E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK® Page 11

  As he crossed the inner circumference, Ismeddin drew at the fourth cardinal point characters and symbols resembling those at the other three; and with a remnant of the red powder, he completed the outer circle. And all the while the Dark Presence stared at Rankin and beyond him cool and unconcerned, scorning even to smile his scorn.

  Ismeddin then struck light to the circle of powder. A tall, unwavering green flame crept along the circumference, until Rankin and his opponent were inclosed in a waist-high wall of fire: and this incredible flame emitted an overpowering sweetness that made Rankin’s senses reel.

  He saw nebulous forms gathering behind the Dark Prince, and crowding against the wall of flame. They muttered to each other, and with their left hands made curious signs. Then, from a great distance, Rankin heard the thump-thump of a drum, and the solemn voice of Ismeddin:

  “Abdemon, friend of Suleiman; and you, Iblis, bound to human form, stand in this circle which is neither earth nor high heaven, nor the house of everlasting fire: and this circle but one of you may leave.”

  A pause; and then Ismeddin’s command: “Strike!”

  The drum resumed its savage muttering; and the opponents, swords advanced, circled warily, each seeking an opening in the other’s guard. Then swift as thought came a relentless whirlwind of steel that bore Rankin back, step by step. The green flames singed his kaftan. Rankin halted, flat-footed, parrying and returning, cut for cut. And from without the circle of quivering, leaping flame the little drum muttered fiercely the song of doom which old Ismeddin’s knuckles and finger tips coaxed from its head of serpent hide.

  “In four lives you have failed!” taunted the Dark Prince as he paused in his attack, and relaxed, point lowered.

  Rankin’s blade wavered—groped—then sheared swiftly down and back in a drawing cut to the adversary’s forearm.

  “You improve with practice!” mocked the Dark Prince as Rankin’s blade cut only the poison sweetness of the heavy air. “If you only had another life—”

  Then he fell back before Rankin’s renewed attack.

  Clack-clack-click! Blade against blade, whirling, circling, yielding a step, gaining a step, traversing, dodging: parry, return, and cut again—an endless, deadly mill. The Dark Prince ceased smiling, and his breath came too fast for mockery. But Rankin’s tough arm ached to the very shoulder from the merciless, biting assault of steel upon steel. And his head whirled from the everlasting mutter of the snakeskin drum…

  The figures crowding against the wall of green flame became more distinct. Their mumbled words became more plain. At times Rankin caught a word, and was glad that he could not understand all…

  Steel against steel…strength against strength…but ages of cunning against the wits of one short life: for only the body of that terrific adversary was human.

  The tall flames were diminishing. With them would perish the last chance. Those who had crossed the Border to aid their Prince crowded against the barrier that would soon give way. Rankin wondered if Suleiman’s shadowy presence was behind him; but he dared not glance back for even an instant.

  The Dark Prince stood fast in the center of the circle, secure in his faultless defense. Rankin knew that when he had exhausted himself against that flashing barrier of steel, the enemy would resume his deadly assault. Six to one in a side street…that was easy…but this thirsty blade would soon drink deep… Rankin’s arm was numb, and his parry against those biting swift returns was ragged. Just one slip—and that would be any moment now…

  The enemy’s eye shifted ever so slightly. He measured the height of the diminishing green flame, and smiled again.

  Then Rankin cut to the head. The adversary parried, and the hungry blade flamed swiftly in return—Rankin could not parry. But stretched out in a full lunge, he passed beneath the shearing steel, and drove home with his point—

  The green flame flickered and died. Rankin, still clutching his blade, lurched forward on his face as the Dark Prince crumpled in a heap on the tiles. But before the blackness descended, Rankin caught a glimpse of the shadowy figure of a bearded king who bowed and extended his arm in salutation. And this time the smiling loveliness of the girl at his side was not obscured by any veil…

  A strong hand gripped Rankin’s shoulder, pulled him back to his knees, and lifted him to his feet.

