CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE TO SETOS AND RAHULA
Setos could not refuse the Dorado an armed escort. But there was treachery in the very air, and Yermah did not retire when he found himself alone and safe inside the temple walls.
He could hear Oghi howling dismally in the stable inclosure and in the intense stillness he heard Cibolo pawing the ground and snorting as if some one were prowling on the outside.
Opening the door cautiously, the hierophant peeped into the long, empty aisles, dim and shadowy in the faint light flickering from the lamps overhead. None of his senses relaxed vigilance, as he pressed his ear close to the floor and listened intently.
Yermah had not long to wait before he heard a grating sound, as if some heavy body were being pushed through the north gate. Returning to his room he hastily tied the leathern pouches around his waist containing the relics of Kerœcia and Akaza. He grasped his sword and came back to the door, and was horrified to find a catapult being dragged into position almost against it.
Recognizing Imos, it flashed over him that the high-priest had seized upon Setos’s nuptial night to make himself hierophant; but his blood ran cold when he thought of the helplessness of the recluses around him.
Fear and distrust counseled against apprising Setos of the situation, and his own loyal guards were fast asleep, believing him safe at Iaqua.
His heart almost stopped its beating when he comprehended that his enemies were attempting to slip the bolts and chains of the door.
Something caused him to turn his head in an opposite direction, and there he saw an apparition of Kerœcia, luminous and perfect in outline. He could only hold the image a moment; but she smiled and beckoned to him as she flitted through the doorway. Instinct bade him follow her.
It was his blood for which the rebels thirsted, and none of the other inmates would be disturbed—Yermah thought, as he ran along the aisle.
While Yermah was unbolting the door, a projectile from the catapult shivered the northern entrance with a crash that rocked and shook the whole structure. The aisles filled immediately with half-awakened monks, but their voices were silenced by an explosion against the opposite wall, which sent the spikes flying in every direction and felled them with stifling and deadly odors.
Yermah could never remember how he succeeded in reaching Cibolo’s stall. The sagacious animal seemed to help in getting into his trappings, and Oghi had already buried his teeth in the back of a miscreant slipping up to the half-opened door through which Yermah had passed. The ocelot darted out of the inclosure ahead of Yermah—all the tiger instincts in him aroused and ready to attack the first thing in sight.
Oghi rolled over and over with a victim, marking and maiming him for life. The man’s cries brought assistance; but neither arrows nor sword thrusts dispatched the assailant until several persons had been wounded.
The Dorado found all the wall entrances locked from the outside, which accounted for the absence of guards at the doors. Escape was only possible through the north-gate, and there more than a dozen warrior-priests were waiting for him.
Man and beast knew there was desperate work before them, but they were nerved for the encounter. As he dashed past Oghi, Yermah saw with a sinking heart that the poor creature was writhing in its death agony.
Cibolo laid back his ears, and tried to take a piece out of the arm put forward to seize the bridle. When the animal found that he could not break the ranks at the open gate, he wheeled and kicked at the assailants viciously.
Yermah reined him back, and charged again, using his sword arm constantly. A spear-point pierced the upper part of Cibolo’s neck, causing him to squeal shrilly, while an arrow went through the flesh of Yermah’s left arm near the shoulder, breaking the point on his armor. A well-directed blow felled his antagonist, and horse and rider cleared the open space at a bound.
The Dorado rode straight to the west into a redwood forest, long since submerged. Covered with dust and faint from exhaustion and loss of blood, with broken armor and disordered dress, he struggled on toward Tlamco’s Tower of Refuge, situated on an artificial hill south of the present Alms House.
Upon arrival there, he found the citadel filled with women and children, who had fled from Tlamco during the day, and among them were Ildiko and Alcyesta.
Yermah only took time to bind up his own and Cibolo’s wound before making his way through Visitacon Valley to the bay, where Alcyesta told him Hanabusa and Ben Hu Barabe were expecting him.
“The Turghati have sworn to kill thee,” confided Alcyesta, “and it were not safe for thee nor for thy followers to remain even here in this tower.”
