Beyond their knowledge of the working of metals, in which they had great facility, Zenas Wright soon found that the scientists of Nematzin could avail him little in his search for explosive compounds. Ordinary gunpowder, indeed, he knew he could make easily enough, after a fashion, but he sought for something more powerful by far than that. From the descriptions which he had heard of the Kimbrian Wall, he judged that it would be a rare task to shake it down.
"We might do it with nitroglycerin," he told Everson. "But we would have to set all of the old wives of Ruthar to soap-making to get our glycerin, and it would be a difficult job to get it pure enough to serve our turn. Besides, nitroglycerin is mean and uncertain to handle."
The two men sat before a ruddy coal fire in the big laboratory room which had been turned over to the uses of the geologist—a fire well screened from the rest of the room, so that no flying spark should raise mischief among the experiments of Zenas. Three weeks had elapsed since their arrival at Zele-omaz. Polaris Janess was well along the road to health. Everson and Oleric, laboring tirelessly, had established five great training camps, one on the plain near the city, and four others in the forests to the north beyond the Illia. Already the levies of Ruthar were pouring into the camps, where they were drilled by the zinds and captains, under the direction of the naval lieutenant and the red captain.
Everson had thrown his whole heart into the work. Already he had made considerable progress in the learning of the Rutharian language. He was beginning to take a vast pride in the army he was welding. Born soldiers he found these Rutharians, amenable to the strict discipline which he preached, and to whom his word was law.
He had ridden in this day from a tour of inspection of his camps to visit Wright and learn of the progress of the work on which depended their entire scheme of campaign.
"Nitroglycerin," said Everson. "So you have found a source of nitric acid, then?"
"Yes," replied Wright. "One of the first things which took my eye among a number of specimens of rock which I found in a case here, was a chunk of sodium nitrate. You know the stuff—Chile saltpeter, they call it."
"Why not a picrate powder, if you have nitrates to work with?" suggested the lieutenant.
"Picrate—nitric acid—phenol," said old Zenas. "That's the way of it. And to get phenol—lots of it—"
He broke off and stared into the depths of the fire.
"Hey!" he cried, and jumped to his feet so suddenly that Everson started. Zenas pointed at the fire, his little black eyes dancing and his beard wagging with his excitement.
"Well?" queried Everson.
"Coal, my boy, coal! There's oodles of it here. All I've got to do is to rig up a kiln for the distillation of coal-tar oil, and I'll have the phenol. God knows, these beggars are handy enough in the gentle art of blacksmithing. Tell your red-headed master of ceremonies to give me a little help—say two hundred or two hundred and fifty of his armorers, till I get a few kilns in operation and build me a bank of Glover towers, and I'll show you a line of stuff that will beat all of the Fourth of July celebrations you ever saw. Picrates! Humph! I'll turn out a brand of melinite for you that will jar the back door of hell off its hinges—if I don't whiff us all to kingdom come while I'm at the stuff."
Oleric was summoned. The red captain turned over to Zenas Wright not two hundred, but nearer five hundred men, and the old university was straightway turned into a munitions plant, the stench and the fires of which ascended to heaven by day and by night.
"And bring me about all the fat you can find in the kingdom," directed Zenas. "I'll need it to mix with my nice little patty-cakes."
"You shall have it, Father Zenas," Oleric replied. "And it will not come amiss to make all that you can of this pastry. After the Kimbrian Wall is down, we may find some of it useful at the gates of Adlaz."
So interested did Zenas become in this new work of his that he scarcely stopped for meals, and he slept on a cot of skins beside his fire in the old laboratory. One day, as he labored among his test-tubes, the outer door opened, and a tall figure robed in furs strode across the room and stood beside him. Zenas looked up impatiently.
"Oh, Lordy, laddie!" he cried, his face lighting up. "It's good to see you on your feet again."
It was Polaris—still somewhat gaunt and tottery, but with a welcome color in his cheeks and a brightness in his topaz eyes that augured well.
