Daughter of the Night Part 4

"Of all contemptible females, you two are the most...."

So saying, and mouthing his disgust with a tongue that frothed with rage, Druga seized the reanimated man with one hand by the shoulder and flung him half across the room, whirling up the axe to send it through him from curly head to gold-bossed sword belt.

Eos cried out in feigned fear and anguish, for she had expected this development, and it was but one phase of the weapon-array she planned to overcome the powers of Diana. For she knew Druga, and that he would be able to act in no other way if he observed what was going on.

But the body of the man was equipped with a sword of antique but st.u.r.dy length, and Diana had time to sweep this formidable weapon from its scabbard and turn aside the down plummeting axe, so that it struck a great shower of sparks from the strange golden metal of the floor.

Druga, his rage unabated, only swung the axe aloft again, parrying Diana's thrust with the haft of it, and then as she ducked his next blow, the great side of the weapon struck her alongside the head; stretching her senseless upon the floor.

Eos, on her feet, had not expected Druga so quickly to knock the G.o.ddess unconscious, and indeed the purple mist of her hyper-s.p.a.ce body was already rising from the unconscious form on the floor as Eos threw herself to the wall where a switch hung open, and with her face a glory of triumph, thrust the great handle upward into place.

As the switch closed, a tiny black vortice spun suddenly into being in the center of the room, and within the black swirl was a tiny golden center. Swiftly the black vortice grew until Eos and Druga were pressed against the wall to avoid the clutch of the power of the whirlpool. The purple mist that was Diana was swept along as a whirlpool draws a straw, faster and faster, and a great scream came out of the blackness. Within, the center of the golden core seemed to give a triumphant laugh as the purple mingled there.

For a time Eos and Druga watched the swirling gold and purple sentience mingling and struggling at the center, and as the golden core shone stronger and stronger and at last overcame the purple swirling ent.i.ty that was Diana, Eos pulled the switch again open, and the black vortice of s.p.a.ce-force lessened and finally disappeared.

That intense whirlpool of black energy had taken Diana back with it into the terrible current of s.p.a.ce. Diana would live--but only as a mote of defeated consciousness whirled along forever into the depths of s.p.a.ce by forces too great to fight.

The man on the floor raised his head, sat up, rubbed the great lump left there by the flat of Druga's axe--and his eyes met the flaming attraction of Eos' eyes. With a bound he was at her side, gathering her up into his arms, crooning brokenly.

"How long I sat and watched your grief and envied the other men who came for their brief spell of life in Paradise before the black witchcraft of your enemy made them into stone. How long I pitied you, poor Eos! How many centuries have pa.s.sed, and now a miracle! I am alive, and have you once again! No other ever shall take you from me...."

Druga picked up the axe that lay disregarded on the floor.

"That may be what you wish, stranger, and though you are no enemy, if it is Eos you desire, you shall have her only over my dead body! Arm yourself, and prepare to die!"

The stranger eyed Druga scornfully. With a sudden gliding motion, he had pa.s.sed from Eos' arms and seized the sword from the floor, was driving with it for Druga's throat. Druga got the axe in the way of the sword, but an axe, whatever antiquarians may say, was never the best tool against a smart swordsman; and this man knew his way with the weapon.

He drove Druga to the wall with swift darting movements of the blade, and Druga had no time to swing the unwieldy axe, but had to keep parrying the thrusts with the axe-haft, holding it between his hands like a quarterstaff. In moments his life blood would have been spilled on the floor had not Eos cried out:

"Hold, you brawling idiots, I am for neither of you! What do you think I have gone through all this for, to have you two whom I love kill each other? Now put up the weapons before I loose my own natural lightning and send you both into that doom you can only guess at!"

Druga peered at Eos, startled, and the reanimated statue pressed the blade to his throat, but Eos struck it up with her hand as he turned to peer at her too, and then Eos opened both her eyes quite wide upon them so that a weakness came upon them both, sending them to their knees in strange thralldom to the energies within her. So leaving them, Eos walked out of the chamber and to the great hall.

After a time, when their reeling senses returned, the two men followed the foot-steps that still sparkled where she had stepped, like flickering motes of golden dust outlining her prints upon the floor--followed the steps like men out of their wits, half staggering.

As they entered the hall, Eos was repeating the procedure so recently gone through by Diana, preparing a great cauldron of the fluid she had used to bring life again to the stone bodies. They leaned weakly against the wall, watching her as she poured the boiling, steaming liquid over one after another of the statues. The first figure so bathed was the body of Feronia.

She came out of the stony trance like a fury, blazing one indignant glance toward Eos, then turned the torrents of her wrath upon Druga.

"You philandering b.o.o.by! I made you what you are and you repay me by running off from me in my greatest need and taking up with this--this--"

"She released you from your stony prison, Feronia!" Druga said hastily, fearing she would anger Eos with whatever word she thought of to describe her rival--and Feronia was clever enough to avoid saying what she was about to say, but went on with her abuse of Druga.

"Never mind what or who she is, it is you that has shown yourself the ingrate, for she owed me nothing. You couldn't go to Mors, Daughter of the Night, and get this thing properly taken care of at once, knowing she was friendly to me, no! You had to wander off on your old grey horse, never thinking of Mors, and get yourself wrapped up with the first woman that you come to, and wind your affections all around the planet in pursuit of her. You couldn't even remember me for one little month! You--you--oh, Druga!"

