"There are, I believe, some five hundred twin-souls at present immured in the dungeons," said Lyone.
"Poor souls!" I murmured, "their apostasy was but their reformation."
"I often think of them," said Lyone, "but I know I can never liberate them except by my own successful apostasy. And yet when all else is peaceful and happy, or at least appears so, why should I become the leader of an insurrection that would precipitate a hundred times more misery on the nation, to say nothing of the possibility of defeat?"
I saw that a crisis had come to Lyone, a tremendous debate agitated her soul. I forebore treading further on the sacred ground. She, with true delicacy, was striving to hide the intensity of her proud unrest.
I felt that in time she would have the courage to take the irrevocable step that led to freedom or death.
As I sat devouring every word spoken by Lyone I felt a strange power surrounding me, an emanation of the soul of my beloved friend. I resisted for a long time a sacrilegious desire to fling myself at her feet and clasp her in my arms. I thought of her supreme dignity, her love for her faith and her people, and I knew one cold glance from her eyes would pierce me through and through like a sword. The more I thought of my position at that moment the more amazed I became at the audacity that led me to ever think of claiming the soul of the goddess as mine, much less my encouragement of an enterprise so desperate as we had already assuredly embarked upon.
[Illustration: HER KISS WAS A BLINDING WHIRLWIND OF FLAME AND TEARS!
IT WAS THE PROCLAMATION OF WAR UPON ATVATABAR. THENCEFORTH WE BECAME A NEW AND FORMIDABLE TWIN-SOUL.]
As I gazed in adoration at the splendid soul before me the scene through the open windows seemed to grow more ideal. There was a new glory in the gardens around me, a finer flashing of fountains in the sunlight, and a bolder chiselling of palaces and temples. Beyond and above there wheeled the roof of the world, with its still more prodigious forests and mountains and a wider expanse of gleaming seas.
I sprang forward with a cry of joy, falling at the feet of the goddess. I encircled her figure with my arms and held up my face to hers. Her kiss was a blinding whirlwind of flame and tears! Its silence was irresistible entreaty. It dissolved all other interests like fire melting stubborn steel. It was the proclamation of war upon Atvatabar! It was the destruction of a unique civilization with all its appurtenances of hopeless love. It was love defying death.
Thenceforward we became a new and formidable twin-soul!
CHAPTER XXXV.
OUR VISIT TO THE INFERNAL PALACE.
The infernal palace was a congregation of subterranean rock-hewn temples under the spiritual control of the grand sorcerer Charka and the grand sorceress Zooly-Soase.
The grand sorcerer's dominion was directly underneath the supernal palace of Egyplosis. An ornate pagoda of stone covered the entrance to the underground palace. The descent was by means of a wide gradient of polished marble, and there was also an elevator car, beautifully decorated with electro-plated sheets of gold and lit by electricity, which was the most rapid means of descent to the pavement beneath, a distance of two hundred and fifty feet. The procession of twin-souls and attendants, who carried Lyone and myself in a splendid litter of gold, entered the palace by means of the inclined marble highway whose sculptured walls were radiant with electric light. The many temples of the underground palace were devoted to the most occult worship of Harikar. There was an immense central edifice whose roof, supported by lofty columns, and sculptured in fantastic beauty, rose two hundred feet above the pavement. Here electric suns lit up what was merely the vestibule of a hundred temples all hewn from the same pale green marble, the aquelium floors glimmering like a fathomless sea.
As we entered this splendid abode of sorcery, we were received by the august officials of the sanctuary. The grand sorcerer Charka was a man of imperial presence, gracious and subtle. His flesh was of the hue of silver bronze and he possessed noble features. His hair was blue and his blue beard was trimmed into a rounded semi-circle on his chin, while his mustache spread nobly on either side of his lips. He wore a robe of emerald blue silk, embroidered with silver flowers. The grand sorceress, Thoubool who accompanied him, possessed the complexion of a pearl, was arrayed in a robe of celestial blue silk, and, like the grand sorcerer, wore a diadem of rubies.
