The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction Read online

  “Saidi, do you know what you saw?”

  “I do, and yet, I do not, quite.”

  “You saw one who sought the Hundred and First Kiss. And found it.” Then, noting the plunder: “What have you there?”

  “Three clay tablets, which you must teach me to read; a drum with a head of serpent’s hide, which I must learn to play; and this diadem, the like of which I have seen only once before.”

  “And where did you see it before?”

  “In my tent on the mound near Koyunjik. Where she danced before me.”

  “Ah!” The old man understood. “Saidi, break the tablets into small pieces; toss the drum into this fire; and drop the diadem into a deep well.”

  “No, Haaji. And to see that you do not do that, sleep, while I stand watch tonight.”

  * * * *

  At noon the next day Landon and Ismeddin rejoined the train at the encampment at the foot of Djeb el Kafir; and then, on the following morning; they started on the return trip to the south, toward the source of the Tigris, and thence eastward, with Syria as their ultimate destination. And in Damascus the caravan disbanded, leaving Landon and Ismeddin in that ancient city to recuperate from the long march.

  “Since you insist, I will read the wedge-shaped characters on those accursed tablets,” Ismeddin finally agreed. “It is the old, forgotten language of the hills, older than that spoken by the infidels who once ruled on the plains of Babîl; a different language, but written in the same letters. Naram-sin of Agade learned it. And summoned her from across the Border. You saw what was left of him. You will surely follow. Forget it.”

  “No, Ismeddin. All these years of adventure have brought me everything but content. So let me track this madness to its finish. I will call her from across the Border. Spell me the first line!”

  “Saidi,” began the old man, many days later, when the tablets had finally been transcribed, “many years have passed since these words were written. In the days of Naram-sin, the proper place from which to call her was near Mosul. And to this day there are legends of the great tower, that ziggurât which he built for her.”

  “But where shall I build?”

  “I can not say, yet. But on a different site. It depends on the positions of the planets, and on celestial configurations. Offhand, I can not say where.”

  “But what difference, Ismeddin?”

  “It is so written. Not only must you pronounce the proper words, and have built the ziggurât, correct in location as well as structure, but also have gone through rites of purification, ending by passing through bit nûri, the bath of fire. And even then she will cross the Border only under certain conditions which you will learn from these tablets,” explained the old man. “And whether the experiment can ever succeed is not assured.” Ismeddin indicated the broken corner of one of the tablets. “Some of the text is missing. Her hidden and secret name is lacking. Without it—”

  “But I know that name!” exulted Landon. “So describe me the ziggurât. We will outbuild Naram-sin.”

  “But how do you know that lost name?”

  “I know what I know. That, of all things, I do know.”

  “What is it, saidi?”

  “You are my teacher, not I, yours. That word was lost so that none could call her before me. It was revealed to me.”

  “Where? In the shrine?”

  “Who can say?” evaded Landon. “So get to work on your calculations.”

  And Landon left the darvish to mutter and fret over the tablets, to compute and predict planetary aspects.

  * * * *

  Day after day Ismeddin labored with his calculations, growing more and more sombre, sullen, and morose; ever seeking to dissuade Landon from his madness. And then, finally, he brightened, apparently resigning himself to the fatal folly of his master.

  “It is solved, saidi,” announced Ismeddin one day. “But it remains to be seen whether you can call her. Time has passed, and the signs of heaven have shifted, so that instead of on the plains of Babîl, you must build the ziggurat in Feringhistan.”

  “That’s a bit indefinite,” protested Landon. “Feringhistan covers a lot of ground. Really now, Ismeddin—”

  “Patience, saidi, patience! I have calculated the exact site of the ziggurât.” Whereupon the old man turned to a mercator’s projection of the world and laid off the latitude and longitude of the calculated point, marking its position with a pin. “There you are, my lord. Now pronounce me the outlandish name of that barbarous corner of Feringhistan.”

