“And see that you speak to no one on the way,” repeated Nam.
“I hear you, father,” replied the priest, and went.
Some ten minutes passed and the door opened again. “The captains are here,” whispered a voice.
“Let them enter,” said Nam.
The order was obeyed, and three great men armed with spears stalked into the narrow chamber. One of them was brother to the king, and the two others were his chosen friends. Then the door closed.
“My brethren,” said Olfan, “I have sent for you to acquaint you with a mystery and to ask you to witness a rite. The goddess Aca, who this day was hurled into the pool of the Snake, has returned to earth as a woman, and is about to become my wife,”—here the captains started—“nay, brethren, ask no questions; these things are so, it is enough. Now, priest, play your part.”
After that, for a while all seemed a dream to Juanna, a dream of which she was never able to recover any exact memory. She could recollect standing side by side with Olfan, while Nam muttered prayers and invocations over them, administering to them terrible oaths, which they took, calling upon the names of Aca and of Jâl, and swearing by the symbol of the Snake. Beyond that everything went blank. Indeed, her mind flew back to another marriage ceremony, when she stood beside Leonard in the slave camp, and the priest, Francisco, prayed over them and blessed them. It was that scene which she saw, and not the one enacting before her eyes, and with its visions were mixed up strange impersonal reflections on the irony of fate, which had brought it about that she should figure as the chief actor in two such dramas, the first of which Leonard had gone through to save her, and the second of which she must go through to save him.
At last it was done, and once more Olfan was bowing before her and kissing her hand.
“Greeting, Shepherdess. Hail! Queen of the People of the Mist,” he said, and the captains repeated his words.
Juanna awoke from her stupor. What was to be done now? she wondered. What could be done? Everything seemed lost. Then of a sudden an inspiration took her.