The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction Read online

  When Ismeddin left, Landon devoted himself to his journal, writing of Mosul, and the mound of Koyunjik, in whose base were the ruins of palaces, and the monstrous effigies of winged bulls whose human heads wore long curled beards, and were crowned with tall miters: solemn, awful images which archeologists had not been able to induce their laborers to disturb. And he regarded with curiosity the clay tablets he had found in the rubbish of the excavations that afternoon: tablets of sun-dried clay, inscribed with cuneiform characters and stamped with seals among whose devices he recognized the Tree of Life. But he could not name the king who knelt and worshiped a woman mounted on a lion.

  Three clay tablets. All that remained of lofty walls and great palaces and high towers; three clay tablets, and the solemn winged bulls.

  It was most unlikely that anyone could have passed the outposts and the encampment as well. And yet Landon sensed a presence. He glanced over his shoulder; moved away from the wall of the pavilion; resumed the writing of his journal; arose from his work, made a circuit of the pavilion, re-entered, and returned to his task.

  The thump-thump of an atabal rolled up from the encampment; and then came a monotonous, guttural chant, and the beating of hands and the stamping of feet in unison. His men were diverting themselves with unsavory songs, to whose cadence one of their number burlesqued the steps of a Cairene dancing girl.

  Presence, indeed! What if Ismeddin had seen the master glancing over his shoulder and fidgeting in that fashion!

  Landon felt his toes twitching nervously; found himself clenching and then relaxing his fists, and pausing to twist his mustache instead of writing his journal. It seemed that Ismeddin had been gone longer than usual. He wondered why his men never changed the tune of their chant at evening.

  A faint breath of sweetness crept into the pavilion, scarcely perceptible at first, but gradually becoming more penetrating, mingling with the aroma of Landon’s cigarette, so that he fancied it might be the source of that insinuating perfume. But it couldn’t be! Those cigarettes had been made to his order; and ran true to form. And even one, had it been scented, would have betrayed its presence ere this. He ground the half-burned cigarette into the earth just beyond the fringe of the rug that covered the pavilion’s floor, and fumbled for an unpolluted smoke. And then, with a start, he dropped his case.

  A slim girl stood in the entrance, regarding him with long-lashed, smoldering eyes. Silver-white she gleamed through the smoke-like wisps of gauze that clothed her shapely form. Yet before all this loveliness Landon shivered.

  “I have sought you from afar, saidi,” she purred softly, matching with her voice the sweetness that had heralded her arrival, “and finally I have found you. Here, of all places! Encamped on the ruins of that noteworthy house of mine which once stood on this very spot.”

  As she advanced to the center of the pavilion, she adjusted the extraordinary diadem that adorned the abysmal darkness of her hair. Landon marveled at the sinuous grace of her arms and slim fingers, and the undulating, rippling glide of her walk. And he wondered that he had shuddered as he first met her veiled, Babylonic eyes.

  She paused in her advance, halting at the center of the pavilion.

  “Noteworthy house?” hazarded Landon, vacantly.

  “Yes. It has been in ruins for some time. Oh, ever so long a time! You know, my friend, Naram-sin, built it for me. And when he died…”

  Her voice trailed into nothingness; her words were completed in an arching of her pointed brows, and a fleeting gesture of her tiny hand, as though no words were needed where but one conclusion could be drawn.

  Landon was still wondering how she had ever passed the sentries. For some reason it did not occur to him to wonder how long a time must elapse before one could pitch one’s camp on the site of a once noteworthy house.

  “Tell me, lady, and who are you to be seeking me?”

  One thing at a time; never mind the discrepancy about Naram-sin, and the noteworthy house. And even one thing at a time is too much.

  The girl laughed, and effortlessly seated herself, cross-legged, on the lustrous Bijar rug at Landon’s feet.

  “Those of Mosul who have seen me dancing here in the moonlight call me Bint el Kafir. Which in a way is right. Why not call me the Infidel’s Daughter, when since the death of Naram-sin I have lived in a villa on the crest of Djeb el Kafir?”

