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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/32822-h.zip b/32822-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..419fe4c --- /dev/null +++ b/32822-h.zip diff --git a/32822-h/32822-h.htm b/32822-h/32822-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c708638 --- /dev/null +++ b/32822-h/32822-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1939 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Daughter Of The Night, by Richard S. Shaver. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; +} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; +} /* page numbers */ + +.linenum { + position: absolute; + top: auto; + left: 4%; +} /* poetry number */ + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.sidenote { + width: 20%; + padding-bottom: .5em; + padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; + padding-right: .5em; + margin-left: 1em; + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; + color: black; + background: #eeeeee; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +/* Images */ +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figleft { + float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 1em; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +.figright { + float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1em; + margin-bottom: + 1em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center; +} + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +/* Poetry */ +.poem { + margin-left:10%; + margin-right:10%; + text-align: left; +} + +.poem br {display: none;} + +.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + +.poem span.i0 { + display: block; + margin-left: 0em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poem span.i2 { + display: block; + margin-left: 2em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + +.poem span.i4 { + display: block; + margin-left: 4em; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; +} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Daughter of the Night, by Richard S. Shaver + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Daughter of the Night + +Author: Richard S. Shaver + +Release Date: June 15, 2010 [EBook #32822] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAUGHTER OF THE NIGHT *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + + +<h1>DAUGHTER OF THE NIGHT</h1> + +<h2>By RICHARD S. SHAVER</h2> + +<p>[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December +1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. +copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>Like a flash of light the gleaming sword swept down</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="sidenote">The evil magic of the Goddess Diana turned men to stone. +Would the power of the strange Eos be strong enough to turn them back to +living men?</div> + + +<p>Like a flash of light the gleaming sword swept down. A fraction of a +second later a portion of it no longer gleamed: it was crimson! And +Queen Dionaea's head bounced down the stairway into her garden of live +oaks. A few seconds of thought remained to it before it would be very +dead; but her thought was confused by shock—her eyes rolled +uncontrollably while she tried to remember some cantrap or rune from her +long association with the Goddess Diana. Desperately she tried to recite +the proper abracadabra to stay the swift death that was sweeping through +her mind; but it is hard for a head to chant a charm with no body to +draw a breath....</p> + +<p>Druga, his job of execution finished, sheathed his bloody sword and +turning, stalked away. Thus it was that he did not see the amazing thing +that happened in the gloom of the ancient live oaks....</p> + +<p>Baena was a serpent, a huge river of strength up to his giant head, and +he lived among the mighty branches of the oaks. Being a serpent, Baena +was far from equal to a human being in his brainpower, but even his dim +perception told him that harm had come to his one and only +benefactress—and that meant harm to him, too, for Queen Dionaea had +always cared for the needs of his stomach. Through her he ate and lived. +Without her, he would die. And so, he glided rapidly down from the trunk +of his favorite tree and emerged into the paths of the garden just as +Dionaea's bleeding head rolled out from the base of the steps.</p> + +<p>Baena coiled his length protectingly about Dionaea. For an instant he +was at a loss, noting her horribly desperate attempts to speak without +breath, her mouth opening and closing and her tongue licking snake-like +in and out.</p> + +<p>Baena realized after a moment that there was no hope for the Queen to go +on living. A head must have a body.</p> + +<p>Glancing about, Baena saw nothing but the numerous coils of <i>his own +body</i>, and after an instant's hesitation, he took his tail in his mouth +up to the tenth joint and bit it off! Shrinking along all his length +with the terrible necessity that faced him, Baena quickly slapped the +bloody stump of his tail fast to the bleeding neck of Dionaea and said +one of the few magic spells he could remember....</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Turning his body slowly until his severed nerves told his spine that the +connections were as accurate as could be expected, Baena waited while +the spell slowly took effect. He lay there all night, waiting for his +own life's blood to reanimate the mind of Dionaea.</p> + +<p>As Dionaea came back to her senses, Baena began to experience the +strange phenomena of wanting to go two ways at once, and as the +phenomena became more and more troublesome, he decided that he had +better have an understanding with Dionaea once and for all. But what +poor male ever won an argument with a woman?</p> + +<p>Thus it was that Baena resigned himself to a life of traveling backward, +and that was that.</p> + +<p>As a snake, he wished only to eat and bask in his favorite tree, but as +Dionaea, he wanted only one thing—and that with all the fervor of hate +a sorceress is capable of—a fitting revenge on the man who had visited +her execution upon her!</p> + +<p>Day and night Dionaea plotted, and in her mind a fitting revenge +grew—it would include the lovely Feronia, Druga's beloved.... Carefully +she prepared the incantation.</p> + +<p>It is here that my story really begins. What has happened, and how it +happened is of little consequence to what is to come—except perhaps to +introduce you to the characters. It is very simple. Dionaea was a very +evil sorceress, and Druga, most heroic of men, had long sought to bring +her into his power, and to end her evil days. Armed with the white magic +of Feronia, his loved one, who was also a sorceress, but one who worked +her charms only for the good of mankind, he had tracked Dionaea to her +castle, and there slain her. Or he would have, had it not been for +Baena, the serpent....</p> + +<p>What is past is past. It is best not to think of it. There is much in +the past of all of us that would need a long, tiresome explanation to a +newcomer, and you are newcomers. To explain all of the past to everyone +would be an impossible task. You need know only that Druga, champion of +mankind, and his lovely Feronia, face now the most awful menace of their +lives, and unknowing of it, too, for thinking their arch enemy slain!</p> + +<p>Where do all our characters live? In Fantasia, a land far away. A land +where wondrous things always happen. It is of one of the most wondrous +adventures of all that you are about to hear now—let the past lie, cold +and dead as it is, and come with me into the present, and into <i>danger</i>!</p> + +<p>Who am I? Does it make any difference? If you must know, I am the Red +Dwarf, and I have seen and recorded <i>everything</i>! I was there, and if +you can but understand, everything has happened <i>because</i> I was there! +If it were not so, how could you be sure what I tell is true? For it +<i>is</i> true....</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>It was evening. As Druga and Feronia sat talking, before retiring, the +horror fell upon them.</p> + +<p>Feronia's hair fell like a living torrent to fondle her gleaming +shoulders and toy everywhere with the strangely electric invisible +vitality of her glowing skin. Her eyes were molten pools, dark and +liquid as the waters of the lost caverns, and the brows above them were +mystic lines of beauty left by the touch of a raven wing. Her generous +mouth was smiling the wondrous lovely magic that was Feronia, red as a +new-born rose, dewy and waiting for Druga. Her capable hands were soft +with expecting him, and cooler than the moss beneath the fern.</p> + +<p>Her breasts were as naked as sun-bleached coral, white as a cloud in a +summer sky, white as truth, white as her own teeth laughing +tantalizingly at him.</p> + +<p>Quite suddenly, shockingly, her lovely figure became transfused with a +vile, interloping energy that struck at Druga's sensitivities with a +sickening piercingness, so that he sprang to his feet in fear.</p> + +<p>Standing there helplessly, Druga watched the evil energy transform the +strong, deep breasted beauty of his Feronia, change her devilishly and +subtly and gradually before his suffering eyes.</p> + +<p>The white magic of her body became transfused with dark, throbbing +force, and as she strove to rise and act, Druga saw that she could not +move her limbs in any way!</p> + +<p>Before his eyes her skin turned black as ebony, her eyes became stony +and fixed; even the sweet curling of her hair became hard and solid, her +whole body became changed to black, hated stone.</p> + +<p>As suddenly as the horrible pulsing had come, it went away, leaving +Druga that least of all desirable women, one of virtuous stone.</p> + +<p>So with one stroke Dionaea repaid Druga and Feronia; Druga by the loss +of his best beloved, and Feronia by the retention of her faculties in a +body of stone. That Feronia had to sit immovable and watch poor Druga in +his grief and loss was particularly excruciating.</p> + +<p>Days of horror dragged by.</p> + +<p>No matter what he proposed to do upon arising, mid-morning found him +reclining before the frozen statue-like body of his beloved, and night +would come down at last to hide the black stone of Feronia from his wet +eyes.</p> + +<p>This existence became at last unbearable, and he resolved to go out into +the world and seek some means of making his days less horrible to him. +That Feronia was not dead, and that he might have obtained her release +by appealing to some greater power, did not occur to Druga in his grief. +Indeed he could never become accustomed to the ways of witches and their +overlords, nor to thinking in terms of magic at all. He was a logical +person, and no matter what wonders he blundered into and saw with his +own eyes, he never quite believed any of it.</p> + +<p>It was with a heavy heart that Druga sealed up the doors of Feronia's +home and made his sad way to the stable, mounted and rode slowly away.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>All night he rode, not choosing his way, but letting the horse do the +thinking, and in the warm sun of late morning lay down to sleep where +the horse had led him.</p> + +<p>As the days passed in heedless wandering, the deep hurt of his loss +lessened, and he began to take note of the road that led ever on and on +to he knew not what, except that it beckoned, as paths and highways +alike have a way of doing to the traveler.</p> + +<p>As his spirits became lighter, he began to take stock of the country +through which he passed, and to note all the strange and curious things +that hovered always just outside normal vision. They were not hidden +from Druga, who had more than ordinary vision, one of Feronia's witch +gifts to him, and many a strange fact of life he picked up from the +circumambient apparent emptiness.</p> + +<p>It was with this far-seeing sense that Druga now noticed a glowing, +golden vibrance spreading an invisible, but terrifically felt glory, all +across the northern horizon. He turned the horse's head toward that +glory, no more able to avoid the decision than is a moth the flame.</p> + +<p>What it was that he sensed he did not surely know, but his memory +supplied him with vague and haunting clues which he could not quite drag +out into the light of reason. It did not stand to reason, but there it +was ahead, the lure of woman augmented by some magic into a glory +visible as sunlight, strong as some great whirlpool of energy, drawing +him resistlessly on and on.</p> + +<p>Many a mile later, Druga came to a point where he could see with his +eyes on ahead and into the shining core of that field of golden +vibrance.</p> + +<p>"One of the universal poles of life!" cried Druga. In his studies Druga +had learned that just as the world has a North and South magnetic pole, +so does the universe have opposite poles of life-magnetic-energy. One of +these is female, and inducts in all life a female nature; the other is +male and inducts in all life a male nature, just as the North and South +pole induct in all iron and in kindred matter a North and South magnetic +pole.</p> + +<p>"It is no wonder it draws me, it is the force which makes all life +attractive to all other life...."</p> + +<p>Druga knew that there was no use his trying to resist the attraction any +more than a compass could resist pointing north. So he rode onward into +the glory, musing that it was strange this universal pole of infinite +space should, in its drifting, have crossed his own path upon this +planet.</p> + +<p>As he neared the center of the increasing ecstasy, Druga's mind and body +became cleaned of all desires but one, and that was to reach the exact +center and there remain. Along with others, his affection for Feronia +was burned away, leaving him helpless in the grip of this emotion +greater by far than any other.</p> + +<p>Glory, golden ecstatic glory, poured through him in a titanic flood, and +nearer and nearer he came to the shining central core of the mighty +field of universal energy.