CHAPTER III

DARK PLOTTINGS

It was past the hour of midnight.

In a dimly lighted turret chamber in the house of Hormazd the Persian

there sat two personages whose very presence seemed to enhance the

sinister gloom that brooded over the circular vault.

The countenance of the Grand Chamberlain was paler than usual and there

was a slight gathering of the eyebrows, not to say a frown, which in

an ordinary mortal might have signified little, but in one who had so

habitual a command of his emotions, would indicate to those who knew

him well an unusual degree of restlessness. His voice was calm however,

and now and then a bland smile belied the shadows on his brow.

At times his gaze stole towards a dimly lighted alcove wherein moved

a dark cowled figure, its grotesque shadow reflected in distorted

outlines upon the floor.

"The Moor tarries over long," Basil spoke at last.

"So do the ends of destiny," replied a voice that seemed to come from

the bowels of the earth.

"He is fleeter than a deer and more ferocious than a tiger," the Grand

Chamberlain interposed. "Nothing has ever daunted him, nor lives the

man who would thwart him and live. Can you tell me where he is now?"

"Patience!" came the sepulchral reply. "The magic disk reveals all

things! Anon you shall know."

Informed by daily gossip and the reports of his innumerable spies,

Basil was aware of a growing belief among the people that the power

he wielded was not altogether human, and he would have viewed it with

satisfaction even had he not shared it. Seeing in it an additional

force helpful to the realization of his ambition, he had thrown himself

blindly into the vortex of black magic which was to give to him that

which his soul desired.

In this chamber, filled with strange narcotic scents and the mysterious

rustling of unseen presences, by which he believed it to be peopled,

with the aid of one who seemed the personified Principle of Evil, Basil

assembled about him the forces that would ultimately launch him at the

goal of his ambition.

This devil's kitchen was the portal to the Unseen, the shrine of the

Unknown, the observatory of the Past and the Future, and the laboratory

of the Forbidden. There were dim and mysterious mirrors, before which

stood brazen tripods whose fumes, as they wreathed upward, gleamed with

dusky fires. It was in these mirrors that the wizard could summon the

dead and the distant to appear darkly, in scarcely definable glimpses.

But he could also produce apparitions more vivid, more startling and

more beautiful. Once, in the dark depths of the chamber, Basil had

seen a woman's phantom apparition suddenly become strangely luminous,

her garments glowing like flames of many colors, that shifted and

blent and alternated in ceaseless dance and play, waving and trembling

in unearthly glory, till she seemed to be of the very flame herself.

The reflection of the world of shadows was upon her; its splendors

were wrapping her round like a mantle. He watched her with bated

breath, not daring to speak. And brighter, ever brighter, dazzling,

ever more dazzling, had grown the flaming phantom, till the wondrous

transfiguration reached the height of its beauty and its terror. Then

the phantom of murdered Marozia, evoked at his expressed desire from

the land of shadows, had faded, dying slowly away in the mysterious

depths of the mirror, as the fires that produced it sank and died in

white ashes.

There could be no doubt. It was the emissary of Darkness himself who

held forth in this dim, demon-haunted chamber where he had so often

listened to the record of his awful visions. He had made him see in

his dreadful ravings the great vaults of wrath, where dwelt the dread

power of Evil. He had made him see the King of the Hopeless Throngs

on his black basaltic throne in the terrific glare-illumined caves,

where Michael had cast him and where Pain's roar rises eternally night

and day. He had made him see the great Lord of the Doomed Shadows,

receiving the homage of those dreadful slaves, those terror-spreading

angels of woe whose hand flings destruction over the earth and sea and

air, while flames were fawning and licking his feet with countless

tongues.

And then he had shown to him a spirit mightier and more subtle than

any of those great wild destroyers who rush blindly through nature,

a spirit who starts in silence on her errand, whom none behold as,

creeping through the gloom, she undermines, unties and loosens all the

pillars of creation, with no more sign nor sound than a black snake in

the tangled grass, till with a thunder that stuns the world the house

of God comes crashing down--dread Hekaté herself.

Was there any crime he had left undone?

His subterranean prisons in which limbs unlearned to bend and eyes to

see concealed things whose screams would make the flesh of a ghost

creep, if flesh one had.

But now there was a darker light in Basil's eyes, a something more

ominous of evil in his manner. The wizard's revelation had possessed

his soul and his whole terrible being seemed intensified. With the

patience of one conscious of a superhuman destiny he waited the

summons that was to come to him, even though his soul was consumed by

devouring flames.

For he had come yet upon another matter; an inner voice, whose appeal

he dared not ignore, had informed him long ago of his waning power with

Theodora. From the man wont to command he had fallen to the level of

the whimpering slave, content to pick up such morsels as the woman saw

fit to throw at his feet. Only on the morning of this day, which had

gone down the never returning tide of time, a terrible scene had passed

between them. And he knew he had lost.

