"And perhaps," she said, "perhaps I want you because I hate you; perhaps because I love you--or perhaps for Lugur or perhaps for the Shining One."
"And if I go with you?" He said it quietly.
"Then shall I spare the handmaiden--and--who knows?--take back my armies that even now gather at the portal and let the Silent Ones rot in peace in their abode--from which they had no power to keep me," she added venomously.
"You will swear that, Yolara; swear to go without harming the handmaiden?" he asked eagerly. The little devils danced in her eyes. I wrenched my face from the smothering contact.
"Don"t trust her, Larry!" I cried--and again the grip choked me.
"Is that devil in front of you or behind you, old man?" he asked quietly, eyes never leaving the priestess. "If he"s in front I"ll take a chance and wing him--and then you scoot and warn Lakla."
But I could not answer; nor, remembering Yolara"s threat, would I, had I been able.
"Decide quickly!" There was cold threat in her voice.
The curtains toward which O"Keefe had slowly, step by step, drawn close, opened. They framed the handmaiden! The face of Yolara changed to that gorgon mask that had transformed it once before at sight of the Golden Girl. In her blind rage she forgot to cast the occulting veil. Her hand darted like a snake out of the folds; poising itself with the little silver cone aimed at Lakla.
But before it was wholly poised, before the priestess could loose its force, the handmaiden was upon her. Swift as the lithe white wolf hound she leaped, and one slender hand gripped Yolara"s throat, the other the wrist that lifted the quivering death; white limbs wrapped about the hidden ones, I saw the golden head bend, the hand that held the _Keth_ swept up with a vicious jerk; saw Lakla"s teeth sink into the wrist--the blood spurt forth and heard the priestess shriek. The cone fell, bounded toward me; with all my strength I wrenched free the hand that held my pistol, thrust it against the pressing breast and fired.
The clasp upon me relaxed; a red rain stained me; at my feet a little pillar of blood jetted; a hand thrust itself from nothingness, clawed--and was still.
Now Yolara was down, Lakla meshed in her writhings and fighting like some wild mother whose babes are serpent menaced. Over the two of them, astride, stood the O"Keefe, a pike from one of the high tripods in his hand--thrusting, parrying, beating on every side as with a broadsword against poniard-clutching hands that thrust themselves out of vacancy striving to strike him; stepping here and there, always covering, protecting Lakla with his own body even as a caveman of old who does battle with his mate for their lives.
The sword-club struck--and on the floor lay the half body of a dwarf, writhing with vanishments and reappearings of legs and arms. Beside him was the shattered tripod from which Larry had wrenched his weapon.
I flung myself upon it, dashed it down to break loose one of the remaining supports, struck in midfall one of the unseen even as his dagger darted toward me! The seat splintered, leaving in my clutch a golden bar. I jumped to Larry"s side, guarding his back, whirling it like a staff; felt it crunch once--twice--through unseen bone and muscle.
At the door was a booming. Into the chamber rushed a dozen of the frog-men. While some guarded the entrances, others leaped straight to us, and forming a circle about us began to strike with talons and spurs at unseen things that screamed and sought to escape. Now here and there about the blue rugs great stains of blood appeared; heads of dwarfs, torn arms and gashed bodies, half occulted, half revealed. And at last the priestess lay silent, vanquished, white body gleaming with that uncanny--fragmentariness--from her torn robes. Then O"Keefe reached down, drew Lakla from her. Shakily, Yolara rose to her feet.
The handmaiden, face still blazing with wrath, stepped before her; with difficulty she steadied her voice.
"Yolara," she said, "you have defied the Silent Ones, you have desecrated their abode, you came to slay these men who are the guests of the Silent Ones and me, who am their handmaiden--why did you do these things?"
"I came for him!" gasped the priestess; she pointed to O"Keefe.
"Why?" asked Lakla.
"Because he is pledged to me," replied Yolara, all the devils that were hers in her face. "Because he wooed me! Because he is mine!"
