The Flute of the Gods Part 41

"I see your thoughts, and I read them," he said. "The men who seek the gold have put a wall between you and me. That which you have you can give them;--but remember in your hearts that there are things which belong to the unborn, and such things you have no power to give them.

Only so long as you keep your own religion, and your own G.o.ds, so long will your tribe stand as a tribe;--no longer! Step by step your children will have to fight the strangers for that which is now your own. Only your G.o.d-thoughts will bind you as brothers;--the G.o.d of the gold hunters will poison your blood, and will divide your clans, and will divide your children, until your names are forgotten in the land!"

"The sorcerer who tells you this is the brother to the serpents in the Desert!" said Padre Vicente springing to his feet in angry impatience;--"enough of words have been said of this--."

A sound between a scream and a moan silenced the words on his lips, and Don Ruy felt his blood run chill, as the drooping figure of the Woman of the Twilight stood suddenly upright with lifted hand.

"Teo!"--she murmured in utter gladness,--and moved through the half light of the room towards the Castilians. "Teo!"

"Holy G.o.d!" whispered Don Ruy, while the padre turned white. Don Diego stared in horror--only one named Teo came in his mind--the Greek who should belong to the Holy Office in Seville;--the man whose word even now was wanted as to the older days of Christian slave trade in Europe!

"Don Teo!" she was quite close to him now, and she spoke as a trembling child who craves welcome,--"I--Mo-wa-the--speak! O Spirit;--you have come back from the Star--you have come--."

The Te-hua men, and Tahn-te also, waited in wonder. Never before had the Twilight Woman gone like that to a man--and she was so close that the man shrank from her against the wall of the room.

"Back!"--he muttered, and he spoke Te-hua now, and his voice was rough with rage and fear,--"This woman is evil, and brings evil power!"

"She is the Woman of the Twilight--the holy woman of the caves," said a man of the Po-Ahtun, for Tahn-te could find no words for the wonder she wakened.

"She is an enchantress who fights against the true G.o.d and his angels;--a witch of evil magic!"--and the padre was white, and breathing hard lest she touch him.

"A witch!"--she echoed in horror.--"I?--Teo--."

She crept to him in abject supplication and reached out her hand, touching the sleeve of his robe.

"Back!"--he shouted in horror--and held the crucifix between them--"Thing of the Evil One! May your tongue be palsied--may your magic fail--may--."

Tahn-te hurled him aside, and caught his mother as she fell; and the padre leaned half fainting against the wall, with great beads of sweat standing on his face, and the crucifix still lifted as a barrier or as a threat.

But the threat was useless to the slender creature of the caves.

"Teo--Teo!" she whispered, and then "Tahn-te," and then the breath went, and her son laid her gently on the floor, while the padre regarded _him_ with a new horror! Don Ruy watching them both, choked back an oath at the revelation in the white face.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BACK! THING OF THE EVIL ONE!" _Page 324_]

The Te-hua men also drew away;--even Po-tzah averted his face when Tahn-te looked from one to the other!

Again had their eyes seen the strength of the white medicine G.o.d. The holy Woman of the Twilight had been destroyed before their eyes. It was the greatest magic they had yet seen!

Tahn-te saw it, and knew it; and felt as he had felt when a boy, and he had stood alone and apart--the only child of the sky. He had come again into his own! He was akin to none of earth's children.

Then the man of the Po-Ahtun spoke.

"Two there were who held the secret of the sun symbol;--Now there is only one,--she has taken it through the Twilight Land to the Light beyond the light."

"Two?"--said Don Ruy--"and this woman was one? And the other?"

No one spoke, but Tahn-te looked at him; and again there was no need for words.

"Medicine can be made to make a man forget," said Tahn-te to the men of Te-hua--"but no medicine can be made to make a man remember! One keeper of the secret is dead by the magic of the white priest. Your children's children will give thanks in the days to come that it was not given to the men of iron."

"It is a secret of the tribe!" protested the man of the Po-Ahtun.

