. Zachel
plays it well--listen--it begins."

From behind them a deep, droning, mellow horn note sounded. Low pitched,
vibrant, continuous, it crept into the ears, and seemed to pour through
them along every nerve, touching them, caressing them with the soft
fingers of the very soul of poppied sleep.

The note droned on, dripping sleep.

The Viking's eyes were fierce and strained with struggle against
slumber. Slowly, slowly the lids closed over them.

His hands relaxed, the fingers opened, his body swayed, his head dropped
upon his chest. He slumped down upon the bench.

The note droned on.

Fight as hard as Kenton might, he could not thrust away the soft,
clinging slumber that pressed inexorably in on him from every side. A
numbness crept through his body. Sleep, sleep--swarms of infinite
particles of sleep were drifting through him, drifting with his blood
through every vein, along every nerve, clogging his brain.

Lower and lower dropped his own lids.

And suddenly he could no longer fight. Chains rattling, down against
Sigurd he fell...

Something deep within Kenton whispered to him to awaken; something
reached down into the abysses of his charmed slumber and drew to its
surface his consciousness. Slowly his heavy lids began to rise--then
stopped, obeying some subtle warning. He looked out through narrowest
slits. The chains that bound his wrists to the riveted manacles of the
oar were long. He had moved in his sleep and now lay with head on arm
stretched along the back of the low bench. He faced the ivory deck.

There, at its edge, looking down upon him was Sharane. Veils of palest
blue, through which the hands of long dead Assyrian maids had woven
golden lotuses, draped her breast, coiled round her slender waist, and
fell to the delicate, sandaled feet. Her black-haired maiden Satalu
beside her, she leaned over, scanning him.

"Mistress," he heard Satalu say, "he cannot be man of Nergal, since
Nergal's men have chained him there."

"No" mused Sharane. "No--in that I was wrong. And had he been of
Nergal, never could he have crossed the barrier. Nor would Klaneth have
taunted me--as he did--"

"He is very handsome and young," sighed Satalu, "and strong. He fought the
priests like a lion lord."

"Even a cornered rat will fight," answered Sharane, scornful. "He let
himself be led to his chains like a whipped dog. And he lied to me! He
came to me in borrowed plumes, bearing a sword he could not use!"

"Oh," cried Sharane--and half of that cry was a sob--"oh, Satalu, I am
ashamed! Liar and coward and slave--still he stirs something in my heart
that never yet stirred for man. Oh, I am ashamed--I am ashamed, Satalu!"

"Lady Sharane, do not weep!" Satalu caught the fluttering hands. "He
may be none of these. How do you know? Perhaps he did speak the truth.
How know we what has happened in that world of ours so long lost to us?
And he is very handsome--and young!"

"At least," said Sharane and bitterly, "he is a slave."

"Sh-h!" warned Satalu. "Zachel comes."

They turned; walked toward Sharane's cabin out of Kenton's vision.

The wakening whistle shrilled. There was a stir among the slaves, and
Kenton groaned, raised himself, rubbed eyes, and gripped the oar.

Exultation was in his heart. There could be no mistaking Sharane's
words. He held her. By a slender thread, it might be; but still--he held
her. And if he were not a slave--when slave he ceased to be--what then?
By no slender thread then would he hold her. He laughed--but softly,
lest Zachel hear. Sigurd looked at him curiously.

"The sleep horn must have brought you gay dream," he murmured.

"Gay, indeed, Sigurd," he answered. "The kind of dream that will thin
our chains until we can snap them."

"Odin send more dreams like it," grunted the Norseman.



9 The Bargaining Of Sharane

WHEN Zachel blew the horn again Kenton had no need of it to send him to
sleep. The sharp eyes of the overseer had seen through Sigurd's
self-sacrificing stratagem, and he had watched Kenton continually,
lashing him when he faltered or let the whole burden of the oar fall
upon the Norseman. His hands were blistered, every bone and muscle
ached, and his mind lay dulled in his weary body. And thus it was
between the next five sleeps.

