Chapter 2

The white man fought like a
mountain leopard. Two men he slew and fell with the last one into the
chasm, and so he perished, Star of Negari."

"Aye," the queen's tone was venomous, "the first white man who ever
came to Negari! One who might have--rise, fool!"

The man got to his feet.

"Mighty Lioness, might not this one have come seeking----"

The sentence was never completed. Even as he straightened, Nakari made
a swift gesture with her hand. Two warriors plunged from the silent
ranks and two spears crossed in the chief's body before he could turn.
A gurgling scream burst from his lips, blood spurted high in the air
and the corpse fell flatly at the foot of the great throne.

The ranks never wavered, but Kane caught the sidelong flash of
strangely red eyes and the involuntary wetting of thick lips. Nakari
had half risen as the spears flashed, and now she sank back, an
expression of cruel satisfaction on her beautiful face and a strange
brooding gleam in her scintillant eyes.

An indifferent wave of her hand and the corpse was dragged away by the
heels, the dead arms trailing limply in the wide smear of blood left
by the passage of the body. Kane could see other wide stains crossing
the stone floor, some almost indistinct, others less dim. How many wild
scenes of blood and cruel frenzy had the great stone throne-dragons
looked upon with their carven eyes?

He did not doubt, now, the tales told him by the river tribes. These
people were bred in rapine and horror. Their prowess had burst their
brains. They lived, like some terrible beast, only to destroy. There
were strange gleams behind their eyes which at times lit those eyes
with up-leaping flames and shadows of Hell. What had the river tribes
said of these mountain people who had ravaged them for countless
centuries? _That they were henchmen of death, who stalked among them,
and whom they worshipped._

Still the thought hovered in Kane's mind as he watched--who built this
place, and why were negroes evidently in possession? He knew this was
the work of a higher race. No black tribe had ever reached such a stage
of culture as evidenced by these carvings. Yet the river tribes had
spoken of no other men than those upon which he now looked.

* * * * *

The Englishman tore himself away from the fascination of the barbaric
scene with an effort. He had no time to waste; as long as they thought
him dead, he had more chance of eluding possible guards and seeking
what he had come to find. He turned and set off down the dim corridor.
No plan of action offered itself to his mind and one direction was
as good as another. The passage did not run straight; it turned and
twisted, following the line of the walls, Kane supposed, and found time
to wonder at the evident enormous thickness of those walls. He expected
at any moment to meet some guard or slave, but as the corridors
continued to stretch empty before him, with the dusty floors unmarked
by any footprint, he decided that either the passages were unknown to
the people of Negari or else for some reason were never used.

He kept a close lookout for secret doors, and at last found one, made
fast on the inner side with a rusty bolt set in a groove of the wall.
This he manipulated cautiously, and presently with a creaking which
seemed terrifically loud in the stillness the door swung inward.
Looking out he saw no one, and stepping warily through the opening,
he drew the door to behind him, noting that it assumed the part of
a fantastic picture painted on the wall. He scraped a mark with his
dagger at the point where he believed the hidden spring to be on the
outer side, for he knew not when he might need to use the passage again.

He was in a great hall, through which ran a maze of giant pillars much
like those of the throne chamber. Among them he felt like a child in
some great forest, yet they gave him some slight sense of security
since he believed that, gliding among them like a ghost through a
jungle, he could elude the black people in spite of their craft.

He set off, choosing his direction at random and going carefully. Once
he heard a mutter of voices, and leaping upon the base of a column,
clung there while two black women passed directly beneath him, but
besides these he encountered no one. It was an uncanny sensation,
passing through this vast hall which seemed empty of human life, but in
some other part of which Kane knew there might be throngs of people,
hidden from sight by the pillars.

At last, after what seemed an eternity of following these monstrous
mazes, he came upon a huge wall which seemed to be either a side of the
hall, or a partition, and continuing along this, he saw in front of him
a doorway before which two spearmen stood like black statues.

