San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-12-13

of silver and with limpid ovals of
crystal-tall and ornate as a
chalice and more than half filled
with dark wine. On the bench
that ran beneath the windows lay
the Countess book of devotions,
basket of silks and woods, hand
mirror, and an ivory skull-a
pious reminder of mortality.
The witch's daughter withdrew
the stopper from phial of glass,
a portion of the legacy her mother
had received from the wise-woman
who had sheltered her and initiated
her and then died. Standing in the
light of the candles, she inverted
the phial carefully above the sill
yer and crystal cup of wine. Thick
drops of a liquid that might have
been blood fell from it sluggishly
-gout by govt.
Sidonia's lips moved. She was
repeating a string of meaningless
words-corrupti of very an
cient Greek and Hebrew names of
power. Eros, Aphrodite, Demeter
and Asmodeus, were all invoked in
this parrot-like patter, though the
girl knew nothing whatever of
such persons. An evanescent,
blood-red flame flickered in the
hollow of the wine cup as the thick
drops fell. A panther covered at
Sidonia's feet like a great, sleek
sided cat. Women-shapes writhed
and eddied about her as smoke
does, and there was a vague stir,
as of shifting coils athwart the
open spaces of the floor. A group
of taller forms, lofty as the cham
ber's roof of stone, doomed more
dimly-known of rather than seen,
even with the sight of the mind.
They were crowned with coronals.
One carried a bow, one cherished
a dove between her hands, one
held wheat ears and one was
horned like a young goat.
Power tingled through Sidonia,
giving her a sensation of rightly,
and yet, at the same time, of
sort of leashed swiftness. Her
faith in the force of the loye-charm
was absolute-an unbroken circle.
Through it she would conquer and.
triumph. Wonders and energies
were about her, almost articulate.
Their fires bathed her. They
merged with her.
Now it was the turn of the
waxen image. Sidonia was a
priestess-a celebrant of implac-
able rituals. She moved in the
deep, blood-glow of that ancient
passion upon whose anvils I'M
breakable letters are forged. She
was an enslaver, riveter of
chains-a symbol of the powers
that are omnipresent, invisible
and pitiless. The scanty. hens of
her dress dragged with a dry
rustic over the rushes. She APP
peared slighter and smaller even
than she was-there, in the vague
largeness of the sparsely furnished
chamber whose thick air was civet-
scented.
1t had been the Countess in
structions that, when the wine was
properly bespelled, the witch-girl
should slip like a shadow to her
own turret room, and in that seclu-
observed through the
door chink that approach of the
young lord-should pierce and re-
pierce the image of wax, address,
ing it by name. And Sidonia,
calmly, had said "Yes''
and yes"
Something told her that there
was too much light. If the young
lord should suddenly enter and
observe her business with the
image, things might not be as well
as they would be otherwise. Nov
ing without haste, she blew out
all the candles save two that were
set on a pair of wall brackets jut-
ting from the untapestried space
between the iwindow-slits. Then,
standing with bent head behind the
table of the wine cup, she stabbed
with a block of withered rose
thorn the little waxen figure Of
naked man.
"Gervaisi Gervais, Gervaisw
With every stab of the thorn she
the name of the person
whose heart should suffer the
thrust of an unmerciful love. The
chamber was plunged now into
semi-dusk.