"That is a lie!" The handmaiden"s voice shook with rage. "It is a lie!
But here and now he shall choose, Yolara. And if you he choose, you and he shall go forth from here unmolested--for Yolara, it is his happiness that I most desire, and if you are that happiness--you shall go together. And now, Larry, choose!"
Swiftly she stepped beside the priestess; swiftly wrenched the last shreds of the hiding robes from her.
There they stood--Yolara with but the filmiest net of gauze about her wonderful body; gleaming flesh shining through it; serpent woman---and wonderful, too, beyond the dreams even of Phidias--and h.e.l.l-fire glowing from the purple eyes.
And Lakla, like a girl of the Vikings, like one of those warrior maids who stood and fought for dun and babes at the side of those old heroes of Larry"s own green isle; translucent ivory lambent through the rents of her torn draperies, and in the wide, golden eyes flaming wrath, indeed--not the diabolic flames of the priestess but the righteous wrath of some soul that looking out of paradise sees vile wrong in the doing.
"Lakla," the O"Keefe"s voice was subdued, hurt, "there _is_ no choice.
I love you and only you--and have from the moment I saw you. It"s not easy--this. G.o.d, Goodwin, I feel like an utter cad," he flashed at me.
"There is no choice, Lakla," he ended, eyes steady upon hers.
The priestess"s face grew deadlier still.
"What will you do with me?" she asked.
"Keep you," I said, "as hostage."
O"Keefe was silent; the Golden Girl shook her head.
"Well would I like to," her face grew dreaming; "but the Silent Ones say--_no_; they bid me let you go, Yolara--"
"The Silent Ones," the priestess laughed. "_You_, Lakla! You fear, perhaps, to let me tarry here too close!"
Storm gathered again in the handmaiden"s eyes; she forced it back.
"No," she answered, "the Silent Ones so command--and for their own purposes. Yet do I think, Yolara, that you will have little time to feed your wickedness--tell that to Lugur--and to your Shining One!"
she added slowly.
Mockery and disbelief rode high in the priestess"s pose. "Am I to return alone--like this?" she asked.
"Nay, Yolara, nay; you shall be accompanied," said Lakla; "and by those who will guard--and _watch_--you well. They are here even now."
The hangings parted, and into the chamber came Olaf and Rador.
The priestess met the fierce hatred and contempt in the eyes of the Norseman--and for the first time lost her bravado.
"Let not _him_ go with me," she gasped--her eyes searched the floor frantically.
"He goes with you," said Lakla, and threw about Yolara a swathing that covered the exquisite, alluring body. "And you shall pa.s.s through the Portal, not skulk along the path of the worm!"
She bent to Rador, whispered to him; he nodded; she had told him, I supposed, the secret of its opening.
"Come," he said, and with the ice-eyed giant behind her, Yolara, head bent, pa.s.sed out of those hangings through which, but a little before, unseen, triumph in her grasp, she had slipped.
Then Lakla came to the unhappy O"Keefe, rested her hands on his shoulders, looked deep into his eyes.
"_Did_ you woo her, even as she said?" she asked.
The Irishman flushed miserably.
"I did not," he said. "I was pleasant to her, of course, because I thought it would bring me quicker to you, darlin"."
She looked at him doubtfully; then--
"I think you must have been _very_--pleasant!" was all she said--and leaning, kissed him forgivingly straight on the lips. An extremely direct maiden was Lakla, with a truly sovereign contempt for anything she might consider non-essentials; and at this moment I decided she was wiser even than I had thought her.
He stumbled, feet vanishing; reached down and picked up something that in the grasping turned his hand to air.
"One of the invisible cloaks," he said to me. "There must be quite a lot of them about--I guess Yolara brought her full staff of murderers.
They"re a bit shopworn, probably--but we"re considerably better off with "em in our hands than in hers. And they may come in handy--who knows?"