Then before I could speak she turned and glided away, swiftly surrounded by her guards, leaving me astonished and very uncomfortable.

CHAPTER XVI

ALLAN’S VISION

The old chamberlain, Billali, conducted us back to our camp.  As we went he discoursed to me of these Amahagger, of whom it seemed he was himself a developed specimen, one who threw back, perhaps tens of generations, to some superior ancestor who lived before they became debased.  In substance he told me that they were a wild and lawless lot who lived amongst ruins or in caves, or some of them in swamp dwellings, in small separate communities, each governed by its petty headman who was generally a priest of their goddess Lulala.

Originally they and the people of Rezu were the same, in times when they worshipped the sun and the moon jointly, but “thousands of years” ago, as he expressed it, they had separated, the Rezuites having gone to dwell to the north of the Great Mountain, whence they continually threatened the Lulalaites whom, had it not been for She-who-commands, they would have destroyed long before.  The Rezuites, it seemed, were habitual cannibals, whereas the Lulalaite branch of the Amahagger only practised cannibalism occasionally when by a lucky chance they got hold of strangers.  “Such as yourself, Watcher-by-Night, and your companions,” he added with meaning.  If their crime were discovered, however, Hiya, She-who-commands, punished it by death.

I asked if she exercised an active rule over these people.  He answered that she did not, as she lacked sufficient interest in them; only when she was angry with individuals she would destroy some of them by “her arts,” as she had power to do if she chose.  Most of them indeed had never seen her and only knew of her existence by rumour.  To them she was a spirit or a goddess who inhabited the ancient tombs that lay to the south of the old city whither she had come because of the threatened war with Rezu, whom alone she feared, he did not know why.  He told me again, moreover, that she was the greatest magician who had ever been, and that it was certain she did not die, since their forefathers knew her generations ago.  Still she seemed to be under some curse, like the Amahagger themselves, who were the descendants of those who had once inhabited Kor and the country round it, as far as the sea-coast and for hundreds of miles inland, having been a mighty people in their day before a great plague destroyed them.

For the rest he thought that she was a very unhappy woman who “lived with her own soul mourning the dead” and consorting with none upon the earth.

I asked him why she stayed here, whereat he shook his head and replied, he supposed because of the “curse,” since he could conceive of no other reason.  He informed me also that her moods varied very much.  Sometimes she was fierce and active and at others by comparison mild and low-spirited.  Just now she was passing through one of the latter stages, perhaps because of the Rezu trouble, for she did not wish her people to be destroyed by this terrible person; or perhaps for some other reason with which he was not acquainted.