what woman really knows the heart of her lover? Yes, perhaps memory stings—and you have good reason to ask it!"
He stood silent.
"However, I am going to kill that woman. And you will not take me to wife if I do?"
Still he did not speak.
Draconda laughed.
At a sign from her, the men drew back from Mynine, who was standing straight and still. Not the slightest tremor was perceptible, though her cheeks were as pale as Death's own. A curious smile, though—one that often rises before my eyes and lingers there—hovered about her lips.
Draconda raised her weapon, rode toward Mynine and smote off Mynine's head, which rolled over twice or thrice, opened and shut its blue eyes several times, then stared straight at Henry Quainfan through the driving rain.
The queen wheeled her horse round and in a moment had dismounted before her lover. She said nothing, just looked at him. And he stepped to her, put his right arm around her and drew her close. And, clinging to him tightly, she cried a little.
AND here I may well bring this narrative to a close. The day before Mynine's great army met destruction, his pontifical highness was killed by a priest in a drunken fight; this occurred in Seeamnos, and shows that, though delighting in intrigue and turmoil, Sallysherib took good care to keep his sacred person distant from the scene of action. Peace followed the great battle. Draconda was able to abolish human sacrifices and many other things of that order—the reform being facilitated by the cruel oppression the people long had endured from the hands of the priests. However, the gravest problem in Loom today is, in all likelihood, this one of the sacerdotal caste. Draconda and Henry Quainfan (who is the king now and called King Henry) are going to direct all possible energy toward the final dissolution of its pernicious influence.
Henry has just begun work on a wireless apparatus (though, of course, he is sadly hampered) with which he hopes to speak the earth. He is sure it is possible to enter into communication with our mother planet and is jubilant over the thought of it.
So this story of Draconda will be read by Terrestrials after all! What a surprise Mr. Homer L. Wood will receive when Henry Quainfan's voice comes to him from out the void!
Neither Draconda nor Henry has seen a page of the record, I withholding it for reasons that will be sufficiently obvious. Of course, that part of it, and the many notes, necessary for its complete understanding by the Venusians will not be transmitted—at any rate, I suppose Henry will not transmit that part of the text and those many notes.
In a few moments, the last word of this history will have been penned. And I am going away now—with a single companion, whose name is Reem Gomar. Though the good things of life are accessible to him, yet he is going away with me—to what, we can only dream.
The great sun is just setting: I wonder in what far places Gomar and I shall see it go down in the west. Of course, neither Draconda nor Henry knows that we are going—we only know.
I have been writing for a long time now, and my hand is tired, and my mind is tired, and so I shall say good-bye. Perhaps—who knows?—many years lie before me and one day I shall even take up my pen to write another history of marvelous things and happenings.
Until then, farewell.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
BY THE HAND OF HIS COMRADE
HERE Rider Famermain's manuscript ends. Of course, Henry Quainfan succeeded in making an apparatus with which he could send electromagnetic waves to our earth—else your eye never would have lighted on this story of Draconda.
The first message was received by me (Homer L. Wood) on the tenth day of May at about a quarter past nine in the evening; and I succeeded, with the instrument that Mr. Quainfan gave me shortly before his mysterious disappearance (and which Mr. Famermain forgot to mention) in soon getting an answer to him. Then came explanations, which I need not give here, and almost immediately was begun the transmission of this marvelous history—now all ready to be given to the world; the most extraordinary true narrative, I believe, ever penned by mortal hand.
"I have omitted," says Mr. Quainfan, "certain lines in which Rider speaks of me in unmerited terms, though, of course, this was not done without his permission." Otherwise certainly I should not have done so. Even as it is, some passages make me to blush like the rose of Sharon. In other respects, however, Rider's narrative (save, of course, that part of the text, and those many notes, written for the benefit of the Venusians) has been transmitted to you just as written. Nothing pertaining to Draconda has been omitted, though Rider extended to her the favor of making any deletion that might be desired: however, not even a comma was struck from the record by her hand.
"Often do we, Draconda and I, sit in the stillness of the night (in which no moon ever shines) and gaze with indescribable feelings at those two stars, the one much larger than the other, that we know so well—the earth and the moon. When they are in opposition, and for some time before and after, the disk of the earth is distinctly visible, and Terra is then a lovely object indeed in our Venusian skies. Mercury too blazes out nobly, now evening star, now star of morn. But oh, how I long for the silvery light of the moon!
"And how interesting now will be the beautiful star Hesperus and Lucifer to eyes on the earth, now when it is known that this shining world, too, is the abode of men and women; that here also, in this far-distant world, which in its remoteness seems but a shining point, are love and hate, laughter and tears, ecstasy, death and sorrow—that great brooding shrouded thing that men, under various names, know as the Mystery of Being.
"As for Rider, not a single word has ever come to us from him or about him. Every day I hope that the long silence will be broken, and never a messenger arrives but the hope rises in my heart that at last word has come to me, but it is only to sink again into those troubled depths whence it comes.
"Does he still see those two stars upon which we so often gaze, or has darkness closed his eyelids in that sleep which men call death?
"Only time can answer, and perhaps even from it no answer ever will come.
"But I still hope: some time, if he is still living and goes not down to death, he will send word to me—some time will come to me again. Yes, surely there will come a day when he will long to see me as I do him and grasp his hand in mine once more.
"Peradventure, though, he will circle the planet ere he comes to us again.
"And now, to all who have known us, to every man, woman and child on the whole earth, Draconda and I send our best greetings and best wishes—send them silently throbbing across that terrible, unfathomable abyss which I shall never cross again."
So now the curtain descends, the drama is done.
And, as the great discoverer and his wondrous queen sit in the stillness of the night and gaze at those two stars that are Terra and Selene, so do I sit and gaze away at that lovely orb which now hangs in our western sky at eve like some glorious jewel; and thousands of pictures come and go in my eyes, and I wonder if Rider Farnermain still lives somewhere in that shining vastness which is to us but a point of light—if ever again his voice, as it were, will wing its swift and silent way across that everchanging, bottomless abyss that lies between.
THE END