"It is now the secret of the G.o.d who hid it in the earth," said Tahn-te. "By all earth people who knew it--it has been forgotten!"

"But--without it we will lose our brothers of the new G.o.d!"

"Without it you will surely lose your brothers of the new G.o.d!" he a.s.sented. "Each time you look on the G.o.d-Maid of the mesa who has turned away her face, you will remember the prophecies of Tahn-te!

Each time the G.o.d of Young Winter paints leaves yellow for the sleep to come, your children will see a sign on the mountain to tell them that Tahn-te was indeed Brother to the Serpent as that man said in his mocking!--also that the prayers of Tahn-te do not end. Free I came from the Desert to you, and I carried the Flute of the G.o.ds, and fruit for your children:--free I go out from your dwellings and carry my 'witch mother' to rest!"

He gathered her in his arms, and looked once into the pallid face of her accuser and destroyer. At that look from the pagan priest the white priest shrank and covered his face with the cowl.

"You--go?" said Po-tzah.

"In the place of Povi-whah another will hear your prayers to the G.o.ds, and I--Tahn-te the outcast--I go!"

No more words were spoken among the men of the council. In silence they watched him as he walked with his burden up the trail of the mesa where he had run so gladly to make his boy vow at the shrine.

No happy sign shone for him this time in the sky. It was as he said to Don Ruy;--those who make vows to the G.o.ds,--and forget them for earth people, pay--and pay prices that are heavy! But above him a bird swept into the golden sky. He put up his hand to the wings in his hair--and heard plainly the words of the mate who would wait his call at the trail's end.

And Don Ruy Sandoval watched the man called "sorcerer" out of sight, and then went to the dwelling of Jose and gathered to his breast the secretary who had adopted blanket draperies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TAHN-Te; THE OUTCAST _Page 326_]

"Sweetheart comrade," he said without proper prelude or preparation--"There is not anything in this weary world worth living for but Love, and Love alone. Shall we take the homeward journey and go where we can guard it?"

"There are tears in your eyes," said his "Dona Bradamante,"--"and you look as if you make love to me, yet think of some other thing!"

"I have seen a man live through h.e.l.l this day," he answered. "Never ask me, Sweetheart--what the h.e.l.l was. It is beyond belief that a man could live it, and continue to live after it."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE BLUEBIRD'S CALL

Even in the long after years in stately Christian Spain, Don Ruy was a silent man when his serene lady in stiff brocades and jewelled shoes would mock at court pageantry and sigh for the reckless days when she had worn the trappings of a page and followed his steps into the north land of barbaric mysteries.

Mystery much of it had remained for her! The life of the final days in the terraced village by the great river had been masked and cloaked for her. Ysobel and Jose had been silent guards, and Don Ruy could not be cajoled into speech!

But there had been a morning he suddenly became a very compelling commander for all of them; and his will was that the cavalcade head for the south and Mexico as quickly as might be, and that Padre Vicente de Bernaldez separate from them all and seek converts where he would. A horse and food was allowed to him, but no other thing.

Don Diego exclaimed with amazement at such arrangement, and warned Don Ruy that the saints above, and Mother Church in Spain, would demand account for such act on the part of even Don Ruy Sandoval!

"Is it indeed so?" asked Don Ruy, and smiled with a bitter meaning as he looked on the padre:--"Will you, senor priest, tell this company it is at your own will and request that you remain in this land of the barbarians? Or is your mind changed, and do you fancy Seville as a pleasant place for a journey?"

But Padre Vicente turned the color of a corpse, and said openly before them all, that he asked freedom to journey to other Indian villages.

Thus, white and silent he was let go. He went without farewell. If he found other villages none can tell, but the men of a great Order framed before the building of the Egyptian pyramids, do know that the traces of a like Order is to-day in one of the villages of that province of New Spain, and that there is legend of a white priest who lived in their terraces of the mesa, and taught them certain things of the strange outside world so long as they let him live. But his name is not remembered by men.