Kane, peering about the corner of a column base made out two windows
high in the wall, one on each side of the door, and noting the ornate
carvings which covered the walls, determined on a desperate plan. He
felt it imperative that he should see what lay within that room. The
fact that it was guarded suggested that the room beyond the door was
either a treasure chamber or a dungeon, and he felt sure that his
ultimate goal would prove to be a dungeon.

He retreated to a point out of sight of the blacks and began to scale
the wall, using the deep carvings for hand and foot holds. It proved
even easier than he had hoped, and having climbed to a point level with
the windows, he crawled cautiously along a horizontal line, feeling
like an ant on a wall.

The guards far below him never looked up, and finally he reached
the nearer window and drew himself up over the sill. He looked down
into a large room, empty of life, but equipped in a manner sensuous
and barbaric. Silken couches and velvet cushions dotted the floor in
profusion and tapestries heavy with gold work hung upon the walls. The
ceiling too was worked in gold.

Strangely incongruous, crude trinkets of ivory and ironwood,
unmistakably negroid in workmanship, littered the place, symbolic
enough of this strange kingdom where signs of barbarism vied with a
strange culture. The outer door was shut and in the wall opposite was
another door, also closed.

Kane descended from the window, sliding down the edge of a tapestry
as a sailor slides down a sail-rope, and crossed the room, his feet
sinking noiselessly into the deep fabric of the rug which covered the
floor, and which, like all the other furnishings, seemed ancient to the
point of decay.

At the door he hesitated. To step into the next room might be a
desperately hazardous thing to do; should it prove to be filled with
black men, his escape was cut off by the spearmen outside the other
door. Still, he was used to taking all sorts of wild chances, and now,
sword in hand, he flung the door open with a suddenness intended to
numb with surprize for an instant any foe who might be on the other
side.

Kane took a swift step within, ready for anything--then halted
suddenly, struck speechless and motionless for a second. He had come
thousands of miles in search of something and there before him lay the
object of his search.

_3. Lilith_

"Lady of mystery, what is thy history?"

--Viereck.

A couch stood in the middle of the room and on its silken surface lay
a woman--a woman whose skin was white and whose reddish gold hair
fell about her bare shoulders. She now sprang erect, fright flooding
her fine gray eyes, lips parted to utter a cry which she as suddenly
checked.

"You!" she exclaimed. "How did you----?"

Solomon Kane closed the door behind him and came toward her, a rare
smile on his dark face.

"You remember me, do you not, Marylin?"

The fear had already faded from her eyes even before he spoke, to be
replaced by a look of incredible wonder and dazed bewilderment.

"Captain Kane! I can not understand--it seemed no one would ever
come----"

She drew a small hand wearily across her white brow, swaying suddenly.

Kane caught her in his arms--she was only a girl, little more than a
child--and laid her gently on the couch. There, chafing her wrists
gently, he talked in a low hurried monotone, keeping an eye on the door
all the time--which door, by the way, seemed to be the only entrance
or egress from the room. While he talked he mechanically took in the
chamber, noting that it was almost a duplicate of the outer room, as
regards hangings and general furnishings.

"First," said he, "before we go into any other matters, tell me, are
you closely guarded?"

"Very closely, sir," she murmured hopelessly; "I know not how you came
here, but we can never escape."

"Let me tell you swiftly how I came to be here, and mayhap you will be
more hopeful when I tell you of the difficulties already overcome. Lie
still now, Marylin, and I will tell you how I came to seek an English
heiress in the devil city of Negari.

"I killed Sir John Taferal in a duel. As to the reason, 'tis neither
here nor there, but slander and a black lie lay behind it. Ere he died
he confessed that he had committed a foul crime some years agone. You
remember, of course, the affection cherished for you by your cousin,
old Lord Hildred Taferal, Sir John's uncle. Sir John feared that the
old lord, dying without issue, might leave the great Taferal estates to
you.