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>As he came at last to clear vision of the core, he saw floating there a +vast, circular disk of golden hue, and upon the disk a tremendous +mansion. Beneath the disk was only the shining golden air, and it came +to Druga that this mansion must be a singularly pleasant place to live. +He cast about for some means of lifting himself across the space of +nothingness that separated the dull earth and the shining plane of the +disk. So near to the delightful power that drew, and yet so impossible +to get nearer because of the nothingness between him and the disk, Druga +at last rode on beneath and on to the very center of the shining +darkness beneath the great disk.</p> + +<p>Now he was truly at the pole and dynamic source of female magnetic +attraction! Shaking in every fibre with the blasting force of the +terrific center of this universal power, Druga stood, a moth caught up +in a whirlpool too great to understand or withstand; and he would have +died there after a time, unable to move from the spot.</p> + +<p>But overhead the great disk suddenly showed a light, a beam of ruby red +that laddered down to him through the golden murk of energy, and above +that beam of ruby light he made out a shining form that beckoned to him. +Trying to answer the invitation, Druga put out a hand to the red beacon +and found it solid to his touch, a rod of crystal, thick as a man's body +and with hand-holds and foot-steps hewn into it. He got off the horse +and ascended the weird ladder toward the shining being who beckoned.</p> + +<p>A woman divinely tall and with hair like ripened wheat, modelled of +hammered sunlight, her glowing flesh surcharged with the infinite female +energies of the Universal Pole, met him at the topmost step of the +ladder.</p> + +<p>He stepped out into the halls of the mansion by her side, unable to +speak with the ecstasy that poured from her. For such was the nature of +that disk, that it concentrated the magnetic flow of the Pole field so +that it emanated solely from the body of this woman.</p> + +<p>She drew a robe of the purest blue about her glowing body, to insulate +and screen off the terrific irresistible force. His mind speculated +constantly and intriguingly on what would happen to him if she should +desire him and cast off this protective robe?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>So thinking, Druga walked beside her vital beauty, noting the deep +lagoons of her eyes upon him, curious, blue as the sea, shaded by long +lashes of dusky amber shielding from him some deep wisdom that she must +keep from him just yet. Try as he might he could not plumb the swirling +depths within her mind. Reach as he would he could find there nothing to +read but pictured vastnesses of strange beauty and violent passions +strongly withheld, nooks and crannies of mysterious, unreadable thought +far beyond his understanding to interpret. His senses turned away from +the inner mysterious glory of her mind, and his eyes came to rest on her +lips, crimson arches riper than tropic flowers, moist as with desire, +wide and capable and smiling upon him with a woman's will to captivate +twinkling all along the crimson outline of her smile. Behind her lips +her teeth gleamed, almost avid, parted in a hunger that he did not then +care to understand. Her breasts were ripe and full, beneath the blue, +shielding robe, her waist a column of cunningly tapered ivory rounding +into hips and thighs of masterful curves, moving with mysterious woman +magic beneath the vaguely transparent shimmer of her robe.</p> + +<p>Druga stared into the blue lagoons of her eyes, and at last asked what +was closest to his heart.</p> + +<p>"Who and what are you, who lives here at the summit of female attraction +in all the universe?"</p> + +<p>"In ancient times, many were the men who were alive enough to sense this +pole and come questing to me as the moth to the flame. But in these +times, who are you to sense the mighty energy of the Universal Pole and +be drawn here to me?"</p> + +<p>"I am Druga, and I am sad and bereft, and I wander seeking death as much +as life. If the name tells you anything, you are welcome to the +information. I am no immortal. Are you then one of those who do not +die?"</p> + +<p>"I have been called by many names in the past, but men sometimes +remember me as Aurora. Others have called me Eos."</p> + +<p>"A fool is easily convinced, immortal Eos. But though I have not lived +long, I have learned that appearances are deceiving and not to be +trusted. How do I know that I am not out of my mind, and this place and +yourself but delusions?"</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> in a state, aren't you? You must tell me all about it; there +will be plenty of time. For there is no way for a man to leave here of +his own will."</p> + +<p>"What became of all those visitors you tell me came here in the old +time?"</p> + +<p>Eos laughed loudly, a clear ringing laugh.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you had better worry about that, Druga! What do you suppose +could have happened to them?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + + +<p>Eos led him into a great feasting chamber, and Druga saw there a great +host of men sitting, as to a feast, side by side.</p> + +<p>Each one of them was of solid black stone. The fact struck Druga's mind +with a terrible impact. With a face like thunder he said:</p> + +<p>"So it was you who turned my Feronia to stone, to drag me here to you by +your spells, and then when you tire of me to turn me likewise into +stone?"</p> + +<p>The woman recoiled from his murderous rage, crying out in a shocked +voice, a voice of virtue unjustly accused:</p> + +<p>"Surely you don't think that I had anything to do with this? These men +are the curse an enemy has put upon me; and every creature that I ever +loved she has turned into stone soon or late and left me here alone +forever. There is no cruelty like the cruelty of Diana Triformis."</p> + +<p>The rage passed slowly from Druga, and left him weak and glad that his +hands had not found their way to that glorious throat, as they had +seemed about to do. For here was a woman who had suffered the same loss +as he.</p> + +<p>"Eos, we must take thought together, for it seems we have a common +enemy. My own Feronia, a woman such as was only created by the Gods once +in all Time, was turned into similar black stone before my eyes not long +ago. We have a common enemy, and we must find a remedy for this curse +she puts upon us. Else I will go through life as you have gone, with +everything pleasant removed from it."</p> + +<p>The artful eyes of Eos softened, and that mystery living in their depths +lightened, her arms became soft pillars of the temple of her beauty as +she lowered herself into the big chair at the head of that gloomy +feasting board of death. Druga picked up the big body of one of the +stone figures, carried it lightly to the side of the hall, and set it +there on a bench. Then he took the vacant place at the board beside the +queen of the palace of the dead.</p> + +<p>Druga related to Eos all the events that had transpired since the +lopping off of Dionaea's head. She surmised, as did he, that this deed +was the one that had led Diana to turn the spell of the black stone +loose upon Druga as upon Eos.</p> + +<p>"There must be found a way of turning the spells of this Goddess into +harmless attempts," said Druga. "We cannot sit here and wait for her +cruelty to work us greater harm. What can we do?"</p> + +<p>"I have had long long years to plan a revenge upon her, but nothing I +have been able to do has had any effect," Eos said.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The desire that Druga could no more help than he could help breathing, +looking upon the pole of all desire that shone its energies through the +flesh of Eos, now spoke, and Druga said with a tongue that was thick:</p> + +<p>"Then, Eos, the very next time that Diana happens to think of you, I too +will become stone, and if we are to have joy of each other, we had +better have it soon, before I become as these others you have loved."</p> + +<p>Eos looked at him sadly, her lips glistening with an unearthly dew and +her eyes shining like chained lightnings.</p> + +<p>"It was that thought that betrayed me every time, Druga. Each of those +men said much those same words to me when he learned the fate that +awaited him, and for each of them my heart turned to water and we spent +our time in dalliance instead of spending our energies trying to +overcome the work of my enemy.</p> + +<p>"For each of them I tried to give all there was of pleasure while they +yet had breath, as one tries to give water to a man about to die of +fever. I was only that much more hurt by their death—for such giving of +the self opens one to the deepest pangs of parting.</p> + +<p>"That is the agony Diana designed for me, and she has done this to me +since that time I brought a young man to her island that was sacred to +her only. This time, Druga, there will be none of that for us; we will +try some other medicine than love for each other against this evil. +Work, we will try!"</p> + +<p>"There speaks my dead Feronia," murmured Druga, sadly. And for thought +of her he forgot to feel the denial of his desire for the body of this +woman, a body filled with the energies of the whole Universal Pole of +female magnetism. That he should lose that glory was nothing beside the +pang he felt at thought of Feronia; and the wise Eos smiled to note that +this man had not forgotten his love even in the face of her infinite +attraction.</p> + +<p>"If we went back to Feronia's home, might it not be that her work would +give you some inkling of how Diana might be overcome?" Druga was +thoughtful.</p> + +<p>"I can only try," Eos answered him. "We will go there. I will examine +her work and her notes, and you will show me her laboratories that I +have heard of even here. Together, we might get an answer."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Eos got up from the board, and went to a small chamber at the edge of +the disk. There her hands sent the disk slanting upward into the sky. As +they left the center of the pole of animal magnetism, Eos' body and face +changed subtly. Druga was released from the power of the pole's +attraction, and whether that was a good thing or not he could not say, +except that every atom of his body wanted to return there to that place +and remain.</p> + +<p>"How is it, Eos, that the pole does not repel your female nature as it +attracts the male? Would it not repel an ordinary woman so that she +could not approach it?"</p> + +<p>"In that you are wrong, Druga. The nature of this life-energy is not the +same as ordinary iron magnetism. Like poles do not repel, but are +unaffected. It is in fact only invigorating to me, making me stronger. +So it would be if you were at the other end of the universe. At the male +pole you would be vastly invigorated, not repelled. Do you understand?"</p> + +<p>"It is only sad that the poles lie at opposite ends of the universe," +murmured Druga, looking askance at Eos.</p> + +<p>"Whatever might you be thinking, Druga? If such power arced between man +and woman they would be consumed!"</p> + +<p>"But what a death, what a death," murmured Druga. Her sudden laughter +rang through the hall of death incongruously, and at the sound they fell +silent again and did not speak for thinking of the corpses waiting there +for what would never come.</p> + +<p>"How many men has Diana and her friends killed through the years? Enough +to populate a couple of planets, I should say?"</p> + +<p>"Diana? With her bow and arrows alone she used to account for a good +many; and later, as she learned more evil arts, there was no record +kept. She has been a most evil goddess, yet men worship her."</p> + +<p>"Why? A goddess that kills a man for seeing her is a fiend! And her +maidens may not see a man, either. It is a strange life she leads, for a +true woman. She must be other than female."</p> + +<p>"That could be, Druga," murmured Eos.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The morning sun glittered from the streams and from the little glass +foot-bridge that shimmered magically across and up in a great arc to the +door in the side of the cliff. Eos sighed at the beauty.</p> + +<p>"This wife of yours was a housekeeper, I note, with an eye for art."</p> + +<p>"Her art and her work were always first, Eos. She was an uncommon hard +woman to get used to, but she made a man of me."</p> + +<p>"That I can see," agreed Eos, and Druga looked at her twice to know what +she meant. "You owe everything to Feronia, according to you, and nothing +to yourself."</p> + +<p>"Very little, Goddess. But I do not exaggerate, she was...."</p> + +<p>"Well, never mind it now. I grow weary of Feronia this and Feronia that. +I will judge for myself whether she understood you or no."</p> + +<p>"She was extremely understanding," said Druga.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Days passed, and much hard work, Eos studying the laboratory notes of +Feronia, and Druga himself reading them over and trying to think of some +way he himself might strike back at their mutual enemy.</p> + +<p>"Nothing that she has developed can be used directly against Diana +without her surviving to fight back. This would have been fatal to +Dionaea, but after all, as you have said—she is dead."</p> + +<p>"She ought to be dead, I cut her head off!"</p> + +<p>"That usually does the trick."</p> + +<p>They decided to leave the laboratory the next morning, and that evening +Druga picked up the stone statue of his Feronia and carried it carefully +aboard the disk, placing her there—one woman among the thousand-odd +dead heroes of the long dead past. Druga sadly made a place for her at +the head of the board. He did not think of it, but Feronia now sat where +Eos herself had spent many a sad hour, sitting and gazing at her dead +lovers.</p> + +<p>With the stone Feronia gone, the vast and multiplex-walled chambers of +mystery and magic assumed a new atmosphere, and Druga found himself +talking to Eos that night as if he was not a man whose heart was dead.</p> + +<p>She sat in the place from which he had removed the black stone body of +Feronia, and Druga could not help but compare the glowing life of her +with the dead thing that had sat there.