E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK® Page 8

  Absál shrugged. “Wallah! That would have been deplorable, of course. But it would have proved to my entire satisfaction that you are not the man for the venture I have in mind. As it is—”

  “As it is, saidi,” interrupted Rankin, “you think that perhaps I may be fit to meet the Black Presence in the vault on the night of the 14th of Nisan?”

  “Inshallah!” evaded Absál. “If it please God. And our lord the Shareef has a good deal to say about that.”

  A gong clanged. The heavy drapes that masked the horseshoe arch in the left wall of the courtyard parted, revealing a long, narrow room at whose farther end was a dais on which sat a white-bearded, hook-nosed man: Absál’s father, the Shareef.

  They paused in the archway to bow, and offer the peace.

  “Wa’salaam aleikum!” responded the Shareef. And then, after scrutinizing Rankin with his hard, piercing eyes: “So this is the stout swordsman of the tradition?”

  “Even so, father,” replied Absál.

  The old man twice clapped his hands. There was a rustling behind the curtains at the Shareef’s right, and the tinkle of anklets. The curtains parted slightly, and Rankin again looked into the smoldering, Saracenic eyes of the veiled lady of the market-place.

  “Is this the man?” queried the Shareef, half turning to catch the eye of the girl in the doorway.

  “This is indeed the man, uncle.”

  “Very well,” he acknowledged. And then, to Rankin: “If you are the man, what is your hidden name?”

  “Abdemon.”

  “Again, very well,” agreed the Shareef. “Now tell me, Abdemon, how it was that Suleiman Baalshem could not keep his promise to you; and why, through all these dusty centuries, the word of Suleiman has been in the power of Shaitan the Damned.”

  “A neighboring king,” began Rankin, “proposed a riddle that Suleiman could not solve. Therefore he swore by his beard that if I, Abdemon, a captain of his guard, would solve the riddle, he would give me his daughter, who was the granddaughter of the sultan of Egypt. Suleiman, the Lord of the Name, swore by his beard and by his right hand, but he failed to add, ‘Inshallah! If it so please God.’ And Allah punished Suleiman for his impiety by giving Iblis, prince of djinn, full power over the promise of Suleiman for a whole day. And during that day of power, Iblis abducted my bride-to-be, so that Suleiman could not keep the oath he had sworn. Yet in the end Allah relented, and granted that after the march of centuries Suleiman would finally be able to keep his promise: provided that Abdemon in one of his incarnations would meet Iblis, sword to sword, and defeat him. And thus, bound by my oath to Suleiman and bound by my love for this girl who was almost mine, I have marched across the centuries, from one failure to another, to meet Iblis, the Dark Presence, in the vault, on the night of the 14th of Nisan: the first full moon of spring.

  “In those days they called her Neferte, but now she is called Azizah,” continued Rankin. “And on nights of the full moon she lies as one dead; her heartbeat is stopped, and her breath is imperceptible.”

  “Well said,” agreed the Shareef. “Now for the final proof: give me the seal.”

  “What seal?” countered Rankin.

  “The leaden seal from the shattered urn.”

  Rankin started at this glib mention of the seal his father had given him nearly twenty years ago, and wondered how the Shareef could know of the incident.

  “That I can not do,” declared Rankin. “It is the leaden impression of the seal of Suleiman Baalshem, who commanded that no hands other than my own should touch it.”

  The old man nodded and smiled.

  “I was aware also of that. So hold it in your own hands that I may examine it.”

  Rankin produced a small leather bag suspended from a chain passed around his neck. Opening the bag, he took therefrom a small disk of lead, and held it up for the Shareef to examine.

  The Shareef and his son bowed low.

  “Bismillahi rahmani raheem!” they exclaimed. “Praise to God, Lord of the Worlds! It is truly the seal of Suleiman Baalshem.”

  “But tell me,” continued the Shareef, “who told you that you would find your destiny in Tekrit?”

  “Ismeddin the Darvish interpreted the dreams which have haunted me since I was a boy, and told me how I could release your brother’s daughter from the blackness that clouds her senses on nights of the full moon, when the power of Iblis the Damned is at its height,” replied Rankin.