  “Wallah!” marveled the Shareef. “Kaffir or not, he is the father of all swordsmen! I knew that his head would be clipped off. And then he stretched out and impaled that son of confusion… Look! That stroke sheared off a bit of his turban. Allah, and again, by Allah!”

  “Then give him his prize, saidi,” replied Ismeddin. And to Azizah, who sat upright and wondering on the polished black sacrificial stone: “You need no veil, ya bint! After all these dusty centuries, you are his.”

  Ismeddin turned to the Shareef: “As for me, saidi, I will be content with but one of those asil mares you wagered against my cracked head.”

  “So be it,” laughed the Shareef, as he led the way up the blood-drenched stairs. “Though doubtless you will steal the other in due course!”

  THE SLAVE OF JUSTICE

  Originally published in Oriental Stories, February/March 1931.

  “Mashallah!” marveled Ismeddin the darvish, “how that executioner could shear off a head! Whether the victim was kneeling or standing, resigned or struggling, it was all one.

  “When the sultan’s right hand rose from his hip to touch his left shoulder with his finger tips—thus—the blade was poised. And as the sultan’s hand swept swiftly back again to the right, the stroke followed flaming and faultless.

  “Wallah! But it was beautiful to see!”

  The darvish paused long enough to trim the fire of the fuming narghileh, coil its flexible stem twice around his wrist, and drink deeply of the fragrant smoke. Then he resumed his rhapsody, telling of the great days of the sultan, Ayyub the Just: how he sat in judgment, without pity, without passion, without prejudice; relentless justice incarnate on a lofty dais.

  Like the refrain of a pagan chant came the recurrent theme of the sultan’s sinister, swift gesture and the flickering doom that followed; so that finally I knew that at last I was to learn what had led up to the strange meeting I had witnessed one evening, several months ago, at the edge of an oasis three days’ march from Angor-lana.

  * * * *

  Ismeddin was sitting cross-legged on a sultry red Boukhara rug just at the edge of the oasis. With the heel of his hand, and with his knuckles and finger tips, he smote and caressed a tiny drum so that it purred, and rolled, and thundered in cunningly varied cadence and volume; and all the while he chanted in the language they speak in the hills.

  A groom drew up with Ismeddin’s kochlani stallion, all decked out and resplendent, halted a few paces to the right, then unslung the embroidered Shirazi saddle-bags and the glittering Ladder to Heaven in its curved scabbard, and laid them at Ismeddin’s right.

  The camel-drivers about the guard fire ceased their quarreling and gaming, and marveled.

  “Haaj Ismeddin is making magic,” muttered one, as he made an odd sign with the fingers of his left hand.

  “He is expecting Azrael the Dark Angel,” hinted another somberly. “When one has lived a hundred years such as his—”

  “Perhaps he expects a visit from the sultan,” suggested a third solemnly. “He is wearing a clean djellab.”

  “Sultan!” scoffed one who missed the jest. “What sultan ever saw Haaj Ismeddin in a clean, new djellab? And sultans can be seen and heard from afar, with their Chinese and Indian music and clanking captains, and emirs on asil horses…”

  “Ismeddin is making magic,” reiterated one with finality.

  And thus and thus, while Ismeddin chanted into the dusk that rolled across the desert and ascended the mountains that rose up before us.

 
The sonorous chant and the sultry glow of the guard fire must for a moment have lulled me into a half-sleep; for with a start I realized that a beggar had materialized before Ismeddin where only an instant ago there had been but empty dusk. A beggar in a djellab as tattered and grimy as Ismeddin’s customary garb, washed early in the reign of the present sultan’s grandfather. A beggar whose head was cocked oddly to one side, as that of a bird pausing in preening his feathers. And his eyes were bird-like…like those of a bird of prey. A beggar who—but was that hard-bitten stranger any beggar?

  The drumming and the chant suddenly ceased, leaving an emptiness that something had to fill.

  “A thousand years, haaji!” greeted the stranger in a curious, shrill, piping voice.

  He was old, but the shrillness of his voice was not that of senility; nor was it the shrillness of the plump, oily eunuchs who guard seraglios.