  “I suppose I ought to bust your jaw after the Feringhi fashion, and then make you spend the rest of the day singing Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” Then, laughing at Ismeddin’s perplexity, Landon continued. “You’ve picked the United States of America, and that particular state where I spent my younger days…until I left for my health…”

  “Ah! Then perhaps your health would not permit your returning? Anyway, even your great wealth would not be enough to build a ziggurât in that mad land where workmen are paid such prodigious sums for their labor.”

  “It’s been a good many years now, and I’ll chance my health. As to expenses, we have the money to back us. Neither objection holds; and the next boat will take us to my native land—”

  “Native, saidi, but as foreign to you as to me. Go back to Herat, to your own great house where the daughter of Abdulrahman el Durani awaits you. Forget this luminous peril, this alluring apparition. You hasten to meet your doom.”

  “All of which I know and accept; so that I shall seek Sarpanit, the Infidel’s Daughter, and find her, and whatever doom she may bring. Tomorrow we leave for Beirut, and then on the first boat we shall sail for America. And this is the law, Ismeddin; so forget your objections, and serve me as faithfully in Feringhistan as you have in the lands of Islam.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The scaffolding and debris incident to construction had finally been cleared away; the workmen had departed; and now, from the crest of a distant knoll, Landon contemplated the colossal bulk of the tower that rose loftily above the rolling plain. Its first stage of black masonry just topped the tallest trees of the surrounding grove; its successive stages, of diverse colors, ascended in terraces and culminated in a seventh and topmost stage of gleaming white, which from its great height commanded the plain and near-by town: a lordly, monumental work, modeled after, but surpassing, that tower which long ago had been reared from the plain of Babîl to pierce the skies and provide man with a stairway to the abode of the gods.

  “I wonder, Ismeddin, if this Naram-sin built her such a house as this ziggurât?”

  “No, master, not like this. And when time comes to an end, and the last man seeks a place to pitch his tent, he must look elsewhere; for no camp will ever be made on the site of this ziggurât. Neither the hand of man nor the fires of heaven can ever shake it. Under the lintel—”

  “Let that be on my head also, even as the unutterable madness of this quest, against which you counseled me in vain. It was so prescribed; and I could but follow the text. And besides, is it not an honor to be immured beneath the lintel of a house built for Sarpanit?”

  Landon vaulted to the back of his Barbary stallion; but before starting down the slope, paused to contemplate his work. The sun had dipped below the horizon, so that all was obscure on the plain below, save the loftily towering silver-white masonry of the topmost stage.

  “Naram-sin built her no such house. And she came across the Border and danced before him on the moonlit terraces of his ziggurât.”

  “And the incandescent madness of the Hundred and First Kiss left him seared and lifeless,” warned Ismeddin, as he reined up beside the master. “Abandon it now, saidi, while you still can.”

  “No. Neither hell’s fire nor the black hands of Iblis can turn me aside. Nothing can stop me.”

  “You forget, master,” suggested Is
meddin, as their horses picked their way down the slope, “that one thing can stop you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Even so. Some girl of the village. Just one slip, and the Infidel’s Daughter will not cross the Border, for she is inhumanly jealous.”

  “The village!”

  Landon snorted his contempt.

  “You are more of a jester than a darvish, Ismeddin. I left my house in Herat, and the daughter of an emir to follow this madness into Feringhistan, to this very spot where you say the avatar shall materialize.”

  But under his badinage, Landon was troubled at the thought of that which he was attempting, even as a madman in his lucid moments is perturbed by the memory of his obsession.

  “No, Haaji, in the entire world there is no woman who can equal her who appeared in my pavilion on the plain of Babîl. Her eyes were a smoldering darkness, and her voice a purring, rippling sweetness. And even yet her perfume lingers in the rug on which she danced.”

  And then, as he leaned forward in the saddle, the Barbary stallion stretched out in a smooth, extended gallop. At the gate of the ziggurât, Landon reined his horse back on his haunches, and dismounting, tossed the reins to Ismeddin.

  An hour later, on emerging from the third stage of the ziggurât, Landon spoke of going to the village to call for mail.

  “Which horse will you ride, saidi?”