  The Shareef frowned at the mention of Ismeddin.

  “So that old ruffian and heretic sent you to Tekrit? Did he by any chance speak of the dooms that over-take meddlers who roam about here in search of adventure?”

  “At great length, saidi,” responded Rankin, “even as he explained that due to various misunderstandings you two have had regarding some horses, he could scarcely appear in person to present me to you. But I came, nevertheless. Is it not written,” quoted Rankin, “There is no shield to turn aside the spear cast of Destiny: gold, glory, silver, each avail not?”

  “Spoken like a true believer,” agreed the Shareef. And then, sharply, “Testify!”

  “La illaha ilia allah—” began Rankin, and paused.

  The sequence was familiar as his own name, but Rankin was not truly a Moslem, and one can not testify falsely when the word of Suleiman and its fulfillment lie in one’s hands.

  “Wa Muhammad er-rasul allahi!” recited the red-bearded chief. “I have testified in his place. And let us consider that this infidel has testified that Muhammad is the prophet of God as well as that there is no God but Allah. For if he can wear the seal of Suleiman Baalshem without harm, it makes little difference what he testifies. For Allah is wise, all-knowing,” concluded Sayyid Absál sonorously.

  “There is something in what you say,” conceded the Shareef. “Still, am I to entrust the welfare of my brother’s daughter to the hands of an infidel? And an infidel sent by that bandit of an Ismeddin!”

  “But,” protested the redbeard, “didn’t he prove himself? He is the stout swordsman of the tradition, Abdemon whose skill was the delight of Suleiman, ages ago, and whose sword must give the word of Suleiman its only chance of fulfilment. And he has the seal—”

  “Mummeries to fool true believers!” growled the Shareef. “Tonight is but the 11th of Nisan. I will look into this fellow’s story, and on the 12th I will either let him carry out his plan, or else—”

  The old man nodded significantly at the stalwart African at his left, who was toying with the hilt of a ponderous two-handed sword.

  The Shareef clapped his hands. “Show this unbeliever every consideration,” he directed, as two slaves approached at his signal. “But on your lives, keep him locked up.”

  “The swords,” thought Rankin, as his escort led him to a cell, “may quench their thirst unless Ismeddin is closer than he seems.”

  Just before he passed out of ear-shot, he caught the faint tinkle of anklets, but he dared not turn back for even a glance at Azizah, who once had almost been his.

  * * * *

  Zantut, servant of Iblis and high priest of the devil-worshipers who had come down from the mountains of Kurdistan, sat in an upper room of the caravanserai just across the street from that selected by Rankin the day before. Two lamps flared ruddily at each side of the Master, casting a flickering light on the parchment scroll he studied. Zantut muttered to himself as he spelled out, line by line, the fine, intricate characters of the manuscript.

  At times he would raise his eyes from his work, glance sharply to either side, and at the door of the room, which he was facing. At last he addressed the adept who squatted, cross-legged, in a shadowy corner where he fed grains of sandalwood to a censer that fumed before the silver image of a peacock.

  “Humayd, what time is it?”

  “Well past midnight, sa
idi. The sentries have been changed three times since sunset.”

  “And still no report!” muttered Zantut as he stroked his black beard. Then, to Humayd: “Sound recall.”

  The adept drew from behind the pedestal of the silver peacock a small drum, carefully tuned it, and with knuckles and the heel of his hand beat a curious, broken rhythm. The drum emitted a surprising volume of sound for its size; yet so low-pitched was its hollow chug-chug-thump that it barely disturbed the silence of that late hour.

  Scarcely had Humayd set aside the drum when there came at the door a tapping that mimicked the cadence of the recall.

  “Enter!” commanded Zantut. And then, recognizing the newcomer, “What luck, Saoud?”

  “Less than none, saidi. I waited at the entrance of the caravanserai across the street until my legs were knotted with cramps. And this”—he flashed from beneath his djellab a keen, curved blade—“is all too clean.” Zantut scrutinized him gravely.