Basil had been an unseen witness of Theodora's and Tristan's meeting

in the sunken gardens on the Aventine. Every moment he had hoped to

see the man succumb to charms which no mortal had yet withstood upon

whom she had chosen to exert them, and on the point of his poniard

sat Death, ready to step in and finish the game. From the fate he had

decreed him some unknown power had saved Tristan. But Basil, knowing

that Theodora, once she was jilted by the object of her desire, would

leave nothing undone to conquer and subdue, was resolved to remove from

his path one who must, sooner or later, become a successful rival. By

some miraculous interposition of Providence Tristan had escaped the

fate he had prepared for him on the night when he had tracked the two

strangers from the Lateran. He had had him conveyed for dead to the

porch of Theodora's palace. But Fate had made him her mock.

Never had Basil met Theodora in a mood so fierce and destructive as on

the morning after she had destroyed Roxana and her lover, and had, in

turn, been jilted by Tristan. And, verily, Basil could not have chosen

a more inopportune time to press his suit or to voice his resentment

and disapprobation. Theodora had driven every one from her presence and

the unwelcome suitor shared the fate of her menials. Her dark hints

had driven the former favorite to madness, for his passion-inflamed

brain could not bear the thought that the love he craved, the body

he had possessed, should be another's, while he was drifting into the

silent ranks of the discarded. He knew for a surety that Theodora was

not confiding in him as of old. Had she somehow guessed the dread

mystery of the crypts in the Emperor's Tomb, or had some demon of Hell

whispered it into her ear during the dark watches of the night?

A flash of lightning followed by a terrific peal of thunder roused him

from his reveries. The storm which had threatened during the early

hours of the evening now roared and shrieked round the tower and the

very elements seemed in accord with the dark plottings in Hormazd's

chamber.

"How much longer must I wait ere the fiends will reveal their secrets?"

Basil at last turned to the exponent of the black arts.

The wizard paused before the questioner.

"To what investigation shall we first proceed?"

"You must already have divined my thoughts."

"I knew the instant you arrived. But there is an incompleteness which

makes my perceptions less exact than usual."

"Where are my messengers? To the number of three have I sped. None has

returned."

The Oriental touched a knob and the lamps were suddenly extinguished,

leaving the room illumined by the red glow of the oven. Then he bade

his visitor fix his eyes on the surface of the disk.

"Upon this you will presently behold two scenes."

He poured a few drops of something resembling black oil upon the

disk, which at once spread in a mirror-like surface. Then he began to

mutter some words in an Oriental tongue, and lighted a few grains of a

chemical preparation which emitted an odor of bitter aloë. This, when

the flames had subsided, he threw upon the oil which at the contact

became iridescent.

Basil looked and waited in vain.

The conjurer exhausted all the selections which he thought

appropriate. The oil gradually lost the changing aspect it had acquired

from the burning substance, and returned to its dull murky tints, and

the interest which had appeared on Basil's features gave place to a

contemptuous sneer.

"Are you, after all, but a trickster who would impose his art upon the

unwary?"

The magician did not reply to this insult, nor did it seem to affect

him visibly.

"We must try a mightier spell," he said, "for hostile forces are in

conjunction against us."

By a small tongs he raised from the fire the metallic plate that had

been lying upon it. Its surface presented the appearance of oxidized

silver with a deep glow of heat.

Upon this he claimed to be able to produce the picture of past or

future events, and many scenes had been reflected upon the magic shield.

He now poured upon it a spoonful of liquid which spread simmering and

became quickly dissipated in light vapors. Then he busied himself with

scattering over the plate some grains that looked like salt which the

heated metal instantly consumed.

At the end of a few moments he experienced what resembled an electric

or magnetic shock. His frame quivered, his lips ceased to repeat the

muttered incantations, his hand firmly grasped the tongs by which he

raised the metal aloft, now made brighter by the drugs just consumed,

and upon which appeared a white spot, which enlarged till it filled the

lower half of the plate.

What it represented it was difficult to say. It might have been a sheet

or a snow drift. Basil felt an indefinable dread, as above it shimmered

forth the vague resemblance of a man on horseback, apparently riding at

breakneck speed.

Slowly his contour became more distinct. Now the horseman appeared to

have reached a ford. Spurring his steed, he plunged into the stream

whose waters seemed for a time to carry horse and rider along with the

swift current. But he gained the opposite shore, and the apparition

faded slowly from sight.

"It is the Moor!" cried Basil in a paroxysm of excitement. "He has

forded the rapids of the Garigliano. Now be kind to me O Fate--let this

thing come to pass!"

He gave a gasp of relief, wiping the beads from his brow.

