Chapter XXI

THE LAW OF GONDWANA

"... It is written: that those who wish to know—may know. This is the Law of the Red Gods—the Law of the barren wives, the Law of Gondwana. But those of our blood only—and among those only women and the servants of the Gods—may hear it and know it without dying."

The voice which was chanting stopped and an order sounded:

"Untie their legs and take off their veils that they may see. The law is the law."

Pierre, freed from the cloth which had been wrapped round his head, looked about him with curiosity. He found himself in the middle of an interior open court, square in shape, of which the four sides were lined with galleries one above the other, narrowing as they ascended, and forming a tangle of recesses and stalls and compartments, over which innumerable canopies and roofs twisted into spiral pinnacles jutted out, tumbling in all directions, straddling over each other, crowding one upon the other in an intricate mass.... The centre of the court was hollowed out, forming a sort of basin paved with large, gray, flat stones, the spaces between which were green with moss. It was in this basin that they lay, he and the missionary. Very far up in the centre of the grotesque and involved crowding of the roofs a section of blue sky shone. Under the galleries the crowd of sorceresses was massed. Among the twisted pillars and the square columns could be seen groups of faces, scarred and twisted with every form of unimaginable deformity, but all bending eagerly towards the two men. How many of them were there? One hundred?... Two hundred?... Perhaps more!

Pierre and the missionary examined them eagerly. They looked from one gallery to another, inspecting the compartments, roving up and down the long façades; and first one, and then the other, suddenly cried out:

"Wanda!"

"Mademoiselle Redeski!"

There she was, standing in one of the galleries, bending forward with her eyes fixed on them. The roof of the gallery in which she stood flung its shadow over her so that the upper part of her figure, clad in a black tunic, was in full blaze of light while the rest of her remained in the shade. She was surrounded with sorceresses. She hung over a little further. The sun lit up the masses of her hair so that she seemed haloed with pale gold. With her arms stretched wide she called:

"Pierre!"

The young man made a motion of rage. She saw that he was ready to rush blindly towards her, and called out hurriedly:

"No ... no ... don't stir.... Presently ... after the...."

Then she fell suddenly silent. Around her the sorceresses were jostling one another, drowning her voice with their ironical laughter and sneers.

Motionless, his face turned towards the young woman, Pierre looked at her long and searchingly. Their glances met and mingled, and their love, stronger than the sense of danger, flamed up and flowed through them, overwhelming them both with the same emotion and the same hopes. It seemed to them that they were close to one another, so that their lips at the same moment gave and received an imaginary kiss, and they smiled, taking no thought of their sorry plight.

Once more an order tore through the silence:

"Hear ye all.... This is the true word."

Their ecstasy was shattered.

Pierre, turning towards the voice which had just sounded, recognized Jieng: Jieng who, now clad in a tunic of white silk and seated in a stall of carved stone decorated with blazing gold, was presiding over the strange assembly. She bent a triumphant grin on the young man and her lids flickered when their eyes met.

Then Lursac looked at the missionary beside him.

"A kind of trial I suppose," said he.

"Yes," said the priest, "but listen!"

The chant continued:

"... At the time when the Gods descended on the world the temple was built—built with their hands. And hundreds and thousands of moons have since then rolled into darkness. Afterwards the Gods created peoples and animals and last of all they created the Law—their Law...."

Once more Pierre turned to face Jieng. She sat motionless in a hieratic pose copied from Siamese idols: at her feet crouched the woman who was chanting; and, as she read, the yellow parchment inscribed in unknown characters unrolling, stretched itself along the floor and seemed to glide towards the two men.

Jieng made a sign.

"... And in order that their will should be obeyed they called together the women who live beyond the mountains in the cold white country and said to them: This is our Law of which you shall be the servants, and your power shall be great, for you shall be the makers and the mothers of the Moï people—the free people of the forest."

A murmur arose, and a great wave of pride tingled in the scarred faces of the priestesses and shone in their eyes.

Father Ravennes interrupted a moment the rosary which he was saying in a whisper and caught Pierre by the elbow:

"What do you intend to do?" said he calmly.

Jerking himself free, the young man walked towards the high priestess. When he was only separated from her by the edge of the basin in which he stood he turned his eyes upon her. For a minute their hates flashed out and Pierre cried roughly:

"Your religious laws don't interest us! What we want is that white woman whom you carried away here and whom you are holding against her will. Do you understand?"

Jieng did not deign to answer. She contented herself with laying her finger on the shoulder of the reader crouched at her feet....

"... As the servants did not understand, the Gods told them more: This is the Temple in which you are to live. Here is the holy valley, the valley in which time shall stand motionless. And here are the males of the Race-which-shall-not-change. They shall be the Living Gods. These shall be Life and they shall be called 'the Red Gods,' that is to say the First, the Sons of the Queen-race, the Rmoahal[17]-race.

