Aldarin slowly arose to his feet. All emotion had vanished from his face. Stern, calm, and fearless, he gazed around. He looked over the vast expanse of the cavern roof, he marked the dread face of the DEMON FORM towering far above, he gazed upon the hurrying forms and agitated faces of the men-at-arms.
“Lead me, lead me to my death—” spoke the fierce tones of Aldarin the scholar. “I scorn and defy ye all.”
Albertine, the monk, still clad in the dark robe and majestic attire of Ibrahim Ben Malakim, strode suddenly to the side of the scholar, and thrust a parchment roll in his hands.
“Man, I betrayed thee,” he whispered, in tones that attested his agony; “Man, I betrayed thee, though my heart smote me in the act. Yet I will not scorn thee in this thy final hour. The parchment, the parchment—grasp it with a grasp like death; the phial, the phial!”
He turned, and continued in a loud voice, audible to the avengers: “Sinner, receive this book of prayer; it may comfort thy final hour.”
Aldarin took the parchment, and calmly folded it to his bosom.
“I scorn ye all,” he shrieked. “I defy your vengeance, I dare the doom ye would inflict. Aldarin fears not death.”
“To the gibbet with the murderer,” shouted Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword. “Aye, upon the same gibbet where blacken the forms of the brave soldiers of Lord Julian, there let the miscreant expiate his crimes.”
And the men-at-arms echoed the shout, until the vast cavern roof resounded with the words of doom: “To the gibbet—to the gibbet with the fratricide.”
In a moment the cavern was left to silence and eternal night.