With which outburst her voice broke, and weeping and saying his name over and over Feronia went into his arms and wept there on his breast for a long time. And after her tears were stopped Druga knew that Feronia would never mention the affair again.

Druga held the dear form of his loved one close and let her weep, stroking the raven black hair, within him the soft well of affection for her filling and filling with all the memories of her dear, mad, competent, unpredictable, tyrannical ways. Over the curling sweep of her dear hair he watched Eos reviving one by one the dead loves of her past, and thought to himself that at least with Feronia he did not have all those rivals to contend with. The slight line across his throat where Eos' magic had stopped the sword of one rival from letting out his life reminded him too that with Eos as she was now, there would be no day pa.s.s that some of these warriors would not try to get rid of some of the rest. Druga decided that after all, Feronia loved him alone, while with Eos there was no knowing what rivals he would have.

Now Eos got a great snake out of the forest, a female, cunningly marked with little emerald markings, and striped with many colors, most venomous and snake-charming in its appearance.

This snake she quickly separated from its head, and placed upon its cunning female body the head of Dionaea, doing all that was needful successfully to incorporate the two into one life.

Baena's tail, which caused him great pain at the separation, she healed by applying a salve, a.s.suring him that he would in time grow a new tail to take the place of the old, as is the way with snakes the world over.

When Dionaea awoke and found herself with a female snake's body, and Baena mooning over her like a lovesick coil of s.h.i.+p's hawser, she let out strings of oaths such as no s.h.i.+p's hawser had heard since the beginning of time. All of which seemed strikingly snake-charming to Baena, who only kissed Dionaea lovingly with his pointed tongue and a.s.sured her she would get used to him or he would devour her and seek a new mate elsewhere. With which a.s.surance Dionaea ceased to curse and began to fawn upon Baena, saying:

"Why, how can you think it is your n.o.ble self I object to, Baena? It is just that I did not expect this development! I have grown so used to you that there is really very little difference, after all."

So conversing, the now lowly Dionaea and the now lordly Baena glided from the chamber and made their way down the ruby ladder of strange crystal, and out into the world. For it is only so that a male can leave the pole of the universal life force of the female principle, in the company of a female good enough to keep his mind from obeying the influence of the magnetic field.

Feronia, watching the scene, decided it was time for bed, and mentally taking Druga by the ear, led him out and down the ruby ladder and across the rainbow bridge of fragile gla.s.s into her own halls.

"Eos will handle her difficulties much the better without our presence, Druga. Besides we must get to bed, for in the morning there will be much work to attend to...."

"What you have in mind?"

"Well, first we have to practice the magical performance we have just watched Eos go through, so that if we ever need it we too can release a figure from that stony curse of petrifaction. It is a most uncomfortable state. Then we have to return to Eos' disk palace and from her get certain information, such as the whirlpool she used to suck up the strength of Diana and cast it out into a current of force flowing through hyper-s.p.a.ce--for we might need it sometime in the future."

"Which I devoutly pray you will not manage," murmured Druga, yawning. "I am too tired to even think about such a thing tonight."

With which words Druga stretched himself across the bed and straightway began to snore, and Feronia, who had expected a warmer welcome home than _that_, looked at him exasperated beyond measure. But then she insinuated her own witch's perceptions into his mind, looked over the somewhat shriveled memories of her that remained to him, and resolved to recreate his love entire before she strained it again with her impatience.

Outside, the great glowing magnetic field of female attraction pulsed and glowed and reached its strange streamers across the sky. The disk with its ancient, quaint, pillared and beautiful mansion, trembled in the current of the energy flow of the pole of life. In Feronia's hall a dark, small witch bent to her knees and prayed a prayer, with tears streaking her too-determined face, that this great sleeping man of hers would return his heart where it belonged.

CHAPTER IV

Now a witch's prayer is pretty apt to find its way to the G.o.d to which it is directed, especially when it is a white witch with black hair doing the praying, and not a black witch with white hair, as is so often the case.

Mother Mors, watching the small black-and-white-striped prayer winging its way across the deeps of night, reached out her hand and gathered it in to her whirling bosom, full of the milk of eternal kindness and soft with the vibrant softness of darkness itself, and read it there with the inner eyes of her heart.

That prayer contained some startling and incomplete information, and the mention of the pa.s.sing of her enemy Diana whom she had tried to entrap herself for so long, brought Mors abruptly out of her sleep and sent her swiftly arrowing down upon the little valley where the golden pole now lit the whole sky.

The mystery and awesome power and majestic primal vitality of her silhouetted against and merged with the golden glory of the primal pole as the vast body of Mors merged and condensed and settled and came into human form there within the great banquet hall of Eos' palace on the disk.

Now as the body of the great G.o.ddess of the night came into solidity before Eos, her laughter rang out, rich and ringing and with low, dark under-tones. Eos looked up from the great stack of ancient alchemic formulae where she sought the solution to the incredible quandary of too many lovers. For too-much-of-a-good-thing she could not find any reference in the books, for they were all designed to give only information on how to get rid of too-much-of-a-bad-thing.

Rosy to the tips of her fingers with embarra.s.sment, Eos rose to her feet, her glory dimmed by the majesty of Mors' dark beauty, her height dwarfed by the tall, mysterious strength of Mors' indestructible figure, a figure such as must have caused the ancient artists deepest despair to depict in the least of its intense and vital and overwhelmingly sublime symmetry.