Once he roused himself enough to ask Sigurd a question that had been
going round and round in his brain. Half the rowers in the pit were
behind the line that separated black deck from ivory--that line which
neither Klaneth and his crew nor Sharane and her women could cross. Yet
Zachel roamed at will from one end of that pit to the other; other
priests, too, for he had seen them. And although he had not seen Klaneth
or Gigi or the Persian there, he did not doubt that they could come and
go if they so wished. Why, then, did not the black robes swarm up the
farther side and overwhelm the rosy cabin? Why did not Sharane and her
women drop into the pit and lay siege to the ebon cabin? Why did they
not launch their javelins, their arrows, over the pit of the rowers into
the wolfpack of the black priest?

It was a warlock ship, the Viking had repeated, and the spell upon it no
simple one. The slave who had died had told him that he had been on the
ship since the gods had launched her, and that the same unseen,
mysterious barrier shut off the side of the rowers that rimmed Sharane's
deck. Nor could javelin or arrow or other missile other than those
hurled by god and goddess penetrate it.

Humanly, each opposing camp was helpless against the other. There were
other laws, too, the slave had told Sigurd. Neither Sharane nor Klaneth
could leave the ship when it hove to in harbor. Sharane's women could.
The black priest's men, yes--but not for long. Soon they must return.
The ship drew them back. What would happen to them if they did not
return? The slave had not known, had said that such thing was
impossible, the ship would draw them back.

Kenton pondered over all this as with aching back he pushed and pulled
at the oar. Decidedly these were practical, efficient deities who had
doomed the ship overlooking no detail, he thought, half amused.

Well, they had created the game, and certainly they had the right to
make that game's rules. He wondered whether Sharane could roam at will
from stem to stern when he had conquered the ship. Wondering still, he
heard the drone of Zachel's horn begin, and pitched, content, into the
bottomless oubliette of sleep it opened.

He awoke from that sixth sleep with mind crystal clear, an astonishing
sense of well being, and a body once more free from pain and flexible
and vigorous. He pulled at his oar strongly and easily.

"Strength flows up to you from the sea even as I foretold," grunted
Sigurd.

Kenton nodded absently, his sharpened mind grappling with the problem of
escape from his chains.

What went on in the pit and on the ship while the rowers were asleep?
What chance would offer then to free himself and the Viking if he could
stay awake?

If he could stay awake!

But how could he close his ears to that horn which poured sleep into
them as the sirens of old poured with their songs fatal fascination into
the ears of sailors strayed within their ken?

The sirens! The story of crafty Ulysses' adventure with those sea women
flashed into his memory. How desire had come upon that wanderer to hear
the siren song--yet no desire to let it draw him to them. How he had
sailed into their domain; had filled his oarsmen's ears with melted wax;
had made them bind him to the mast with open ears, and then, cursing,
straining at his bonds, mad with desire to leap into their white arms,
had heard their enchanted measures--and sailed safe away.

A wind arose--a steady wind that filled the sail and drove the ship
through gently cresting waves. Came command to rest oars. Kenton
slouched down upon the bench. Sigurd was in one of his silent moods,
face brooding, gaze far away, filled with dreams of other days when his
dragons cleft the Northern Ocean.

Kenton dropped his hands upon the silken rags upon his legs; his fingers
began, seemingly idly, to unravel their threads, twist and knot them
into little silken cylinders. He worked on, the Viking unheeding. Now
two were finished. He palmed one, rubbed as idly the side of his face,
and so rubbing slipped the little silken cylinder into an ear. He waited
for a time; slipped in the other ear the second plug. The roaring of the
wind sank to a loud whispering.

Carefully, unhurrying, he drew them out; twisted more threads around
them. Again he set them in place. Now the wind's roar was only a
murmuring, faint and far away. Satisfied, he slipped the silken
cylinders under his torn girdle.

On sped the ship. And after a while the slaves came and dashed their
buckets over him and the Viking; brought them food and drink.