"Years ago you disappeared and Sir John spread the rumor that you had
drowned. Yet when he lay dying with my rapier through his body, he
gasped out that he had kidnapped you and sold you to a Barbary rover,
whom he named--a bloody pirate whose name has not been unknown on
England's coasts aforetime. So I came seeking you, and a long weary
trail it has been, stretching into long leagues and bitter years.

"First I sailed the seas searching El Gar, the Barbary corsair named
by Sir John. I found him in the crash and roar of an ocean battle;
he died, but even as he lay dying he told me that he had sold you in
turn to a merchant out of Stamboul. So to the Levant I went and there
by chance came upon a Greek sailor whom the Moors had crucified on the
shore for piracy. I cut him down and asked him the question I asked
all men--if he had in his wanderings seen a captive English girl-child
with yellow curls. I learned that he had been one of the crew of the
Stamboul merchants, and that she had, on her homeward voyage, been set
upon by a Portuguese slaver and sunk--this renegade Greek and the child
being among the few who were taken aboard the slaver.

"This slaver then, cruising south for black ivory, had been ambushed
in a small bay on the African West Coast, and of your further fate
the Greek knew nothing, for he had escaped the general massacre, and
taking to sea in an open boat, had been taken up by a ship of Genoese
freebooters.

"To the West Coast, then, I came, on the slim chance that you still
lived, and there heard among the natives that some years ago a white
child had been taken from a ship whose crew had been slain, and sent
inland as a part of the tribute the shore tribes paid to the upper
river chiefs.

"Then all traces ceased. For months I wandered without a clue as to
your whereabouts, nay, without a hint that you even lived. Then I
chanced to hear among the river tribes of the demon city of Negari and
the black queen who kept a white woman for a slave. I came here."

Kane's matter-of-fact tone, his unfurbished narration, gave no hint
of the full meaning of that tale--of what lay behind those calm
and measured words--the sea-fights and the land fights--the years
of privation and heart-breaking toil, the ceaseless danger, the
everlasting wandering through hostile and unknown lands, the tedious
and deadening labor of ferreting out the information he wished from
ignorant, sullen and unfriendly savages, black and white.

"I came here" said Kane simply, but what a world of courage and effort
was symbolized by that phrase! A long red trail, black shadows and
crimson shadows weaving a devil's dance--marked by flashing swords and
the smoke of battle--by faltering words falling like drops of blood
from the lips of dying men.

Not a consciously dramatic man, certainly, was Solomon Kane. He
told his tale in the same manner in which he had overcome terrific
obstacles--coldly, briefly and without heroics.

"You see, Marylin," he concluded gently, "I have not come this far and
done this much, to now meet with defeat. Take heart, child. We will
find a way out of this fearful place."

"Sir John took me on his saddle-bow," the girl said dazedly, and
speaking slowly as if her native language came strangely to her from
years of unuse, as she framed in halting words an English evening of
long ago: "He carried me to the sea-shore where a galley's boat waited,
filled with fierce men, dark and mustached and having simitars, and
great rings to the fingers. The captain, a Moslem with a face like a
hawk, took me, I a-weeping with fear, and bore me to his galley. Yet he
was kind to me in his way, I being little more than a baby, and at last
sold me to a Turkish merchant, as he told you. This merchant he met off
the southern coast of France, after many days of sea travel.

"This man did not use me badly, yet I feared him, for he was a man of
cruel countenance and made me understand that I was to be sold to a
black sultan of the Moors. However, in the Gates of Hercules his ship
was set upon by a Cadiz slaver and things came about as you have said.

"The captain of the slaver believed me to be the child of some wealthy
English family and intended holding me for ransom, but in a grim
darksome bay on the African coast he perished with all his men except
the Greek you have mentioned, and I was taken captive by a black
chieftain.

"I was terribly afraid and thought he would slay me, but he did me no
harm and sent me up-country with an escort, who also bore much loot
taken from the ship. This loot, together with myself, was, as you know,
intended for a powerful king of the river peoples. But it never reached
him, for a roving band of Negari fell upon the beach warriors and slew
them all. Then I was taken to this city, and have since remained, slave
to Queen Nakari.