Our reception was extremely gracious, the grand sorcerer saying he felt highly honored with our visit.
As we passed down the palace pavement, an immense bell opened its mouth of gaunt and glorious bronze. Soft explosions of music swept in thrilling moans through temple and cloister, the echoing walls resounding with ritournels of enthusiastic peace. As if inspired with passion, I could hear the bell swing and roll on its delirious pivot uttering its deep-sounding fantasy.
I saw, illuminating the sculptured archway of each temple on either side of us, the name thereof in letters of incandescent light. I saw the names Amano, Biccano, Demano, Hirlano, Kilano, Pridano, Redolano, Ecthyano, Oxemano, Jiracano, Oirelano, Orphitano, Cedeshano, Padomano, Jocdilano, Nidialano, Bischomano, Omdolopano and many others, indicating the various departments of soul development to which each temple was dedicated.
The sorcerer waved his wand and suddenly a band of priestesses appeared on the pavement moving in strange and fantastic measures.
Their attire consisted of low-cut circles of bright and beautiful stuffs with short skirts, having in front of each a sheaf of heavy folds that expanded and fell as the dancer moved. All wore jewels and rings of precious metals on wrists and ankles. Their faces, perfect in feature, were pale rose in color but marvellously delicate. Ranging themselves on either side of the immense aisle, they formed a delightful guard of honor for the grand sorcerer and his retinue.
They were not only souls, but the materializations of souls, that danced and sang as when on earth. They were souls of former priestesses reincarnated by the sorcerer and who vanished when we reached the entrance to the temple of the labyrinth. It certainly was a delicate and superexcited imagination that wrought the splendid archway through which we passed into the grotto garden beyond. Neither Greek nor Moor, Hindoo nor Goth ever conceived such arabesques as were sculptured on the walls of the entrance to the holy of holies.
In the garden, hewn from the solid stone, were interminable thickets and hedges enclosing labyrinthine walks. There were open spaces in which stood veritable trees with strangest leaf and flower, branch and stem delicately chiselled from the solid rock. There were also acres of grass and flowers, wonderful creations of art. There were rose bushes, heavy with their eternal bloom, the flowers stained crimson as in life and the leaves their varying gradations of green.
Fruit trees, with pale pink flowers and leaves light and dark green, stood amid the green grass that never waved in the breeze. An immovable streamlet ran down its bed of carved irregularities between flowery banks and underneath a bridge formed of a single arch.
I looked up expecting to see the sky, but my gaze met the solid heavens of stone, and I knew again I was in a cavern. The feeling was somewhat suffocating. The garden was lit by an electric sun in the centre of the roof two hundred feet overhead. The pathway, wide enough for six people abreast, led by labyrinthine dells to the pagoda of the sorcerer, which stood in the centre of the garden. The mazes of the pathway were so numerous that none save the initiated, when once in the labyrinth, could find their way out again.
It was a weird experience to find myself walking between the master twin-souls of that subterranean paradise, exploring its many mysteries.
We arrived in due time at the entrance to a mighty temple at the further side of the labyrinth, whose bronze door suddenly opened to receive us, and the sorcerer bade me enter.
Passing through a pillared porch we entered a wide and lofty space lit by tall windows and a roof of many-colored domes of glass that threw wonderful lights on the polished aquelium floors of the building. The light that shone through window and dome was produced by myriads of electric incandescent lamps that glowed in recesses of the rock behind each window. This was the inmost shrine of the sorcerer.
As I walked toward the centre of the mysterious temple the sorcerer inquired if creative magic was cultivated on the outer sphere.
I informed the sorcerer that necromancy, divination, magic, clairvoyance, esotericism, and theosophy were things known and practised in many countries. "But," I added, "the idea there is that of self-abnegation and miracles are only to be performed by ascetics who practise the most rigid austerities. Men who desire to possess occult power live in complete solitude, subjecting themselves to cruel mortifications. They abstain from all fellowship with their kind, they try to live even without food. They absolutely mourn existence, avoiding all contact with everything earthly. They hope by renouncing all the actions of life to enter more and more into the spiritual existence. They believe they can build up an enormous soul out of the ruins of the body."
