THE FIERY PORTAL
Awaking after many hours, Polaris found Kalin standing by his couch.
"Stranger, thou sleepest well. Like an untroubled babe's are thy slumbers," said the priest. "And yet, if I read thee aright, thou art in all ways a strong man. The woman is outdone and sleepeth well. There is that which I would have thee see."
He led him to the edge of the terrace. A little procession of Sardanians was toiling up the path by which they had come. Among them walked a man who was the center of the group, to whom the others, one by one, spoke affectionately, but who answered little. As they came nearer, Polaris saw that he was in the prime of his life and of noble figure; but his limbs were wasted and his face was drawn with lines of suffering.
At the brink of the terrace the group halted. One by one his companions bade the man farewell, lifting their hands in the Sardanian salute. One young woman threw herself, weeping, into his arms, and he kissed her tenderly.
Then the other members of the party took their way down the mountainside again, leading with them the weeping girl. The man came on alone. On the terrace he was received by two of the black-robed attendants of Kalin.
The priest drew Polaris to one side, and they proceeded out of view of the man by a roundabout way to the great stone arch.
"Hither cometh one sore afflicted with illness who would pass the gateway, and thou shalt see him pass," said the priest.
They entered through the arch into the vast cavern beyond, and soon were in darkness, to which, however, the eyes of Kalin seemed to be well accustomed. He led Polaris swiftly through many galleries in the bowels of the mountainside, ever upward, until they reached a broad way, dimly lighted from above, which took a spiral course through the rock. Up the spiral way they passed, and it gave after three or four turns upon a wide, rocky floor, which curved away to either side of where they emerged.
Above them many feet towered the rocky ring of the volcano, of which they were in the crater. Its walls were beetling, scarred with ancient fires, seamed and ragged. Crag upon crag, ledge upon ledge, rose the wall; to where its circle cut a round expanse of blue sky.
All around them the massive rock reverberated to the muffled roar of a great fire far below. Where the shelving rock floor gave into space, clouds of luminous vapors rose from out the mighty pit of the crater. Where the sun's rays beat down through it, far above them, the billowing mass was golden. Directly ahead of them it seethed in a shifting play of colors, now lurid red, now green and yellow and blue, in the reflection cast up from the flickering flames below.
At times the vapor clouds were wafted aside by air currents, and Polaris could see the wall of the crater opposite, some two hundred feet across the pit.
To the left the shelf of rock narrowed to a mere thread of a pathway, overhung by the bulge of the crag wall. At the right a number of low buildings of rock had been constructed along the face of the cliff.
Kalin led Polaris to where the rock overhung the path, and showed him a number of footholds in the wall, by which he might climb to another small ledge above, and from which he could command a view of the platform, and also look down directly into the fearsome pit of flames. The priest then withdrew to one of the buildings.
Polaris crouched at the brink of the little shelf and gazed down through the many-hued vapor clouds which were wafted by him continuously. Occasionally, when they were swept aside by drafts of air, he could see the very bottom of the crater over which he clung. It was a sight to awe the heart of the bravest.
Hundreds of feet from where he crouched seethed and boiled and eddied a terrible caldron of chromatic heat. It was evident that the volcano was slowly dying, a death that might continue for centuries.
Nearer to the base of the crater its circumference was greater. At its bottom, in the course of ages, the substance of the fires had cooled, forming a crust against the calcined rock walls. As the fires themselves had sunk lower they had added to the deposit of crust, leaving it in the shape of a huge funnel.
In the funnel itself stewed and sweltered a lake of fire. It was nearly an acre in extent, bounded by the glowing circumference of the funnel. Its molten substance boiled and eddied in a fury of heat. Immense volumes of gas were continually belched up through it with startling detonations, spouting many feet in the air, to flame a brief instant, while the blazing masses they threw up with them fell splashing back into the fearful reek. For yards above the surface of the caldron the crust glowed a dull red. Even where the man sat the heat was withering.
Voices on the rock shelf to his right drew the attention of Polaris from the broiling inferno, into which he had gazed fascinated.