"Aye, old friend, 'tis I," he answered. "While you do wear yourself thin in this place of many smells, and Everson rides his flesh off his bones, shall I then be doing nothing but to lie in a soft bed and dream the days away? I will have no more of it."
From that day strength came back to the son of the snows with surprising rapidity, considering that he had been so ill. Nor would he chafe in restless idleness, but demanded work to do. Soon in the five great camps of fighting men his figure and that of the huge black dog which followed him like a shadow were as well known to the soldiers as were those of Everson and the lieutenant. Under the tutelage of the Goddess Glorian, he had advanced in mastery of the Rutharian tongue much faster than either of the other two Americans; for he was a natural linguist and did not find the ancient language difficult.
Old Jastla had come down out of his hills, and it was his particular pride to superintend the training of the son of the snows in the use of the arms of Ruthar. At his first trial, weakened though he was by his illness, Polaris cast a javelin farther by half a score of paces than could any warrior of Ruthar. Within a fortnight, although they might touch him by tricks of fence, there was not a swordsman in the five armies who could wear him down in the play of blades.
Jastla boasted of him throughout the land.
But though he took pleasure in all these things, he knew anxiety with the passing of the days, and in his heart pined mightily for news of his lady in Adlaz town. For that strong, true heart could not forget. Occasionally Oleric had word from over the wall from some of his secret spies in Maeronica, but never a word of the welfare of the stranger captives.
All of his story Polaris had one day told to Glorian. And she had smiled and cheered him with brave words. And then, when he had gone, she had sat for the half of a day in her chamber, looking out at the snow-capped hills of Ruthar, striving to remember that she was a goddess, and to forget that she also was a woman. Too late she found that the woman conquered.
Five weeks went by from the day when Polaris first went down to the workshop of Zenas. And then the geologist announced that he would give a show. He had some wares which he was anxious to display, he said.
Near the south bank of the Illia, above the city and beyond the camp, stood an old stone tower which long had been crumbling into decay and which Atra, the zind who ruled in Zele-omaz, had purposed some day to tear down. There it was that the geologist said he would stage his performance, and all the camp and a goodly part of the citizens of the town went thither to see what he would do.
At the appointed hour, early in the afternoon, the scientist rode out to the tower, attended by three of his assistants from the laboratory. With them they took a number of cakes of what looked remarkably like the bars of brown soap wherewith the American housewife labors o' Mondays. As much as two men could carry of the stuff they took. The third man bore a rude battery which Zenas had contrived, and a coil of copper wire which the Rutharian smiths had drawn for him, and which he had insulated with woven fiber dipped in gums from the forests.
The tower had been a massive old structure, covering nearly a half acre of ground, and the lower parts of it were still solid. Its roof was gone, and portions of the upper walls had fallen in.
Zenas found that there were a number of chambers below the ground level of the structure. In the central one of them he bestowed his precious cakes, and with them the end of his copper wire. He directed his assistants to cover the whole over with heavy stones.
"And handle them with care," he cautioned, "or you will come a lot closer to the stars than you are ever likely to be by any other means."
His preparations completed, the geologist bade his henchmen to make themselves scarce, which they were very glad to do. Bidding every one in the neighborhood of the tower to withdraw to a distance of several hundred feet, Zenas uncoiled his wire, of which he had brought a quantity sufficient to keep him out of harm's way. He squatted down behind the bole of a big yew-tree and struck the knob of his battery.
For an instant nothing happened, and Zenas, peering forth from behind his tree, felt his heart sink with disappointment. Then very quietly the entire structure of the tower, which was nearly seventy feet in height, quitted the earth. For a second it seemed to hang suspended in the air like some enchanted thing. A hollow booming reverberated across the plain. The tower flew into fragments. The ice-bound surface of the Illia was shattered by the falling rocks. A gust of air rushed across the plain and through the ranks of the Rutharian soldiery and with it a shower of smaller débris, which fell among them like a storm. From the spot where the tower had stood, a column of greenish-yellow smoke arose and hung heavily.