"Do you find that such a method produces a high development of creative power, love, justice, conscience, truth, temperance, order, and benevolence?" said the grand sorcerer.
"I cannot say," I replied, "that the devotees to whom I refer are conspicuous for those qualities, certainly not for a highly active state of such qualities. Their abnegation develops fanaticism, which is intemperance itself, and fills them with hate toward those outside their creed. The starvation of every appetite of pleasure withers up the appreciation for every form of human delight."
"Then what virtues are derived from ascetic practices?" inquired the sorcerer.
"Certain virtues of a negative order," I replied. "The adepts claim to have power to create and transport matter; a claim which reliable history does not, except in a few cases, recognize, and in a very limited sense they have power to separate the soul from the body.
While the body remains in a comatose state, the soul traverses space, holds consultation with similar souls, and returns to its mansion in the body again."
[Illustration: THE LABYRINTH WAS A SUBTERRANEAN GARDEN, WHOSE TREES AND FLOWERS WERE CHISELED OUT OF THE LIVING ROCK.]
"Your magicians," said the sorcerer, "weaken or kill the body without imparting corresponding power to the soul. Now we of Atvatabar believe that the body should be developed equally with the soul. We believe that contact with the noblest and best of earthly things develops power and beauty. We feed both body and soul on the perfection of things, that both may thereby absorb perfection.
"In the brilliant activities of the supernal palace, and in the golden calm of the infernal palace, priest and priestess, as twin souls, naturally intermingle in the enjoyment of a long Nirvana of ecstasy.
We have not only the occult power to perform miracles like the ascetics of the outer sphere, but the soul possesses an enormous development of every noble quality without which our golden century is impossible. We are able by means of our baths of life to obtain a hundred years of glorious youth, during which period age and decay of the body is suspended. Our devotees when they arrive at the age of twenty years, when youth is fully developed, begin their Nirvana of blessedness and love. They do not grow older during these years. The eye is as bright, the pulse as bounding, the heart as lively, the complexion as pure and lovely, the feelings as fresh, at the end of the interregnum as at its commencement. Then when the golden century is exhausted, the body begins to be twenty-one years old."
"Do you mean that a man who has lived one hundred and thirty years is but thirty years old?" I inquired.
"Precisely," said the sorcerer; "why should we call a period age in which there is no change?"
"Do all souls live until their century of youth is accomplished?"
"Not all souls. Many die of accident or in consequence of sin. With some, Nirvana consists of but a single day's felicity, with others a month, or a year, up to a hundred years. It is the ideal for which we strive, and there is no reason why the body should not live one thousand years as well as one hundred, when vitality becomes more developed."
I was astonished at the remarks of the sorcerer, and yet I remembered the case of Adam, Noah, and Methusaleh. I told him that men on the outer sphere had lived almost one thousand years.
"You may be sure they never practised the austerities of the ascetic life you have just mentioned. They must have enjoyed life always turning their faces to the sun."
"I think one hundred years a great step toward immortality," I remarked.
"At twenty years the body is developed, but even a hundred thousand years will not develop the soul. Think of the development involved in having power over disease and death, power to create substantialities of matter!"
"Do you create matter?" I inquired breathlessly.
"I will show you what we can do," replied the sorcerer; "if you will follow me."
The sorcerer led the way to seats upon a platform of silver, on which stood in terrific grandeur the figure of a hehorrent, or dragon of gold, whose eyes were blazing rubies. He stood before the dragon, at least twenty feet above the pavement of the palace.
Presently the sorcerer shouted with a loud voice, "My host! my host!"
and at once several thousand twin souls thronged into the immense temple, dancing with naked feet on the polished aquelium pavement.