From the spiral path up which he had lately climbed stepped one of the black-garbed priests, bearing a flickering torch. Behind him, walking with firm step and quiet gestures, was the Sardanian Polaris had seen crossing the terrace. On either side of him marched two other priests, and a fourth brought up the rear of the little procession. All four of the priests wore veils, through which their eyes glittered somberly.
They halted a few feet from the brink of the fiery precipice. By the light of the priest's torch Polaris saw that the rock floor had been cut away into a runway, or chute, at a sharp angle from the floor level, notching the edge of the declivity and ending sharply in the empty air of the great pit. The sides of the trough glittered like polished glass in the light rays.
One of the priests disappeared into the nearest of the stone buildings and came out bearing a disk of dark wood. It was concaved and not much larger than a warrior's shield, which indeed it much resembled, for within it were two loops of rope or thong, which might have served for armholds. The priest set it down near the upper end of the channel in the rock.
More torches hung in cressets along the wall were lighted, their flames reflecting from thousands of little veins and flecks of metal in the rock, and heightening the eery effect of the strange scene.
When these preparations were completed, Kalin stepped forth on the ledge. He was garbed in a flowing robe of flame-red, his head hidden in a veiled hood, of which the section that covered his face was white.
He stepped in front of the waiting man and raised his hand in a solemn salute.
"Chloran, son of Sardon; thou hast come to the Gate?" he asked.
"Aye, priest," answered Chloran.
"Thy house is in order, thy farewells made, thy work done?"
"Aye, Chloran stands ready."
"Then thou comest content to the temple of the Lord Hephaistos?"
"Well content."
"Chloran, son of Sardon, we, the ministers of the Lord Hephaistos, are but the guardians of the Gate. We know not what lieth beyond it, but thou shalt soon learn. Be it of good or of evil for thee, thine own heart mayest answer, the depths of which no man may know. I, Kalin the Priest, bid thee farewell on thy journey to a greater knowledge than is Kalin's. To the Lord Hephaistos, whose servant I am, I commend thee."
He raised his hand again, and Chloran bowed his head. One of the attendant priests came up, bearing a metal vase.
"Quaff deeply of the wine of Hephaistos," said Kalin. The man clutched the vase and drank. Almost immediately his eyes glazed, and he stood like a man of stone. Two of the priests led him to the chute and seated him on the wooden shield, binding his thighs with the thongs.
"Welcome, Chloran, to the Gateway to the Future," cried Kalin. But Chloran heard him not. The powerful drug in the wine bound his senses. His head fell forward. At a sign from Kalin the two priests shoved the shield into the chute. Down the polished way it whirled, and shot out into the fiery rift.
Polaris clung at the brink of the little ledge and strained his eyes out into the terrible, fire-shot chasm to watch the fall. With its living burden the shield whirled down through the curling vapors, straight toward the molten caldron that tossed and roared in the funnel. In a breath it had fallen so far that it looked like a toy fluttering above the flames.
Then it was gone. So intense was the heat into which it fell that it seemed to dissolve into vapor before it ever touched the surface. A long, yellow tongue of flame shot up from the surface of the lake.
Polaris turned to the ledge. The priests had extinguished the torches and disappeared. Presently Kalin came forth from his chapel and called to him. With one more glance into the depths of the sinister pit, he descended from his perch in the rock and joined the priest.
They proceeded toward the chapel.
As Polaris passed the chute he stumbled. His feet shot from under him and down on his back he fell on the polished stone, and he, too, went whizzing head first down the way that Chloran, son of Sardon, had taken into the terrible fire-pit of Hephaistos!
Head first he shot down. As he slid by a mighty effort he turned over in the chute and thrust out his arms. The chute was about the width of a man's height. Polaris was exceptionally broad of shoulder, and his arms were long, so that his hands rubbed the sides of the chute.
Just as his head thrust over the brink of the awful chasm his hands found holds at either side of the chute. Whoever had cut the way in the rock in the long ago had left, almost at the very edge, a cleft in each side that was large enough for hand-grip. Very probably they were the holds by which the artisans steadied themselves while they hewed and polished the stone of the chute.