</p> + +<p>The hammered sunlight of her hair made curls and waves of beauty about +the white shores of her shoulders. She had let the robe of insulative +blue drop from her, exposing the very heart of her beauty he had feared +to see when she was herself filled with the flow of the Pole of Life +Energy. And Druga wondered a little whether she were not still somehow +the center and pivot of the energy, for his senses reeled with looking, +and his will crumbled into forgotten ashes. He sank to the silken couch +beside her, and his eyes burned with flashing energies like meteors +plunging into the Northern lights.</p> + +<p>Eos held her breath, and her eyes burned into his with greater and +greater force, for she had been dreaming and weeping and waiting there +at the Pole-of-all-Life for so many cold empty years—waiting for the +curse to be lifted so that she could begin to live again.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>With the last shred of her own will Eos murmured: "Let us go into the +disk and leave at once for Armora, and think no more of each other or +surely we will sink into the raptures we desire and forget to fight. +Then I will awake and find you too turned into stone, and myself again +alone against her. I have been unable to fight alone."</p> + +<p>"If that is your will, do not fail to shield your beauty with that robe +you wear. For I cannot resist the power in your loveliness any more than +a straw in the wind!"</p> + +<p>Eos closed the robe against his gaze, and like two people weighted down +with lead in every limb, they got up and went out of the darkened +chambers, and Druga closed the great doors and locked them. Silently, +not touching each other, they walked down the bridge of glass.</p> + +<p>They entered the mansion on the disk, and Eos sent it sharply upward. +There was blood on her lower lip where she had bit it, and Druga's nails +had bitten into his palms.</p> + +<p>Druga noted that the great golden glow in the sky had approached near to +the valley that Feronia had made her home, and he said:</p> + +<p>"This pole of life seems to follow you about! Is there some relation +between you and it, so that you cannot be apart?"</p> + +<p>Eos looked at him, smiling sadly, her eyes far-off with other thoughts.</p> + +<p>"I have been taught, in the far past, that there was a Mother of Life, a +real woman, mighty and majestic beyond thinking, who lived there at the +pole and ordered life to be as it should be. That she is my ancestor, +and that there is some relation between the life energies and myself, +may be true, Druga. Whether the pole follows me, or whether coincidence +is governed by some magic so that we are never far apart, I know not. +Knowledge is a thing now lost from life, as we know it, Druga. We can +only guess at these truths, and never learn them surely."</p> + +<p>"Now you are not telling me all you know, Eos."</p> + +<p>"I would not tell you what I only guess, Druga. And I do not surely know +anything, any more. I have spent so much time brooding and alone."</p> + +<p>"Forgive me, Eos. An eagle cannot fly with crows, and I will never again +put myself forward. When you have need of me, I will be here, and when +you need only your own thoughts, why then go apart; I will not seek you +out. I forget who and what you are, for my senses are strained beyond +endurance with the power of you."</p> + +<p>"You are no crow, Druga. But in me is an adult mind, and you are as a +child, whom I must teach and raise up gradually to my estate. Every +parent grows impatient of ignorance in their offspring. One day, if time +keeps treading the self-same mill, we will be crushed together like +grapes and pressed clean. Until then, be my knight, and think not of me, +except with pity for the broken heart that beats inside me."</p> + +<p>Druga did not look at her more, but went in and sat at the board where +the thousand dead stared, each stony eye broodingly centered upon the +spot where he had placed Feronia. And as Druga's eye likewise centered +upon that seat that had been the scene of a thousand deaths, he felt a +wave of anger from the stony body of Feronia, and a sense of guilt came +over him. He felt remorse that he should forget her and desire Eos. If +he had known that those eyes were not dead, but seeing and remembering +all that passed before them, he would have been shivering with fear of +her anger. But Druga did not know. Yet it seemed to his senses that each +of those eyes was likewise angry with him, and he got up in haste from +that table of dead men and one dead woman, and went and drank wine by +himself until sleep came.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>With the first rays of morning light Eos woke him, and Druga learned +that she had lowered the disk over the garden of live-oaks beside the +palace of Dionaea, and Druga looked out. No one was yet astir; they had +not yet been seen. Druga and Eos descended by the ladder of ruby glass, +and went side by side through the garden and Druga took the stairs he +knew well up to the sleeping chamber of Dionaea. For in the many-locked +cabinets of that chamber were her many acquisitions of magical +apparatus, and if anything was there that would help them, they meant to +find it.</p> + +<p>As they entered the room, opening the door with a pick-lock, Eos cried +out in a triumphant voice:</p> + +<p>"We are not in vain. The Queen is not dead, Druga!"</p> + +<p>The sleepy-eyed Dionaea poked her head above the covers at the sound of +their entry. At sight of them, she hissed like a great snake, and +writhed the long hideous body of Baena free of the encumbrance of the +quilts, and Baena reared his own hideous, fanged head up beside +Dionaea's.</p> + +<p>Druga stood astonished to see the fabled Amphis-Baena here in the bed of +Dionaea, and with the head of Dionaea! A great laugh broke from him to +see the reptilian change the grafting had wrought in Dionaea's beauty.</p> + +<p>Dionaea did not say anything, but Baena coiled swiftly on the bed and +struck out full length, his fangs meeting in Druga's arm. Druga felt the +terrible venom, like fire in his veins, and seized the great +serpent-head in his two hands, squeezing in terrible anger. But Eos +seized him.</p> + +<p>"No, do not kill her! Carry her into the disk, and make her captive. I +have conceived of a way of conquering Diana, and we need this creature +alive."</p> + +<p>Druga wrapped the great body around and around his body and arm, seizing +the neck of Dionaea in one hand and the neck of Baena in the other. So +burdened, he staggered down the steps and up again into the disk, and +the trip took him a good hour, for Baena twisted loose and tried to +flee, and he wrestled and fell from the ladder, and only succeeded by +tying the writhing pillar of strength into a bow-knot and pulling it up +into the ship with a rope.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Meanwhile the people of Armora had awakened from the tumult, and crowded +everywhere about the gardens, getting underfoot and wondering loudly +what this was all about. Eos hurried from the bed chamber of their Queen +with a great bundle of material she had selected as of possible future +use. They tried to stop her, but one glance of the potent magnetic power +that flamed from her great eyes sent them all to their knees in +worshipful, helpless adoration.</p> + +<p>Druga, waiting above with the snake wound round with ropes and lashed to +the pillars, watched this evidence of her powers with awe, for he had +himself but narrowly escaped the swords of the guards, and had been +about to plunge down the ladder with his own sword in a futile attempt +to rescue Eos.</p> + +<p>She sent the disk spinning upward in flight, and Druga took himself from +her and went and sat by the writhing, fettered body of the Amphis-Baena, +or Dionaea-Baena, or two-headed snake, saying to her as she spat venom +at him:</p> + +<p>"Listen to me, Dionaea, the best thing you can do for yourself is to try +to win the favor of Eos. She is an enemy who has suffered as greatly as +yourself from the work of Diana, and would help you if you earned it, to +acquire a human body again. I think the snake himself would like that +better too. He is too greatly married, I would say, to relish the state +overmuch."</p> + +<p>Baena relaxed at these words, and ceased to struggle. Then in great +snake hisses, he made himself heard.</p> + +<p>"Dionaea, I think too you should seize this opportunity to get out of +this fix we are in. I gave you my tail to roost upon as a temporary +measure, not as a permanent part of my future. Diana, whom we both +serve, could have released us if she had been so inclined, and fixed us +up with separate bodies, but she chose not."</p> + +<p>That Dionaea was considering his words was evident. She ceased to spit +at him, and composed her face into thought. Druga leaned back and +smiled.</p> + +<p>Eos brought the disk to rest again at the meadow at the foot of the +glass bridge before Feronia's cliff palace, and came in to them. She +stood gazing at the two-headed creature trussed to the pillars of the +chamber. Feronia gazed at them with her stone eyes, and all the men +gazed at Feronia as if transfixed by her stony beauty, and the sight +made Dionaea shiver with apprehension. For she thought that these were +people who had angered Eos and that Eos had changed them into stone. She +wondered why Eos had added Feronia to the collection.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + + +<p>Eos sat beside Feronia and watched the great, writhing two-headed +Dionaea, and waited. After a time the flowing golden bands of +Life-energy entered, focusing subtly all about her, so that she seemed +to Dionaea truly to be the Mother of All, and the greatest of All +Goddesses anywhere.</p> + +<p>At the entrance of the golden energy Eos smiled with relief, for now she +had a power that she had not thought to use against Diana before. For to +Eos this aversion to all men of the Goddess Diana spelled out the +message of her weakness, and this energy of the life pole was going to +pierce that weakness.</p> + +<p>Day dragged after day, and the weird scene there in the banquet hall of +the stone men of the past became to Druga a tense place of waiting for +his own demise and change into a similar relic to decorate this hall of +death. For Eos would not tell him what she planned for fear he would +give her away in the tense moments that were to come when Diana at last +rejoined her Dionaea in their strange dual existence.</p> + +<p>The inducted energies of the female pole had a most disturbing effect +upon the mingled male and female of the Amphis-Baena.</p> + +<p>Baena, driven half mad by the increased female qualities of the head of +Dionaea, made inadvertent love to her, caressing her face with his long +forked tongue, and combing at her tangled hair with his fangs, always +Baena was distraught with her attraction. This attention drove the woman +near frantic, strained as she was in her unnatural condition, and she +could not afford to anger the beast whose body she had been grafted +upon. For even a serpent has been known to swallow its tail, and Dionaea +had no desire to know if Baena could do that trick.</p> + +<p>Eos, sitting quietly and watching the bound serpent, smiled at this +continual by-play, and offered to release Dionaea for revealing her +knowledge of Diana, so that some chink in her armor might be found. Not +that Eos now needed any such thing, but she was kind-hearted, and wanted +Baena at least on her side. For she could see into the dual life and +thought of the two-headed monster, and knew that if Baena chose to set +his will against Diana when she was within the body and mind of +Dionaea—it would help her in what she planned.</p> + +<p>"Baena," Eos at last said, "if you can find a way to help me against +this unnatural mistress of your mistress, I will repay you by giving you +anything you may ask of me."</p> + +<p>Baena looked at Dionaea's head with the reptilian love-light glowing +frustrate in his great green-and-gold eyes.</p> + +<p>"If you will promise to give me what is in my mind that I desire, why +then when the time comes I will see what I can do. I am weary of being +the tail when I was meant to be the head, and if I had it to do over, +this unnatural and self-willed appendage would remain in her proper +place."</p> + +<p>Now Eos knew that Baena could not help desiring Dionaea as a mate, for +she seemed most reptilian in the strange snake-growth that had come over +her, and knowingly she nodded at Baena, so that he knew that she knew +what he wanted, but Dionaea did not know, for it never occurred to her. +To Eos, what the future might bring to Dionaea as the mate of a snake +seemed a proper revenge for what she had done in aiding Diana, and for +other cruelties of which Druga had told her. She planned accordingly.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Came that day which was the time appointed by Diana Triformis for her +visit to Dionaea. Much as she detested the need for entering the male +body of Baena to interview Dionaea, still Dionaea had been a valuable +ally, and Diana did intend in time to release her and give her again a +human body.</p> + +<p>To this end she had made some inquiries as to how this might be done. +For in truth the method of doing so had evaded her mind in the +excitement and rage of finding what had happened, and in the task of the +spell she had created to turn Feronia into a stone image. For Diana knew +that what Baena had accomplished she could accomplish, certainly, and +the shame of forgetting how it might be done before the wise Baena's +critical eyes made her neglect to mention her intentions to either of +the two heads of the snake.</p> + +<p>As the swirl of ethereal force that was Diana's traveling form settled +within the golden-moted atmosphere of the great chamber of the +disk-mansion, Eos stood up, and dropped from her body her insulating +blue robe of shimmering magic, so that her supercharged beauty shone +everywhere in blinding, awful attraction.</p> + +<p>Druga, who had been sitting disconsolately talking to himself, rose to +his feet like an automaton and walked toward that more than mortal +beauty, his eyes blinded and his senses wholly submerged in ecstasy at +the sight of the glory of Eos unveiled. As he reached the Goddess he put +out his arms like a sleepwalker to take her to him, but she avoided him, +seizing him by a wrist and turning him about, hissing in his ear, +imperatively:</p> + +<p>"Now prove to me that you are truly a mighty man of his word, with +courage and strength, and in spite of this body of mine go out of this +chamber and wait till I call without once letting your attention turn +toward me or noting anything that goes on, else are we both lost!"