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The Lost Continent

C >> C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne >> The Lost Continent




But all this time the lean preacher from the mountains was
sending forth his angry anathemas, and still holding the strained
attention of the people. And next he set forth before them the
cult of the Gods in the ancient form as is prescribed, and they
(with old habit coming back to them) made response in the words and
in the places where the old ritual enjoins. It was weird enough
sight, that time-honoured service of adoration, forced upon these
wild people after so long a period of irreligion.

They warmed to the old words as the high shrill voice of the
priest cried them forth, and as they listened, and as they realised
how intimate was the care of the Gods for the travails and sorrows
of their daily lives, so much warmer grew their responses.

". . . WHO STILLED THE BURNING OF THE MOUNTAINS, AND MADE
COOL PLACES ON THE EARTH FOR US TO LIVE!--PRAISE TO THE MOST
HIGH GODS.

"WHO GAVE US MASTERY OVER THE LESSER BEASTS AND SKILL OF
TEN TIMES TO PREVAIL!--PRAISE TO THE MOST HIGH GODS. . . ."

"WHO GAVE US MASTERY OVER THE LESSER BEASTS AND SKILL OF
TEN TIMES TO PREVAIL!--PRAISE TO THE MOST HIGH GODS . . . ."

It thrilled one to hear their earnestness; it sorrowed one to
know that they would yet be obdurate and not return to their old
allegiance. For this is the way with these common people; they
will work up an enthusiasm one minute, and an hour later it will
have fled away and left them cold and empty.

But Zaemon made no further calls upon their loyalty. He
finished the prescribed form of sentences, and stepped down off the
platform of the war engine with the Symbol of our Lord the Sun
thrust out resolutely before him. To all ordinary seeming the
crowd had been packed so that no further compression was possible,
but before the advance of the Symbol the people crushed back,
leaving a wide lane for his passage.

And here came the turning point of my life. At first, like,
I take it, every one else in that crowd, I imagined that the old
man, having finished his mission, was making a way to return to the
place from which he had come. But he held steadily to one
direction, and as that was towards myself, it naturally came to my
mind that, having dealt with greater things, he would now settle
with the less; or, in plainer words, that having put his policy
before the swarming people, he would now smite down the man he had
seen but yesterday seated as Phorenice's minister. Well, I should
lose that final fight I had promised myself, and that mound of
slain for my funeral bed. It was clear that Zaemon was the
mouthpiece of the Priests' Clan, duly appointed; and I also was a
priest. If the word had been given on the Sacred Mountain to those
who sat before the Ark of the Mysteries that Atlantis would prosper
more with Deucalion sent to the Gods, I was ready to bow to the
sentence with submissiveness. That I had regret for this mode of
cutting off, I will not deny. No man who has practised the game of
arms could abandon the promise of such a gorgeous final battle
without a qualm of longing.

But I had been trained enough to show none of these emotions
on my face, and when the old man came up to me, I stood my ground
and gave him the salutation prescribed between our ranks, which he
returned to me with circumstance and accuracy. The crowd fell
back, being driven away by the ineffable force of the Symbol,
leaving us alone in the middle of a ring. Even Nais, though she
was a priest's daughter, was ignorant of the Mysteries, and could
not withstand its force. And so we two men stood there alone
together, with the glow of the Symbol bathing us, and lighting
up the sea of ravenous faces that watched.

The people were quick to put their natural explanation on the
scene. "A spy!" they began to roar out. "A spy! Zaemon salutes
him as a Priest!"

Zaemon faced round on them with a queer look on his grim old
face. "Aye," he said, "this is a Priest. If I give you his name,
you might have further interest. This is the Lord Deucalion."

The word was picked up and yelled amongst them with a thousand
emotions. But at least they were loyal to their policy; they had
decided that Deucalion was their enemy; they had already expended
a navy for his destruction; and now that he was ringed in by their
masses, they lusted to tear him into rags with their fingers. But
rave and rave though they might against me, the glare from the
Symbol drove them shuddering back as though it had been a
lava-stream; and Zaemon was not the man to hand me over to their
fury until he had delivered formal sentence as the emissary of our
Clan on the Sacred Mount. So the end was not to be yet.

