Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
breath, not daring to speak. And brighter, ever brighter, dazzling,
ever more dazzling, had grown the flaming phantom, till the wondrous
transfiguration reached the height of its beauty and its terror. Then
the phantom of murdered Marozia, evoked at his expressed desire from
the land of shadows, had faded, dying slowly away in the mysterious
depths of the mirror, as the fires that produced it sank and died in
white ashes.
There could be no doubt. It was the emissary of Darkness himself who
held forth in this dim, demon-haunted chamber where he had so often
listened to the record of his awful visions. He had made him see in
his dreadful ravings the great vaults of wrath, where dwelt the dread
power of Evil. He had made him see the King of the Hopeless Throngs
on his black basaltic throne in the terrific glare-illumined caves,
where Michael had cast him and where Pain's roar rises eternally night
and day. He had made him see the great Lord of the Doomed Shadows,
receiving the homage of those dreadful slaves, those terror-spreading
angels of woe whose hand flings destruction over the earth and sea and
air, while flames were fawning and licking his feet with countless
tongues.
And then he had shown to him a spirit mightier and more subtle than
any of those great wild destroyers who rush blindly through nature,
a spirit who starts in silence on her errand, whom none behold as,
creeping through the gloom, she undermines, unties and loosens all the
pillars of creation, with no more sign nor sound than a black snake in
the tangled grass, till with a thunder that stuns the world the house
of God comes crashing down--dread Hekaté herself.
Was there any crime he had left undone?
His subterranean prisons in which limbs unlearned to bend and eyes to
see concealed things whose screams would make the flesh of a ghost
creep, if flesh one had.
But now there was a darker light in Basil's eyes, a something more
ominous of evil in his manner. The wizard's revelation had possessed
his soul and his whole terrible being seemed intensified. With the
patience of one conscious of a superhuman destiny he waited the
summons that was to come to him, even though his soul was consumed by
devouring flames.
For he had come yet upon another matter; an inner voice, whose appeal
he dared not ignore, had informed him long ago of his waning power with
Theodora. From the man wont to command he had fallen to the level of
the whimpering slave, content to pick up such morsels as the woman saw
fit to throw at his feet. Only on the morning of this day, which had
gone down the never returning tide of time, a terrible scene had passed
between them. And he knew he had lost.
Basil had been an unseen witness of Theodora's and Tristan's meeting
in the sunken gardens on the Aventine. Every moment he had hoped to
see the man succumb to charms which no mortal had yet withstood upon
whom she had chosen to exert them, and on the point of his poniard
sat Death, ready to step in and finish the game. From the fate he had
decreed him some unknown power had saved Tristan. But Basil, knowing
that Theodora, once she was jilted by the object of her desire, would
leave nothing undone to conquer and subdue, was resolved to remove from
his path one who must, sooner or later, become a successful rival. By
some miraculous interposition of Providence Tristan had escaped the
fate he had prepared for him on the night when he had tracked the two
strangers from the Lateran. He had had him conveyed for dead to the
porch of Theodora's palace. But Fate had made him her mock.
Never had Basil met Theodora in a mood so fierce and destructive as on
the morning after she had destroyed Roxana and her lover, and had, in
turn, been jilted by Tristan. And, verily, Basil could not have chosen
a more inopportune time to press his suit or to voice his resentment
and disapprobation. Theodora had driven every one from her presence and
the unwelcome suitor shared the fate of her menials. Her dark hints
had driven the former favorite to madness, for his passion-inflamed
brain could not bear the thought that the love he craved, the body
he had possessed, should be another's, while he was drifting into the
silent ranks of the discarded. He knew for a surety that Theodora was
not confiding in him as of old. Had she somehow guessed the dread
mystery of the crypts in the Emperor's Tomb, or had some demon of Hell
whispered it into her ear during the dark watches of the night?
A flash of lightning followed by a terrific peal of thunder roused him
from his reveries. The storm which had threatened during the early
hours of the evening now roared and shrieked round the tower and the
very elements seemed in accord with the dark plottings in Hormazd's
chamber.
"How much longer must I wait ere the fiends will reveal their secrets?"
Basil at last turned to the exponent of the black arts.
The wizard paused before the questioner.
"To what investigation shall we first proceed?"
"You must already have divined my thoughts."
"I knew the instant you arrived. But there is an incompleteness which
makes my perceptions less exact than usual."
"Where are my messengers? To the number of three have I sped. None has
returned."
The Oriental touched a knob and the lamps were suddenly extinguished,
leaving the room illumined by the red glow of the oven. Then he bade
his visitor fix his eyes on the surface of the disk.
"Upon this you will presently behold two scenes."
He poured a few drops of something resembling black oil upon the
disk, which at once spread in a mirror-like surface. Then he began to
mutter some words in an Oriental tongue, and lighted a few grains of a
chemical preparation which emitted an odor of bitter aloë. This, when
the flames had subsided, he threw upon the oil which at the contact
became iridescent.
Basil looked and waited in vain.
