At the Queen's Mercy

It may have been hours or days. I do not fix the space of my captivity.

A man in my state,—may it be reckoned with heavy reckoning against this son of darkness, this foul priest of Hed,—a man, as I say, in my condition of mind and body notes not the flight of time. Neither do I deny that I may perchance have dreamed somewhat. That witch’s cave wherein at length I came again to life was a likely enough nest for the hatching of nightmares, aye! and worse things to follow. But this I hold,—upon my honor as an honest man and a God-fearing gentleman, and to defend the truth of the same, I will do violence to him who doubts me,—I saw, and saw with waking eyes, and waking brain, the things I now relate to you who read these pages.

So, defending if need be every jot and tittle of my tale, I will set forth in plain unvarnished words what fate set me to see of the red witch and her revel.

The last thing I remember was the fall of some heavy substance above my head, as half-carried by Lah, the Queen, I was let down into that dark hole, beyond which lay the moment’s safety, and perchance escape.

Then came a swift rushing and surging as of mighty waters about and above me; fiery darts shot through my brain and danced before my eyes. Then distant voices, and figures passing and repassing, but ever afar off. Lastly, a glimmer of light, and the touch of cooling bandages bound tight about my head. After a time the darkness wholly passed; I lay on a couch of skins, and a bowl full of some evil-smelling mixture was pressed against my lips.

At this, I remember I was wroth, and would have smote the unseen nurse that teased me, but my hand, when I tried to raise it, fell, heavy as lead, by my side. I heard a hoarse cackling laugh, and against my will I drank of the cup held out to me.

Nor, save for a slightly bitter flavor, was the draught nauseous. Indeed, it warmed like wine. I felt new strength run tingling from limb to limb, and I opened my eyes, my own man once more, a little weak and stiff in the joints still, yet whole and sound again and ready for the morrow and its burden.

Looking about me I found that I lay in a corner of a cave barely six feet high, whose end was lost in darkness. This cavern was lighted from above, by torches stuck in rude brackets here and there in the rocky wall. I saw, too, that the earth of the floor had been pounded hard and smooth, and was covered over with intermingling lines of black and white, red, blue, and yellow.

I followed these lines with my eyes, and I beheld, without understanding it, that the network had a meaning. Sometimes a line would end abruptly with a star, sometimes it was cut clean across, often other lines met the first, so that the colors ran thickly together; but at all times there was a certain order like the lines of a map, or a puzzle in geometry.

After a time I grew giddy watching this never-ending maze, and I turned upon my side that I might better see the other portion of my prison house. A fire smouldered in a distant corner, and a leaping flame showed the edge of a great cauldron that stood in the cave’s centre, from which came the quick shimmer and sparkle of precious metal and of gems. A dark mass near by uncoiled itself slowly, and two unwinking, lidless, fiery eyes looked straight at me and beyond. The thing slipped away without noise into the farther darkness, and I sat up. A draught of air played about my head. It was damp, and pleasantly cool in this underground retreat, and save for the crackling of the fire all was silent.

I am not, I trust, a coward, but I tell this as it happened, leaving out nothing, altering nothing. For all I knew I was alone, safe and alone, but on a sudden my heart began to beat thickly, my hair stood erect, and my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. Cold sweat stood in beads upon my body, and some inner force compelled me to look where I would not.

And there, crouching by the fire, I saw the bent figure of a woman, hardly larger than a child, but old beyond man’s counting.

She swayed backward and forward. She was perfectly bald, and her face was a mass of wrinkles, though the ashen, parchment-like skin was drawn tight over the bones.

I saw that the creature was wrapped in a red mantle. She turned her head and opened her eyes full upon me. Such eyes! Two sparks of living fire, deep set, that ate through bone and muscle, flesh and sinew, and laid bare the soul. I shrank back, and the head of the red witch dropped down once more between her shoulders. I felt the terror that had seized me pass, but I had lost all wish to move. So I waited, in patience and unsurprised, the pleasure of the shrivelled hag, to whose lair the Queen had brought me.

