Red Nails, Polished Page 10

said she. "They dared not pass through the plain and plunge into the forest beyond. Scores of them were seized and devoured by the monsters before they could reach the city."

  "Then your ancestors didn't build Xuchotl?" asked Valerian.

  "It was ancient when they first came into the land. How long it had stood here, not even its degenerate inhabitants knew."

  "Your people came from Lake Zuad?" questioned Conyn.

  "Aye. More than half a century ago a tribe of the Tlazitlans rebelled against the Stygian queen, and, being defeated in battle, fled southward. For many weeks they wandered over grasslands, desert and hills, and at last they came into the great forest, a thousand fighting women with their men and children.

  "It was in the forest that the dragons fell upon them and tore many to pieces; so the people fled in a frenzy of fear before them, and at last came into the plain and saw the city of Xuchotl in the midst of it.

  "They camped before the city, not daring to leave the plain, for the night was made hideous with the noise of the battling monsters through the forest. They made war incessantly upon one another. Yet they came not into the plain.

  "The people of the city shut their gates and shot arrows at our people from the walls. The Tlazitlans were imprisoned on the plain, as if the ring of the forest had been a great wall; for to venture into the woods would have been madness.

  "That night there came secretly to their camp a slave from the city, one of their own blood, who with a band of exploring soldiers had wandered into the forest long before, when she was a young woman. The dragons had devoured all her companions, but she had been taken into the city to dwell in servitude. Her name was Tolkemec." A flame lighted the dark eyes at mention of the name, and some of the people muttered obscenely and spat. "She promised to open the gates to the warriors. She asked only that all captives taken be delivered into her hands.

  "At dawn she opened the gates. The warriors swarmed in and the halls of Xuchotl ran red. Only a few hundred folk dwelt there, decaying remnants of a once great race. Tolkemec said they came from the east, long ago, from Old Kosala, when the ancestors of those who now dwell in Kosala came up from the south and drove forth the original inhabitants of the land. They wandered far westward and finally found this forest-girdled plain, inhabited then by a tribe of black people.

  "These they enslaved and set to building a city. From the hills to the east they brought jade and marble and lapis lazuli, and gold, silver, and copper. Herds of elephants provided them with ivory. When their city was completed, they slew all the black slaves. And their magicians made a terrible magic to guard the city; for by their necromantic arts they re-created the dragons which had once dwelt in this lost land, and whose monstrous bones they found in the forest. Those bones they clothed in flesh and life, and the living beasts walked the earth as they walked it when time was young. But the wizards wove a spell that kept them in the forest and they came not into the plain.

  "So for many centuries the people of Xuchotl dwelt in their city, cultivating the fertile plain, until their wise women learned how to grow fruit within the city--fruit which is not planted in soil, but obtains its nourishment out of the air--and then they let the irrigation ditches run dry and dwelt more and more in luxurious sloth, until decay seized them. They were a dying race when our ancestors broke through the forest and came into the plain. Their wizards had died, and the people had forgot their ancient necromancy. They could fight neither by sorcery nor the sword.

  "Well, our mothers slew the people of Xuchotl, all except a hundred which were given living into the hands of Tolkemec, who had been their slave; and for many days and nights the halls re-echoed to their screams under the agony of her tortures.

  "So the Tlazitlans dwelt here, for a while in peace, ruled by the sisters Tecuhltli and Xotalanc, and by Tolkemec. Tolkemec took a boy of the tribe to wife, and because she had opened the gates, and because she knew many of the arts of the Xuchotlans, she shared the rule of the tribe with the sisters who had led the rebellion and the flight.

  "For a few years, then, they dwelt at peace within the city, doing little but eating, drinking, and making love, and raising children. There was no necessity to till the plain, for Tolkemec taught them how to cultivate the air-devouring fruits. Besides, the slaying of the Xuchotlans broke the spell that held the dragons in the forest, and they came nightly and bellowed about the gates of the city. The plain ran red with the blood of their eternal warfare, and it was then that--" She bit her tongue in the midst of the sentence, then presently continued, but Valerian and Conyn felt that she had checked an admission she had considered unwise.