"How I have lived through all those terrible scenes of battle and
cruelty and murder, I know not."

"A providence has watched over you, child," said Kane, "the power which
doth care for weak women and helpless children; which led me to you in
spite of all hindrances, and which shall yet lead us forth from this
place, God willing."

"My people!" she exclaimed suddenly like one awaking from a dream;
"what of them?"

"All in good health and fortune, child, save that they have sorrowed
for you through the long years. Nay, old Sir Hildred hath the gout and
doth so swear thereat that I fear for his soul at times. Yet methinks
that the sight of you, little Marylin, would mend him."

"Still, Captain Kane," said the girl, "I can not understand why you
came alone."

"Your brothers would have come with me, child, but it was not sure that
you lived, and I was loth that any other Taferal should die in a land
far from good English soil. I rid the country of an evil Taferal--'twas
but just I should restore in his place a good Taferal, if so be she
still lived--I, and I alone."

This explanation Kane himself believed. He never sought to analyze his
motives and he never wavered, once his mind was made up. Though he
always acted on impulse, he firmly believed that all his actions were
governed by cold and logical reasonings. He was a man born out of his
time--a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the
ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan, though the
last assertion would have shocked him unspeakably. An atavist of the
days of blind chivalry he was, a knight errant in the somber clothes of
a fanatic. A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right
all wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all crimes against right
and justice. Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in
only one respect--he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such
was Solomon Kane.

"Marylin," he now said kindly, taking her small hands in his
sword-calloused fingers, "methinks you have changed greatly in the
years. You were a rosy and chubby little maid when I used to dandle
you on my knee in old England. Now you seem drawn and pale of face,
though you are beautiful as the nymphs of the heathen books. There are
haunting ghosts in your eyes, child--do they misuse you here?"

She lay back on the couch and the blood drained slowly from her already
pallid features until she was deathly white. Kane bent over her,
startled. Her voice came in a whisper.

"Ask me not. There are deeds better hidden in the darkness of night and
forgetfulness. There are sights which blast the eyes and leave their
burning mark forever on the brain. The walls of ancient cities, recked
not of by men, have looked upon scenes not to be spoken of, even in
whispers."

Her eyes closed wearily and Kane's troubled, somber eyes unconsciously
traced the thin blue lines of her veins, prominent against the
unnatural whiteness of her skin.

"Here is some demoniacal thing," he muttered, "A mystery----"

"Aye," murmured the girl, "a mystery that was old when Egypt was young!
And nameless evil more ancient than dark Babylon--that spawned in
terrible black cities when the world was young and strange."

Kane frowned, troubled. At the girl's strange words he felt an eery
crawling fear at the back of his brain, as if dim racial memories
stirred in the eon-deep gulfs, conjuring up grim chaotic visions,
illusive and nightmarish.

Suddenly Marylin sat erect, her eyes flaring wide with fright. Kane
heard a door open somewhere.

"Nakari!" whispered the girl urgently. "Swift! She must not find you
here! Hide quickly, and"--as Kane turned--"keep silent, whatever may
chance!"

* * * * *

She lay back on the couch, feigning slumber as Kane crossed the room
and concealed himself behind some tapestries which, hanging upon the
wall, hid a niche that might have once held a statue of some sort.

He had scarcely done so when the single door of the room opened and a
strange barbaric figure stood framed in it. Nakari, queen of Negari,
had come to her slave.

The black woman was clad as she had been when he had seen her on the
throne, and the colored armlets and anklets clanked as she closed
the door behind her and came into the room. She moved with the easy
sinuousness of a she-leopard and in spite of himself the watcher was
struck with admiration for her lithe beauty. Yet at the same time a
shudder of repulsion shook him, for her eyes gleamed with vibrant and
magnetic evil, older than the world.

"Lilith!" thought Kane. "She is beautiful and terrible as Purgatory.
She is Lilith--that foul, lovely woman of ancient legend."