The conjurer exhausted all the selections which he thought
appropriate. The oil gradually lost the changing aspect it had acquired
from the burning substance, and returned to its dull murky tints, and
the interest which had appeared on Basil's features gave place to a
contemptuous sneer.
"Are you, after all, but a trickster who would impose his art upon the
unwary?"
The magician did not reply to this insult, nor did it seem to affect
him visibly.
"We must try a mightier spell," he said, "for hostile forces are in
conjunction against us."
By a small tongs he raised from the fire the metallic plate that had
been lying upon it. Its surface presented the appearance of oxidized
silver with a deep glow of heat.
Upon this he claimed to be able to produce the picture of past or
future events, and many scenes had been reflected upon the magic shield.
He now poured upon it a spoonful of liquid which spread simmering and
became quickly dissipated in light vapors. Then he busied himself with
scattering over the plate some grains that looked like salt which the
heated metal instantly consumed.
At the end of a few moments he experienced what resembled an electric
or magnetic shock. His frame quivered, his lips ceased to repeat the
muttered incantations, his hand firmly grasped the tongs by which he
raised the metal aloft, now made brighter by the drugs just consumed,
and upon which appeared a white spot, which enlarged till it filled the
lower half of the plate.
What it represented it was difficult to say. It might have been a sheet
or a snow drift. Basil felt an indefinable dread, as above it shimmered
forth the vague resemblance of a man on horseback, apparently riding at
breakneck speed.
Slowly his contour became more distinct. Now the horseman appeared to
have reached a ford. Spurring his steed, he plunged into the stream
whose waters seemed for a time to carry horse and rider along with the
swift current. But he gained the opposite shore, and the apparition
faded slowly from sight.
"It is the Moor!" cried Basil in a paroxysm of excitement. "He has
forded the rapids of the Garigliano. Now be kind to me O Fate--let this
thing come to pass!"
He gave a gasp of relief, wiping the beads from his brow.
The cowled figure now walked up to the central brazier, muttering words
in a language his visitor could not understand. Then he bade Basil walk
round and round it, fixing his eyes steadily upon the small blue flame
which danced on the surface of the burning charcoal.
When giddiness prevented his continuing his perambulation he made him
kneel beside the brazier with his eyes riveted upon it.
Its fumes enveloped him and dulled his brain.
The wizard crooned a slow, monotonous chant. Basil felt his senses keep
pace with it, and presently he felt himself going round and round in an
interminable descent. The glare of the brazier shrank and diminished,
invaded from outside by an overpowering blackness. Slowly it became
but a single point of fire, a dark star, which at length flamed into a
torch. Beside him, with white and leering face, stood the dark cowled
figure, and below him there seemed to stretch intricate galleries,
strangled, interminable caves.
"Where am I?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain, overpowered by the fumes
and the fear that was upon him.
"Unless you reach the pit," came the dark reply, "farewell forever to
your schemes. You will never see a crown upon your head."
"What of Theodora?" Basil turned to his companion, choking and blinded.
"If the bat-winged fiends will carry you safely across the abyss you
shall see," came the reply.
A rush as of wings resounded through the room, as of monstrous bats.
"Gehenna's flame shall smoothe her brow," the wizard spoke again. "When
Death brings her here, she shall stand upon the highest steps, in her
dark magnificence she shall command--a shadow among shadows. Are you
content?"
There was a pause.
The storm howled with redoubled fury, flinging great hailstones against
the time-worn masonry of the wizard's tower.
"Then," Basil spoke at last, his hands gripping his throat with a
choking sensation, "give me back the love for which my soul thirsts and
wither the bones of him who dares to aspire to Theodora's hand."
The wizard regarded him with an inscrutable glance.
"The dark and silent angels, once divine, now lost, who do my errands,
shall ever circle round your path. Everlasting ties bind us, the
one to the other. Keep but the pact and that which seems but a wild
dream shall be fulfilled anon. They shall guide you through the dark
galleries of fear, till you reach the goal."
"Your words are dark as the decrees of Fate," Basil replied, as the
fumes of the brazier slowly cleared in his brain and he seemed to
emerge once more from the endless caverns of night, staring about him
with dazed senses.
"You heed but what your passion prompts," the cowled figure interposed
sternly, "oblivious of that greater destiny that awaits you! It is a
perilous love born in the depths of Hell. Will you wreck your life for
that which, at best, is but a fleeting passion--a one day's dream?"
"Well may you counsel who have never known the hell of love!" Basil
cried fiercely. "The fiery torrent that rushes through my veins defies
cold reason."
The cowled figure nodded.
"Many a ruler in whose shadow men have cowered, has obeyed a woman's
whim and tamely borne her yoke. Are you of those, my lord?"
"I have set my soul upon this thing and Fate shall give to me that
which I crave!" Basil cried fiercely.
The wizard nodded.
"Fate cannot long delay the last great throw."
"What would you counsel?" the Grand Chamberlain queried eagerly,
peering into the cowled and muffled face, from which two eyes sent
their insane gleam into his own.
"Send her soul into the dark caverns of fear--surround her with