CHAPTER XIV.
“RAHEE THE TERRIBLE!”
“WHAT sayest thou? Wilt live or die?”
Many hours had passed since Mervyn made his decision.
The flaming barrier had sunk back into the depths whence it sprang, and Nordhu stood once more before his captive.
The scientist faced the priest boldly.
“This is my answer,” he cried: “I utterly refuse to reveal to you any of the things you wish to know; but hear this ere ye destroy me: I have friends who will exact a terrible vengeance if I be harmed. Not all your hordes of wolfish followers will save you from their fury.”
“Think you to fright me with such talk?” returned the priest scornfully. “What doth hinder me to take your friends captive also, and put them to the torture? Are they such mighty warriors that ye think they can stand against the hosts of the underworld? I know of their movements. I know that they be approaching the haunts of my people in hope to rescue their brother. I have warned them by a fire message, but I fear me they will not heed. Though they force an entrance into our caverns, they shall never return, I swear it by Ramouni, and by Rahee, sacred beast of Ramouni! Soon will I have all of ye safely in my power, and it may be that I can wrest the secret from one, if ye are stubborn. But come, Rahee waits.”
Stepping over the fire-crack, Mervyn passed out of the chamber.
On once more down the tunnel the priest and prisoner made their way, and behind, silent and terrible, came the two wolfish guards. Round numberless bends and curves they went, sometimes crossing a huge vaulted chamber, to plunge into a tunnel on the farther side. And ever around them, from the numerous galleries on either hand, came the sounds of machinery. At length they reached a doorway, before which hung a curtain of skins. This Nordhu pulled aside, and the four passed through into a dazzling glare of fungi light.
So brilliant was the glow that it paled the light of the priest’s stone, and, for a few seconds, Mervyn was compelled to veil his eyes with his manacled hands. Presently, as they became accustomed to the glare, he was able to take note of his surroundings.
He was standing in a vast natural amphitheatre in the heart of the mountain range. Around him, ledge upon ledge, terrace after terrace, rose the cliffs, and every cranny of the towering walls was crowded with fungi. Everywhere the luminous growths flourished, the floor of the amphitheatre alone being free from them.
But not for long was Mervyn allowed to stand gazing upon this scene.
“Come,” snapped the priest, and moved on across the floor.
Soon before them loomed a gigantic idol, rudely carved in stone.
It was a monstrous, misshapen, half-human figure with but one eye, and that in the centre of its forehead. Immediately in front stood a flat stone slab, which evidently served as an altar, and Mervyn shuddered as he noted the dark stains upon the surface of the stone.
Doubtless many a score of victims had been sacrificed beneath the murderous knife of Nordhu upon that slab; many a savage had gone screaming to his death to satisfy the lust of the devilish priest.
The two guards had instantly prostrated themselves before the monstrosity, and now lay upon their faces, muttering some doggerel or other in praise of the image.
Nordhu himself bowed low, then turned furiously upon his prisoner.
“Kneel!” he screamed, “kneel to Ramouni, that ye may hear his will.”
But the scientist stood rigid as the idol itself. He knew well that he was face to face with death, and he was not minded that his last few moments of life should be spent in bowing himself before the repulsive figure which served these people as a god.
“Dost hear?” thundered the priest; “kneel, ye white dog, before the god of my people.”
“I will not kneel,” Mervyn answered calmly, “to this misshapen block of stone that ye call a god. Think you to deceive me with this craven figure! If it be a god, let it speak.”
“So,” returned Nordhu mockingly, “ye would fain hear Ramouni speak? Hearken then.”
Raising his arms above his head, he gabbled out a long formula, punctuated with sundry bowings and scrapings that made Mervyn long to kick the fellow. But the yearning to do violence to the priest’s person vanished, and the scientist stood absolutely dumbfounded, as a thin, cracked voice from the lips of the idol answered Nordhu’s plea.
“Let the white stranger be delivered unto Rahee, the sacred beast.”
“’Tis well, oh Ramouni,” replied the priest, “it shall be done. Well, art satisfied?” he continued, turning to Mervyn.
“No,” cried the latter; “I am persuaded that the idol speaks but by a trick.”
An expression of fiendish rage swept over the face of the priest, and he raised his clenched fist threateningly above his victim. For an instant it seemed as though he would strike Mervyn to the earth, but he restrained his fury.
“Hound!” he hissed frenziedly, “dost dare to say Ramouni hath no voice?”
“I go further,” pursued Mervyn firmly—to him in a flash had come the revelation of Nordhu’s trickery—“I know the means by which ye make the idol speak, and will expose you to your people. Think you that you alone can give Ramouni voice? Listen!”
Once more a voice came from the image, but this time different indeed in tone; no weak, piping voice this, but strong and of full volume.
“Hark ye, Nordhu,” come the words—and at the sound of them the two wolfish worshippers raised themselves, staring in astonishment at the lips of the god—“do no harm to this white stranger, I command ye. It is my will that he should depart in peace. See to it, lest my anger be visited upon my people!”
It was Mervyn’s last card, his final effort in his struggle against death.
Himself a ventriloquist of no mean ability, the scientist had quickly perceived the method by which the crafty priest gave speech to Ramouni. A faint hope flickered up in his mind that, by means of his talent, he might compel Nordhu to release him.
Vain hope! One moment the priest stood as though turned to stone, the next his clenched fist shot out, and Mervyn dropped like a log.
Ere he could rise again the priest, tearing the hide girdle from the loins of the nearest savage, was upon him, and, binding the filthy strip of skin firmly across his mouth, effectually gagged the prostrate scientist.