Nakari halted by the couch, stood looking down upon her captive for
a moment, then with an enigmatic smile, bent and shook her. Marylin
opened her eyes, sat up, then slipped from her couch and knelt before
her black mistress--an act which caused Kane to curse beneath his
breath. The queen laughed and seating herself upon the couch, motioned
the girl to rise, and then put an arm about her waist and drew her
upon her lap. Kane watched, puzzled, while Nakari caressed the white
girl in a lazy, amused manner. This might be affection, but to Kane it
seemed more like a sated leopard teasing its victim. There was an air
of mockery and studied cruelty about the whole affair.

"You are very soft and pretty, Mara," Nakari murmured lazily, "much
prettier than the black girls who serve me. The time approaches, little
one, for your nuptial. And a fairer bride has never been borne up the
Black Stairs."

Marylin began to tremble and Kane thought she was going to faint.
Nakari's eyes gleamed strangely beneath her long-lashed drooping lids,
and her full red lips curved in a faint tantalizing smile. Her every
action seemed fraught with some sinister meaning. Kane began to sweat
profusely.

"Mara," said the black queen, "you are honored above all other girls,
yet you are not content. Think how the girls of Negari will envy you,
Mara, when the priests sing the nuptial song and the Moon of Skulls
looks over the black crest of the Tower of Death. Think, little
bride-of-the-Master, how many girls have given their lives to be his
bride!"

And Nakari laughed in her hateful musical way, as at a rare jest. And
then suddenly she stopped short. Her eyes narrowed to slits as they
swept the room, and her whole body tensed. Her hand went to her girdle
and came away with a long thin dagger. Kane sighted along the barrel
of his pistol, finger against the trigger. Only a natural hesitancy
against shooting a woman kept him from sending death into the black
heart of Nakari, for he believed that she was about to murder the girl.

Then with a lithe cat-like motion she thrust the girl from her knees
and bounded back across the room, her eyes fixed with blazing intensity
on the tapestry behind which Kane stood. Had those keen eyes discovered
him? He quickly learned.

"Who is there?" she rapped out fiercely. "Who hides behind those
hangings? I do not see you nor hear you, but I know someone is there!"

Kane remained silent. Nakari's wild beast instinct had betrayed him and
he was uncertain as to what course to follow. His next actions depended
on the queen.

"Mara!" Nakari's voice slashed like a whip, "who is behind those
hangings? Answer me! Shall I give you a taste of the whip again?"

The girl seemed incapable of speech. She cowered where she had fallen,
her beautiful eyes full of terror. Nakari, her blazing gaze never
wavering, reached behind her with her free hand and gripped a cord
hanging from the wall. She jerked viciously. Kane felt the tapestries
whip back on either side of him and he stood revealed.

For a moment the strange tableau held--the gaunt white man in his
blood-stained, tattered garments, the long pistol gripped in his right
hand--across the room the black queen in her savage finery, one arm
still lifted to the cord, the other hand holding the dagger in front of
her--the white girl cowering on the floor.

Then Kane spoke: "Keep silent, Nakari, or you die!"

The queen seemed numbed and struck speechless by the sudden apparition.
Kane stepped from among the tapestries and slowly approached her.

"You!" she found her voice at last. "You must be he of whom the
guardsmen spake! There are not two other white men in Negari! They said
you fell to your death! How then----"

"Silence!" Kane's voice cut in harshly on her amazed babblings; he knew
that the pistol meant nothing to her, but she sensed the threat of the
long blade in his left hand. "Marylin," still unconsciously speaking
in the river-tribes' language, "take cords from the hangings and bind
her----"

He was about the middle of the chamber now. Nakari's face had lost much
of its helpless bewilderment and into her blazing eyes stole a crafty
gleam. She deliberately let her dagger fall as in token of surrender,
then suddenly her hands shot high above her head and gripped another
thick cord. Kane heard Marylin scream but before he could take another
step, before he could pull the trigger or even think, the floor fell
beneath his feet and he shot down into abysmal blackness. He did not
fall far and he landed on his feet; but the force of the fall sent
him to his knees and even as he went down, sensing a presence in the
darkness beside him, something crashed against his skull and he dropped
into a yet blacker abyss of unconsciousness.

