“What a pity it is so muddy!”
“That’s because of the wash of the rich soil of the valley floor,” Henry elucidated. “It’s hundreds of feet deep, that soil.”
“The whole valley must have been a lake at some time,” Francis concurred. “Run your eye along the cliff and see the old water-lines. I wonder what made it shrink.”
“Earthquake, most likely—opened up some subterranean exit and drained it off to its present level—and keeps on draining it, too. Its rich chocolate color shows the amount of water that flows in all the time, and that it doesn’t have much chance to settle. It’s the catch-basin for the entire circling watershed of the valley.”
“Well, there’s one house at least,” Leoncia was saying five minutes later, as they rounded an angle of the cliff and saw, tucked against the cliff and extending out over the water, a low-roofed bungalow-like dwelling.
The piles were massive tree-trunks, but the walls of the house were of bamboo, and the roof was thatched with grass-straw. So isolated was it, that the only access, except by boat, was a twenty-foot bridge so narrow that two could not walk on it abreast. At either end of the bridge, evidently armed guards or sentries, stood two young men of the tribe. They moved aside, at a gesture of command from the Sun Priest, and let the party pass, although the two Morgans did not fail to notice that the spearmen who had accompanied them from the Long House remained beyond the bridge.
Across the bridge and entered into the bungalow-like dwelling on stilts, they found themselves in a large room better furnished, crude as the furnishings were, than they would have expected in the Valley of Lost Souls. The grass mats on the floor were of fine and careful weave, and the shades of split bamboo that covered the window-openings were of patient workmanship. At the far end, against the wall, was a huge golden emblem of the rising sun similar to the one before the altar by the Long House. But by far most striking, were two living creatures who strangely inhabited the place and who scarcely moved. Beneath the rising sun, raised above the floor on a sort of dais, was a many-pillowed divan that was half-throne. And on the divan, among the pillows, clad in a softly-shimmering robe of some material no one of them had seen before, reclined a sleeping woman. Only her breast softly rose and softly fell to her breathing. No Lost Soul was she, of the inbred and degenerate mixture of Carib and Spaniard. On her head was a tiara of beaten gold and sparkling gems so large that almost it seemed a crown.
Before her, on the floor, were two tripods of gold——the one containing smouldering fire, the other, vastly larger, a golden bowl fully a fathom in diameter. Between the tripods, resting with outstretched paws like the Sphinx, with unblinking eyes and without a quiver, a great dog, snow-white of coat and resembling a Russian wolf-hound, stedfastly regarded the intruders.
“She looks like a lady, and seems like a queen, and certainly dreams to the queen’s taste,” Henry whispered, and earned a scowl from the Sun Priest.
Leoncia was breathless, but Torres shuddered and crossed himself, and said:
“This I have never heard of the Valley of Lost Souls. This woman who sleeps is a Spanish lady. She is of the pure Spanish blood. She is Castilian. I am as certain, as that I stand here, that her eyes are blue. And yet that pallor!” Again he shuddered. “It is an unearthly sleep. It is as if she tampered with drugs, and had long tampered with drugs——”
“The very thing!” Francis broke in with excited whispers. “The Lady Who Dreams drug dreams. They must keep her here doped up as a sort of super-priestess or super-oracle.—That’s all right, old priest,” he broke off to say in Spanish. “If we wake her up, what of it? We have been brought here to meet her, and, I hope, awake.”
The Lady stirred, as if the whispering had penetrated her profound of sleep, and, for the first time, the dog moved, turning his head toward her so that her down-dropping hand rested on his neck caressingly. The priest was imperative, now, in his scowls and gestured commands for silence. And in absolute silence they stood and watched the awakening of the oracle.
Slowly she drew herself half upright, paused, and re-caressed the happy wolf hound, whose cruel fangs were exposed in a formidable, long-jawed laugh of joy. Awesome the situation was to them, yet more awesome it became to them when she turned her eyes full upon them for the first time. Never had they seen such eyes, in which smouldered the world and all the worlds. Half way did Leoncia cross herself, while Torres, swept away by his own awe, completed his own crossing of himself and with moving lips of silence enunciated his favorite prayer to the Virgin. Even Francis and Henry looked, and could not take their gaze away from the twin wells of blue that seemed almost dark in the shade of the long black eyelashes.
“A blue-eyed brunette,” Francis managed to whisper.
