Allan Quatermain · Chapter 18 (2/2)

This was a finishing stroke to poor Good. It is not pleasant to any man to learn that he has been made a tool of, but when the circumstances are as peculiarly atrocious as in the present case, it is about as bitter a pill as anybody can be called on to swallow.

“Do you know,” he said, “I think that between you, you fellows have about worked a cure,” and he turned and walked away, and I for one felt very sorry for him. Ah, if the moths would always carefully avoid the candle, how few burnt wings there would be!

That day was a Court day, when the Queens sat in the great hall and received petitions, discussed laws, etc., and thither we adjourned shortly afterwards. On our way we were joined by Good, who was looking exceedingly depressed, and no wonder.

When we got into the hall Nyleptha was already on her throne, and proceeding with business as usual, surrounded by councillors, courtiers, lawyers, priests, and an unusually strong guard. It was, however, easy to see from the air of excitement and expectation on the faces of everybody present that nobody was paying much attention to ordinary affairs, the fact being that the knowledge that civil war was imminent had now got abroad. We saluted Nyleptha and took our accustomed places, and for a little while things went on as usual, when suddenly the trumpets began to call outside the palace, and from the great crowd that was gathered there in anticipation of some unusual event there rose a roar of “Sorais! Sorais!”

Then came the roll of many chariot wheels, and presently the great curtains at the end of the hall were drawn wide and through them entered the “Lady of the Night” herself. Nor did she come alone. Preceding her was Agon, the High Priest, arrayed in his most gorgeous vestments, and on either side were other priests. The reason for their presence was obvious⁠—coming with them it would have been sacrilege to attempt to detain her. Behind her were a number of the great lords, and behind them a small body of picked guards. A glance at Sorais herself was enough to show that her mission was of no peaceful kind, for in place of her gold-embroidered “kaf” she wore a shining tunic formed of golden scales, and on her head a little golden helmet. In her hand, too, she bore a toy spear, beautifully made and fashioned of solid silver. Up the hall she came, looking like a lioness in her conscious pride and beauty, and as she came the spectators fell back bowing and made a path for her. By the sacred stone she halted, and laying her hand on it, she cried out with a loud voice to Nyleptha on the throne, “Hail, O Queen!”

“All hail, my sister!” answered Nyleptha. “Draw thou near. Fear not, I give thee safe conduct.”

Sorais answered with a haughty look, and swept on up the hall till she stood right before the thrones.

“A boon, O Queen!” she cried again.

“Speak on, my sister; what is there that I can give thee who hath half our kingdom?”

“Thou canst tell me a true word⁠—me and the people of Zu-Vendis. Art thou, or art thou not, about to take this foreign wolf,” and she pointed to Sir Henry with her toy spear, “to be a husband to thee, and share thy bed and throne?”

Curtis winced at this, and turning towards Sorais, said to her in a low voice, “Methinks that yesterday thou hadst other names than wolf to call me by, O Queen!” and I saw her bite her lips as, like a danger flag, the blood flamed red upon her face. As for Nyleptha, who is nothing if not original, she, seeing that the thing was out, and that there was nothing further to be gained by concealment, answered the question in a novel and effectual manner, inspired thereto, as I firmly believe, by coquetry and a desire to triumph over her rival.

Up she rose, and descending from the throne, swept in all the glory of her royal grace on to where her lover stood. There she stopped and untwined the golden snake that was wound around her arm. Then she bade him kneel, and he dropped on one knee on the marble before her; and next, taking the golden snake with both her hands, she bent the pure soft metal round his neck, and when it was fast, deliberately kissed him on the brow and called him her “dear lord.”

“Thou seest,” she said, when the excited murmur of the spectators had died away, addressing her sister as Sir Henry rose to his feet, “I have put my collar round the ‘wolf’s’ neck, and behold! he shall be my watchdog, and that is my answer to thee, Queen Sorais, my sister, and to those with thee. Fear not,” she went on, smiling sweetly on her lover, and pointing to the golden snake she had twined round his massive throat, “if my yoke be heavy, yet is it of pure gold, and it shall not gall thee.”

Then, turning to the audience, she continued, in a clear proud tone: “Ay, Lady of the Night, Lords, Priests, and People here gathered together, by this sign do I take the foreigner to husband, even here in the face of ye all. What, am I a Queen, and yet not free to choose the man whom I will love? Then should I be lower than the meanest girl in all my provinces. Nay, he hath won my heart, and with it goes my hand, and throne, and all I have⁠—ay, had he been a beggar instead of a great lord, fairer and stronger than any here, and having more wisdom and knowledge of strange things, I had given him all; how much more so, then, being what he is!” And she took his hand and gazed proudly on him, and holding it, stood there boldly facing the people. And such was her sweetness, and the power and dignity of her person, and so beautiful she looked standing hand in hand there at her lover’s side, so sure of him and of herself, and so ready to risk all things and endure all things for him, that most of those who saw the sight, which I am sure no one of them will ever forget, caught the fire from her eyes and the happy colour from her blushing face, and cheered her like wild things. It was a bold stroke for her to make, and it appealed to the imagination; but human nature in Zu-Vendis, as elsewhere, loves that which is bold and not afraid to break a rule, and is moreover peculiarly susceptible to appeals to its poetical side.