</p> + +<p>Like a man weighted down with lead on his feet, Druga strove to obey +her, moving inch by slow inch away from that vast flood of energetic +attraction.</p> + +<p>Eos watched him move slowly away from her, every muscle standing out on +his body and his neck corded with effort to keep his head turned away, +and a vast admiration for him rose in her throat and choked her. It +seemed to her that the statue of Feronia moved and that the stone face +changed, suffused for an instant with admiration also.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The swirling purple cloud of Diana's entrance moved nearer to Dionaea, +for in the hyper-space of her travelling, the points and dimensions of +this world were much alike, and she did not realize that Dionaea was not +in her palace at Armora. Settling about the two-headed creature lashed +fast to the pillars of the chamber, she moved herself within the snake +body and came to rest within the body of Baena, the snake.</p> + +<p>Looking out of the dual heads of Dionaea and Baena now, Diana Triformis, +who was no stranger to dual and triple existence even in the same body, +saw with those four eyes the naked body of Eos, reflecting, emanating, +giving off in vast floods the focused energies of the Pole of Female +Life-energy, and those four eyes fastened hypnotized upon that glory, +female beyond any other life in all space.</p> + +<p>Eos moved closer and closer to the bound snake, murmuring soft words:</p> + +<p>"Oh, Diana, wonderful one, long have I desired you, for I know your +secret, that you are not female as your body seems, but male. So I have +decided to have you for myself, for I am weary of men, and want only the +boy Diana himself for my love, forever. Come to me, Diana, and dwell +with me here at the pole of love, and never leave me. Can you not see +that the enmity that has sprung up between us is the result of +misunderstood love!"</p> + +<p>Now Baena, seeing his opportunity, thrust his own male personality to +the fore, trying to sway the intricate balance of sexes in the weird +self of Diana—and with his mind and his eyes upon Eos, made himself to +desire that infinite female attraction, which was not hard, so as to add +that much weight to the attraction which even a God might not resist +unless, as Druga had done, he turned his back upon it.</p> + +<p>Diana could <i>not</i> turn her back, and the whole sudden surprise of +finding herself not in the palace in Armora, but here in the halls of +her erstwhile enemy, Eos of the Dawn-light, made her natural male +attributes become dominant so that she desired Eos mightily.</p> + +<p>Trapped thus by the circumstances, the lashed serpent body of Baena +which insisted upon gazing steadily at the vast and overwhelming beauty +of the unveiled body of Eos, and by the ignorance of Dionaea as to what +was going on, by her own masculine nature into desiring this essence of +all female attraction, Diana gazed upon Eos while the energies sent by +Eos' skill coursed in greater and greater ecstacy through her.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>So it was that Diana fell in love with Eos, as Eos desired, and with the +Gods, love is an overmastering passion that may not be resisted.</p> + +<p>Now Eos and the trapped spirit of Diana conversed together, and at the +subtle words of Eos and the overmastering attraction, Diana swirled out +of the body of Baena and settled engrossed about the glowing glory that +was Eos. Inward she was drawn, and mated there in mysterious communion +with the Goddess.</p> + +<p>"If you but had a strong male body, Diana, we could live here forever in +love and ecstasy. Why not return one of the stone men of the past into +flesh again, become a man instead of half-woman as in the past—and so +learn anew to live and love differently and gloriously...."</p> + +<p>Such were Eos' words, made potent by the golden glowing energies within +her, swaying the bemused Diana to her will. And Diana, with Eos' hands, +went to the wall cabinets and set out certain magical apparatus, brewing +an antidote for the stony seizure she had sent to Eos' lovers in the +past. This liquid she poured over the male of stone that Eos selected, +and even as the stone man stirred and quickened into life again, her +ethereal self whirled out of Eos and settled into the reanimated flesh +of the man.</p> + +<p>When he arose to his feet and spoke, it was Diana herself who spoke and +not the man who had loved Eos long ago. What this desecration of her +past love meant to Eos we shall not know, for she hid it beneath +languishing glances and subtle swayings of her body, drawing Diana to +her, wrapping her arms about the reanimated being, and walking with the +new male Diana out of the room and so to her own chambers.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Druga, as Eos had foreseen, had been unable to contain his curiosity as +to what was going on, and had at last peered from the hallway where he +waited, just in time to see the purple swirl that was Diana settle into +and seem to reanimate the ancient long-dead stone image.</p> + +<p>The emotions natural to a man rose in him. He was not sure just what he +was seeing, but jealousy rose in him like a flame, and his passion so +steadfastly controlled and so rewarded by the fickle Eos made this +jealousy into a terrible, red rage against her who had withheld herself +from him only to give herself to her worst enemy in the form of a man.</p> + +<p>Druga, overcome with this jealous rage, strode out into the banquet hall +of dead men, took from the side of one of the dead men a great war-axe +of bronze, and hefting it in his hand as if it were a trembling feather +plume, strode after the two figures like the wrath of God.</p> + +<p>As Eos reclined sensuously upon her couch in her sleeping chamber, and +Diana in the man's body stretched beside her, bending back Eos' head and +planting there a burning kiss, Druga entered, and standing over the pair +like an outraged husband, shouted in a voice he was unable to make +articulate.</p> + +<p>"Of all contemptible females, you two are the most...."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>But the body of the man was equipped with a sword of antique but sturdy +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Eos, on her feet, had not expected Druga so quickly to knock the goddess +unconscious, and indeed the purple mist of her hyper-space 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 entity +that was Diana, Eos pulled the switch again open, and the black vortice +of space-force lessened and finally disappeared.</p> + +<p>That intense whirlpool of black energy had taken Diana back with it into +the terrible current of space. Diana would live—but only as a mote of +defeated consciousness whirled along forever into the depths of space by +forces too great to fight.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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 passed, and now a miracle! I am alive, and have you +once again! No other ever shall take you from me...."</p> + +<p>Druga picked up the axe that lay disregarded on the floor.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>The stranger eyed Druga scornfully. With a sudden gliding motion, he had +passed 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.</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"You philandering booby! 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—"</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +pass 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Baena's tail, which caused him great pain at the separation, she healed +by applying a salve, assuring 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.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>When Dionaea awoke and found herself with a female snake's body, and +Baena mooning over her like a lovesick coil of ship's hawser, she let +out strings of oaths such as no ship'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 +assured her she would get used to him or he would devour her and seek a +new mate elsewhere. With which assurance Dionaea ceased to curse and +began to fawn upon Baena, saying:</p> + +<p>"Why, how can you think it is your noble 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 glass into her own halls.</p> + +<p>"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...."</p> + +<p>"What you have in mind?"</p> + +<p>"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-space—for we might need it sometime in the future."</p> + +<p>"Which I devoutly pray you will not manage," murmured Druga, yawning. "I +am too tired to even think about such a thing tonight."</p> + +<p>With which words Druga stretched himself across the bed and straightway +began to snore, and Feronia, who had expected a warmer welcome home than +<i>that</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + + +<p>Now a witch's prayer is pretty apt to find its way to the God 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>That prayer contained some startling and incomplete information, and the +mention of the passing 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Now as the body of the great Goddess 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.</p> + +<p>Rosy to the tips of her fingers with embarrassment, 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.</p> + +<p>Mors' laughter made Eos blush till rosy was not the word for her.</p> + +<p>"My dear Eos, can this be you? I would hardly have expected it of you, +who have always been to me the personification of so many virtues...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mother Mors, I am glad to see you, in spite of this state of +affairs—you can help me. You must know what has happened?"</p> + +<p>"I can guess, but you had better explain from the beginning. Only a +woman could know what to do here, it seems." Mors glanced around at the +thousand and some virile males.</p> + +<p>"You know the Pole is responsible for bringing them here, and one by one +Diana turned them into stone as soon as my lonely heart turned to them +for affection."</p> + +<p>"It's a good story, but no one but me will ever believe it."</p> + +<p>Eos only looked pitifully at Mors, and Mors took her to her dark, soft +heart, and the vast strength of her poured into the vibrant soul of Eos, +mingled there with that golden energy that made her what she was.</p> + +<p>"Whatever I do is going to break their hearts—you know what this place +does to men. I cannot love them all, but I <i>do</i>, and I cannot send them +away empty-handed. You know what it <i>means</i> to them! It is really all +that cruel Diana's fault!</p> + +<p>"For ridding me of her I owe you a debt, and though you are but a child +to my ages of life, I will help you avoid ruining the lives of all these +fine men whom you have loved. Suppose I take them away with me, all but +one, and give them back their own time and place before they found their +way here—give them the will to want that life before they knew you, +would that comfort you?"</p> + +<p>"Only one?" murmured Eos, then blushed as she looked out over the +thousand-and-odd faces that stared at her accusingly.</p> + +<p>"Only one, and you must choose him carefully from among them all."</p> + +<p>"That will take some thought," said Eos, her face full of indecision. "I +loved each of them dearly."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Mors' face grew a little stern at that, and quickly Eos went on:</p> + +<p>"I'll attend to it directly, Mother Mors."</p> + +<p>"I have a little errand to attend to over at Feronia's, I will be back +in a few beats of Druga's stricken heart. You could at least have kept +your body hidden from him, out of respect for Feronia! I have not much +patience with your dilemma. After all, there are other places to live, +you know."</p> + +<p>"But not for me, Mors. It follows me about!"</p> + +<p>Mors' face grew even sterner, and Eos added:</p> + +<p>"Of course I <i>know</i> that is because of the peculiar nature of the metal +of which the disk is constructed, but <i>after all</i> you <i>know</i> it has been +my home for so <i>very</i> long, I couldn't be expected to give up my home, +could I?"</p> + +<p>Mors only lifted one great dark eyebrow and lifted suddenly into dark +whirling force and disappeared.</p> + +<p>Eos, her face tear-streaked, went slowly down the endless line of men, +examining each one carefully and cudgeling her memory to decide which +one she had loved the <i>very</i> most. It was <i>so</i> difficult.</p> + +<p>Mors, meanwhile, drifted into being over the sleeping Druga and the +praying Feronia, still on her knees, her face upraised and very sweet +with the dark-winged eyes closed, the long line of her throat sheer +beauty in the dim light.</p> + +<p>She touched the closed eyes softly with her potent fingertips, and +Feronia opened them with a new understanding gifted into their +structure. Then she softly entered Feronia's body and together they +peered down into the body and the thought of the sleeping man, and with +her dark fingertips vibrant with the energies of dark space, Mors went +over each little nerve and passage in the brain where the energies of +the disk and the Pole and the sight of the intense glory of Eros' body +had burned out Feronia's years of love.</p> + +<p>Everywhere she touched, a new awareness grew, centered and vitalized by +the presence of Mors within the body of Feronia, so that nowhere was +there any evidence of the loss of love, but only the beautiful memories +of Feronia alive again within his mind, and wherever desire lived in him +Mors touched her fingers, and planted a seed that would grow with good +treatment into vital love. As she worked, Feronia wept shamelessly with +thankfulness, and for every tiny node of love that Mors planted in +Druga, one sprouted likewise in Feronia, and some of them were for Druga +and some were natural gratitude to Mors for this work of replacement. +The sleeping Druga stirred and his arms came about Feronia's hips where +she stood by the bed. Mors sent her strange energies through the two +lovers, marrying them there with the potent blessing that is actual +magnetic mingling of being—and Feronia knew that only by abuse could +she lose this man again!