From the camp and the crowds of citizens went up a low moan of awe, followed by a shout of triumph from thirty thousand throats. Men ran across the meadows to view the aftermath of this wonder—such a thing as never had been seen in Ruthar. Where the tower had stood was a hole in the earth, wherein the structure itself might almost have been buried. No vestige of the masonry was left. Not one stone remained upon another, and many of the larger foundation rocks had been sundered into fragments by the terrific force of the released gases of the melinite.
Rutharians from that day on called Zenas Wright "Father of the Thunders," and accorded him a respect second only to that in which they held Polaris.
Janess, the red captain, and Everson, who had been witnesses to his experiment, ran to the side of the geologist and wrung his hand.
"And now do you, Father Zenas, stay away from that laboratory," said Oleric.
"See to it that my men keep to the trick of making this stuff; but do you keep away. Some careless fellow might let a cake of your earth-shaker fall—and we cannot spare you."
"Now show me this Kimbrian Wall," was the comment of Zenas. But the scientist yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and thereafter went no more to the laboratories, except once a day only, to test the purity of the chemicals with which his workmen wrought.
Soon after the destruction of the tower, Oleric, with Polaris and the lieutenant, rode down through the forests to visit the Kimbrian Wall. Now that they were assured of a means to open the way to Adlaz, they were all of them impatient to map out their plan of campaign, in which, as he alone of them all was skilled in such matters, they looked to Everson for counsel.
Three days riding brought the party to the great barrier which the Children of Ad had built far back in the dim centuries to separate them from their hated enemies.
As the riders approached the wall, they found the land narrowed to an isthmus, which Oleric told them was nearly eighty miles in extent, by something less than sixty across. The Kimbrian Wall crossed the neck of land nearly midway to its length, but if anything, a few miles nearer to the mainland of Maeronica than it was to Ruthar. On the hither side of the barrier stretched thick forests of oak and pine. Along the isthmus and near its western sea-border lay the course of an ancient road, which once had connected the two countries. To this old highway Everson gave careful attention. In some places it was broken up and overgrown with timber, but the lieutenant thought that little work would be required to put it in shape for travel.
From a pine-clad knoll in the forest they had their first glimpse of the wall, and a mighty work it was. Built of gray stone, now moss-grown and weather-aged, it stretched away to the right and left as far as they could see and ended sheer with the precipitous cliffs above the sea. So enormous were the stones of which it was constructed that it reminded Everson of remnants of the cyclopean masonry, which are to be found in the old countries and which tradition used to tell were built by a race of giants. Probably this work was as old as they.
The wall was nearly fifty feet high, and so broad as its top that two chariots might pass thereon. At intervals of a mile all along its length were watchtowers, garrisoned by the border-soldiers of Bel-Ar. In addition to all those points of strength, the wall had been so constructed that near its top there was an overhang of a number of feet, making it exceedingly difficult for scaling.
Still, Oleric said, it had been scaled, and many times, by small parties of raiders from both sides—and some of them had never returned.
"Look!" the captain exclaimed. "Here comes one of the patrols."
From the nearest tower to the east three men on horseback came riding along the top of the wall, clearly outlined against the pale sky. As they came nearer the forest-watchers could see that the riders were muffled in cloaks. A sharp wind was sweeping down from the south, and it must have been bitter indeed on the unprotected eminence of the wall.
"Ha! 'Tis Atlo himself—the captain whom I replaced at the port," said Oleric as the patrol came opposite him. "See, the foremost of the riders."
Sight of his enemies riding by so close proved too much of a temptation to one of the Rutharian fighting men who had ridden down with the party to the wall. He was a master bowman. While the eyes of his companions were fixed on the three riders, he dismounted and slipped away among the trees to the left. In the shadow of a pine he paused and set an arrow to the string.
It was a long shot—nearly a hundred yards—but the winged shaft flew straight and true. It smote the captain, Atlo, on the shoulder, and the riders in the forest could hear the faint clink as the point fell blunted from the armor which he wore beneath his cloak.
Atlo started in his saddle, then turned and waved his hand, with a laugh. He rode on as if the arrow were a matter of little moment. The other two riders were more timorous than their captain, and they sent many a glance back toward the dark forest shadow as they rode along.
