The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Surely you’ve heard of the Knights of the Saffron Mask!”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “You’ll hear of them soon enough, if they learn I’m here. They’re a secret order—but how in the world have you missed hearing of them? And where am I?” she questioned, glancing about her, and indicating the sculptured and tapestried walls.

  “All in due course. Please continue about these Knights,” suggested Landon.

  “They’re self-appointed guardians of public safety and morals, and particularly of Christianity in general. Jews, Catholics, and atheists are their particular aversion, as well as anyone who is inclined to be unconventional. And whoever offends them is introduced to tar, feathers, and the lash. Witness myself. Once in a while they make effective use of rope, and a tall tree.”

  “Conducting a jehad under cover, so to speak?”

  “Exactly. Holy war describes the doings of these bigots.”

  Landon wondered that the girl had understood his phrase, but held his peace.

  “Come to think of it, I did hear of them.” And he told her of Ismeddin’s adventure with the masked intruder the very night of the episode at Tiptoe Inn. “Self-appointed guardians…judging from my bit of eavesdropping that night, your friend’s propositions weren’t any too savory—”

  “No. Which was to be expected. Rumor has it that he holds a high command in the order. The rank and file are honest, deluded bigots who serve as a mask for blackmail, rape, murder, arson, or what’ll-you-have, perpetrated by their leaders. Extortion, revenge…see how the pretty scheme works out? Camouflaged by piety, virtue, and saffron masks.”

  And Landon wondered greatly, and marveled at the contrasting crudeness and simplicity of the lands of the Moslem, where he had spent so many hard, fierce years.

  “Now tell me,” resumed the girl, again glancing about her, “where I am.”

  “Among friends.” And Landon struck the small brazen gong at his side.

  “Pardon me. I didn’t mean to be inquisitive.”

  “You may as well improvise some clothes,” continued Landon, ignoring his guest’s apology, “until I can equip you more suitably.” He picked up the torn and soiled scrap of silk that his guest had discarded in favor of his lounge-robe. “This is a bit the worse for wear, you know. Tell me where you live, and I’ll call for your baggage in the morning.”

  Just then Ismeddin, in response to the master’s summons, entered with a tray.

  “Is that all, saidi?”

  Landon nodded, whereupon the old man left the master and his guest to sip the night-black Abyssinian coffee he had brought in.

  “Allah akbar! But she is lovely!” he exulted. “Oh, excellent young woman!”

  “Lord, what coffee! You are a mind-reader, stranger. But no, don’t go after my clothes. You’ll just draw the whole pack down on both of us. That clown at Tiptoe Inn surely must hold a high command among the Knights, or they’d never have bothered me. Even if I am a cabaret singer. That town’s no longer safe for me. They’d drag me out of here if they knew I was here, and as for you, helping me this way—”

  “The devil you say!” snorted Landon. “You’re safe here till the crack of doom. Unless these fellows get siege guns and batter the place down over our ears. And I’ll certainly get you some clothes and whatever else you need.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” pleaded the girl. “They don’t know I’m here. As long as they don’t know, we’re safe. I’ll make the most of things—yes, I have my nerve, but I simply have to invite myself to stay a few days until this mess quiets down, and I can safely leave.”

  “Fair enough. Just make yourself at home, if you can stand our queer life. See you in the morning!”

  And Landon left his guest to nurse her bruises and make herself as comfortable as she could on her improvised couch of several small silk rugs and a few cushions.

  The signs of heaven were approaching the aspect called for in the three tablets; so that even after such an outlandish night, Landon, after leaving his guest, dismissed her from his mind and devoted himself to the rehearsing of the invocations and secret names he was to use in summoning Sarpanit from across the Border. In the seventh stage, high above the plain, face to face with the Lords of the Sign, Landon chanted and beat the tiny drum with knuckles and fingertips until it purred and rolled in that same uncanny rhythm to which the Infidel’s Daughter had danced in the pavilion of Koyunjik.