The old man faced me and spoke in the sacred tongue, which the
common people do not know. "My brother," he said, "which have you
come to serve, Deucalion or Atlantis?"

"Words are a poor thing to answer a question like that. You
will know all of my record. According to the Law of the Priests,
each ship from Yucatan will have carried home its sworn report to
lay at the feet of their council, and before I went to that
vice-royalty, what I did was written plain here on the face of
Atlantis."

"We know your doings in the past, brother, and they have found
approval. You have governed well, and you have lived austerely.
You set up Atlantis for a mistress, and served her well; but then,
you have had no Phorenice to tempt you into change and fickleness."

"You can send me where I shall see her no more, if you think
me frail."

"Yes, and lose your usefulness. No, brother, you are the last
hope which this poor land has remaining. All other human means
that have been tried against Phorenice have failed. You have
returned from overseas for the final duel. You are the strongest
man we have, and you are our final champion. If you fail, then
only those terrible Powers which are locked within the Ark of the
Mysteries remains to us, and though it is not lawful to speak even
in this hidden tongue of their scope, you at least have full
assurance of their potency."

I shrugged my shoulders. "It seems that you would save time
and pains if you threw me to these wolves of rebels, and let them
end me here and now."

The old man frowned on me angrily. "I am bidding you do your
duty. What reason have you for wishing to evade it?"

"I have in my memory the words you spoke in the pyramid, when
you came in amongst the banqueters. 'PHORENICE,' was your
cry, 'WHILST YOU ARE YET EMPRESS, YOU SHALL SEE THIS ROYAL
PYRAMID, WHICH YOU HAVE POLLUTED WITH YOUR DEBAUCHERIES, TORN TIER
FROM TIER, AND STONE FROM STONE, AND SCATTERED AS FEATHERS BEFORE
A WIND.' It seems that you foresee my defeat."

The old man shuddered. "I cannot tell what she may force us
to do. I spoke then only what it was revealed to me must happen.
Perhaps when matters have reached that pass, she will repent and
submit. But in the meanwhile, before we use the more desperate
weapons of the Gods, it is fitting that we should expend all human
power remaining to us. And so you must go, my brother, and play
your part to the utmost."

"It is an order. So I obey."

"You shall be at Phorenice's side again by the next dawn. She
has sent for you from Yucatan as a husband, and as one who (so she
thinks, poor human conqueror) has the weight of arm necessary to
prolong her tyrannies. You are a Priest, brother, and you are a
man of convincing tongue. It will be your part to make her
stubborn mind see the invincible power that can be loosed against
her, to point out to her the utter hopelessness of prevailing
against it."

"If it is ordered, I will do these things. But there is
little enough chance of success. I have seen Phorenice, and can
gauge her will. There will be no turning her once she has made a
decision. Others have tried; you have tried yourself; all have
failed."

"Words that were wasted on a maiden may go home to a wife.
You have been brought here to be her husband. Well, take your
place."

The order came to me with a pang. I had given little enough
heed to women through all of a busy life, though when I landed, the
taking of Phorenice to wife would not have been very repugnant to
me if policy had demanded it. But the matters of the last two days
had put things in a different shape. I had seen two other women
who had strangely attracted me, and one of these had stirred within
me a tumult such as I had never felt before amongst my economies.

To lead Phorenice in marriage would mean a severance from this
other woman eternally, and I ached as I thought of it. But though
these thoughts floated through my system and gave me harsh wrenches
of pain, I did not thrust my puny likings before the command of the
council of the Priests. I bowed before Zaemon, and put his hand to
my forehead. "It is an order," I said. "If our Lord the Sun gives
me life, I will obey."

