Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 2 (1925-08).djvu/30

"Why have you fear?" he asked, as she listened apprehensively to some retreating footsteps.

"My lord knows not the worship of Khayandra," she told him. "But if I may please the god in any way ..."

The white man was drunk with his power, which lay hidden in the ground among the hills that looked down on the city. His power was in small red stones, the largest of which was the size of a man's fist, but they glittered very wonderfully, and most men would have sold their souls for one of the smallest of them. The white man, disguised as a priest of Khayandra, thought of those stones glittering in the dark damp earth, waiting for his coming, and the thought intoxicated him. He looked upon the woman before him and found her pleasing. She was proud of carriage, and small of foot, and graceful. And her lips were very, very red, almost as red as the rubies the white man had stolen, and her eyes were like other jewels he did not possess.

"The god Khayandra," he murmured, looking at her obliquely, "desires to show you his favor. And I am his priest."

Had he been a wiser man, he would have seen that the light that came upon her face was from a thought of another than him, but his own heart was puffed up with pride, and full to bursting with vanity. And there was much evil in his eyes, which blinded him. He did not see stealthy figures creeping up behind him, nor read aright the sudden terror that overcame her as he reached out his hand to touch her.

An arm crept about his throat and tightened. And a cold, wavy blade pressed against his side, and then two men flung themselves upon his feet before he could more than gasp from a sudden very terrible fear. Then he saw small, monkeylike eunuchs fling themselves upon the ranee Sahnya, and bind her fast. Then they grinned at him while one more monkeylike than the rest squatted on his haunches and made signs to the white man. The monkeylike man could not speak, because his tongue was cut out,—which told with horrible clarity of tortures that were in store for the false priest of Khayandra.

The white man had forgotten that though he might be very powerful, because of certain red stones hidden in the damp earth, he had ventured from pride and lust into the palace of the raja of Barowak, and that the raja was jealous of his honor, besides being possessed of a peculiar sense of humor. The white man went pale to his very liver, from certain foreknowledge of what was to come to him. He had forgotten the mark on his forehead.

One of the eunuchs vanished, bearing a message, and presently returned. He made signs to the others, and the white man was lifted up and carried for a long distance through gloomy corridors of stone, while those who carried him giggled to themselves at what was to befall him. He could only writhe. But the ranee Sahnya made no struggle.

They brought him at last to a little courtyard where there was a fountain, and the raja of Barowak sitting on a divan, half asleep, while a pallid, plump man with spectacles read to him from a book. It was a curious book to be in such a place. It was printed in English, and the babu was reading from it with great unction, and then translating what he had read into the accurst language which is spoken in Barowak.

The raja of Barowak looked up sleepily when the white man was flung down upon the stone floor.