Chapter 4

PRINCESS OF THE JEWEL CITY

How can I describe her as I first saw her, enthroned in her golden chair under that immense dome of dim and luminous ruby? Words, I think, fail and falter before the task of describing such utter perfection of feminine beauty.

She wasyoung, a girl, a mere child: she looked perhaps fourteen when I saw her first in the Great Hall of Phaolon. Slim and graceful as a dancing girl, with her slight, tip-tilted breasts and long, slender legs, she had the coltish grace of an adolescent which contrasted with her regal, queenly dignity.

She wore robes of dull, heavy plush-plush with a shimmering silvery nap-plush the dim hue of damask roses. A scooping neckline exposed the upper slopes of her shallow, adolescent breasts, laid bare her slim shoulders and the fragility of her slender throat. All of her upper bosom was the creamy hue of old mellow ivory.

The bodice of her gown fitted her like a second skin, and clung seductively to the slender waist and smooth, boyish hips of Niamh. But from her girdle, slung low about her hips in the style of the Renaissance, the rose plush skirts of the gown swelled out like the open petals of some soft, lovely flower. This gown was slit up the sides, demurely revealing the silken loveliness of her soft, smooth long legs, naked to the upper thigh, and from beneath the hem of this gown could be glimpsed the tiny, exquisite foot of a Mandarin princess, shod in slippers of golden filigree.

From heavy, telling puffed sleeves, her slim arms extended, bare and unadorned. In all that splendid company, Niamh alone wore no gems at breast or throat, lobe or brow or fingers. She had no need of the frozen mineral fire to add luster or brilliance to her loveliness.

Her face was fineboned, heart-shaped, exquisite. Beneath delicately arched brows, her eyes were enormous wells of depthless amber flame wherein flakes of gold fire trembled. Thick jetty lashes enshadowed the dark flame of her eyes, but her hair, elaborately teased and twisted and coiffed, was startlingly white: a fantastic confection of frosted sugar, an exquisite construction of spun silver.

Her mouth was a luscious rosebud, daintily pink, moistly seductive.

A delicate flower of superb and breathtaking loveliness was Niamh the Fair, when first I looked upon her there on the gilt throne, bathed in shafts of somber and ruby light from the hollow dome above.

The portly chamberlain rang his great silver mace of office against the polished tiles; and there commenced a scene of dramatic confrontation which baffled and maddened me-for, not only was it conducted in a language unknown to me, but a language whose tones I could not even hear!

The spirit-state in which I floated unseen had annoying properties. Although I could see clearly, by the agency of some interaction of forces inexplicable to me then and now, no sound whatsoever reached my impalpable senses. Thus it was that the tense drama now enacted before me was conducted in total silence, insofar as I was concerned.

The tall gaunt man with the cruel face and intense eyes, whose name was Akhmim, as I later learned, seemed to be presenting the princess with an ultimatum of some sort. He set forth his terms with vehement gestures and emphatic curtness, dictating, as I gathered, from a position of superiority. That his terms were unpalatable I assumed from the glum expressions on the faces of those courtiers nearest to me; and that they were peremptory and affrontive I gathered from the stiffness of Niamh’s posture and from the rich color that glowed in her cheeks.

There was a sneering insolence in Akhmim’s arrogant posture, in the negligent courtesy he made to the throne, and in the insufferable smugness wherewith he rested his

case, awaiting with folded arms and lofty expression the reply of the princess.

As for Niamh, long lashes hooded the amber fire of her eyes, but indignation colored her cheeks and her breasts rose and fell, panting with suppressed fury.

As for me, although I understood none of this, I longed to seize Akhmim by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his robe and chuck him out of the hall in a most unceremonious monious manner, calculated to bruise his selfimportance, if not even more tender portions of his physical anatomy. And if I read correctly the outrage and insult that smoldered in the gaze of many of Niamh’s courtiers, there were many in the hall that day who would have applauded such an act, had it been possible for me to perform it.

Still Niamh hesitated before giving her answer to the ultimatum of Akhmim. I somehow sensed that her reply, once given, would be irrevocable.

Then something caught my attention, and drew me from this scene of tension. Niamh’s gilt throne rose on a manytiered pedestal in the center of the hall; but the hall itself was cruciform, like the crux formed by the two passages of a cathedral, and, where the nave of a cathedral would be, there rose a most curious structure. It was like an immense sarcophagus, but one built of delicate blown glass, chased with arabesques and painted with inscriptions in a tongue unknown to me.

Within this crystal coffin there reposed the body of a man so perfectly preserved that his appearance was in all details utterly lifelike. Indeed, you would have unhesitatingly sworn he was not dead at all, but lay in light slumber. The bloom of life was on his cheeks, his grim lips were moist, almost you saw his deep chest tremble to the susurration of light breathing.