"Then let us begone from this place," said Zaemon, and took me
by the arm and waved a way for us with the Symbol. No further word
did I have with Nais, fearing to embroil her with these rebels who
clustered round, but I caught one hot glance from her eyes, and
that had to suffice for farewell. The dense ranks of the crowd
opened, and we walked away between them scathless. Fiercely though
they lusted for my life, brimming with hate though they made their
cries, no man dared to rush in and raise a hand against me.
Neither did they follow. When we reached the outskirts of the
crowd, and the ranks thinned, they had a mind, many of them, to
surge along in our wake; but Zaemon whirled the Symbol back before
their faces with a blaze of lurid light, and they fell to their
knees, grovelling, and pressed on us no more.

The rain still fell, and in the light of the camp fires as we
passed them, the wet gleamed on the old man's wasted body. And far
before us through the darkness loomed the vast bulk of the Sacred
Mountain, with the ring of eternal fires encincturing its crest.
I sighed as I thought of the old peaceful days I had spent in its
temple and groves.

But there was to be no more of that studious leisure now.
There was work to be done, work for Atlantis which did not brook
delay. And so when we had progressed far out into the waste, and
there was none near to view (save only the most High Gods), we
found the place where the passage was, whose entrance is known only
to the Seven amongst the Priests; and there we parted, Zaemon to
his hermitage in the dangerous lands, and I by this secret way back
into the capital.



9. PHORENICE, GODDESS


Now the passage, though its entrance had been cunningly hidden
by man's artifice, was one of those veins in which the fiery blood
of our mother, the Earth, had aforetime coursed. Long years had
passed since it carried lava streams, but the air in it was still
warm and sulphurous, and there was no inducement to linger in
transit. I lit me a lamp which I found in an appointed niche, and
walked briskly along my ways, coughing, and wishing heartily I had
some of those simples which ease a throat that has a tendency to
catarrh. But, alas! all that packet of drugs which were my sole
spoil from the vice-royalty of Yucatan were lost in the sea-fight
with Dason's navy, and since landing in Atlantis there had been
little enough time to think for the refinements of medicine.

The network of earth-veins branched prodigiously, and if any
but one of us Seven Priests had found a way into its recesses by
chance, he would have perished hopelessly in the windings, or have
fallen into one of those pits which lead to the boil below. But I
carried the chart of the true course clearly in my head,
remembering it from that old initiation of twenty years back, when,
as an appointed viceroy, I was raised to the highest degree but one
known to our Clan, and was given its secrets and working
implements.

The way was long, the floor was monstrous uneven, and the air,
as I have said, bad; and I knew that day would be far advanced
before the signs told me that I had passed beneath the walls, and
was well within the precincts of the city. And here the vow of the
Seven hampered my progress; for it is ordained that under no
circumstances, whatever the stress, shall egress be made from this
passage before mortal eye. One branch after another did I try, but
always found loiterers near the exits. I had hoped to make my
emergence by that path which came inside the royal pyramid. But
there was no chance of coming up unobserved here; the place was
humming like a hive. And so, too, with each of the five next
outlets that I visited. The city was agog with some strange
excitement.

But I came at last to a temple of one of the lesser Gods, and
stood behind the image for a while making observation. The place
was empty; nay, from the dust which robed all the floors and the
seats of the worshippers, it had been empty long enough; so I moved
all that was needful, stepped out, and closed all entry behind me.
A broom lay unnoticed on one of the pews, and with this I soon
disguised all route of footmark, and took my way to the temple
door. It was shut, and priest though I was, the secret of its
opening was beyond me.

Here was a pretty pass. No one but the attendant priests of
the temple could move the mechanism which closed and opened the
massive stone which filled the doorway; and if all had gone out to
attend this spectacle, whatever it might be, that was stirring the
city, why there I should be no nearer enlargement than before.