Pierre stretched his hand towards Jieng:

"Listen," he cried; "if you don't give us back this woman our brothers will come and destroy your temple and raze it to the ground. You shall all be dispersed and slain. Our revenge is terrible!"

Jieng, implacable, slowly raised her withered hand:

"... And henceforth the first Rule of the Law shall be concerning your fate: you shall be conquered throughout the centuries but you shall never be subdued. Everything which is taken from you you shall some day recover, as the free people of the forest, the Moï people, shall not die. They shall remain a strong people, for the women of the race whose bodies are sterile shall come here and shall be the brides for one night of the Living Gods, and they shall carry back to the people of the forest the life and the strength of the Race-which-shall-not-change."

Pierre bent his head; he felt himself fighting against a stupendous power, in the face of which all resistance would be useless. The versicles chanted in Banhar by the reader seemed to him a fantastic story without interest. He thought of nothing but Wanda. Would he ever be able to set her free? He looked at her. Her face seemed to him paler, yet more wonderfully sweet and tender, in the midst of these ravaged faces of the sorceresses! But at the same time he realized his weakness against their numbers. The disproportion of their forces came home to him with brutal certainty, and he knew in advance that he would go down to defeat. He would not save Wanda ... he would not be able to save her!

To his rage succeeded a dull despair. He turned to the missionary, and the priest, aware of his sufferings, said gravely:

"Wait, the goodness of the Lord is without bounds: we have no right to despair...."

The voice of the chantress continuing her litany interrupted him:

"... They shall be brides of a night—but they shall not know it, for they shall remain wrapped in slumber, as no woman except their servants may see the Living Gods. No one—unless her life henceforth is to be that of one of their servants and that she remain among them until her death. And this is the second Rule of the Law."

Jieng bent forward: she looked the young man up and down.

"Do you hear?" she asked in her expressionless voice. "She wanted to see the Red Gods. She has seen them, and she must remain among us until her death. It is the second Rule of the Law...."

She leaned back.

"... But the women of the free people who have been three times brides of the Gods and who shall still remain sterile shall become their servants. Then their portion shall be ugliness and obedience. Those who are not ugly shall be made so; so that all the women who are thus offered to the Gods shall alike have faces without thought and without mind,—as beauty and thought will bring to blossom in the holy valley as they have in the rest of the world the trees of love, of hatred and of revolt.—And this is the third Rule of the Law."

The parchment, now almost all unrolled, stretched out towards the hollow in the centre of the court, brushing the feet of the two men and jerking with every movement of the reader, whose voice, up to that moment level and expressionless, suddenly became vibrant and sonorous.

"... Men even of Moï blood shall never see the Temple, and the Dead Zone shall be their boundary. Nevertheless fifty warriors shall live in the Temple, but without knowing the Gods; and before entering there they shall have been made no longer fit to be called men. This is the penultimate Rule of the Law."

A long pause, then the voice rose and became strident and flung out like a defiance or a verdict of death the last section of the Law.

"... And if a man who is neither of the Moï blood nor of the Moï country comes to the Temple, drawn by the lust of knowledge or even by chance, the Slow Death shall be his portion. And this is the last Rule of the Law."

Lursac saw the missionary blench.

"Is it this verdict of death which causes you anxiety?" he asked.

The priest shrugged his shoulders:

"Didn't you hear? We are condemned to the Slow Death. I suppose you know what that means?"

"Yes," said Pierre, "starvation and thirst!"

"No," interjected the priest, "it is something much more horrible, a punishment which is celebrated in the annals of the Kingdom of Annam."[18]

The voice of Jieng interrupted him. She had risen. With her two hands sweeping the air in a wide threatening gesture, she cried out:

"The Law is the Law. You have come here to find out, and you have found out; but now the Law of Gondwana has become your Law. Hear this also which is the first word, at once the first and the last, as the chain which binds you is complete.

... It is written: that those who wish to know—may know. This is the Law of the Red Gods—the Law of the barren wives, the Law of Gondwana. But those of our blood only—and among those only women and the servants of the Gods—may hear it and know it without dying...."

A great clamor filled the hall: all the priestesses standing upon their steps with their eyes turned towards the two men repeated in unison:

"And the Law of Gondwana is become your Law."

Clear and sudden, silence fell and lasted for a moment; then Jieng gave the order:

"Set them in the eighth gallery of the end hall until sunset. Then they shall be carried to the statue of the God; and when the dawn comes the last rule of the Law shall be carried out...."

She looked the missionary in the face.

"And now I shall find out how those who serve your God can die," said she.

Straining towards him she seemed to await his answer. But the priest, with his eyes in front of him, gave no evidence of having heard her except by a faint smile.