Oleric shouted to the archer to loose no more arrows.
"Let no more raids be made over the wall," Everson directed, "and have a force of men clear and rebuild the old road yonder. Bring it up as near to the wall as may be, without attracting attention. We must attack and take them unawares. We will have to mine underground from the forest to the wall and place our explosives. As soon as the wall is down, we shall throw a force of infantry through the breach, starve the garrison off the wall and hold the territory on the other side against all attack until we can clear the wreck of the wall and lay a road through the gap so that our cavalry and charioteers may pass it. Otherwise, the Maeronicans will hold the breach against us, in which case there would be a delay which we cannot afford—if, indeed, we should be able to fight our way through at all."
Oleric pondered on the plan for a few moments. He looked up with shining eyes.
"A wise counsel," he said. "All of these things shall be done, and right speedily."
Almost miracles are the things which may be accomplished by human brains and hands, if there be enough of them and they are united to their work by a common and all-pervading purpose.
Into the old forests above the Kimbrian barrier the Rutharian zinds threw a force of two thousand men and half again as many horses. The ancient roadway through the wood to the foot of the wall was cleared and rebuilt as though by magic. Everson, visiting the scene of the work, reflected somewhat bitterly on the contrast between the manner of this labor and any similar task to be done in the land where he was born.
There, he knew, there would have been the delays caused by failure to supply the necessary materials, and failure again to get them to their appointed places on contract time. There would have been labor strikes, jealousies and bickering among leaders. In the end, of course, the work would have been done, and well done—but with much trouble.
But in Ruthar there were no walking delegates. Happy were the workmen to labor from sun to sun, and others to take up the task in the hours of darkness. Materials were free and inexhaustible, and the zinds and leaders worked together like brothers, each doing what was required of him, as though his very life depended upon it.
Within a fortnight of his first view of the Kimbrian Wall, the lieutenant deemed that the time to strike was nearly ripe. Two months and nearly a half of another of the allotted six were past. Three months and a half remained before Adlaz would gather for the Feast of Years. Three months and a half in which to conquer a nation and take a walled city, the strength of which was a tradition! Yet it must be done. And Everson, when he saw the tools with which he had to work, hoped high. This was an archaic people; but he found its sons good companions; sturdy, truthful, straightforward as their own long sword-blades. He believed they would follow to the death and that they would not come too late to the Adlaz gates.
One day, Glorian, who of late had avoided Polaris, summoned the son of the snows and bade him bring with him his American comrades and Oleric the Red.
"I know that you are nearly ready to go up against the Kimbrian Wall and the hosts of Bel-Ar," she said. "But before that day comes, there is a pilgrimage that must be made to one without the aid of whom perchance your greatest effort would be in vain. Bring horses; for on this journey I ride with you."
Polaris rode a splendid black stallion, splotched with white at forehead and fetlock, which had been the gift of Jastla, of the hills. When they were ready to leave the temple gates, Rombar came barking at the horses' heels.
"Best to leave the dog behind, brother," said Oleric. "We go upon a path where he may find ill-favor."
Cloaked in a wondrous robe of red fox-skins, Glorian rode on a cream-colored palfrey, attended by one of her women in waiting only. Never had she seemed more fair and queenly. Like some bright daughter of the white North of the long ago, was she, of whom the skalds have sung in their undying sagas.
From her he glanced to Polaris, who rode beside her. The son of the snows was clad from head to heel in the glittering chain armor which Rutharian smiths had forged for him, and cloaked in the black skin of a forest bear. At his back swung a two-handed sword. A winged helm, brilliant with gold-work and curtained with a hood and cape of delicately wrought links, sat upon his tawny hair. Long since a razor of keen bronze had swept the beard from his cheeks and chin.
Only in the amber eyes had the troubles of the years left their mark—a shadow of sadness when they were thoughtful or in repose, but which did not ill become them.