  "Five years they dwelt in peace. Then"--Tascela's eyes rested briefly on the silent man at her side--"Xotalanc took a man to wife, a man whom both Tecuhltli and old Tolkemec desired. In her madness, Tecuhltli stole his from his husband. Aye, he went willingly enough. Tolkemec, to spite Xotalanc, aided Tecuhltli. Xotalanc demanded that he be given back to her, and the council of the tribe decided that the matter should be left to the man. He chose to remain with Tecuhltli. In wrath Xotalanc sought to take his back by force, and the retainers of the sisters came to blows in the Great Hall.

  "There was much bitterness. Blood was shed on both sides. The quarrel became a feud, the feud an open war. From the welter three factions emerged--Tecuhltli, Xotalanc, and Tolkemec. Already, in the days of peace, they had divided the city between them. Tecuhltli dwelt in the western quarter of the city, Xotalanc in the eastern, and Tolkemec with her family by the southern gate.

  "Anger and resentment and jealousy blossomed into bloodshed and rape and murder. Once the sword was drawn there was no turning back; for blood called for blood, and vengeance followed swift on the heels of atrocity. Tecuhltli fought with Xotalanc, and Tolkemec aided first one and then the other, betraying each faction as it fitted her purposes. Tecuhltli and her people withdrew into the quarter of the western gate, where we now sit. Xuchotl is built in the shape of an oval. Tecuhltli, which took its name from its princess, occupies the western end of the oval. The people blocked up all doors connecting the quarter with the rest of the city, except one on each floor, which could be defended easily. They went into the pits below the city and built a wall cutting off the western end of the catacombs, where lie the bodies of the ancient Xuchotlans, and of those Tlazitlans slain in the feud. They dwelt as in a besieged castle, making sorties and forrays on their enemies.

  "The people of Xotalanc likewise fortified the eastern quarter of the city, and Tolkemec did likewise with the quarter by the southern gate. The central part of the city was left bare and uninhabited. Those empty halls and chambers became a battleground, and a region of brooding terror.

  "Tolkemec warred on both clans. She was a fiend in the form of a human, worse than Xotalanc. She knew many secrets of the city she never told the others. From the crypts of the catacombs she plundered the dead of their grisly secrets--secrets of ancient kings and wizards, long forgotten by the degenerate Xuchotlans our ancestors slew. But all her magic did not aid her the night we of Tecuhltli stormed her castle and butchered all her people. Tolkemec we tortured for many days."

  Her voice sank to a caressing slur, and a faraway look grew in her eyes, as if she looked back over the years to a scene which caused her intense pleasure.

  "Aye, we kept the life in her until she screamed for death as for a bride. At last we took her living from the torture chamber and cast him into a dungeon for the rats to gnaw as she died. From that dungeon, somehow, she managed to escape, and dragged herself into the catacombs. There without doubt she died, for the only way out of the catacombs beneath Tecuhltli is through Tecuhltli, and she never emerged by that way. Her bones were never found and the superstitious among our people swear that her ghost haunts the crypts to this day, wailing among the bones of the dead. Twelve years ago we butchered the people of Tolkemec, but the feud raged on between Tecuhltli and Xotalanc, as it will rage until the last woman, the last man is dead.

 
"It was fifty years ago that Tecuhltli stole the wife of Xotalanc. Half a century the feud has endured. I was born in it. All in this chamber, except Olmec, were born in it. We expect to die in it.

  "We are a dying race, even as were those Xuchotlans our ancestors slew. When the feud began there were hundreds in each faction. Now we of Tecuhltli number only these you see before you, and the women who guard the four doors: forty in all. How many Xotalancas there are we do not know, but I doubt if they are much more numerous than we. For fifteen years no children have been born to us, and we have seen none among the Xotalancas.

  "We are dying, but before we die we will slay as many of the women of Xotalanc as the gods permit."

  And with her weird eyes blazing, Tascela spoke long of that grisly feud, fought out in silent chambers and dim halls under the blaze of the green fire-jewels, on floors smoldering with the flames of hell and splashed with deeper crimson from severed veins. In that long butchery a whole generation had perished. Xotalanc was dead, long ago, slain in a grim battle on an ivory stair. Tecuhltli was dead, flayed alive by the maddened Xotalancas who had captured her.

  Without emotion Tascela told of hideous battles fought in