On the very edge of the sleep-horn drone Kenton slumped down upon the
bench, face on forearms, the silken cylinders hidden under thumbs.
Swiftly he slipped them in his ears. Then he let every muscle go limp.
The droning diminished to a faint, hardly heard humming. Even so, a
languor crept through him. He fought it. He beat the languor back. The
humming ceased. He heard the overseer go by him; looked after him
through half-raised lids; saw him ascend that pit's steps and pass over
the deck to Klaneth's cabin.

The black deck was empty. As though shifting in slumber Kenton rolled
over, threw an arm across the back of the bench, rested his head upon
it, and through lowered lashes took stock of what lay behind him.

He heard laughter, golden, chiming. To the edge of her deck, black-haired
Satalu beside her, walked Sharane. She seated herself there,
unbound her hair, shook the flaming red gold cloud of it over face and
shoulders; sat within it as though within a perfumed, silken red gold
tent. Satalu raised a shining tress; began to comb it.

Through that web of loveliness he felt Sharane's eyes upon him.
Involuntarily his own opened wide; clung to her hidden ones. She gasped,
half rose, parted the curtains of her hair, stared at him in wonder. "He
is awake!" she whispered. "Sharane!" he breathed.

He watched shame creep again into her eyes--her face grow cold. She
raised her head, sniffed daintily.

"Satalu," she said, "is there not a stronger taint from the pit?" Again
she silted her nose. "Yes--I am sure there is. Like the old slave market
at Uruk when they brought the new slaves in."

"I--I notice it not, mistress," faltered Satalu. "Why yes--of course."
Sharane's voice was merciless. "See there he sits. A new slave; a
strange slave who sleeps with open eyes."

"Yet he--he looks not like a slave," again faltered her handmaiden.

"No" questioned Sharane sweetly. "What has happened to your memory,
girl? What is the badge of a slave?"

The black-haired girl did not answer; bent low over the locks of her
mistress.

"A chain and the brand of whips," mocked Sharane. "These are the slave's
badge. And this new slave has both--in plenty."

Still Kenton was silent beneath her mockery; made no movement; indeed
scarce heard her, his burning eyes drinking in her beauty.

"Ah, but I dreamed one came to me with great words, a bearer of
promises, fanning hope in my heart," sighed Sharane. "I opened my heart
to him--in that dream, Satalu. All my heart! And he repaid me with
lies--and his promises were empty--and he was a weakling--and my girls
beat him. And now it seems to me that there sits that liar and weakling
of my dreams with brand of whip upon his back and weak hands chained. A
slave!"

"Mistress! Oh, Mistress!" whispered Satalu. But Kenton kept
silence, although now her mockery began to sting.

And suddenly she rose, thrust hands through shining locks.

"Satalu," she murmured, "would you not think that sight of me would
awaken even a slave? That any slave, so he were young and strong, would
break his chains--for me?"

She swayed, turned; through her thin robes gleamed exquisite, rosy
curves of breast and thigh; lithe loveliness. She spread wide the nets
of her hair, peered through them at him with wanton eyes; preened
herself, thrust out a tiny, rosy foot, a dimpled knee.

He raised his head recklessly, the hot blood rushing through.

"The chains will break, Sharane!" he called. "I will break them--never
fear! And then----"

"And then--" she echoed, "and then my girls shall beat you as before!"
she mocked, and sped away.

He watched her go, pulse beating like drums. He saw her halt and whisper
to Satalu. The black-haired girl turned, made him a warning gesture. He
closed his eyes, dropped head on arm. And soon he heard the feet of
Zachel striding down the steps, go by him. The waking whistle shrilled.

Why, if her mockery had been real, had she warned him?

Sharane looked down upon him again from her deck.

Time had gone by since she had stood there mocking him. Time had gone,
but how measured in his own lost world Kenton had no means of telling,
meshed as he was in the ship's timeless web.