There was no sound of life within the temple precincts; there
were evidences of decay and disuse spread broadcast on every hand;
but according to the ancient law there should be eternally one at
least on watch in the priests' dwellings, so down the passages
which led to them I made my way. It would have surprised me little
to have found even these deserted. That the old order was changed
I knew, but I was only then beginning to realise the ruthlessness
with which it had been swept away, and how much it had given place
to the new.

However, there can be some faithful men remaining even in an
age of general apostasy, and on making my way to the door of the
dwelling (which lay in the roof of the temple) I gave the call, and
presently it was opened to me. The man who stood before me,
peering dully through the gloom, had at least remained constant to
his vows, and I made the salutation before him with a feeling of
respect.

His name was Ro, and I remembered him well. We had passed
through the sacred college together, and always he had been known
as the dullard. He had capacity for learning little of the cult of
the Gods, less of the arts of ruling, less still of the handling of
arms; and he had been appointed to some lowly office in this
obscure temple, and had risen to being its second priest and one of
its two custodians merely through the desertion of all his
colleagues. But it was not pleasant to think that a fool should
remain true where cleverer men abandoned the old beliefs.

Ro did before me the greater obeisance. He wore his beard
curled in the prevailing fashion, but it was badly done. His
clothing was ill-fitting and unbrushed. He always had been a
slovenly fellow. "The temple door is shut," he said, "and I only
have the secret of its opening. My lord comes here, therefore, by
the secret way, and as one of the Seven. I am my lord's servant."

"Then I ask this small service of you. Tell me, what stirs
the city?"

"That impious Phorenice has declared herself Goddess, and
declares that she will light the sacrifice with her own divine
fire. She will do it, too. She does everything. But I wish the
flames may burn her when she calls them down. This new Empress is
the bane of our Clan, Deucalion, these latter days. The people
neglect us; they bring no offerings; and now, since these rebels
have been hammering at the walls, I might have gone hungry if I had
not some small store of my own. Oh, I tell you, the cult of the
true Gods is well-nigh oozed quite out of the land."

"My brother, it comes to my mind that the Priests of our Clan
have been limp in their service to let these things come to pass."

"I suppose we have done our best. At least, we did as we were
taught. But if the people will not come to hear your exhortations,
and neglect to adore the God, what hold have you over their
religion? But I tell you, Deucalion, that the High Gods try our
own faith hard. Come into the dwelling here. Look there on my
bed."

I saw the shape of a man, untidily swathed in reddened
bandages.

"This is all that is left of the poor priest that was my
immediate superior in this cure. It was his turn yesterday to
celebrate the weekly sacrifice to our Lord the Sun with the circle
of His great stones. Faugh! Deucalion, you should have seen how
he was mangled when they brought him back to me here."

"Did the people rise on him? Has it come to that?"

"The people stayed passive," said Ro bitterly, "what few of
them had interest to attend; but our Lord the Sun saw fit to try
His minister somewhat harshly. The wood was laid; the sacrifice
was disposed upon it according to the prescribed rites; the
procession had been formed round the altar, and the drums and the
trumpets were speaking forth, to let all men know that presently
the smoke of their prayer would be wafted up towards Those that sit
in the great places in the heavens. But then, above 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 chiefest God, and
legend says that He raised this circle of stones Himself to be a
place where votaries should offer Him worship. It is the fashion
amongst us moderns not to take these old tales in a too literal
sense, but for myself, this one satisfies me. By our wits we can
lift blocks weighing six hundred men, and set them as the capstones
of our pyramids. But to uprear the stones of that great circle
would be beyond all our art, and much more would it be impossible
to-day, to transport them from their distant quarries across the
rugged mountains.

There were nine-and-forty of the stones, alternating with
spaces, and set in an accurate circle, and across the tops of them
other stones were set, equally huge. The stones were undressed and
rugged; but the huge massiveness of them impressed the eye more
than all the temples and daintily tooled pyramids of our wondrous
city. And in the centre of the circle was that still greater stone
which formed the altar, and round which was carved, in the rude
chiselling of the ancients, the snake and the outstretched hand.

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