“PAT MACPHERSON”
Said Watson: “Who gave you this? Did you see the man?”
“It was sent up my lord. The man was a high Bar in the Senestro's guard.”
Watson could not understand this. Was it possible that there were others in this mysterious region besides himself? At any rate, he wasn't wholly alone. He felt that he could count upon the Irishman—or was this fellow Scotch? Anyhow, such a man would find the quick means of wit at a crucial moment.
Suddenly Watson noted a queer feeling of emptiness. He looked out of the window. The music had ceased, and the incessant hum of the throngs had deadened to silence. It was suspended, awesome, threatening. At the same time, the Jan Lucar came to attention, at the opposite door stood the Rhamda Geos, black clad, surrounded by a group of his fellows.
“Come, my lord,” he said.
The crimson guard fell in behind Watson, the black-gowned took their places ahead, and the Jan Lucar and the Geos walked on either side. They stepped out into the corridor. By the indicator of a vertical clock, Chick noted that it was nine. He did not know the day of the year other than from the Thomahlian calendar; but he knew that it was close to sunset. He did not ask where they were going; there was no need. The very solemnity of his companions told him more than their answers would have. In a moment they were in the streets.
Watson had thought that they would be taken by aircraft, or that they would pass through the building. He did not know that it was a concession to the Bar Senestro; that the Senestro was but playing a bit of psychology that is often practised by lesser champions. If Watson's nerve was not broken it was simply because of the iron indifference of confident health. Chick had never been defeated. He had no fear. He was far more curious as to the scenes and events about him than he was of the outcome. He was hoping for some incident that would link itself up into explanation.
At the door a curious car of graceful lines was waiting, an odd affair that might be classed as a cross between a bird and a gondola, streaming with colours and of magnificent workmanship and design. On the deck of this the three men took their places; on the one side the Rhamda Geos, tall, sombre, immaculate; on the other, the magnificent Jan Lucar in the gorgeous crimson uniform, gold-braided and studded with jewels; on his head he wore the shako of purple down, and by his side a peculiar black weapon which he wore much in the manner of a sword.
In the centre, Watson—bareheaded, his torso bare and his arms naked. He had been given a pair of soft sandals, and a short suit, whose one redeeming feature in his eyes was a pocket into which he had thrust the automatic that he valued so much. It was more like a picture of Rome than anything else. Whatever the civilisation of the Thomahlians, their ritual in Watson's eyes smacked still of barbarism.
But he was intensely interested in all about him. The avenues were large. On either side the guards were drawn up eight deep, holding back the multitude that pressed and jostled with the insistence of curiosity. He looked into the myriad faces; about him, splendid features, of intelligent man and women.
Not one face suggested the hideous; the women were especially beautiful, and, from what he could see, finely formed and graceful. Many of them smiled; he could hear the curious buzz of conjecturing whispers. Some were indifferent, while others, from the expression of their faces, were openly hostile.
Chick was in the middle of a procession, the Rhamdas marching before and the crimson guard bringing up the rear. A special guard: the inner one, Rhamdas, the outer one of crimson surrounding them all.
The car started. There was no trace of friction; it was noiseless, automatic. Chick could only conjecture as to its mechanism. The black column of Rhamdas moved ahead rhythmically, with the swing of solemn grandeur. For some minutes they marched through the streets of the Mahovisal. There was no cheering; it was a holy, awesome occasion. Chick could sense the undercurrent of the staring thousands, the reverence and the piety. It was the Day of the Prophet. They were staring at a miracle.
The column turned a corner. For the first time Watson was staggered by sheer immensity; for the first time he felt what it might be to see with the eyes of an insect. Had he been an ant looking up at the columns of Karnak, he would still have been out of proportion. It was immense, colossal, beyond man. It was of the omnipotent—the pillared portal of the Temple of the Bell.
Such a building a genius might dream of, in a moment of unhampered, inspired imagination. It was stupendous. The pillars were hexagonal in shape, and in diameter each of about the size of an ordinary house. Dropping from an immense height, it seemed as if they had originally poured out in the form of molten metal from immense bell-like flares that fell from the vaulted architrave. Such was the design.
Chick got the impression that the top of the structure, somehow, was not supported by the foundation, but rather the reverse—the floor was suspended from the ceiling. It was the work of the Titans—so high and stupendous that at the first instant Watson felt numb with insignificance. What chance had he against men of such colossal conception.
How large the building was he could not see. The Gargantuan facade itself was enough to smother comprehension. It was laid out in the form of a triangle, one end of which was open towards the city; the two sections of the facade met under a huge, arched opening—the door itself. Watson recognised the structure as the one he had seen from the June Bug on the outskirts of the Mahovisal. The enormous plaza was packed with people, leaving only a narrow lane for the procession; and as far back as Chick could see crowds in the streets converged towards this vast space. Their numbers were incalculable.
The car stopped. The guards, both crimson and blue, formed a twenty-fold cordon. Watson could feel the suspended breath of the waiting multitude. The three men stepped out—the Geos first, then the Jan Lucar, and Watson last. Chick caught the Lucar's eye; it was confident; the man was springing with vigour, jovial in spite of the moment.