And so the people cheered till the roof rang; but “Sorais of the Night” stood there with downcast eyes, for she could not bear to see her sister’s triumph, which robbed her of the man whom she had hoped to win; and in the awfulness of her jealous anger she trembled and turned white like an aspen in the wind. I think I have said somewhere of her that she reminded me of the sea on a calm day, having the same aspect of sleeping power about her. Well, it was all awake now, and, like the face of the furious ocean, it awed and yet fascinated me. A really handsome woman in a royal rage is always a beautiful sight, but such beauty and such a rage I never saw combined before; and I can only say that the effect produced was well worthy of the two.

She lifted her white face, the teeth set, and there were purple rings beneath her glowing eyes. Thrice she tried to speak, and thrice she failed, but at last her voice came. Raising her silver spear, she shook it, and the light glanced from it and from the golden scales of her cuirass.

“And thinkest thou, Nyleptha,” she said, in notes which pealed through the great hall like a clarion⁠—“thinkest thou that I, a Queen of the Zu-Vendi, will brook that this base outlander shall sit upon my father’s throne and rear up half-breeds to fill the place of the great House of the Stairway? Never! never! while there is life in my bosom and a man to follow me and a spear to strike with. Who is on my side?⁠—who?

“Now hand thou over this foreign wolf, and those who came to prey with him, to the doom of fire, for have they not committed the deadly sin against the Sun? or, Nyleptha, I give thee War⁠—red War! Ay, I say to thee that the path of thy passion shall be marked out by the blazing of thy towns, and watered with the blood of those who cleave to thee. On thy head rest the burden of the deed, and in thy ears ring the groans of the dying and the cries of the widows and those who are left fatherless forever and forever.

“I tell thee I will tear thee, Nyleptha, the White Queen, from thy throne, and that thou shalt be hurled⁠—ay, hurled even from the topmost stair of the great way to the foot thereof, in that thou hast covered the name of the house of him who built it with black shame. And I tell ye strangers, all save thou, Bougwan, whom because thou didst do me a service I will save alive if thou wilt leave these men and follow me” (here poor Good shook his head vigorously, and ejaculated “Can’t be done,” in English), “that I will wrap you in sheets of gold and hang you yet alive in chains from the four golden trumpets of the four angels that fly east and west and north and south from the giddiest pinnacles of the Temple, so that ye may be a token and a warning to the land. And as for thee, Incubu, thou shalt die in yet another fashion that I will not tell thee now.”

She ceased, panting for breath, for her passion shook her like a storm, and a murmur, partly of horror and partly of admiration, ran through the hall. Then Nyleptha answered calmly and with dignity,

“Ill would it become my place and dignity, O sister, so to speak as thou hast spoken, and so to threat as thou hast threatened. Yet if thou wilt make war, then will I strive to bear up against thee; for if my hand seem soft, yet shalt thou find it of iron when it grips thine armies by the throat. Sorais, I fear thee not. I weep for that which thou wilt bring upon our people and on thyself, but for myself I say⁠—I fear thee not. Yet thou, who but yesterday didst strive to win my lover and my lord from me, whom today thou dost call a ‘foreign wolf,’ to be thy lover and thy lord” (here there was an immense sensation in the hall), “thou who but last night, as I have learned but since thou didst enter here, didst creep like a snake into my sleeping-place⁠—ay, even by a secret way, and wouldst have foully murdered me, thy sister, as I lay asleep⁠—”

“It is false, it is false!” rang out Agon’s and a score of other voices.

“It is not false,” said I, producing the broken point of the dagger and holding it up. “Where is the haft from which this flew, Sorais?”

“It is not false,” cried Good, determined at last to act like a loyal man. “I took her by the Queen’s bed, and on my breast the dagger broke.”

“Who is on my side?” cried Sorais, shaking her silver spear, for she saw that public sympathy was turning against her. “What, Bougwan, thou comest not?” she said, addressing Good, who was standing close to her, in a low, concentrated voice. “Thou pale-souled fool, for a reward thou shalt eat out thy heart with love of me and not be satisfied, and thou mightest have been my husband and a king! At least I hold thee in chains that cannot be broken.

“War! war! war!” she cried. “Here, with my hand upon the sacred stone that shall endure, so runs the prophecy, till the Zu-Vendi set their necks beneath an alien yoke, I declare war to the end. Who follows Sorais of the Night to victory and honour?”

Instantly the whole concourse began to break up in indescribable confusion. Many present hastened to throw in their lot with the “Lady of the Night,” but some came from her following to us. Amongst the former was an under-officer of Nyleptha’s own guard, who suddenly turned and made a run for the doorway through which Sorais’s people were already passing. Umslopogaas, who was present, and had taken the whole scene in, seeing with admirable presence of mind that if this soldier got away others would follow his example, seized the man, who drew his sword and struck at him. Thereon the Zulu sprang back with a shout, and avoiding the sword-cuts, began to peck at his foe with his terrible axe, till in a few seconds the man’s fate overtook him and he fell with a clash heavily and quite dead upon the marble floor.

This was the first blood spilled in the war.

“Shut the gates!” I shouted, thinking that we might perhaps catch Sorais so, and not being troubled with the idea of committing sacrilege. But the order came too late, her guards were already passing through them, and in another minute the streets echoed with the furious galloping of horses and the rolling of chariots.

So, drawing half the people after her, Sorais was soon passing like a whirlwind through the Frowning City on her road to her headquarters at M’Arstuna, a fortress situated a hundred and thirty miles to the north of Milosis.

And after that the city was alive with the endless tramp of regiments and preparations for war, and old Umslopogaas once more began to sit in the sunshine and go through a show of sharpening Inkosi-Kaas’s razor edge.