  “You slept!” snapped the Master.

  “Not in that corner of perdition, saidi. And I reported while that drum was still warm.”

  “Granted!” admitted Zantut.

  And then came another sequence of taps at the door.

  “Enter and report!” commanded Zantut.

  “Weariness and waste of time, saidi,” announced the latest arrival. “As you ordered, I had a word with the guards posted at the city gates. My purse is somewhat lighter, but to no purpose.”

  And the purport of each of the succeeding scouts was similar. Rankin had evaded them all. Then, after an interval, came the last scout.

  “I saw a man on horse, followed by three on foot, saidi,” he began. “They carried a burden that might very well have been a man. The horseman halted at the house of the Shareef Yussuf, where he and his followers entered.”

  “Ah!…could it have been the Shareef’s son, Absál?”

  “It could. He had a red beard, and was very tall and lean.”

  “Sayyid Absál himself! Then what, Ismail!”

  “Someone of the party had been wounded. I followed blood splashes on the paving until I came to a side street close to the caravanserai of this madman we are seeking. In a blind street I saw three men lying where they had fallen. They had no further use for the swords they still clutched. But before I could investigate, a party of armed men approached to pick up the dead.”

  “Then what?” demanded Zantut.

  “I gathered from their remarks that an additional corpse would be easily enough handled. And I didn’t wish to arouse suspicion by loitering.”

  “Very good, Ismail,” replied Zantut. “It seems that our enemy is in good hands: either dead or imprisoned. That saves us considerable annoyance. Being strangers, we could not handle an assassination as safely or effectively as the son of our Lord the Shareef.”

  “But why,” queried one of the adepts, “should Sayyid Absál have killed or captured this madman, Rankin?”

  “Iblis alone can say. Power and praise to Thousand-Eyed Malik Taûs!”

  “Praise and power to him!” in-toned the assembled adepts in unison as they made with their left hands a curious fleeting gesture.

  “It may be,” continued Zantut, “that the Shareef or Sayyid Absál doubted that Rankin is indeed the Elect, the reincarnated Abdemon who alone can thwart Iblis on the 14th of Nisan. Which is all the better; for then one of us can very easily approach the Shareef claiming to be the Elect, get possession of the lady Azizah on the pretext of breaking the spell that clouds her senses on nights of the full moon, and then seek the hidden vault. But it is late. Humayd, stand guard while we sleep.”

  Humayd took his post, scimitar in hand.

  Zantut set aside his scrolls and stretched out on his divan. The adepts extinguished the flaring lamps and lay down on the thick rug at the foot of the Master’s couch.

  * * * *

  “Well,” thought Rankin, as he surveyed his cell by the light of the jailer’s torch as the barred door clanged shut, “I’ve been in worse holes than this.”

  Odors were present, and vermin also; but by no means as plentiful or as unbearable as, for instance, they had been in the dungeons of the Emir’s palace in Boukhara. And the air was almost fresh. In the course of a few years of adventure, one at times sleeps on a worse bed than the stone bench that ran along the wall of the cell.

  “And Ismeddin,” reflected Rankin, “is doubtless on the job. All the worse for Iblis and his friends!”

  The very absence of any sign of Ismeddin seemed to Rankin to be certain proof that the wily old darvish was busily at work against the followers of Iblis, who was worshiped in Kurdistan as Malik Taûs, the Lord Peacock. Rankin had heard tales the length and breadth of Kurdistan, telling of the outrageous feats and resourcefulness of that unusual hermit who divided his time between the walls of his cavern and the palaces of princes: that is, when not engaged in the single-handed looting of caravans.

  Then, like any seasoned campaigner, Rankin sought and found the soft spots of the stone bench, and stretched out for as much sleep as the night afforded. But that sleep was to have its interruption.

  A pebble clicked against the wall at Rankin’s side; and then another.

  “Ismeddin, by God!” was Rankin’s first thought as he raised himself on his elbow and looked up at the tiny, barred window through which filtered the moon’s dazzling whiteness.