In no way did he resemble the dainty, effeminate men of Phaolon. Where they were small and exquisite, he was tall, broad of shoulder, with great arms and thighs of mighty girth. Where their limbs were delicate as those of smooth young girls, his were corded with sinews, thick with swelling thews. Where their faces were fineboned and elfin, his was a rude frame of jutting bone, square and massive of jaw, swarthy of hue, and, lacking their smoothness, rough and harsh as from the burning kiss of tropic suns and the lash of stinging tempests.

He had been a mighty warrior, I guessed, and perhaps

had led many a war-host in the field: for the stern, grim-lipped air of command lay about him like a crimson cloak.

He was unclothed, the Sleeping One-which, as I later learned, was what the folk of Phaolon called the warrior in the crystal coffin-and his great arms lay folded upon his breast, where they were clenched about the massive pommel of a gigantic broadsword of blue steel. A glittering scarlet crystal flashed and winked in the pommel of that sword.

Something about the Sleeping One caught my attention, drew me to the glass sarcophagus wherein he lay enshrined. I cannot explain the fascination that mighty form exerted upon my imagination; it was as if every line and lineament of those grim features was engraved upon the tablets of my memory-as if I had known him, somewhere, somewhen, perhaps in some former life … .

I drifted down toward the great figure, where it lay stretched out upon a pallet of sumptuous velvets. And then there occurred a miracle, the strangest among the many I had thus far experienced; for my spirit-self floated down to scrutinize the body of the Sleeping One-and entered it-And lived again in human flesh!

The transition from disembodied spirit to a spirit which dwelt in living flesh was instantaneous and utterly astounding. In my spirit-state I had been aware of no bodily sensations whatsoever-now the pulse thundered in my temples, the heart labored in my breast, and my lungs ached, starving for air!

With an involuntary start of surprise, my thews convulsed; I rose from my pallet, brandishing my arms, and the great broadsword to which I clung clove through the glass sarcophagus, shattering it to ten thousand ringing shards l

The explosion of shattering glass filled the hall with ringing echoes. A hundred startled eyes turned to see me rise from my place among the glorious dead. The miracle of my resurrection wrung a gasp of stupefied amazement from a hundred throats.

But none in all that place were more astounded at this turn of events than was I myself!

For I had not willed myself down into that dead or

sleeping form. Hovering near, I had been caught helpless in the attraction of some force unknown to me, sucked down as by a vortex into that body, helpless to resist the suction as any chip caught in a maelstrom.

Niamh stared at me with unbelief in her wide eyes and astonishment written in her face.

From where he stood before the throne, Akhmim regarded me as if I were an apparition. I sensed that something in my resurrection-perhaps its timing, which had come almost as if in answer to his ultimatumdisconcerted him, shook his arrogance, struck doubt into the armor of his confidence.

For a breathless moment he stood, twisted about awkwardly in his stiff robes, looking uncomfortable and somehow foolish. And he knew it, for he paled and bit his lip and tugged at his garments as if to rearrange them.

For a long moment the entire company stood frozen in shock. No one spoke or moved. Then, from among a rank of courtiers who stood in a semicircle behind Niamh’s throne, one elderly sage thrust himself to the fore and addressed me. From the rising lilt of his tones I gathered it was an interrogation. The only trouble was that the question was spoken in a language completely unknown to me-a fluid, musical tongue that sounded rather like a cross between Hawaiian and French, with a sibilant tang of old Castilian.

The question thus addressed to me was spoken in loud, clear tones fully audible to all who stood within the ruby-domed hall. Whatever the nature of the query may have been, I sensed from the breathless silence that followed upon the old man’s words, and from the keen and alert fixity with which all eyes were trained upon me, that it was one of enormous importance. Without exception, all who stood there waited in tense expectancy for my reply.

From the moment I had stood up, shattering free of the glass sarcophagus, I had stood motionlessly, my face impassive, clenching the mighty broadsword in one scarred fist. I had not chosen this immobile stance consciouslythe fact of the matter was that I was suffering exquisitely from the torment of renewed circulation. How long this trance-bound body had slept in its transparent tomb I did not know, but the pins-and-needles sensation of numb flesh awakening and the intolerable ache of long-unused muscles forced to work again, combined in a torture beyond description.

In my agony, I scarcely heard the sage’s query, and it was not until long after that I realized its importance, and the import of my answer. By pure accident, without even thinking, I did precisely the right thing.

I-nodded.

And in the next instant the ruby dome above rang to a peal of thunderous acclamation. Joy blazed in the eyes of the throng; exaltation shone in their happy faces. Indescribable relief and bliss glowed in the face of Niamh the Fair. Her eyes shone down on me, brilliant with an inexplicable fervor, and she clasped her small hands to her throbbing heart in an ecstasy beyond all my comprehension.

A burly, hard-faced guard captain, who stood very near the foot of his princess’ dais, turned upon me a gaze of wordless adoration. Then he removed his sword from his scabbard and raised it aloft in salute to me.

A hundred swords leaped from their scabbards to flash aloft like narrow mirrors in the rich glory from above.

And from a hundred throats rang one word-

“Chong! Chong! CHONG!”

And I knew it was no word, but a name.

My name!