  “Neither. I’ll walk.”

  And Ismeddin, who knew that a horse is at times too much company, held his peace. As Landon, on foot, left the ziggurât, the old man opened the outer gate slightly, seated himself cross-legged in the shadow of one of the monstrous winged bulls whose mitered heads upheld the ceiling, and, like the darvish he had once been, entered the silence.

  At the post-office Landon found a letter awaiting him. Its seals seemed intact. At the sight of them he frowned, recognizing their device; tore the unopened letter in half, then, pausing, pieced it together and read the fine Persian script of the message from Herat. Once on the street, he wandered aimlessly. Passers-by avoided him, giving him the paving, shrinking from contact with that lean man and avoiding the mordant glance of those sombre eyes.

  They called him back to Herat; yet in his native land he was a foreigner, stared at from a distance, a distance which was scrupulously kept.

  Landon wandered aimlessly, and wondered, nor heeded the lady of the evening who trailed him and with professional allurements sought to inveigle him. Sought to ensnare him, until, under the glow of a street lamp, she recognized her prospective prey, and recoiled before the sombre, fierce eye that for an age-long instant impaled her.

  And then he stalked into the smoky air of Tiptoe Inn, seating himself at a table apart from the others, but next to a booth, occupied, as he judged from the murmur of conversation.

  Shirazi wine… The reek of raw corn whisky from the hills… Sandalwood and patchouli… The stench of cigarettes tossed aside to smolder to extinction… The plucked strings of a sitar… The blatant screech and moan of saxophones… The tinkling, mistily spraying fountains of Herat… The raucous, rasping voice of a cabaret singer…

  And the Infidel’s Daughter, Sarpanit, the Bright and Shining One, was to cross the Border and appear in this strange land…

  From the adjoining booth came the purring voice of a woman who spoke with the blurred, indefinable accent of one who speaks many tongues; louder than before, but still softly, suavely, though with the sting and crackle of the lash in each finely enunciated word.

  “It is true,” she declared, “that all men are jackasses. But to think that I’m listening to the King of Men. No,” she resumed, interrupting her companion’s protest, “I don’t want you nor your damned car, nor your apartment. And that is that!”

  “So you’ve become pious all of a sudden? Perhaps you’ve forgotten—”

  A splash, and a crash of glass.

  “You hell-cat. I’ll—”

  “Go to it. Here’s luck!”

  Landon glanced up in time to see the high-spirited lady leaving the booth. Trim ankles, and dainty feet; jade ear-pendants, and rebellious, blue-black curls, and a fine, proudly carried head; and though her form was concealed by her cape, Landon knew that only a shapely, well-proportioned woman could achieve that effortless, undulant walk.

  “Don’t know who she is, but she sounds like a woman after my own heart,” reflected Landon. Then he noted that while a few smiled approval as the victrix left the field of battle, there were other groups who scowled and muttered to each other.

  That bit of distraction had cracked Landon’s introspective gloom, so that on his way back to the ziggurât he had no thought of the letter from Herat, nor of the lurid star which each night progressed farther into the configuration described in the cuneiform tablets. Strange, how in the face of a curious and uncertain doom one can pause to laugh.

  As Landon entered the steel-barred gate, Ismeddin emerged from his post in the shadow of the winged bull.

  “Master, there was a visitor this evening.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes. Look!”

  And Ismeddin thrust before Landon’s eyes a mask of vermilion-colored silk. “The open gate tempted him. And I… But I am an old man, and I was unarmed,” apologized Ismeddin, “so he lost nothing but his mask.”

  “Very good, Haaji. You’re in Feringhistan, where they discountenance private graveyards. If this fellow had been found with a bit of cutlery between his ribs, or a cord about his throat, we might conceivably have some explaining to do. And remember, we’re outnumbered, and we’re foreigners.”

  “But in Angor-lana, one evening—”

  “I know, Ismeddin. But this is my native land.” And Landon smiled sourly.