For a space the red witch sat still as some carven image. As the firelight fell on the wizened, peering face, the peaked features took on new shapes of ugliness; the lips writhed in a terrible smile, yet stirred not, and I drew back into the shadows and waited for that which was to come. As I did so, the hag arose. For an instant I feared that she was about to approach my couch, but she passed into the outer darkness with never a backward glance.

Another moment and she had come again, walking slowly and with evident pain, and indeed with so much feebleness that I thought every step would be her last.

Upheld by her skinny arms was a curious image in painted stone, the god Hed, as I saw at once.

The weight of the thing must have been a tax on the strength of a man even of my inches, but this strange woman now held it aloft, and without pausing, lightly as though lifting a feather, set the god in a niche prepared for him above and opposite the cauldron.

Then she drew from her withered bosom a small bag, and took from it a pinch of powder. This she threw into the pot, and at once a thin blue vapor arose from its depths.

The hag squatted beside her brew, and began a monotonous beating with her hands upon a hollow log, across either end of which a tanned skin had been tightly drawn.

Then she commenced to sing in a curious cracked voice, and the song had no melody, but instead a kind of rhythm that met with the drum beats, and stirred, I know not how or why, to frenzy him who listened.

This is a fragment of the song as near as I can remember. For reasons that I shall tell presently I stopped my ears in horror before its end. It was no common chanting; for even as it rose, the thin blue smoke took on form and substance and imaged what she sang.

And here it was that as a Christian man I stopped my ears. For I come of honest yeoman stock, and God forbid that I should so much as listen to such foul mouthings.

That the devils the witch called were there, I doubted not, for as I have said, even as the words passed her lips, the blue vapor from the cauldron took shape, and I saw floating therein all those whom she had named. But more was still to come. For presently my own image was joined to theirs and was swept with them into a kind of evil dance. Faster and faster the vapor figures whirled. There was despair and envy, and wrath and sorrow and dismay, on the swift revolving faces. I could not turn my eyes away, and my heart was as water in my breast.

Then on a sudden the lips of the hag ceased to move, and like drifted smoke the vision passed.

I would have cried aloud in wrath against such practices, but the sound died in my throat.

Then Hubla spoke, but not to me.

She had risen, and now stood before the hideous image of the Serpent god, and in one hand she held a slender iron rod whose end was white hot, and whose middle part glowed red from the flames.

“False and perjured god!” I heard her cry, and the tones struck ice to my breast, so full were they of malice and of rage. “Between me and thee is the struggle yet to come. Think not that Hubla fears thee. Take this, and this, in token of thy shame and thy defeat.”

And as she spoke she smote with all her force, with the rod, the stolid squatting figure.

Drops of foam fell from the witch’s lips, and again her shrill voice rang through the cavern.

“I have shielded thine enemy. Out of the toils of thy priests I have delivered him. Lo! he shall live, and the blast of thy anger shall not smite him. Neither shall thy breath consume him. For I have thrown my mantle about him, and he shall live to mock thee in thy courts.”

Then once more, with all her might she smote, and the stone image fell with a crash from its narrow ledge, and lay prone in the glowing embers beneath the cauldron.

Peal after peal of shrill laughter came from the shrivelled figure, and straightway the witch began to dance,—a strange heathenish dance, in which she flung about her withered arms, and took grotesque steps with bare feet that trod upon the smouldering logs strewn about her fallen enemy.

Then at length she threw upon the flames another powder. A deafening report followed; the cavern shook, and a column of red flame shot up to the ceiling. The heat was intolerable, and the place was crimsoned as with blood.

I gasped for breath, and shielded my face as well as I might from the awful scorch of that fiery pillar, nor, I think, could my mortal body have withstood the flame; but after a moment’s space Hubla clapped her hands, and on the instant the fire died down.

Save from the flickering light from the torches, all was darkness; the red witch crouched as before, motionless, before the embers.

For a little she sat thus; then once more those fiery points that lay behind her eyelids glowed on me, and I saw the skinny hand beckon.

“Rise, son,” said the red witch. “Thy hour is come. Go boldly forward. Death lies waiting with open maw, but Hubla bids you fear him not. Rise! the treasures of the ages await thee.”