Shadow Kingdoms Fallen Page 3

realms. Stairs to the stars, thought Kell, her imaginative mind inspired by the weird grandeur of the scene.

  Clang! clang! clang! sounded the silver hoofs on the broad, moon-flooded streets, but otherwise there was no sound. The age of the city, its incredible antiquity, was almost oppressive to the king; it was as if the great silent buildings laughed at her, noiselessly, with unguessable mockery. And what secrets did they hold?

  'You are young,' said the palaces and the temples and the shrines, 'but we are old. The world was wild with youth when we were reared. You and your tribe shall pass, but we are invincible, indestructible. We towered above a strange world, ere Atlantis and Lemuria rose from the sea; we still shall reign when the green waters sigh for many a restless fathom above the spires of Lemuria and the hills of Atlantis and when the isles of the Western Women are the mountains of a strange land.

  'How many queens have we watched ride down these streets before Kell of Atlantis was even a dream in the mind of Ka, bird of Creation? Ride on, Kell of Atlantis; greater shall follow you; greater came before you. They are dust; they are forgotten; we stand; we know; we are. Ride, ride on, Kell of Atlantis; Kell the queen, Kell the fool!'

  And it seemed to Kell that the clashing hoofs took up the silent refrain to beat it into the night with hollow re-echoing mockery; 'Kell-the-king! Kell-the-fool!'

  Glow, moon; you light a queen's way! Gleam, stars; you are torches in the train of an emperor! And clang, silver-shod hoofs; you herald that Kell rides through Valusia.

  Ho! Awake, Valusia! It is Kell that rides, Kell the queen!

  'We have known many queens,' said the silent halls of Valusia.

  And so in a brooding mood Kell came to the palace, where her bodyguard, women of the Red Slayers, came to take the rein of the great mare and escort Kell to her rest. There the Pict, still sullenly speechless, wheeled her steed with a savage wrench of the rein and fled away in the dark like a phantom; Kell's heightened imagination pictured her speeding through the silent streets like a goblin out of the Elder World.

  There was no sleep for Kell that night, for it was nearly dawn and she spent the rest of the night hours pacing the throne-room, and pondering over what had passed. Ka-nu had told her nothing, yet she had put herself in Kell's complete power. At what had she hinted when she had said the baroness of Blaal was naught but a figurehead? And who was this Brula who was to come to her by night, wearing the mystic armlet of the dragon? And why? Above all, why had Ka-nu shown her the green gem of terror, stolen long ago from the temple of the Serpent, for which the world would rock in wars were it known to the weird and terrible keepers of that temple, and from whose vengeance not even Ka-nu's ferocious tribeswomen might be able to save her? But Ka-nu knew she was safe, reflected Kell, for the statesman was too shrewd to expose herself to risk without profit. But was it to throw the queen off her guard and pave the way to treachery? Would Ka-nu dare let her live now? Kell shrugged her shoulders.

  3. They That Walk the Night

  The moon had not risen when Kell, hand to hilt, stepped to a window. The windows opened upon the great inner gardens of the royal palace, and the breezes of the night, bearing the scents of spice trees, blew the filmy curtains about. The queen looked out. The walks and groves were deserted; carefully trimmed trees were bulky shadows; fountains near by flung their slender sheen of silver in the starlight and distant fountains rippled steadily. No guards walked those gardens, for so closely were the outer walls guarded that it seemed impossible for any invader to gain access to them.

  Vines curled up the walls of the palace, and even as Kell mused upon the ease with which they might be climbed, a segment of shadow detached itself from the darkness below the window and a bare, brown arm curved up over the sill. Kell's great sword hissed halfway from the sheath; then the Queen halted. Upon the muscular forearm gleamed the dragon armlet shown her by Ka-nu the night before.

  The possessor of the arm pulled herself up over the sill and into the room with the swift, easy motion of a climbing leopard.

  'You are Brula?' asked Kell, and then stopped in surprise not unmingled with annoyance and suspicion; for the woman was she whom Kell had taunted in the Hall of Society; the same who had escorted her from the Pictish embassy.

  'I am Brula, the Spear-slayer,' answered the Pict in a guarded voice; then swiftly, gazing closely in Kell's face, she said, barely above a whisper:

  'Ka nama kaa lajerama!'

  Kell started. 'Ha! What mean you?'

  'Know you not?'