_4. Dreams of Empire_

"For Rome was given to rule the world
And gat of it little joy--
But we, we shall enjoy the world,
The whole huge world a toy."

--Chesterton.

Slowly Kane drifted back from the dim realms where the unseen
assailant's bludgeon had hurled him. Something hindered the motion of
his hands and there was a metallic clanking when he sought to raise
them to his aching, throbbing head.

He lay in utter darkness but he could not determine whether this was
absence of light, or whether he was still blinded by the blow. He
dazedly collected his scattered faculties and realized that he was
lying on a damp stone floor, shackled by wrist and ankle with heavy
iron chains which were rough and rusty to the touch.

How long he lay there, he never knew. The silence was broken only
by the drumming pulse in his own aching head and the scamper and
chattering of rats. At last a red glow sprang up in the darkness and
grew before his eyes. Framed in the grisly radiance rose the sinister
and sardonic face of Nakari. Kane shook his head, striving to rid
himself of the illusion. But the light grew and as his eyes accustomed
themselves to it, he saw that it emanated from a torch borne in the
hand of the queen.

In the illumination he now saw that he lay in a small dank cell whose
walls, ceiling and floor were of stone. The heavy chains which held him
captive were made fast to metal rings set deep in the wall. There was
but one door, which was apparently of bronze.

Nakari set the torch in a niche near the door, and coming forward,
stood over her captive, gazing down at him in a manner rather
speculating than mocking.

"You are he who fought the men on the cliff." The remark was an
assertion rather than a question. "They said you fell into the
abyss--did they lie? Did you bribe them to lie? Or how did you escape?
Are you a magician and did you fly to the bottom of the chasm and then
fly to my palace? Speak!"

Kane remained silent. Nakari cursed.

"Speak or I will have your eyes torn out! I will cut your fingers off
and burn your feet!"

She kicked him viciously, but Kane lay silent, his deep somber eyes
boring up into her face, until the feral gleam faded from her eyes to
be replaced by an avid interest and wonder.

She seated herself on a stone bench, resting her elbows on her knees
and her chin on her hands.

"I never saw a white man before," she said, "Are all white men like
you? Bah! That can not be! Most men are fools, black or white. I know
most black men are fools, and white men are not gods, as the river
tribes say--they are only men. I, who know all the ancient mysteries,
say they are only men.

"But white men have strange mysteries too, they tell me--the wanderers
of the river tribes, and Mara. They have war clubs that make a noise
like thunder and kill afar off--that thing which you held in your right
hand, was that one of those clubs?"

Kane permitted himself a grim smile.

"Nakari, if you know all mysteries, how can I tell you aught that you
know not already?"

"How deep and cold and strange your eyes are!" the queen said as if he
had not spoken. "How strange your whole appearance is--and you have the
bearing of a king! You do not fear me--I never met a man who neither
loved nor feared me. You would never fear me, but you could learn to
love me. Look at me, white man--am I not beautiful?"

"You are beautiful," answered Kane.

Nakari smiled and then frowned. "The way you say that, it is no
compliment. You hate me, do you not?"

"As a man hates a serpent," Kane replied bluntly.

Nakari's eyes blazed with almost insane fury. Her hands clenched until
the long nails sank into the palms; then as quickly as her anger had
arisen, it ebbed away.

"You have the heart of a king," she said calmly, "else you would fear
me. Are you a king in your land?"

"I am only a landless wanderer."

"You might be a king here," Nakari said slowly.

Kane laughed grimly. "Do you offer me my life?"

"I offer you more than that!" Kane's eyes narrowed as the queen leaned
toward him, vibrant with suppressed excitement. "White man, what is it
that you want more than anything else in the world?"

"To take the white girl you call Mara, and go."

Nakari sank back with an impatient exclamation.