But such eyes! Round they were, rather than long. And yet they were not round. Square they might have been, had they not been more round than square. Such shape had they that they were as if blocked off in the artist’s swift and sketchy way of establishing circles out of the sums of angles. The long, dark lashes veiled them and perpetuated the illusion of their darkness. Yet was there no surprise nor startlement in them at first sight of her visitors. Dreamily incurious were they, yet were they languidly certain of comprehension of what they beheld. Still further, to awe those who so beheld, her eyes betrayed a complicated totality of paradoxical alivenesses. Pain trembled its quivering anguish perpetually impending. Sensitiveness moistly hinted of itself like a spring rain-shower on the distant sea-horizon or a dew-fall of a mountain morning. Pain—ever pain—resided in the midst of languorous slumberousness. The fire of immeasurable courage threatened to glint into the electric spark of action and fortitude. Deep slumber, like a palpitant, tapestried background, seemed ever ready to obliterate all in sleep. And over all, through all, permeating all, brooded ageless wisdom. This was accentuated by cheeks slightly hollowed, hinting of asceticism. Upon them was a flush, either hectic or of the paint-box.
When she stood up, she showed herself to be slender and fragile as a fairy. Tiny were her bones, not too-generously flesh-covered; yet the lines of her were not thin. Had either Henry or Francis registered his impression aloud, he would have proclaimed her the roundest thin woman he had ever seen.
The Sun Priest prostrated his aged frame till he lay stretched flat out on the floor, his old forehead burrowing into the grass mat. The rest remained upright, although Torres evidenced by a crumpling at the knees that he would have followed the priest’s action had his companions shown signs of accompanying him. As it was, his knees did partly crumple, but straightened again and stiffened under the controlled example of Leoncia and the Morgans.
At first the Lady had no eyes for aught but Leoncia; and, after a careful looking over of her, with a curt upward lift of head she commanded her to approach. Too imperative by far was it, in Leoncia’s thought, to proceed from so etherially beautiful a creature, and she sensed with immediacy an antagonism that must exist between them. So she did not move, until the Sun Priest muttered harshly that she must obey. She approached, regardless of the huge, long-haired hound, threading between the tripods and past the beast, nor would stop until commanded by a second nod as curt as the first. For a long minute the two women gazed steadily into each other’s eyes, at the end of which, with a flicker of triumph, Leoncia observed the other’s eyes droop. But the flicker was temporary, for Leoncia saw that the Lady was studying her dress with haughty curiosity. She even reached out her slender, pallid hand and felt the texture of the cloth and caressed it as only a woman can.
“Priest!” she summoned sharply. “This is the third day of the Sun in the House of Manco. Long ago I told you something concerning this day. Speak.”
Writhing in excess of servility, the Sun Priest quavered:
“That on this day strange events were to occur. They have occurred, O Queen.”
Already had the Queen forgotten. Still caressing the cloth of Leoncia’s dress, her eyes were bent upon it in curious examination.
“You are very fortunate,” the Queen said, at the same time motioning her back to rejoin the others. “You are well loved of men. All is not clear, yet does it seem that you are too well loved of men.”
Her voice, mellow and low, tranquil as silver, modulated in exquisite rhythms of sound, was almost as a distant temple bell calling believers to worship or sad souls to quiet judgment. But to Leoncia it was not given to appreciate the wonderful voice. Instead, only was she aware of anger flaming up to her cheeks and burning in her pulse.
“I have seen you before, and often,” the Queen went on.
“Never!” Leoncia cried out.
“Hush!” the Sun Priest hissed at her.
“There,” the Queen said, pointing at the great golden bowl. “Before, and often, have I seen you there.
“You——also, there,” she addressed Henry.
“And you,” she confirmed to Francis, although her great blue eyes opened wider and she gazed at him long——too long to suit Leoncia, who knew the stab of jealousy that only a woman can thrust into a woman’s heart.
The Queen’s eyes glinted when they had moved on to rest on Torres.
“And who are you, stranger, so strangely appareled, the helmet of a knight upon your head, upon your feet the sandals of a slave?”
“I am Da Vasco,” he answered stoutly.
“The name has an ancient ring,” she smiled.
“I am the ancient Da Vasco,” he pursued, advancing unsummoned. She smiled at his temerity but did not stay him. “This is the helmet I wore four hundred years ago when I led the ancestors of the Lost Souls into this valley.”
The Queen smiled quiet unbelief, as she quietly asked:
“Then you were born four hundred years ago?”
“Yes, and never. I was never born. I am Da Vasco. I have always been. My home is in the sun.”
Her delicately stenciled brows drew quizzically to interrogation, though she said nothing. From a gold-wrought box beside her on the divan she pinched what seemed a powder between a fragile and almost transparent thumb and forefinger, and her thin beautiful lips curved to gentle mockery as she casually tossed the powder into the great tripod. A sheen of smoke arose and in a moment was lost to sight.