Sleep after sleep he had lain on his bench, watching for her. She had
kept to her cabin--or if she had not, she had kept herself from his
sight.

Nor had he told the Viking that he had broken the spell of the sleep
horn. Sigurd he trusted, heart and soul. Yet he was not sure of the
Norseman's subtlety; not certain that he could feign the charmed slumber
as Kenton did. He could not take the risk.

And now again Sharane stood and looked down upon him from the platform
close to the emerald mast. The slaves slept. There was none at watch on
the black deck. There was no mockery now in Sharane's face. And when she
spoke she struck straight home to the heart of her purpose.

"Whoever you are, whatever you may be," she whispered, "two things can
you do. Cross the barrier. Remain awake when the other slaves must
sleep. You have told me that you can break your chains. Since those two
things you can do--I find belief within me that of the third you also
speak the truth. Unless----"

She paused; he read her thought.

"Unless I lied to you about that as I lied to you before," he said
levelly. "Well, those were no lies I told you."

"If you break your chains," she said, "will you slay Klaneth?"

He feigned to consider.

"Why should I kill Klaneth?" he asked at last.

"Why? Why?" Scorn tinged her voice. "Has he not set his chains upon you?
Had you whipped? Made you slave?"

"Did not Sharane drive me forth with javelins?" he asked. "Did not
Sharane pour salt in my wounds with her mockery--her laughter?"

"But--you lied to me!" she cried.

Again he feigned consideration.

"What will this liar, weakling, and slave gain if he kills the black
priest for you?" he asked bluntly.

"Gain?" she repeated blankly.

"What will you pay me for it?" he said.

"Pay you? Pay you! Oh!" The scorn in her eyes scorched him. "You shall
be paid. You shall have freedom--the pick of my jewels--all of them--"

"Freedom I shall have when I have slain Klaneth," he answered. "And of
what use to me are your jewels on this cursed ship?"

"You do not understand," she said. "The black priest slain, I can set
you on any land you wish in this world. In all of them jewels have
value."

She paused, then: "And have they no worth in that land from whence you
come, and to which, unchained, it seems you can return whenever danger
threatens?"

Her voice was honeyed poison. But Kenton only laughed.

"What more do you want?" she asked. "If they be not enough--what more?"

"You!" he said.

"Me!" she gasped incredulously. "I give myself to any man--for a price!
I--give myself to you! You whipped dog!" She stormed. "Never!"

Up to this Kenton's play with her had been calculated; but now he spoke
with wrath as real and hot as hers.

"No!" cried Kenton. "No! You'll not give yourself to me! For, by God,
Sharane, I'll take you!"

He thrust a clenched, chained hand out to her.

"Master of this ship I'll be, and with no help from you--you who have
called me a liar and slave and now would throw me butcher's pay. No!
When I master the ship it will be by my own hand. And that same hand
shall master--you!"

"You threaten me!" Her face flamed wrath. "You!"

She thrust a hand into her breast, drew out a slender knife--hurled it
at him. As though it had struck some adamantine wall, invisible, it
clanged, fell to her feet, blade snapped from hilt.

She paled, shrank.

"Hate me!" jeered Kenton. "Hate me, Sharane; For what is hate but the
flame that cleans the cup for wine of love!"

With no soft closing of her cabin door did she go within it. And Kenton,
laughing grimly, bent his head over his oar; was soon as sound asleep as
the Norseman snoring beside him.



10 On The Ship A-Sailing

HE AWAKENED to a stirring and humming through all the ship. On ivory
deck and black the ship's folk stood, pointing, talking, gesticulating.
A flock of birds, the first he had seen in this strange world, hovered
above him. Their wings were shaped like those of great butterflies.
Their plumage shone as though lacquered in glowing vermilions and pale
golds. From their opened beaks came a chiming tumult as of little
tinkling bells.

"Land!" the Viking exclaimed. "We run into harbor. Food and water must
be low."

