Frank Aubrey

King of the Dead

Warsaw 2022

Contents

I. PRESENTIMENTS

II. THE MESSAGE

III. A MAN OF MYSTERY

IV. A STRANGE INTERVIEW

V. ON BOARD THE "ALLOYAH"

VI. SOME MODERN MAGIC

VII. GONE!

VIII. THE HAUNTED MOUNTAIN

IX. THE WHITE PUMA

X. THE LADY OF THE MOUNTAIN

XI. RHELMA'S WARNING

XII. HUNTING WITH LIONS

XIII. A LETTER FROM BERYL

XIV. MANZONI

XV. A MYSTERIOUS PLANT

XVI. THE RED RAY

XVII. THE STORY OF LYOSTRAH AND THE HIDDEN CITY

XVIII. WHAT IS LYOSTRAH'S SECRET?

XIX. A SURPRISE

XX. THE CITY OF MYRVONIA

XXI. IN LYOSTRAH'S PALACE

XXII. HAPPY HOURS

XXIII. THE TEMPLE OF DORNANDA

XXIV. GATHERING SHADOWS

XXV. THE HORROR IN THE LAND

XXVI. BERYL'S DREAM

XXVII. THE BLACK CANOE AGAIN

XXVIII. DEMONS OF THE NIGHT

XXIX. BERYL MISSING!

XXX. LYOSTRAH AND MANZONI

XXXI. A NIGHT EXPEDITION

XXXII. MAHRIMAH THE TERRIBLE

XXXIII. ALESTRO, SON OF THE STARS

XXXIV. IN ALLOYAH'S POWER

XXXV. THE END

I. PRESENTIMENTS

“DEAR Arnold, do not press me for reasons; for I can give none. As well might you ask me to tell you why I admire yonder glowing clouds and the golden sunset; or why I should shiver and be filled with sadness were it all to be suddenly obscured by rolling masses of heavy sea fog. The one affects me pleasurably; the other unfavourably–but I cannot tell you why. Yet you know that such feelings are part of one’s very nature. Well, so it is here–with this man. He affects me unfavourably, and therefore I instinctively shrink from him.”

“But, Beryl! Is it fair to him–to any man–to condemn him thus arbitrarily, especially–”

“I condemn him? What a foolish idea, Arnold! I know nothing about him that would justify my forming any such opinion. Indeed, his kindness to you–”

“Exactly. That’s just what I want to remind you of.”

“Indeed, Arnold, I am not in any danger of forgetting it. You, yourself, are always dilating upon it, and–to a certain extent–I, of course, am compelled to admit it. But then, there are people who are sometimes kind for some motive of their own, perhaps an unworthy motive. I–”

“Beryl!”

“Well, I don’t say that that is the case here. I only say that I have an intuitive distrust of your brilliant friend, and it urges me–oh so strongly, Arnold–to pray of you not to allow him to tempt you, or to persuade you, into joining him in any wild adventure.”

The scene was Ryde, the time summer, and the speakers were Beryl Atherton and Arnold Neville, two young people who were lovers. One may say, indeed, very much lovers. They had been engaged for quite three months and had not had a single quarrel as yet; not even–as yet–so much as a difference of opinion or an argument. And now that a slight difference of opinion had arisen it took no form of jealousy, though it had been caused through another man. On the contrary, the occasion was merely that the lady obstinately declined to diagnose, in the character of a certain mutual friend, the claims to admiration and confidence which her lover enthusiastically insisted upon. Most likely, had it been the other way about–i.e.had the lady been foremost in assigning to the mutual friend such an attractive personality–her lover would have been torn by jealousy, and would have contemptuously pooh-poohed the proposition. Such is the inconsistency of young people in love.

Beryl Atherton was an orphan, living with a widowed aunt who had brought her up from childhood. This relative–Mrs Beresford by name–lived a somewhat retired life in a small cottage of her own called “Ivydene,” one of the prettiest residences in the Isle of Wight. This home she scarcely ever left from year’s end to year’s end; and Beryl, in consequence, had grown up to what was now her twentieth year with but scant knowledge of the great world that lay outside that sunny island. A few visits, of no long duration, to distant and little known relatives, a month, once or twice, in London during the season, and a trip, one winter, to the South of France, for the benefit of her aunt’s health, constituted the total of her travels from home. But she was a studious and intelligent reader, and her industry in this direction, and a curiously accurate, intuitive, natural perception, enabled her to make up in many respects for her real ignorance of the “world” and its ways.

But, if lacking in most of those doubtful accomplishments which usually mark the society belle, Beryl Atherton possessed other attractions in the form of beauty and grace such as are but rarely granted to even the most favoured of Eve’s daughters. To a face and figure all but perfect, she added the charms of large, lustrous, grey-blue eyes, shining with the clear, unmistakable light of a pure woman’s soul within, and a smile so sweet and so sunny that few who once saw it ever forgot it. Golden brown hair that glistened in the sunlight, well-marked eyebrows a little darker in shade, perfect teeth, exquisitely moulded hands and feet, and a stature neither short nor tall, complete the short description of one of Nature’s fairest gifts to the earth, one of whom it had been said, by more than one, that she was “beautiful as a goddess, and as good as she was beautiful.”

