Part 9

The arch conspirator sent out his band of assassins to kill King Jared as he sat upon the throne, and as they departed he called after the bullies, "That I may know that you have done your work well, bring me a token, bring me the head of the king," and he smiled grimly to think that the same fate that Jared had decreed for his father, should now be meted out to him.

Akish did not know what fear was, but he could ill brook delay. He sat in his great stone chamber and essayed a dozen tasks only to throw them aside and listen impatiently, as the afternoon lengthened into night. When the heavy tread of his accomplices resounded in the corridor, he could have shouted with relief.

"How goes it?" he questioned sharply, as the men filed into the room.

"It is done," answered Simon.

"How?"

"With twenty wounds, Chief," broke in one of the followers.

"We went in and mingled with the people as he sat high upon his throne, and when the petitioners for justice had all gone, and he started to descend, we stabbed him. Our men watched the entrances so we would not be interrupted in our work."

"And the proof?"

"Behold, my Lord," Simon threw back his cloak and held up by the hair the ghastly trophy, but it was not this gruesome spectacle that froze the look of horror on the face of Akish.

Instinctively he looked in the other direction to behold Aida, clad in her night robes, in the doorway. Whether or not she had recognized the head of her father, in the half light of the room, they could not tell, for she turned silently, and they heard the swish of her draperies down the hall.

Confusion fell upon the retainers, and Akish, shaking as if he had the ague, said, "I did not mean for her to see that. Get out of my sight."

If they had any doubts they were soon dissipated, for Aida shut herself up in her apartments, and for three days her screams resounded through the palace. On the third day Akish commanded her to appear at a banquet, for he dared not face her alone. She came and sat stony-faced at the board.

During the coronation ceremonies which followed, when Akish sat in her father's place, and she, on his right hand, was crowned queen, neither of them ever mentioned Jared's name.

Not until her son Ether was born some months later did Aida smile again, and somehow, because Akish was his father, the little newcomer renewed the bond between them.

IV.

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.

Beyond the initial step, Aida had taken no part in Akish's crimes. When he attained the throne, she thought that his violence must cease, but his increased power only offered him more opportunities to sate his lust for wickedness. Because his honor was bound up with his queen, as well as for her innate charm, Akish had cared more for her than he did for anybody. But, steeped with satiety, he constantly sought new sensations; and, as he grew more brutish, Aida's influence with him waned. His crimes became more vicious, and he reveled in bloodshed, until the people called him monster, and prayed for a liberator.

Their eyes turned naturally to the tyrant's eldest son. Ether, now grown to splendid manhood, who through his mother, had kingly blood in his veins. The old king saw with jealous eyes how the populace loved his son, and despised him, and his hate knew no bounds. He incarcerated Ether in prison, and gradually starved him to death.

His mother, who could stand no more, left the monster, and retired to her desert castle to mourn. Nimrah, her second son, fearful that his father's wrath would now fall on him, fled with a few followers to Omer at Ablom.

Not to please a paramour but to punish Aida for leaving him, Akish yielded to the importunities of one of his favorites, a vulgar, blase woman and flaunted her openly at the palace.

It is said that the reason the criminal always gets caught is because he stands out against organized society; nay, more than that, he is fighting the law of the universe, progression. As soon as a man impairs his own usefulness, or injures his fellow-men, he becomes a clog to block her advancement, and nature is going to crush him. She has no use for weaklings, but on the useful worker she will lavish power a hundredfold.

The debased debauchee had become a menace, so the immutable laws prepared to destroy him. Grief-stricken over the death of his brother, and smarting under this latest insult offered to his mother, Gilead, the third son, arose in wrath, and declared war against his father. Thousands in the kingdom, who nursed grievances, rallied to his support. So Aida saw her own flesh and blood arrayed against their father. Deep as she had drunk of the bitter draught of sorrow, she was destined yet to drain it to the dregs.

As befitted her mood, the queen had retired to a bleak castle, partly in ruins and surrounded for miles by barren cacti. Bats lurked in its turrets, and the wind claimed its ancient towers for its own. The nation had risen in arms, and when rumors of battle reached their retreat nothing would do but that Aida's youngest son, a boy of fifteen, must sally forth to join his brothers on the field. In vain did his mother plead; he was obdurate. Finally with trembling fingers she fastened the armor on his stripling limbs, kissed him, and let him go. After that the queen of tragedy haunted the edge of the battlefield like a vampire, until they brought her baby boy in dying upon his shield. Then her already tottering reason gave way, and she went stark mad. A few hours later, when they placed the fair, slender body in the sepulchre, his mother was a raving maniac.

All the tragedies of her life were babbled forth in the drivel of the insane. One night, under cover of a storm, she escaped from her keepers. The next morning they found her body in the well, but, whether blinded by the rain, she had stumbled over the curbing and been plunged by accident into the pit, or had sought to drown her troubles in the Lethean waters of suicide, they did not know.

Couriers carried the news of the queen's death to the king. It stirred the remnant of feeling left in him, but his last hold on life was gone. Scarce had the messengers ceased speaking when the guard from the watch tower broke in to say that the legions were advancing on the citadel. Then a captain came to report that his soldiers had been bribed by the enemy. Hated by his own followers, with half-hearted officers who knew they were on the losing side, with fear written on every countenance, Akish realized that he had lost, before the enemy had raised a spear.

"At least we'll die with harness on our back," and he motioned for an attendant to get down his armor from the wall, and, as the boys' hands shook, he kicked him for a coward, and stooped and fastened the straps himself. He ordered his chariot, and when seated on high, the gates were thrown back. Like a bull who charges the toreadors, he glanced over the plain, which, as far as the eye could see, was alive with plumed warriors. His whip sang out over the heads of the horses, and, undaunted to the end, he plunged into the maelstrom to his death.

(THE END.)

End of Project Gutenberg's The Cities of the Sun, by Elizabeth Rachel Cannon