"She may be a goddess," thought Zenas to himself, "and she is beautiful enough to be a real one; but if she hasn't gone silly as a cow-girl over this lad of ours, then I'm a donkey, and a blind one, to boot. O Trouble, you've worn skirts ever since you quit fig-leaves."
Zenas shook his head. The geologist had never married.
It was no brief pleasure-jaunt on which Glorian led, but nearly two days' hard riding into the northwest from Zele-omaz, across heavily-wooded mountains and through valleys deep with snow.
Leaving the hills at last, the party came to a vast, dark forest, silent, somber and covering the rolling land like a black pall. Into its soundless glades the riders penetrated and rode for miles.
Presently they saw ahead of them a clearing in the depths of the wood, and a stretch of long buildings, built of stone, and with their windows set high in the walls near their roofs.
It was late afternoon when the riders entered the clearing and approached the buildings, which stood about the four sides of a square, enclosing a space of nearly three acres. As they rode into this court, following a path between two of the buildings, the travelers saw that a number of smaller structures of stone and wood occupied a part of the square. Here and there in the court, fires of brush were burning—for it was bitter cold in the forest depths—and dark figures of men passed to and fro about the fires. A pack of shaggy, wolf-bred dogs came yapping at the horses' heels.
"Who comes?" cried a voice. Men bearing spears ran forward from the fires.
"Glorian of Ruthar comes to visit Zoar of the Amalocs," answered Oleric.
Straightway the armed men knelt in the courtyard, and one in a stern voice called back the dogs.
A door in one of the houses near the center of the square was opened, and the form of a man stood there, silhouetted against a flaring light within the dwelling.
"Methought that I heard a voice well known to me, speaking of Glorian of Ruthar and of Zoar of the Amalocs." The tones of the man in the doorway were low, but clear and sonorous as a bell. "I thought it the voice of one Oleric the Learned," the man went on. He bent forward and shaded his eyes with his hand. "Are you indeed come, red one? Ride forward that I may see."
Oleric's answer was drowned in a terrific chorus of squealing groans, which seemed to issue from the larger buildings on all three sides of the square. So unearthly and piercing was the din, that Zenas Wright would have clapped his hands to his ears; but he found his best efforts needed to control his horse. The steeds of all the party snorted and reared in terror of that hideous outburst. They would have bolted, but knew not where to bolt; and presently the clamor was ceased, and they stood still and trembling.
"What demons of the place are these?" cried Polaris. He sprang down from his horse, tossed the reins to the man nearest him, and ran to the head of Glorian's palfrey, which was curveting and threatening to pitch its mistress from her saddle.
"Those are the pets of Zoar," Oleric answered, "the amalocs. They know his voice and answer him in their own fashion." Spurring his restive horse, the red captain rode forward to the porch of the dwelling.
"So, 'tis you, indeed," said Zoar as the captain advanced into the ring of firelight. This time the man spoke softly, almost in a whisper, and was not again interrupted. He stepped to the side of the captain's horse and took him by the hand. "Who rides with you, and why do you ride to seek Zoar?" he asked. "Is the time come, red one? Is it come?"
"Aye; the time is here, Zoar," said Oleric soberly. "Our years have not been in vain. Yonder sits the Goddess Glorian, and holding her horse's head is the hope of Ruthar, whom I have brought up from the sea."
"And the Kimbrian Wall?" Zoar asked.
"It waits but the coming of the amalocs, when we will push it down like a barrier of straw," Oleric answered. "Ruthar stands in arms as she never has before, and the land rustles with banners. We have come to ask your aid. When we know that Zoar of the amalocs is on the march, then will the war-drums be sounded."
"Has the ancient crown touched his brow?" asked Zoar.
"Not yet; we wait your word."
"It is given." Zoar lifted his face to the dim sky. "Beyond the mists the stars of Ruthar shine, never so brightly," he muttered. He laid his hand on the captain's arm.
"On the third day from now Zoar of the Amalocs will march," he said. "Now bring your party within, and they shall enjoy what poor hospitality I have for them, who entertain so few guests."
Men led away the horses, and the travelers entered the hall of Zoar.