  “And to you, a thousand, saidi!” returned Ismeddin as he rose and bowed very low. “Prayer on you, my Lord, and the Peace!”

  He stepped aside so that the wanderer might seat himself on the shimmering silky rug.

  The stranger declined, remaining standing, his head still cocked to one side; but his glittering eyes looked Ismeddin full in the eye.

  Ismeddin laid the saddle-bags, stuffed to bulging, at the stranger’s feet.

  “Food, my lord. And a horse,” he continued, as he offered the beggar the reins of his own richly caparisoned mount. “Ride out of the hills and be sultan. They cry for you in Angor-lana. Schamas ad Din is gone, and his nephew misrules in his stead. There is no justice.”

  So this beggar was to be sultan? Well now, by the rod! For all his piping voice and curiously wrenched neck, and rags, he was every bit a sultan; the kind that ruled in the old days, before sultans dissolved hasheesh in their wine, and paddled sluggishly in pools of outrageous diversion.

  Ismeddin half unsheathed his scimitar with its Kufic characters of pale gold inlay, then drove it back into its scabbard and thrust the ringing blade hilt foremost at the stranger, tempting him with its smoldering rubies and cool sapphires.

  “Let us ride, saidi,” the darvish entreated. “I will follow.”

  “Neither swords nor horses, old friend,” piped the wanderer, recoiling from the glittering hilt before him. “Nor Justice either…fresh-spilled blood creeps up through the sand they spread on the blood-splashed tiles…”

  He paused, brooding somberly for a moment, then: “But—inshallah! One must eat.”

  He stooped to pick up the embroidered saddle-bags at his feet. Then I saw why his head was so strangely cocked to the left: an incredible scar, broad and ridged and long, showed how narrowly he had escaped decapitation. The severed muscles in healing had contracted and given his head that slant, and distorted his vocal chords. How any one could survive such a cut!

  “One must eat,” he piped. “But do not tempt me with horses, and thrones. Blood creeps up through the sand…”

  He shouldered the saddle-bags and strode into the darkness.

  * * * *

  Then I regained the thread of Ismeddin’s repetitious tales of the just sultan, and wondered if he had noted my lapse of attention. But he hadn’t; Ismeddin and his narghileh were utterly absorbed in their memories of the old days when Ayyub sat in the shadow of slowly swaying peacock-plume fans and pronounced swift doom or unexpected pardon.

  “…There was one accused of having a second time used false weights in the souk.

  “Ayyub considered the evidence, and recognized the culprit as one who had been previously dismissed with a hundred lashes for a like offense.

  “‘This becomes monotonous,’ remarked the sultan.

  “But before his finger tips could reach his left shoulder, a wazir interposed.

  “‘Saidi,’ he said, ‘a man’s life is a heavy penalty to pay for petty fraud.’

  “‘Flogging,’ smiled the sultan, ‘has been futile. Still…as you say…well, then, cut off his right hand.’

  “‘But he is the son of Ibn Saoud, who saved your life at—’

  “‘All the worse!’ declared Ayyub. ‘There are neither sons nor friends when I sit in judgment. Were he my own son—’

  “And even as he spoke, the sultan’s hand left his hip; fingertips touched his left hand for an instant, and swiftly swept back to his right. The two-handed sword sheared faultlessly. By Allah! But there was justice for you, executed before the criminal could even think either of mercy or bribery.

  “The head was carried off in a basket, and the body dragged away with hooks. And while they were scattering fresh sand on the blood-splashed tiles, a detachment of the guard entered the hall of judgment, leading a stalwart brigand from the hill tribes. A stout, handsome fellow, with hard eyes and a hooked beak like the sultan himself, and the sultan’s father before him. One of those fierce men from the hills. Had it so pleased Allah, he might amply have filled a throne and sat in judgment on him before whom he himself was now to receive sentence.

  “The executioner was wiping his blade.

  “Old Amru with that deep rich voice of his read the charges: How, single-handed, the hillman had charged into the outpost of Al Azhár, routed a detachment of the guard posted there, and darted for the hills with three horses and the arms of three men.