  Landon’s brain was slowing up like run-down clockwork. He blinked, passed his hand over his eyes, stroked his beard. Questions were fighting for expression. Twice he half opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. The girl disregarded his stupor, ignored his inertia, and patted her dusky coiffure.

  “Yes,” she repeated, “I am the Infidel’s Daughter. And I have come to tell you…but what have you been seeking all your life of wandering, saidi?”

  And Landon, as in a dream, began the ritual he had so often heard old Ismeddin repeat, concluding with, “And I am going where the will of Allah leads me, in search of I know not what.”

  The girl smiled as at a pupil who has learned his lesson well.

  “Say rather, saidi, if truth is any consideration, that you have heard of a shrine on the topmost crest of Djeb el Kafir, in which hangs a small drum, and at the base of whose altar are three clay tablets resembling those which you picked up today.”

  Landon momentarily recovered from the numbness that weighted his senses.

  “Lady, you know too much of Djeb el Kafir. And you wear a diadem strangely like the one—”

  “Why should I not know? I live there, and have, for a long time. But since you know so much, saidi, have you the heart to learn all? Come now, tell me the truth! Over all of Asia you have sought her who dances to the evening star on the crest of the Mount of the Infidel. But could you endure the Hundred and One Strange Kisses she bestows on those who summon her from across the border? Could you, saidi?”

  Landon leaped to his feet, staring.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, grasping the girl by the wrist. “And how do you know the thoughts I hardly admitted to myself?”

  “My lord, I am more than Bint el Kafir. I am Sarpanit. And in Armenia they have another name for me. But you are bruising me. Be seated, saidi, and I will dance for you.”

  Whereat she drew from her curiously embroidered girdle a small vial whose stopper she removed. The heavy perfume that pervaded the pavilion increased to an overpowering, deadly sweetness. With a drop from the vial she anointed her eyebrows; and with her fingertips she smeared a drop of that overwhelming fragrance on Landon’s eyelids, and on his black beard. Then, pivoting about on the tips of her toes, she spilled the remainder of the essence in a circle about her, snapped her fingers thrice, and began a dance of statuesque, formal steps and poses.

  “Now, if I only had music…”

  From the encampment below there came, renewed, the chanting of Landon’s men, and the pulsing of an atabal. But the rhythm was unlike any that Landon had ever heard his men play: a compelling, hypnotic cadence, a throbbing sorcery that rippled up and down his spine in waves of fire and frost, cutting into him like a sword-thrust.

  The girl’s tiny feet seemed to trace the figures of the Bijar rug on which they stepped; her body rippled and swayed; and her silver-white limbs seemed jointless and serpentine.

  Landon noted that where she had spilled that unearthly perfume, there was now a circle of small, quivering, lapping flames; vibrant, incredible flames, bluer than the burning of sulfur.

  She paused in her dance.

  “There are three tablets which you will pry from the base of the altar, saidi. And from the corner of one a piece is broken, so that no man can read the inscription completely. But I will tell you the hidden name of the Infidel’s Daughter, the one secret name of her many names, so that you can call her from across the Border.”

  With her lips to his ear, the girl whispered a word, and twice repeated it.<
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  “Do not forget, saidi… And this one kiss, this first, shall lead you to seek the hundred that follow.”

  Then, as she resumed her dance, the girl chanted a song of unearthly desires and tormenting delights, of the Hundred and One Kisses with which Sarpanit had caressed Naram-sin, who had been a king in Agade, and who had ruled in Babîl. Landon nodded to the cadence of the muttering drums, dizzied by the flickering swiftness of her feet…

  A wisp of silk was vanishing through the door of the pavilion. A low laugh rippled in from the darkness. The sweetness was vanishing, and the blue flames had died. Landon started, rubbed his eyes, shivered. Then he drew his pistol and with its butt smote the small brazen gong at his side; paused, and struck a second and third time. Haaj Ismeddin appeared before its last vibration had ceased.

  “What of the sentries, Haaji?” demanded Landon, ignoring the old man’s salaam.

  “On their posts, saidi. And awake,” he added; unnecessarily, surely, for it was too early for sentries to sleep on post.

