The Lost Continent by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne (e novels to read .txt) 📗

the noise of the ceremonial, there came the rushing sound of wings, and from out of the sky there flew one of those great featherless man-eating birds, of a bigness such as seldom before has been seen.”

“An arrow shot in the eye, or a long-shafted spear receives them best.”

“Oh, all men know what they were taught as children, Deucalion; but these priests were unarmed, according to the rubric, which ordains that they shall intrust themselves completely to the guardianship of the High Gods during the hours of sacrifice. The great bird swooped down, settling on the wood pyre, and attacked the sacrifice with beak and talon. My poor superior here, still strong in his faith, called loudly on our Lord the Sun to lend power to his arm, and sprang up on the altar with naught but his teeth and his bare arms for weapons. It may be that he expected a miracle—he has not spoke since, poor soul, in explanation—but all he met were blows from leathery wings, and rakings from talons which went near to disembowelling him. The bird brushed him away as easily as we could sweep aside a fly, and there he lay bleeding on the pavement beside the altar, whilst the sacrifice was torn and eaten in the presence of all the people. And then, when the bird was glutted, it flew away again to the mountains.”

“And the people gave no help?”

“They cried out that the thing was a portent, that our Lord the Sun was a God no longer if He had not power or thought to guard His own sacrifice; and some cried that there was no God remaining now, and others would have it that there was a new God come to weigh on the country, which had chosen to take the form of a common man-eating bird. But a few began to shout that Phorenice stood for all the Gods now in Atlantis, and that cry was taken up till the stones of the great circle rang with it. Some may have made proclamations because they were convinced; many because the cry was new, and pleased them; but I am sure there were not a few who joined in because it was dangerous to leave such an outburst unwelcomed. The Empress can be hard enough to those who neglect to give her adulation.”

“The Empress is Empress,” I said formally, “and her name carries respect. It is not for us to question her doings.”

“I am a priest,” said Ro, “and I speak as I have been taught, and defend the Faith as I have been commanded. Whether there is a Faith any longer, I am beginning to doubt. But, anyway, it yields a poor enough livelihood nowadays. There have been no offerings at this temple this five months past, and if I had not a few jars of corn put by, I might have starved for anything the pious of this city cared. And I do not think that the affair of that sacrifice is likely to put new enthusiasm into our cold votaries.”

“When did it happen?”

“Twenty hours ago. To-day Phorenice conducts the sacrifice herself. That has caused the stir you spoke about. The city is in the throes of getting ready one of her pageants.”

“Then I must ask you to open the temple doors and give me passage. I must go and see this thing for myself.”

“It is not for me to offer advice to one of the Seven,” said Ro doubtfully.

“It is not.”

“But they say that the Empress is not overpleased at your absence,” he mumbled. “I should not like harm to come in your way, Deucalion,” he said aloud.

“The future is in the hands of the most High Gods, Ro, and I at least believe that They will deal out our fates to each of us as They in Their infinite wisdom see best, though you seem to have lost your faith. And now I must be your debtor for a passage out through the doors. Plagues! man, it is no use your holding out your hand to me. I do not own a coin in all the world.”

He mumbled something about “force of habit” as he led the way down towards the door, and I responded tartly enough about the unpleasantness of his begging customs. “If it were not for your sort and your customs, the Priests’ Clan would not be facing this crisis to-day.”

“One must live,” he grumbled, as he pressed his levers, and the massive stone in the doorway swung ajar.

“If you had been a more capable man, I might have seen the necessity,” said I, and passed into the open and left him. I could never bring myself to like Ro.

A motley crowd filled the street which ran past the front of this obscure temple, and all were hurrying one way. With what I had been told, it did not take much art to guess that the great stone circle of our Lord the Sun was their mark, and it grieved me to think of how many venerable centuries that great fane had upreared before the weather and the earth tremors, without such profanation as it would witness to-day. And also the thought occurred to me, “Was our Great Lord above drawing this woman on to her destruction? Would He take some vast and final act of vengeance when she consummated her final sacrilege?”

But the crowd pressed on, thrilled and excited, and thinking little (as is a crowd’s wont) on the deeper matters which lay beneath the bare spectacle. From one quarter of the city walls the din of an attack from the besiegers made itself clearly heard from over the house, and the temples and the palaces intervening, but no one heeded it. They had grown callous, these townsfolk, to the battering of rams, and the flight of fire-darts, and the other emotions of a bombardment. Their nerves, their hunger, their desperation, were strung to such a pitch that little short of an actual storm could stir them into new excitement over the siege.

All were weaponed. The naked carried arms in the hopes of meeting some one whom they could overcome and rob; those that had a possession walked ready to do a battle for its ownership. There was no security, no trust; the lesson of civilisation had dropped away from these common people as mud is washed from the feet by rain, and in their new habits and their thoughts they had gone back to the grade from which savages like those of Europe have never yet emerged. It was a grim commentary on the success of Phorenice’s rule.

The crowd merged me into their ranks without question, and with them I pressed forward down the winding streets, once so clean and trim, now so foul and mud-strewn. Men and women had died of hunger in these streets these latter years, and rotted where they lay, and we trod their bones underfoot as we walked. Yet rising out of this squalor and this misery were great pyramids and palaces, the like of which for splendour and magnificence had never been seen before. It was a jarring admixture.

In time we came to the open space in the centre of the city, which even Phorenice had not dared to encroach upon with her ambitious building schemes, and stood on the secular ground which surrounds the most ancient, the most grand, and the breast of all this world’s temples.

Since the beginning of time, when man first emerged amongst the beasts, our Lord the Sun has always been his