Now her fiancéeArnold Neville, was also an orphan; and perhaps that fact may have had something to do with the sympathy which had existed between the two from the moment of their first meeting. It had been a case of “love at first sight” on both sides. Not a surprising fact so far as the young man was concerned, for every young man fell in love with Beryl Atherton at first sight–or thought he did. But the fact that it was in this case mutual, was unexpected, especially by Beryl’s guardian. That good dame had been so accustomed to her niece’s attractions causing all and sundry to offer their adoration without the smallest symptom of corresponding feelings on her side, that she had come to look upon such an event as beyond the limit of everyday calculations. For, until Arnold’s appearance upon the scene, the young girl had merely accepted the homage of her admirers as a sort of form of politeness, smiling kindly and cordially upon each in turn, but never giving to any the smallest encouragement. And this gratified her guardian, who seemed to think that no one beneath the rank of a nobleman was good enough for her beloved niece, and had quite fallen into a sort of belief that the girl thought the same, and was awaiting the advent of her Prince Charming.

The shock had been, therefore, somewhat severe when she woke up one day to the knowledge that Beryl had given her heart to young Neville, whom they had known but a year; and who was very far indeed from fulfilling her dream of an ideal husband for her darling–at least, so far as worldly prospects went.

For Neville–unlike Beryl–possessed no “blue-blooded” relations. If Beryl was an orphan, she not only knew who her relatives were, but could boast–if she had wished to boast–that she was very “well-connected” indeed. Her father had been sixth cousin to a Duke, whilst her mother had been the daughter of parents who had been closely related to an Earl.

But Arnold, so far from possessing ducal or lordly relatives, scarcely even knew his own name. That is to say, he had no relative that he knew of in the whole world, had never known his own father or mother, and had to take it on trust, so to speak, that his name was really Neville. Saved from a wreck in which both his parents had been drowned, he had been adopted and brought up by a kindly old couple who had educated him as an engineer, and finally died, leaving him just enough to live upon had he cared to be an idle man. Some linen in which he had been wrapped, when saved from the wrecked ship, had been marked “Arnold Neville,” and this name had accordingly been bestowed upon him. Beyond that he knew nothing.

One thing, however, was certain–so far as appearance went, Neville might have claimed the best of descent. Fairly tall, and well built, with a face and head of a singularly refined, intellectual cast, there was something in his air and manner that denoted the polished gentleman almost before one had had time to perceive the pleasing character of the features, and the steady, searching gaze of the clear, grey eyes. Handsome he certainly was, and well-favoured beyond the common run of mankind; but the kindly expression, and the genial smile that were habitual to him, were more attractive, and formed a truer index to his real character, than even the manly beauty that was undoubtedly his. In temperament he was inclined to be somewhat of a dreamer; and he was an enthusiast in music and painting; but this was compensated by a natural mathematical bias which had been strengthened and fostered by the special education he had received as an engineer. He was fond, too, of outdoor sports, and was well skilled in athletic exercises–characteristics which served still further to balance the dreamy, poetical side of his nature. He had now reached, according to the only data be possessed, his twenty-fifth year, and the occasion had served to remind him that he had not as yet settled down to any fixed career. So far, he had passed his time, since leaving college, as an improver in the offices of two or three different firms, changing his ground with the object of gaining a more varied experience. Latterly, he had been seeking an opportunity of employment with some pioneer railway enterprise abroad, an occupation which would, he hoped, afford him still wider experience, combined with foreign travel and exploration, which latter had always had for him an almost irresistible fascination.

Hence it was that his fiancée’sallusion to “wild adventure” fell somewhat unpleasantly on his ears. Beryl’s ideas upon the subject, so far as she was able to judge, led her to oppose his accepting any post that would take him abroad, especially as it must, almost certainly, mean that they would be separated for a term. His argument was, however, that such a course was wisest in the end, though distasteful for the time being. He would in that way get a better position, earn more money, and thus be enabled to marry sooner than he could hope to do by staying at home and waiting for the slow promotion which would then be all he could hope for.

“I hardly see, Beryl,” he said, in reply to her last remark, “that going abroad to take part in some engineering or mining enterprise deserves to be denounced as entering upon a ‘wild adventure.’ Look at my friend Leslie, for instance. He has been out for five years in South America, engaged in railway work. Beyond such adventures as are more or less incidental to travel and exploration, his occupation has been businesslike enough; and, as the upshot, he has not only made more money than he could possibly have earned by staying at home, but he is now qualified to take a position which he could not otherwise have hoped to gain for years to come. He is, moreover, so well pleased with his experiences, that he is ready and willing to go out again, as you know, and–”

“Ah yes; but he has been engaged in a legitimate business undertaking–not in (I must really repeat the words, Arnold) a wild adventure. For it seems to me to be nothing else that his friend, Don Lorenzo, now proposes to you. I have a sort of instinctive aversion to your going off on any such expedition with that man.”

“But why, Beryl?”

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