The Hour of the Dragon | Page 2

if from some let-down of extreme tension.
"Ishtar!" he gasped. "It is Xaltotun!--and he lives! Valerius! Tarascus!
Amalric! Do you see? Do you see? You doubted me--but I have not
failed! We have been close to the open gates of hell this night, and the
shapes of darkness have gathered close about us---aye, they followed
him to the very door--but we have brought the great magician back to
life."
"And damned our souls to purgatories everlasting, I doubt not,"
muttered the small, dark man, Tarascus.
The yellow-haired man, Valerius, laughed harshly.
"What purgatory can be worse than life itself? So we are all damned
together from birth. Besides, who would not sell his miserable soul for
a throne?"

"There is no intelligence in his stare, Orastes," said the large man.
"He has long been dead," answered Orastes. "He is as one newly
awakened. His mind is empty after the long sleep--nay, he was dead,
not sleeping. We brought his spirit back over the voids and gulfs of
night and oblivion. I will speak to him."
He bent over the foot of the sarcophagus, and fixing his gaze on the
wide dark eyes of the man within, he said, slowly: "Awake, Xaltotun!"
The lips of the man moved mechanically. "Xaltotun!" he repeated in a
groping whisper.
"You are Xaltotun!" exclaimed Orastes, like a hypnotist driving home
his suggestions. "You are Xaltotun of Python, in Acheron."
A dim flame flickered in the dark eyes.
"I was Xaltotun," he whispered. "I am dead."
"You are Xaltotun!" cried Qrastes. "You are not dead! You live!"
"I am Xaltotun," came the eery whisper. "But I am dead. In my house
in Khemi, in Stygia, there I died."
"And the priests who poisoned you mummified your body with their
dark arts, keeping all your organs intact!" exclaimed Orastes. "But now
you live again! The Heart of Ahriman has restored your life, drawn
your spirit back from space and eternity."
"The Heart of Ahriman!" The flame of remembrance grew stronger.
"The barbarians stole it from me!"
"He remembers," muttered Orastes. "Lift him from the case."
The others obeyed hesitantly, as if reluctant to touch the man they had
recreated, and they seemed not easier in their minds when they felt firm
muscular flesh, vibrant with blood and life, beneath their fingers. But
they lifted him upon the table, and Orastes clothed him in a curious

dark velvet robe, splashed with gold stars and cresent moons, and
fastened a cloth-of-gold, fillet about his temples, confining the black
wavy locks that fell to his shoulders. He let them do as they would,
saying nothing, not even when they set him in a carven throne-like
chair with a high ebony back and wide silver arms, and feet like golden
claws. He sat there motionless, and slowly intelligence grew in his dark
eyes and made them deep and strange and luminous. It was as if
long-sunken witch-lights floated slowly up through midnight pools of
darkness.
Orastes cast a furtive glance at his companions, who stood staring in
morbid fascination at their strange guest. Their iron nerves had
withstood an ordeal that might have driven weaker men mad. He knew
it was with no weaklings that he conspired, but men whose courage
was as profound as their lawless ambitions and capacity for evil. He
turned his attention to the figure in the ebon-black chair. And this one
spoke at last.
"I remember," he said in a strong, resonant voice, speaking Nemedian
with a curious, archaic accent. "I am Xaltotun, who was high priest of
Set in Python, which was in Acheron. The Heart of Ahriman-I dreamed
I had found it again-where is it?"
Orastes placed it in his hand, and he drew breath deeply as he gazed
into the depths of the terrible jewel burning in his grasp.
"They stole it from me, long ago," he said. "The red heart of the night it
is, strong to save or to damn. It came from afar, and from long ago.
While I held it, none could stand before me. But it was stolen from me,
and Acheron fell, and I fled an exile into dark Stygia. Much I remember,
but much I have forgotten. I have been in a far land, across misty voids
and gulfs and unlit oceans. What is the year?"
Orastes answered him. "It is the waning of the Year of the Lion, three
thousand years after the fall of Acheron."
"Three thousand years!" murmured the other. "So long? Who are you?"

"I am Orastes, once a priest of Mitra. This man is Amalric, baron of
Tor, in Nemedia; this other is Tarascus, younger brother of the king of
Nemedia; and this tall man is Valerius, rightful heir of the throne of
Aquilonia."
"Why have you given me life?" demanded Xaltotun. "What do