There was a flat area, almost circular in shape, measuring about fifty paces in diameter. The hill of which it occupied the summit was not completely detached from the base of Bol-Gho; it was only a meager spur of the enormous mountain. But a vertical wall, looming up at the end of that terrace of sorts, did not allow anything to be seen of the snowy crests sparkling thousands of cubits higher up, in the open sky.
From down below, that stump of denuded rock scarcely cut out an insignificant streak of yellow in the immense mantle of verdure falling from the shoulders of the giant.
At close range, one might have thought it the colossal rampart of some monstrous city, blind and deaf, with no opening but a rounded porch, large enough at the most for the passage of a single chariot. But no harnessed team or wheel had ever crossed the threshold drowned in shadow. A dull fog crept there heavily, with a suffocating odor. A continuous rumble and strident detonation revealed the eternal combat of hostile elements there, the nearby tumult of subterranean waters, skirting with a rapid flow the burning regions of fire.
On the platform, not a single blade of grass, nor a thorny bush, grew in the cracks in the leprous stone, corroded by volcanic emanations. No insect sought refuge there. It really was the Desolate Hill, the sinister domain of death.
Beyond the threshold a steep slope was sketched, ending in a precipice. Only the boldest ventured there, pale with fright. A few paces brought them into the presence of the Gulf. On their knees or lying face down, bracing their feet and hands, holding their breath, they could, by advancing their head, glimpse the chaos of turbulent vapors far below them, traversed with blue or bloody gleams, by turns.
At a lesser depth, ten or twelve cubits lower than the extreme edge, a narrow ledge stood out, sufficient to huddle thereon, a last and very feeble chance left to the unfortunate whom vertigo or lack of air had dragged down in an initial fall. But no effort, without the aid of a solid rope, would have permitted him to climb back up. At any rate, the adventure was devoid of any example. No one, in human memory, had descended that far except those of the condemned whose agony was prolonged by a supreme clemency perhaps crueler than brutal precipitation. The latter, it is true, by virtue of suffocation or the anguish of the void, ran the favorable risk of a liberating unconsciousness.
As a mercy or aggravation of the punishment, that mode of execution had been chosen for Soroé. Two sacrificers were waiting with the necessary lines.
Dawné, her cheeks inundated with tears, wanted to throw herself at her feet again. Soroé enveloped her tenderly with her arms, and, lowering her voice to a murmur, whispered in her ear:
“Live! Be happy! And if you see him again one day, if he remembers me, tell him that I never ceased to love him, and that I hope to find him again in the Beyond. Go now! May the clement gods protect you, and protect Atlantis!”
Gently, she undid the desperate embrace of her companion, but Dawné, overwhelmed by distress, implored her, shaken by sobs: “Let me perish with you, I beg you. Existence is odious to me henceforth, and in surviving you, I’d have a nostalgia for death.”
The royal virgin smiled with an ineffable tenderness. “Is it me,” she said, “on the threshold of death, who must enlighten your soul and show you the depths of your heart?”
“What do you mean? Can you think, at this moment, of others…?” The young woman did not finish the atrocious thought
“I’m thinking,” Soroé concluded, “About all those I love and who have loved me. Ruslem, I know, will scarcely survive me; but for you, the future awaits, and the natural destiny of those who are young and whom a dream of happiness visits in the hours of sleep or reverie...”
“You think…?” cried Dawné, whose sudden blush attested to confusion and disturbance.
“Child,” murmured Soroé, hugging her bewildered friend. “Look down there at the confines of that wooded cape, where the Gilt-Hermians’ ship is swaying. Don’t forget that Maghée commands it, and that you reign over Maghée.”
Dawné tried to protest, to interrupt Yerra’s victim, but she fell silent, impressed by the splendor of her face, illuminated by some reflection from the heavens.
“Yes,” Soroé murmured. “I know, I see; the gods are speaking to me; the boat of the Sons of the North, so tiny on the waves, will take you to the mysterious homeland of Argall. Is he also aboard? I can’t make out any more. You’re fading way into the mists of the north…and there, where I have known Atlantis, the sea is unfurling, immense and deserted, over semi-engulfed reefs...”