There was a brisk wind blowing and the oars at rest. Careless of
Zachel's lash, Kenton leaped upon the bench, looking over the bow. The
overseer gave no heed, his own eyes intent upon what lay before.

It was a sun yellow isle, high and rounded, and splashed with craters of
color like nests of rainbows. Save for these pansied dapplings, the
island curved all glowing topaz, from its base in the opalescent
shallows of the azure sea to its crest, where feathered trees drooped
branches like immense panaches of ostrich plumes dyed golden amber. Over
and about that golden isle shot flashes of iridescences from what seemed
luminous flying flowers.

Closer drew the ship. At the bow the damsels of Sharane clustered,
laughing and chattering. And upon her balcony was Sharane, watching the
isle with wistful eyes.

Now it was close indeed. Down ran the peacock sail. The ship rowed
slowly and more slowly to the shore; not until the curved prow had
almost touched that shore did the steersman shift the rudder and bring
the ship sharply about. As they drifted, the plumes of the strange trees
swept the deck with long leaves, delicately feathered as those the frost
etches on the winter pane. Topaz yellow and sun amber were those leaves;
the branches from which they hung glistened as though cut from yellow
chrysolite. Immense clusters of flowers dropped from them, lily shaped,
flame scarlet.

Slowly, ever more slowly, drifted the ship. It crept by a wide cleft
that cut into the heart of the isle. The sides of this vale were
harlequined with the cratered colors, and Kenton saw that these were
fields of flowers, clustered as though they filled deep circled
amphitheaters. The flashing iridescences were birds--birds of every size
from smallest dragon flies to those whose wing-spread was that of
condors in the high Andes. Large and small, on each glittered the
lacquered butterfly wings.

The isle breathed fragrance. Of green upon it there was none, save for
the emerald glintings of the birds.

The valley slid behind them. Ever more slowly the feathered trees
brushed the deck. The ship slipped into the mouth of a glen at whose end
a cataract dropped rain of pearl into a golden-ferned pool. There was
the rattling of a chain; an anchor splashed. The bow of the ship swung
in; nosed through the foliage; touched the bank.

Over the rail climbed the women of Sharane, upon their heads great
baskets. From her balcony Sharane looked after them with deeper
wistfulness. The women melted within the flower-spangled boskage;
fainter and fainter came their voices; died away. Sharane, chin cupped
in white hands, drank in the land and with wide and longing eyes. Above
her red gold hair streaming through the silver crescent a bird
hovered--a bird all gleaming emeralds and flashing blues, chiming peals
of fairy bells. Kenton saw tears upon her cheeks. She caught his gaze,
dashed them away angrily. She half turned as though to go; then slipped
down woefully behind one of her balcony's tiny blossoming trees where he
could no longer see her weeping.

Now her women filed back along the bank, their baskets filled with
plunder; fruits, gourds purple and white, and great clusters of those
pods he had eaten when first he had broken fast upon the ship. Into the
cabin they trooped, and out again with baskets empty. Time upon time
they came and went. At last they bore away skins instead of the woven
hampers; water bags which they filled from the pool of the cataract.
Time upon time they brought them back, swollen full, upon their
shoulders.

They trooped out once more, burdenless; darted joyously over the rail;
doffed their scanty enough robes and plunged into the pool. Like water
nymphs they swam and played, the pearly flow caressing, streaming from
delicately delicious curves--pale ivory, warm rose, soft olive. They
sprang from the pool, wove flower crowns and with sprays of the fragrant
lily blooms in arms clambered, reluctant, over the side and into the
rosy cabin.

Now crawled over the rail the men of Klaneth. They slipped on and off
the ship with their burdens, poured their last water skins into the
casks.

Again there was stir upon the ship. The chains rattled, the anchor
lifted. Up and down flashed the oars, drawing the ship from the bank. Up
rose the peacock sail. The ship veered, caught the wind, swam slowly
through the amethystine shallows. Faster swung the sweeps. The golden
isle diminished, was saffron shadow in the mists; vanished.