  Then, lest a repetition of the signal attract the attention of the sentry posted somewhere in the hall leading to the door of the cell, Rankin intoned the sonorous first lines of the Sura of the Brightness, as any piously inclined prisoner might do in resigning himself to captivity:

  “By the noonday brightness, and by the night when it darkeneth!

  Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee, neither hath he been displeased.”

  The pebbles ceased.

  But the hand thrust in between the bars of the window was certainly not the grimy talon of Ismeddin. The slender white fingers released a scrap of paper that fluttered a moment in the moonlight, then, passing out of the beam, settled to the floor where in the darkness Rankin could just distinguish it.

  “Truly the future shall be better for thee than the Past,” concluded Rankin. “And thy Lord shall be gracious, and thou satisfied.”

  The jeweled fingers gestured ever so slightly, paused a moment, and disappeared.

  Rankin curbed his impatience and contented himself with staring at the scarcely perceptible blotch that was the note from his unknown friend.

  Very faintly from the hall came the snore of the sentry.

  “My devoutness was wasted,” thought Rankin, as he arose to get the note. “Still, a bit of piety is never out of order.”

  Rankin struck a match. One sufficed, for the note was brief:

  Bismillahi! Neferte to Abdemon, greeting! The darvish, Ismeddin, will spring the bars of your cell and release you on the night of the 12th of Nissan. Ride and overtake us at the oasis of al Akra.

  The night of the twelfth…two days of hard riding…well, that would not be so bad…so let Ismeddin do the worrying for the next few hours…

  * * * *

  On the evening of the 12th, the porter admitted seven darvishes seeking audience of the Shareef shortly before the sunset prayer.

  “Prayer and the Peace upon you, Cousin of the Prophet,” saluted Zantut as he bowed low before the white-bearded Shareef. “My companions and I have ridden day and night from the north of Kurdistan in our haste to fulfill an ancient prophecy. It is written—” Zantut paused and turned to the adept at his left: “Humayd, tell the Cousin of the Prophet, our Lord the Shareef, of your vision.”

  “Three nights, ago,” began Humayd, after receiving the Shareef’s permission to speak, “I was sitting in contemplation of holy things, when suddenly a great lig
ht appeared in my cave. A tall stranger whose face and garments shone like the noonday sun stood there before me.

  “‘Rise at once, Abdemon,’ he said, ‘and with your pious companions seek the house of the Shareef, Sayyid Yussuf—’

  “‘A thousand pardons,’ I replied, ‘but I am Humayd, a darvish, and not Abdemon.’

  “‘You are wrong,’ said the glittering stranger; ‘not Humayd, but Abdemon, who in a former life were favored by our lord, Suleiman Baalshem, who promised you his daughter, Neferte. But that promise, as you know, Suleiman could not keep, on account of Allah’s wrath at his impiety. But Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, has relented; and on the 14th of Nisan, the first full moon of spring, you must take Neferte, who in this life is the lady Azizah, the niece of our lord the Shareef, to the Valley of Djinn, and there perform the ritual which will lift the curse from her life. And then Suleiman’s promise to you in an earlier life can be fulfilled. Finally, there is a great treasure which Suleiman left awaiting this day; one third of it is yours, and the rest is for the pious Shareef.’

  “Then there came an intolerable brightness which blinded me; and when I could again see, the Presence had vanished. I sought my instructor the holy Zantut; and behold, we are here,” concluded Humayd.

  “So there is also a treasure?” queried the Shareef.

  “Even so, saidi. Just as Humayd has said.”

  “What of the seal?” asked the Shareef.

  Humayd drew from a small pouch suspended at his throat a leaden seal.

  “The seal of Suleiman Baalshem,” admitted the Shareef. “And then, Ishtitad!” he commanded. “Testify!”

  “La illaha illa allah,” intoned Humayd. “Wa Muhammad er-rasul allahi.”

  “At least we have a true believer this time,” reflected the Shareef. Then, to his son: “Was I not right in imprisoning the infidel you brought before me?”