Daughter of the Sun: A Tale of AdventureGregory, Jackson
Science
Daughter of the Sun: A Tale of Adventure
Gregory, Jackson
Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction; Science fiction; Western stories
He sat like a man in a trance. The dim mirrors seemed unreal. What he
saw elsewhere--was it a reflected reality or was his mind under the
spell of Zoraida's? Was she through hypnosis projecting a lying image
into his groping consciousness? Absolutely, he did not know. He drew
his eyes away from the vision of that room and turned them
questioningly upon Zoraida. Stern she was and rigid and white, a dim
figure in that dim light save alone for her eyes; they burned
ominously, glowing like a cat's.
A quick shifting of the image in the glass jerked back his straying
attention. The man had completed his brief labors with the steel
frames which now made a strong cage; he shook the bars with his hand as
though trying them, and they were firm in their places. He opened a
section which turned on hinges so that a narrow door swung back. Then
he drew away and across the room. And now the remarkable thing was
that though he moved several paces, still he remained in full view at
the center of the mirror.
Plainly in a complicated series of reflectors there were mirrors which
were being turned as the man moved, cunningly and skilfully adjusted to
his slow progress; otherwise would he have passed out of the scope of
Kendric's vision. As it was, the cage slid away out of view, an
uncanny sort of thing since it had the appearance of gliding under a
will of its own.
Presently, however, the man opened a door in the wall and was gone.
For an instant the mirror darkened; then the light flashed back and
Kendric was treated to a broken procession of images which set him
marveling. First he saw straight into the heart of the gardens of the
golden Tezcucan; he saw the sacrificial stone; he saw one of the old
men approach it and pass by; he saw the treasure chamber. Again he
stared at Zoraida, again the fear was upon him that she had mastered
his mind with hers, that what he fancied he saw was but what she willed
him to imagine. For he could not ignore the long tunneled distance
they had traversed, the dark passageways, the heavy doors with their
massive locks. And yet his reason told him that to a mind like
Zoraida's as he began to believe it, a brain filled with ancient craft
and perhaps a strain of madness, actuated by such dark impulses as
certainly must abide there, the actual physical accomplishment of this
sort of parlor magic was a thing in keeping. There would be small
tube-like holes through walls, angled with reference to other mirrors;
there would be scientific arrangement; there would be, somewhere in the
great house, a sort of operating room, a room of mirrors with a trained
hand to manipulate them. Perhaps, with modern reflectors, she but
improved on some fancy of an ancient king who sought to guard himself
against treachery or his hoardings against the hand of his treasurers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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