The valley of eyes unseen
here hold other views.'
I noticed throughout this interview that Philipson had dropped into
speaking of the people of the valley as his, as if he had never
belonged to the outer world. Also, while I have written his words in
fluent English, this was not how we heard them. Often he paused at a
loss for an expression, and strange though it seemed to us, it was none
the less manifest that Saunders Philipson was already beginning to
forget the English tongue.
He must have sensed what was passing through my mind. 'And how do _you_
manage with _our_ language?' he inquired.
'Poyning had it pat almost from the first,' said I. 'I've got a decent
hang of it myself now--like him, I'd learned the language at school,
and I had only to adapt it the way it is pronounced here. But you,
Philipson, were perfectly familiar with both words and pronunciation
before you came.'
He started at the directness of the remark. 'You knew that?' he queried
sharply.
'I heard you speaking to the doctors who attended you on the mountain
side,' I said, 'and--'
His eyes were on my face as palpably as if he had touched me with his
fingers. 'And--and that,' I concluded, 'seemed pretty conclusive.'
Philipson preserved a tense silence for about half a minute, as if
debating with himself.
'You have been faithful comrades to me,' he said at last, in a low,
earnest voice, 'and it is time for you to know the whole truth. That
you have not learned it from me before is only because I was myself
not sure--only the upshot of this adventure could reveal the truth,
and before I have finished you will confess that I had good reason for
hesitating to speak out. It is enough to say that I knew I was more
than I purported to be when I met you. Upon you I practised a deception
which I have practised on the world at large--if deception it could
be called. I told you my name was the rather humdrum British one of
Saunders Philipson. That was the name I had adopted in England, where
I was educated and became a naturalised Englishman. But I was not of
English birth. I was born in Greece, near the modern city of Salonika,
and was known to the people of that region as Alexandre Philipides. The
surname had been borne by my family from very early times, and was held
by us, among other evidences, to indicate our descent from the ancient
kings. From my boyhood I had brooded deeply on the circumstance of my
ancestry. I had also dreamed strange visions--I think your English
expression "voices" would best describe these visitations--all of
which seemed to tell me my destiny lay in the East, where some great
mystery lay waiting to be revealed to me. Sometimes there would seem
to be a voice speaking in my ear and calling to me, sometimes a human
figure rose before my eyes, and once, gentlemen, I solemnly assure you
that I dreamed a vision of the magnificent panorama of this valley
exactly as it burst upon our view when we emerged from the mountains a
few weeks ago.
'By the time I came to man's estate my impulse to travel in the East
was irresistible, and my parents being then both dead, I set out on my
quest. In my mind I had put together all the evidence of my visions,
and it seemed to me that somewhere among these tremendous mountains lay
the heart of the mystery which I was destined to discover. I explored
the wild interior of Asia in a way that no other man living has done,
and then at last I came upon that strange inscription of the obo.
You already know how I secured an interpretation of it, and you need
not be told of the exultation I felt when I recognised in it a solid
confirmation of all that my visions had told me. Then, Mirlees, as if
the gods were determined to aid me, they threw you in my path, and
later, you, Poyning. Your help, I thought, would be precious, and if
you will allow me to say so, I was not wrong in my expectations. I made
known to both of you the secret of the obo, which I knew to be sound
fact, but said nothing of my "voices," which, real as they were to me,
might only have disposed you to believe you were dealing with a madman.
Then again, at Nanking, I had a vision so vivid that it convinced me
finally I was following no mere chimera; and again in the pass of the
_obo_ came a visitation that I could not doubt.'
Philipson paused, eyeing me very keenly before he resumed his
narrative. I imagine he was wondering how much I knew or suspected of
these affairs already.
'Though,' he continued at length, almost hastily, 'once more I shrank
from communicating a matter so wild and incredible. And from then on,
that vision was before my eyes night and day, leading me by safe paths.
Otherwise, not I nor any other man of this earth could have found a way
as I did over that last awful wilderness of snow. The rest is known to
you. We came to the rim of the valley, and I knew it was the valley
of my dreams. I think I should have told you everything on that last
morning, but then came the avalanche, and after that, as you saw, I
was borne away from you in the midst of a bodyguard. There now seemed
to ensue several periods of unconsciousness, which I found afterwards
were part of the treatment given me by our physicians, and when at last
I came to my normal self I learned that I had been chosen King of this
city. I asked for you and for my servants. The latter were brought to
me a day later. I did not know then that they had been picked up on the
hillside for dead, so their appearance did not greatly surprise me. I
then inquired why you had not come to me. I was informed that the Nine
Shadows advised delay. It was my first knowledge of the existence of
that body, but from the way their name was mentioned I realised they
were a force to be reckoned with, and subsequent developments have more
than confirmed me in the belief. Bit by bit I have come to understand
my position. I can tell you it is by no means so simple as might have
appeared to a casual onlooker the other day when I was crowned and
publicly betrothed to a maiden of the ancient blood royal.'