On sailed the ship. And on and on--by what signs or reckonings or to
what port Kenton could not know. Sleep after sleep it sailed. The huge
bowl of silver mists whose edge was the horizon, contracted or expanded
as those mists thickened or thinned. Storms they met and weathered;
roaring storms that changed the silver of the mists to lurid copper,
ambered jet, darkness deeper than night. Sudden storms threaded with
lightnings weird and beautiful. Lightnings that were like the
shatterings of immense prisms, the breakings of rainbows of jewels.
Storms that trod on feet of thunder. Thunder that was metallic,
tintinnabulary; hurricanes of clashing cymbals following showers of
multicolored, flaming gems.

Steadily strength of the sea poured into Kenton up his oar blade, even
as Sigurd had promised; remaking him, hardening him, turning all his
body into a machine as finely tempered as a rapier and as flexible.

Between sleeps Sigurd chanted to him Viking tales, Sagas unsung, lost
epics of the Norse.

Twice the black priest sent for him; questioned him, threatened him,
cajoled him--vainly. And each time with blacker face sent him back to
his chains.

Strife of god and goddess there was none. And Sharane during the sleep
time of the slaves kept to her cabin. Awake, he could not turn his head
to seek her without inviting the bite of Zachel's lash. So often he let
the horn of sleep have its way--what use to keep awake while Sharane
hid?

There came a time when, lying awake, he heard steps coming down the
pit's stair. He turned, face against the back of his bench, as though in
troubled slumber. The steps paused beside him.

"Zubran," it was the voice of Gigi, "this man has become a young lion."

"Strong enough," grunted the Persian. "It is a pity that his strength is
wasted here--driving this ship from one place of weariness to another as
bad."

"I think as you," said Gigi. "Strength he now has. Also he has courage.
You remember how he slew the priests."

"Remember!" There was no boredom in Zubran's voice now. "Can I forget!
By the heart of Rustam--could I forget! It was the first draft of life
given me, it seemed, for centuries. I owe him something for that."

"Also," went on Gigi, "he has loyalty where his heart turns. I told you
how he shielded with his own back the man who sleeps beside him. I liked
him well for that, Zubran."

"As a gesture," said the Persian, "it was excellent. A trifle florid,
perhaps, for perfect taste. But still--excellent."

"Courage, loyalty, strength," mused the drummer; then slowly, a hint of
mirth in his voice, "and cunning. Unusual cunning, Zubran, since he has
found a way to shut his ears to the sleep horn--and lies here now wide
awake."

Kenton's heart stopped; began to beat furiously. How did the drummer
know? Did he know? Was it only a guess? Desperately he strove against
quivering nerves; forced his body to remain inert.

"What!" exclaimed the Persian, incredulously. "Awake! Gigi--you dream!"

"Nay," said Gigi quietly. "I have watched him when he saw me not. He is
awake, Zubran."

Suddenly Kenton felt his paw upon his breast, pressing upon his pounding
heart. The drummer chuckled; withdrew the hand.

"Also," he said, approvingly, "he has caution. A little he trusts
me--but not too much. Nor does he know you well enough as yet, Zubran,
to give you any trust at all. Therefore he lies quiet, saying to
himself: 'Gigi cannot really know. He cannot be sure as long as I do not
open my eyes.' Yes, he has caution. But see, Zubran, he cannot keep the
blood from stealing up into his face, nor slow his heart to the calm
rhythm of sleep." Again he chuckled, half-maliciously. "And there is
other proof of his caution, in that he has not told his comrade that the
horn has no power over him. Hear the long-haired one snore? No mistaking
that for wakefulness. I like that too--he knows that a secret shared by
two runs risk of being none."

"He seems sound asleep to me." Kenton felt the Persian bend down over
him doubtfully.

His eyelids fought to rise; by sheer will he kept them down, breathing
regularly, motionless. How long would they stand there looking at him?
At last Gigi broke the silence.