  Finally, having reached the end of the ceremonial, Landon arose from his seat at the foot of the altar, gazed through the slits in the vaulted ceiling of the seventh stage and out into the shimmering darkness beyond. In each slit were cross-hairs of fine silver wire so adjusted that at the instant the Lords of the Sign had risen into position, each would be at the intersection of the wires in his particular house: and thus Landon would know that the moment had arrived when the secret name of the Infidel’s Daughter was to be pronounced, summoning her into his presence in material form from across the abyss that divides the phantom from its incarnation. And as Landon noted that some of the powers were already approaching their houses, he knew that the others, in the course of but a few days, would swing into the prescribed aspect; knew, and shuddered at the thought of the awful forces which he sought to command, the ruin and ultimate destruction that would be his.

  * * * *

  During the next few days Landon saw little of his protégée save at an occasional meal; but those few glimpses were disturbing. The blurred, indefinable accent of her speech stirred a shadowy memory of a memory; and the haunting, half familiarity of her piquant, irregular, almost lovely features upset his poise and self-possession. He found himself from time to time denying with needless vehemence the speech of old Ismeddin, wherein the darvish had suggested that a girl of Feringhistan might lure him from his quest of Sarpanit, who was inhumanly jealous.

  The girl had amused herself by taking pieces of Hindustani fabrics Landon had given her and improvising quaint, outlandish apparel which seemed to please her enormously: exotic, pagan raiment which made her fit into and become a part of her surroundings.

  “You are a clever designer. But you can’t wear that outside of the ziggurât. Hadn’t I better go to town and get you some clothes in which you could travel?”

  “Well…yes…if I’m in the way…or grating on your nerves.”

  “Oh, not at all,” reassured Landon, lying valiantly. “Only, I don’t want to keep you here against your best interests. The Knights—”

  “Never mind them. Unless I am wearing out my welcome.”

  “No danger. Just stay away from the seventh stage. And stay away from that bronze door, whatever you do. Otherwise, the place is yours. But remember, keep clear of the seventh stage,” concluded Landon solemnly.

  That afternoon Landon rode to town for mail which he was not expecting. He returned with a mountainous aggregation of boxes and parcels which by some miracle he contrived to balance on his saddlebow: civilized apparel, traveling-clothes for his guest, the cabaret girl.

  “Ismeddin, take this stuff up to our guest,” he commanded.

  “Very well, saidi,” agreed the old man. But for such an agile, sprightly veteran, Ismeddin was strangely clumsy and feeble in his attempts to collect and shoulder the assortment of packages.

  “Never mind,” countermanded Landon, “I’ll take them up in the morning.”

  And that night, after Landon had gone to the seventh stage to pass through the purification by water and fire, the girl and the darvish met in what she called her throne-room.

  “Thanks for the coffee, Ismeddin. But that’s not why I rang for you.”

  “To hear is to obey, bibi!”

  “Then sit down and listen to me. The master brought home a load of traveling-clothes for me this evening—”

  “Who am I to say?” evaded Ismeddin.

  “You needn’t say.
I know what I know. Now tell me the truth: just how anxious is the master to get me out of here?”

  Ismeddin marveled that he could no more resist that girl’s compelling eye than he could the master’s. And strangely, he did not resent the fact.

  “I will tell you the truth. Your presence disturbs the master’s studies.”

  “Indeed?”

  The girl’s eyebrows rose in saracenic arches; and she smiled as one who is more pleased than amused.

  “Then tell me, Ismeddin,” she purred in the rippling syllables of a language the darvish had not heard for many months, “tell me what manner of studies he pursues, and how I could possibly disturb his meditations. You can trust me, Ismeddin,” she continued, ignoring his amazement at hearing that unexpected language, “and speak to me freely. For I have seen and heard, without having intended to eavesdrop. And I know that you were pleased at my arrival; even as I know also that you did not care to bring me my traveling-clothes this evening… Oh, but it is very strange, Haaj Ismeddin… Yet I know many things… So tell me more, wise Haaji…what manner of studies does the master pursue, and how could I disturb him?”