“O Queen!” begged Dawné.
But already, the rude voice of a sacrificer cut off the flight of the confused vision, brutally recalling the virgin to the rightful reality of the moment.
“I order you,” she said to the servant, with a gentle firmness, conscious of the authority that she suddenly assumed, “to go down to Maghée. Don’t leave the liberating ship again. Be ready at any moment to quit the Atlantean shore. Tell my brother Maghée what my supreme wish is in his regard. Perhaps he will see Argall again—doubtless to save him…and yet…!”
She turned to the temple servants who were about to march upon her; her imperious gesture retained them.
“Dawné,” she said, “let us embrace for the last time.”
“O Queen, what supreme order are you giving me?”
“One alone: run immediately toward the sea, without looking back, without losing a moment—and remember! Adieu!”
She watched the young woman draw away, mad with despair, and marched toward her executioners with a firm tread.
The greater part of the day had passed. The sun, disappeared behind the summits, now left the Desolate Hill in shadow. The cool breeze had not yet made itself felt. The rock charred by the rays of the midday sun continued to reverberate its ardor.
From that bare and lugubrious terrace, the view extended over all of the distant plain: Atlantis and the roseate white of its edifices, its port, its girdle of villas, gardens and colored flower-beds, parks with giant trees, cultivated fields, meadows, forests of cedars and sandalwood. Beyond, all the way to the horizon, the immense blue sea extended, speckled with islets, each surrounded by a snowy fringe of breakers, without an apparent wrinkle. The royal virgin’s gaze embraced that dear and marvelous panorama one last time, and searched the enclosure of the city for traces of the night’s events.
Nothing, at that distance, remained visible. A few voids punctured the tightly-knit mass of low houses in the populous tempest—but there had been no lack of fires since the fatal tempest. One disaster more was hardly distinguishable.
For a moment, her eyes focused on the Temple of Light; she recalled her memories of the happy years of her childhood, and then evoked the image of the Bloody Day. Argall had loved her then…to the point of giving his life for her! To the point of combating and toppling Yerra from the throne!
Two tears shone between her eyelashes. One of the sacrificers raised his voice again: “It’s time!”
Already, the fever had dried her eyelids. She raised her head. At the moment they raised their hands to her, the wretches could not help recalling her origin and her recent royalty, and shuddered secretly.
But the fear of Nohor made them tremble more.
The preparations were simple. They passed a rope under her arms, knotted it at the height of her shoulders and led the virgin to the edge of the vault. There, the more robust of the two wound the long end of the attachment around an iron spike sealed in the rock. The other, with a manifest repugnance, was obliged to follow the victim a little further. Meanwhile, the first, resuming speaking, casually gave her advice.
“You see, young woman, how we’re avoiding doing you any harm. Be docile, and your passage from one life to the other will be as easy as it is for a child to pass from waking to sleep. When you’re at the extremity of the slope, sit down on the edge, let yourself slide down gently, and I’ll retain you with the aid of this rope and iron bar. Don’t worry—they’re both solid. A few cubits lower down, you’ll find a ledge wide enough to lie down upon at your ease. Let the cord side down to your feet and slip away…and don’t be anxious any more. The vapors of the Gulf, here, seem suffocating, and I agree that they don’t smell good, but it’s only a moment to pass. Lower down, where you’ll find yourself, no longer being mixed with the external air, they don’t have any odor, a kind of perfume at the most, which some even judge quite pleasant. After all, it’s a matter of taste. We know that, you understand. I’ve brought blasphemers, poisoners and parricides here. That exhalation will immediately give you the desire to go to sleep. Why resist? Anyway, you won’t be able to. So, you’ll fall asleep without even perceiving it, and you’ll wake up in the presence of the gods. You’ll only have suffered for the moment of a sigh!”