"Ah, daughter of the stars," he said, and bowed, as Glorian crossed his threshold, "many years have gone since I last looked into your eyes; but I find that the will burns strongly still, and your beauty has not dimmed. But I grow old, daughter, old and very weary."
Gravely and courteously Zoar welcomed his guests, and bade them rest and sit at meat with him. It was a plain place into which he ushered them; yet was it rich, as the world counts riches, and its wealth was all of ivory. Seats, tables, cabinets, even the casings of the windows and the doors were of ivory—wonderful, finely grained stuff, some of it white as alabaster, and some of it cream-yellow with the tint of age. And the carvings on it must have been the work of years.
Zoar, the host, the travelers found quite as remarkable as his ivory treasure. He was a slight, short man, hardly so tall as Zenas Wright and not so stocky as the geologist. He wore a long white beard, and his hair, of the same silver, flowed across his shoulders. His eyes, under bushy brows, were bright and kindly. His step was quick and firm, nor did his limbs or hands tremble. Yet there was on him the stamp of an unutterable, incredible age.
His skin was as yellow-pale as the oldest of his ivory, and the whole surface of it was fretted with thousands of infinitesimal wrinkles. When he spoke or moved it was with spirit and animation; but when he fell into fits of abstraction—and that was often—Zoar looked very like a mummy fresh-stripped from its tomb.
Polaris the old man regarded with especial interest, and when the meal had been cleared away he sat and talked with him and Glorian for many minutes, recalling odd, old tales of the history of Ruthar, with which he showed remarkable familiarity.
"But Ruthar's greatest story is yet to be made," he said in conclusion of his tales. Then he called his servants to show his guests to their chambers.
"What! Have I ridden all these miles, friend Oleric, and then to be put to bed without the chance to tell you that these wonderful beasts about which you have bragged so much are only elephants after all?" said Zenas Wright, forgetting in his stubbornness the ivory gateway at Zele-omaz.
The red captain grinned and put a question to Zoar. The old man answered with a shake of his head:
"The amalocs love not to be disturbed at night, and especially they love not fires or lights. If you and your friends would sleep in peace this night, I counsel that you wait till daybreak to see the beasts. Otherwise they may revile you in such fashion as will shake your couches and drive all sleep from your pillows."
So Zenas was forced to be content and go to his bed with no chance to crow over Oleric. All night long there penetrated occasionally through the geologist's slumbers the noise of raucous trumpeting and the padding stamp of ponderous feet.
When they had broken their fast in the morning, Zoar led his guests into the court and sent men to throw open the great bronze doors in the front of the nearest of the stone buildings.
"Now for an elephant," muttered Zenas. "Perhaps a mighty big one, but still an elephant." Then Zenas stopped, amazed.
Out through the doors of bronze and into the open court stalked a mountain of flesh and ivory and stood swaying restlessly from one foot to another, flapping ears that would have made a bed covering, and looking keenly about with little, inflamed eyes. Elephantine in shape only was this monster. The points of its shoulders were fifteen feet from the ground—a full yard taller than the most stalwart elephant that ever bore the howdah of a mogul emperor.
Tusks that were ten feet long projected from its massive skull, curving downward where they left the bone and then out and up in such fashion that if they had been continued farther they would have formed spirals. The body of the monster was covered with a coarse and woolly growth of reddish-brown hair, through which there pricked long, black bristles. On the trunk the wool was sparse and the bristles shorter, and one could see that the hide of the beast was a drab-gray. Neck it had none; but along the spine, just back of the skull and extending beyond the shoulders, was a ridge or mane of coarse, black hair.
His face gone white and his eyes round and goggling, Zenas Wright stood and stared up at this Gargantuan offspring of the hinder ages.
"Loxodon!" he breathed.
Never in all his life had the geologist felt so small and insignificant as in the presence of that towering survivor of the prehistoric past.
Zoar stepped forward in front of the beast.
"Ixstus!" he called gently.
The great ears inclined forward to attention.
"Stekkar mal!" the old man commanded.
Down swung the vast, wrinkled trunk in a huge loop, into which Zoar stepped and was hoisted to the table of the monstrous skull—a flat place where five men might have sat and played at cards.