  Again her eyebrows rose in pointed arches; and her eyes smoldered through their long lashes. Loyalty to the master melted under that mordant, burning gaze; reticence and reserve fell asleep, drugged by those rippling, caressing tones of a familiar tongue.

  “…And thus it is,” concluded the darvish, “that the master fears that even your presence in the very basements of this tower would arouse the inhuman jealousy of Sarpanit whom he seeks to summon from across the Border; fears that she will not reveal herself in human form; fears that he will be cheated of his doom and robbed of the fiery destruction of the Hundred and First Kiss which in the end she bestows on her lovers.”

  “And you, Haaji?” murmured the girl. Strangely enough, she had heard the old man’s mad tale of the Infidel’s Daughter without surprise or amazement, accepting it as of all things in the world the most logical and reasonable. “And you, Haaj Ismeddin, do you share his fears?”

  “I? By the black hands of Abaddon! If you could only save him from himself! Whoever and whatever you are, bibi…if only…but no; you could not even pass the brazen door tomorrow night. Your presence there, in that holy of unholies, would break the powerful spell he intends to chant; and she would not cross the Border. But your being in any other place in this ziggurât would not suffice. And a hundred men could not batter down that heavy door, nor the most cunning smith pick its locks and bars—”

  “Once it is closed, no.” The girl smiled, and patted her dusky coiffure. “And I will not leave in the morning as he designs, Haaji…”

  “Ismeddin,” began Landon the next morning, as the old man entered with the master’s meal of barley cakes and water, “how long must one shelter a stranger who has eaten one’s bread and salt?”

  “Your enemy may stay three days; and for a whole day after his departure you may not pursue him.”

  “But this girl is not my enemy. Though her presence—”

  “Saidi, as long as she does not enter the seventh stage, her presence makes no difference. So that though she can now leave in safety, you can scarcely send her away. Lawfully, yes; but when did you ever urge a guest to leave? You are not of Feringhistan; you could not ask a guest to leave, saidi. And she does no harm. If she should enter the seventh stage…but she can not do that.”

  And then the girl herself entered Landon’s apartment.

  “How can I ever thank you? Those clothes are really adorable. Only…forgive me for mentioning it…I simply couldn’t leave here barefooted.”

  “Barefooted? Why, I included shoes!”

  “Then you must have lost them on the road. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’ll replace them tomorrow. No trouble whatever. But in the meanwhile,” concluded Landon, pausing at the door, “I’ll be very busy. Surely you’ll pardon my haste?”

  Ismeddin, following the master, wondered what had become of the pair of shoes that had fallen from a mountainous heap of parcels he had that morning carried to the girl’s apartment.

  “It is written, saidi,” observed the old man. “She must stay another day. Surely you could not send her away barefooted.”

  “Very well then. But tomorrow morning…no matter what happens tonight—”

  “I understand, saidi. If she appears from across the Border, the girl will leave.”

  * * * *

  It was late that night when Landon, in the seventh stage of the ziggurât, completed the final purification by passing through fire. And then, barefooted, and robed in purple, he stepped into the center of a circle of powdered cinnabar which flamed luridly in the violet light of the adytum of the Infidel’s Daughter. On his head was a three-storied miter woven of purple plumage; on his wrists were bracelets of silver, and around his throat he wore a collar of hammered bronze. In his right hand he carried a diadem of curiously wrought silver, and in his left was a tiny drum whose head was of serpent’s hide.

  At the center of the circle he knelt, bowed low in obeisance, then rose, and advancing toward the altar of unsculptured stone, placed thereon the drum and the diadem.

  “Infidel’s Daughter, this is the drum to whose cadence you shall dance to the evening star, on the terraces of the house which I have built for you; and this is the diadem you shall wear when you reign in this house which rises to the heavens to meet you: and all this is proof that I sought you on the Mount of the Infidel as you commanded.”

