Description
A Witch Shall Be Born
1 The Blood-Red Crescent
Taramis, queen of Khauran, awakened from a dream-haunted slumber to a
silence that seemed more like the stillness of nighted catacombs than
the normal quiet of a sleeping place. She lay staring into the darkness,
wondering why the candles in their golden candelabra had gone out. A
flecking of stars marked a gold-barred casement that lent no
illumination to the interior of the chamber. But as Taramis lay there,
she became aware of a spot of radiance glowing in the darkness before
her. She watched, puzzled. It grew and its intensity deepened as it
expanded, a widening disk of lurid light hovering against the dark
velvet hangings of the opposite wall. Taramis caught her breath,
starting up to a sitting position. A dark object was visible in that
circle of light–_a human head_.
In a sudden panic the queen opened her lips to cry out for her maids;
then she checked herself. The glow was more lurid, the head more vividly
limned. It was a woman’s head, small, delicately molded, superbly
poised, with a high-piled mass of lustrous black hair. The face grew
distinct as she stared–and it was the sight of this face which froze
the cry in Taramis’s throat. The features were her own! She might have
been looking into a mirror which subtly altered her reflection, lending
it a tigerish gleam of eye, a vindictive curl of lip.
‘Ishtar!’ gasped Taramis. ‘I am bewitched!’
Appallingly, the apparition spoke, and its voice was like honeyed venom.
‘Bewitched? No, sweet sister! Here is no sorcery.’
‘Sister?’ stammered the bewildered girl. ‘I have no sister.’
‘You never had a sister?’ came the sweet, poisonously mocking voice.
‘Never a twin sister whose flesh was as soft as yours to caress or
hurt?’