  Together they inspected the sentries, much to the old man’s amazement. And more to his amazement, Landon took an electric torch and closely scrutinized the earth that marked the patrolled boundaries of the encampment. Then, returning to his pavilion, he repeated that same close examination of the surrounding earth.

  Ismeddin held his peace, and refrained from inquiring what the master had lost. One can never tell just what may be lost by one who wanders too long in the desert and among ruins; so that it is not wise to ask questions. Yet it seemed that the master was looking for footprints which he could not find.

  “The earth is very firm here, and a light tread might fail to leave an imprint,” he commented as he finally entered the pavilion.

  “Even so, saidi.”

  “And a stealthy, agile person might indeed have passed vigilant sentries.”

  “Even so, saidi,” agreed Ismeddin.

  Landon smoked in silence until his cigarette seared his fingertips.

  “Where are we going, Haaji?” he snapped.

  The old man stared, perplexed; for that question was out of order. The ritual had already been complied with. But habit asserted itself:

  “Where the will of Allah leads us, in search of we know not what—”

  “Ah, but now we do know, Haaji,” interrupted Landon. “Listen: tomorrow we start northward, into the uttermost limits of Kurdistan, and then still farther north to Djeb el Kafir, on whose crest there is a curious shrine—”

  “No, master, there we will not go,” contradicted Ismeddin.

  “What?”

  “I have spoken. We will not go.”

  “Why not?” questioned Landon, amazed at the old man’s contradiction.

  “It is a place of evil, saidi, where the Infidel’s Daughter dances to the evening star.”

  “What do you know of the Infidel’s Daughter?”

  “Too much. Too much entirely. So that I do not care to learn more. And we will not go.”

  “Haaji!” snapped Landon.

  The old man glanced up and met the relentless, adamantine fire of Landon’s unwavering stare; quivered under that pulsating, merciless will conveyed by the master’s predatory eyes; shivered…shrank…yielded.

  “We will go, Haaji,” came the slow, deliberate voice of the master.

  “Even so, saidi,” conceded the old man, admitting defeat.

  “Yes. I will go, and you with me; for there will be words which I can not speak, and scripts which I can not read, and calculations which I can not make; and in all this you shall serve me. That is all, Haaji.”

  Ismeddin bowed himself from the master’s presence. Once without the pavilion and beyond the view of its interior, he halted, lifted his eyes, searching for some constellation, until his gaze rested on a scintillant, evilly flaming, ruddy star that dominated the southeastern quarter of the heavens.

  “Playmate and brother of the Infidel’s Daughter, may Allah drown your fires in nethermost hell! And you, Infidel’s Daughter, by what right do you walk the earth again? Who called you from Aralû?”

  Then, head bowed, Ismeddin sought his quarters, where he finally cursed and muttered himself into a troubled sleep.

  * * * *

  In the morning the caravan began its march to the north of Kurdistan, bound for the Yuruk Mountains, and beyond, into that wild land of uncertainty that lies south of Trebizond, where strange gods make their homes; where Anaitis is worshiped with curious rites, and where Malik Taûs spreads his painted fan, where Djeb el Kafir towers loftily to an evil eminence, crowned by the seldom-sought shrine of the Infidel’s Daughter.

  Bint el Kafir they called her in the south, on the plain of Babîl, a flickering apparition that beguiled wanderers, and dabbling necromancers who sought to reach across the Border; seduced them from their senses, and led them to their doom with her song of the Hundred and One Strange Kisses, and of the indescribable pleasures and joyous torments she once lavished on Naram-sin of Agade. And thinking on all this, Landon’s men no longer sang to the beating of atabals when they made camp of an evening; desertion thinned the ranks of the caravan to a handful, so that there remained but the faithful few, headed by Landon and the sombre-eyed Haaj Ismeddin, to push on through the passes of the Yuruk Mountains, bribed by the master’s gold, and beaten by his fierce, exultant eye.

  Finally, one evening after the tents had been pitched, Ismeddin entered the master’s pavilion and announced, “We are at the foot of Djeb el Kafir. Just before us, and high above, is the shrine of the Infidel’s Daughter. Behind us is the source of the Tigris; and close at hand is…our doom, saidi. Turn back!”