</p> + +<p>"You are a good girl, Feronia, and you have a good man. I will visit you +again, if that <i>Dark Master</i> wills it."</p> + +<p>A chill went through the chamber at the mention of The Name, and Mors +went out with the strange ecstatic sweep of entity, and Feronia knew +what was meant by <i>God-head</i>.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Eos waited for a long time before Mors came again to her, for the +God-head required certain things of Mors for this night's work.</p> + +<p>As she at last reappeared to Eos, Eos did not note the terrific emotions +of love-ecstasy upon her face, the record of her touching with <i>the One</i> +upon the mention of him, and began to complain.</p> + +<p>"How can I give them up, Mors?"</p> + +<p>But Mors only looked at her with absent, flaming eyes, intent upon some +far thing, and for the first time Eos noted the vast and subtle change +in her, as if she had touched some vast fountain of beneficence +somewhere in the while she had been gone. Her cheeks were flushed, her +breast rising and falling. Mors was like a woman in love, or a Goddess +touched by the love of Jove, and Eos' eyes fell before her sublimely, +and only stood waiting for Mors to do what she must.</p> + +<p>So Mors absently gathered up all the thousand-and-some men, tucking them +into her bosom one by one, and whirled into the night with all but one.</p> + +<p>As the Goddess Mors disappeared, a sudden suspicion struck Eos, and she +whirled to look upon the man that was left behind.</p> + +<p>She burst into tears.</p> + +<p>The Red Dwarf reached out and patted her golden head. Then he stepped to +the controls and sent the disk winging swiftly away.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?" asked Eos, lifting her head in surprise, and +looking indignantly through her tears.</p> + +<p>"To the opposite Pole of Energy, my sweet one," said the Red Dwarf. "Be +patient a little while, and you will yet be supremely happy. Mother Mors +is very wise...."</p> + +<p>And Eos was very happy. You see, I <i>do</i> know, for I was there. If it +were not so, how could you be sure what I tell you is true? For it <i>is</i> +true....</p> + +<p>The wise will understand what I have written.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Daughter of the Night, by Richard S. Shaver + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAUGHTER OF THE NIGHT *** + +***** This file should be named 32822-h.htm or 32822-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/8/2/32822/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Shaver + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Daughter of the Night + +Author: Richard S. Shaver + +Release Date: June 15, 2010 [EBook #32822] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAUGHTER OF THE NIGHT *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + DAUGHTER OF THE NIGHT + + By RICHARD S. SHAVER + +[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December +1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. +copyright on this publication was renewed.] + + +[Sidenote: The evil magic of the Goddess Diana turned men to stone. +Would the power of the strange Eos be strong enough to turn them back to +living men?] + + +[Illustration: Like a flash of light the gleaming sword swept down] + + +Like a flash of light the gleaming sword swept down. A fraction of a +second later a portion of it no longer gleamed: it was crimson! And +Queen Dionaea's head bounced down the stairway into her garden of live +oaks. A few seconds of thought remained to it before it would be very +dead; but her thought was confused by shock--her eyes rolled +uncontrollably while she tried to remember some cantrap or rune from her +long association with the Goddess Diana. Desperately she tried to recite +the proper abracadabra to stay the swift death that was sweeping through +her mind; but it is hard for a head to chant a charm with no body to +draw a breath.... + +Druga, his job of execution finished, sheathed his bloody sword and +turning, stalked away. Thus it was that he did not see the amazing thing +that happened in the gloom of the ancient live oaks.... + +Baena was a serpent, a huge river of strength up to his giant head, and +he lived among the mighty branches of the oaks. Being a serpent, Baena +was far from equal to a human being in his brainpower, but even his dim +perception told him that harm had come to his one and only +benefactress--and that meant harm to him, too, for Queen Dionaea had +always cared for the needs of his stomach. Through her he ate and lived. +Without her, he would die. And so, he glided rapidly down from the trunk +of his favorite tree and emerged into the paths of the garden just as +Dionaea's bleeding head rolled out from the base of the steps. + +Baena coiled his length protectingly about Dionaea. For an instant he +was at a loss, noting her horribly desperate attempts to speak without +breath, her mouth opening and closing and her tongue licking snake-like +in and out. + +Baena realized after a moment that there was no hope for the Queen to go +on living. A head must have a body. + +Glancing about, Baena saw nothing but the numerous coils of _his own +body_, and after an instant's hesitation, he took his tail in his mouth +up to the tenth joint and bit it off! Shrinking along all his length +with the terrible necessity that faced him, Baena quickly slapped the +bloody stump of his tail fast to the bleeding neck of Dionaea and said +one of the few magic spells he could remember.... + + * * * * * + +Turning his body slowly until his severed nerves told his spine that the +connections were as accurate as could be expected, Baena waited while +the spell slowly took effect. He lay there all night, waiting for his +own life's blood to reanimate the mind of Dionaea. + +As Dionaea came back to her senses, Baena began to experience the +strange phenomena of wanting to go two ways at once, and as the +phenomena became more and more troublesome, he decided that he had +better have an understanding with Dionaea once and for all. But what +poor male ever won an argument with a woman? + +Thus it was that Baena resigned himself to a life of traveling backward, +and that was that. + +As a snake, he wished only to eat and bask in his favorite tree, but as +Dionaea, he wanted only one thing--and that with all the fervor of hate +a sorceress is capable of--a fitting revenge on the man who had visited +her execution upon her! + +Day and night Dionaea plotted, and in her mind a fitting revenge +grew--it would include the lovely Feronia, Druga's beloved.... Carefully +she prepared the incantation. + +It is here that my story really begins. What has happened, and how it +happened is of little consequence to what is to come--except perhaps to +introduce you to the characters. It is very simple. Dionaea was a very +evil sorceress, and Druga, most heroic of men, had long sought to bring +her into his power, and to end her evil days. Armed with the white magic +of Feronia, his loved one, who was also a sorceress, but one who worked +her charms only for the good of mankind, he had tracked Dionaea to her +castle, and there slain her. Or he would have, had it not been for +Baena, the serpent.... + +What is past is past. It is best not to think of it. There is much in +the past of all of us that would need a long, tiresome explanation to a +newcomer, and you are newcomers. To explain all of the past to everyone +would be an impossible task. You need know only that Druga, champion of +mankind, and his lovely Feronia, face now the most awful menace of their +lives, and unknowing of it, too, for thinking their arch enemy slain! + +Where do all our characters live? In Fantasia, a land far away. A land +where wondrous things always happen. It is of one of the most wondrous +adventures of all that you are about to hear now--let the past lie, cold +and dead as it is, and come with me into the present, and into _danger_! + +Who am I? Does it make any difference? If you must know, I am the Red +Dwarf, and I have seen and recorded _everything_! I was there, and if +you can but understand, everything has happened _because_ I was there! +If it were not so, how could you be sure what I tell is true? For it +_is_ true.... + + * * * * * + +It was evening. As Druga and Feronia sat talking, before retiring, the +horror fell upon them. + +Feronia's hair fell like a living torrent to fondle her gleaming +shoulders and toy everywhere with the strangely electric invisible +vitality of her glowing skin. Her eyes were molten pools, dark and +liquid as the waters of the lost caverns, and the brows above them were +mystic lines of beauty left by the touch of a raven wing. Her generous +mouth was smiling the wondrous lovely magic that was Feronia, red as a +new-born rose, dewy and waiting for Druga. Her capable hands were soft +with expecting him, and cooler than the moss beneath the fern. + +Her breasts were as naked as sun-bleached coral, white as a cloud in a +summer sky, white as truth, white as her own teeth laughing +tantalizingly at him. + +Quite suddenly, shockingly, her lovely figure became transfused with a +vile, interloping energy that struck at Druga's sensitivities with a +sickening piercingness, so that he sprang to his feet in fear. + +Standing there helplessly, Druga watched the evil energy transform the +strong, deep breasted beauty of his Feronia, change her devilishly and +subtly and gradually before his suffering eyes. + +The white magic of her body became transfused with dark, throbbing +force, and as she strove to rise and act, Druga saw that she could not +move her limbs in any way! + +Before his eyes her skin turned black as ebony, her eyes became stony +and fixed; even the sweet curling of her hair became hard and solid, her +whole body became changed to black, hated stone. + +As suddenly as the horrible pulsing had come, it went away, leaving +Druga that least of all desirable women, one of virtuous stone. + +So with one stroke Dionaea repaid Druga and Feronia; Druga by the loss +of his best beloved, and Feronia by the retention of her faculties in a +body of stone. That Feronia had to sit immovable and watch poor Druga in +his grief and loss was particularly excruciating. + +Days of horror dragged by. + +No matter what he proposed to do upon arising, mid-morning found him +reclining before the frozen statue-like body of his beloved, and night +would come down at last to hide the black stone of Feronia from his wet +eyes. + +This existence became at last unbearable, and he resolved to go out into +the world and seek some means of making his days less horrible to him. +That Feronia was not dead, and that he might have obtained her release +by appealing to some greater power, did not occur to Druga in his grief. +Indeed he could never become accustomed to the ways of witches and their +overlords, nor to thinking in terms of magic at all. He was a logical +person, and no matter what wonders he blundered into and saw with his +own eyes, he never quite believed any of it. + +It was with a heavy heart that Druga sealed up the doors of Feronia's +home and made his sad way to the stable, mounted and rode slowly away. + + * * * * * + +All night he rode, not choosing his way, but letting the horse do the +thinking, and in the warm sun of late morning lay down to sleep where +the horse had led him. + +As the days passed in heedless wandering, the deep hurt of his loss +lessened, and he began to take note of the road that led ever on and on +to he knew not what, except that it beckoned, as paths and highways +alike have a way of doing to the traveler. + +As his spirits became lighter, he began to take stock of the country +through which he passed, and to note all the strange and curious things +that hovered always just outside normal vision. They were not hidden +from Druga, who had more than ordinary vision, one of Feronia's witch +gifts to him, and many a strange fact of life he picked up from the +circumambient apparent emptiness. + +It was with this far-seeing sense that Druga now noticed a glowing, +golden vibrance spreading an invisible, but terrifically felt glory, all +across the northern horizon. He turned the horse's head toward that +glory, no more able to avoid the decision than is a moth the flame. + +What it was that he sensed he did not surely know, but his memory +supplied him with vague and haunting clues which he could not quite drag +out into the light of reason. It did not stand to reason, but there it +was ahead, the lure of woman augmented by some magic into a glory +visible as sunlight, strong as some great whirlpool of energy, drawing +him resistlessly on and on. + +Many a mile later, Druga came to a point where he could see with his +eyes on ahead and into the shining core of that field of golden +vibrance. + +"One of the universal poles of life!" cried Druga. In his studies Druga +had learned that just as the world has a North and South magnetic pole, +so does the universe have opposite poles of life-magnetic-energy. One of +these is female, and inducts in all life a female nature; the other is +male and inducts in all life a male nature, just as the North and South +pole induct in all iron and in kindred matter a North and South magnetic +pole. + +"It is no wonder it draws me, it is the force which makes all life +attractive to all other life...." + +Druga knew that there was no use his trying to resist the attraction any +more than a compass could resist pointing north. So he rode onward into +the glory, musing that it was strange this universal pole of infinite +space should, in its drifting, have crossed his own path upon this +planet. + +As he neared the center of the increasing ecstasy, Druga's mind and body +became cleaned of all desires but one, and that was to reach the exact +center and there remain. Along with others, his affection for Feronia +was burned away, leaving him helpless in the grip of this emotion +greater by far than any other. + +Glory, golden ecstatic