LITMIR.BIZ

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last devil gone!" he shouted. The ship trembled—trembled as though far beneath its keel a hand had risen and was shaking it. It stopped. Around it the waters darkened. Deep, deep down in those darkened waters began to glow a scarlet cloud. Deep, deep beneath them the cloud moved and widened as widens the thunderhead. It vortexed into a crimson storm cloud blotted with blacknesses. It floated up; ever growing, its scarlets deepening ever more angrily, its blacks shading ever more menacingly'

      The lifting cloud swirled; from it shot out strangely ordered rays, horizontal, fan-shaped. From those slant planed luminescences now whirling like a tremendous wheel in the abyss, immense bubbles, black and crimson, began to break. They arose, growing swiftly in girth as they neared the surface.

      Within them Kenton glimpsed figures, misty figures; bodies of crouching men clad in armor that glimmered jet and scarlet.

      Men within the bubbles!

      Armored men! Men who crouched with heads on knees, clothed all in glittering scales. Warriors in whose hands were misty swords, misty bows, misty javelins.

      Up rushed the bubble hosts, myriad after myriad. Now they were close to sea surface. Now they broke through.

      The bubbles burst!

      Out of their shattered sides the warriors sprang. All in their checkered mail, pallid-faced, pupilless eyes half closed and dead, they leaped out upon the darkened blue of the sea. From crest to crest of waves they vaulted. They ran over the waters as though over a field of withered violets. Silently they poured down upon the ship!

      "Men of Nergal!" wailed Sharane. "Warriors of the Black One! Ishtar! Ishtar—help us!"

      "Phantoms!" cried Kenton, and held high his blood stained sword. "Phantoms!"

      And he knew in his soul that whatever they were—phantoms they were not!

      The front rank poised themselves upon the tip of a curling wave as though upon a long land barrow. They thrust down bows no longer misty. To their cheeks they drew the tips of long arrows. Came a twang of strings, a pattering as of hail against the sides of the ship. A dozen shafts quivered along the side of the mast; one fell at his feet—serpent-scaled, black and crimson, its head buried deep within the deck.

      "Ishtar! Mother Ishtar! Deliver us from Nergal!" wailed Sharane.

      As though in answer the ship leaped as if another hand had thrown it forward.

      From the hosts still breaking through the bubbles arose a shouting. They raced after the flying ship. Another rain of arrows fell upon it.

      "Ishtar! Mother Ishtar!" sobbed Sharane. The hovering darkness split. For an instant out of it Peered an immense orb circled with garlands of little moons. From it poured silver fire; living, throbbing, jubilant. The pulsing flood struck the sea and melted through it. The shadows closed; the orb was gone.

      The moon-flames it had poured dropped down and down. Up to meet them sparkled other great bubbles all rosy, pearl and silver, shimmering with glints and glimmerings of tenderest nacre, gleamings of mother-of-pearl, cream-of-roses.

      In each of them Kenton sensed a form, a body—wondrous, delicate and delicious; a woman's body from whose beauty the shining sides of the bubbles drew their glory!

      Women within the bubbles! Up rushed the spheres of glamour; they touched the surface of the wan sea. They opened.

      Out of them flowed hosts of women. Naked, save for tresses black as midnight, silvery as the moon, golden as the wheat and poppy red, they stepped from the shimmering pyxes that had borne them upward.

      They lifted white arms and brown arms, arms shell pink and arms pale amber, beckoning to the rushing, sea-born men-at-arms. Their eyes gleamed like little lakes of jewels—sapphires blue, black and pale sapphires, velvet jet, sun stone yellow, witched amber; eyes gray as sword blades beneath winter moons.

      Round hipped and slender hipped, high breasted and virginal, they swayed upon their wave crests, beckoning, calling to Nergal's warriors.

      At their calling—dove-sweet, gull-plaintive, hawk-eager, sweet and poignant—the scaled hosts wavered; halted. The bows that had been drawn dropped; swords splashed; javelins twirled through the deeps. Within their dead eyes a flame sprang.

      The warriors shouted. They leaped forward... to the women...

      Wave crests on which mailed men raced met crests on which the wondrous women poised. Into the mailed arms the women were swept. For a breath, tresses brown and black, silver as the moon and golden as the wheat, swirled round mail ebon and scarlet.

      Then warriors and women melted into the form behind the racing ship; became one with the jeweled and sparkling wake of it; a wake that rolled and sighed as though it were the soul of amorous seas.

      "Ishtar! Mother Beloved!" prayed the Lady Sharane. "To Ishtar— homage!"

      "To Ishtar—homage!" echoed Kenton, and bent his knee. Rising, he caught her to him.

      "Sharane!" he breathed. Her soft arms wreathed his neck. "My lord— I pray you forgiveness," she sighed. "I pray you forgiveness! Yet how could I have known—when first you lay upon the deck and seemed afraid and fled? I loved you! Yet how could I have known how mighty a lord you are?"

      Her fragrance shook him; the softness of her against his breath closed his throat.

      "Sharane!" he murmured. "Sharane!"

      His lips sought hers and clung; mad wine of life raced through his veins; in the sweet fire of her mouth memory of all save this moment was burned away.

      "I—give myself—to you!" she sighed.

      He remembered...

      "You give nothing, Sharane," he answered her. "I—take!" He lifted her in his arms; he strode through the rosy cabin's door; shut it with thrust of foot and hurled down its bar.

      Sigurd, Trygg's son, came and sat at the threshold of the rosy cabin. He polished the black priest's sword, chanting low some ancient bridal lay.

      Upon the black deck Gigi and Zubran moved, casting the bodies of the slain into the sea; ending the pain of those not yet dead; casting them then after the others.

      One dove and then another fluttered down from the balcony of the little blossoming trees. The Viking watched them, still chanting. Quick after the first dropped others, twain upon twain. They cooed and bent inquisitive heads; they billed and murmured. They formed a half ring before the cabin's closed door.

      The white breasted doves—red beaked, vermilion footed; the murmuring, the wooing, the caressing doves—they set their snowy seal upon the way to Kenton and Sharane.

      The doves of Ishtar wedded them!

      Part III

      XIV

      THE BLACK PRIEST STRIKES

      "Dear lord of mine—Kenton" whispered Sharane. "I think that even you do not know how greatly I love you!" They sat within the rosy cabin, her head upon his breast. It was a new Kenton who looked down upon the lovely face upturned to his. All that had been modern had fallen from him. He had gained in height, and brown as his face was the broad chest bared by open tunic. His blue eyes were clear and fearless, filled with a laughing recklessness; touched, too, with half-fierce ruthlessness. Above the elbow of his left arm was a wide bracelet of thin gold, graven with symbols Sharane had cut there. Upon his feet were sandals that Sharane had embellished with woven Babylonian charms—to keep his feet upon a path of love that led to her and her alone.

      How long had it been since that battle with the black priest, he wondered, as he drew her closer to him. Eternities it seemed—and but yesterday! How long?

      He could not know—in that timeless world where eternities and yesterdays were as one.

      And whether yester-moment or eternities ago, he had ceased to care!

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