In those clefts the groping fingers of Polaris caught and held. The impetus of his body would have torn away the hold of a man less splendidly muscled than the son of the snows; but with a mighty wrench of his arms he stayed his progress and hung with head projected over the brink of the pit.
All in an instant it happened, and with no noise; for Polaris, fearful as was his plight, did not cry out, and neither did Kalin, who saw him fall. From out of the blackness that was behind him Polaris heard the priest gasp, and then for a moment all was silence but for the roaring of the fires far below.
Kalin crept to the brink of the precipice and peered over. Below him he saw the head of Polaris.
"Now," he muttered to himself, but not so low that Polaris could not hear him—"Now, I think it were well perhaps for Sardanes, and especially well for the Prince Helicon, did I let this stranger go on his way to Hephaistos. Nay, but he is a brave man, and I have come to like him strangely, and I cannot.
"Ho, thou, Polaris of the Snows, canst hold that grip of thine while I fetch rope?" he called aloud.
"Aye, Kalin the priest, I can hold for many minutes if so be thou art minded to aid me," answered Polaris grimly. "If thou art not, then I go hence through this strange gate of thine."
"Hold, then," said the priest, and hurried to the chapel, marveling at the hardihood of the man, who hung on the brink of death, and who cried not for aid or mercy.
Back he came in a moment with a stout rope and cast the loop of it over Polaris's head. Then he stepped back, braced his feet against the rocky floor, and, exerting a strength whereof his slender frame did not seem capable, he dragged Polaris from his perilous resting-place.
When he felt the firmness of the floor beneath his feet again Polaris drew a long breath. He turned to the priest and looked him closely in the eyes.
"Kalin, henceforth I may not doubt that in Sardanes I have found a friend. Thanks for thy deed I have not the words to express to thee. If ever thou are in evil case may I be as near to aid thee." He extended his hand and wrung that of the priest until Kalin winced.
Together the two went down the spiral way through the mountainside to the house of the priest.
"Thou hast taken note of all that occurred?" asked Kalin. Polaris nodded. "And has understood?" continued the priest.
"Not altogether. Who is the Lord Hephaistos? That name is known to me as that of the armorer god of the Greeks of old, but only one of their many gods. How is it that ye of Sardanes, who also speak the tongue of those Greeks, worship the dead god of a people long dead?"
"Stranger, thou speakest boldly to the hereditary priest of the religion of Sardanes," replied Kalin, and a quizzical smile played about his lips. "Thou spakest boldly also to the Prince of Sardanes, thou, who art but one alone in a strange land. I think that fear abides not in thee. But—" and he rested his hand on the shoulder of Polaris—"perhaps Kalin doth but love thee the better for thy temerity. And Kalin's self, although he be of Sardanes, yet seemeth at times to feel strangely alone. As for the religion, I will show to thee the annals of the Sardanians, with what of history, both of the people and the religion, they contain. Perchance, in thy world, shouldst thou indeed ever reach it—and it comes to me that thou wilt—these tales will find ready ears, and be to thy great credit."
From a stone seat in front of the house of the priest a figure arose and came forward to meet them, and Polaris and Kalin halted and gazed in wonder. Rose Emer it was—a new and amazing Rose. Ministered to by one of the women of the priest's household, she had slept and bathed, and then had arrayed herself in the full costume of a Sardanian lady of quality, which the woman had brought her.
Around her slender form, clinging to each gracious curve was draped a flowing kirtle of a delicate blue tint, belted in below her bosom with a broad girdle of soft, tan-colored leather. Its skirt swept the tops of a pair of gossamer hose of the same hue as the gown. Her feet were encased in neat little laced sandals of material similar to that of the girdle.
To complete the effect, her long chestnut hair was plaited and coiled about her head in the Sardanian fashion, and the whole was set off with a filmy blue veil, bound turban-wise, its tassels falling on her shoulder.
Kalin advanced and bowed, a courtly and sweeping genuflection.
"Thou dost Sardanes honor, lady, and all the valley is the brighter for thy beauty," he murmured.
Then Kalin fetched forth a packet of manuscripts, well written in Greek characters on parchments that were yellowed and crinkly with extreme age.
"Here be the records of a nation," he said, and set to work to sort them over.