“Before daylight, this place will be surrounded,” added the keeper. “They will suspect thy hiding place. Shouldst thou surrender and stand trial, thou knowest beforehand what the verdict would be.”
“Be advised by me,” pleaded Alcyesta. “For this purpose am I come.”
“Ample provision has been made,” urged the keeper. “Go thou quickly. I fear for thy safety.”
Seeing that Ildiko prepared to accompany them, Yermah turned to her, saying:
“Why art thou here? Thy father is married to Rahula, and will be proclaimed Grand Servitor in a few hours.”
“I know all that thou sayest. But dost thou think I should be allowed to live at Iaqua? If so, thou knowest neither Setos nor Rahula.”
“What is thy purpose?”
“To go with thee and thy followers. Do not, I beseech thee, turn me away, since I should be left to perish miserably.”
“That is thy probable fate with me.”
“So be it.”
Seeing that she was not to be dissuaded, Yermah offered no further objection.
The bay extended down to Monterey at that time—Monterey, the quaint old Spanish town, where the first American flag was unfurled on this coast.
Hanabusa had managed to pick up six other balsas loaded with provisions and manned by stout rowers whose fealty was unquestioned.
When this little remnant of Atlantians and Monbas reached the seas through Monterey Bay, they were the last of the Mazaleels—a term of derision applied to them by conservative Azes. Mazaleel was simply another name for half-breed, and for ages after was a despised epithet.
Steadily and in secret, before there was light enough to betray their movements, the conspirators wheeled the catapult back to the parade-grounds near the Observatory. Thinking that Yermah would return to the temple, they securely closed every door and window.
None of the monks ever awoke from their first insensibility.
Imos ordered the stable-doors to be left open and the north-gate ajar, so that Yermah’s absence might be discovered by some passer-by, but he took good care to be at home when the news flew over Tlamco.
He was the first to suggest that the Dorado’s flight was to conceal a crime, and was properly shocked and horrified when the facts were made known.
With a preternaturally long face and proper unction, Imos went to Setos, and offered to officiate in Yermah’s stead.
Setos was genuinely surprised, yet not displeased over the turn of affairs, and readily agreed with Imos that the temple should be razed and never rebuilt. He had always opposed the White Brotherhood, and could see them exterminated without regret.
It was rather an imposing procession that filed out of Iaqua at noon, and marched over the rising ground, lately a scene of bloodshed, to the Temple of the Sun, where Setos and Rahula were to receive the fealty of the populace.
Each male adult in Tlamco, brought earth in a square jar and water in a deep disk for an oath-offering. Unclasping a pair of interlaced bracelets, the citizen placed his right hand flat upon one band, and, detaching the other, carried it to his forehead, saying:
“Name I thee to witness, I make loyal oath by two rings. So help me, All Powerful One.”
This formula was repeated thousands of times in the next three days, and then, in response to a general proclamation, the warriors and citizens assembled to give burial to the slain. These were interred in a large circle at the base of Mount Olympus, with their heads turned toward the center.
Setos’s first public work as Servitor was to erect a tall shaft with four fire-altars at the base, on the cardinal points, on which sacrifice was offered to the “Martyrs of the Lost Soul,” as the dead in this conflict were subsequently termed.
Beginning at the northern side of East Avenue, and circling in a radius of three thousand and ninety feet to the same side of West Avenue, was a set of pillars supporting a low crenellated wall along which was a sentry-path, used for public observation in the residence part of the city.
This crescent gave the distance of the lost planet from the center of Tlamco, Mount Olympus being in the same radiation. It was indicated again from Las Papas to Lime Point, and also from Lone Mountain to the artificial sugar-loaf surmounted by the Tower of Refuge, south of Blue Mountain, and between Las Papas and Strawberry Hill.
The gilded domes on the Temple of the Sun were the five-pointed star in the center of the crescent, a device which anciently figured as the lost planet[23]—the present star and crescent of the Turkish Empire.