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A New Sacrificial Knife for Opar
As they did a few years before, La and the Oparians find Tarzan alone and unconscious. (The conspirators had drugged Tarzan the night before.) When the priest Cadji prepares to sacrifice Tarzan, La steps in to give him a history lesson. “During the long ages that Opar has endured, our legends tell us that more than one High Priest has been offered upon the altar to the Flaming God.” Cadj then reminds La of her duty. “I did not kill him. That remains, as La, our queen, has told you, for her to do. The eye of the Flaming God looks down upon you, High Priestess of Opar. The knife is at your hip, the sacrifice lies before you.”
(Cadj’s reference
to “The knife” at her hip, indicates that the Oparians must have fashioned a
new sacrificial knife after the original, ages-old blade was lost years before
during the events of Tarzan and the
Jewels of Opar.)
“Twice before had he escaped her sacrificial knife; in the final instance love had at last triumphed over jealousy and fanaticism, and La, the woman, had realized that never again could she place in jeopardy the life of the man she loved, however hopeless she knew that love to be.”
Forsaking her throne as High Priestess and
leaving the sacrificial knife behind, La leads Tarzan to freedom in the valley
behind Opar. Back in the city, Cadj seizes the sacrificial knife and pronounces
himself, “King of Opar, High Priest of the Flaming God.” When challenged by
another priest, Cadj “leaps toward the offending man, the sacrificial knife
raised menacingly above his head.”
“Cadj hesitated, his knife poised on high. He saw the direction of the ape-man’s eyes and followed them, and in that instant the golden lion leaped to the pavement, and with two mighty bounds was upon the High Priest of Opar. The knife clattered to the floor and the great jaw closed upon the horrid face.”
Coming forward and picking up the knife, La reclaimes her preeminence in Opar. Tarzan returns home, perhaps believing he has visited Opar for the last time.
Tarzan Again Returns to Opar
When he arrives at lost city, Tarzan expects a friendly reception from La, whom he had helped restore to the throne after the earlier coup led by the priest Cadj. However, Tarzan finds that La has been deposed again, and an angry, young priestess, who now wields the sacred sacrificial knife, confronts him. “Know, man of the outer world, that I … Oah, am high priestess of the Flaming God.” When Tarzan ignores her, and asks to see La, Oah flies into a frenzy of rage.
“She
is dead!” she screamed, advancing to the edge of the dais as though to leap
upon Tarzan, the jeweled handle of her sacrificial knife gleaming in the
sunlight, which poured through a great aperture where a portion of the ancient
roof of the throne room had fallen in. “She is dead!” she repeated. “Dead as
you will be when next we honor the Flaming God with the life blood of a man. La
was weak. She loved you, and thus she betrayed her God, who had chosen you for
sacrifice. But Oah is strong—strong with the hate she has nursed in her breast
since Tarzan and La stole the throne of Opar from her. Take him away!” she
screamed to his captors, “and let me not see him again until I behold him bound
to the altar in the court of sacrifice.”
Though confined, pending the sacrifice ceremony,
Tarzan avoids having the “gleaming sacrificial knife” being plunged into his
breast and finds the imprisoned La. The two of them hatch a counter-coup to
replace La as high priestess. However, Oah learns of the plot, forcing Tarzan
and La to flee Opar.
When La falls into the hands of a band of
Arabs, she defends herself vigorously with a knife she had brought with her
from Opar. It isn’t Opar’s sacred sacrificial knife, but the deadly way she
wielded this one was a reminder of how deftly she must have used that sacred
knife when she had sat on the throne in Opar.
“Her
eyes flaming with anger, La leaped to her feet, one hand moving swiftly to the
hilt of her dagger. Ibn Dammuk stepped back, but one of his men leaped forward
to seize her. Misguided fool! Like a tigress she was upon him; and before his
friends could intervene, the sharp blade of the knife of Darus, the priest of
the Flaming God, had sunk thrice into his breast, and with a gasping scream he
had slumped to the ground dead.
“With
flaming eyes and bloody knife, the high priestess of Opar stood above her kill
… “Lay no profaning hand upon the person of the high priestess of the Flaming
God.”
They were able to subdue La on that
occasion, but later another Arab fell victim to La’s knife-wielding fury.
“With equal safety might Ibn Dammuk have
embraced a lion. In the heat of his passion he forgot many things, among them
the dagger that hung always at his side. But La of Opar did not forget. With
the coming of daylight, she had noticed that dagger, and ever since she had
coveted it; and now as the man pressed her close, her hand sought and found its
hilt. For an instant she seemed to surrender. She let her body go limp in his
arms, while her own, firm and beautifully rounded, crept about him, one to his
right shoulder, the other beneath is left arm. But as yet she did not give him
her lips, and then as he struggled to possess them the hand upon his shoulder
seized him suddenly by the throat. The long, tapered fingers that seemed so
soft and white were suddenly claws of steel that closed upon his windpipe; and
simultaneously the hand that had crept so softly beneath his left arm drove his
own long dagger into his heart from beneath his shoulder blade. The single cry
that he might have given was choked in his throat. For an instant the tall form
of Ibn Dammuk stood rigidly erect; then it slumped forward, and the girl let it
slip to the earth. She spurned it once with her foot, then removed from it the
girdle and sheath for the dagger, wiped the bloody blade upon the man’s thob.”
La eventually returns
to Opar, and, with Tarzan and his Waziri warriors’ help, regains her throne in
Opar and, presumably, possession of the city’s sacred sacrificial knife. How
long La continued to reign in Opar and how many more sacrificial victims died
beneath the sacred knife in her hand is unknown.
— The End —