glory, poured through him in a titanic flood, and +nearer and nearer he came to the shining central core of the mighty +field of universal energy. + + * * * * * + +As he came at last to clear vision of the core, he saw floating there a +vast, circular disk of golden hue, and upon the disk a tremendous +mansion. Beneath the disk was only the shining golden air, and it came +to Druga that this mansion must be a singularly pleasant place to live. +He cast about for some means of lifting himself across the space of +nothingness that separated the dull earth and the shining plane of the +disk. So near to the delightful power that drew, and yet so impossible +to get nearer because of the nothingness between him and the disk, Druga +at last rode on beneath and on to the very center of the shining +darkness beneath the great disk. + +Now he was truly at the pole and dynamic source of female magnetic +attraction! Shaking in every fibre with the blasting force of the +terrific center of this universal power, Druga stood, a moth caught up +in a whirlpool too great to understand or withstand; and he would have +died there after a time, unable to move from the spot. + +But overhead the great disk suddenly showed a light, a beam of ruby red +that laddered down to him through the golden murk of energy, and above +that beam of ruby light he made out a shining form that beckoned to him. +Trying to answer the invitation, Druga put out a hand to the red beacon +and found it solid to his touch, a rod of crystal, thick as a man's body +and with hand-holds and foot-steps hewn into it. He got off the horse +and ascended the weird ladder toward the shining being who beckoned. + +A woman divinely tall and with hair like ripened wheat, modelled of +hammered sunlight, her glowing flesh surcharged with the infinite female +energies of the Universal Pole, met him at the topmost step of the +ladder. + +He stepped out into the halls of the mansion by her side, unable to +speak with the ecstasy that poured from her. For such was the nature of +that disk, that it concentrated the magnetic flow of the Pole field so +that it emanated solely from the body of this woman. + +She drew a robe of the purest blue about her glowing body, to insulate +and screen off the terrific irresistible force. His mind speculated +constantly and intriguingly on what would happen to him if she should +desire him and cast off this protective robe? + + * * * * * + +So thinking, Druga walked beside her vital beauty, noting the deep +lagoons of her eyes upon him, curious, blue as the sea, shaded by long +lashes of dusky amber shielding from him some deep wisdom that she must +keep from him just yet. Try as he might he could not plumb the swirling +depths within her mind. Reach as he would he could find there nothing to +read but pictured vastnesses of strange beauty and violent passions +strongly withheld, nooks and crannies of mysterious, unreadable thought +far beyond his understanding to interpret. His senses turned away from +the inner mysterious glory of her mind, and his eyes came to rest on her +lips, crimson arches riper than tropic flowers, moist as with desire, +wide and capable and smiling upon him with a woman's will to captivate +twinkling all along the crimson outline of her smile. Behind her lips +her teeth gleamed, almost avid, parted in a hunger that he did not then +care to understand. Her breasts were ripe and full, beneath the blue, +shielding robe, her waist a column of cunningly tapered ivory rounding +into hips and thighs of masterful curves, moving with mysterious woman +magic beneath the vaguely transparent shimmer of her robe. + +Druga stared into the blue lagoons of her eyes, and at last asked what +was closest to his heart. + +"Who and what are you, who lives here at the summit of female attraction +in all the universe?" + +"In ancient times, many were the men who were alive enough to sense this +pole and come questing to me as the moth to the flame. But in these +times, who are you to sense the mighty energy of the Universal Pole and +be drawn here to me?" + +"I am Druga, and I am sad and bereft, and I wander seeking death as much +as life. If the name tells you anything, you are welcome to the +information. I am no immortal. Are you then one of those who do not +die?" + +"I have been called by many names in the past, but men sometimes +remember me as Aurora. Others have called me Eos." + +"A fool is easily convinced, immortal Eos. But though I have not lived +long, I have learned that appearances are deceiving and not to be +trusted. How do I know that I am not out of my mind, and this place and +yourself but delusions?" + +"You _are_ in a state, aren't you? You must tell me all about it; there +will be plenty of time. For there is no way for a man to leave here of +his own will." + +"What became of all those visitors you tell me came here in the old +time?" + +Eos laughed loudly, a clear ringing laugh. + +"Perhaps you had better worry about that, Druga! What do you suppose +could have happened to them?" + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Eos led him into a great feasting chamber, and Druga saw there a great +host of men sitting, as to a feast, side by side. + +Each one of them was of solid black stone. The fact struck Druga's mind +with a terrible impact. With a face like thunder he said: + +"So it was you who turned my Feronia to stone, to drag me here to you by +your spells, and then when you tire of me to turn me likewise into +stone?" + +The woman recoiled from his murderous rage, crying out in a shocked +voice, a voice of virtue unjustly accused: + +"Surely you don't think that I had anything to do with this? These men +are the curse an enemy has put upon me; and every creature that I ever +loved she has turned into stone soon or late and left me here alone +forever. There is no cruelty like the cruelty of Diana Triformis." + +The rage passed slowly from Druga, and left him weak and glad that his +hands had not found their way to that glorious throat, as they had +seemed about to do. For here was a woman who had suffered the same loss +as he. + +"Eos, we must take thought together, for it seems we have a common +enemy. My own Feronia, a woman such as was only created by the Gods once +in all Time, was turned into similar black stone before my eyes not long +ago. We have a common enemy, and we must find a remedy for this curse +she puts upon us. Else I will go through life as you have gone, with +everything pleasant removed from it." + +The artful eyes of Eos softened, and that mystery living in their depths +lightened, her arms became soft pillars of the temple of her beauty as +she lowered herself into the big chair at the head of that gloomy +feasting board of death. Druga picked up the big body of one of the +stone figures, carried it lightly to the side of the hall, and set it +there on a bench. Then he took the vacant place at the board beside the +queen of the palace of the dead. + +Druga related to Eos all the events that had transpired since the +lopping off of Dionaea's head. She surmised, as did he, that this deed +was the one that had led Diana to turn the spell of the black stone +loose upon Druga as upon Eos. + +"There must be found a way of turning the spells of this Goddess into +harmless attempts," said Druga. "We cannot sit here and wait for her +cruelty to work us greater harm. What can we do?" + +"I have had long long years to plan a revenge upon her, but nothing I +have been able to do has had any effect," Eos said. + + * * * * * + +The desire that Druga could no more help than he could help breathing, +looking upon the pole of all desire that shone its energies through the +flesh of Eos, now spoke, and Druga said with a tongue that was thick: + +"Then, Eos, the very next time that Diana happens to think of you, I too +will become stone, and if we are to have joy of each other, we had +better have it soon, before I become as these others you have loved." + +Eos looked at him sadly, her lips glistening with an unearthly dew and +her eyes shining like chained lightnings. + +"It was that thought that betrayed me every time, Druga. Each of those +men said much those same words to me when he learned the fate that +awaited him, and for each of them my heart turned to water and we spent +our time in dalliance instead of spending our energies trying to +overcome the work of my enemy. + +"For each of them I tried to give all there was of pleasure while they +yet had breath, as one tries to give water to a man about to die of +fever. I was only that much more hurt by their death--for such giving of +the self opens one to the deepest pangs of parting. + +"That is the agony Diana designed for me, and she has done this to me +since that time I brought a young man to her island that was sacred to +her only. This time, Druga, there will be none of that for us; we will +try some other medicine than love for each other against this evil. +Work, we will try!" + +"There speaks my dead Feronia," murmured Druga, sadly. And for thought +of her he forgot to feel the denial of his desire for the body of this +woman, a body filled with the energies of the whole Universal Pole of +female magnetism. That he should lose that glory was nothing beside the +pang he felt at thought of Feronia; and the wise Eos smiled to note that +this man had not forgotten his love even in the face of her infinite +attraction. + +"If we went back to Feronia's home, might it not be that her work would +give you some inkling of how Diana might be overcome?" Druga was +thoughtful. + +"I can only try," Eos answered him. "We will go there. I will examine +her work and her notes, and you will show me her laboratories that I +have heard of even here. Together, we might get an answer." + + * * * * * + +Eos got up from the board, and went to a small chamber at the edge of +the disk. There her hands sent the disk slanting upward into the sky. As +they left the center of the pole of animal magnetism, Eos' body and face +changed subtly. Druga was released from the power of the pole's +attraction, and whether that was a good thing or not he could not say, +except that every atom of his body wanted to return there to that place +and remain. + +"How is it, Eos, that the pole does not repel your female nature as it +attracts the male? Would it not repel an ordinary woman so that she +could not approach it?" + +"In that you are wrong, Druga. The nature of this life-energy is not the +same as ordinary iron magnetism. Like poles do not repel, but are +unaffected. It is in fact only invigorating to me, making me stronger. +So it would be if you were at the other end of the universe. At the male +pole you would be vastly invigorated, not repelled. Do you understand?" + +"It is only sad that the poles lie at opposite ends of the universe," +murmured Druga, looking askance at Eos. + +"Whatever might you be thinking, Druga? If such power arced between man +and woman they would be consumed!" + +"But what a death, what a death," murmured Druga. Her sudden laughter +rang through the hall of death incongruously, and at the sound they fell +silent again and did not speak for thinking of the corpses waiting there +for what would never come. + +"How many men has Diana and her friends killed through the years? Enough +to populate a couple of planets, I should say?" + +"Diana? With her bow and arrows alone she used to account for a good +many; and later, as she learned more evil arts, there was no record +kept. She has been a most evil goddess, yet men worship her." + +"Why? A goddess that kills a man for seeing her is a fiend! And her +maidens may not see a man, either. It is a strange life she leads, for a +true woman. She must be other than female." + +"That could be, Druga," murmured Eos. + + * * * * * + +The morning sun glittered from the streams and from the little glass +foot-bridge that shimmered magically across and up in a great arc to the +door in the side of the cliff. Eos sighed at the beauty. + +"This wife of yours was a housekeeper, I note, with an eye for art." + +"Her art and her work were always first, Eos. She was an uncommon hard +woman to get used to, but she made a man of me." + +"That I can see," agreed Eos, and Druga looked at her twice to know what +she meant. "You owe everything to Feronia, according to you, and nothing +to yourself." + +"Very little, Goddess. But I do not exaggerate, she was...." + +"Well, never mind it now. I grow weary of Feronia this and Feronia that. +I will judge for myself whether she understood you or no." + +"She was extremely understanding," said Druga. + + * * * * * + +Days passed, and much hard work, Eos studying the laboratory notes of +Feronia, and Druga himself reading them over and trying to think of some +way he himself might strike back at their mutual enemy. + +"Nothing that she has developed can be used directly against Diana +without her surviving to fight back. This would have been fatal to +Dionaea, but after all, as you have said--she is dead." + +"She ought to be dead, I cut her head off!" + +"That usually does the trick." + +They decided to leave the laboratory the next morning, and that evening +Druga picked up the stone statue of his Feronia and carried it carefully +aboard the disk, placing her there--one woman among the thousand-odd +dead heroes of the long dead past. Druga sadly made a place for her at +the head of the board. He did not think of it, but Feronia now sat where +Eos herself had spent many a sad hour, sitting and gazing at her dead +lovers. + +With the stone Feronia gone, the vast and multiplex-walled chambers of +mystery and magic assumed a new atmosphere, and Druga found himself +talking to Eos that night as if he was not a man whose heart was dead. + +She sat in the place from which he had removed the black stone body of +Feronia, and Druga could not help but compare the glowing life of her +with the dead thing that had sat there. + +The hammered sunlight of her hair made curls and waves of beauty about +the white shores of her shoulders. She had let the robe of insulative +blue drop from her, exposing the very heart of her beauty he had feared +to see when she was herself filled with the flow of the Pole of Life +Energy. And Druga wondered a little whether she were not still somehow +the center and pivot of the energy, for his senses reeled