Абрахам Меррит - The Ship of Ishtar

They saw houses, two–storied; block–like with smaller cubes for wings like those a child makes. They were painted startlingly—both in colors and patterns; facades striped with alternate vertical, yard–wide bands of blue, and yellow facades of dull blue through which darted scarlet zigzags like the conventionalized lightning bolt; broad horizontal bands of crimson barred with stripes of green.

The road narrowed, became a thoroughfare paved with blocks. The painted houses became thicker. Men and women passed them, brown faced and black, clad alike in one sleeveless white garment cut short just below the knees. On the right wrist of each of these was a bronze ring from which fell a half dozen links of chain. They carried burdens—jugs, baskets of the fruits and gourds, loaves of bread colored ruddy brown, flat cakes a foot across. They glanced at the four curiously as they passed.

"Slaves," said Sigurd.

Now the painted houses stood solidly, side by side. These were galleried and on the galleries were flowering trees and plants like those upon the rosy cabin of the ship. From some of them women leaned and called out to them as they went by.

They passed out of this street into a roaring avenue thronged with people. And here Kenton halted in sheer amazement.

At its far end loomed the huge bulk of the terraced temple. Its sides were lined with shops. At their doors stood men crying out their wares. Banners fell from them on which in woven silk ran the cuneiform letters that told their goods.

Past him walked Assyrians, men of Nineveh and Babylon with curled heads and ringleted beards; hook–nosed, fierce–eyed Phoenicians; sloe–eyed, muslin–skirted Egyptians; Ethiopians with great golden circles in their ears, almond–lidded, smiling yellow men. Soldiers in cuirasses of linked mail, archers with quivers on back and bows in hand strode by; priests in robes of black and crimson and blue. There stood in front of him for an instant a ruddy–skinned, smooth–muscled warrior who carried upon one shoulder the double–bladed ax of ancient Crete. Over his other shoulder lay the white arm of a sandalled woman in oddly modern pleated and patterned skirt, snake–girdled and with high, white breasts peeping from her opened and as oddly modern blouse. A Minoan and his mate he knew the pair to be, two who had perhaps watched youths and maids who were Athen's tribute to the Minotaur go through the door of the labyrinth to the lair where the monstrous man–bull awaited them.

And there went a cuirassed Roman, gripping a short sword of bronze that might have helped cut out the paths the first Caesar trod. Behind him strode a giant Gaul with twisted locks and eyes as coldly blue as Sigurd's own.

Up and down along the center of the thoroughfare rode men and women in litters borne on the shoulders of slaves. His eyes followed a Grecian girl, long limbed and lithe, with hair as yellow as the ripened wheat. They followed, too, a hot–eyed Carthaginian lovely enough to be a bride of Baal who leaned over the side of her litter and smiled at him.

"I am hungry and I thirst," grunted Sigurd. "Why do we stand here? Let us be going."

And Kenton realized that this pageant of past ages could be no strange thing to these comrades who were also of that past. He nodded assent. They swung into the crowd and stopped before a place wherein men sat eating and drinking.

"Better for us to enter two by two," said Gigi. "Klaneth seeks four men and we are four strangers. Wolf, go you in first with Sigurd. Zubran and I will follow—but do not notice us when we enter."

The shopkeeper set food before them and high beakers of red wine. He was garrulous; he asked them when they had made harbor, if their voyage had been a good one.

"It is a good time to be off the sea," he gossiped. "Storm comes—and a great one. I pray to the Dispenser of Waters, that he hold it until Bel's worship is ended. I close my shop soon to see that new priestess they talk so much about."

Kenton's face had been bent over, his cap veils hiding it. But at this he raised it and stared full into the man's face.

The shopkeeper blanched, faltered, stared back at him with wide eyes.

Had he been recognized? Kenton's hand sought stealthily his sword.

"Pardon!" gasped the shopkeeper, "I knew you not—'" Then he peered closer, straightened and laughed. "By Bel! I thought you were—another—Gods!"

He hurried away, Kenton looked after him. Was his departure a ruse? Had he recognized him as the man Klaneth sought? It could not be. His fright had been too real; his relief too sincere. Who was it then that Kenton so resembled to bring forth this fright and relief?

They finished their food quickly, paid from the gold they had taken from the galley; passed out into the street. Almost at once Gigi and the Persian joined them.

Two by two they passed down the street, not hurrying, like men just in from a long voyage. But as they went Kenton, with an ever growing puzzlement and apprehension, saw now one and now another glance at him, pause as though in wonder and then, averting eyes go swiftly by. The others saw it, too.

"Draw the cap cloths about your face," said Gigi, uneasily. "I like not the way they stare."

Briefly Kenton told him of the shopkeeper.

"That is bad," Gigi shook his head. "Now who can it be you so resemble that those who look at you grow frightened? Well—hide your face as best you can."

And this Kenton did, keeping his head bent as he walked. Nevertheless heads still turned.

The street entered a broad park. People were strolling over its sward, sitting on benches of stone, and gigantic roots of trees whose trunks were thick as the sequoia and whose tops were lost in the slowly thickening mists. And when they had gone a little way Sigurd turned off the highway into this park.

"Wolf," he said. "Gigi is right. They stare at you too much. It comes to me that it will be better for all if you go no further. Sit upon this bench. Bow your head as though asleep or drunken. There are few here and they will be fewer as the temple court fills. The mists hide you from those who pass along the street. The three of us will go on to the temple and study that stairway. Then we will return to you and we will take counsel."

Kenton knew the Viking was right. Steadily his own unease had grown. And yet—it was hard to stay behind, not to see for himself that place where Sharane lay captive, leave to others the chance of finding way to her.

"Courage, brother," said Sigurd as they left him. "Odin has held off the storm for us. Odin will help us get your woman."

Now for a time, a long, long time, it seemed to him, he sat upon that bench with face covered by hands. Stronger and stronger grew that desire to see for himself Sharane's prison, study its weaknesses. After all, his comrades were not as interested as he; their eyes not sharpened by love. He might succeed where they would fail; his eyes see what theirs would miss. And at last the desire mastered him. He arose from the bench, made his way back to the thronged street. When it was a few steps away, he turned and went along through the park, paralleling the street but not going out on it.

And in a short while he came to the end of the park and stood, half hidden, looking out.

Directly before him, not fifty yards away, arose the immense bulk of the Temple of the Seven Zones.

It blocked his vision like a Cyclopean cone. The great stairway coiled round it like a serpent. For a hundred feet up from its base the temple shone like burnished silver. There a circular terrace bit into the cone. Above that terrace for another hundred feet the surface was covered with some metal of red gold color, rich orange. Another terrace and above that a facade of jet black, dull and dead. Again a terrace. The mists hid the walls above this last, but he thought that through them he could see a glint of flaming scarlet and over it a blue shadow.