The hideous clown spoke abundantly, making it up as he went along, for neither he nor any of his colleagues had ever ventured more than six paces from the porch. The majority of the condemned, simply launched down the slope with their elbows bound, or paralyzed with fear, rolled like inert masses and went over the edge of the vertical shaft without further ado. A few must have collided with the inferior ledge in passing; a dull thud as hard, a shriller cry, or even a howl commenced and cut off. Others, descended as Soroé was being descended, kept quiet, economizing their last aspiration of relatively pure air, or already deprived of sentiment. The executioners did not linger to monitor their death-throes, going back up as soon as the cord was released, fearing the murderous exhalations on their own account, uniquely concerned with recovering the daylight.
“Thank you,” said the royal virgin. “May you receive similar consolations in the hour of your death.”
She had spoken in utter simplicity, her mind elsewhere. Nohor’s acolyte understood that, but he grimaced nevertheless.
His comrade, however, already under the porch, was getting impatient. The victim’s white robe immediately vanished into the shadow and the mist. The men who had brought her faced toward the opposite edge of the platform, pretending to be looking into the distance—because the victim might turn round, and her last glance was reputed to be deadly it one received it full on. For the same reason, the crowd avid for cruel spectacles tolerated being forbidden access to the Desolate Hill on days of execution.
This time, no precaution of that sort seemed to have been taken, and yet, no one could be seen on the funereal esplanade but the guards and the executioners. Doubtless the deferred hour of the execution had remained secret from everyone.
The young woman’s eyes, involuntarily, were fixed on the uncoiled rope, similar in its slow undulations, to an enormous moving snake. Abruptly, the line stiffened; the sacrificer, braced on his hamstrings, was retaining it with both hands, wrapped around the iron spike, letting it slide down little by little, with a slight hiss, a murmur of friction over the soft rock. That unwinding seemed interminable to him.
Finally, an exclamation resounded under the vault; the extremity of the cable whipped the ground like an irritated serpent and disappeared. Almost immediately, the second sacrificer emerged from the creeping vapor, breathing the air noisily, with recriminations against his colleague’s slowness.
“I thought you were going to give me time to choke! Do you think one’s at one’s ease in that hole?”
The other, without replying, indicated the guards with a twitch of his shoulder, inert with horror. They too had gone pale, standing as if nailed to the funereal platform, intoxicated by the accomplished crime, although they had only been its instruments. At the other extremity of the terrace, the temple servants were going away. Their leader, the last one remaining, was gazing at the plain where the setting sun, invisible to them, seemed to be casting an immense golden veil.
Suddenly, the executioner saw him lean over, place a hand in front of his eyes, and then look up at the sky with a surprised expression, as if seeking the cause of some inexplicable event.
A downward glance sufficed for them to understand and share his astonishment. The entire immense and marvelous landscape, bathed a moment before in pure light, scarcely bleached, variegated by the thousand hues of woods and pasturelands, thatched or marble roofs, the sterile beach, gardens, and fields, bare or green with various crops, was now completely clad, as far as the eye could see, in a uniform red color, which grew increasingly somber, as if the light of a smoky torch had been substituted for the clarity of daylight.
Above their heads, however, nothing troubled the profound transparency of the azure. But they could only see half of it. The rocky wall, overhanging, concealed the region of the setting sun, doubtless the location of some formidable meteor.
The sacrificer who had not penetrated beyond the porch frowned, and muttered hoarsely: “We had something like that on the evening of the Bloody Day.”
The other, white-faced, stammered: “Let’s go down quickly. We’ll hardly be able to see to get back.”
Night did indeed fall with lightning rapidity. A vast black cloud overflowed the crests, invading the eastern half of the sky. Before they had reached the other extremity of the esplanade, where the road emerged, the almost-complete obscurity had already slowed their pace.
A sinister rumbling seemed to shake the sides of the mountain; a furious, burning wind swept the platform, and the ground oscillated beneath their feet.
A veil of darkness enveloped the heavens and the earth. Up above, not a single star was shining, but down below, a few fuliginous gleams pierced the shadows: heavy swirls of spiraling smoke, fringed with somber gold and grim purple, rose above the palaces of Atlantis.