with looking, +and his will crumbled into forgotten ashes. He sank to the silken couch +beside her, and his eyes burned with flashing energies like meteors +plunging into the Northern lights. + +Eos held her breath, and her eyes burned into his with greater and +greater force, for she had been dreaming and weeping and waiting there +at the Pole-of-all-Life for so many cold empty years--waiting for the +curse to be lifted so that she could begin to live again. + + * * * * * + +With the last shred of her own will Eos murmured: "Let us go into the +disk and leave at once for Armora, and think no more of each other or +surely we will sink into the raptures we desire and forget to fight. +Then I will awake and find you too turned into stone, and myself again +alone against her. I have been unable to fight alone." + +"If that is your will, do not fail to shield your beauty with that robe +you wear. For I cannot resist the power in your loveliness any more than +a straw in the wind!" + +Eos closed the robe against his gaze, and like two people weighted down +with lead in every limb, they got up and went out of the darkened +chambers, and Druga closed the great doors and locked them. Silently, +not touching each other, they walked down the bridge of glass. + +They entered the mansion on the disk, and Eos sent it sharply upward. +There was blood on her lower lip where she had bit it, and Druga's nails +had bitten into his palms. + +Druga noted that the great golden glow in the sky had approached near to +the valley that Feronia had made her home, and he said: + +"This pole of life seems to follow you about! Is there some relation +between you and it, so that you cannot be apart?" + +Eos looked at him, smiling sadly, her eyes far-off with other thoughts. + +"I have been taught, in the far past, that there was a Mother of Life, a +real woman, mighty and majestic beyond thinking, who lived there at the +pole and ordered life to be as it should be. That she is my ancestor, +and that there is some relation between the life energies and myself, +may be true, Druga. Whether the pole follows me, or whether coincidence +is governed by some magic so that we are never far apart, I know not. +Knowledge is a thing now lost from life, as we know it, Druga. We can +only guess at these truths, and never learn them surely." + +"Now you are not telling me all you know, Eos." + +"I would not tell you what I only guess, Druga. And I do not surely know +anything, any more. I have spent so much time brooding and alone." + +"Forgive me, Eos. An eagle cannot fly with crows, and I will never again +put myself forward. When you have need of me, I will be here, and when +you need only your own thoughts, why then go apart; I will not seek you +out. I forget who and what you are, for my senses are strained beyond +endurance with the power of you." + +"You are no crow, Druga. But in me is an adult mind, and you are as a +child, whom I must teach and raise up gradually to my estate. Every +parent grows impatient of ignorance in their offspring. One day, if time +keeps treading the self-same mill, we will be crushed together like +grapes and pressed clean. Until then, be my knight, and think not of me, +except with pity for the broken heart that beats inside me." + +Druga did not look at her more, but went in and sat at the board where +the thousand dead stared, each stony eye broodingly centered upon the +spot where he had placed Feronia. And as Druga's eye likewise centered +upon that seat that had been the scene of a thousand deaths, he felt a +wave of anger from the stony body of Feronia, and a sense of guilt came +over him. He felt remorse that he should forget her and desire Eos. If +he had known that those eyes were not dead, but seeing and remembering +all that passed before them, he would have been shivering with fear of +her anger. But Druga did not know. Yet it seemed to his senses that each +of those eyes was likewise angry with him, and he got up in haste from +that table of dead men and one dead woman, and went and drank wine by +himself until sleep came. + + * * * * * + +With the first rays of morning light Eos woke him, and Druga learned +that she had lowered the disk over the garden of live-oaks beside the +palace of Dionaea, and Druga looked out. No one was yet astir; they had +not yet been seen. Druga and Eos descended by the ladder of ruby glass, +and went side by side through the garden and Druga took the stairs he +knew well up to the sleeping chamber of Dionaea. For in the many-locked +cabinets of that chamber were her many acquisitions of magical +apparatus, and if anything was there that would help them, they meant to +find it. + +As they entered the room, opening the door with a pick-lock, Eos cried +out in a triumphant voice: + +"We are not in vain. The Queen is not dead, Druga!" + +The sleepy-eyed Dionaea poked her head above the covers at the sound of +their entry. At sight of them, she hissed like a great snake, and +writhed the long hideous body of Baena free of the encumbrance of the +quilts, and Baena reared his own hideous, fanged head up beside +Dionaea's. + +Druga stood astonished to see the fabled Amphis-Baena here in the bed of +Dionaea, and with the head of Dionaea! A great laugh broke from him to +see the reptilian change the grafting had wrought in Dionaea's beauty. + +Dionaea did not say anything, but Baena coiled swiftly on the bed and +struck out full length, his fangs meeting in Druga's arm. Druga felt the +terrible venom, like fire in his veins, and seized the great +serpent-head in his two hands, squeezing in terrible anger. But Eos +seized him. + +"No, do not kill her! Carry her into the disk, and make her captive. I +have conceived of a way of conquering Diana, and we need this creature +alive." + +Druga wrapped the great body around and around his body and arm, seizing +the neck of Dionaea in one hand and the neck of Baena in the other. So +burdened, he staggered down the steps and up again into the disk, and +the trip took him a good hour, for Baena twisted loose and tried to +flee, and he wrestled and fell from the ladder, and only succeeded by +tying the writhing pillar of strength into a bow-knot and pulling it up +into the ship with a rope. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile the people of Armora had awakened from the tumult, and crowded +everywhere about the gardens, getting underfoot and wondering loudly +what this was all about. Eos hurried from the bed chamber of their Queen +with a great bundle of material she had selected as of possible future +use. They tried to stop her, but one glance of the potent magnetic power +that flamed from her great eyes sent them all to their knees in +worshipful, helpless adoration. + +Druga, waiting above with the snake wound round with ropes and lashed to +the pillars, watched this evidence of her powers with awe, for he had +himself but narrowly escaped the swords of the guards, and had been +about to plunge down the ladder with his own sword in a futile attempt +to rescue Eos. + +She sent the disk spinning upward in flight, and Druga took himself from +her and went and sat by the writhing, fettered body of the Amphis-Baena, +or Dionaea-Baena, or two-headed snake, saying to her as she spat venom +at him: + +"Listen to me, Dionaea, the best thing you can do for yourself is to try +to win the favor of Eos. She is an enemy who has suffered as greatly as +yourself from the work of Diana, and would help you if you earned it, to +acquire a human body again. I think the snake himself would like that +better too. He is too greatly married, I would say, to relish the state +overmuch." + +Baena relaxed at these words, and ceased to struggle. Then in great +snake hisses, he made himself heard. + +"Dionaea, I think too you should seize this opportunity to get out of +this fix we are in. I gave you my tail to roost upon as a temporary +measure, not as a permanent part of my future. Diana, whom we both +serve, could have released us if she had been so inclined, and fixed us +up with separate bodies, but she chose not." + +That Dionaea was considering his words was evident. She ceased to spit +at him, and composed her face into thought. Druga leaned back and +smiled. + +Eos brought the disk to rest again at the meadow at the foot of the +glass bridge before Feronia's cliff palace, and came in to them. She +stood gazing at the two-headed creature trussed to the pillars of the +chamber. Feronia gazed at them with her stone eyes, and all the men +gazed at Feronia as if transfixed by her stony beauty, and the sight +made Dionaea shiver with apprehension. For she thought that these were +people who had angered Eos and that Eos had changed them into stone. She +wondered why Eos had added Feronia to the collection. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Eos sat beside Feronia and watched the great, writhing two-headed +Dionaea, and waited. After a time the flowing golden bands of +Life-energy entered, focusing subtly all about her, so that she seemed +to Dionaea truly to be the Mother of All, and the greatest of All +Goddesses anywhere. + +At the entrance of the golden energy Eos smiled with relief, for now she +had a power that she had not thought to use against Diana before. For to +Eos this aversion to all men of the Goddess Diana spelled out the +message of her weakness, and this energy of the life pole was going to +pierce that weakness. + +Day dragged after day, and the weird scene there in the banquet hall of +the stone men of the past became to Druga a tense place of waiting for +his own demise and change into a similar relic to decorate this hall of +death. For Eos would not tell him what she planned for fear he would +give her away in the tense moments that were to come when Diana at last +rejoined her Dionaea in their strange dual existence. + +The inducted energies of the female pole had a most disturbing effect +upon the mingled male and female of the Amphis-Baena. + +Baena, driven half mad by the increased female qualities of the head of +Dionaea, made inadvertent love to her, caressing her face with his long +forked tongue, and combing at her tangled hair with his fangs, always +Baena was distraught with her attraction. This attention drove the woman +near frantic, strained as she was in her unnatural condition, and she +could not afford to anger the beast whose body she had been grafted +upon. For even a serpent has been known to swallow its tail, and Dionaea +had no desire to know if Baena could do that trick. + +Eos, sitting quietly and watching the bound serpent, smiled at this +continual by-play, and offered to release Dionaea for revealing her +knowledge of Diana, so that some chink in her armor might be found. Not +that Eos now needed any such thing, but she was kind-hearted, and wanted +Baena at least on her side. For she could see into the dual life and +thought of the two-headed monster, and knew that if Baena chose to set +his will against Diana when she was within the body and mind of +Dionaea--it would help her in what she planned. + +"Baena," Eos at last said, "if you can find a way to help me against +this unnatural mistress of your mistress, I will repay you by giving you +anything you may ask of me." + +Baena looked at Dionaea's head with the reptilian love-light glowing +frustrate in his great green-and-gold eyes. + +"If you will promise to give me what is in my mind that I desire, why +then when the time comes I will see what I can do. I am weary of being +the tail when I was meant to be the head, and if I had it to do over, +this unnatural and self-willed appendage would remain in her proper +place." + +Now Eos knew that Baena could not help desiring Dionaea as a mate, for +she seemed most reptilian in the strange snake-growth that had come over +her, and knowingly she nodded at Baena, so that he knew that she knew +what he wanted, but Dionaea did not know, for it never occurred to her. +To Eos, what the future might bring to Dionaea as the mate of a snake +seemed a proper revenge for what she had done in aiding Diana, and for +other cruelties of which Druga had told her. She planned accordingly. + + * * * * * + +Came that day which was the time appointed by Diana Triformis for her +visit to Dionaea. Much as she detested the need for entering the male +body of Baena to interview Dionaea, still Dionaea had been a valuable +ally, and Diana did intend in time to release her and give her again a +human body. + +To this end she had made some inquiries as to how this might be done. +For in truth the method of doing so had evaded her mind in the +excitement and rage of finding what had happened, and in the task of the +spell she had created to turn Feronia into a stone image. For Diana knew +that what Baena had accomplished she could accomplish, certainly, and +the shame of forgetting how it might be done before the wise Baena's +critical eyes made her neglect to mention her intentions to either of +the two heads of the snake. + +As the swirl of ethereal force that was Diana's traveling form settled +within the golden-moted atmosphere of the great chamber of the +disk-mansion, Eos stood up, and dropped from her body her insulating +blue robe of shimmering magic, so that her supercharged beauty shone +everywhere in blinding, awful attraction. + +Druga, who had been sitting disconsolately talking to himself, rose to +his feet like an automaton and walked toward that more than mortal +beauty, his eyes blinded and his senses wholly submerged in ecstasy at +the sight of the glory of Eos unveiled. As he reached the Goddess he put +out his arms like a sleepwalker to take her to him, but she avoided him, +seizing him by a wrist and turning him about, hissing in his ear, +imperatively: + +"Now prove to me that you are truly a mighty man of his word, with +courage and strength, and in spite of this body of mine go out of this +chamber and wait till I call without once letting your attention turn +toward me or noting anything that goes on, else are we both lost!" + +Like a man weighted down with lead on his feet, Druga strove to obey +her, moving inch by slow inch away from that vast flood of energetic +attraction. + +Eos watched him move slowly away from her, every muscle standing out on +his body and his neck corded with effort to keep his head turned away, +and a vast admiration for