"Zubran," he said, quietly, "like you, I tire of the black priest and
this fruitless strife between Ishtar and Nergal. Yet bound by our vows
neither you nor I may come to grips with Klaneth, nor may we harm his
men. It matters not that by trickery those vows were gotten from us. We
made them--and they bind. As long as Nergal's priest rules Nergal's deck
we may not give him battle. But suppose Klaneth no longer ruled--that
another hand thrust him to his dark master?"

"A mighty hand that! Where on these seas could we find such a hand? And
if found, how persuade it to close on Klaneth?" jeered the Persian.

"I think--it is here." Kenton felt again the drummer's touch. "Courage
and loyalty and strength, quick wit and caution. He has all these.
Besides--he can pass the barrier!"

"By Ahriman! That is so!" whispered the Persian. "Now I would make
another vow," said Gigi. "A vow in which you would join. If this man's
chains were--broken, easily then could he pass to Sharane's cabin;
easily now, I think, regain his sword."

"Well, what then?" asked Zubran. "He would still have Klaneth to meet
and all his pack. And we could not help him."

"No," answered the drummer. "But neither would we hinder him. Our vows
do not bind us to fight for the black priest, Zubran. Were I this
man--with my chains broke--and sword regained--I would find way to
release this comrade sleeping beside him. He, I think, could keep off
the pack while this wolf cub, who is now no longer cub but grown, could
match himself against Klaneth."

"Well--" the Persian began doubtfully; then changed to cheerfulness--"I
would see him loosed, Gigi. At the least, it would give break to this
cursed monotony. But you spoke of a vow."

"A vow for a vow," answered Gigi. "If broken were his chains, if he
regained sword, if he met Klaneth and we fought not against him at
Klaneth's side, and if he slew Klaneth, would he vow comradeship with
you and me, Zubran? I wonder?"

"Why should he make that vow to us," asked Zubran, "unless--we loosed
his chains?"

"Exactly," whispered Gigi. "For if he made that vow--I would loose
them!"

Hope sprang flaming up in Kenton. Cold doubt followed. Was this all a
trap? A trick to torment him? He would take no chance--and yet--freedom!

Gigi again bent over him.

"Trust me, Wolf," he said, low. "Vow for vow. If you accept--look at
me."

The dice were offered him. Were they straight or weighted, he would cast
them. Kenton opened his eyes, stared straight for an instant into the
twinkling beads of jet so close. Then he closed them tight; resumed his
slow breathing; his semblance of deepest slumber.

And Gigi rose from him, laughing. He heard the two move away, up the
pit's steps.

Freedom again! Could it be true? And when would Gigi--were it true and
no trap--when would Gigi loose his chains? Long he lay between fiery
hope and chilling doubt. Could it be true?

Freedom! And----

Sharane!



11 Gigi Snaps The Chains

NOT LONG did Kenton have to wait. Hardly had the next faint hum of the
sleep horn died than he felt a touch on his shoulder. Longer fingers
twitched his ears, raised his eyelids. He looked into the face of Gigi.
Kenton pulled out the little silken cylinders that shut off the
compelling slumber of the horn.

"So that is how you do it." Gigi examined them with interest. He
squatted down beside him.

"Wolf," he said, "I have come to have a talk with you, so that you may
know me a little better. I would continue to sit here beside you, but
some of those cursed priests may come prowling around. Therefore, in a
moment I shall seat myself on Zachel's stool. When I have done so, turn
you around facing me, taking that highly deceptive attitude I have so
often watched you assume."

He stepped up on the bench. "Zubran is with Klaneth, arguing about the
gods. Zubran, although sworn to Nergal, thinks him a rather inferior
copy of Ahriman, the Persian god of darkness. He is also convinced that
this whole matter of warfare between Nergal and Ishtar for the ship
lacks not only originality and ingenuity, but taste--something, indeed,
that his own gods and goddesses would not do; or if they did, would do
much better. This angers Klaneth, which greatly rejoices Zubran."

Once more he arose and looked about him.