'You mean your power is limited?' put in Poyning.
Philipson leaned further forward and sunk his voice lower. 'The
situation seems to be this,' he said. 'The Nine Shadows are
all-powerful. As soon as they had satisfied themselves I was the
true Alexander who should come, they advised the reigning Prince,
Kalliphanes, to abdicate. "Advise"--that is the word generally used of
the acts of the Nine, but I have already apprehended that it might be
bad for the man who neglected that advice. Although Kalliphanes retired
with apparently good grace, I do not know that he is reconciled to his
retirement. He has behind him a faction, some of whom even question
my claim to the throne, and though he can do nothing so long as the
Nine are with me, I am disposed to venture little authority on my own
account until my position is more securely established. So you see,' he
concluded, 'it is not all honey to be King of the lost city of Hellas.
But now tell me something about yourselves. What have you been doing
all this while?
'We saw the abdication ceremony,' said Poyning, 'but after that
Kalliboas disappeared and we were little better than prisoners for
about eight days. When he came back he told us it was your wish that
we should see the city. We have already seen much. We have had the
mystery of the great birds cleared up for us, and we have been taught
something of the art of flight, and we know what it says on the obelisk
of Alexander.'
'That was good,' said Philipson with quiet enthusiasm. 'There you went
to the very heart of our existence. So now you have seen the devils
of ghostly face and the great birds. What else does the legend speak
about? The white gems--have you seen them?'
Philipson saw by our faces we had not.
'Then it is obvious you have not yet visited any of our private
dwellings,' he said.
'How does that follow?'
'If you had, you would have seen the children playing with the white
gems very much as your English children play with marbles. They come
from the river which flows into the lake from the north-east. Sbrang
Chikya was quite right about it. Diamonds as big as walnuts roll down
its course by the hundred; the bed of the lake must be thick with them.
You must ask Kalliboas to take you there, but I would suggest you do
not betray any great excitement about the stones. Although my people
do not hold such things precious they know that in the outer world the
greed of men for diamonds passes all understanding; and they regard
that lust with the utmost horror and contempt.'
'That matter is still a great riddle to us,' I said. 'We've had plenty
of hints that your people are not unaware of what is going on outside
the valley. How is that knowledge obtained?'
His voice became suddenly graver. 'If I tell you here,' he said, 'you
will not be able to believe. Kalliboas will show you for yourselves,
and much more to astonish.'
We left Philipson shortly after this. His forecast was abundantly
fulfilled. We did see much to astonish us, and much that I but vaguely
understand to this day. I saw with these eyes the method by which
this strange people informed themselves of the events of the rest of
the earth--a sight which leaves me still amazed and bewildered, even
sceptic; and yet on the other hand there remains the undoubted fact
that they _were_ aware of what was transpiring beyond their mountain
barriers. Of that, at least, I am certain.
The day after our audience with Philipson, Kalliboas came to our
quarters and bade us get ready to accompany him. It seemed clear enough
now that Philipson's influence was making itself felt: more and more
candidly did the old man answer our hosts of questions, and he even
volunteered information on many strange matters the mere existence of
which we hadn't suspected.
Through the streets, fragrant with the aromatic scent of the bordering
trees, we followed him on foot to a place about a quarter of a mile
from the royal palaces, where we came to a courtyard into which, as it
seemed, the populace weren't allowed access. It was a vast enclosure,
with walls nowhere less than fifty yards from the group of buildings
in the middle of it, and each of these was a good deal bigger than any
single structure we had yet seen. In the main building, too, there was
a marked difference in the design of the interior, its halls--and it
had many--being built one within another like kernels of a nut. Some
chambers through which we passed, though panelled and paved with the
magnificent marble we had grown familiar with in our own guest-house,
were manifestly laboratories, containing scientific apparatus of a
pattern entirely new to us; and in one passage near the centre of the
building we came upon a superb life-sized statue of the Pallas Athene,
a deity I don't remember, curiously enough in a city given over to
mental culture, to have seen portrayed elsewhere.
Kalliboas whispered to us here that we must preserve unbroken silence
until we emerged again from these inner chambers. For myself, I found
this injunction none too easy to obey: I could have cried out time and
again with amazement over what we saw. In the first place I couldn't
for the life of me fathom how these enclosed halls were lighted and
ventilated, yet they were both. Sweet air, and a queer diffused rosy
illumination pervaded them all, though I felt no draught that could
have accounted for the clean atmosphere nor saw any lamp that could
have furnished the light.
We had now entered a square corridor the wall of which was built
with many cubicles, all small and furnished with bier-like couches
of marble upon which lay forms in varying degrees of inertia. Some
were already still and pale as the marble all round them, so that