Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 2 (1925-08).djvu/27

The white man prospered in Kosar. There were those who knew of the meaning of the mark on his forehead, and they paid court to him because he could dispense the favors of Khayandra. He had horses and slaves and food waiting for him when he received a secret summons from the palace. It was from the ranee, the wife of the raja, and she met the white man with tears in her eyes and something of fear upon her countenance.

"You must pray to the god Khayandra," she told him, wringing her hands. "You must implore the god to be merciful."

The white man knew what she had to say, because it had been a part of his planning that she should say just this. But he feigned ignorance. In his pretended character of a priest he asked, "What do you wish of the god Khayandra, whose name not many know?"

And she told him. The raja was growing weary of her, and she loved him. He had no son to carry on his name and was debating within himself the purchase of other and younger wives. He would even sell one or more of his rubies to secure young and fruitful girls of great beauty. The ranee wept as she told the white man of this, thinking him a priest of the god of births.

"The god will hear you," said the white man, pointing to the mark on his forehead. "By this mark he will hear you,—if you make proper sacrifice."

And she wept again, and told of her poverty, of the poverty of all the whole realm where the raja's palaces fell to ruins for lack of revenues to keep them in repair, while the raja clung close to his rubies, in worth more than the whole kingdom.

"Those rubies," said the false priest of Khayandra, his eyes glittering strangely; "show me those rubies. Let me touch the mark upon my forehead with the greatest of all the rubies, and the god will grant your prayer."

"But it is death to approach them," cried the ranee, again wringing her hands, "save only for the raja himself."

Here the false priest turned away, and the ranee flung herself upon the floor before him, pleading. And he was obdurate.

With a cloak flung about her and a single taper in her hand, she led him down deep and dark damp passages, where molds grew upon the walls, and where the air was heavy with the scents of decay. Once she crept softly past a sleeping guard. Twice she pressed secret things and seeming solid blocks of stone opened before them. Twice she shuddered as she led the way within.

And then they came to a place where there was a moldy European carpet upon the floor of a tiny, rock-walled room. And there were rickety chairs there, and a table that was falling to pieces from the damp. And in a chest, quite unlocked, she showed him the rubies.

They glowed and gleamed and glittered by the ray of the single taper. The white man, disguised as a priest of Khayandra, caught his breath as he looked at them. They were men's lives, and women's honors, and war, and famine, and pillage. They were all luxuries, and all things desirable, and they were things that caught at a man's heart and held it fast, so that he coveted them fiercely and could not rest until he possessed them.

"Here," said the ranee, catching her breath in a sob, "here is my sacrifice to the god Khayandra. I have betrayed my lord through love of him, that the god Khayandra may grant my prayer for his honor."

And the white man, in his strange robes of a hidden priesthood, threw back his head and laughed.