They passed between two of the huge pillars, and under the giant arch. For a few minutes they walked through what seemed, to Chick, a perfect maze of those titanic columns. And every foot was marked by the lines of crimson and blue, flanking either side.
An immense sea of people rose high into the forest of pillars as far as his eye could reach. He had never been in such a concourse of humanity.
They passed through an inner arch, a smaller and lower one, into what Chick guessed was the temple proper. And if Chick had thought the anteroom stupendous, he saw that a new word, one which went beyond all previous experience, was needed to describe what he now saw.
It was almost too immense to be grasped in its entirety. Gone was the maze of columns; instead, far, far away to the right and to the left, stood single rows of herculean pillars. There were but seven on a side, separated by great distances; and between them stretched a space so immense, so incredibly vast, that a small city could have been housed within it. And over it all was not the open sky, but a ceiling of such terrific grandeur that Chick almost halted the procession while he gazed.
For that ceiling was the under side of a cloud, a grey-black, forbidding thundercloud. And the fourteen pillars, seven on either side, were prodigious waterspouts, monster spirals of the hue of storm, with flaring sweeps at top and bottom that welded roof and floor into one terrific whole. Sheer from side to side stretched that portentous level cloud; it was a span of an epoch; and on either side it was rooted in those awful columns, seemingly alive, as though ready at any instant to suck up the earth into the infinite.
By downright will-power Watson tore his attention away and directed it upon the other features of that unprecedented interior. It was lighted, apparently, by great windows behind the fourteen pillars; windows too far to be distinguishable. And the light revealed, directly ahead something that Chick at first thought to be a cascade of black water. It leaped out of the rear wall of the temple, and at its crest it was bordered with walls of solid silver, cut across and designed with scrolls of gold and gem work; walls that swooped down and ended with two huge green columns at the base of that fantastic fall.
As they approached a swarm of tiny bronze objects, silver winged, fluttered out through the temple—tiny birds, smaller than swallows, beautiful and swift-winged, elusive. They were without number; in a moment the air of the temple was alive with flitting, darting spots of glinting colour.
Then Chick saw that there were two people sitting high on the crest of that cascade. Wondering, Chick and the rest marched on through the silent crowd; all standing with bared heads and bated breaths. The worshipping Thomahlians filled every inch of that enormous place. Only a narrow lane permitted the procession to pass towards that puzzling, silent, black waterfall.
They were almost at its base when Chick saw the vanguard of the Rhamdas unhesitatingly stride straight against the torrent, and then mount upon it. Up they marched; and Chick knew that the black water was black jade, and that the two people at its crest were seated upon a landing at the top of the grandest stairway he had ever seen.
Up went the Rhamdas deploying to right and left against the silver walls. The crimson and blue uniformed guards remained behind, lining the lane through the throng. At the foot of the steps Chick stopped and looked around, and again he felt numb at the sheer vastness of it all.
For he was looking back now at the portal through which the procession had marched; a portal now closed; and above it, covering a great expanse of that wall and extending up almost into the brooding cloud above, was spread a mighty replica of the tri-coloured Sign of the Jarados.
For the first time Chick felt the full significance of symbolism. Whereas before it had been but an incident of adventure, now it was the symbol of mystic revelation. It was not only the motif for all other decoration upon the walls and minor elements of the temple; it was the emblem of the trinity, deep, holy, significant of the mystery of the universe and the hereafter. There was something deeper than mere fatalism; behind all was the fact-rooted faith of a civilisation.
But at that moment, as Chick paused with one foot on the bottom step of the flight, something happened that sent quivers of joy and confidence all through him. Someone was talking—talking in English!
Chick looked. The speaker was a man in the blue garb of the Senestro's guard. He was standing at the end of the line nearest the stair, and slightly in front of his fellows. Like the rest, he was holding his weapon, a black, needled-pointed sword, at the salute. Chick gave him only a glance, then had the presence of mind to look elsewhere as a man said, in a low, guarded voice:
“Y' air right, me lad; don't look at me. I know what ye're thinkin'. But she ain't as bad as she looks! Keep yer heart clear; never fear. You an' me can lick all Thomahlia! Go straight up them stairs, an' stand that blackguard Senestro on his 'ead, just like y'd do in Frisco!”
“Who are you?” asked Watson, intent upon the great three-leafed clover. He used the same low, cautious tone the other had employed. “Who are you, friend?”
“Pat MacPherson, of course,” was the answer. “An' Oi've said a plenty. Now, go aboot your business.”
Watson did not quibble. There was no time to learn more. He did not wish it to be noticed; yet he could not hide it from the Jan Lucar and the Rhamda Geos, who were still at his side. They had heard that tongue before. The looks they exchanged told, however, that they were gratified rather than displeased by the interruption. Certainly all feelings of depression left Chick, and he ascended the stairs with a glad heart and a resilient stride that could not but be noticed.
He was ready for the Senestro.