  Then, inclining his head for a moment, he retreated to the circle of cinnabar, raised his arms, and began his invocation; haltingly at first, and then more surely and firmly as the spirit of those ancient words overcame him.

  “Flaming lords of the two horizons and watchers of the treble gates, stand one at the right and one at the left as the star of Sarpanit rises to his throne and rules over his sign,” he intoned as he gazed through the central cruciform cleft in the ceiling, looking out into blackness beyond that great height. “And you, dark princes of Aralû, open the gates of that dim land where you keep her imprisoned, and release her once more to spread gladness and woe without end over this earth which dries and wanes, lacking her presence. Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, dark lords and shining presences, and by your secret names which I know and can pronounce, hear ye and obey my will.”

  Pausing in his invocation, he drew from a pouch at his girdle a small vial whose contents he poured in a circle about him, concentric to, and within the circle of cinnabar. And as the fluid touched the floor, it burst into quivering, lapping flames whose spectral blueness exhaled a poison-sweetness which overwhelmed the dense fumes rising from the censers that smoldered at each side of the altar.

  “Belît Nûri,” he resumed, “light of heaven and earth, Sarpanit, shining torch of heaven, return from Aralû! Seven times and seven times have I passed through fire; food have I not eaten; sorrow was my nourishment; water have I not drunk; grief was for my thirst. I am Adôn, for whom you wept; I am the Lord of the Great House; I am the builder of the Ziggurât; and it is I who call you from Aralû, from the gloomy realm of Ereshkigal; it is I who summon you from across the Border, Belît Nûri, Lady of Light!”

  Statuesquely, with formal precision, he made gestures reminiscent of the mitered kings who in the lower halls of the ziggurât rode to battle and poured libations on lofty altars. And all the while he chanted in that dim, forgotten tongue, summoning the Infidel’s Daughter from across the Border.

  “It is I who seek you, Bint el Kafir who danced before me on the mound of Koyunjik; therefore ride on your lions past the throne of Allatu, and appear before me, Sarpanit, Bright and Shining One!”

  The Lord of the Sign rose into the predicted configuration. Great clouds of purple smoke, choking and blinding, rose from the censers and overwhelmed Landon with their awful sweetness; but still he chanted. And then as the star hung for
an instant on the silver cross-hair in the cleft, flaming like an incandescent bead on a string of light, he raised his arms and called in a great voice that final word, the uttermost and hidden name of the Infidel’s Daughter: “Come from across the Border, Kadishtu!”

  The blue flames shrank into blackness. Landon collapsed, sprawling across the edge of the cinnabar circle. His three-staged miter rolled to the foot of the altar. Uncrowned, and mocked by the star that flamed its way up the silver cross-hair, Landon lay senseless in the darkness of the shrine sacred to the Bright and Shining One.

  CHAPTER 3

  That very evening, shortly after nightfall, the Knights of the Saffron Mask met in secret conclave. Under cover of darkness they slunk in pairs down side streets and alleys, uncouth figures in robes and miters, converging in all directions toward their rendezvous in the basement of a house at the outskirts of the village.

  “Good evening, Brethren,” greeted the Grand Master with punctilious solemnity as he ascended the rostrum. “Be seated.”

  Whereat the Knights took seats and respectfully awaited the opening of the Book of Seals, wherein were inscribed not only the rules and minutes of the Order, but also, in the appendix, the names of offenders, actual as well as prospective; the list of the proscribed, and the proceedings instituted against them.

  “Tonight,” began the Grand Master, “we shall try and sentence this Landon whose manifold iniquities have become a disgrace and a scandal to this Christian community. Brethren, what is your good pleasure?”

  “Let him be tried,” intoned forty voices in the monotone of a litany; “and let him be sentenced; and let this sentence be forthwith executed.”

  “Who prefers a charge?”

  A dozen robed figures leaped to their feet.

  With a gesture the Grand Master yielded the floor to one of them.

  “Master,” began the Knight, “this man is an infidel; he worships the sun and moon and the hosts of heaven.”