Another word of command, and the mammoth advanced a couple of paces. The snakelike trunk groped forward, and Zenas, wriggling some as he went, was swung aloft and found himself seated breathlessly by the side of Zoar.
The master of the beasts smiled at the other old man.
"When you come again to your own land, you may tell your children's children, if you have them, that you have sat on the head of an amaloc, the grandfather of all beasts," said Zoar.
While Zenas appreciated that honor, it might be said that he was much relieved when he got his feet on the ground again.
From building to building of the immense stables, the scientist was led with growing wonder. Ninety and three of the giant mammals there were, of which no one stood less than twelve feet high. But Ixstus was the champion and patriarch of the herd.
As the riders journeyed back to Zele-omaz, Oleric told again how the Children of Ad had driven the beasts southward from their lands with fire, and how the men of Ruthar likewise had made war upon them, until they were in danger of becoming extinct.
"But then came the prophecy, and men of wisdom set themselves to study and tame the beasts," he said. "And now, when the wall is down, and Ruthar takes the road to Adlaz, the amalocs shall lead the way, and Zoar and his servants shall drive them against the hosts of Bel-Ar."
"Won't the Maeronicans scare them again with fires?" asked Everson.
"Nay; that has been provided against," said the captain.
"Lady," Polaris said to Glorian, "I have heard and seen many strange things in this country of yours, and I have learned much. One more thing I would ask that you make clear to me. Oleric has, and last night the old man back yonder did again speak of things of the long ago, in which you had a part. What did they mean? You are scarcely of mine own years."
Glorian glanced hastily at Oleric, and then she answered:
"When the world was younger, men had the secret of years. The slave O'Connell told Oleric that it was written in your sacred book out yonder in the world that such was so. That secret was lost. For ages it was lost. But it was found again in Ruthar. I am one of those to whom it has been imparted."
"You mean, lady, that you—" Polaris gasped.
"My friend, I first saw the light on Ruthar's hills well-nigh three hundred years ago," Glorian replied, and as he involuntarily shrank in his saddle, she added hastily, "It is a matter of the inward will that holds the spirit and the flesh. To only a few is it given to have the will to prevail for a time against time itself. And they are not immortal. Presently old age will come to me as it has to Zoar, and I shall shrivel away—and die." She shuddered.
Polaris looked at this fair, fresh woman, beautiful as a goddess indeed, and by all earthly standards in the first bloom of her young womanhood, and he felt that this matter was beyond his comprehension.
"Are there, then, any others, besides you and Zoar?" he asked.
"One other only—and he rides at your side," she answered. "Oleric the Learned is younger than I by only fifty years."
"Now, my brother, are some of my wild sayings explained to you," Oleric said. "We do not ask that you believe, for this thing is new to you and contrary to all that you have learned. Only the years will show you the truth of what we tell you—if they pass without accidents. For we are not proof against mischance. A sword-stroke may end my days as swiftly as any man's."
"Would you that I impart the secret to you?" asked Glorian. And she turned and looked deep into Polaris's eyes. "You have a will that is stronger than most, and I think that you might well exert it to hold back the years, were you instructed. Say, shall we teach it you?"
"Nay, lady," said Polaris. "I will live my appointed years, be they few or many, and die when my time comes. One short human life, it seems, can hold all the troubles for which a man has heart. And I would not, if this thing be possible, see my friends grow old and die, while I lived on."
Glorian sighed. Then she seemed struck by a new thought, and asked:
"What will happen if Ruthar is too late, and you reach not your friends in Adlaz—and the lady Rose, of whom Oleric has told me? What if you come not to Adlaz in time to save them?"
"I think that I shall be in time," Polaris said grimly. "If I am not, then I think death shall find me on the road—and be welcome."
Zenas Wright, hearing these things, and marveling, became troubled.
"Wow!" he said to the lieutenant. "I can believe anything now. To-day I have seen a living mammoth, and I felt about three thousand years old myself. And now, too, look out for squalls.”