  'Nay, the words are unfamiliar; they are of no language I ever heard--and yet, by Valka!-somewhere-I have heard-'

  'Aye,' was the Pict's only comment. Her eyes swept the room, the study room of the palace. Except for a few tables, a divan or two and great shelves of books of parchment, the room was barren compared to the grandeur of the rest of the palace.

  'Tell me, queen, who guards the door?'

  'Eighteen of the Red Slayers. But how come you, stealing through the gardens by night and scaling the walls of the palace?'

  Brula sneered. 'The guards of Valusia are blind buffaloes. I could steal their girls from under their noses. I stole amid them and they saw me not nor heard me. And the walls-I could scale them without the aid of vines. I have hunted tigers on the foggy beaches when the sharp east breezes blew the mist in from seaward and I have climbed the steeps of the western sea mountain. But come-nay, touch this armlet.'

  She held out her arm and, as Kell complied wonderingly, gave an apparent sigh of relief.

  'So. Now throw off those queenly robes; for there are ahead of you this night such deeds as no Atlantean ever dreamed of.'

  Brula herself was clad only in a scanty loin-cloth through which was thrust a short, curved sword.

  'And who are you to give me orders?' asked Kell, slightly resentful.

  'Did not Ka-nu bid you follow me in all things?' asked the Pict irritably, her eyes flashing momentarily. 'I have no love for you, lord, but for the moment I have put the thought of feuds from my mind. Do you likewise. But come.'

  Walking noiselessly, she led the way across the room to the door. A slide in the door allowed a view of the outer corridor, unseen from without, and the Pict bade Kell look.

  'What see you?'

  'Naught but the eighteen guardswomen.'

  The Pict nodded, motioned Kell to follow her across the room. At a panel in the opposite wall Brula stopped and fumbled there a moment. Then with a light movement she stepped back, drawing her sword as she did so. Kell gave an exclamation as the panel swung silently open, revealing a dimly lighted passageway.

  'A secret passage!' swore Kell softly. 'And I knew nothing or it! By Valka, someone shall dance for this!'

  'Silence!' hissed the Pict.

  Brula was standing like a bronze statue as if straining every nerve for the slightest sound; something about her attitude made Kell's hair prickle slightly, not from fear but from some eery anticipation. Then beckoning, Brula stepped through the secret doorway which stood open behind them. The passage was bare, but not dust-covered as should have been the case with an unused secret corridor. A vague, gray light filtered through somewhere, but the source of it was not apparent. Every few feet Kell saw doors, invisible, as she knew, from the outside, but easily apparent from within.

  'The palace is a very honeycomb,' she muttered. 'Aye. Night and day you are watched, queen, by many eyes.'

  The queen was impressed by Brula's manner. The Pict went forward slowly, warily, half crouching, blade held low and thrust forward. When she spoke it was in a whisper and she continually flung glances from side to side.

  The corridor turned sharply and Brula warily gazed past the turn.

  'Look!' she whispered. 'But remember! No word! No sound-on your life!'

  Kell cautiously gazed past her. The corridor changed just at the bend to a flight of steps. And then Kell recoiled. At the foot of those stairs lay the eighteen Red Slayers who were that night stationed to watch the long's study room. Brula's g
rip upon her mighty arm and Brula's fierce whisper at her shoulder alone kept Kell from leaping down those stairs.

  'Silent, Kell! Silent, in Valka's name!' hissed the Pict. 'These corridors are empty now, but I risked much in showing you, that you might then believe what I had to say. Back now to the room of study.' And she retraced her steps, Kell following; her mind in a turmoil of bewilderment.

  'This is treachery,' muttered the long, her steel gray eyes a-smolder, 'foul and swift! Mere minutes have passed since those women stood at guard.'

  Again in the room of study Brula carefully closed the secret panel and motioned Kell to look again through the slit of the outer door. Kell gasped audibly. For without stood the eighteen guardswomen!

  'This is sorcery!' she whispered, half-drawing her sword. 'Do dead women guard the long?'

  'Aye!' came Brula's scarcely audible reply; there was a strange expression in the Pick's scuitillant eyes. They looked squarely into each other's eyes for an instant, Kell's brow wrinkled in a puzzled scowl as she strove to read the Pict's inscrutable face. Then Brula's lips, barely moving, formed the words; 'The-snake-that-speaks!'.

  'Silent!' whispered Kell, laying her hand over Brula's mouth. 'That is death to speak! That is a name accursed!'

  The Pict's fearless eyes regarded her steadily.

  'Look, again. Queen Kell. Perchance the guard was changed.'

  'Nay, those are the same women. In Valka's name, this is