f fungus gas. But a handful escaped!"

"Speak on: is that all?" A terribly intent expression crept over the
aquiline faces around the council table.

"Nay, spare thy servant!" begged the green kilted courier, raising
sweaty, imploring hands. "I--I dare not--"

"Speak!" snarled Hero Giles, his blue eyes terribly lit. "Speak!--else
thy carcass shall be flung to the pteranodons."

Wild-eyed, the fellow blinked fearfully about. The grim-lipped nobles
edged closer. Nelson, realizing all that lay at stake, watched
intently, conscious that Alden was now by his side.

"I--I, Her Sacred Holiness, Altara--." The messenger's red face
twitched and he choked as in terror.

"Altara!" The name reechoed weirdly from a dozen dry throats, and
Nelson saw the skin suddenly pale and tighten over Hero John's face.

"What of the divine Altara, fool?" he thundered in a dreadful, shaken
monotone. "Have those foul swine of Jarmuth dared--?"

"Forgive, oh Hero!" cried the groveling courier, his long red hair
sweeping the marble floor. "The dog-sired Jereboam hath made
proclamation in Jezreel that the Sacred Virgin is doomed to perish on
the altar of Beelzebub, their demon god, in two days' time!"

"What?" The great marble-walled chamber was shaken by an unearthly
outcry as horror and rage struggled for mastery in the circle of tense
faces surrounding the momentarily forgotten aviators.

Bedlam broke loose, while Hero Giles sat as though stunned, staring on
the shivering runner at his feet.

Nelson, very much on the alert, could see that the announcement of
Altara's impending death had produced nothing short of a cataclysm in
the plans of the council.

* * * * *

Like men paralyzed by electric shocks, the yellow bearded veterans and
nobles sat stupefied, frozen in their last gesture. Then, in the midst
of their silent despair, came the sound of a curious, high-pitched
horn that had in its note something of the eery wail of a fire siren.
The effect was magical, for the nobles sprang up, hands on sword hilts
and eyes searching the corridor.

"The priests!" gasped a short, broad-shouldered noble at Altorius'
left. "By Poseidon! 'Tis the fanfare of the Herakles himself."

Then indeed did the council glower, for, as Nelson soon learned,
Herakles was the moving spirit and evil genius of that priestly party
which had dared to imprison the Emperor.

Again the horn wailed its warning of the arch-priest's ap