The cowled figure now walked up to the central brazier, muttering words

in a language his visitor could not understand. Then he bade Basil walk

round and round it, fixing his eyes steadily upon the small blue flame

which danced on the surface of the burning charcoal.

When giddiness prevented his continuing his perambulation he made him

kneel beside the brazier with his eyes riveted upon it.

Its fumes enveloped him and dulled his brain.

The wizard crooned a slow, monotonous chant. Basil felt his senses keep

pace with it, and presently he felt himself going round and round in an

interminable descent. The glare of the brazier shrank and diminished,

invaded from outside by an overpowering blackness. Slowly it became

but a single point of fire, a dark star, which at length flamed into a

torch. Beside him, with white and leering face, stood the dark cowled

figure, and below him there seemed to stretch intricate galleries,

strangled, interminable caves.

"Where am I?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain, overpowered by the fumes

and the fear that was upon him.

"Unless you reach the pit," came the dark reply, "farewell forever to

your schemes. You will never see a crown upon your head."

"What of Theodora?" Basil turned to his companion, choking and blinded.

"If the bat-winged fiends will carry you safely across the abyss you

shall see," came the reply.

A rush as of wings resounded through the room, as of monstrous bats.

"Gehenna's flame shall smoothe her brow," the wizard spoke again. "When

Death brings her here, she shall stand upon the highest steps, in her

dark magnificence she shall command--a shadow among shadows. Are you

content?"

There was a pause.

The storm howled with redoubled fury, flinging great hailstones against

the time-worn masonry of the wizard's tower.

"Then," Basil spoke at last, his hands gripping his throat with a

choking sensation, "give me back the love for which my soul thirsts and

wither the bones of him who dares to aspire to Theodora's hand."

The wizard regarded him with an inscrutable glance.

"The dark and silent angels, once divine, now lost, who do my errands,

shall ever circle round your path. Everlasting ties bind us, the

one to the other. Keep but the pact and that which seems but a wild

dream shall be fulfilled anon. They shall guide you through the dark

galleries of fear, till you reach the goal."

"Your words are dark as the decrees of Fate," Basil replied, as the

fumes of the brazier slowly cleared in his brain and he seemed to

emerge once more from the endless caverns of night, staring about him

with dazed senses.

"You heed but what your passion prompts," the cowled figure interposed

sternly, "oblivious of that greater destiny that awaits you! It is a

perilous love born in the depths of Hell. Will you wreck your life for

that which, at best, is but a fleeting passion--a one day's dream?"

"Well may you counsel who have never known the hell of love!" Basil

cried fiercely. "The fiery torrent that rushes through my veins defies

cold reason."

The cowled figure nodded.

"Many a ruler in whose shadow men have cowered, has obeyed a woman's

whim and tamely borne her yoke. Are you of those, my lord?"

"I have set my soul upon this thing and Fate shall give to me that

which I crave!" Basil cried fiercely.

The wizard nodded.

"Fate cannot long delay the last great throw."

"What would you counsel?" the Grand Chamberlain queried eagerly,

peering into the cowled and muffled face, from which two eyes sent

their insane gleam into his own.

"Send her soul into the dark caverns of fear--surround her with

unceasing dread--let the ghosts of those you have sent butchered to

their doom surround her nightly pillow, whispering strange tales into

her ears,--then, when fear grips the maddened brain and there seems no

rescue but the grave--then peals the hour."

Basil gazed thoughtfully into the wizard's cowled face.

"When may that be?"

"I will gaze into the silent pools of my forbidden knowledge with the

dark spirits that keep me company. I have mysterious rules for finding

day and hour."

"I cannot expel the passion that rankles in my blood," Basil interposed

darkly. "But I will tear out my heart strings ere I shirk the call. An

emperor's crown were worth a tenfold price, and ere I, too, descend to

the dread shadows, I mean to see it won."

"These thoughts are idle," said the wizard. "Only the weak plumb the

depths of their own soul. The strong man's bark sails lightly on

victorious tides. Your soul is pledged to the Powers of Darkness."

"And by the fiends that sit at Hell's dark gate, I mean to do their

bidding," Basil replied fiercely. "Else were I indeed the mock of

destiny. Tell me but this--how did you obtain a knowledge at which the

fiend himself would pale?"

The wizard regarded him for a moment in silence.

"You who have peered behind the curtain that screens the dreadful

boundaries--you who have seen the pale phantom of Marozia, whom you

have sent to her doom,--how dare you ask?"

Basil had raised both hands as if to ward off an evil spirit.

"This, too, then is known to you? Tell me! Was what I saw a dream?"

"What you have seen--you have seen," the cowled form replied

enigmatically. "The cocks are crowing--and the pale dawn glimmers in

the East."

Throwing his mantle about him, Basil left the turret chamber and, after

creeping down a narrow winding stair, he made for his villa on the

Pincian Hill.