"However," he went on, "this time he is arguing to keep Klaneth and
especially Zachel away while we talk, since Klaneth leans a great deal
upon Zachel in these arguments. I have told them that I cannot bear
their talk and that I will watch on Zachel's seat until it is finished.
And it will not be finished until I return, for Zubran is clever, oh,
very clever and he expects our talk to lead, ultimately, to permanent
relief of his bore--"

He glanced slyly at the ivory deck.

"So do not fear, Wolf." He swayed upon his dwarfed legs. "Only as I go,
slip sideways and keep your eyes on me. I will give you warning if
warning is needed."

He waddled away, climbed into the overseer's seat. Kenton, obeying him,
turned sleepily; rested arm on bench and head on arm.

"Wolf," said Gigi suddenly, "is there a shrub called the chilquor in the
place from whence you came?"

Kenton stared at him, struck dumb by such a question. Yet Gigi must have
some reason for asking it. Had he ever heard of such a shrub? He
searched his memory.

"Its leaves are about so large." Gigi parted finger-tips for inches
three. "It grows only upon the edge of the desert and it is
rare--sorrowfully rare. Look you--perhaps you know it by another name.
Perhaps this will enlighten you. You bruise the buds just before they
open. Then you mix them with sesamum oil and honey and a little burned
ivory and spread it like a paste over your head. Then you rub and rub
and rub--so and so and so--" he illustrated vigorously upon his bald and
shining pate.

"And after a little," he said, "the hair begins to sprout; like grain
under the rains of spring it grows, until soon--lo--naked dome is
covered. Instead of the light flying off affrighted from shining dome it
plays within new hair. And once more the man who was bald is beautiful
in the eyes of woman!

"By Nadak of the Goats; by Tanith, the dispenser of delights!" cried
Gigi with enthusiasm. "That paste grows hair! How it does grow hair!
Upon a melon would it grow it. Yes, even those planks rightly rubbed by
it would sprout hair like grass. You are sure you do not know it?"

Struggling with his amazement Kenton shook his head. "Well," said Gigi,
sorrowfully. "All this the chilquor buds can do. And so I search for
them--" here he sighed mightily--"who would once more be beautiful in
woman's eyes."

He sighed again. Then one by one he flecked the backs of the sleeping
slaves with Zachel's whip--even the back of Sigurd.

"Yes," he murmured, "yes, they sleep."

His black eyes twinkled on Kenton, the slit mouth grinned.

"You wonder," he said, "why I talk of such trivial matters as shrubs and
hair and bald pates, while you lie chained. Well, Wolf, these matters
are far from trivial. They brought me here. And were I not here--would
you have hope of freedom, think you? Ah, no," said Gigi. "Life is a
serious matter. Therefore all parts of it must be serious. And therefore
no part of it can be trivial. Let us rest for a moment, Wolf, while you
absorb that great truth."

Again, one by one, he flecked the backs of the sleeping slaves.

"Well, Wolf," he went on, "now I shall tell you how I came aboard this
ship because of the chilquor, its effect on hair and because of my bald
pate. And you shall see how your fortune rests upon them. Wolf, when I
was but a child in Nineveh, girls found me singularly attractive.

"'Gigi!' they would cry as I passed by them. 'Gigi, little love, little
darling! Kiss me, Gigi!'"

Gigi's voice was ludicrously languishing; Kenton laughed.

"You laugh, Wolf!" observed the drummer. "Well--that makes us understand
each other better."

His eyes twinkled impishly.

"Yes," he said, "'Kiss me,' they cried. And I would kiss them, because I
found them all as singularly attractive as each found me. And as I grew,
this mutual attraction increased. You have no doubt noticed," said Gigi
complacently, "that I am an unusual figure of a man. But as I passed
from adolescence my greatest beauty was, perhaps, my hair. It was long
and black and ringleted, and it fell far over my shoulders. I perfumed
it and cared for it, and the tender little vessels of joy who loved me
would twine their finge