  * * * *

  One night, a week later, Landon thrust aside the three clay tablets which he had been studying, pronouncing after Ismeddin the age-old tongue whose secret they had wrested from the wedge-shaped characters. Landon’s wrists and fingers were numb from playing the snakeskin-headed drum, and his brain reeled from the insinuant sorcery of the rhythm he had coaxed therefrom.

  “I’ll ride tonight, Ismeddin. Suleiman needs exercise. And I need a rest.”

  A few minutes later the old man led the pawing, belligerent stallion from the stable. Landon mounted and gave the fierce beast his head, letting him pick his course across the moonlit plain. Mile after mile he sped, until finally, lacking the urge of the spur, the stallion slowed down to a walk. Landon, relaxed in the saddle, dozed, and dreamed of Herat, and of the mound at Koyunjik; and mixed into his wandering thoughts, ever recurring in one guise and another, was a girl with trim ankles and jade ear-pendants.

  A lurid star flamed over her head…and as she set on her blue-black hair a curiously wrought diadem, the piquant irregularity of her features became softened, transfigured into an astonishing loveliness…

  The stallion came to an abrupt halt, waking Landon with a jerk. The smell of smoke and smoldering wood and the odor of tar fanned his nostrils. And then he saw why Suleiman had recoiled, snorted, and tossed his head; athwart the path, almost beneath the horse’s hoofs, was a woman, sprawled in a heap, unconscious.

  “Steady, lad!” And then, dismounting, he saw that the girl was clad only in a slip of filmy silk, torn, soiled, and clinging in shreds to her lacerated back and sides. Her wrists were pinioned together with a piece of clothes-line. She was still breathing, and stirred faintly at his touch.

  “Well, we can’t leave her here… I’ll be damned!”

  Landon recognized the girl of Tiptoe Inn, the insouciant one who had a few nights ago so boldly declared herself. As he cut the lashings from her wrists, she opened her eyes, murmured confusedly, shrank from his touch.

  “Don’t worry, sister. Let’s go!” And so saying, he picked up the half-conscious girl, mounted Suleiman, and turned back toward the ziggurât, leaning forward in the
saddle, urging the Barbary stallion to a longer stride.

  At the gate of the ziggurât, Landon tossed the reins to Ismeddin, who took charge of the foaming Suleiman. In due course, if he so pleased, the master would say more of the bruised, disheveled burden he had carried into the hall of winged bulls, and up the staircase flanked with parading archers. Nevertheless, the darvish wondered, and as he groomed Suleiman, he smiled, the first time in many weeks; smiled, and hoped that the woman was young and lovely.

  “Bismillahi rrahhmani rrahheem!” he ejaculated, as he put the finishing touches to Suleiman’s silky coat, and polished his dusty hoofs. “Praise be to God, lord of the worlds! Finding her by chance, and riding back as though the black hands of Abaddon reached out after him… Saidi, may this indeed be the daughter of some infidel!”

  The old man chuckled at his own play on words, and stroked his white beard.

  “Please don’t stand on formality,” replied the girl, as Landon, half an hour later, knocked at the door of the apartment wherein he had left his guest. “Come right in.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to take you at a disadvantage. How do you feel now?”

  “More like myself, thanks to a bit of first aid.”

  “I fancy we’ve met before,” resumed Landon. “At a distance, that is. In the Tiptoe Inn, a few nights ago. You were laying down the law to some friend, and ended by—”

  “Christening him with a ginger ale highball.” The girl laughed softly, then continued, “And here you see the result.”

  She shivered, and drew more closely about herself the brocaded robe in which Landon had wrapped her before leaving her to doctor her bruises and lacerations.

  “Oh, but my shoulders ache! Well, and it might have been worse. I just missed a coat of tar and feathers—”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Just that. But one of the Knights had a kind-hearted streak, so they merely beat me with rawhide whips until I passed out. I don’t know how long I was lying there when you found me.”

  “Must have been an hour or so. Come to think of it, I did smell tar along with the fire, a couple of yards to the side of the path. But what are these Knights, anyway?” demanded Landon, who had never, even in barbarous Angor-lana, seen a slave so mercilessly flogged.