  “‘Mashallah!’ marveled the sultan. ‘What a man!’

  “‘There are more like me in the hills, saidi,’ boasted the prisoner, and smiled. Then, nodding at the headsman, whose blade gleamed again: ‘Let him strike clean.’

  “‘Allah upon you, young fellow,’ smiled the sultan in return. ‘Have no fear on that score.’

  “And then the jest died on his lips, and the dying was bitter.

  “‘Ismail,’ said the sultan to the captain who had brought the prisoner before him, ‘you might have let this fellow escape after making him swear to appear and offer his services in the Guard. He is worth three of the cowards he slaughtered at Al Azhár.’

  “‘Is that then your pleasure, Magnificence?’ queried Ismail hopefully; for Ismail took small pleasure in the day’s duty.

  “‘It would have been, stupid and all too zealous captain,’ replied the sultan. ‘But it is too late: for now he stands not before me, but before Justice.’

  “Then, to the prisoner: ‘Young fellow, have you anything to say before we strike? And what favor, aside from your life, would you choose?’

  “‘First, my lord,’ grinned the bandit, ‘I should have been content with one horse and sure escape. Second, let me stand to take the stroke.’

  “‘Granted,’ agreed Ayyub.

  “I saw that justice was costing Ayyub dearly: for there before him stood a man after his own heart. And Ayyub himself was the son of a robber from the hills, and had stolen a kingdom; yet justice was justice.

  “‘Ismail,’ muttered the sultan, ‘you were wrong.’

  “Ayyub glanced from the prisoner to the sentries posted at the entrance of the hall of judgment; glanced at the door itself, and measured the distance with his eye…

  “‘A man after my own heart,’ pronounced Ayyub. ‘Let him therefore be unbound so that he can die as befits a man whom I would pardon if I could.’

  “The cords that bound the bandit’s wrist were cut, and he stood free and unafraid.

  “Again the sultan glanced from the prisoner down the length of the hall, and at the door, but without hope; for Ayyub knew that the guard would cut the prisoner down unless Ayyub made the gesture of pardon. And that gesture the slave of justice could not make.

  “Each white-bearded captain who had years ago ridden out of the hills behind his chief felt himself standing before the throne to face doom; and although Ayyub had glanced at the door, he saw nothing but hopelessness: so that none noted the old woman who entered the hall of judgment.

&
nbsp; “Ayyub’s hand rose very slowly from his hip.

  “The woman’s shriek startled the sultan, and the sign of doom stopped before it had fairly started.

  “Evading the guard, she knelt at the foot of the dais.

  “‘Who are you, old woman?’ demanded the sultan as his hand dropped back to his hip. ’And what have you to do with this?’

  “Ayyub breathed deeply and relaxed. He could not relent; but he welcomed the moment’s respite. By Allah, but you would have thought that it was his own sentence that had been postponed.

  “‘I am his mother, saidi! And why for the sake of three horses should he lose his head, when you, the son of a bandit, rode from the hills and took this city!’

  “The captains gasped, and stroked their beards, and marveled. But Ayyub, staring at the woman, gave no sign to have her ejected.

  “‘You, his mother? By Allah, old woman, but you are before Justice rather than before any sultan. That blood creeping from the sand just at your knees was spilled by the thieving son of an old friend.’

  “Ayyub’s right hand rose—“The woman leaped to her feet and seized his wrist.

  “The lords and captains were confused, for they did not know whether to stand fast, or to drag her from the hall.

  “The prisoner smiled just the shadow of a smile.

  “‘Old woman,’ said the sultan as his hand again dropped to rest at his hip, ‘I am sorry that your son is before me. For when I am in this hall, I am very Justice itself, for I rode from the hills to establish Justice. And after all, each of those many who have lost their heads in this hall have had mothers. Then who am I to thwart Justice for the sake of—’”

  “‘For the sake of one mother?’ mocked the woman.

  “Wallah! And how her voice derided Ayyub!