  Landon in his exultation dispensed with the remainder of the recital; for now that he knew what he sought, the overpowering madness of his knowledge veiled the memory of his years of wandering, so that the uncounted domes of prodigious Atlânaat, the incredible bulk of Angkor, and red walls of holy Marrakesh were as nothing, and less than nothing.

  “Turn back, saidi!”

  “No, Ismeddin,” replied Landon, gently, as one who reproves an erring child. “Have we two ever before turned back? And the doom will be mine, will it not?”

  The next morning Landon, on foot and attended only by Ismeddin, began the ascent of the final peak of Djeb el Kafir. All day long they fought their way up the pathless, perilous sides of the mountain, until at last, shortly before sunset, they attained their goal, and halted before a great, conical mass of black rock that rose out of the thin earth of the crest of Djeb el Kafir. In color and texture and luster it was different from the stones in the vicinity: a black outlaw among the gray natives.

  “The shrine, saidi. The house of Bint el Kafir. Ages ago it fell from heaven, white, lustrous, dazzling; but the memory of her untold iniquities blackens it.”

  “A meteorite,” thought Landon, recognizing the texture and dark color.

  As they approached, they noted the sculptures in low relief; smooth, polished by the winds of ages, almost obliterated. At the sight of them Ismeddin stroked his beard and muttered; and Landon wondered if after all that conical rock might not be the topmost pinnacle of the palace of Iblis, reaching up and passing the surface of the earth.

  Then, rounding the circumference of the rock, they saw that the sheltered sides were more finely and clearly sculptured. The figures over the low arched entrance were minutely detailed; and the panels at either side were as delicately carved as a cleanly struck medal. A woman of incredible beauty was mounted on a lion, and received the adoration of bearded, kneeling kings. And then there were panels not as easily or explicitly described; tormented and curiously interlaced figures depicting things which, even if allegorical, were grotesque and outlandish beyond all imagining.

  “Let us return, saidi,” urged the old man. “It is not good to look upon such things.” And Ismeddin indicated the unholy sculptures that f
lanked the doorway of that black, conical shrine that pointed upward like a pudgy, misshapen index finger.

  But instead of replying, Landon drew from his belt a flashlight and entered the low archway, shaking off the restraining hand of Ismeddin. The old darvish, foot on the threshold, about to enter, shrank back. Loyalty to the master had its limits.

  As Ismeddin paced to and fro at the entrance, he noted the indirect glow of the master’s flashlight; heard the tinkle of tiny bells, and the snapping of exceedingly dry wood; heard Landon’s footsteps as he prowled about in that awful shrine; became aware of an overpowering, deathly sweetness, as of all the sandalwood of the Indies and all the roses of Naishapur blended into one compelling fragrance. The old man shuddered and wondered what djinn or afreet would materialize and drive them both stark mad.

  “Christ above! Skin and bones!” came the wide-spaced accents of Landon from within. And an instant later he stumbled out of the shrine, bearing in his hand three clay tablets. In the other he grasped a small kettle-drum, and a glittering object of silver filigree and saw-piercing: a curiously wrought diadem.

  Ismeddin saw that the master’s dark bronze had paled to a sickly yellow; that his hands trembled, and that his lips twitched; not with terror, but rather unbelief, awe, incredulity beyond expression.

  “Skin and bones, Ismeddin,” he repeated, speaking to himself rather than to his companion. “A king lying on a lofty dais. And on his forehead was the print of rouged lips. On his face the look of him who had lived in an instant all the wonders and bliss ever known in the whole mad lifetime of those who eat hasheesh…”

  Ismeddin followed the master’s footsteps down the pathless slope.

  “He seemed asleep… I shook him by the shoulder… My hand met not the substantial form of a man, but a hollow shell, skin and bones…as the shell of an insect, dried in the sun…”

  “You saw that, master?”

  “Even so, Haaji. And she herself was there, but I could not see her.”

  Darkness had fallen. Ismeddin and the master made camp.