"It is a lie," said Nam.
"Silence!" answered Juanna. "Let that door be opened, and you shall see if I have lied."
"Wait awhile, Queen," said Olfan, who appeared utterly overcome. "If I understand you right, your husband lives, and therefore you say that the words which we have spoken and the oaths that we have sworn mean nothing, for you are not my wife."
"That is so, Olfan."
"Then now I am minded to turn wicked and let him die," said the king slowly, "for know this, Lady, I cannot give you up."
Juanna grew pale as death, understanding that this man's passions, now that once he had given them way, had passed beyond his control.
"I cannot give you up," he repeated. "Have I not dealt well with you? Did I not say to you, 'Consent or refuse, as it shall please you, but having once consented you must not go back upon your words'? What have I to do with the reasons that prompted them? My heart heard them and believed them. Queen, you are wed to me; those oaths that you have sworn may not be broken. It is too late; now you are mine, nor can I suffer you to pass from me back to another man, even though he was your husband before me."
"But the Deliverer! must I then become my husband's murderer?"
"Nay, I will protect him, and, if it may be, find means to send him from the land."
Juanna stood silent and despairing, and at this moment Soa, lying on the couch, broke into a shrill and mocking laugh that stung her like a whip and roused her from her lethargy.
"King," she said, "I am at your mercy, not through any wanton folly of my own, but because fate has made a sport of me. King, you have been hardly used, and, as you say, hitherto you have dealt well with me. Now I pray you let the end be as the beginning was, so that I may always think of you as the noblest among men, except one who died this day to save me. King, you say you love me; tell me then if my life hung upon a word of yours, would that word remain unspoken?
"Such was my case: I spoke the word and for one short hour I betrayed you. Will you, whose heart is great, bind me by such an oath as this, an oath wrung from me to save my darling from the power of those dogs? If this is so, then I have erred strangely in my reading of your mind, for till now I have held you to be a man who would perish ere he fell so low as to force a helpless woman to be his wife, one whose crime is that she deceived him to save her husband."
She paused, and, clasping her hands as though in prayer, looked up into his troubled face with beseeching eyes; then, as he did not speak, she went on:
"King, I have one more word to say. You are the strongest and you can take me, but you cannot hold me, for that hour would be my last, and you but the richer by your broken honour and a dead bride."
Olfan was about to answer when Soa, fearing lest Juanna's pleading should prevail against his passion, broke in saying, "Be not fooled, King, by a woman's pretty speeches, or by her idle threats that she will kill herself. She will not kill herself, I know her well, she loves her life too much; and soon, when you are wed, she will love you also, for it is the nature of us women to worship those who master us. Moreover, that man, the Deliverer, is not her husband, except in name; for months I have lived with them and I know it. Take her, King, take her now, this hour, or live to mourn her loss and your own folly all your life's days."
"I will not answer that slave's falsehoods," said Juanna, drawing herself up and speaking proudly, "and it were more worthy of you not to listen to them, King. I have spoken; now do your will. Be great or little, be noble or be base, as your nature teaches you."
And suddenly she sank to the ground and, shaking her long hair about her face and arms, she burst into bitter weeping.
Twice the King glanced at her, then he turned his head as though he dare look no more, and spoke keeping his eyes fixed upon the wall.
"Rise, Queen," he said hoarsely, "and cease your tears, since you are safe from me. Now as always I live to do your will, but I pray you, hide your face from me as much as may be, for, Lady, my heart is broken with love for you and I cannot bear to look on that which I have lost."
Still sobbing, but filled with admiration and wonder that a savage could be thus generous, Juanna rose and began to murmur thanks, while the captains stared, and Soa mocked and cursed them both.
"Thank me not," he said gently. "It seems that you, who can read all hearts, have read mine aright, or perchance you fashioned it as you would have it be. Now, having done with love, let us to war. Woman, what is the secret of that door?"
"Find it for yourself," snarled Soa. "It is easy to open when once you know the spring—like a woman's heart, Olfan. Or if you cannot find it, then it can be forced—like a woman's love, Olfan. Surely you who are so skilled in the winning of a bride need not seek my counsel as to the opening of a door, for when I gave it but now upon the first of these matters, you would not hearken, Olfan, but were melted by the sight of tears that you should have kissed away."
Juanna heard and from that moment made up her mind that whatever happened she had done with Soa. Nor was this wonderful, for few women could have pardoned what she had suffered at her hands.
"Drive the spear into her till she speaks, comrade," said Olfan.
Then at the touch of steel Soa gave up mocking and told the secret of the door.
Chapter XXXVI
How Otter Came Back
After he had rested awhile at the bottom of the glacier, Otter set to work to explore the cliff on the top of which he found himself, with the view of descending it and hiding at its foot till nightfall, when he hoped to find means of re–entering the city and putting himself in communication with Olfan. Very soon, however, he discovered that if he was to return at all, he must follow the same route by which he had come.
Evidently the tunnel sloped upwards very sharply, for he was standing on the brow of a precipice cut into three steps, which, taken together, may have measured some three hundred feet in height, and, so far as he could see, it was utterly impossible to descend any of these cliffs without the aid of ropes. Nor could he continue his investigations over a wide area, for about four hundred paces to the left of the opening to the subterranean passage—whereof, by the way, he was very careful to note the exact position—the mountain pushed out a snowy shoulder, with declivities so precipitous that he dared not trust himself on them.
Then he tried the right–hand side, but with no better luck, for here he was stopped by a yawning rift in the rock. Now Otter sat down and considered the situation.
The day was still young, and he knew that it would be foolish to attempt escape from the pool before dark. In front of him the mountain rose steeply till, so far as he could judge, it reached a pass which lay some two miles off, at the base of that main peak, on whose snows the priests had watched the breaking of the dawn. Part of this declivity was covered with blocks of green ice, but here and there appeared patches of earth, on which grew stunted trees, shrubs, and even grass and flowers. Being very hungry, it occurred to Otter that he might find edible roots among this scanty vegetation.
With this hope he began to climb the slope, to be rewarded in due course by the discovery of a vegetable that he recognised, for it was the same which had been offered to him on the occasion of his unlucky outbreak that had resulted in the casting away of the rubies.
With this poor food the dwarf filled himself, and having found a bough that made him an excellent staff, he continued his climb, desiring to see what there might be on the other side of the neck.
Arriving there without any great difficulty, Otter stood astonished, although he was not much given to the study of scenery. Below him lay the City of the Mist, with its shining belt of rivers that, fed from the inexhaustible mountain snows, meandered across the vast plains—now no longer hidden in mist—which they had trodden on their journey. Above his head the mighty peak towered thousands of feet into the air, till it ended in a summit shaped like a human finger pointing eternally to the heavens. Before him the scene was even stranger, made up as it was of snowy fields broken by ridges of black rock, and laid one beneath the other like white sails drying upon the slopes of a sandhill.