him rose in her throat and choked her. It +seemed to her that the statue of Feronia moved and that the stone face +changed, suffused for an instant with admiration also. + + * * * * * + +The swirling purple cloud of Diana's entrance moved nearer to Dionaea, +for in the hyper-space of her travelling, the points and dimensions of +this world were much alike, and she did not realize that Dionaea was not +in her palace at Armora. Settling about the two-headed creature lashed +fast to the pillars of the chamber, she moved herself within the snake +body and came to rest within the body of Baena, the snake. + +Looking out of the dual heads of Dionaea and Baena now, Diana Triformis, +who was no stranger to dual and triple existence even in the same body, +saw with those four eyes the naked body of Eos, reflecting, emanating, +giving off in vast floods the focused energies of the Pole of Female +Life-energy, and those four eyes fastened hypnotized upon that glory, +female beyond any other life in all space. + +Eos moved closer and closer to the bound snake, murmuring soft words: + +"Oh, Diana, wonderful one, long have I desired you, for I know your +secret, that you are not female as your body seems, but male. So I have +decided to have you for myself, for I am weary of men, and want only the +boy Diana himself for my love, forever. Come to me, Diana, and dwell +with me here at the pole of love, and never leave me. Can you not see +that the enmity that has sprung up between us is the result of +misunderstood love!" + +Now Baena, seeing his opportunity, thrust his own male personality to +the fore, trying to sway the intricate balance of sexes in the weird +self of Diana--and with his mind and his eyes upon Eos, made himself to +desire that infinite female attraction, which was not hard, so as to add +that much weight to the attraction which even a God might not resist +unless, as Druga had done, he turned his back upon it. + +Diana could _not_ turn her back, and the whole sudden surprise of +finding herself not in the palace in Armora, but here in the halls of +her erstwhile enemy, Eos of the Dawn-light, made her natural male +attributes become dominant so that she desired Eos mightily. + +Trapped thus by the circumstances, the lashed serpent body of Baena +which insisted upon gazing steadily at the vast and overwhelming beauty +of the unveiled body of Eos, and by the ignorance of Dionaea as to what +was going on, by her own masculine nature into desiring this essence of +all female attraction, Diana gazed upon Eos while the energies sent by +Eos' skill coursed in greater and greater ecstacy through her. + + * * * * * + +So it was that Diana fell in love with Eos, as Eos desired, and with the +Gods, love is an overmastering passion that may not be resisted. + +Now Eos and the trapped spirit of Diana conversed together, and at the +subtle words of Eos and the overmastering attraction, Diana swirled out +of the body of Baena and settled engrossed about the glowing glory that +was Eos. Inward she was drawn, and mated there in mysterious communion +with the Goddess. + +"If you but had a strong male body, Diana, we could live here forever in +love and ecstasy. Why not return one of the stone men of the past into +flesh again, become a man instead of half-woman as in the past--and so +learn anew to live and love differently and gloriously...." + +Such were Eos' words, made potent by the golden glowing energies within +her, swaying the bemused Diana to her will. And Diana, with Eos' hands, +went to the wall cabinets and set out certain magical apparatus, brewing +an antidote for the stony seizure she had sent to Eos' lovers in the +past. This liquid she poured over the male of stone that Eos selected, +and even as the stone man stirred and quickened into life again, her +ethereal self whirled out of Eos and settled into the reanimated flesh +of the man. + +When he arose to his feet and spoke, it was Diana herself who spoke and +not the man who had loved Eos long ago. What this desecration of her +past love meant to Eos we shall not know, for she hid it beneath +languishing glances and subtle swayings of her body, drawing Diana to +her, wrapping her arms about the reanimated being, and walking with the +new male Diana out of the room and so to her own chambers. + + * * * * * + +Druga, as Eos had foreseen, had been unable to contain his curiosity as +to what was going on, and had at last peered from the hallway where he +waited, just in time to see the purple swirl that was Diana settle into +and seem to reanimate the ancient long-dead stone image. + +The emotions natural to a man rose in him. He was not sure just what he +was seeing, but jealousy rose in him like a flame, and his passion so +steadfastly controlled and so rewarded by the fickle Eos made this +jealousy into a terrible, red rage against her who had withheld herself +from him only to give herself to her worst enemy in the form of a man. + +Druga, overcome with this jealous rage, strode out into the banquet hall +of dead men, took from the side of one of the dead men a great war-axe +of bronze, and hefting it in his hand as if it were a trembling feather +plume, strode after the two figures like the wrath of God. + +As Eos reclined sensuously upon her couch in her sleeping chamber, and +Diana in the man's body stretched beside her, bending back Eos' head and +planting there a burning kiss, Druga entered, and standing over the pair +like an outraged husband, shouted in a voice he was unable to make +articulate. + +"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 sturdy +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 goddess +unconscious, and indeed the purple mist of her hyper-space 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 entity +that was Diana, Eos pulled the switch again open, and the black vortice +of space-force lessened and finally disappeared. + +That intense whirlpool of black energy had taken Diana back with it into +the terrible current of space. Diana would live--but only as a mote of +defeated consciousness whirled along forever into the depths of space 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 passed, 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 +passed 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 booby! 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 +pass 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, assuring 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 ship's hawser, she let +out strings of oaths such as no ship'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 +assured her she would get used to him or he would devour her and seek a +new mate elsewhere. With which assurance Dionaea ceased to curse and +began to fawn upon Baena, saying: + +"Why, how can you think it is your noble 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 glass 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-space--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 God 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 passing 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 Goddess 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 embarrassment, 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. + +Mors' laughter made Eos blush till rosy was not the word for her. + +"My dear Eos, can this be you? I would hardly have expected it of you, +who have always been to me the personification of so many virtues...." + +"Oh, Mother Mors, I am glad to see you, in spite of this state of +affairs--you can help me. You must know what has happened?" + +"I can guess, but you had better explain from the beginning. Only a +woman could know what to do here, it seems." Mors glanced around at the +thousand and some virile males. + +"You know the Pole is responsible for bringing them here, and one by one +Diana turned them into stone as soon as my lonely heart turned to them +for affection." + +"It's a good story, but no one but me will ever believe it." + +Eos only looked pitifully at Mors, and Mors took her to her dark, soft +heart, and the vast strength of her poured into the vibrant soul of Eos, +mingled there with that golden energy that made her what she was. + +"Whatever I do is going to break their hearts--you know what this place +does to men. I cannot love them all, but I _do_, and I cannot send them +away empty-handed. You know what it _means_ to them! It is really all +that cruel Diana's fault! + +"For ridding me of her I owe you a debt, and though you are but a child +to my ages of life, I will help you avoid ruining the lives of all these +fine men whom you have loved. Suppose I take them away with me, all but +one, and give them back their own time and place before they found their +way here--give them the will to want that life before they knew you, +would that comfort you?" + +"Only one?" murmured Eos, then blushed as she looked out over the +thousand-and-odd faces that stared at her accusingly. + +"Only one, and you must choose him carefully from among them all." + +"That will take some thought," said Eos, her face full of indecision. "I +loved each of them dearly." + + * * * * * + +Mors' face grew a little stern at that, and quickly Eos went on: + +"I'll attend to it directly, Mother Mors." + +"I have a little errand to attend to over at Feronia's, I will be back +in a few beats of Druga's stricken heart. You could at least have kept +your body hidden from him, out of respect for Feronia! I have not much +patience with your dilemma. After all, there are other places to live, +you know." + +"But not for me, Mors. It follows me about!" + +Mors' face grew even sterner, and Eos added: + +"Of course I _know_ that is because of the peculiar nature of the metal +of which the disk is constructed, but _after all_ you _know_ it has been +my home for so _very_ long, I couldn't be expected to give up my home, +could I?" + +Mors only lifted one great dark eyebrow and lifted suddenly into dark +whirling force and disappeared. + +Eos, her face tear-streaked, went slowly down the endless line of men, +examining each one carefully and cudgeling her memory to decide which +one she had loved the _very_ most. It was _so_ difficult. + +Mors, meanwhile, drifted into being over the sleeping Druga and the +praying Feronia, still on her knees, her face upraised and very sweet +with the dark-winged eyes closed, the long line of her throat sheer +beauty in the dim light. + +She touched the closed eyes softly with her potent fingertips, and +Feronia opened them with a new understanding gifted into their +structure. Then she softly entered Feronia's body and together they +peered down into the body and the thought of the sleeping man, and with +her dark fingertips vibrant with the energies of dark space, Mors went +over each little nerve and passage in the brain where the energies of +the disk and the Pole and the sight of the intense glory of Eros' body +had burned out Feronia's years of love. + +Everywhere she touched, a new awareness grew, centered and vitalized by +the presence of Mors within the body of Feronia, so that nowhere was +there any evidence of the loss of love, but only the beautiful memories +of Feronia alive again within his mind, and wherever desire lived in him +Mors touched her fingers, and planted a seed that would grow with good +treatment into vital love. As she worked, Feronia wept shamelessly with +thankfulness, and for every tiny node of love that Mors planted in +Druga, one sprouted likewise in Feronia, and some of them were for Druga +and some were natural gratitude to Mors for this work of replacement. +The sleeping Druga stirred and his arms came about Feronia's hips where +she stood by the bed. Mors sent her strange energies through the two +lovers, marrying them there with the potent blessing that is actual +magnetic mingling of being--and Feronia knew that only by abuse could +she lose this man again! + +"You are a good girl, Feronia, and you have a good man. I will visit you +again, if that _Dark Master_ wills it." + +A chill went through the chamber at the mention of The Name, and Mors +went out with the strange ecstatic sweep of entity, and Feronia knew +what was meant by _God-head_. + + * * * * * + +Eos waited for a long time before Mors came again to her, for the +God-head required certain things of Mors for this night's work. + +As she at last reappeared to Eos, Eos did not note the terrific emotions +of love-ecstasy upon her face, the record of her touching with _the One_ +upon the mention of him, and began to complain. + +"How can I give them up, Mors?" + +But Mors only looked at her with absent, flaming eyes, intent upon some +far thing, and for the first time Eos noted the vast and subtle change +in her, as if she had touched some vast fountain of beneficence +somewhere in the while she had been gone. Her cheeks were flushed, her +breast rising and falling. Mors was like a woman in love, or a Goddess +touched by the love of Jove, and Eos' eyes fell before her sublimely, +and only stood waiting for Mors to do what she must. + +So Mors absently gathered up all the thousand-and-some men, tucking them +into her bosom one by one, and whirled into the night with all but one. + +As the Goddess Mors disappeared, a sudden suspicion struck Eos, and she +whirled to look upon the man that was left behind. + +She burst into tears. + +The Red Dwarf reached out and patted her golden head. Then he stepped to +the controls and sent the disk winging swiftly away. + +"Where are you going?" asked Eos, lifting her head in surprise, and +looking indignantly through her tears. + +"To the opposite Pole of Energy, my sweet one," said the Red Dwarf. "Be +patient a little while, and you will yet be supremely happy. Mother Mors +is very wise...." + +And Eos was very happy. You see, I _do_ know, for I was there. If it +were not so, how could you be sure what I tell you is true? For it _is_ +true.... + +The wise will understand what I have written. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Daughter of the Night, by Richard S. Shaver + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAUGHTER OF THE NIGHT *** + +***** This file should be named 32822.txt or 32822.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/8/2/32822/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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