For an instant it seemed as though the two wolf-men were about to interfere. Doubtless they were afraid that they would suffer for Nordhu’s rash action if Ramouni fulfilled his threat; but the high priest was quite ready for the emergency.
With consummate skill he flung his voice between the lips of the image.
“Thou hast done well, O priest,” came the piping tones. “I did but try thee, whether thou wert faithful to me or no. Let my people make merry over the death of this white stranger, for he is mine enemy.”
Every word of this speech Mervyn heard, as he struggled painfully to his feet; yet he was powerless to resist the devilish schemes of the merciless monster beside him. With a fiendish grin overspreading his features, the priest raised his voice in a piercing cry:
“Ayoki! Ayoki!”
The word pealed twice from his lips, and, ere the echoes had died, into the temple filed a score of dark figures. Right up to the altar they glided, moving with scarce a sound, and formed a semicircle about the high priest and his prisoner.
At their advent the wolf-men rose and vanished, seeming glad to leave the presence of the image, which their ignorant superstitious minds credited with supernatural powers.
The newcomers, each of whom was clad somewhat scantily in a coarse skin mantle, were creatures of the same type as the high priest, save that, if anything, their faces were more brutalised and repulsive. They glared fiercely at the scientist as they stood waiting for Nordhu to speak.
“Priests of Ramouni,” he began at last, “our god hath decided that this white stranger shall be delivered unto Rahee, the sacred beast. Let the people of the underworld be summoned.”
Instantly one of the priests raised a horn to his lips.
As the weird note trembled through the temple, the whole band closed about Mervyn and hustled him forward towards the further end of the amphitheatre, where stretched a line of bars. Straight towards this barrier the scientist was thrust and driven, until he was close enough to see that beside it stood a huge stone windlass.
Here the priests halted, and once again the blast of the horn echoed amid the cliffs.
At that a multitude of sinister forms poured into the vast enclosure. Rank upon rank, they thronged in and took their places silently, until the whole floor of the temple, up to within a few yards of the spot where stood Nordhu and the priests, was covered with a heaving sea of bodies.
As he noted the wolfish forms of the creatures, their terrible aspect, Mervyn, despite his terror, felt thankful that he had not revealed to Nordhu the secret he so longed to know.
Fervently he prayed that his comrades might not fall into the hands of the devilish priest through any mad attempt to rescue him.
The hopelessness of any such effort, the utter impossibility of it, was plain to him. An army would be overwhelmed in a few moments by these countless hordes! What chance, then, had his friends? At most they were but four in number, and, with all their daring, they would not be able to pluck him from out the clutches of the priest.
So thinking, the scientist commended his soul to his Maker, waiting, pale faced but undaunted in spirit, for the terrible death which he knew would soon be his.
What form it would take he knew not; but he was aware that somewhere behind that row of bars lurked the beast to whose murderous appetite he was to be sacrificed. The suspense was terrible. Anything was better than this drawn-out agony, and he was glad when, suddenly, the high priest raised his hand.
Instantly a thunderous shout of “Nordhu! Nordhu!” pealed upward from a myriad throats. It ceased abruptly, and a tense, brooding silence followed, broken a few moments later by the harsh voice of the chief priest.
With many violent gestures he harangued his people, and Mervyn listened with fast-beating heart as Nordhu pronounced his doom.
As his voice trailed off into silence, half a dozen of the priests sprang forward to the windlass, while the rest, opening a gate in the barrier, thrust Mervyn into the enclosure beyond. Then the scientist observed that there was a second row of bars within the den, forming a barrier before the mouth of a large cave in the temple wall. The use of the windlass without became apparent to him in a moment.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, the huge wheel turned beneath the united efforts of the priests, and the rails—the only barrier between the captive and the so-called sacred beast of the wolf-men—rose, until the mouth of the cave was uncovered.
As the great windlass ceased to move, another thunderous shout swelled up from the ranks of the savages.
“Hail, Rahee! Rahee the terrible!”
On the instant, as though in answer to the cry, a sound came from the depths of the cave. The beast was coming forth!
Fascinated, Mervyn stood watching for the appearance of the redoubtable Rahee.
“My God”
Like the wail of a soul in torment, the despairing cry trembled from the captive scientist’s lips as the sacred beast emerged from the cavern.
Never in all his wildest dreams had he imagined that so hideous a creature could exist. Long afterwards the terror of the brute haunted him. Its glaring eyes seemed to be ever before him, and the gnashing of its jaws dinned in his ears for days.
With a stealthy, sidelong motion the spider-like brute crept towards its fascinated victim. Every hair on its great, brown body bristled with fury; each of its eight, claw-armed legs seemed to quiver with eagerness as it advanced.
The horror of the awful thing stunned Mervyn—held him powerless, as though he were fixed to the floor. He could do naught but stare.
Then suddenly a wave of fury swept over him, and with might and main he strove to release his hands from the manacles. Like a madman he fought and tore, but the chains held him like a vice, and presently, with bleeding hands and wrists, he ceased his efforts.
Bowing his head that he might not see the grim form of his destroyer, he stood awaiting his doom.
Yet at that moment, although he knew it not, help was at hand.
Even while he thought himself within an ace of Eternity; when the great spider, but a few yards from its victim, was crouching for a spring, and the savage hordes in the temple were watching eagerly for the final scene of the tragedy, a shout came pealing downward from above.
Aroused, Mervyn looked up. The sight that met his eyes sent the hope rushing back into his heart, and set every nerve in his body tingling with a wild desire to live.